Gamethrower overflow. Make the game enjoyable again.

[brugarune]

Dear BMG,
I am writing this in the name of many many players who want an enjoyable game experience.

So... I am a long time user and I enjoyed the game for a long time. Not so mach lately.
There used to be an option on this forum where you could report players for gamethrow with screenshots attached, but this funcion is gone for a while. And the problem starts here...

Since then the game is basically unplayable. Intentional gamethrow (not stupidity... im talking about intentional and ADMITTED gamethrow) became a HUGE problem!!! Their numbers grew significantly in the last months and still growing.
We all know there is an in-game reporting system but let's be honest, that sytem is really really inefficient especially when it comes to gamethrow.
I lose almost half of my winning games (literally...) to this issue. For example a mayor comes out and says "sorry town I'm on discord with the gf so I help him" or "I don't like this town's name so I will make u lose haha" or the mafia member who insta-leaves the game with the rest of the mafia names in their last will.
Many of them keeps doing it over and over again and I am getting them in my games over and over again (based on their account namea) and they are getting away happily without any kind of punishment.

I know it's a hassle to deal with the countless reports here and hard to decide between a real gamethrow or just an inattention but it would serve well even as a deterrent force rather than the current situation.
Please BMG, I beg you to do something. The game is now more cancerous than ever before... even when it was free to play... It's just simply unenjoyable at this point.

I hope you can hear me and the thousands who slowly getting enough of this.

Best regards,
A player who doesn't want to quit.

[kosmo16]

+1 I suffered from hard gamethrows in high elo games and these people are still there after few days.

[Flavorable]

We are working on phasing out forum reports alltogether. I sincerely doubt that gamethrowing will be reportable on the forums again. Our judges have more than enough work on their plates, they shouldn't also have to do the job we have jurors for.

I understand the frustration, but when GT reports were still handled on the forums, a lot of them were invalid (so a waste of time for Judges), and didn't get handled any quicker than they are now.

[Joacgroso]

I suppose this is because the game can be played for free on mobile and mobile users can play with pc users, making the paywall completely useless.

[Boredfan1]

We are working on phasing out forum reports alltogether. I sincerely doubt that gamethrowing will be reportable on the forums again. Our judges have more than enough work on their plates, they shouldn't also have to do the job we have jurors for.

I understand the frustration, but when GT reports were still handled on the forums, a lot of them were invalid (so a waste of time for Judges), and didn't get handled any quicker than they are now.

Then you will have an in game lobby report option? And I mean the queue lobby to start a game.

[kyuss420]

Just report them in game, and give as much info as you can. like, '' Mayor said he was in discord with GF day 5'' ''lynched a towny because he didnt like his name, day 7'' or ''Forger left day 1, had all maf names in his will''

Just hitting report and G/T means we have to read through the entire game and might even miss the important parts (like looking at the dead mafs will), so clear cut guiltys might get abstained or innoed. Then after enough jurors read thru the whole game, the judges have to read thru the whole game. This takes time that isnt always there. The simple act of giving what day we are looking at can speed up the process a lot.

I havent done reports for a while, but when i did, I did mainly G/T reports. It would take an hour to read thru 10 matches and most of them were invalid, ''They were stupid and Im salty'' kinda reports.

[Grethius]

There are 2 problems here that go hand in hand.

1. There are jurors and Higher who will not guilty a report because they do not think its that big of an issue, soooo many times I hear the excuse " oh it's just a game. why u mad?" mainly because they are doing the same crap themselves. And if you do not think they are not, I Highly suggest you take a good look. or they know someone getting reported and refuse to guilty them even though it goes against the rules. Same with Dev's / Mods refusing to flip an INNO verdict even though they admit themselves " TECHNICALLY its against the rules but MY personal feelings say otherwise".

2. the game is going through an admin change right now and sadly they're main focus is on Unity ( still ) and getting the admin staff figured out. They could care less about gamethrowing/cheating unless it is something serious like some kind of hatespeech or pedo stuff. and even with hatespeech, hatespeech specifically states that its permabanned. Yet people are only getting suspended. Why? because its only a game right?

