Prefer over Avoid?

General Discussion
1

If long “Avoid this player” list is never happening, why not to introduce a “Prefer grouping with this player”? This one can be however long and won’t implicitly reduce the matching pool.

Additionally it could act as a first-stage friendship filter: enjoyed playing a match with some randomly matched player but unsure about adding as a friend yet? Are you picky or just try to keep your friends list short and neat instead of an ocean-deep cavern of “who are all these people”? Add to “Prefer to be matched with” list and enjoy higher probability play with them!

P.S. Since a similar feature was there in the beginning and was misused quite a bit, it could work in the following way:

14 Likes
2

i’m more concerned about the complete opposite problem that the pro widow player had in the first place

everyone avoided them so they had 0 matches

now it’ll be everyone prefers them, so they end up with a bunch of potatoes

suddenly everyone elses’ game is ruined

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3

I think OW might have this a long time ago. It pretty much became a tool for griefers to harass and follow players between matches.

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4

I love it and need it in my life

5

Well, preferred does not mean a pro will end up in a match with bronze folks – the matching range should still apply.

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6

prefer a player was just abused by psycho e-stalkers.

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7

I also have vague memories we had something like this in the very beginning, unsure though when and why the feature disappeared…

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8

“Soft-friends”, where you can send a preferred invite and the other can accept, but does not add them to their friends list nor the benefits of it and the only thing you could do was turn off preferred.

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9

Yep, something like that would work.

10

We used to have that. I think a lot people abused it to throw other people’s games instead of using it right. Which is why they removed it iirc

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11

I feel like throwers who wanted to “get back at people” for something would prefer them so they could try to ruin their next game, too. Then it pretty much forces people to avoid people they don’t want to play with between matches just so that person can’t try to prefer them. I also find that, if I did really great and it was a close win, I probably don’t want to play with that team again. I don’t want them to be able to prefer me and make have to pull out a huge performance again just to hopefully squeak by with another win.

12

I miss perfer as teammate because I could often play with people I like without having to add them to my friends list

Imagine a community being so toxic they have to remove a feature intended to be used for friendly reasons

13

we actually had a “prefer” system in the game.

because of the population size, it worked less than 1% of the time. we ultimately removed it to reduce UI and matchmaking code complexity.

obviously, we like ideas like this – that’s why we tried it. we’ll continue to brainstorm along these lines.

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14

I’ve always wanted a Prefer to Fight button. Sometimes people on my team are toxic, and I’d love to show em a thing or two in the next match by battling them.

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15

i just want like 8-10 avoid slots… literally… that’s it…

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16

Do you think there will be an increase in avoid slots in the future?

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17

would you ever consider “General population” rules? For easing the stress off of experienced players? I think this MIGHT have a more positive impact compared to having to add another large group of “Avoid team member” slots?

The whole thing I mention in another post is like what Guild leaders went through on WoW. Players that put more time on their main account are going to take objectives serious. While those whom are starting off or started an alt account weren’t going to be respecting the autonomy of the community, since they had NO consequences if they lost their alt account.

Just like the person that jumps into TRADE chat on WoW and advertises junk (remember the lvl 1 accounts from SPAMMER DAYS in Orgimmar?. Where the orcs would form a GIANT message to spam “K4G”. :face_vomiting:

Or if you drop in at the right time on a TF2 server and someone that REPEATEDLY creates TF2 accounts just to CHEAT, because the game is F2P O_O.

18

Ooh, yes please.

19

I wish we could get more avoids… have it based on your endorsement level or something…

Also allow the “avoid” to avoid both team and enemy in non-comp modes. I’ve had people harass without chat. They would ignore everything but only go for me and try to kill me. I would see them in several matches. You can’t block/mute that kind of harassment.

3 Likes
20

Well put.
This goes a longer way than most people expect.

1 Like