I think blizzard really messed up on this one, especially in regards to competitive play.
Making profiles private has decreased the ability to play around one’s teammates. For example, sometimes a teammate will insta-lock a character whilst having little to no time spent on said character. But, more times than not, they will have a bunch of hours on another character and can be convinced to switch over with a bit of polite suggestion. Or, one can look at a few different profiles and try to set up combos based off of what their teammates are good at, often times to great success.
This update killed all of that strategy. And it is especially difficult now because people are not always willing to offer up relevant information, or worse they do not have a mic and thus their time spent responding takes up time from the actual game play. Not to mention the sheer amount of info one can go through if everyone’s career profile is public. I.e. win percentages, previous season’s pick, etc. To think that this all can be transmitted, digested, then utilized effectively is unreasonable.
All this to say, I hope blizzard listens to reason and rescinds private profiles from the update.
The default option just should be “public” and if a player faces problems with his public profile there is the option to turn it “private”. But now everyones is private, even if the majority of players (I think) didn’t had any issues with that.
And I also think many players don’t bother/know/are too lazy to change it to public, even if they havn’t problems with it, especially in lower ranks (where I am) this maybe will be a problem…
See the part where people are not willing, or unable to because they do not have a mic.
Looking at profiles allows one a much greater bandwidth in comparison to random variables such as whether one has a mic, they are willing to divulge information, whether they are being honest about information (wouldn’t put it past overwatch players to shake their own hands a bit), whether they are effective at communicating, whether they are smart about times of communication if they do not have a mic (not typing in tight situations), etc., etc.
If profiles are made public, then all of this info is guaranteed to be in an easy to read and digest format without any chance for random variation.
You see I understand what you mean but it goes off of the idea that people in overeat will be nice about it. I don’t think people will nicely ask nor play around someone. I think hiding profiles prevents toxicity because it allows people to play who they want instead of being judged over who they main.
Ask, and it shall be given. If you can’t be bothered to simply type in text chat “does anyone have any playtime on main tanks so I know what off tank to pick?” there’s no real reason you should be able to snoop on people’s profiles and demand “you have x hours on this hero, play them now”.
Personally I’m grateful for this. I was a bit of a forced Mercy main and whenever I wanted to play someone else, I was told “naw, you have x hours on Mercy, you can only play her and nobody else, so that’s who you’ll be playing”. Glad that’s over.
…and those players will likely stay at lower SR ranks as communication is generally required as you rise up.
A cheap headset mic can go for as low as $5-$10 these days so if someone is choosing not to have a mic for online gaming I’d argue it’s a conscious choice.
A few days ago someone on my team told everyone else to report me for buying carries because they went to my profile and saw that my rank went up all the way back in season 5. Didn’t even bother to look at the fact I had played well over 300 games that season. I even got placed with the same person next game and they continued to trash talk me. While I will still be setting my profile to public, there is a reason for this feature.
If for no other reason than this I am glad they made the change. People shouldn’t be unable to play new heroes because people like you pigeonhole them.
People are failing to grasp that if a person wants to be a jerk and not be a team player by picking a non-optimal hero for the team comp then that’s exactly what they’re going to do. No amount of peeking at their profile so you can see what they play is going to change that, nor will it make someone take polite advice and switch if they don’t want to.
Then there are examples like this where someone’s harassed based on their profile. So… yeah, you might think it’s a bad idea, but I personally think it’s just fine.
They should not be able to play a hero if given the chance to play a hero in their hero pool that they have a little to no time on and that has no similarities to the heroes the player plays because that would ruin the game for the other players. If a mercy main decides to play widowmaker with little to no time on her shouldn’t he/she be called out and told to switch to a character in their hero pool? I don’t see why they shouldn’t be? If anyone apart from pro player picks up a brand new hero in competitive they will most likely feed and effectively throw the game for the other 5 people.
i like private profiles, now i dont have to worry about some kid screaming in my ear to switch to mercy because i have more hours on her then other characters, how about you switch to mercy and i’ll play whatever i feel like
Yes, theyre absolutely terrible and they feel terrible. They probably won’t ever change because Blizzard believes that if you hate them, just set yours to public and they will be monitoring how many people are public. Unfortunately, nobody is going to be setting theirs to public because it legitimately gives you a disadvantage in competitive.
Yep, you read it correctly. Blizzard expects you to give yourself a disadvantage in competitive in order to protest a change that should have never been implemented in the first place.
Contrary to popular belief, you do not need to see their profile. If the Mercy main is going to play Widow this time, then the Mercy main is going to play on Widow regardless of what you can see. you do not need to see their profile in order to demand that they swap back to their main. You may also still play around them even though you may not open up their profile to confirm that they’re a Mercy main on Widow. Lastly, if the Mercy main is playing Widow, and does a terrible job, they’re going to de-rank quickly to where they belong instead of having their teams carry them by catering to them not playing as a team. Eventually they will drop to a rank where they belong.
If a majority of your playtime is mercy and you aren’t like a top 500 player or a pro mercy then yes you can only play her at your current elo because mercy has basically no skill transference to other heroes and if you don’t believe me on this why is it such a common occurrence to see mercy mains that are terrible at every other hero apart from mercy. You will never see a zen one-trick who cannot play mcree decently because he knows how to position, you will never see a tracer one trick who cannot play soldier decently because they know how to track targets. The only hero I can think off who doesn’t a skill that can be transferred is doomfist but that is probably because I’ve never played him.