Suggestion: Suspend/Ban for Numerous Reports

[Llosidian]

There are a number of people who specifically receive a significant number of reports in very short amounts of time. These users are highly toxic, spam non-stop the whole game, and etc. Literally nobody wants to play with them. I regularly see them just lynched by town day 2 of the game with no evidence, or executed/shot night 2, just to get them out of the game. Their reports go through the trial system, and are generally found "not guilty" because "their spam is game related," "fake claiming 4 different roles as town isn't against the rules," "advertising your youtube channel without posting the actual link isn't spam," "pushing townies for no reason as non-TI roles isn't against the rules," and etc. In a lot of these cases, we're talking about a minimum 30 reports per month, in some cases even more. For comparison, I have 33 in a well over year and a half with right at 3,000 ranked games played. In talking to most of these players, they've specifically said they don't care if they get banned, ban avoidance is $5, and they already have multiple accounts.

Solution: Apply strikes to accounts based on either a percentage of reports vs games played or based on number of reports over a particular rolling time period, whether or not they're "guilty" in the trial system. Say 5 reports in a rolling 30 days results in a strike. Or say 5 reports in a rolling 100 games (and lets be real, 5 per 100 is actually REALLY HIGH).

I mean, I've done some really crazy, off the wall stuff that's been reported, and made some pretty stupid plays that got reported, and I have barely over a 0.1% report rate. 0.1-0.2% seems to be pretty normal for the "regulars." These guys have like 5-10% report rates, sometimes even higher. One account I looked at has almost a 20% report rate. It is ludicrous that someone who gets reported 1 in 5 games for GT, HSH, and Spam can continue to ruin the game or make it significantly less enjoyable for the other (up to) 70 people they played with and never receive any consequences for their behavior. I log in and play one game and see these people, I log out after one game and find something else to play. Fix this please.

[Brilliand]

Give an example (i.e. a link to one of the reports against one of these people).

I definitely do not want any number of in-game reports to generate an auto-guilty without trial jurors/judges checking it, but I could perhaps see an argument for making the rules more strict in certain situations.

[Flavorable]

/bignosupport

Not everyone that gets reported a lot is actually toxic. Heck, me and my friends sometimes get 4-5 reports each PER DAY just because people get salty. Not to mention the amount of people that get reghunted, or people who simple don't know the actual rules and would report people for literally anything (A former Trial Server Judge was once reported for Gamethrowing as an Amnesiac that died Night 1, just because of the people he played with). Heck, I've seen Survs get reported for not siding with one side or another. Or Inappropriate Ingame Name reports for things like "Sex". Not to mention reports where nothing even happens.

Not to mention that jurors in the Trial System can duplicate reports on players, meaning that with your suggestion, all someone has to do is have to have played 151 games, go to the Trial System and start duplicating reports on people just to get them banned.

Granted, from context, it's easy enough to tell what group of players you are talking about, and it most cases they're right, the things they do is generally something that skirts by the rules, but we can't just start banning people because others don't like them or they way they play. Also keep in mind that most of these players have been suspended before and a portion of them has even been banned. So they do get punished, if they actually break rules.

But if we start banning everyone who gets reported for doing something others don't like, trust me, we wouldn't have much of a playerbase left.

[Joacgroso]

The problem with this suggestion is that trolls with multiple accounts could easily abuse it to suspend innocent players. A blacklist option that warns you if you are sharing lobby with a blacklisted player would be better.

[Ezradekezra]

I've gotten a good few reports from people who are salty about me playing well, so this is a /nosupport from me.

[Llosidian]

Since someone asked for a specific example:
TylerDurden99 - Last one I looked at. When I was looking at it, this one had 99 reports, 1554 games played (6.4% report rate), and was 4 months old (~25 reports/month), one report actually has them saying that they will throw every game until they are banned. In multiple interactions with this player they have said they have other accounts, ban avoidance is $5, and they don't care if they get banned. If allowed to live past day 2 in a typical game, they will claim a minimum of 3 different roles and push to lynch multiple townies intentionally and without reason when they are town. Typically gets lynched on day 2 no matter what, which just sucks for whichever team they're on. Frequently spams their YouTube channel at the start of the game, spams nonstop throughout the game. Incredibly toxic to people, especially when they get lynched on day 2 for their behavior.

@Flavorable - You talk about getting lots of reports. For comparison, from what I see, you have 80 reports, 4680 games played (1.7% report rate) with a 4+ year old account (~20 reports/year).

[Llosidian]

The problem with this suggestion is that trolls with multiple accounts could easily abuse it to suspend innocent players. A blacklist option that warns you if you are sharing lobby with a blacklisted player would be better.

