2 days ago, I was on OW, I was playing tank and the dps had two dps que both level 28 ranked at 2750 and they were 100% qued with the silver support we had. We were stomping the enemy team up to the point where the enemy team used all 6 ults and got themselves the point
one of dps blamed the off tank and the off tank said “I was trying my best dude”
and he just kept blaming him
The off tank said “can you please stop bullying me? We get it your top500 boosting your silver friend”
The smurfs threw a temper tantrum and decided to throw, I told them “can you guys please just play the game?” They said “we dont care we can boost our friend later Lul”
They threw we lost
and I said to enemy team “congrats on your ez win we had two babies, please report them they are the dps”
two days later they are against me with the same guy who is suddenly now at 2450 (from 1950)
Like bruv what?
they noticed me btw and I legit didnt even know till they noticed me and they said
“get ready to be (s word here) Lethal, these babies will (f word here) you”
they were stomping my team with widow and tracer, I told my team to go all tanky heroes or heroes that are hard to hit
Lucio, brig, reaper, mei, ball, and winston (dats me)
All i did was focus the “gold” player, and the widow occasionally
We won and said “Yeah guys you totally showed me”
they started to trash talk me and wanted to 1v1 -.- xD
I reported them and still recieved no report on them (they were the only people I reported in the last 2 days)
2 people ruined so many matches and why? to have fun? whats the fun in this?
Make competitive minimum level
150
this way your mmr gets set up good by quickplay
Have to disagree with that. Team Fortress 2 has very low toxicity, because single teammate can’t ruin game for everyone.
Historically it’s team-focused games with small teams, that have highest levels of toxicity. Luckily, TF2 was usually played 12v12 or 16v16 format for the most part.
It doesn’t mean you can’t find toxic people in TF2 - they exist there, like in any game - but their impact is limited, and players usually have kick/ban tools in their disposal to remove most annoying individuals from server.
Yeah. Once upon a time, I used to really care, in this game. Granted, a lot of that was because of pre-Role Q. I enjoyed Filling & Flexing across roles, and while the matchmaker was never perfect, I did feel like there were less stomp matches and/or reasons to Smurf.
Now? Ehh. The Backfill system doesn’t even work well, anymore. I’ve had a ton of games that were 5v6 for most of the match, because 1 Tank/Support left and it took forever for the slot to be filled. Or, you wait 10 mins (or more) on DPS, just to get back filled into the “Defeat” screen. match making has become so loose in QP now, just so Q times aren’t crazy and that’s led to stomp city.
And, as far as Comp goes, higher ranks players feel a need to Smurf, just to get into a match, in a reasonable amount of time. And/or role mains treat their other two roles like “lol, why do these matter?”, so they just throw on them or whatever they feel like doing, because “it’s not my main (role), so who’s cares?” (Basically, how some people use alt accounts and the like). Plus, other things like people (usually DPS Mains) going onto other roles to get quick Q times, but then not playing the role properly. Or, having something happen, where: you Q for Comp, it takes 20 mins to find a match (or more), then someone leaves, match canceled, then you Q again, wait, match canceled, Q again, wait, get to play a match (but, by then, you’ve waited an hour just to finally play).
Honestly, the more time we have with this system, the more that I see where it only “fixed” 4 DPS (which wasn’t as big of a problem as people made it out to be) and GOATS (which was only played at the highest levels, anyway). But, to do that, it ended up breaking everything else and has led people to throw and Smurf more (for the reasons I just mentioned, above)
Honestly, it’s getting to the point where even if I stick around for overwatch 2, I’m only going to be playing the PvE stuff. Because between: throwers, leavers, smurfs, Q times, poor match making, questionable balance decisions, etc, I’m getting tired/stressed/frustrated with OW’s PvP “experience”. And, honestly, a lot of that went downhill for me when Role Q became a thing and created (or exacerbated) the issues I previously mentioned. Yeah, I’m not saying it was perfect, before (it wasn’t), but I think it could have been approved upon, without resorting to this game breaking Role Lock/Q/222 system.
I wonder how many people would put up with something like that?
Many games have been scrutinized for having some sort of subscription model, especially these days. But, This is also a blizzard product. People actually paid insane amount of money for WoW, so who knows?
Then, again, while it might go over well with PC players, I’m unsure what the console player base would think. Outside of things, like Xbox Gold, we don’t really do subscriptions. At least not game specific ones. So, I don’t know.
Personally, I would find it a bit crap that someone gets a better overwatch experience, just because they pay blizzard money, every month. It should be a decent experience for everyone who purchased the game. It’s not like this is a F2P title.
But, again, I don’t know. Maybe it would go over like gangbusters. Maybe it would fall flat on its face. I really don’t know. If this was a PC only game, yeah, I could see the Blizzard audiences eating it up. But, I don’t foresee the console audience being as accepting. But, I could be wrong
Yeah, but that punishes “honest” players just as much as it does smurfs and the like. Why should they have to grind 200 levels, just to play Comp, all because some bad apples abuse the system?
honestly, you’re kind of right. And the reason that is the case, is because Overwatch is too team dependent. So, one smurfs, one leaver, or one thrower can put a wrench in the whole match.
