The worst people are in gold; with the best people being in >= Diamond and Silver. Bronze is an exception.
This is because a high population of the skilled players who play frequently get hit with the reporting system and are forced to make smurfs; and start off in bronze/silver after initial placement on new accounts. I see half the players in my games on new smurfs being other smurfs.
Is Blizzard this ignorant to the fact how they hurt their own playerbase? The lower leagues get abused by us forced to smurf.
The reporting system causes more harm than good. It doesnât work. Just like masks.
Maybe this has always been the case, but probably only the 3 highest ranks have any meaning. You could argue as now that people can boost other players to higher ranks than they deserve, that ranks below Master have no meaning.
The quality of matches in Ranked is not comparable to the solo queue only HL system. Not just because it allows for a three rank spread in groups, but simply because fewer people play ranked than they once did.
Personally Iâve learned in Plat just to accept ranked for what it is. It might be the âcompetitiveâ mode, but itâs just a game and few of us will reach Master/GM let alone Pro, just enjoy it while we still have it.
A lot of people have said all ranks under master are ultimately the same and I tend to agree as someone who played in all leagues under master so far.
There isnât enough population to discern between a diamond 5 and a platinum 5 sometimes. A Silver can often be better than a gold. A bronze can be a total potato or a climbing smurf.
Totally. Even without a smurf or population problem, some players on the ladder wonât climb not because they donât have the skills, but because they donât have the interest to invest the time to do so. So they could be Silver, but if they played more than a handful of games a season they could quickly rank into Plat or higher.
Yeah took some of my friends like hundreds of games to get from silver to gold, because their max skill cap was gold. So it was a grind at like 50,3% win rate or something.
Not many people are interested in that grind just to get a portrait in a game. Nobody respects rank portraits anyway in HotS unless itâs Grand Master.
Iâm not buying it. I wager there are just longer queue times as you rise in rank. Coupled with the fact that a yuge portion of the playerbase lies between bronze and gold you have a situation that entices people to reroll. To get games and play with their friends.
Are there people who reroll and make alts to dodge their punishments? Sure. Theyâre just not the important demographic because if you want to play the game then you wise up and control yourself or make a group of friends with whom you have rapport and who tolerate your behaviors.
Mute them and carry on, why do you need to be vindictive and want them to lose their accounts just so that they make smurfs and ruin low elo games, you think after I got perma banned the first time because I am a team player and very vocal and emotional.
You think I ever spent another dollar on this game after (I had easily spent 500$ on my OG account)? Nope! Blizz lost a cash cow like me and turned me into someone who wants to make newbies quit when I smurf, bashing their heads in silver as to how my zeratul can 1v5 their team, kill their squishy and escape without a scratch⌠ALL GAME! Then they think itâs the hero that is good, they play him and are absolute dog water on him because they have not spent 10k games as him since beta like myself.
Making new players quit because they get constantly told that they suck (and they do!) but they do not like being told that. Nobody like being told they suck. But we need to GROW UP and get THICKER SKIN and just DEAL WITH IT. Life is not fair, some people are better than others, how you handle it determines how high you will peak in both HotS and Life.
All of that ranting to say, if Blizz had just banned me for 1 month max at a time, I would have eventually got better getting month long bans every time I dared call out a bad play.
I just play with 5 stacks only now when Iâm trying to climb, or no Team chat and voice only. The only way to enjoy this game is with people you can keep accountable and are as serious as you are about the game.
This could be one option or you could do it more civilised and give them a constructive feedback where they suck, but usually even better players struggle to do it, because most of the time people are triggered when they play with players, who do more visible mistakes than enemys. And it is already a challenge to overcome his own âtriggered emotionsâ.
At least itâs kinda confirms my own experience that there is no difference between gold and silver
Does it mean your main account is banned and thatâs why youâre smurfing?
The problem isnât that Blizzard disallows trash talking; itâs that they let the community decide what is and isnât trash talking which is an unenforceable clause in their ToS/EULA as itâs too vague.
The reporting system according to contract law isnât even strictly legal in North America (not to be confused with criminal, this is a civil matter) and itâs highly abusable.
Itâs single handedly the worst system Iâve ever seen in a multiplayer game in regards to moderation and is so insanely short sighted that itâs contributed massively to the death of HotS as it actively drives players away.
Whoever thought it was a good idea in itâs current iteration screwed up. Badly.
Itâs correct itâs a flawed system, but itâs very efficient for itâs costs and that is why I guess why Activision Blizzard choosed it, because itâs simple and effcient, no matter how abuseable it is.
