Another example of why I turn off chat and text

General Discussion
1

Title. Story time. Get comfy.

I generally have all communications off at all times, because nothing good comes from chat anymore.

So today, after listening to a buddy talk about some funny banter he had in a game, my QP randos group on Oasis were spamming emotes and dancing and seemed like they were in a good mood.

“sure, what the hell” I said, and turned text on. No one is actually saying anything. No problem. Won first round with a well-timed rocket barrage on their frontline, things seemed good.

Silence all game. Not a word was said, that I noticed. Until second point.

I’m on Pharah this whole time, putting in work, doing my share, making enemy supports annoyed with me. With about 20 sec left on the clock, my whole team minus myself and Mercy wipes to ults except for me. Mercy flies off back towards spawn, while I’m on the tower in the middle wondering how I’m going to deal with their Ana, Bastion and Reaper still on the point, with their Moira running down their hallway towards them. I poke a bit, seeing if I can get a lucky pick without dying.

No dice. I decide feeding is a bad idea, in case they were close to more ults, and conc blast back to my sides’ hallway. Overtime hits, round is basically done, my Mercy flies to me in the hallway with about 5 seconds on the clock left and starts spamming “go” emote. I look back and realize my Mauga is just leaving spawn and there’s no chance anyone else gets there in time, no one has any ults, and stepping on the point is just dying anyways, so I figure nah, we’ll get them next round.

As the round ends, I start seeing “Pharah wtf” “Pharah throwing” “report our Pharah” in match chat. I think ‘great, here we go’.

Almost turned off chat again right then and there, but waited to see if they clarified what exactly they were mad about. I didn’t engage or ask questions, just stayed silent.

I switch to S76 because I had the feeling my supports were not going to be paying me any attention at all from that point on. I do ok, but the other team has a Bastion and Sym, both pocketed, holding the entrances while my tank tried valiantly to catch as many bullets as he could with his teeth. Their tank, as far as I could tell in all the chaos, is basically just dancing around on the point waiting to see if we break thru and making sure that I can’t get on the point solo from any of the flanks.

We accomplish nothing and lost the round along with the game. Unfortunate. Chat fills up with my team demanding everyone in the game report me. Still unsure what for. I ask ‘why’ in chat, get no response, except someone spamming ‘phara sold phara sold phara sold’ over and over. Whatever that means.

My best guess is that they were mad I didn’t sacrifice myself on the point for no benefit. I don’t actually know, but it also doesn’t really matter anymore.

Back to menu, text chat gets turned off once again, and that is where it will stay indefinitely.

When I say this community has turned terrible with F2P, that nothing good comes from text or voice chat, that it should always be off at all times if for no other reason than peace of mind, this is the stuff I’m talking about.

Are those reports actionable? No, not really. Could the automated ban system do me dirty? Definitely. We see posts about that all the time, and people KNOW it works like that, which is why they will report for anything they dislike. But thankfully, I didn’t really engage, so I don’t expect anything too serious to come from this.

Other than the fact that I will never again be using any communications in this game except for pings and emotes.

Just keep all comms off. Use pings and emotes to relay information as needed. Because not hearing the garbage that everyone else will surely be spewing makes for a substantially more positive experience.

Thanks for coming to my TedTalk.

14 Likes
2

It’s happened to me too.
There’s like 5 seconds left and nobody, not even Ball, Sombra, Tracer, Lucio or any fast character can possibly get there in time, so I just emote in spawn.

“kobol threw”, “wtf kobol”, “kobol you ####### piece of ####”, “####### kobol”, “report kobol for throwing”

5 Likes
3

I don’t think there’s ever a good reason not to try and touch the point in overtime.

Were you trying to preserve your kd stats or something? Stats are irrelevant only winning or losing matters.

Given that the round is ending and you have lost the correct call is to dive onto the point and simply try and stay alive. If you die then you tried your best. If you do not die then your team may arrive in time to also extend the overtime.

I would not call what you did throwing, but it’s a mistake in your thinking. You lose nothing by trying to touch the point. At this stage of the game your death is irrelevant, so better to die trying.

2 Likes
4

Your team mates were toxic, it’s clear you were not throwing.

Mmh, maybe they really thought you did just throw that round, if I were you, I could have said I didn’t throw, just knew round was lost anyway, but then, maybe they’ll see that as throw too.

Maybe next time you could say: "why, I didn’t throw, I can’t do 1V5 and you were far away " or something like that Idk, so maybe you give more info instead of the “why” you said.

1 Like
5

Possibly. But when I look out and see Ana, Bastion, and Reaper looking right at me, and I have about 3 seconds to take account of all variables to decide if yeeting my body onto the point has any value at all, I don’t usually see any. When the roles are reversed, I chuckle at the last-second Tracer stall attempts, because they just get deleted and no benefit is had. I would have to survive my gold-skill-level ground Pharah game for at least 10 seconds in order to buy the rest of my team enough time to also touch, which just wasn’t feasible in that moment.

Flawed thinking? Maybe. But a series of very fast decisions made in a very short period of time led me to decide that we simply lost, and we would try again the next round.

But I’ll consider it. Maybe trying to jet up and down the middle tower, touching every couple of seconds? Hoping they miss? Idk. Going back thru it in my head, I’d still just go out there and die for no benefit, because there just wasn’t enough time. Except maybe satisfying the bloodthirst of my report-happy teammates.

