Consistent problems with chat moderation

I have been playing deadlock since August-September of 2024. Early on in the game, there wasn't much of a moderation system to worry about. But since then, I have gradually been communication banned for reasons both valid and invalid (we've all been there). My issue, obviously, is with the invalid bans. I am not the only one that has complained about this- according to a mod in the discord server, and a couple of my friends that I have played with over the past year or so have dealt with similar issues.

I am tired of saying tame things, communicating with my team, and lightly trash talking, just to end up getting all communication taken away. I have been called slurs, and harassed for the entire duration of matches before. I mute them, and the problem is solved. I report them, they hardly ever get banned, but GOD FORBID I return a fraction of the energy to someone like that, and I'm handed 1 day up to 30 day cool downs.

I was banned less than an hour ago for 5 days- because I made a "McGinnis IDF" joke in game (only thing I said) outside of politely communicating with my teammates, things such as "go mid" "pushing walker". This is obnoxious- all it does it grief my teammates (who are unable to communicate with me) and being on their side of it isn't any better. The amount of times that I have joined a match, just for 3 of my teammates to only be able to communicate via the scroll wheel, which is unsurprisingly ineffective at real communication and playmaking, SUCKS. This makes the game unenjoyable for days, even weeks on end, given that my only opportunity to actually COMMUNICATE with teammates is if friends are on, or sifting through the discord server for a group of people playing in the same region- which is not often.

The chat moderation system is leading to unintentional griefing. There is a mute feature for a reason- and this game is marketed towards teenagers/adults, who should be mature enough to handle coarse language. There is no reason that, when people like me are being called multiple slurs, and we mute them, that other people can't do the same.

This system is also incredibly abusable- I have carried teams, having the highest stats in the lobby, and not spoken more than a few sentences, just to end up com banned because my entire team (or the enemy team) reported me for something insignificant (or non-existent).


Counter-strike, another game made by your company, has a much better system with chat moderation- where a communication ban is incredibly rare, and only comes after multiple consistent reports across games from a LOT of people. If we are able to mute others, we do NOT need a malfunctioning AI chatbot moderating games. Not only is this a waste of your resources, it's a waste of our time to play a game and risk getting a ban for no valid reason, despite people who DO say incredibly terrible things very seldom getting any kind of punishment for it.

I had three people on my team yesterday saying the f slur, the t slur, the n word, etc. and I reported them as a test (I had my lane mate report them as well). They received ZERO ban (we invited them into a lobby after the fact) despite having said in both text and voice chat multiple egregious things about those people. I was banned for 5 days for making a reference to a popular deadlock meme on tiktok of calling McGinnis an IDF soldier.

Please, for the love of god, fix this system. I'm tired of walking on eggshells and being griefed by the system for no reason. I can't communicate with my teammates til Wednesday, fuck them I guess!
 
@PaulM the noticeable lack of responses to bug reports is quite obnoxious coming from a company with the resources necessary to keep up with them. The whole point of a playtest is to listen to your community's feedback and it's evident that it isn't happening.
 
Very well said.

I've said my fair share of slurs on this game and I can understand suspensions for that but IMO we are all adults and it should be on your own accord to use the mute feature if you have a problem with how someone is speaking.

I've had similar experiences to you where I get extensive suspensions immediately after games where I throw rather tame insults at team mates that are straight up costing the game such as 'idiot' or 'retard'. How is something like that suspension worthy?

Most modern games have shit moderation systems where they all draw the lines at different levels and much worse either rely on AI or simply a number of reports and there is no investigation. If everyone on your team is okay with you saying something, it should not be suspension worthy. If your team/enemy team wants to spam report for misc. reasons, you should not be able to be banned simply off number of reports.

I agree this game really needs to address this and has a chance to take the bold step into actually asking people to be adults and draw their own lines on inappropriate speech by using the mute button like I said above.
 
what they need is word filters on the backend that just comms ban people if they say certain phrases or words,in no world should it take multiple player reports for folks to get banned due to being heinous in chat, there needs to be a detection system that gets triggered, and flags people. let people say things freely, that way they get themselves banned while thinking they're safe.

It's bad enough valve does NOTHING about smurfing( there's programmatic ways of detecting smurfs btw) but at the same time, people can be as diabolical as they want in chat with zero consequence unless they're actively reported.
 
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