Guild Wars 2

Based on a few friends being reported for absurd reasons, this rose a few questions in my head about the report function. I do wish my friend was unbanned, he really did nothing wrong, which makes me really uneasy about exactly how Arena Net is handling the reports from players. Skip the next two paragraphs for the suggestion.

I Necros I was recently banned for “botting”, being reported in Cursed shore. Considering that I play with this guildie a lot, and I can definitely say he is NOT using a bot program of any sort, I think this brings up a few problems. Apparently he was reported for doing the Cursed Shore Plinx event literally all day. Only time he took a break was when we did WvW. Someone reported him for botting, but I don’t see how ANet came to the conclusion that he was.

Another instance is a fellow commander in our guild. I can’t see how he was told to rename himself 2-3 times for a name that wasn’t, in my eyes, or most of our guilds, inappropriate. His name started with “soviet”. "Soviet” is derived from a Russian word signifying council, assembly, advice, harmony, concord. Yes, it was followed by a country name such as china or cuba, but I don’t see how this is offensive.

These 2 instances bring me to my suggestion. Yes, this is similar to the “Tribunal” in League of Legends, but it’s really to examine just what exactly is being reported. In the case of botting, while this may be a bit problematic, the person being reported should be given a problem to answer, a simple 1+1 or something, or a captcha (yeah, really annoying, I know). It’s easy for someone to mistake those rangers with brown bears with bots, when they could just be new players. If someone was afk, and they get reported, then the timer that tells you that you will be logged out if you don’t resume activity should begin.

As for the name reports, that needs to be brought to public attention, imo. I’ve seen people come back from renaming or bans, telling everyone what they’re original name was, and having an entire map wondering who would be so sensitive or troll enough to report them.

After the long wall of text (sorry for being long winded), I’m just saying that ANet should really consider if who they are banning and telling to rename characters really deserve it or not. My friend is pretty mad that he’s been banned for being reported for botting, when he hasn’t at all, not even using gold farmers.

Reporting is out of control; especially on the forums. It’s a free for all among players. I have been infracted twice in the last hour for unproductive posts… yet I was replying to same. When I go back to look at the post- the same inflamatory rhetoric is still there where-as my post has been deleted.

Solution- Do to them what they have obviously done to you. There’s nothing to be gained by being righteous and silent. Best to get in a few punches and take notes… for your appeal.

I don’t really know in game but in the forums at least I have the really strong impression that there is an automatic system that deletes posts, probably based on reports and in some sort of scanning for potencially offensive or worthless content.
I say this because I’ve had my posts deleted like 3 or 4 times, and all of those were deleted way too fast (I really can’t believe moderators could be so efficient) and a PM was sent to me claiming that it was an automated measure and that if I would like to appeal I could send my complaints to a certain email. Thing I did once, like 2 weeks ago, and didn’t even get an answer.

The bot one i agree , they really should work on that , your friend was not the first person i heard that got banned for no good reason.

The name one , in this case , i dont , adding soviet before a country name makes perfect sense to get a name change. You cant represent yourself like you were a country , just like you cant use any famous person name. And soviet is not a simple word either , we both know it comes from the Soviet Union , which on itself bring another bunch of implications.

So , Anet was obviously wrong on the bot part , but i dont see any blunder on the name one.

This is the very reason why people can’t see player names in WvW.

People are abusing the privilege of reporting the actual bots. They do need an overhaul in how they detect bots I agree wholeheartily. I personally if ever I reported someone by accident and realized it before logging report my report in a support ticket right away.

There needs to be the ability to remove your own reports before an admin sees it, like a timer “this report has not been viewed and was placed on ……”.

Their system of support is a little strange, nothing like what I’d expect from a AAA title. Why while i’m in game and monitoring a situation would I EVER want to switch from the game to a browser that has to wait for a website to load to submit a support ticket? Doesn’t that strike you as odd they are doing it this way? And seriously WHY do we not have an in game monitoring of our support tickets? I was under the impression from my friend that works in the computing field that they use universal database protocols for this stuff, how hard would it be to give this game a ui for a better handling of support, name, and bot reporting?

The name thing, i think they should change it to requiring two reports before it needs evaluation to see if it needs changing by a human. Yes there needs to be a human involved in some of these because reporting a name because you don’t like it just needs to have more people involved really…and they need to make this a silent change to the reporting names system so that people won’t say to their friends, “hey this guy isn’t agreeing with me in map chat let’s report his name hurp durp.”

False positives happen in any bot fighting system. If you act like a bot you might just get mistaken for one. It is usually possible to get unbanned, was this not the case? As for the name? Soviet in and of itself should not be a cause for a name change. Doing so seems seems a tad too rigid, draconian even.

My understanding is that when you report someone, no action is taken until someone from ANET looks at the report and makes a decision. Anything else would be stupid.

If you make too many false reports, you get punished. I don’t know the exact punishments yet, probably a warning for the first time.

I Necros I was recently banned for “botting”, being reported in Cursed shore. Considering that I play with this guildie a lot, and I can definitely say he is NOT using a bot program of any sort,

Automatic bot detection does trigger false positives.

Another instance is a fellow commander in our guild. I can’t see how he was told to rename himself 2-3 times for a name that wasn’t, in my eyes, or most of our guilds, inappropriate. His name started with “soviet”. "Soviet” is derived from a Russian word signifying council, assembly, advice, harmony, concord. Yes, it was followed by a country name such as china or cuba, but I don’t see how this is offensive.

Soviet Russia was a horrible place. People don’t want to be reminded of it, nor to see suggestions that other countries copying it is a good idea.

As for the name reports, that needs to be brought to public attention, imo. I’ve seen people come back from renaming or bans, telling everyone what they’re original name was, and having an entire map wondering who would be so sensitive or troll enough to report them.

People lie about why they were banned. Just do a text search for ‘not ok’ and start laughing.

You know, if you want to avoid being reported for a namechange, there is actually a rather good precaution to take: pick a real, proper name. If you insist on using a “clever” chat handle, there is always a chance someone would take it too seriously and report you. Running around with a character named “Soviet -something-” is pretty much like running around with a character named “Nazi Germany” or “Thatcherian Britain” or something. Generally not a good thing to do: as you might imagine, many people dislike having their leisure time marred by reminders of Soviets or Nazis, let alone those of Mrs. Thatcher.

Nox Aeterna.2965:

. And soviet is not a simple word either , we both know it comes from the Soviet Union , which on itself bring another bunch of implications.

Implication? let me laugh … is just a word. man, stop being … u? …
I rly saw names totaly inappropriates, but is their game, they can do whatever they want. Didnt read the eula?
And yup, i heard about automatic bann, like dhar said is a free for all player vs payer.