I'm going to start off with another brief review of the system to get everyone on the same page. We have 6 categories in which players can fall into: Chat Abuse, Feeding/Stat Manipulation, Impersonating Staff, Ability/Item Abuse, Bad Nickname/Clan name, and Avoiding AFK Detection.
To report a player, click the ban-hammer next to their name (either in-game or after the match), select the category, enter a small description and select a time. Press the submit button when you are done! As simple as that!
Each player that gets reported can have multiple tickets from different players against them which helps us determine how toxic that player can be and allows up to get to them faster. The more you report, the better the community becomes.
Exciting never-before-talked-about feature!
With the latest iteration of the Report-A-Player system, we made the system more automatic, that is, some tickets are already handled before they even reach the GMs! Essentially, the system will look for players who are constantly breaking the rules and send them up to the front of the line. At the same time it looks at the players who actually had not done anything wrong, and dismisses them automatically. This allows for faster processing of tickets and a better turnaround for everyone.Statistics Time!
The RAP system automatically determined that 17% of all tickets coming in needed high priority and we were able to get those toxic players out of the game right away. Because of the automation, we were able to remove over a few thousand players to ensure better quality games for everyone.As for reports that were forwarded from the system to the GMs - over 30,000 individual Player Reports (or Tickets as well call them) were submitted and completed for the month of July!
Here's the breakdown!
Chat AbuseGuilty: 83%
Innocent: 8%
Warned: 9%
Feeding/Stat Manipulation
Guilty: 72%
Innocent: 24%
Warned: 4%
Impersonating Staff
Guilty: 7%
Innocent: 91%
Warned: 1%
Ability/Item Abuse
Guilty: 85%
Innocent: 11%
Warned: 4%
Bad Nickname/Clan name
Guilty: 10%
Innocent: 90%
Warned: 0%
Avoiding AFK Detection
Guilty: 52%
Innocent: 42%
Warned: 6%
As I've said before, in a perfect world all of the tickets we receive would be 100% guilty, but realistically that won't happen. The more guilty reports we get, the less time we have to spend on the players who did nothing wrong, the innocent group.
I'd like to take this time to bring up some common concerns I see posted regarding the Report-A-Player system and clear up some information.
A banned player can just make a new account, so why does it matter?
We have a very low limit for the number of accounts that can be made by a single person. We use some pretty amazing tools to determine who you are, where you're playing from, and use that information to prevent account creation over our set limit. You can't just keep making accounts after you get banned.
No only that, but when you're banned, you now lose access to your valuable account. You've lost access to playing at your MMR bracket, your avatars, bonuses, essentially your identity as a HoN player.
Why don't I get an email anymore?
With the new automation of the RAP system, we don't want players to feel like their reports did nothing. Tickets that come in where the player did nothing wrong becomes automatically closed, we don't want you to feel like you've wasted your time because every report, innocent or guilty, helps the system evolve. If we start sending you an email saying your ticket was deemed innocent as soon as you send it in, you might become a bit discouraged to report in the future.
If we can work on providing higher quality reports, we can be the change in the community that we want see. We have the systems in place, we just need you to keep it up!
As always, if you have any questions or concerns about the RAP system feel free to head on over to the RAP Feedback Section on the forums and talk about it with Game Masters.
Thanks for reading!