#28 - Sept. 26, 2017, 11:19 p.m.
Oooh this can be my first post since I know quite a lot about this stuff coming from the CS team!
While of course only we can 100% verify if a bot is in fact a bot, its honestly not hard to spot. Generally within about 10-20 seconds of watching a character move we can without a doubt know it’s a bot however we still make sure to “dot the I’s and cross the t’s” on it by using some other undisclosed things that we can see. So I wouldn't be surprised if a player says "I without a doubt know it’s a bot" odds are you're probably right at some point on it. I know we've said it before but a large amount of the bots that we see are just simply compromised accounts.
For those that lack the context the Overwatch team is talking about wanting to give players some sort of feedback on reports that players submit on other players (i.e. hackers, spammers, toxic players, etc). It’s a great idea, but you have to remember WoW is a vastly different game than Overwatch, even from its community standpoint. In WoW for example you encounter a far larger amount of players at a higher consistency because of the fact it’s an ever existing world leading to potentially more reporting. Also something that we notice is that when players report, they end up reporting very consistently, thus leading to far more reports in something like WoW compared to Overwatch.
Trust me when I say there are a lot of player reports that we investigate and other game reporting is a little different than WoW's, partly because there's so many categories and things that fall within certain systems because it’s just handled differently. Take for example bot reports vs spam reports two totally different methods and systems that takes different kinds of reports. It would just be difficult to consolidate that data into one system and even then it would be a large amount of data.
I do agree though that more could always be done and there’s always potential in making players feel like their reports are worthwhile because its honestly priceless. I will definitely pass on things like this so the CS leadership and dev leadership can see these kinds of asks from players. :)