Way back in season 1, skill rating adjustments were recalculated for whenever a leaver did occur and it affected both the team with the leaver and the team without. The community at the time did not feel this was a fair thing to do. And before season 1 ended, they stop that re-calculation. Here are some related posts I recently recovered that goes through this:
Now, I am observing this is now happening again since the introduction of Role Queue and it might be intentional, but there have been no developer posts that explain why this is happening again. All we know is that it is.
And you would be correct that players often accuse of other players “smurfing” needlessly and inaccurately. I myself rarely accuse other players unless there is upfront evidence (like my two examples in my starting post) that they are in fact smurfing, which again, I believe is deliberately throwing games to play against easier opponents overall. If anything, this is more about those who are willing to throw games to disrupt their matches in general. Now how many of them are there, I don’t know. All I do know is that according to results provided by Blizzard is that about 1% to 5% of our community demonstrates behavior that is considered “consistantly disruptive” meaning those players refuse to change their behavior even if they are actioned by Blizzard. Hell, I myself have been accused of smurfing mainly because I am still a Silver Tank, Gold Support, and Platinum Damage player with a platinum experience border around my portrait icon in game.
I personally love playing against significantly stronger opponents when the opportunity arrives (though preferably in a non-Competitive mode) and all I look for is players who are deliberately throwing for no good reason which is who I want to stop.
This is an unfortunate truth in many ways, and that is why I think trying to directly tackling alternate accounts is not a directly viable option. Now based on Seraph’s description of his behavior, I don’t think he is technically throwing but playing to the best of his ability with his different heroes that he wants to play.
Remember, to me throwing is simply sabotaging the match by either not playing (like the examples in my starting post) or engaging in activity that prevents their allies from winning (like Ice Walling an ally spawn exit). I am seeing that behavior in my games (especially in the Silver ranks where I play Tank) and that is what I want to stop.
I personally like the 1 to 5000 system far better than the 1 to 100 system. The grind just to get up one single SR point was annoying to say the least. Remember in my example above, the scoring was incredibly different (and more like that of Hearthstone’s current ranked game mode).
I always thought playing attack on Sudden Death was hard, especially on Assault maps (of course I didn’t know what the heck I was doing half the time back then).
It is still important to remember that at least for me every voice matters. I want to hear what you all have to say equally.
(To anyone reading this, please keep any related politics about this Blizzard Core Value out of my post please.)
I am not sure what you mean by cookies. Cookies to me are temporary internet files downloaded to preserve your personal information related to sites you visit and can easily be cleared. (They are also really tasty things to eat.) However, I don’t see any real technology that would prevent a player from accessing multiple accounts on a device. Remember that even console platforms allow multiple accounts to the game disc/license through family share features of PlayStation Network, Nintendo Network, and Xbox Live (which is why the problem is way worse on those platforms than PC). As far as legal perceptions go, our western culture is a long way off from that. Only South Korea and China have such restrictions.
This has been a polarizing idea in the past. I once wrote a (very naive) topic on the old forums called “5 ways to fix Competitive but at a price” and proposing a season fee was one of them. The community roasted me for it despite the fact I said hypothetical scenarios in an effort to identify the real problem. In today’s day and age, a season fee to the main Competitive mode of this game might directly harm players participating and may increase our queue times.
Now I would point out that back in 2017, it looked like FaceIt (a third-party matchmaking service that works with many games) was finally going to support Overwatch, and this was exactly what you propose. Unfortunately, Blizzard from what we could tell pulled out of the deal.
I don’t see the value in this common idea in order to keep the game attractive for new players. Yeah it would be a great deterrent for starting alternate accounts, but the grind to get from even level 1 to 100 takes hours upon hours and I feel this would risk players getting too bored or too frustrated from the more chaotic matchmaking experiences of Quick Play and Arcade to want to work their way into Competitive if they are truly looking for a competitive experience.
On the flip side, other games do successfully work with a hefty entry requirement such as Heroes of the Storm requiring a player to own 16 heroes that are levels 5 or higher (a very time-consuming task). This might be something the devs do but I think they would have to evaluate the benefit of slowing down alternate accounts versus making it too difficult for new players to join.
Well, I played some TF2 back in the day, and it was not the most engaging experience mainly due to toxic players. I also will note it is listed as WatchMojo.com’s first list of most toxic video game communites (warning: strong language in this video), and I have seen other related reports toward this game. Surprisingly, Overwatch has avoided that list and its sequel list. Not saying Overwatch is a shining heaven or TF2 is hell on earth (because I have other games that come to mind for both ends of the spectrum) but if anything it is all about perspective.
Thank you everyone for the positive discussion so far.
Because, unlike TF2, in Overwatch players don’t have their own tools to handle toxicity.
