Clarify The Rules About Reporting AFK Players


I was told by a Hive Support Team member that you shouldn’t really report AFK players if you’re not sure they’ve been AFK for more than one game, at least that’s what I’ve got from the answer they sent when I asked about reporting AFK players. I sent a screenshot of my question and a screenshot of the answer they gave me above.

I’m suggesting if the Hive doesn’t really want players to report AFK players if the AFK player was just AFK for the one game the reporting player saw the AFK player in then they should clarify this somewhere such as saying so when you go to report them for being AFK.

However, I also believe that you should be able to report players for AFKing even if it’s just for AFKing for a single game so a moderator can see and then look into whether or not that player was AFKing in previous games or if they continued to AFK in future games.

My reasoning is that if a lot of people are playing a game you most likely won’t be queued into another game with the same AFK player so you’ll never know if that player is still AFKing or not and if you aren’t really supposed to report the AFK player since you don’t know for sure if they’ve been AFKing for multiple games (according to the Hive Support Team member) then the AFK player will never be brought to justice.

Intentionally AFKing for XP is against the rules which is why this is a concern for me, I believe AFKing for XP for even one game should be against the rules and should be a reportable offense and that you should be able to report a player for AFKing even if you don’t know for sure whether or not they were intentionally or unintentionally AFKing so that a moderator can look into it and make a decision and then take the appropriate actions.

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I was also wondering about if you’d even get good reporting reputation points for quest point rewards if you reported an AFK player that was AFK for only the game you were in with the AFK player or not.

I’m even worried about if we would get punished if we didn’t know if they were AFK for multiple games and just knew they were AFK for the one.

I’ve reported lots of players for being AFK and I’ve never received a single quest point from doing so, so I’m wondering if reporting players for being AFK can even give you good reporting reputation points or quest points if a moderator finds they’ve only been AFK for the single game and no others.

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Generally speaking, emailing [email protected] is the best way to get clarification on our rules or how we may handle them. There’s a lot more to things than it may seem, so asking before making a suggestion is always advised if you’re unclear.

In terms of your proposal, we already have a rule against being AFK in-game to grind XP, boost, or anything similar that would be considered unfair (as you’ve mentioned). When a user is only AFK in one game, we can’t say with certainty that it wasn’t for a number of other reasons.

More often than not, users who are AFK for a single game have done so unintentionally. It would be too harsh of us to consider punishing, given there’s no way we can be sure they were actually intending to gain anything or break our rules if they’re only briefly AFK. Moreover, being AFK is rarely a major issue or impact unless a player is continuing to do so across multiple games. Players who are AFK once are not given “justice” as there isn’t usually any to give, in those cases.

Our support team member likely advised against reporting on a single game because it’s unlikely the report would be accepted. It isn’t that we don’t want you to report, more that the player likely hasn’t done anything wrong if you’ve only seen them AFK once. We can’t follow up if we don’t have more examples, but we can’t find more examples if the player hasn’t actually repeated the issue.

Returning to your suggestion, we don’t feel there’s any clarification that needs to be made to our rules. The rule on being AFK is clear on it not being allowed, we simply don’t believe one AFK game is enough to warrant something as serious as a punishment in most situations.

If you have any further questions, I would recommend reaching out to Support. Questions about reporting can also be directed there, as our forums aren’t the best place for asking. :slightly_smiling_face:

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