[SparkingJay]

1. There are jurors and Higher who will not guilty a report because they do not think its that big of an issue, soooo many times I hear the excuse " oh it's just a game. why u mad?" mainly because they are doing the same crap themselves. And if you do not think they are not, I Highly suggest you take a good look. or they know someone getting reported and refuse to guilty them even though it goes against the rules. Same with Dev's / Mods refusing to flip an INNO verdict even though they admit themselves " TECHNICALLY its against the rules but MY personal feelings say otherwise".

nononononono
Jurors/Judges don't inno/guilty reports based on their own personal experiences, that's just plain stupid. Besides, 1 juror doesn't decide the verdict of a report, several jurors vote on a single report to decide the verdict to avoid bias or mistakes.
There are cases where some reports are on the fence of either being guilty or innocent depending on the situation but by no means does anyone break the rules due to their own opinions of the verdict of a report.

[Flavorable]

There are 2 problems here that go hand in hand.

1. There are jurors and Higher who will not guilty a report because they do not think its that big of an issue, soooo many times I hear the excuse " oh it's just a game. why u mad?" mainly because they are doing the same crap themselves. And if you do not think they are not, I Highly suggest you take a good look. or they know someone getting reported and refuse to guilty them even though it goes against the rules. Same with Dev's / Mods refusing to flip an INNO verdict even though they admit themselves " TECHNICALLY its against the rules but MY personal feelings say otherwise".

2. the game is going through an admin change right now and sadly they're main focus is on Unity ( still ) and getting the admin staff figured out. They could care less about gamethrowing/cheating unless it is something serious like some kind of hatespeech or pedo stuff. and even with hatespeech, hatespeech specifically states that its permabanned. Yet people are only getting suspended. Why? because its only a game right?

The game isn't going through an admin change, though? Not sure where you get your info from, but it's not factual.

Also, nowhere is stated that all hatespeech is permabanned.

As for your first point: jurors and judges look at the broad picture, we're not just going to ban people for making a dumb play, which is what a lot of people want us to do.
I suggest if you feel differently, you e-mail the devs and ask them to change the rules and how they are implemented and handled.

[Grethius]

There are 2 problems here that go hand in hand.

1. There are jurors and Higher who will not guilty a report because they do not think its that big of an issue, soooo many times I hear the excuse " oh it's just a game. why u mad?" mainly because they are doing the same crap themselves. And if you do not think they are not, I Highly suggest you take a good look. or they know someone getting reported and refuse to guilty them even though it goes against the rules. Same with Dev's / Mods refusing to flip an INNO verdict even though they admit themselves " TECHNICALLY its against the rules but MY personal feelings say otherwise".

2. the game is going through an admin change right now and sadly they're main focus is on Unity ( still ) and getting the admin staff figured out. They could care less about gamethrowing/cheating unless it is something serious like some kind of hatespeech or pedo stuff. and even with hatespeech, hatespeech specifically states that its permabanned. Yet people are only getting suspended. Why? because its only a game right?

The game isn't going through an admin change, though? Not sure where you get your info from, but it's not factual.

Also, nowhere is stated that all hatespeech is permabanned.

As for your first point: jurors and judges look at the broad picture, we're not just going to ban people for making a dumb play, which is what a lot of people want us to do.
I suggest if you feel differently, you e-mail the devs and ask them to change the rules and how they are implemented and handled.

Exactly the response I thought I would get.

the game isnt going through an admin change? Okay... turdpile is stepping down/away and Naru is taking his place? yeah Id call that admin changes.

When Other jurors/judges/mods are saying yes its guilty but we dont see that kind of thing that much of a serious issue so we are going to inno. And you know full well that is the case because I know you personally have had those conversations before. I mean its all over discord.

@ Sparkling, Oh yes. some of their thought process are everyone does it, I dont see a problem with it so Im not going to guilty this report even though it violates the rules. I have seen photographic evidence of these conversations in both discord and in reports. So do not tell me this is not the case. And I did not say "personal experiences" I said "personal beliefs". BIG difference.

Plus with you saying that you're trying to get all the reporting off of the forums anyway to rely on trial server itself, when V2 hasnt even dropped yet. I can think of quite a few reasons why you are trying to pull reporting off of the forums. Personally I think they should stay, why? because the player base has a right to know what kind of people you are allowing into this game. So when they see people doing this kind of crap, they tend to recognize their account name and end up leaving games. I had 4 people leave a game last night because of one person in particular who is a known gamethrower and completely toxic, they as jailor excuted town on n3 and did it 3 games in a row. So No. taking reports off of the forums is a HUGE mistake. But hey Im just a lowly player juror. Im not well known, But I am trying to help by being a juror because there is simply not enough compotent ones.

