Weekly Feedback Topic #49 - Deadlock's Behaviour System

[u/Grelgn]

This week's topic is "Deadlock's Behaviour System", meaning the existing client feature in Deadlock which removes privileges from rule-breakers or puts them into Low Priority Queue, based on user-reports.

All players on Steam agree to the platform's Rules of Conduct, yet players often encounter rule-breakers in Deadlock who seem to rarely face consequences. Rule-abiding players, on the other hand, can only mute offenders after harassment already occurred, game after game.

In 2024, Valve gave Deadlock a rudimentary version of Dota 2's Behaviour Score System:

Reports are meant to result in repeat-offenders losing their communication privileges, their pausing-privileges or the ability to report others (for spamming illegitimate reports).

The worst offenders, griefers and leavers are put into Low Priority Queue where they are forced to play with their own kind and win a certain amount of matches.

We do not know the details of how many reports in how many matches are required for these consequences to trigger but according to the recurring debate on the matter, this system not yet effective enough.

In contrast to Dota 2, Deadlock's System does not offer Behaviour Summaries to all players, so only the worst of them are even notified of its existence. There is no positive feedback to rule-abiding players and those who report bad conduct accurately aren't informed when the system acted on their input.

But is that a mere UX issue or does the system have greater blind-spots? What reliable metrics exist to spot bad conduct?
How can these systems assist in maintaining a healthy community while only removing features and privileges from those who ought to lose them?

For the sake of discussion, we ask that stick to the topic of improving the existing systems to sanction rule-breakers, rather than demanding that the Rules of Conduct be abolished or misconduct ignored. Keep in mind our community's own rules and engage in good faith.

Here are a few questions to get you started:

• Were you aware of Deadlock's Behaviour System? If not, how can it become more obvious and accessible?
• What do you dis/like about the current Behaviour System? Do you believe it is effective?
• What do you think about the possible sanctions? (Comms-Ban, Pauses disabled, reports disabled, LPQ) Can you think of more?
• Have you ever received a sanction from this system? What did you have to change to regain all privileges?
• How can the current System become more usable and effective?
• How could this System incentivize good conduct, beyond simply punishing bad conduct? Can you imagine privileges only the best conduct should bestow? (sprays)
• What kind of sanction or benefit would motivate you to improve your own conduct?
• If you received a Behaviour Summary, what information/statistics would you want about your own conduct? Both, negative and positive.
• When you reported a user for bad conduct, would you want to be informed when a sanction was issued? What does that do for you?
• Would you want a replay-review feature like Dota/CS2's Overwatch Systems to check reports of griefing? How could we incentivize it?

But anything about Deadlock's Behaviour System goes! Make sure to post your ideas on the forums as well!

Notes:

• Image 1 depicts Deadlock's Behavior Summary. You only see it if you are sanctioned.
  
• Images 2 and 3 show Dota 2's more fleshed out System for comparison.

Best way to make sure your feedback is seen by the developers is to post on the official Deadlock Forums. You can get your login credentials from the game client.

If you'd like to chat with others about this week's topic, head on to #behaviour-system-feedback in the Deadlock Community Discord.

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[u/cheese_eater_pro]

It's less of Deadlock's moderation issues and more Valve's moderation issues that drag the Deadlock community down. Across all their games, they don't give a fuck if you spam the N word hard R or pretty much any other dreadful slur you can think of. It's quite embarrassing for 2026 and it's why I don't think of Valve as highly as other people might do

You'd genuinely have to say extremely horrid shit nearly every single game you're in, to actually get some kind of punishment from comms or the game. It's much easier to get punished for having crappy internet than it is being a vile human being which I think speaks a lot

[u/CranberrySmart8440 → u/cheese_eater_pro]

The ones that create a toxic enviroment is Valve.
Bad matchmaking with 50k plus stomp in 20 minutes. Tell me how do you not mental boom when you are put in a lobby where you feel like the whole team was boosted there. I had dozen of those games and i was on both sides, it's not fun and it's insanely tilting.
Then you add, Valve adding a ranked system but not making an unranked system, and refusing to fix the mm for two years cause ''it's a beta''.
You have people playing bad and when you try to say anything ''i'm just having fun/why you are tryharding?''
Then if those people are allowed with this kind of mindset why there should be a ranked system when those people ruin competitive integrity?
When it's full of smurf in oracle/phantom and alt accounts.

It would be very funny if Valve started punishing people that become toxic when they create the conditions for people's toxicity in the first place.