since when has this been a thing
also im not sure if you can make a public profile hidden, it would just be a hidden profile right
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I donāt know, but in my opinion itās a blessing. The same way people are inclined to nose through your career profile in-game, people on the forums like to go through your posts to try and read you to filth if they donāt like you or agree with you.
Call me petty, but I love denying people that. It gives me incredible satisfaction.
Just always post great things that can never be made fun of~
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When I first joined the forums I told myself I wouldnāt have an opinion or get too āpoliticalā
Whoooooops
I also abuse my gif priveleges as a Trust Level 3 overlord and sometimes it gets me in trouble.
Double whooooops
I always use every option I am given for privacy. It is why my Overwatch profile is private. It is why my Steam profile is private. It is why my Blizzard forum profile is private. It isnāt that there is something nefarious behind that wall, or that I am ashamed of what I have posted. Quite the opposite. It is just a case of the fact that you simply donāt have a right to that information.
It isnāt your business what the last three games I played in Steam were, how many hours I have on Roadhog, or who I gave the most likes to. Again, you just donāt have a right to know. In this age of instant access and oversharing on social media that may seem like an affront, but I think having such protections is wonderful.
To answer the question, it has been a āthingā for at least a year.
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This appeared to become a feature, and an enabled setting on most official forum profiles too, around the time of the Mercy megathreads. A few forum members discovered, by using forum profile stats before they became hidden profiles, that on an official level the chance that one or more people were reading posts in the megathreads was unlikely. A bit of time after this happened the feature for hiding forum profiles became available, whether itās coincidence or not I donāt know. Hope this clarifies!
By hiding your forum profile youāre also effectively disabling quick and easy access to a playerās profile, but if that profile is also private then thereās no point in having a button which says āview profileā (Overwatch profile) on someoneās forum avatar anyway (when clicked).
Omg same. I saw one who tried so hard to get my rank he went to overbuff and said I was 2200 showed him a screenshot of me being a 2900 and that higher than him and i was like yeah sure bro by your logic you totally have more knowledge than me and that i am a hardstuck gold support main XD
(Rein main and off support player)
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I donāt know when but itās at least a couple of months.
And itās separate from your game profile. You can have a hidden forum profile and a public game one.
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Iām fairly consistent, so I never had that issue. The only time I really see that happen is when people try to pretend they never said something or claim they main a hero they openly admitted elsewhere they donāt.
Now the game profiles on the other handā¦people do use those to try to pick apart opinions.
Yeah, Iād say Iām less consistent depending on the topic at hand. I have had situations similar to what Lethal mentioned, but Iāve also had spats with people on the topic of Mercy (that hot button issue we all know and love) where they tried similar stunts.
When it comes to career profile peeping, I feel like people shouldnāt base their argument on my ācredentialsā or stats instead of their own merits. Iām not into rank shaming or hero shaming.
When did they add that feature? O_o
Yeah the one that lethal mentioned is moreso about your game profile. And I also hate when people do that. While hero main and rank are indeed biasing factors, that doesnāt render an opinion remotely invalid automatically. I mean sure sometimes people have it extreme and should be reminded of it, but thatās pretty rare. 99 times out of 100, itās just unnecessary and obnoxious.
And those Mercy threads I largely stay out of precisely because they often arenāt conducted in a way thatās standard for the rest of the forum. That is absolutely not a good thing.
Itās a mixed bag. It can on occasions be handy so thereās no speculations. Unfortunately, however, more often than not itās better to have a hidden profile so thereās no potential for being shamed based on certain statistics and/or heroes played.
As for Mercy threads, well, itās not just limited to Mercyā¦ she just happens to be the hot topic to target at the moment thanks to a popular stream. Makes me laugh though when some might resort to rank shaming, or worseā¦ automatically assuming someone is bad at a hero because of opinions and/or facts that they are posting which arenāt agreed on by the other person.
For the forums there is a setting to make it so no one can see your post history