Except that leaving the lobby, in ranked, gets your account suspended... this would be fine if it wasn't happening in ranked play. Maybe implementing a permanent "I never want to play with this player again" feature would work instead.

[Joacgroso]

Yeah, blacklists shouldn't work in ranked because they could be abused to evade good players. But ideally, elo should take care of that and only match throwers with other low elo people. If only.

[mrklin]

Although I agree with the principle of this, they first need to implement a way to reconnect to game if a night has not passed and character killed. I've got several disconnects to my name now, and they are frustrating as I could easily have gotten back on given the option, and I could just as easily be reported/banned in half of those due to suspicious timing, bad roles etc.

[TheFluffyWaffleV2]

This is not the way to go.

[OreCreeper]

Since someone asked for a specific example:
TylerDurden99 - Last one I looked at. When I was looking at it, this one had 99 reports, 1554 games played (6.4% report rate), and was 4 months old (~25 reports/month), one report actually has them saying that they will throw every game until they are banned. In multiple interactions with this player they have said they have other accounts, ban avoidance is $5, and they don't care if they get banned. If allowed to live past day 2 in a typical game, they will claim a minimum of 3 different roles and push to lynch multiple townies intentionally and without reason when they are town. Typically gets lynched on day 2 no matter what, which just sucks for whichever team they're on. Frequently spams their YouTube channel at the start of the game, spams nonstop throughout the game. Incredibly toxic to people, especially when they get lynched on day 2 for their behavior.

@Flavorable - You talk about getting lots of reports. For comparison, from what I see, you have 80 reports, 4680 games played (1.7% report rate) with a 4+ year old account (~20 reports/year).

I know that guy, I'm friends with him. He's Saint C L I F F lol.

[Brilliand]

one report actually has them saying that they will throw every game until they are banned. In multiple interactions with this player they have said they have other accounts, ban avoidance is $5, and they don't care if they get banned.

This behavior should warrant escalating any Guilty report to an immediate permaban.

Expressed intent to break the rules should remove any and all leniency available in the system.

[OreCreeper]

one report actually has them saying that they will throw every game until they are banned. In multiple interactions with this player they have said they have other accounts, ban avoidance is $5, and they don't care if they get banned.

This behavior should warrant escalating any Guilty report to an immediate permaban.

Expressed intent to break the rules should remove any and all leniency available in the system.

OP failed to mention that the player in question was mafia in the report, and I doubt pretending to be gamethrowing town when you're actually mafia is bannable.

[e621CraX]

I support the idea to an extent, however just taking action automatically for having x amount of reports is a bad idea (as stated by others)

What would be a much better idea is flagging accounts with a suspiciously high amount of reports for investigation, and having users check it to see if the reported player is clearly trying to break the rules and ruin the game, or just happens to have a lot of salt reports. We already have the Trial system, I don't see why this would be much different.

For example, a common complaint would be a Veteran requesting TP/LO and then alerting. It's not guilty for gamethrowing, because it can be justified as a bad strat (I disagree, but that's beside the point.) I figure if a user is constantly getting reports for that reason, it can no longer be labelled as just bad strats due to the fact that it is repeated, when it very clearly never has worked and never will work across many games.

Or, another example related to recent reports. There's a lot of people with names like "White Lives Matter". Sure, it's not racist, but there likely is bad faith behind choosing that name. Once a player choosing that name gets enough reports, people could look into it and decide if it's just a name someone is picking for no apparent reason, or if it's a player trying to cause drama and generally stir the pot over race issues (which I'm certain we can all agree is the most likely outcome)

[ProjectSuperBoy]

The potential problems with this are far too numerous, some of them have already been pointed out. The trial system itself does not even always ban the right people. Furthermore, the other people who play this game are far too prone to gang up on one player for stupid nonsense such as not adhering to whatever made up rules they think every ToS player should adhere to. As well as the fact that all it takes in most matches is for one person to talk the most every single day and they basically run the town with 0 opposition for 5 or 6 days. That in conjunction with the possibilities that this suggestion brings would be a disaster.

[Brilliand]

What would be a much better idea is flagging accounts with a suspiciously high amount of reports for investigation, and having users check it to see if the reported player is clearly trying to break the rules and ruin the game, or just happens to have a lot of salt reports. We already have the Trial system, I don't see why this would be much different.

The Trial system already has the necessary mechanism for this. When judging a report, the trial system juror sees a list of all previous reports against that person, and has a button to create a new report under a different category (for the same game).

Jurors are allowed to take previous reports into account when making their decision, but I don't think most do so in practice (because there's nothing in the rulebook that says they should).