[SparkingJay]

There are 2 problems here that go hand in hand.

1. There are jurors and Higher who will not guilty a report because they do not think its that big of an issue, soooo many times I hear the excuse " oh it's just a game. why u mad?" mainly because they are doing the same crap themselves.

[Flavorable]

Exactly the response I thought I would get.

the game isnt going through an admin change? Okay... turdpile is stepping down/away and Naru is taking his place? yeah Id call that admin changes. This is only on Discord, and if there is an admin change permanently, it won't be before Trial V2 is rolled out. It has no bearing on current reports.

When Other jurors/judges/mods are saying yes its guilty but we dont see that kind of thing that much of a serious issue so we are going to inno. And you know full well that is the case because I know you personally have had those conversations before. I mean its all over discord. If it's borderline, then yes, it is at Judge discretion, however, nowadays with the new rules in place, hardly anything is borderline anymore. If it goes up to Judges and they feel the crime isn't bad enough to warrant an immediate punishment, they will Exception the report, not vote innocent on it. The main issue is that a lot of people don't seem to realise that what we or they might find gamethrowing, is not always considered gamethrowing by the official rules that the Devs made and we are bound by.

@ Sparkling, Oh yes. some of their thought process are everyone does it, I dont see a problem with it so Im not going to guilty this report even though it violates the rules. I have seen photographic evidence of these conversations in both discord and in reports. So do not tell me this is not the case. And I did not say "personal experiences" I said "personal beliefs". BIG difference.

Plus with you saying that you're trying to get all the reporting off of the forums anyway to rely on trial server itself, when V2 hasnt even dropped yet. I can think of quite a few reasons why you are trying to pull reporting off of the forums. Personally I think they should stay, why? because the player base has a right to know what kind of people you are allowing into this game. So when they see people doing this kind of crap, they tend to recognize their account name and end up leaving games. I had 4 people leave a game last night because of one person in particular who is a known gamethrower and completely toxic, they as jailor excuted town on n3 and did it 3 games in a row. So No. taking reports off of the forums is a HUGE mistake. But hey Im just a lowly player juror. Im not well known, But I am trying to help by being a juror because there is simply not enough compotent ones.Forum reports are being removed because it takes too much time for Judges to have to handle things that should be handled by Jurors. You might not agree with that, but it is, however, a fact. Once we migrate to a different forum, forum reports will very likely no longer exist. And there is a big difference between no longer being able to report people on a forum and people not getting punished if they do break the rules. Afaik, however, there is talk of implementing some form of feedback system when people report someone. And while I get that people want to see what is done with their reports, the Trial System doesn't exist for that, it exists to punish people for breaking the rules (and filtering out the thousands of invalid and/or salt-based reports). The fact alone that the ability was there to report people on the forums AND the fact that people can look up player's reports on Discord, is much more than a lot of games offer, feedback-wise. Not to mention the public appeals forum where everyone can see people that got banned or suspended.

^ Feedback up there.

As for the rest: The main issue is, and will likely continue to be, that a lot (and I do mean a lot) of gamethrowing reports are invalid. It takes time to sift through them all. Judges should not have to waste their time with probable invalid GT reports on the forums, when they could instead be handling the probable guilty ones that are in the Judge queue after being filtered by Jurors.
The only problem I see (and have always seen), is a lack of communication from the Devs on what actually is gamethrowing and what isn't. If that were broadcast more and people would read it, the actual gamethrowers would get punished a lot quicker.

But the same goes for a lot of reports and this is why we have jurors. The amount of mis-created reports that then have to get duplicated for the right category and sent back into the queue alone is massive. People don't seem to know (or care) that reporting someone for the right category does matter.

[Flavorable]

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[LevinSnakesRise]

Hi. I was mentioned, and therefor I am summoned. /s


Hi guys. Hope you don't mind me stepping in.

