Question about Ban System

General Discussion
1

Greetings,

For the last two months, I’ve been experiencing a complete computer crashes given a specific condition in Overwatch: Be alt+tabbed browsing the web when Overwatch finds a competitive match. Sometimes when this happens, my computer will completely hard freeze, and I will have to hard reboot it in order to make my computer usable again. As such, this gives me a competitive ban.

Until recently, these have been the 10-15 minute bans, I assume this was the case because my account was in good standing. However, 2 days ago, I received an 8 hour ban. After the ban, I played about 15 competitive matches, my computer froze, and I received a 20 hour ban.

Given the circumstances, I have no choice left but to attempt to reformat my computer and reinstall everything from scratch to avoid these bans in the future, as I have nearly troubleshooted everything I could, but that’s not what this post is about today. I am asking if the “karma” system is still in place, where you play a certain amount of matches after receiving these bans and you no longer receive bans with such a long length. Or is it safe to say my account has had so many bad marks that any further bans will result in longer or permanent bans?

Will this ban karma also roll over into the next season? Legitimately concerned. Thank you.

2

I know it does not run over into the next season. Not sure how long your next ban this season will be though.

1 Like
3

When a new season starts your status should reset back to “good standing”. Given there is only 6 days remaining in the season you should probably consider avoiding Competitive Play for the remainder of this season. I say this because the next penalty you would incur is a season ban and that will result in the loss of all end of season rewards and will put you one irreversible step closer to a Competitive play permanent ban.

I strongly implore you to take the time to investigate your computer freezes and lockups. Based on your brief description there are a few possibilities, your hard drive is not loading resources quick enough, your ram is overloading, there is an interfering program that consumes your RAM or CPU, or there is a small possiblity of a connection issue.

I strongly recommend working through these troubleshooting steps:

Remember to test by playing non-Competitive modes like Quick Play (as penalties are far less severe). If you need additional help, please provide more details in the technical support forum.

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4

Well, I reformatted my computer, installing the operating system and Overwatch from scratch, and not a single hiccup on my alt account for about 20 matches.

I wish I had heeded your advice about “one irreversible step closer to a Competitive play permanent ban” earlier, because I am now banned for the remainder of Season 26.

Sadly, these troubleshooting tips mean nothing to me because I am a Linux user with Lutris. For 9 solid months there have been absolutely no hiccups at all, and then for the last 2 months, very random, but occurring under very specific conditions, crashes.

Could you please elaborate on this Competitive play permanent ban? My game has never crashed once in Quick Play, but I do not enjoy any modes other than competitive.

EDIT: Also, this never really answered my question. A new season will return me to “good standing” but is there any karma to be earned or is there just a fixed number of 10 min bans, then an 8 hour ban, then a 20 hour ban, then a season ban?

5

Are you running overwatch in an emulator? How does it perform?

6

Well, like I said, for 9 months straight, there was never a single hiccup, and I was getting better performance than I did on any Windows 10 machine I’d ever used.

Sadly, as you can see though, there are complications and now I have a comp season ban as well as an irreversible mark against a permanent comp ban.

7

Overwatch is only intended for the Windows platform per the recommended system requirements. Attempting to run Overwatch on any bootcamp or emulator can result in errors and crashes. You really should try to only operate Overwatch on a legitimate and licensed Windows platform.

It is beyond my scope to help on the technical issues at this point, but I think you understand that other players rely on you to have a reliable setup before playing Competitive Play.

Once any account gets three season bans they will no longer be allow to access the competitive play mode in it’s entirety. Note that the season bans do not have to be consecutive to each other.

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8

For reasons that go beyond the scope of these forums, I will most likely not be returning to Windows. Especially since it has been working flawlessly… no, better than, my Windows 10 Overwatch ever did. And I do understand that other players rely on a reliable setup. I felt it was safe to assume after playing 20 matches on an alt account in comp that the reformat fixed problem. I don’t think it was unreasonable to give my main account a chance again, but that was before I knew one more ban would leave a permanent scar on my account record.

Also, I’m going to assume the “karma” system no longer exists, never existed, or was a myth, and only a fixed number of 10 minute bans existed, and even if I had played 100 matches between this 20 hour ban and gotten one more ban, I would have been banned for the season… I am now on my alt account trying to intentionally crash Overwatch with no success. The crashes are so sparatic and random and I have been pleading with the Lutris community to help with no avail. Why this issue would crop up after 500+ hours and 9 months of play I don’t know, but I am starting to guess it’s a hardware issue, and Windows would not necessarily save me from that.

9

Not sure what you mean by this, the Competitive Leaver system would steadily increase in suspension times if you frequently leave Competitive Games, now you work back into good standing if you complete a very high percentage of your games.

Always a possibility, but also understand graphic card driver updates and game updates are made with the operating systems they are intended for. Who knows what errors could crop up since. Obviously, hardware issues are best figured out by checking for overheating or checking for board damage on the necessary components.

In any case, I wish you the best luck in your future efforts.

1 Like
10

I’d like to report that the “Repeatedly leaving matches early will result in a penalty” notification has never once shown up until after my season ban. I think that’s incredibly rude?

I’m now trying to intentionally crash the game with a debug logger going. So far, on my alt account, I have played 33 consecutive comp matches without a single crash. I am now back on my main account playing quick play. I am trying to emulate the conditions of the crash as described prior, but so far I have been unsuccessful in any crashes.

I find this extremely unfair that I can play 20 matches of comp on my alt, 2 matches on my main, crash, then an additional 33 matches of comp on the alt without a crash… literal insanity.

EDIT: How do I make that notification go away? I obviously can not play any more competitive matches, or is it just gonna hang out there because it’s a reminder that I’m a bad person for having so many crashes beyond my control? :roll_eyes:

EDIT2:

Since the post I made where I got the season ban, I have now played 70 matches, which can be all accounted for as twitch past broadcasts, without a single crash.

I am using the same conditions which previously created my crash:

  • Queuing for competitive in the background
  • Browsing the internet with Firefox
  • The game should crash as I enter a match

It has not. Thus, I can only assume something involving my main account queuing for competitive is causing that crash, and I will not be able to diagnose it until my ban is up. This makes entirely no sense, but I have now played seventy matches on the same system boot since the crash that caused my main account to be banned. I have done nothing different other than enabling diagnostic logging through WINE and lowered my graphic settings for streaming (Graphic settings were also lowered at one point on my main account in comp and crashes were still occurring).

I don’t know what to make of this other than this ban should have never happened. My computer would crash twice a day on average during these conditions, and now it is not crashing at all on my alternate account. I don’t know how else to explain this.

EDIT3: Well well well, on game 87 it finally crashed, but I did not have logging enabled. However I’m now speculating that it has something to coms?