[LevinSnakesRise]

Jurors are allowed to take previous reports into account when making their decision, but I don't think most do so in practice (because there's nothing in the rulebook that says they should).

History should never be taken into account for Jurors. It isn't within their scope.

As a Juror, you are to vote on the report in front of you only. Nothing else matters but that one report, until you move onto the next.

[Brilliand]

History should never be taken into account for Jurors. It isn't within their scope.

As a Juror, you are to vote on the report in front of you only. Nothing else matters but that one report, until you move onto the next.

You're actively trying to prevent jurors from using all the information available to them, in a system that technically permits jury nullificiation with no expectation for the jurors to explain themselves? Why?

Jurors are currently the only layer of the system that's allowed to adjust their rulings based on whether the player is "actually toxic". They don't use that power enough; but still, it's an important function.

[LevinSnakesRise]

History should never be taken into account for Jurors. It isn't within their scope.

As a Juror, you are to vote on the report in front of you only. Nothing else matters but that one report, until you move onto the next.

You're actively trying to prevent jurors from using all the information available to them, in a system that technically permits jury nullificiation with no expectation for the jurors to explain themselves? Why?

Jurors are currently the only layer of the system that's allowed to adjust their rulings based on whether the player is "actually toxic". They don't use that power enough; but still, it's an important function.

That's how it's always been.

You vote on the report you are handed. That it is it. Nothing else matters in that moment other than the report you are given to look at.

You are not to take into consideration anyone's history because that isn't your job. Your job as a Juror is to decide whether that report in front of you broke any rules or not, and is worth viewing by staff. If you think it is, then of course, you vote Guilty. If not, then you vote Innocent, or you skip it. Only staff take into account player history, because we are the ones with the final deciding vote.

History is not to be used by jurors; it isn't in your scope.

[Message]

There are a number of people who specifically receive a significant number of reports in very short amounts of time. These users are highly toxic, spam non-stop the whole game, and etc. Literally nobody wants to play with them. I regularly see them just lynched by town day 2 of the game with no evidence, or executed/shot night 2, just to get them out of the game. Their reports go through the trial system, and are generally found "not guilty" because "their spam is game related," "fake claiming 4 different roles as town isn't against the rules," "advertising your youtube channel without posting the actual link isn't spam," "pushing townies for no reason as non-TI roles isn't against the rules," and etc. In a lot of these cases, we're talking about a minimum 30 reports per month, in some cases even more. For comparison, I have 33 in a well over year and a half with right at 3,000 ranked games played. In talking to most of these players, they've specifically said they don't care if they get banned, ban avoidance is $5, and they already have multiple accounts.

Solution: Apply strikes to accounts based on either a percentage of reports vs games played or based on number of reports over a particular rolling time period, whether or not they're "guilty" in the trial system. Say 5 reports in a rolling 30 days results in a strike. Or say 5 reports in a rolling 100 games (and lets be real, 5 per 100 is actually REALLY HIGH).

I mean, I've done some really crazy, off the wall stuff that's been reported, and made some pretty stupid plays that got reported, and I have barely over a 0.1% report rate. 0.1-0.2% seems to be pretty normal for the "regulars." These guys have like 5-10% report rates, sometimes even higher. One account I looked at has almost a 20% report rate. It is ludicrous that someone who gets reported 1 in 5 games for GT, HSH, and Spam can continue to ruin the game or make it significantly less enjoyable for the other (up to) 70 people they played with and never receive any consequences for their behavior. I log in and play one game and see these people, I log out after one game and find something else to play. Fix this please.

I'm glad you made this post, I had made something similar but it was never allowed to be published as you cannot "report players" here..

Players have asked for evidence/description of the behavior so here it is:


-------------------------------------------


It is obvious that Saint Kingmaker and his counterparts game-throw and use an alternative method of communication to speak with his accomplices (Saint Curry/Saint Milwaukee). Regardless of faction, the goal is usually to boost Saint Kingmaker's win so that he can flex his elo even though the entire game just consists of the 3 of these individuals spamming chat and pushing their agenda.



In this game - I was mafia so I wasn't even heavily affected by their spamming practices. However, it's extremely tough to play town in this situation...as it disrupts the entire game and causes false lynches to whomever these 3 individuals want to lynch.

