You have such a narrow-minded view of this game and its players.
Main doesn’t equal one-trick. Someone can main Mercy and McCree. There are people who have been playing this game since launch and have 100+ hours on multiple heroes. Source: a friend I’ve been playing with for two years. Stacked a lot of Mercy hours because “Hey can you please Mercy, you have more hours on her than me, thanks.” And my friend is good enough to oblige. Got to 200 hours of Mercy in 1300+ levels. Most of it from people asking them to fill because they spied my friend’s profile.
Also got 150 on Ana, 50+ on McCree, Widow and Soldier. “Mains” Mercy and hitscans. Since private profiles, nobody knows about their Mercy hours and I’m just laughing at how many times the team has said “Wow great picks Widow!” “Oh we have a super pro McCree!” “Our Soldier is owning!” Mercy main, btw.
You know what used to happen? My friend would pick McCree in spawn and 3 armchair generals were immediately on my friend’s profile, tearing it apart and demanding that my friend picks Mercy immediately. Threatening to throw and report otherwise. Ruined both my friend’s and my day, forced us into conforming to their abusive behaviour (don’t know about you, but we’re not exactly focused well enough when some vulture is screaming at us) and created a loop where the more you played a hero, the more others demanded that you fill that hero so you end up having more hours on that hero which makes others harass you more if you dare to pick something else.
No thanks. Stop being obsessive and egotistical. Stop treating people based on random numbers you see on their profile. Stop blaming others for your own shortcomings. Just because you can’t play more than one hero, doesn’t mean others can’t either. You can main both Mercy and McCree.
I can’t link on the forums, but Googling “overwatch lfg public profiles” the first links that show up for me show articles of Kaplan talking about future changes to the LFG system alongside discussion about clans etc.
If I create a group, I kick anyone who has a Private Profile (after asking them if they can make it public). I don’t see it as for example a Mercy main trying to play another hero. That wouldn 't really bother me. It’s just the fact that there is obviously something to hide, there is no other reason for it. You can say ‘I just don’t want people to flame me’. Well ask yourself. Why are they going to flame you? Is there something you’re hiding?
Anyway, I normally don’t care about Private Profiles unless they’re in my group. I do find it frustrating when someone (especially on the forums) has the audacity to shame someone else on their stats while hiding away like a coward.
Now, while no one should be flamed for whatever they chose to play. They have to also help themselves. For example, if you have over 500 hours on Mercy and very little on anything else and you decide ‘hey I am going to play Widow today’. Then you’re basically asking to be flamed. At least get some time played in QP on that hero before you go into Comp.
In my opinion, I get less annoyed when someone has a public profile where I can clearly see they are playing a hero they have 0 time on, and more annoyed when someone is just simply hiding something. It makes you imagine what they’re hiding, and that can sometimes be worse than their actual stats. Basically, if you have a Private profile people are going to picture your stats to be horrific and instantly judge you. But I still wouldn’t flame anyone for it.
thats really, really sad and pathetic that Blizzard is giving into control freaks
pulled this quote from one of the links
what would have worked much better is to give a LFG group a setting mandating public profiles, and then those of us with private profiles could then opt to simply avoid these control freak groups
Because of it, I’m even less inclined to use the LFG system, as I like having control to only let my friends see my profile - I think they’re the only people who deserve it as I received a lot of toxicity for my hero picks and allegedly not being good on heroes I enjoy, so for me, this is a step backwards, but I have the option to not use the LFG system so, I suppose it’s something, although my criticisms remain.
It’s not up to other people to harass or tell me who to play, but I am open to constructive discussion about it as I would like that same discourse with others.
That really makes no sense. They should simply make into an optional setting for LFG. You’re making a LFG? If you want only public profiles, tick a box and anyone who joins will have their profiles turns public.
Technically, I do believe that if you’re forming a LFG six-stack, there should be transparency and communication. I don’t think that necessarily means the profiles have to be public, but I understand when people would prefer that. Playing in a six-stack requires coordination and cooperation and while people can simply tell others what they play, I understand if someone simply prefers to be able to see everybody’s profiles before they queue so they can form a long-term plan and adjust it on the fly (especially if the person is a good shotcaller).