In reference to the OP, brugarune;
I apologize for the inconvenience of the forum reporting for Gamethrowing going away. It has been the Developers' plans to phase out the report forum completely for a few years now and be completely Trial-based, however we the community staff have elected to keep the forum open for Lobby-rule-infractions and for serious Hate Speech reports that need to be dealt with quickly (you can also do Bots, though the guidelines don't mention that, since usually said bots are the moonmen spamming racial slurs to begin with). I try to keep my eye out for serious reports, and I ask that Judges check the forum daily to see if there's something that needs to be taken care of. Anything outside of the Guideline requirements (or failure to meet the requirements) usually results in a lock and move to Closed Reports for the respective reasoning.
I personally see it better this way, as not only do Judges have several lists/queues, Mods have Judge's list and their own queue, and Myself and TP have everyone else's lists and our own queue to clear when we get a chance. Even some selected Jurors in the Trial System discord have access to two channels to help filter the reports they come across. This way people aren't waiting a week or so for someone to come handle Report A on the forum and if it doesn't fit the requirements, just closing it. I feel like it's better being streamlined for Trial and Discord, rather than the forums. Besides, we also are supposed to be migrating forums sometime during the beginning of next year (no idea when or if we're even going through with it), and chances are, Developers won't reinstate the Report Players forum, and reporting on the forums will completely disappear. We might be able to convince them to re-add it for the current situation we're currently handling things, but I can assure you, there's almost no chance that Forum Reports will ever return full-force.
If you come across a gamethrower, report them and make sure that someone else in-game also reports. Even if you both report different people, a report will be generated, as long as two people report in a single game. I sometimes handle incoming reports when I have empty queues (that's a rarity) and a lot are actually invalid gamethrowing reports, but there are the few that are valid, so I close them as I view them. While Gamethrowing is usually only Guiltied under the most obvious and extreme circumstances, it's still a valid report reasoning. Currently the idea is to cleanse the toxicity of the game, and once that is done (for the most part) we will revisit the rules and shift our focus back to a more well-rounded step towards all of the rules, but the main concern is taking the hard-line towards toxic users who ruin the game for everyone, not just because they made a bad mistake, or they really didn't know how said role works. Gamethrowing isn't always so cut and dry. The only cut-and-dry part of gamethrowing is the intent to hurt your chances of winning, or your team's chances of winning. Basically they have to admit they know they're doing wrong, or we can't punish them for it, because it isn't fair in all honesty.

In reference to Joacgroso;
Currently Mobile can only play a handful of games before either A.) Having to buy the full game, or B.) having to watch an ad. There's only so many ads that can be served to each player, and it's not by BMG's fault, but by the advertiser's. These people get upset and don't want to pay to play the full game, so they quit. Some do, and therefor do play with PC players, however they are completely blocked when they can't meet either of the requirements above, and don't want to buy the game. So yes in those limited games, they might ruin the experience but once their time is up, the paywall kicks in and they have but one choice; buy it. (or quit it.)

In reference to Boredfan1;
There is plans for adding a lobby report option, however when it will come is unknown. It's anyone's guess really, I'd assume after Unity is fully fleshed out and released, but that's just my guess.