Example of Chat Spam (Check Chat Log)****:

(In this case you can see (M I L W A) mention that Kingmaker and Abby both visited CURRY. Neither Abby nor Kingmaker denied this or pushed for M I L W A as evil as they're all working together to help M I L W A get the jester win (MILWA was not lookout - He was jester.)

https://i.imgur.com/jPxH9S0.jpg

Example of C U R R Y (Check Chat Log)



(In this case, C U R R Y claimed transporter as the arsonist. Surely this is not a reportable offense, but by the means of using 3 friends to push the actual transporter to get lynched in a ranked game must have some sort of impact. Queen Jasmine was the real transporter in this game and myself and others confirmed them. However with the voice of KINGMAKER, ABBY, CURRY, and MILWA - There is absolutely no possibility that this wasn't going to be hanged.)

https://i.imgur.com/Jqk5ZPT.jpg

Example of K I N G M A Ker (Check Chat Log)

Weirdly enough, he is the legitimate investigator. However, as you can see in the left chat - he kept spamming that Piper is immune and pushed to hang piper. Piper was the confirmed lookout and only resisted being hanged because the real jailor (7, Dallas) had confirmed him as legitimate.

https://i.imgur.com/8alYX7K.jpg

Here is the final role list.



While it can definitely be a coincidence in a singular game, Saint Kingmaker, Saint Curry, and Saint Milwaukee always work together regardless of faction. This has persisted between hundreds to thousands of games.



I don't believe that working with an arsonist, jester, mafia, town etc. is technically a bannable offense, but doing so with a premade group of friends in a ranked game to disrupt the game for everyone else is extremely disturbing.

Is this allowable for a group of individuals to queue up together, spam the chat and make fake claims even as town members with the intent of boosting a certain individual's elo?

https://i.imgur.com/VvlY6Q9.png

Here are the names on the end-card after the game.

https://i.imgur.com/9hXvNaB.png

Here are Kingmaker9999's reports. It seems that he keeps getting passed for some reason. For those of you who have checked Trialbot reports - You know how many reports this is and how recent most of these reports are.

https://i.imgur.com/d9K6NyS.png

https://i.imgur.com/isDreXx.png

https://i.imgur.com/YoEUGI2.png


I didn't really want to make this thread nor day I have any interest in the bans of game-throwers or people who make poor decisions in this game.



I just can't stand these 3 individuals continuously working together to ruin the ranked experiencing, spamming lobbies and throwing the game so that they can enjoy their own game at the expense of 12 others.

Additional: (If you check any of Kingmaker's Trialbot reports... Weirdly enough you'll see that Konstantina21 and KluftObert are in almost all of them.

Please comment if you've had a similar experience.

Recent Report 1: https://blankmediagames.com/Trial/viewR ... id=2797984

Recent Report 2: https://blankmediagames.com/Trial/viewR ... id=2790830

Recent Report 3: https://blankmediagames.com/Trial/viewR ... id=2790791

Recent Report 4: https://blankmediagames.com/Trial/viewR ... id=2790738

Recent Report 5: https://blankmediagames.com/Trial/viewR ... id=2790680

Each one of his last 5 games, he played with the same 3 people. The chatlogs can easily be read and be used to determine that their actions are detrimental to everyone else playing.



I had made this on June 15th, 2020 so it may be a little dated, however the ingame experiences remain quite the same.

I had stopped playing the game specifically because of them, but saw in a recent Youtube video that they may have been punished, so I thought I'd have a look in the forum which brought me to this post...

[Message]

I would like to emphasize....

I am NOT against the notion of fake claiming, and spamming to help evils/cause chaos is perfectly fine to assist your team to win

one report actually has them saying that they will throw every game until they are banned. In multiple interactions with this player they have said they have other accounts, ban avoidance is $5, and they don't care if they get banned.

This behavior should warrant escalating any Guilty report to an immediate permaban.

Expressed intent to break the rules should remove any and all leniency available in the system.

OP failed to mention that the player in question was mafia in the report, and I doubt pretending to be gamethrowing town when you're actually mafia is bannable.

To address this concern. I find it fully fine to act in a way that can negatively effect gameplay for town. However, when you're doing it as town... every game, and creating your own meta to spam and chaos a chaotic atmosphere in any lobby you're in, it deteriorates the entire experience for everyone else.

The additional problem here is you cannot just "ignore" all 3/4 SAINT's in the lobby because then if they are a town role like investigator/sheriff, you cannot use their meaningful info to lynch other players and if you refuse to vote out a player they found as suspicious because you've "IGNORED" their messages, you're basically gamethrowing.

/bignosupport

Not everyone that gets reported a lot is actually toxic. Heck, me and my friends sometimes get 4-5 reports each PER DAY just because people get salty. Not to mention the amount of people that get reghunted, or people who simple don't know the actual rules and would report people for literally anything (A former Trial Server Judge was once reported for Gamethrowing as an Amnesiac that died Night 1, just because of the people he played with). Heck, I've seen Survs get reported for not siding with one side or another. Or Inappropriate Ingame Name reports for things like "Sex". Not to mention reports where nothing even happens.

