Blizzard has made it clear they don’t want me playing their game.
From false reporting, lack of effective CS, the community attacking anything that’s out of the “normal”, Blizzard has effectively made a game and fostered a community that is toxic and Blizzard appears on the forefront to be doing nothing about it.
There’s just a few reasons why I don’t be playing OW anymore, and will significantly decrease my presence on the forums. I’m gonna break it down into 2 separate sections. One on the game and another about the Blizzard, the forums and the community.
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The Game
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Balance is a complete mess.
No matter what angle you look at it, Balance is just non-existent in game. Players only pick what is viable and meta. Currently that sits and has sat at ~7 heroes for the past 2-4 weeks. Whether it’s Brigitte’s release and the slow to non-existent ability to nerf basic damage numbers, there’s just no reason to play the game when I’m just gonna be CC’d all the time. There’s no reason to play when some of my favorite heroes aren’t even in meta while some of the easiest heroes are not.
Blizzard, why does it take 2 weeks to reduce Hanzo’s storm arrow damage by 5? You’ve said yourself the PTR is for bugs. How could there possibly be any bugs around such a change? -
Blizzard picks favorites
We’ve all seen them. Nerfs that happen out of nowhere. Zen’s recent volly nerf just came from nowhere. Sombra’s buffs came from nowhere and weren’t even put on the PTR. Then 2 weeks later, her nerfs weren’t put on the PTR either, thus putting her in the lowest win and play rate average of all the heroes.
Why are we allowing this to happen to any hero? Why was this allowed to happen because the pros and some of the community couldn’t deal with playing around Sombra? Why is Bastion still in the gutter? Why is his only Niche being able to do large amounts of damage on big targets? So many other heroes do it better than him but yet he has no known changes coming.
The PTR patch was pretty insulting to Sombra players as well. One of the most well documented list of glitches for Sombra from t500s and the community alike. There’s literally 2+ dozen issues with her, yet this PTR run did nothing.
This doesn’t happen with Brigitte. This never happened with Genji or Tracer. This never happened with anyone that Blizzard deems “in an ok place.” -
The report system never seems to work
Whether it’s the banning/suspension of one tricks (regardless of whether they’re telling the truth) or it’s the suspension of users with an automated system, the report system needs work. Blizzard says that no suspension or ban gets authorized without human interaction, but yet you can still be banned or suspended for things like “abusive chat” even when you haven’t talked in the mic or on text for a long time.
Look at Tyler1. Sure, I don’t agree with the guy, but when he came back to OW, he found himself in a near perma ban from microphones and text chat. He claims he didn’t play the game for ~4 months prior. If he’s telling the truth, how is this kind of thing allowed to happen? How is Blizzards “non-automated” system allowing this to happen? -
The introduction of Competitive mode
This has by far ruined the game the most. Between the constant need to win by most of the community, to creating a competitive atmosphere that promotes name calling, chat abuse, and overall toxicity for doing less than optimal in game. Not only this, but players go as far as to defend users who name call and attack the players the others are being toxic towards. There’s nothing we can do either. Not only if we say something out of line we could get suspended, but our only option is to report them and hope Blizzard takes care of them. Racial slurs, homophobic comments, among other insults are still prevalent in the game when they should be filtered out and result in an automatic silence. This is one of the few times where an automatic silence is possible and potentially necessary. We should not have to wait for Blizzard to do something about these sorts of players.
You could say “Just mute them and move on” but that doesn’t really do anything does it? That’s the equivalent of putting a picture frame over the hole in the wall. It does nothing for anyone and the problem still exists, it’s just hidden from you. Blizzard appears to do little to nothing about most of these kinds of occurrences.
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Blizzard, the forums, and the community
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Blizzard CS is just terrible
There’s a high chance that we’ve all seen this happen. You get suspended/banned from something. You submit a report to Blizzard which is the only way to get it fixed after you get an email about it. The report reason specified on the email says “Spam/trolling” with the message I typed on the forums. What does this mean? You ask the support rep about why your comment was removed and you were suspended.
You get the same cookie cutter answer saying the infamous phrase “After reviewing the account’s record of forum violations we have determined that the appropriate actions were taken and this account will not have forum privileges restored at this time. You will need to allow the current suspension to end.”
You get no clarification on how to improve your behavior let alone any room to actually prove how you weren’t toxic because the reasoning is so broad and nobody is willing to give you feedback.
It makes no sense to punish players then not tell them how to avoid being punished in the future. It opens the line up for subjectivity on suspensions and other means, and in turn, creates unhelpful suspensions and a somewhat tyrannical state. It opens up the idea that we could possibly be punished for something and not be told what it is. -
The Report system
The removal of downvotes was a good thing on paper. However, it prompted users to flag things they didn’t agree with because they saw it as “Trolling.” This has yet to be delt with by the forum mods but despite their attempts at limiting our ability to flag posts, this has caused a toxic community because of the subjectivity of “Trolling.”
