Posted by Mooney on Epic Games
Hello Paragon Community, how are you? I am great.
Over the last few months we have been working on solutions to better deal with player toxicity in Paragon. We’ve addressed this in two previous blogs, but most of the work has been manual. Now we welcome our automated robot overlords.
AFK Still Not OK
We are introducing our new Automated AFK/Leaver System with the release of the .28 update. We have designed this system to catch the players who serially leave and AFK during matches of Paragon. Players who then continue to perform these actions will receive ramping account bans and be considered for a permanent ban if the behavior continues. This will follow the structure from our previous blog.
We (like you) see this behavior as completely unacceptable, and to echo the previous posts, it’s not only detrimental to your teammates, but five opponents as well. We understand there may be situations where you have an emergency or other issue which prevents you from playing a match. Remember, however, that when you hit that PLAY button you are usually committing to 30 minutes or more of MOBA gameplay.
Further, we removed the incentive for this behavior as AFK offenders will no longer receive in-game rewards.
Draft Mode
With the launch of Draft Mode, we noticed an increase of dropped lobbies during Khaimera’s launch. Players wanting to play specific heroes or avoid certain team compositions repeatedly dodged lobbies. We implemented our updated penalty system with the 6-hour de-escalation period was implemented with the hope of reducing that number. The results have been positive and you can find more info in this forum post.
We also made another change to our current guidelines for Draft Lobby penalties. We now only penalize the dodger rather than the whole party. It is important to us that we not discourage grouping with friends. In addition to this, we will continue to work on improving the matchmaking experience.
Be Excellent To Each Other (In Chat)
Another issue that we are actively working to address is chat harassment within Paragon. The first step we have taken is rate limiting team comms to ensure it’s being used to assist and inform teammates rather than using it in a spammy or aggressive manner. We will continue to iterate on this in the future.
We have a work-in-progress system that will result in chat silencing if players harass teammates consistently.
Cheating? Also Still Serious
As a refresher for those who might not have seen our policy on players attempting to script or hack the client. We have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to cheating in Paragon:
- First Offense: permanent ban from all Epic Games.
We are continually working on cheat detection and will continue taking an aggressive stance on catching and bringing down those attempting to circumvent the integrity of matches.
Paragon Community Unite!
We will continue to develop tools, methods and guidelines to help deal with toxicity within the game. You can help us by using the existing player ratings, found in the post-match screen, to let us know about any negative situations you run into while in a match. If you feel a report requires more specific context (i.e. screenshots, video, chat logs) please reach out to our Player Support and let us know.
Thanks for continuing to support Paragon, giving us feedback and assisting us in identifying problematic areas. With your help we can keep Paragon a fun, friendly and inclusive environment for all players.
