FairPlay

What is FairPlay?

FairPlay is an automated system that evaluates player reports and behavior, and dishes out warnings & penalties to offenders. Initial punishments are very light, but consecutive offenses will ramp up the severity.

FairPlay exists to ensure good sportsmanship, which leads to a more fun game for everyone!

Flagged Behaviors

Leavers

A "leaver" is a player who abandons the game early by quitting or disconnecting.

AFKers

An "AFKer" is a player who remains in the game, but isn't doing anything (Doesn't build fighters, train workers, hire mercenaries, or chat).

Griefer

A "griefer" is a player who intentionally tries to lose the game or otherwise sabotage their chances of winning.

Toxic Player

A "toxic player" is a player who is verbally abusive in chat, spam pings, or is otherwise disrespectful to other players in the game.

Strikes

All flagged behaviors can ruin the game for your teammates, but some offenses are accidental, while others are intentional. Because the system can't distinguish a player's intent, it relies on Player Reports to determine the severity of strikes to give to an account.

The more reports a player receives, the more confident FairPlay is that an offense was intentional and more strikes will be given.

However, even with 0 reports, FairPlay collects a lot of contextual information about the game, including, but not limited to:

• How early/late in the game a player left/AFK'ed
  • i.e. leaving on Wave 1 after you saw your Yolo roll vs. leaving on Wave 14 while you're on fire is a big difference
• Whether the player is in a party
  • i.e. intentional griefing is very rare in a party
• Whether the reporting players are in a party
  • i.e. reports from the same party are weighted much less than reports from different parties
• How frequently the reporting players send reports
  • i.e. someone who reports people every other game may not be considered quite as seriously as someone who reports very occasionally
• How many messages player typed & how many pings they've been spamming (or not)
  • i.e. a player who typed literally nothing and is reported for toxicity? Probably a false report.
• How well the player is doing in the game
  • i.e. a player who is doing well is probably not griefing
• How frequently a player spammed -ff
  • i.e. a player who spams -ff (not just once or twice) is probably not the most pleasant to play with
• How many times a player attempts to reconnect
  • i.e. a player who reconnects 5 times (but kept disconnecting) is less likely to be a rage quitter than someone who never tried to reconnect
• Plus, a bunch more factors not listed here. Note that all of these factors are contributing factors and would never be used in isolation.

Based on contextual information & player reports, FairPlay will add strikes against a player's account. If a player has enough strikes against their account, they will receive a punishment. On the other hand, each game a player plays without any flagged behaviors or reports, their strikes will decrease slightly.

Punishments

When a player receives enough strikes, they receive a punishment.

Bans

Leavers, AFKers, and Griefers receive a temporary ban from playing PvP game modes.

Mutes

Toxic players receive temporary chat mutes, but can still play the game as normal. Muted players start off each game in a muted state; however, allies can choose to unmute them if they wish. Muted players are unable to type in Global Chat.

• Allied players receive a prompt at the beginning of the game if playing with a muted player.
• Muted players are unable to ping as frequently as unmuted players
• Allied players can choose to block/unblock pings from muted players
• Muted players can't -ff nearly as often
• Limitations for players with 30+ day mutes are much more extreme

Severity

Punishments start off fairly light, then increase in severity with consecutive punishments.

• Punishments ramp up as follows: 1 hour / 1 day / 2 days / 4 days / 7 days / 14 days / 30 days / 99 days / 9999 days
• Each time you are punished you move to the next tier. (Note that it typically takes repeated offenses in a short span of time to be punished.
• Cases are continually monitored by community staff and tweaks are made each patch to make sure guilty people are being punished and innocent people aren't.

What does FairPlay look like in-game?

Postgame Exclamation Point

In post-game, you may see a player marked with a [!]. This means they are being evaluated by the system.

Alert Level

If you are repeatedly flagged by FairPlay, your alert level will be displayed to warn you before you are punished. Your alert level will automatically go down if you just play more games without being flagged/reported. Alert level looks like this:

Behavior Score

Every player has a "behavior score," which is a numeric score out of 100. This is displayed on your profile. (todo: add picture)

• Behavior score is based off of strikes against your account for flagged behaviors.
• Every game you play with good behavior bring your behavior score back up (no higher than 100).
• The higher the score, the better your behavior.
• Any score above 90 is considered good.
• A score of 100 indicates perfect, or near-perfect behavior. The vast majority of players fall into this category.
• As a reward for good behavior, players with a behavior score of 90-100 earn 1-10% bonus essence every game!