But that’s not always necessary. People don’t even use LFG only for comp. It should simply be an option that you can turn on if you want it for your LFG.
Hypothetically, if I wanted to play in LFG, my top characters are snipers and Sombra. Do I want to hide that? Not necessarily. However, if I want to play those characters in LFG… They are probably not going to want them. If I want to play any of the other DPS that I can play competently, they are going to see the disproportionate amount of time on snipers and Sombra and most likely assume that I cannot play anything else. This is less of a problem since Hanzo was upgraded from zero to hero. But still. You can imagine that regardless of not wanting to “hide” anything per se, there is almost a need to.
I was flamed for having a 70% win-rate Hanzo when he was a troll-pick. So… People will flame for literally any reason whatsoever.
That is not really unique. I doubt anyone cares about private profiles outside of their group. That is sort of the problem, that you cannot see what your teammates play.
Some of them do not filter QP in. So, that does not help in many instances.
You say that, but on my sniper smurfs, I get less heat. Nobody is assuming I will do poorly. That happened more… When they could see that I had experience? It is counter-intuitive, I understand. But you just cannot make it up. People are weird and you never really understand until you have been through it.
I’m inclined to agree, I’ve played comp games with people who have private profiles too, and a lot of people are quite reasonable if you approach them with an open mind and a positive approach.
If a player’s hero choice isn’t necessarily working out, some players are prepared to switch if you talk to them constructively. I find people are very reasonable when you explain it’s not them the player that’s the problem but a different hero would be a better fit for the situation, reminding them they’re still considered valuable and valid in the team, but their flexibility will be even more beneficial. Of course, not everyone is receptive, but some are and it’s a positive space to facilitate it.
While yes, some groups will flame you. Not all will. And having your profile Public is definitely more respectable than having it Private when using LFG.
Because snipers are in a good spot right now, Sombra isn’t. You can play whatever you want, but if I went and decided Symmetra was my new main and I played countless hours on her then what do you expect? People will always believe in a ‘meta’ and if your hero isn’t in it, you will get flamed. But it doesn’t help when you decide to only play that hero and nothing else.
Yeah, same. I have my private profile on, and I play comp in high plat. There’s a lot of low diamonds around as well.
So far, nobody really complained. I’m a flex player. My most played are Hanzo and Zarya, but I also play the entire support category, as well as Orisa and D.va. I haven’t received any complaints so far. I’m usually on Moira or Orisa these days and people normally ask for a swap and nobody starts asking to know my winrates or why is my profile private. In my experience, people will choose what they’re comfortable with playing in 90% of the cases. I see private profiles a lot and I never make any assumptions. It usually works out just fine.
People are more flexible than some might think and they are often far more willing to try something else if asked nicely. It might even be due to private profiles. To me personally, it takes a lot of the stress off. For example, I like Pharah as another dps and I think I’m pretty good with her, but I was reluctant to play her for a long time because I had barely 40 hours (my top ten heroes start at 40+) so she was somewhere in the middle. But now, I am more comfortable picking her and I realised I can actually do a lot with her. I bet other people are more relaxed now as well.
I’m certainly in that demographic with you, I’m much more relaxed playing comp regardless of what I play. And heroes I’m still establishing more comp time on, I can now do so without the unnecessary toxicity from teammates who think they know better (they usually don’t). I’m also not being hounded anymore to play heroes I decided were no longer fun and have no recent time on.
There’s a lot of freedom to improve when people can’t nitpick me based on my profile which lacks context anyway.
I feel ya.
When private profiles came in. I hid it cause I was like nice. Finally no flame in champ select. Had no flame things were ok. And I was like he lets see I set it to public now…
I regretted that once I joined the game. Someone immediatly stalked it told me to play Mercy, but I was feeling like nah wanna go Ana… this dude literally flammed me all game. I wasnt even really underperforming he just was hell bent on making me go what he thought would be best.
