A Comprehensive Report On Reforming Overwatch's Toxic Competitive Community

You’re stretching your percentages there. If anything, at best, it’ll solve 60-70% tops. Which is why it’ll only work 100% if Blizzard would just put in the money to beef up their report team. They can afford it, the fact that this game sold 30 million copies and it has other sources of revenue through loot boxes and other stuff, what surprises me is that if they can’t really afford to refine the algorithm on dealing with reports, why not just add more man power? Put actual people into reviewing reports, or even go the Valve route with CSGO if they are so lazy with CSGO’s Overwatch system where players themselves can judge games that have gotten enough reports. Yes, again, human factor and what not, but might as well just cover each player’s name as the character they were using at the instance/s and the reported player as “suspect”.

Most players aren’t toxic by themselves, it takes this atrocity of a matchmaking system to make them toxic.

  • Oh we got 5 support mains? Well guess then we lose…
  • We have someone dragging their 1000SR lower friend(s) into the match? Well guess then we lose…
  • We have 5 people instalock DPS? Well guess then we lose…
  • We have a symm/torb one-trick on control maps? Well guess then we lose…

And there’s nothing you can do to prevent this unless you can 6-stack with 5 other people but guess what? Then you lose too because you get put against other stacks who’ve been playing together for much longer and then you also have to schedule your games, good luck when all 6 of you have a full-time job as well.

You just can’t win with this matchmaking system because so much of it relies on having enough luck to get an actual functioning team.

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Epic post! Some good points in there.

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Mute, squelch, block, avoid, report, move on

Fixed for brevity.

Bookmarking to read later to massive to get through right now, dropping you an early like now though because from what I have skimmed through seems like some good stuff.

Doesn’t stop the matchmaker from deciding that you should be queue’d with the same people after using the avoid as teammate feature to its max cap.

I think two simple things could help prevent this at least a little:

  1. Stats charts. Sort of like they do on HearthStone, (and tried out sort of in last Archives event) where you can see how much dmg, healing, tanking, deaths, kills, assists from all teammates was done. This will help to at least prove who was right when blaming others for a loss. Also, many times you believe a healer is not healing, or a dps is not killing, but stats can help you know if you were right or wrong; which brings me to my next point.

  2. Play of the Game needs to be much more inclusive. Almost always, the Play of the Game is awarded to someone that killed many enemies in an epic or creative play. Yes, eliminations count a lot to win this game, but many times a healer or a tank did almost all the carrying. Imagine if the play of the game was awarded to a Moira or Lucio that managed to pull 4 of his teammates out of Critical Health in an important play. Or an Orisa that thanks to her ULT your team got a TeamKill. Or a Reinhardt that absorbed all that DMG and thanks to that the rest of the team could clear the area. I know, voting at the end includes this to let others know all that a certain player did, but there are so many times that I see 4 or 5 DPS instant lock and the whole game they just dived in to get that 4 or 5 kill combo that could give them the Play of the Game. Same thing with supports not healing. Lot’s of times one or two guys go for support or even 3, but they never ever heal… just search for final blows…

This said, having a more inclusive Play of the Game and some overall Game Stats (live preferably), could be a really simple twitch to help prevent such bad picks for a team comp. Better team comp = better game experience (sometimes you don’t care if you loose if you know the whole team did it’s best). Better game experience = less toxicity. Well, at least imho.

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I read the whole thing. Excellent points and I can’t find much to disagree with here, and as unlikely as it is I really wish Blizzard takes on what you’ve said here.

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I think you have a fair point, very thorough analysis. The very idea of competing in a non specific competitive environment, creates toxicity. The game has flaws, the devs just need to accept that and fix how it works. If all someone wants out of competitive mode is the golden weapon, they aren’t there for the same reason I am. I want to learn how the game works. I want to learn the hard counters. I want to be trained to win. Yet we have to be grouped together with people who could care less!

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This thread pretty much sums up my entire line of thinking on the problems with overwatch so…nothing further to add?

Game needs more soft CC so badly.

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Can I be honest?