1 Like
6

At least it’s not like in CS2 where you can get randomly votekicked by your team.

1 Like
7

Bro, some people are just living in their own little fantasy world. My sistah spice was driving and the light is red, correct? Green arrow to turn. However, pedestrians are allowed to cross, you yield to pedestrians. This weirdo honks at her while we wait for the man to cross the street. My sister turns after he clears the way and the car revs up and flips us off, apparently. :joy:

She ain’t going to run someone over for you, dawg. Maybe if you were the one crossing the street she might consider it. He was probably on some hard drugs, and perhaps your teammates were as well. People are strange!

Just be thankful you do not need to live their life. Sit back and imagine that you are that useless… All of a sudden you ain’t too concerned about what they think, am I right? You know I am right.

1 Like
8

Just adopt the mindset of never give up until the round is actually over is the best strategy. I did win one game tonight as tracer by dashing into an overtime and stalling long enough.

9

it actually really is a good “ted talk”.

Thats the problem in this game is that arrogance to one’s own problem is often what gets someone into trouble.

IN old overwatch I would have ripped them out in chat and told them exactly why they lost and reported them for instigating a fight in chat. calling them out for scapegoating their own wrong-doings. Which is their mercy was working for THEM and not for the team or the win.

Its all about them feeling good and blaming someone else that is not associated with them. Despite it was fully THEIR FAULT.

Rage-reporting is a thing. They feel they need to report it because it makes them feel good that they can simply lay blameless about it.

I drive semi trucks and see this on the road every day. People that pull out infront of others and then wonder why THEY got hit and then they blame the other party and not themselves for paying attention or using common sense. Especially when 80,000lb rolling vehicles require a substantial distance just to slow down.

That example there is just another piece to Darwin’s theory and Natural Selection of humanity imploding on itself.

2 Likes
10

CS2, the game where you can get vote kicked by a game full of sexist players who are also throwing slurs and you’ll be the one punished if you get kicked enough, but they’ll never ever even get a chat restriction.

1 Like
11

Tbh the game just feels really hollow like this to me. I admire the people who can enjoy it without chat, but sadly I’m not able to.

3 Likes
12

game is way more fun with friends, but unfortunately if you use any communication, youre liable to be falsely autobanned and lose all your skins and unlocks, hero progress, friends list and account history.

Better off just not using communications at all- that way when you eventually get autobanned for playing in a way people don’t like (eg playing off meta and getting reported for abusive chat for it) hopefully the autoban could be appealed…

13

And this honestly terrifies me. I’ve been playing since Ow1 beta. My account overall has existed since I made it in Nov '04 for WoW. I have every non-OWL skin that has ever been made available in this game except for one I missed from an OW1 event, including all the Blizzcon skins. I have dropped serious money on this game.

I’m not willing to risk any of it over nonsense. Therefore, chat and text will remain off. If I don’t see or hear anything from anyone, I won’t be tempted to respond to it.

I have noticed when a lot of people who were banned post their email or whatever, the email will quote things they said in chat. Almost all of it is usually harmless, and nowhere near the trash talk we used to endure during my old Halo tournament days. So I figure, maybe if I have no chat history, there’s nothing to report, less fuel for the ban system, etc.

Hopium maybe. But again, I’m not willing to risk my account.

3 Likes
14

To start, I’ll say that I don’t agree with your teammates getting that upset and calling for reports because of a quick decision you had to make with only a few seconds on the clock.

But consider the situation you were in. If you knew no one else on your team could make it before the round was over, that means that if you didn’t go to the point there was absolutely no way your team could win, right? So by not going for the point, you had already lost the round. On the other hand, there could have been some incredibly unlikely series of events that would have gotten the round to go on long enough for your team to arrive if you’d extended the round time. Even if it was a less than 1% chance of victory, that’s still better than the 0% chance giving up would be.

Also consider that the enemy doesn’t get to keep ult charge or anything between rounds. Even if you went and died on the point and gave all 5 of the opposing players their ults, they don’t keep them for the next round so you don’t actually lose anything. Especially if you know for a fact that the round will end if you don’t try to rush the point.

I don’t think your teammates were right for spamming for reports and getting upset, and I don’t necessarily think you’re wrong for making the judgement call to stay off point. But remember that if you have the choice between two options, one which will certainly fail and one that will almost certainly fail, that the almost certain one still has a chance to succeed.

I was never in voice comms in Overwatch (unless I was playing Comp and even then I didn’t talk,) but when OW2 came out I pre-emptively turned off all chat too. For me, having to stop in the middle of a match to open up the menu to block and report someone was much worse for my team than me not seeing their chat.

1 Like
15

It’s the COD crowd, zero self-awareness, but quick to type in chat or shout in comms.

1 Like
16

I agree with this. I wouldn’t call it a throw by any means, but actively not trying to accomplish taking the objective is what they were referring to when they say you “sold”.

“Selling” is what your team perceived as the wrong call and following through with it.

You said you had a Mercy on you as Pharah too, you almost certainly could have both stagger-touched to wait for the Mauga to get back and try to recap. But you backing off with 5 seconds left (touching within 3 seconds of the round being over will trigger overtime) makes it sound and seem like you had already given up. Play til round or game is finished.

2 Likes