Increase in Avoid slots is still not enough

While the increase in Avoid as Teammate slots to three is appreciated, it’s still nowhere close to enough.

3 is still a drop in the toxic ocean that is Overwatch Competitive, especially on console where smurf accounts are free to make thus there is a plague of trolls/throwers/toxic players in console Competitive.

There needs to be a lot more slots (10 would be a good start), and the duration also needs to be Permanent.

A week’s duration is absolutely pointless because for whatever reason you avoid someone as a teammate, you can bet they’ll be doing that same thing in a week’s time.

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The odds of them being in your match again are small. Even one avoid slot is all you actually need.

Furthermore, on console adding more avoid slots hurts console queue health even more than PC because of a much more limited population size. I already don’t bother booting up my PS4 anymore because queue plus loading times on PS4 are double or triple what is on PC. Wait times on PS4 are quickly approaching the same duration as an actual match. At that point I generally uninstall games because they are no longer worth playing.

Queue times do not scale linearly with avoids. Every single increase to avoid slots has a bigger effect than the last one.

PvP games have been toxic since the dawn of time and always will be. There is absolutely nothing you can do to fix it that won’t also kill the game. That’s the nature of human competition. Emotions get high and people get heated. Learn to ignore it.

You’re joking, right? 1 slot?

What happens, then, in the case where you get 2-3 trolls/throwers/quitters/toxic players in a given match?

Utterly ridiculous.

I’d be quite fine with a 15 minute queue time if it meant I didn’t end up running into the same trolls/throwers/quitters/toxic players every day.

Toxicity is already killing the game, though.

No. I won’t do the equivalent of putting my hands over my ears and pretending like it isn’t happening. That does nothing to solve the problem.

It’s not a solvable problem. It’s like the movie war game when they have the AI calculate all outcomes and it determines the winning solution is simply to not play that game. Don’t engage with toxicity.

If you literally get 2-3 trolls every single match, it’s likely your definition of troll that needs analysis. Problem is likely you. My experience is wildly different. I can go weeks without seeing an actual troll. Your description tells me you are likely making a mountain out of a mole hill and being completely unrealistic and unreasonable. Like one of those folks who throws a hissy fit because the store has a shirt in teal but not turquoise, then has a complete melt down.

I would gladly wait a bit longer to avoid a player(s) and i’m sure most people agree. This happening, sorry if it causes you to leave (not really).

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It doesn’t cause me to leave. It causes me to make smurf accounts like this one to drop my queue times back to reasonable levels. I doubt that anyone on the opposing team enjoys the matches they play against me.

Then you get avoided, in one of the three glorious avoid slots and everyone continues to enjoy their day!

Avoiding only ensures I’m not on your team. I continue to be on the opposing team and dumpster them.

Nobody uses avoid on a good player unless they were absurdly toxic in chat.

Then we go on to win the match and enjoy our day. What’s the issue here?

The issue is that we create a system where players are incentivized to bypass matchmaking because matchmaking takes too long. This leads to reduced match balance, more stomps/face rolls and far fewer close, competitive matches. The exact thing that people are often complaining about on the forums.

For me at least, a huge driving factor for that is because I can wait 10-15 minutes for a match, or I can wait 2 minutes. I know which one I (and many others) choose.

Incidentally, stomps tend to drive people bonkers and incite toxic behavior, which means avoid isn’t even making a dent in toxic player behavior. Report/Block/Mute is the solution, not avoid.

Smurfs were around before the avoid player feature and they’ll be around after…sooo…

The extra slot is happening and it’s welcomed! Do what you need to do to cope.

I’d much rather have more avoid as teammate slots with a reduced expiration. For busy ranks such as platinum, well, three isn’t enough. What I’d also like to see is some automation whereby if you try to add someone to an already full list then it will automatically remove the oldest entry in that list.

In not-so-busy ranks like GM, even 10 still wouldn’t be enough.

Actually you’ve got it backwards. Busy ranks are where you don’t need them as much. You just need to skip them for one match and then they pretty much don’t show up again.

The automated revolving is a good idea. Most of us already manually do that, having it automatically do that would be nice.

Not going to read this as I can see the title - YES - avoid should be fkkkking 10 at LEAST and probably close to 50. I meet terrible players and WORSE people almost EVERY SINGLE GAME. How can I enjoy OW if I have to play with these people?

Here’s a novel thought.

I’ve always said I don’t spend money on this game, or watch OWL to further their endorsements.

What I WOULD have spent money on, is if they had an item in the shop for $5 that gave +5 avoid slots.

Of course it’s too late now since the game is worse than it was as OW1 and only play once a week or so, compared to the once every day or two.

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why is there the same amount of slots now, when its f2p?? makes no sense.

Hard agree. 3 is such a stupid number, at least make it 5. Ideally 10.

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Guess I’ll throw this out there once more since the solution is still glaringly obvious and nothing happens to fix it:

The supposed downside for more avoid slots is increased queue times, but that is because they look at the situation the wrong way.

In the current implementation, 100, 1000 or 5000 people can avoid a single player and with every added avoid that player’s queue times is increased.
That avoided player can’t do anything to fix it but wait for the seven days to expire.

If you turn this around and make it so anyone who avoids someone has that avoided person take precedence over themselves when both are considered for the same game, then your queue times are literally yours to balance.

If you avoid 5 players, 5 players get precedence over you, avoid half the playerbase then half the playerbase gets precedence over you.

If your queue times get too long, you have the power to remove people from your avoid list and fix it.

Best part of all?
Other people avoiding you has no impact on you or your queue times, as you get precedence over them.

Stupidly simple.

There’d still need to be a hardcap but it could be tens, hundreds or maybe even thousands, not single digits.