(Sorry for necro-ing my thread to anyone who cares, but I want to say this:)

When I posted this I expected an overwhelmingly negative response, which is why I didn’t bother to come back and read any replies until now, literally 2 months later. I expected a whole boatload of people who were going to dispute individual points: “Your proposed solution to soloqueue is terrible!” They’d say. “I can’t believe you think giving Roadhog his hook back is a good idea!”

I dreaded that because the solutions weren’t really the point of the post - pointing out the problems was. Remarkably, rather than getting that type of response, I got a thread full of… actual discussion! I can’t emphasize enough how incredibly cool it was to come back here and read 30 replies of (generally speaking) actual talk about the problem concepts, instead of just disputing semantics of the solutions.

So I guess… if you replied, thanks? I welcome all types of discussion, including well-thought-out disagreement, and that’s exactly what I got. I’ve never been so happily surprised by this community. So thanks.

I really would like to see this addition of a team builder or leagues to sort out all the things about team composition and communication before hand. This would make the start of the match so much more smooth and would get rid of those matches where you know, that you are in for a bad time, because you have 5 DPS in your team not responding to voice chat.
I want the team building phase to be done before hand and after you found some composition and way to play together, then you are off to do get a match vs a team of comparable strength.

For a game with heroes/champions/characters (however you want to call them) which have a recognizable kit, but much less effect on game play look at Quake Champions. There those different champions can be more efficient depending on the situation, but the your individual skill is much more important.
I would never be able to a frag against Rapha in Quake Champions, no matter what champions we pick. I might be able to win a duel as Soldier76 against him on Lucio.

Overwatch is a great team game, but without a team is an exercise in frustration. This can also be seen, when good teams play each other. To balance solo queue and make matches where you get paired with your team mates a fun experience, is a fool’s errand. Acknowledge that for competition Overwatch is only fun as a team and structure your competitive mode around it!

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What’s up all. Just wanted to post before I delete Overwatch from my PC. I’m a pretty level headed 34 year old. Overwatch has become unplayable for me due to the fact that I have to Q up with random groups. The amount of racism and just straight up disrespect there is in the community is ridiculous. It’s just not fun at all anymore, which sucks because the game in and of itself is so fun to play. I’ve reported multiple players because of ridiculous behaviors racial slurs, just yelling into a microphone throughout a whole competitive match, wishing death of upon you for a game ha. Sounds funny while I’m typing it. I have pretty thick skin and can take most jokes lightly, this stuff going here isn’t jokes it’s causing some people some real psychological problems. I mean the level it gets to is insane. I can’t report enough people to even make a dent in the toxic community almost every single comp game has at least one of them. Just wanted to post here to see if it could have some effect for those who will continue to play Overwatch. Wish you all the best !

Overwatch is toxic because of Match Making Rating, a handicapping system designed to make the game addictive rather than objective or fair.

There is even toxicity in the comments of this post, it’s 2019, and Blizzard has not yet made a comment or a formal explanation about that kind of situation. The toxicity in the game (and the lack of Blizzard to take a drastic action in fact to solve, as Ubisoft has done in not giving chances for this type of human being) makes me want to give up and not play anymore just to get away from this kind of people, while giving up is let oppression win, let these kinds of people win. I find this all very difficult. It hurts my soul really deep.

I finally was able to play comp for the first time last night and the first two games were great. The first team I played with, no one talked or comm, but we sort of coelesced and whooped the other team. The second team I played with they wanted to comm and helped me out with what they wanted so I went along with their strategy and we won. The third team I played with was good in the first round but had these two players, Iamthesenate and Owlsucks, who immediately started heckling me for charging the point (after we lost the second round (mind you there is a third round we could win in still). They wanted me to block so I started blocking and they both proceeded to get more irate and harrass me (if I was a kid I would say they were bullies). I was also playing exactly how the second team told me to play, “take the point” and we won in that team. The players from this third team however didn’t want to rush the point except me and another tank. They kept skirting the edges of the point which seems illogical if you want to take it and frankly, the other team was flat out good, so kudos to them. But the main point being, in the toxic team with the two toxic players, I think we would have won if they communicated better and not start to harassing or bullying right away because they get killed a few times. It is a game, we win and we lose like in any sport and we have to show a level of good sportsmanship, and when a good team is whooping your butt, I don’t think it’s time to blame other teammates. And yes I did report the two players for harassment.