There needs to be a happy medium. Smaller stuff shouldnât be an issue. Being told âyou suckâ isnât nice but if you canât take even the slightest amount of shadeâŚwell lifeâs not going to be very fun for you!
On the flip side, thereâs crazies out there who think itâs okay to threaten physical violence, tell people to KYS, etcâŚand thatâs not even remotely acceptable.
Blizzard sucks at making good Judgment calls and has for decades. Itâs like theyâre allergic to critical thinking and are stuck in their own little world. Iâd argue while WoW has been a resounding success, that success was the deathknell of the company as theyâve become increasingly out of touch with reality every year after itâs initial release culminating in a buy out from Activision, multiple mass exoduses of talent and 80% of their IPs being abandoned.
Even, if youâre right, but you donât have to forget that Blizzard makes the rules on their servers and if they want to be customer-friendly and intolerable against the smallest rudeness itâs their decision and it wasnât even that bad, if you consider that Blizzard always want to attract CASUAL player and not only hardcore players. You donât have to like their decisions, but you have to accept they make sense for what they did.
Itâs hardly efficient; I mean what happens if one gamer who has purchases in-game gets mad enough to sue over it?
The saving go right out the window as itâs not an enforceable clause and thereâs measurable monetary damages.
Realistically; the best solution would be to rig âabusive chatâ to not send reports at all and just block the user in question with things such as racism, death threats, etcâŚyou know, actually offensive stuff under a different category like âharassmentâ or however youâd want to categorize it.
Or include an auto-mute function where if you say a key word too many times in a game like âyou suckâ or 'u suck" âur badâ or whatever else, then youâre muted for the next 3 hours.
Lots of automated solutions which donât expose Blizzard to legal fallback and wouldnât have actively harmed the game.
It doesnât make any sense; in Diablo and StarCraft 2 this isnât a feature and this reporting system was only introduced in HotS after it worked for Overwatch, which was extremely toxic to the point where drastic action needed to be taken.
Additionally, it opens Blizzard up to legal action. A general rule for North Americaâs contract law is that if your clause states you can do whatever you want, whenever you want to whoever you wantâŚthat clause is unenforceable because itâs far too vague (gotcha clauses as theyâre known endanger the entire EULA which is really bad news).
In addition, your purchases, if youâve ever made them are held âhostageâ when the EULA or ToS is updated which is literally called âbad faith negotiatingâ and is not legal in terms of civil law since unless you agree to the new EULA/ToS youâre not allowed access to said purchases.
Blizzard relies on us not suing them over this kind of stuff which anyone could do for around $100 if they really wanted to - because they know theyâd lose. A lot of corporations rely on consumer ignorance when it comes to contract law, Actiblizzard included.
Hereâs a great case in which a corporationâs EULA was found unenforceable for the same reason Blizzardâs EULA isnât enforceable.
You should look the other way around. If you go to McDonalds or any other place, where you can potencially meet other people and you buy your food, but then you are triggered about some people there. What do you think will happen? If you donât change your behaviour you get kicked out, the difference to Blizzard system itâs automated due to low costs, but itâs same.
They could do it, but this thing is actually not so easy to solve, because of the nature of the internet. People on the internet can do things they wouldnât do in real life and I wouldnât like, if you give Trolls an out-of-jail card. Your idea would only make sense in an controlled system, where workers checks the reports and not in this current system.
Or they let the system as it is, but they let actions (like suspension decays over long period of time), if one player got silenced or suspended from the game and comeback after years and changed himself and growed up, he donât have to fear to get banned, if it is happen again. thatâs the only issue I have with the system, because in itâs current iteration itâs harder than actual prison and thatâs insane.
Thatâs hardly the same thing and you know it lol.
Some worker checks are needed because automation eventually fails. You cannot have a fully automated system and just expect things to work out. Thereâs a difference between a troll and someone whoâs telling you that you suck after youâve for example, died 11 times in 5 minutes. Arguably, the person who died that many times is the one whoâs trying to incite a reaction which is why I donât like using the word trolling as itâs very subjective.
What should be actionable is being excessively rude or harassing other players. Basic criticism, even if itâs âyou suckâ is neither harassment nor by most definitions would it be excessively rude. We as a society need to grow up and learn to deal with things better. Weâve become thin skinned and itâs dumb.
If we have a choice between a bad system that drives players away for the trade-off of protecting the extremely delicate sensibilities of a minority of people and a proper system which is properly defined and thus, is a legal clause within the EULAâŚI think Iâll choose the latter. Iâm not into pandering to over sensitives and when things such as âsighâ are actionable (according to Blizzard, not according to contract law) weâve crossed over a line.