Not to mention that jurors in the Trial System can duplicate reports on players, meaning that with your suggestion, all someone has to do is have to have played 151 games, go to the Trial System and start duplicating reports on people just to get them banned.

Granted, from context, it's easy enough to tell what group of players you are talking about, and it most cases they're right, the things they do is generally something that skirts by the rules, but we can't just start banning people because others don't like them or they way they play. Also keep in mind that most of these players have been suspended before and a portion of them has even been banned. So they do get punished, if they actually break rules.

But if we start banning everyone who gets reported for doing something others don't like, trust me, we wouldn't have much of a playerbase left.

I agree that an automated way to ban players is not the option either, as players will abuse it and do things that will completely ruin the game/support system as these players have.

However, there's definitely a very very small segment of the community participating in the spamming. You don't even have to play or be invested in Town of Salem to know who they are. You just need to watch a decently popular Youtuber and every 3rd video they produce you can see a group of 3-4 players all with the same username, all lobbied up together, and ruining the entire game play interaction for everyone else in the lobby.

Had many players been doing this, the story would be different likely, but there's only about 5 people dedicated towards ruining the game for everyone but due to loopholes in the rules, there hasn't been enough to prevent them from doing so.

[LevinSnakesRise]

I would like to emphasize....

I am NOT against the notion of fake claiming, and spamming to help evils/cause chaos is perfectly fine to assist your team to win

one report actually has them saying that they will throw every game until they are banned. In multiple interactions with this player they have said they have other accounts, ban avoidance is $5, and they don't care if they get banned.

This behavior should warrant escalating any Guilty report to an immediate permaban.

Expressed intent to break the rules should remove any and all leniency available in the system.

OP failed to mention that the player in question was mafia in the report, and I doubt pretending to be gamethrowing town when you're actually mafia is bannable.

To address this concern. I find it fully fine to act in a way that can negatively effect gameplay for town. However, when you're doing it as town... every game, and creating your own meta to spam and chaos a chaotic atmosphere in any lobby you're in, it deteriorates the entire experience for everyone else.

The additional problem here is you cannot just "ignore" all 3/4 SAINT's in the lobby because then if they are a town role like investigator/sheriff, you cannot use their meaningful info to lynch other players and if you refuse to vote out a player they found as suspicious because you've "IGNORED" their messages, you're basically gamethrowing.

/bignosupport

Not everyone that gets reported a lot is actually toxic. Heck, me and my friends sometimes get 4-5 reports each PER DAY just because people get salty. Not to mention the amount of people that get reghunted, or people who simple don't know the actual rules and would report people for literally anything (A former Trial Server Judge was once reported for Gamethrowing as an Amnesiac that died Night 1, just because of the people he played with). Heck, I've seen Survs get reported for not siding with one side or another. Or Inappropriate Ingame Name reports for things like "Sex". Not to mention reports where nothing even happens.

Not to mention that jurors in the Trial System can duplicate reports on players, meaning that with your suggestion, all someone has to do is have to have played 151 games, go to the Trial System and start duplicating reports on people just to get them banned.

Granted, from context, it's easy enough to tell what group of players you are talking about, and it most cases they're right, the things they do is generally something that skirts by the rules, but we can't just start banning people because others don't like them or they way they play. Also keep in mind that most of these players have been suspended before and a portion of them has even been banned. So they do get punished, if they actually break rules.

But if we start banning everyone who gets reported for doing something others don't like, trust me, we wouldn't have much of a playerbase left.

I agree that an automated way to ban players is not the option either, as players will abuse it and do things that will completely ruin the game/support system as these players have.

However, there's definitely a very very small segment of the community participating in the spamming. You don't even have to play or be invested in Town of Salem to know who they are. You just need to watch a decently popular Youtuber and every 3rd video they produce you can see a group of 3-4 players all with the same username, all lobbied up together, and ruining the entire game play interaction for everyone else in the lobby.

Had many players been doing this, the story would be different likely, but there's only about 5 people dedicated towards ruining the game for everyone but due to loopholes in the rules, there hasn't been enough to prevent them from doing so.

The SAINTS that have been skirting the rules lately were punished I believe 2 days ago by TurdPile himself, for doing just that; skirting the rules.

[TurdPile]

The SAINTS that have been skirting the rules lately were punished I believe 2 days ago by TurdPile himself, for doing just that; skirting the rules.

Wasn't skirting anything .. they group spammed and got suspended for it.