For example, TF2 has PvE 6 players mode, and like in Overwatch, you can find some bad players trying to sabotage game. But, it has votekick/ban, so you can effectively remove such players from game, receive new player from matchmaking and play as normal.
Vote to kick systems are rather ineffective tools in today’s culture (they were more essential in the early days before MMO management systems was in their infancy), and I think it would be even more ineffective with the unique hero-based system that is Overwatch versus the class based system that is TF2.
Nice state by the way, I googled it, being a Brit.
Don’t want to state the obvious, but would an easy fix not be to match Bronze level (Not rank) players with Bronze level players, and silver level with silver, then gold and the ones above all together; assume by gold level you have played enough to not be a smurf ?
That way if your silver level or above you just cannot have a smurf in your game.
As for toxicity it’s pretty much every game, I just mute and silence them.
My experience says otherwise, though - it’s most effective tool you get to get rid of unpleasant players. System in Overwatch reacts too slow, so toxic players cause plenty of damage, before they finally reach “critical mass” of reports.
Guess it depends from point of view. In TF2, it’s relatively easy to isolate toxic players - they aren’t irreplaceable parts of the team, due to overall larger teams and lack of class limits.
Thank you, in many ways I love my home. Its damn cold right now though.
Matchmaking would be significantly slowed for those at Silver rank, and if you were to divide it up even more for Gold, Platinum, and Diamond XP levels those higher ranked players would never find a fair match. We would have to dump Role Queue for this to even be a thing and even then I don’t think it could effectively work. Matchmaking is like shifting sand, the more filters that are put on, the less that comes through.
Again it depends on the game, but for games like Overwatch, League of Legends, Heroes of the Storm, that give players unique characters with unique abilities to play, the risk is that the system would be greatly abused if a player prefers to play with an off-meta hero. Besides, why kick a player from a Competitive game, that would be no different than just plain surrendering as you can’t get that player back (and there is no backfill).
Tbf, role queue is already very close to the equivalent of LFG.
Dps players would also get screwed even more without automatic matchmaking, if they had to spend the time between matches actively looking for a group.
Maybe just Bronze level (not rank) in a pool on their own, Everyone silver and above can play together. By the time they have played up to silver their sr should of levelled out unless deliberate deranking.
Perhaps a detection system for deranking could be put in place that auto bans from comp anyone who drops by a set amount of SR (say 500) in a certain time, say 2 weeks or whatever is deemed to work.
I agree, that there are issues with that, but so far, there are no other systems to remove toxic players from team, that have similarly quick response and efficiency.
If Overwatch was less team-dependent kind of game, we would see less hostility towards off-meta players, as they wouldn’t require everyone else to pick something else for their hero to be effective.
Players feel need to control others, if they feel their success being dependent on others. There are multiple ways to victory, but small size of team and team-reliance means, that someone has to make others, by any means, agree with their way.
First off, according to the Play Fair, Play Nice panel, it does sound like Blizzard is putting some more advanced learning metrics to detect this behavior. However a straight up system which detects a straight plunge would be inaccurate. I know because I once plunged 600 SR in season 3 in a single night (worst night I ever played this game BTW) mostly due to getting tilted from playing. Maybe a system that stops a player from playing for the rest of the night if they are losing too much in a single night might work to stop both smurfs and those tilting, but that overall harms an innocent player’s ability to enjoy game. Its an good idea, but I am not sure if it is an effective one.
I would question if there is a need for immediate action. First off, it is important to remember that only a very small percentage (less than 5%) of our community is “consistently disruptive” according to Blizzard. This means, their disruptive behavior is continuous and predictable despite any proactive means by Blizzard (through account actions) or that player’s peers to change, however over 95% of our community is reported at least once at any given time. This means not all of us are going to have a good game and some of us might be frustrated (I sure was by the end of my night last night), we may have had a bad day at work/school, or we are playing too tired or impaired. In the end, I don’t think we as a community alone can effectively decide who deserves to be kicked from a game they are trying to play.
If anything, it sounds like the balance philosophy change that is starting to happen is going to help shift a little power back into those who can carry. A long ways to go though and it will never be perfect.
Yep, and if anything one of the biggest weaknesses with Overwatch is the fact that you can just pick and choose the players you really want (short of making a coordinated effort in the Looking for Group forums; not the LFG tool), and even then playing as a coordinated group can have its significant disadvantages (queue times being a first). Hell, they don’t even allow groups of larger than 2 in Grand Masters anymore. I’d like to think I have mastered my communication skills to encourage, praise and be critical, but never demanding or toxic to my teammates, but I know it is impossible to specifically control my team in every step of the game.
… Maybe I should make a turn-based strategy game mode in the Workshop.
This has been an engaging discussion everyone! Thank you. I look forward to seeing more responses tomorrow. But for now, I am heading off to bed.
On a side note, tonight was a lot better though I only played a few games. Got the Power Overwhelming achievement for Zarya tonight so I am pretty happy about that.