Not only are players just flagging things, but they’re also being very toxic towards one another and there aren’t enough flags to go around. Because of the flag limits that came with the “Inappropriate use of the Flagging Feature” post by a forum mod, we are now only able to have 3 flags every 24 hours, each resetting after 24 hours of being filed. This simply isn’t enough. If you have controversial opinions like me or you see posts on the daily basis breaking CoC or being toxic and rude to others, you flag them. I know for one that I run out of flags on a nearly daily basis and most of them get removed. If someone is spamming, there’s no possible way that 3 flags would be able to remove their 2 days worth of posting the same thing. I once saw a user that was going on 2 weeks of posting the same post, sometimes multiple times a day.
Even if it’s not spamming, if you’re frequently seeing comments like “You deserve everything coming to you” or “awww the level 92 gonna cry poor baby” (both has been said to me in the period of 24 hours), then you can’t expect to flag everything. Some people would assume this is just me being PC or something, but when you can have a post removed for calling someone’s ideas horrible among many other less severe things, I think that this would need some attention. -
The mod’s lack of consistency
We’ve all seen them. Some posts have the Edited by a forum mod for <reason>, please see CoC with a link to the CoC page. Only some posts get this. Others don’t. The thing is, only some posts get this treatment. Others get removed.
Some users literally just attack others on the forums by their rank, who they play, and their level. Other users can say things like “Your opinion doesn’t matter because you’re gold/silver/plat/etc.” This is pathetic behavior. How is this not being cracked down on by the forum mods? How are new players supposed to share opinions and do anything on the forums if they’re treated like a Genji Main? How are Genji/Tracer mains supposed to give constructive feedback when there’s posts attacking them for maining Genji/Tracer? I mean, I get they’re the most hated heroes, but that’s no reason to say their opinion isn’t valid.
Posts attacking players for hero mains aren’t removed while posts saying a general negative statement are removed and possibly gets the user suspended. How is this fair? -
The lack of transparency on trust levels
A few weeks ago, something happened and users all across the forums lost their level 3 status for seemingly no reason. It was, in part, shortly after the maintenance that occurred. Others lost it for seemingly no reason. Some users had forum stats that were above the stats of other level 3 players, but they only had level 2 and some even had level 1.
There’s a rumor that suspensions impact your level 3 status, but that’s not been confirmed as there’s users who only got one suspension and lost level 3 while users who have been suspended quite a few times still have level 3. This also brings up the question about overturned suspensions. Do they impact your trust level? Do they prevent you from getting level 3? We don’t even know if suspensions impact your trust level, let alone the requirements to get level 3.
When I submitted a ticket about it on the chance it might be a bug, I received no answer. I lost level 3 almost a full 2 weeks after the last non-overturned suspension. How am I supposed to know what I did wrong? At that time I had 96 days visited, 43k posts read, and over 300 likes given and 3.7k received. There was little to no reason I wouldn’t have level 3 at that point so it must have been some kind of bug or suspensions.
The reason I believe level 3 is so important is that it allows users to communicate that minimizes miscommunication. Users can post videos exactly where their point is without having to leave the forums. Users can also link external websites so users on mobile can just click on them instead of going through the painful process of highlighting it just to copy and paste it. Being able to post links and videos is a huge bonus to the level 3 and quite frankly, it’s the only reason to even work towards (if you can call it that) level 3. If the forum mods were worried about spam, a 30+$ paywall would probably keep most spammers out. Level 2 trust would also keep more spammers out, as you have to be around and participating for a while to become level 2. There’s just no solid reason level 2s shouldn’t atleast be able to post clickable links.
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That’s my rant. The amount of stuff I have listed is just an insult to the gamer. The inability to actually do anything about most of this is just horrible to me. I love the forums and it feels like it’s the only place that I can share my opinions and have them actually seen by someone. Blizzard’s moderation team and the community just completely ruin that for me in most cases.
Sorry about the formatting. If I add spaces between the paragraphs, the forums puts an entire block of text in a </> like if you were posting a link or “code” as they put it.
Also, please try to keep this civil. I hope users will assist in reporting useless and toxic comment such as “Cya in game” as well as “Goodbye, you won’t be missed.”
Please remember, these are my opinions. I have a right to share them just as much as you have a right to read them. None of these are fact and should be taken with a grain of salt. But these are my thoughts. Please don’t remove this mods.
This is being reuploaded after an unjust removal + suspension from the forum mods that was quickly overturned. I have edited out the parts I was told to edit out, specifically about prior suspensions on my account that were upheld as well as changing some of the language so it’s not misconstrued as “attacking” or anything towards Blizzard. Their balance team may not be the best, but their concept creation team is actually okay.