New World factions abuse mass reporting to ban key players before wars

New World is without a doubt one of the hottest games this autumn, as Amazon's MMO enters its third week as the most played game on Steam, with hundreds of thousands of users discovering new secrets each day.

New World's core gameplay loop has attracted armies of MMO fans hungry for something new on the genre market to fill in the hole left by a dying World of Warcraft.

While far from perfect, the game has offered an interesting setting and engaging gameplay which was enough for the huge success New World is currently seeing.

The battle for dominance between the game's three factions - Syndicate, Covenant, and Marauders - is probably the most interesting part of the game, as they are all trying to control as many territories as they can. And in this fierce rivalry, they do not hesitate to use all tools available, even if that means gaming the system.

New World companies abuse mass reporting to ban enemy players

The main goal of companies (guilds) and their parent factions is to control as many territories as they can on a server. This is done through factions' influence, and in order to dispute a company's control over a territory, the opposing factions need to undermine their influence and challenge their government by doing PvP activities on their territories and thus successfully taking over control from the ruling company.

Doing enough of this will allow opposing factions to declare war on a territory their enemies control.

Battles in these wars are 50v50 matches and they happen at a pre-arranged time, which is settled between the two conflicting companies. And this is where the abuse of reporting system comes into play.

Factions and companies have quickly learned that they can devastate the opponents even before a battle starts, simply by mass reporting important high-level players before the battle so that they get them banned for at least 24 hours, which is more than enough for them to be forced to skip the battle.

Forums and Reddit are full of posts from players getting unjustly banned in this way.

"I got banned because I didn’t agree to a dumbass truce between the Marauders and Covenant," says u/curvaceous-triangle. "Amazon fix your reporting system - this is so frustrating."

Player En0kas, who is a level 60 healer, is another victim of the "ban before the war" strategy, where opponents usually mass report victims for "disruptive/abusive behaviour."

Rylynn, who plays on Valhalla (US EAST) and who is also banned in this way, explained why is this strategy so popular: "The incentive and payoff for mass reporting are too high. There's almost no chance the ticket can be reviewed before the war occurs, so you can guarantee to remove multiple players from the war. Most of our players are offline right now, but we have 3 confirmed bans already... all level 60 players."

These are just some of the examples from Reddit, which is currently overflown by posts of players with a similar fate. And while Amazon claims that not all reports are automatic, the mass reporting strategy has been very effective from the first day of the game's release and it is still one of the most alarming issues, as it creates a toxic environment and it threatens to kill normal social interactions in the community.

Players are urging Amazon to find an effective method to put a stop to this abuse, as it hurts the game's competitive integrity if anyone can remove strong players by simply mass reporting them.

Some players suggest strong punishments (7-day bans) for anyone who falsely reports other players, which would deter players from using this strategy, while multiple offences should result in a permanent ban. Streamers are not innocent in this as well, as some are reportedly weaponizing their armies of fans to target specific people.

Whatever solution Amazon Games has for this, they need to implement it as soon as possible, as players are not happy with the current situation and many are willing to wait for bug fixes a bit more if that means that this issue will become a top priority for fixing.

• Read more: New World: How to fix Easy Anti-Cheat untrusted file system bug

For more New World news and guides, check out our dedicated hub.

Featured image via Amazon Games.