In reference to Grethius' posts;
Hi there Grethius. Your first quote from your first issue is that "oh it's just a game" why you mad. I assure you this doesn't come from anyone above a Juror, and honestly a Juror is just the same user as you, they just participate in the Trial System. There's no special powers, etc involved, so to group a Juror and the people ranked above them is irrelevant and baseless. As for players doing it themselves, maybe. Who knows. However, at the end of the day, this is a game, and it isn't the end of the world if one person experiences a player gamethrowing. Does it ruin the experience? Yes of course, however it isn't the end of the world, and if everyone came across someone and started screaming "WHY ARE YOU NOT IP BANNING THIS FUCK" (sic-quoted from a previous discussion with an anonymous user) and we listened, we wouldn't have a player-base. (And I assure you, the quote above happens more times than you think, even for the simplest gamethrow, it's their first game and don't know any better, etc.)
In regards to refusing to Guilty reports because they know the person involved, Jurors get penalized Trial Rating points if they vote incorrectly and a staff member closes the report opposite of what they vote. Jurors I'm not too worried about, because I can say I can trust most of the Jurors doing the reports. Staff on the other hand, I would rather they not handle reports of people they know (and they are told not to do so in practice), as to avoid someone screaming "YOU'RE BIASED, BAN!" at their faces (again, quoted). 9/10 times (I'm sure there's one instance I've missed, so I'm counting it as the '1') I see a Judge or Moderator come to the group and say "Hey, can someone handle this? I'm biased and don't want to be involved". It isn't that they don't want to punish their friend, but they're told not to handle reports that may potentially come off as biased decision making because they know said person. Usually that report is closed by the end of the day by someone else and we go on about our day.
As for Devs/Mods refusing to flip an Innocent report, if the community thinks a gamethrowing report is too 'gray' (not clearly showing intent of hurting their win chances), they're welcome to close it as Innocent. I'm going to refrain from mentioning Devs or Moderators because Developers don't play a part in the Trial System or the reports (unless staff needs clarification, etc), and Moderators (and Judges) do not have the power to flip reports. Only Administrators (TurdPile and I) can flip reports, and we only flip Innocent reports when we know for a fact it's Guilty without a doubt, and is worth a flip. (i.e: Racial Slurs getting Inno'd, etc.) Gray areas such as gamethrowing we don't flip because if the community doesn't think that it's gamethrowing, who are we to argue? It's a community-driven system. You guys decide what you think is Guilty or Innocent, and if Guilty, you send it up to us. Technicalities are something we avoid, and should one arise, we close the report as Exception'd, meaning that yes it's technically Guilty, but we don't think said user should be punished. (Usually this is gray-area gamethrowing and their first report, as an example.)
In regards to the Administrator changes, the only change that has taken place at this moment is that I have took over the Discord for Trial System (for the second time). Yes, it's a known fact that I'm to be replacing TurdPile when he leaves, which will be after 2.0 is released. However, it'll still be a while, so there's currently no "changing" at the moment regarding the Administrator positions. I've been an Administrator in-game for almost a year now while retaining my Global Moderator status on the forum. Any changes regarding myself and TP further will likely happen next year, which is probably when 2.0 will be almost fully released. To what full-extent I will be replacing TurdPile is currently unknown. While he implies I will be taking over everything, I don't quite know how the Developers will handle it. Regardless, the changes that have happened (and will happen) have not affected the type of reports that are closed, how often they are closed, or how they are closed. Rest assured, we are still handling reports as we have been. Everyone just has to keep in mind that myself and TurdPile both have full-time jobs, and he is always on-call for his job, so if someone asks us to do something, like say flip a report, or reply to an appeal to give a final verdict, it might be a while.

I appreciate anyone and everyone who takes part in the Trial System and helps try to make the game a better place for everyone. Sure, before the game was Pay to Play there was very little effect on the community because someone could just create a new account in seconds and ta-da, back to breaking the rules. Now it's Pay-to-Play. The only way you can play for free is via Referrals (limited) and Mobile (also limited). The standard user (not a bot, account-breacher, etc) will take their accounts' value into account. Botters, etc will just abuse people's referral codes, etc and just find another way to do it, however they're limited in how many they can make with just referrals, etc. They'll be cleared out eventually.
I just ask that everyone is patient with the Trial System and the game. I know the game is stale right now, because there's no recent balance changes, we've been on the same Ranked Season for a very, very long time now, and then everyone thinks the report system is still not effective. 2.0 will change a lot of what's wrong with 1.0, and eventually we will get the trash out of the community. We just ask that you help us help you to get these guys out of the community. We don't want them as much as you don't want them. These people make the game awful for everyone and ruins folks' experiences, however gray-area matters are a whole other thing aside from the trolls we're trying to currently rid the player-base of. We may run the system, but you guys drive it. Let's get there together, eh?

Thanks guys for the feedback. I really appreciate it!

[Joacgroso]

I didn't know ads were limited. Anyway, can't toxic players just make more accounts?

[LevinSnakesRise]

I didn't know ads were limited. Anyway, can't toxic players just make more accounts?

If they want to pay another $5, yes, yes they can, but they'll just get banned again anyways, because most people don't change anyways, no matter how much they promise or beg or plead. That's just them throwing money at BMG's faces. If that's what they prefer to do with their time and money, so be it.

[Joacgroso]

I mean, can't they just make more mobile accounts with different emails?

[LevinSnakesRise]

I mean, can't they just make more mobile accounts with different emails?

Yes but unless they have no life they're not going to sit there and create 20+ emails for a mobile game, even toss-aways.

Besides, by the time they got through not even half, the advertiser would probably stop serving them ads all together because of their Demographic information. While they can create toss-away emails, they can't create different demographic information that the advertisers already have received from their first account.

[yolomcswaggins03]

I have a suggestion of how to fix this problem. I think that there should be a like button for good players so people with many likes are put together. just a simple suggestion to the creators.

[LevinSnakesRise]

I have a suggestion of how to fix this problem. I think that there should be a like button for good players so people with many likes are put together. just a simple suggestion to the creators.

While a good idea in theory, this would just be abused. Such systems have been suggested before and turned down for the fact they're abusable.