An open letter to the community manager

General Discussion
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Replied in Dandy’s post but I feel its relevant enough to just make it public as well…

Tom, if you understand why this statement might be underwhelming or disheartening then you also understand why it is unacceptable. The game is 2 years old now and well into its third year. OWL is done so that excuse is no longer viable. The content calendar it pretty well known and its not like you can’t push things back to deal with certain problems. But your problem and the problem at the office is this, WHAT ARE YOU PLANNING TO DO?! We need to know as your player base, your PAYING customers. A statement on your course of action is not only requested, it is expected.

  • Is this being discussed?
  • Is there already a plan in motion?
  • Will we see something before the end of the summer?
  • What solutions do you have right now?

This isn’t a game balance issue, this is a customer satisfaction issue, those need to be dealt with YESTERDAY if you plan to retain those customers. “were working hard to reduce toxicity in overwatch” might as well sound like “sucks to be you” at this point in time, because its takes entirely too long to handle these things and when you guys do they are either half measures or just simply too late.

Edit: For the record Tom, 40 million players, 2 avoid slots… Just saying…

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What would you have them do, that wouldn’t be abused in some way?

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A public statement about WHAT they planning to do is much better than “we have things is the works”

Maybe then we as the community can discuss ways to make sure it can’t be abused.

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A broad reply from then is better then no reply.
So far they have been silent. The only things we hear about OW from them are the developer updates, which only come out when there is something new in the game.
Doesn’t warframe say stuff on a weekly basis?
Even if it’s just “Hey guys we know everything sucks, but WE DO hear you and are currently working on something in house. We don’t want to go into full detail yet, but trust us we have something”
Would be better than silence. I have to agree.

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Op, I feel your grievances, but hear me out:

It’s hard to control this kind of thing, properly. It just is. There is no shortcut, no magic wand or ancient dance one could perform in order to alleviate that.

It’s also important to consider the idea that basically some of these problem players are so bad that giving them any additional or official information usually just ends up leveraged somehow to further enable the toxic behavior.

Please, just be patient. They clearly don’t like it and I bet you anything they are working super hard on trying to fix it right now as we speak.

Consider, the trolls are really greasy and tenacious, they are like fking weeds man, you gotta rip them out by the root otherwise they will just figure out new ways of trolling. Happens every time.

Just put them all in a pool together, and don’t acknowledge it exists, ever. Just let them sit in there and que with the same 600 asshats in Silver league for the rest of their OverWatch careers. Let the greatest Troll be a nothing, ever. LOL

That would be perfect. Just a big o’l Troll pool.

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you can only avoid 2 people???

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Not going to be able to stop people from being rude, dont know of a single online game that has/can do that.

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There is an immediate fix to the original issue though, more avoid slots. 2 was a complete joke and everyone knows it? 2? How many people did they think we run into in a given session? Toxicity has festered for so long that we as the community deserve to be part of the input in fixing it. LFG is great, but if you aren’t level 3 or higher already no one will group with you under the assumption you aren’t a positive teammate. I literally create groups under the title “only good teammates” with a level 3 requirement because I just won’t deal with toxic people period. But those that just want to play without being harassed constantly…you have 2 avoid slots…

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I’m by no means a Blizzard fangirl, but I do think people are putting a lot of blame on them for the actions of individual players.

Every time someone calls me a hick or tells me to go back to school and learn how to speak due to my accent, I don’t think, “Dang Blizzard! It’s their fault this guy said that! Why wasn’t he banned, like, yesterday?!”

Realistically speaking, there’s not much more they can do. The report feature is there, so is a mute and block option. Like … I don’t know what more people want.

The only thing I can think of is hiring more staff to sit and actually manually go through reports. That’d be great if every report could be handled that way, but everyone knows that’s impossible. The staff size that would take would be … well, a lot.

Not to mention that would open up a whole new set of problems. Problems like we see from the forum moderation team. In that, not everyone is in agreement on how bad something is, and how it should be punished.

Say Bob reviews a report of Player A telling player B to “Shut the [bleep] up and go drink bleach.”

Bob would probably react like me and be like, “Alright, this kid was totally tilted. Looking through his history, he has no prior infractions. I’m gonna give him a 72 hour ban and tell him to watch his temper.”

Rhonda, on the other hand, might overreact and handle the exact same report as, “Oh dear lord! He suggested suicide! I don’t care what he did before, this is obviously life-time ban worthy!”

So then there’d be even more appeals now than before, the punishment system would somehow be even more inconsistant, and ugh.

The only way that would ever work is if we somehow develop sentient AI clones that all share a hivemind. So basically, we need the Borg. :stuck_out_tongue:

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I agree that they could do more, and that this is a major issue. However this is one of those things that is very tricky to deal with. Plus, no system that they can put in place will actually be able to regulate how people behave. The best you can do is regulate how you interact with those people.

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Well when WE aren’t given the tools to deal with toxicity properly, how is it our fault?

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Agreed, Thats why I give full credit to LFG being in the game. But what about that one person that just loads up the game for quick session and they are immediately met with the worst kind of people? LFG, as great as it is, doesn’t cover everyone and is the situation with Dandy Clearly had the opposite effect.

We need better communication, and be apart of the decision making process about it. Since this isn’t a balance issue there’s NO reason not to involve the community.

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Im curious what you expect blizz to do, we can avoid teammates, we can leave chat, we can block them so we dont see their chat, we can mute their voice, we can report. What else should there be?

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Yes Warframe talks about what they have planned all the time. Their streams are nice

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Maybe not limit us to only 2 avoid slots. Do they really think the average player only runs into 2 toxic players in a 7 day period?

They could also commit to actually having a severe punishment system, the ONLY reason its as bad as it is because people DO NOT fear they system.

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No, but that is why you unavoid some people and add the people currently being toxic. Block people for the current, not from 6 days ago. Sure id be fine with another couple avoid slots, but giving us many more will just turn into it being abused.

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So instead of everyone thats toxic properly being punished we have to pick and choose who deserves it more?

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We both know with tons of avoid slots it wouldnt have anything to do with avoiding toxic people. I think that person played badly, avoid. I didnt like their hero choices, avoid. Mute the other toxic people then, even if they are on your team, you can stop them from being toxic towards you.

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That can be tough…“well this guy threatened to kill me last game, but these two threatened to kill my whole family 3 games ago…who do I remove from my robust (max 2) avoid player list?”

You don’t have to go a week out to know 2 slots isn’t enough. Unless I accidentally have my team’s comms muted, I can’t go 1 hour without reassigning my 2.

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Then communicate with the community so everyone can be a part of the discussion to minimize abuse of any future system.