Low "Goodwill"

[Jackie Daytona]

I haven't been playing long. In fact, I have only 6 games played in normal arena matches. (Aside from my co-op vs ai games.)

Last time I played, I checked out my in-game profile. Only to find I had 50% goodwill. I had no idea what it meant. There's no tooltip and I don't recall anything about it from the tutorial.

So today I decided to look it up. It means people are reporting me. How can this be real?!

I don't say anything. I don't type anything. I don't spam emotes. My mic is turned off. So it has nothing to do with my communication.

What then? I'm not feeding. I'm not throwing games. I'm making no attempt to disrupt my allies or ruin their experience in any way.

Sure, I'm not very good. But I'm not doing it on purpose. I'm not very good at video games in general, and this is no exception.

I bring this up due to my experience with Dota2 and LoL. In both of these I had people typing in chat that I was bad at the game, and they were reporting me for being bad. (They even claimed I was trolling by saying I was new.) Not only that, but they encouraged teammates and enemies to report me as well.

I stopped both of those games before playing much. (Since I figured I'd just be banned anyway.) I didn't do anything wrong, per se. I just wasn't very good and died a lot.

...and I guess I should stop with Smite as well. It's true what they say about elitism and toxicity in MOBAs. It really is everywhere and non-stop.

[RecalledDread]

Some people get mad and report bad players. If you are genuinely not doing anything wrong, you shouldn't have anything to worry about.
If you DO end up getting an actual ban, you can appeal it with Support I guess. Report the players who you know are falsely reporting you (if you know someone is going to/did).

Low goodwill doesn't really mean anything beyond lower favour gained from matches. And the newer system as well I guess, with commendations (only a small part of it though).

False reporting IS bannable, so if you know someone has reported you for nothing, or for just being bad at the game, report them back. Make an effort to get better at the game as well of course, but everyone takes time to learn, some more than others, and you are new, so you can't be doing anything "wrong" at this point beyond learning.

[BigGreen21]

Also once you get past the low level(pre 30) it gets better. A lot of people make alt or smurf accounts and will harrass new players. Once they hit 30 most smurfs will create anothe account because it starts matching them up with people more thier skill level.

[Nickjet45]

Reports do impact good will....

[Jackie Daytona]

Originally posted by RoofCat:

You DC a game or leaving some lobby would reset Goodwill to 0% and then you would climb ~6% a game back.

I definitely didn't DC or leave a lobby.

Originally posted by RoofCat:

Although the whole topic makes no sense anyway. "I do nothing, nothing happens, I have low goodwill... must be reports". How?

What else would it be?

Also, I said I didn't do anything wrong. Not that I did nothing. That would imply my character was just standing around afk. All the way from start to finish.

Originally posted by RoofCat:

Maybe you start with 0 Goodwill and since he has around "6 games" (8?) that's it - much ado about nothing?

Assuming that is the case, it would be odd. Gamepedia says any "negative actions" will reduce your goodwill to 0%. Being commended will raise goodwill by 6%. However, my goodwill has never been a number divisible by 6.

With only 6 games played, having 50% goodwill makes no sense. Unless I was reported on my very first match. Then gained 10% on the next 5 games. OR (as you stated) it starts everyone at zero.

I'm having trouble finding definitive official information on the "goodwill" system. Since I don't know for certain how this works... I worry that it's easy to abuse.

I've become increasingly worried since reading the official Smite forums. A lot of the regular posters seem to be overzealous[forums.smitegame.com] concerning in-game rules. At least when it comes to reporting afks. That might explain why I'm getting reported.

I was eating during one particular match. I took a bite of food while waiting on the rez timer. This resulted in being stationary for just a few seconds. As I did not leave the base immediately after the rez.

I figured something was up. Each time this happened one of the other players would start to leave the base, stop, turn towards me, stare at me for a second, and then leave the base. I now assume they were screenshotting for reports. Each and every time they saw me not moving. Even for a second or two.

Don't get me wrong here. It's not like I was standing still after every rez. This happened... maybe... 3-5 times the entire match. With each instance being less than 10 seconds each time.

I have geniune hate for people that afk in team games. I won't hesitate to make a report. But even I don't report people over a few seconds being immobile. For all I know they could have a bit of lag. I could be lagging, or even the server could have something go wrong. All of which can give the appearance that people aren't moving.

You say "much ado about nothing" but this is exactly the kind of thing I worry about. Not only that, but I'm pretty sure[forums.smitegame.com] I found a person that reports people that simply play badly. (That is what she seems to imply.) So it looks like I need to worry about that too.

