I’ve been harassed and targeted by an individual constantly, almost every morning, by the same person on multiple accounts. No matter how many times I report the guy he’s back the next day, either on a new account or on the same account(yes I block each account, he’s able to circumvent the block feature somehow) and he’s yelling obscenities and terrorizing my group.
Furthermore, after avoiding and blocking his nonsense in the group finder I will almost always have to play against him 3-4 times each morning because I’m within this player’s region and skill rating. This results in my account constantly receiving false reports from him and his friends. This has also resulted in multiple abusive chat bans for myself, even though I’ve never fought back, never antagonized, never said anything reportable at all.
What do I do about this? Putting a ticket in only ends up with the canned responses telling me to report the player in-game but when they’re only harassing a single individual from multiple accounts those reports won’t ever be seen or have any effect.
This player is ruining my gaming experience and I’m tired of having to log out for the day after seeing him to avoid stress and unpleasant gaming. Apart from begging 5 random group finder players to report the guy what do I have to do to stop being harassed so hard?
As far as this goes, using the in game reporting tool is the correct workflow for you and anybody else this player is offending. Assuming this is indeed one person, eventually they’ll be silenced due to the number of reports (if they haven’t been already - it’s possible the penalties have already stacked multiple times if this has been a problem for a bit. For privacy reasons I can’t discuss what has happened with an account, but typically highly offensive players start racking up penalties quickly.)
The silence penalties escalate over time, so continue reporting as you have been. At a certain point people who are offensive over longer periods of time and who do not learn from penalties on their account can receive extremely long silences (several months) and even permanent bans from the game if they just refuse to stop.
Please keep in mind that the block feature only blocks direct messages from the player. You still can run into matches with unless they’re on your avoid as teammate list, and against them even if they’re on avoid. Your best bet is to keep reporting any players who are toxic to our community. We appreciate the reports, as they do help us keep things clean. Just keep in mind that the first few penalties we give an account are more lenient to give the player time to change behavior. Hopefully they learn, and if not, well, they’ll eventually find their ability to chat with anybody other than premade group members severely limited.
I can tell you I have reported this player over 30 times across at least 6 of his accounts. This is not an exaggeration. Reporting the player does nothing for he just shows up on a new account the next day. Furthermore, I have made it a point to block each account immediately after he joins my groups, but he’s found a way to circumvent the blocks. Accounts that I and another friend have blocked have become randomly unblocked by the next morning. The same guy jumps into our groups shouting the same nonsense and I have to start the process all over again for the day. This has been ongoing for 2 months straight, 5 days a week at least.
But your response is just as expected, “Please put a report in and eventually something will happen.” No, it hasn’t. This user has more than one account and my 1 report every day vs his countless accounts and ability to drop a block have made me lose faith in Blizzard’s reassurance that things will eventually catch up to him.
If what you’re saying is true, then I should be able to just file 40 reports against him in a single moment and that should ban the user. But we both know that’s not true.
Between my 3 accounts I have well over 2000 hours played in this game. As of lately, due to this unpunished troll, I’ve cut my gametime down significantly, some days I don’t even play a match because I’m so frustrated by him bombarding my group finder group that it’s easier and less stressful to just log off and go do something else with my time.
Continuing on, I’ve been banned twice on my main in the last 4 months. Both times, the very next day and week to follow, this user comes into my groups shouting things like “Hope you’re enjoying your ban.” “haha you got banned” as if he and his group have forced these false reports on me in turn giving me a suspension. If that isn’t enough my most recent suspension he took credit for the morning after because I say "gg’ and “Stay fresh, cheese bags.” after each match and that was there “abusive chat” reason to have his groups reporting me morning after morning.
All that having been said I am removing myself from Overwatch and the unpoliced toxicity. Blizzard has a strict policy that promotes trolling, a guilty until proven innocent system that favors false reports. Big shout out to Blizzard for prompting me to uninstall Overwatch and go spend my time and money elsewhere. You let a single toxic user run off a veteran player.
While I entirely respect where you’re coming from here, there’s no way for someone in customer support to directly circumvent the in game reporting system. However, it sounds like your problem may go beyond the scope of said system. If you’re dealing with a player who is in some manner exploiting the reporting system, that’s info our hacks team needs to help fine tune the system. They can be emailed at hacks@blizzard.com. More info on our exploit/hack article. Because of the scope of something like that, it’s not something CS would have access to the needed logs to prove, but we do have teams who look for report abuse. Further, we can’t take player reports over the forums for privacy reasons.
As far as your custom groups go, there’s nothing you can really do to avoid a player trying to jump into your custom group. If your group is openly seeking players in group finder, anybody can apply. It’s up to your group leader to deny them entrance or kick them.
Regarding your reporting system suggestions, this isn’t the appropriate forum for suggestions. All we do here is direct you for how to fix problems with the in game systems as designed. With the exception of the report you have of them exploiting the report system somehow, everything you’ve said so far is technically functioning as it was designed. That’s not to say it’s perfect - but any suggestions for changing our systems should head to our general discussion forums.
Whatever you do choose to do here, best of luck. I hope this has at least provided some insight into why you’ve been getting the sorts of replies you’ve been getting anyway.
You’ve all given me the same information, “We can’t do anything. Just report them in game.” Blizzard has made it apparent that they don’t want to deal with this sort of thing, it’s the player’s responsibility to police the game. There used to be a time when Blizzard took responsibility in their games, showed more responsibility for their playerbase. But with the addition of Overwatch it’s just been a cop out in every way.
Since there’s nothing more we can suggest here and this has devolved from a support topic to feedback, I’m going to once more direct you to the correct forum:
And lock the thread since there’s nothing else customer support can do to help. If there were more we could do in Customer Support we’d certainly be interested in giving this a look, but as long as you’re in our CS forums our role is to get you to the right place. If you’re not interested in that, we understand, but there’s no longer any point in this thread staying open.