Rather just get rid of profiles in general it’s borderline useless
Ok. However, that is insignificant when compared to the massive downside of toxicity.
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They are unrelated, realistically. Blizzard could have punished toxic behavior to deter it and profiles wouldn’t need to be private. But they dance around the issue without ever addressing it. Profiles? Rank shaming. Same difference. But only one is hidden.
This was less about toxicity and more to help beta healer and tank mains feel empowered to choose dps. Lets be real.
You’ve specifically seen more profile shaming?
I’m sorry but I don’t believe you. I’ve seen private profile players profile shaming like 5 times, and every time they instantly got shut down by everyone in the game pointing out that they had private profiles.
Besides, you could… literally just make your profile private to avoid it.
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You don’t believe them… Because it hasn’t happened to you? That logic cannot be refuted. I guess you are correct, he is clearly lying.
Private profiles became a thing not due to rank shaming but due to hero shaming. Players with a lot of hours on 1 or 2 heroes could never learn a new hero because their team would attack them.
It wasn’t just limited to tanks and supports. Any player who had a lot of time on just a few heroes couldn’t play anything different because there was always someone who would immediately tilt off the face of the Earth.
Ultimately there aren’t any real downsides to private profiles. Those that want privacy can have it. Those that don’t can be public. You never need to see anyones profile. You might want to but it’s not a need. That’s unimportant when compared to the downsides of the alternative.
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You can’t control other peoples reaction to your profile. So yeah; they could go ahead and choose DPS and be met with people that throw themselves off the grand canyon because someone is playing something besides the hero they have the most hours on.
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Of course, I was just generalizing. My point is that toxicity wasn’t the primary reason they added the feature and they even stated as much.
Regardless, the upsides to private profiles massively outweigh the annoyance of some nosey players.
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The upside of another layer of anonymity in which to launch toxicity?
They were added because people were harassing people that played characters outside of what was shown on their card. Harassment was never ok so they added private profiles to mitigate that. And yes you are toxic for pressuring someone to release information if they don’t want to. It’s their choice to have an open or private profile you have to respect that.
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The community has proven time and time again that they are not mature enough to handle public profiles. Therefore, private profiles were established. And making them private by default means that people who enjoy privacy don’t have something to ‘hide’.
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I don’t understand we’re not having any option to hide the profiles outside game.
This is for me a real privacy issue.
Thread title is a blatant lie. Sure, be curious about stats, but don’t pretend profile trolling was the reason why people checked to begin with getting so bad that they put in a private option.
What can Blizzard do against Smurf.
Litterly nothing.
Its difficult to identify a smurf.
LoL has smurf queue and it has some issues, too.
Problem is that toxic people call everything “throwing”.
Playing badly/not playing the way you want me to != Throwing btw.
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The point is it’s their data, not yours. They decide if you should see it, not Blizzard and not anyone else. Just them.
it’s not about toxic try-hard, it’s fundamentally a data privacy question.
This isn’t a small thing where you can follow it up with they serve little use. It was a big help when they were public to be able to see that our Rein and Zarya are both flexing to the other’s role and maybe if they swapped we’d do better, and we did. I could see in spawn that there are 2 other support mains and pick tank straight away. People rather politely asking if I wanted to take Ana from them instead of playing Mercy just so I’d be comfortable and our team would do better, whether I took that option or not. Seeing we have 3 players whose mains work in dive so maybe we build something in that vein so there’s any synergy at all.
And especially when it had a summary on hovering, it was way faster than “Hey, what do you play? And you? And you? And” spawn doors already opening
lol apparently I have to repeat this again…
The point of this post is not that I’m here demanding I be allowed to see any profile I want. If you want your profile private, that is absolutely your choice, and no skin off my back. I dont think any more or less of you if your profile is private. You want it private? More power to you… but this post isn’t about privacy.
The point of the post was to say private profiles by default have created even more division. The side that wanted private profiles in the first place has now, themselves, become reflexively toxic because they immediately assume malice when I’m just curious. Blizzard created more toxicity by trying to solve toxicity.
Private profiles are a must, and you enjoying viewing profiles makes it worse, not better. Who does that. Besides it’s not like i care WHY you view the profile. It’s just not your business
Your argument would only apply if I was in here demanding that I be able to see any profile I want at any time… that is not what I said.
I said that by trying to solve toxicity by making all profiles private by default, blizzard created more toxicity in another area. It drove another wedge into the community and created even more “us vs them” hysterics. Also, I don’t think player profiles in an online video game fall under the veil of “data privacy” lol. I’m not going to get access to any of your financial information, your address, etc by seeing your OW profile 
You want your profile private? No skin off my back, play the game the way you want it to be played.