[RecalledDread]

The majority of people won't report because you've stopped for a few seconds after spawning. The exception might be if the enemy is attacking the Titan. Then they might assume you can't be bothered to defend or are throwing the game.
That's assuming they are even reporting you for that incident anyway.

You don't need to worry about the Goodwill system. It doesn't really do much, and having low goodwill won't get you banned or punished. You will recieve less favour, and it will take longer to fill up the new commendations bar (which you won't be able to do before the new season anyway since you're new).

Whilst the system is somewhat automated - by which I mean it will automatically inform you of reports on your behaviour etc - an actual person reviews each case before deciding if a ban is needed. The only auto-bans are the deserter penalties for DCing from games repeatedly. If you are doing nothing wrong, don't worry about it. If it's really a concern, party up with some people and you'll avoid that situation.

[Jackie Daytona]

Originally posted by RecalledDread:

Some people get mad and report bad players. If you are genuinely not doing anything wrong, you shouldn't have anything to worry about.
If you DO end up getting an actual ban, you can appeal it with Support I guess. Report the players who you know are falsely reporting you (if you know someone is going to/did).

Low goodwill doesn't really mean anything beyond lower favour gained from matches. And the newer system as well I guess, with commendations (only a small part of it though).

False reporting IS bannable, so if you know someone has reported you for nothing, or for just being bad at the game, report them back. Make an effort to get better at the game as well of course, but everyone takes time to learn, some more than others, and you are new, so you can't be doing anything "wrong" at this point beyond learning.

In my experience, well... It would be best to actually explain my experience. It's a long story, but I'll give you a much shorter version. Please keep in mind there are other events and a lot of detail I'm leaving out of this.

As mentioned, I had trouble with LoL and Dota2. So I moved onto Heroes of the Storm(HotS).

One day I'm on the Blizzard forums, and I get into an argument. Some guy is freaking out about the reporting system. Claiming it can be very easily abused. I'm telling him it's not and he's overreacting.

That guy, his alts, his friends, and all their alts make false reports against me. Resulting in a temporary suspension from the game.

No problem. Just a one-time thing right? Wellllllll... As it turns out, Blizzard has some shady matchmaking methods. I found a presentation by a Blizzard employee on YouTube about matchmaking system design. In short, he says fairness doesn't matter.

There's also been talk from Jeff Kaplan about "systems working in the background" that you "won't see". All in an effort to combat "toxicity".

With me so far? Great.

I noticed that after the suspension, something changed. My matchmaking time increased. Every match I got afkers, trolling, ping-spammers, feeding, or overwhelming toxicity in chat. I dropped to the bottom of the ranking system.

I suspected this had something to do with the suspension. That came from the false reports. So I decided to try an alt. It was okay for a while. Then things got more and more toxic. Until it was the same as my main account.

So I played HotS from a friend's computer. People were mostly friendly and nice once again. I had no trouble placing and maintaining a gold ranking on her account. Whereas my own account was forever stuck in bronze with toxic players.

Based on all this, I fear false reporting. It can be much worse than a temp ban. I don't know how Smite does things, and that's what worries me the most.

[Jackie Daytona]

Originally posted by RecalledDread:

The majority of people won't report because you've stopped for a few seconds after spawning. The exception might be if the enemy is attacking the Titan. Then they might assume you can't be bothered to defend or are throwing the game.
That's assuming they are even reporting you for that incident anyway.

You don't need to worry about the Goodwill system. It doesn't really do much, and having low goodwill won't get you banned or punished. You will recieve less favour, and it will take longer to fill up the new commendations bar (which you won't be able to do before the new season anyway since you're new).

Whilst the system is somewhat automated - by which I mean it will automatically inform you of reports on your behaviour etc - an actual person reviews each case before deciding if a ban is needed. The only auto-bans are the deserter penalties for DCing from games repeatedly. If you are doing nothing wrong, don't worry about it. If it's really a concern, party up with some people and you'll avoid that situation.

Thanks for taking the time to explain this. I'm still a bit worried about it though.

I have some friends(more like former friends, but we've been talking of playing together) that play Smite. But they are on console. So I'm waiting for the cross-platform update to be able to play with them.

[RoofCat]

Goodwill from game is not exactly 6 in fact. At some numbers it jumps by 7. Rounding stuff I guess. So 50 is perfectly possible.

[MrBloodworth]

You start at 0. Goodwill is earned.