Guild Wars 2

I know this post might be stupid, but I do care about this topic.
I love this game’s community, but sometimes some flammers start harassing me when I kill them on PvP or when they kill me and want to brag about it. I always report them for verbal abuse (specially when they use harsh words).

How do I know my reports are being taken into account? I don’t want to feel good for reporting them without knowing if it works or not.

Thanks

Bad news, I have never heard of this working for anyone other than reporting gold sellers.

You don’t. Usually, MMOs don’t talk about enforcement either — but I was trying out FFXIV recently, and in their news they announced the number of actions taken in the last month. (~ 8k bans, and 18k punishments).

That might be a good thing to push anet for. It would at least give the sense that something was being done.

There was a time when ArenaNet used to call out people who would post on Reddit claiming to be the “innocent victim” of a false suspension. Someone would claim “I just got a 1 week suspension… I’ve never said anything bad in chat… other players are just griefing me… ArenaNet just bans people who get multiple reports, without investigating anything!” Then someone from ArenaNet would come along and post the chat log from that person in all its uncensored glory and retort with “THIS is what got you suspended. Questions?”

It was hilarious to see people get shut down like that, and it showed that ArenaNet does indeed investigate and take action on those verbal abuse reports.

Keep in mind that ArenaNet usually starts people out with a 1 – 3 day suspension at first (they might even get just a warning before that), and it may take up to a week or more between when you submit your report and when they have a chance to act on it.

I’m pretty sure they do take action. But their actions on specific incidents aren’t always immediate or visible to us.

TorsoReaper.8530:

Bad news, I have never heard of this working for anyone other than reporting gold sellers.

The many people on reddit (as mentioned above) and the suspended players who have posted on these very forums would tend to disagree with you. ;-)

When the language is over the top (which is very rare), I recommend filing a support ticket, so you can include screenshots and call attention to the specific phrases.

The staff still isn’t going to tell you how they are going to respond. You can tell, however, that they take the report seriously.

I’m just gonna give him the benefit of the doubt and assume the “bragging” is something along the lines of the other player telling him how much of a nubcake he is for failing to kill the other player, how mentally r******d he must be to use whatever spec he is using, how fat his mom is cuz he sucks at PvP, etc.. Probably in different words too. Fortunately it is quite uncommon but it does happen.

Most verbal abuse I’ve seen in PvP comes from people on the same team. Blaming one or more members for the team losing the match.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Maximus Delion.8719:

It was hilarious to see people get shut down like that, and it showed that ArenaNet does indeed investigate and take action on those verbal abuse reports.

Keep in mind that ArenaNet usually starts people out with a 1 – 3 day suspension at first (they might even get just a warning before that), and it may take up to a week or more between when you submit your report and when they have a chance to act on it.

I’m pretty sure they do take action. But their actions on specific incidents aren’t always immediate or visible to us.

Believe me, reports are read, and we have a team on board 24/7/365. That doesn’t guarantee that the team member will respond exactly as you desire, for they try to look at things objectively, and we tend to forgive an occasional “slip of the tongue.” Still, we do take action on offensive chat and will continue to do so, in the interests of keeping the game pleasant for everyone.

You also are welcome to send individual reports to the team. Best to include the exact day, time, and precise spelling of the offending player’s character or display name, to offer the most effective report.

I suggested this in another thread on the subject, Gayle, but one of the things I was surprised by in testing out FFXIV was that in their news they had a “report on actions taken”, which indicated the number of bans and suspensions that had been issued in the last month.

That didn’t have the whole “call out one individual” thing going on, but it certainly gave the sense of the scale they were working at. (IIRC, it was ~ 8.5k accounts blocked, and ~ 18.5k suspensions.)

Anyway, perhaps publishing stats like that on a regular basis would give the community some sense of how much action was undertaken, and we would see less “reports do nothing” conspiracy theories.

(ps: yes, I know I’m literally kitten for mentioning the competition. )

…yes, yes, I know, then it would be “conspiracy theory number two: the numbers in the report are made up!!!!11!”