And I experienced that every time whenever I open my profile up again. Its just endless flames and bs even in fleeecking quickplay when I wanna get better at dps ppl stalk ur fleecking profile and tell you to swap x.x
So all the stupid stuff with the private profiles just exists cause some people are buttpeople…
That is the inherent problem with people wanted public profiles, if you ask me. The lack of context. You never know WHY someone has the stats that they have. My Widow stats on this account, for instance, are quite a bit lower than my smurfs because I learned Widow on this account. A huge portion of my time spent on her was when she dealt 150 bodyshot damage, a lot of it was when she was worthless, and not much of it is with the “modern” Widow as I have, again, taken to my smurfs for that. McCree, I believe, is listed as my fourth most played. I have not played him seriously since they removed fan the hammer. Maybe 5 hours at most. The rest is from before the first patch. Ha ha ha…
That is why I want a preference based system. You select up to 5 characters that you would be willing to play. That does not need context. People can see what you are willing to swap to.
The lack of context is definitely a factor, for me it’s mostly down to the attitude of people who actually look and then comment on my profile when it used to be public. If people weren’t such entitled wannabe-know-it-alls in their behaviour and knew how to communicate properly, I’d have no issues keeping it public. But the general behaviour is toxic, unproductive and harmful when the idea is to have fun even when playing comp.
I joked about this with my husband and our friends before, but I’d love it if Blizzard threw in a tutorial ‘somewhere’ that made players understand how to communicate positively and constructively. It’s such a huge part of being good at the game and a skill so many people overlook. Never mind addressing the toxicity issues they herald as stopping them from devoting resources to other aspects of the game we want, like a replay system. (I can’t remember which dev update it was, but it was around July-October last year berating the community for our awfulness.)
But yes, the lack of context like not knowing a bias of which maps you’re particularly exceptional on or struggle with, the overall summary of stats across all patches that it’s tracked you on, etc make profiles unreliable anyway.
I’ve also noticed that people like to fill in their own context based on huge assumptions and personal preferences.
I noticed this the most when I began playing a lot of Orisa. I instalock Orisa. I have 10 hours on her. Nobody complains. Why? Because I instalocked a main tank and nobody wants to play a main tank so nobody cares that I only have 10 hours on her. “That’s good enough since it means I don’t have to play it instead!” Even though having a bad main tank is arguably the worst. To the profile spies, this isn’t a cause for concern because it miraculously fits their needs.
So it really tells me this isn’t about insisting that you should play your most played/best hero. It’s simply about people who want to dictate what others do while they themselves play what they want.
You can also tell this is the case because the argument of “If you’re not playing your best hero, you’re throwing” doesn’t apply if your best hero isn’t meta. Literally nobody ever asked me to play my best hero (Hanzo) ever in two years (before the rework). Or Symmetra for example. Any non-meta hero mains will say the same. There’s just so much potential for wrong interpretation followed by abuse when people insist that your profile tells them everything about you.
I saw this a lot when I took over to play DPS in a comp game and they ask me who my best DPS is and my response is “Sombra”… Their tunes quickly changed and they get very defensive and nervous. Even now she’s meta there’s so much hesitation over previously perceived non-meta picks when they don’t understand that just because they can’t play them, doesn’t mean I can’t. I haven’t been learning Sombra for 9 months to nearly a year, and approximately 100 hours, and not have anything to show for it - I’m also capable of saying when there are maps I’m not confident playing her on, and the ones I feel extremely confident on - Volskaya for example.
I’ve found Private Profiles make the LFG system very hard to use for QP. Whenever we tried making groups using it you would end up with one or two people who’re significantly worse than the other players in the group. It just doesn’t work out.
Private profiles are one of the worst mistakes Blizzard has made. Toxic people are going to be toxic whether profiles are public or not… The only thing we’ve accomplished with private profiles is giving the player base even less information in a game that already gave its players very little to begin with.