After a while, they become unmuted, and regain their ability to talk to other players. I'm not sure how long the muting lasts, but I assume it's related to the number of reports that player receives, along with how many times they've been muted in the past. A month after implementing this feature, Valve wrote a blog post about what they found:
- Since the ban system has been implemented, there’s been a 35% drop in negative communication interactions.
- Less than the 1% of the active player base (players who have played Dota 2 in the last month) are currently banned.
- 60% of players who receive bans go on to modify their behavior and don’t receive further bans.
- Total reports are down more than 30%, even after accounting for the reduction in the number permitted per week.
Dota 2 does have its own in-game muting system, so you can choose to mute another player so that you don't have to listen to them, but Valve said the reason they decided to put in this feature is that muting another player doesn't give that player feedback that they are being a dick. Looking at the stats they've provided, it seems like it's working in reforming some of the worst players.
Sometimes.... it doesn't quite work as intended. I've had this person on my friends list for a while now, and I've only ever played with him once. I should have started this a lot sooner, but over about two months, I've been taking screenshots of his Steam username. See, while muted players are not able to type messages to other players in the game, they are still allowed to change their own name. So some people get around the system by changing their name to whatever abusive thing they want to say.
As my friend has done:
I actually find him really fascinating. He seems completely oblivious to the fact that he is constantly getting muted over and over again, and the reason for that is because he is an abusive player. I would have thought it would click after the second or third time, but to be muted over and over again over a period of two months?!
To be fair, he isn't a bad player skill-wise, but I have noticed that he constantly blames others when things go badly. When Dota 2 first released the rated matchmaking system, we had a chat after we had both been rated (you need to play ten calibration games before getting your rating). He asked me what I thought about the system, and I said that it seemed fair to me (though I did win 8 out of my 10 calibration matches, so perhaps I was a bit biased). He said that it was completely unfair to be matched with randoms and have that affect your rating. He said that he constantly got matched with bad teammates, so he didn't do very well in his calibration games.
I just really can't wrap my head around the fact that he can't see that he is the issue. I really want to message him and say, "So, I've noticed that you've been muted a lot lately. What's up with that?" but I have a feeling that he will say it's because douchebag players report him because they don't like him. I know it's tempting to report people that you don't like, but you are limited in the number of reports that you receive per week (3), so you can't just go around reporting people willy-nilly or you'll quickly run out and will regret it when someone truly horrible comes along.
A part of me wonders if maybe I can save him from being muted. If I played enough games with him and calmed down our teammates so they wouldn't continue reporting him, maybe he'd learn by example and be glad to be able to communicate with other people properly. He obviously really cares about the game, as he still plays it after being muted, and he sinks quite a few hours into it per week. Aside from the minor schadenfreude from seeing him constantly have to update his name, I feel sad for him, as I can understand how frustrating it is when you feel like you've done everything that you can, only to lose due to something outside your control.
Then I remember that he is probably slinging abuse to people he has never met, and quite a large number of people by the looks of things. I've been on the receiving end of abuse quite a lot, and all I can say is, it's not a nice feeling. It's very hard not to get emotional, and want to yell back, so I try to compartmetalise it away to deal with after the game is over so that I can stay focused. Doesn't always work, especially when the abuse is hurled towards one of my friends, then I really struggle not to get into an Internet shouting match. Do you think that perhaps some people are just really angry deep down, and there's nothing that you can do to help them?
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