Is the Overwatch report system doing any good ? In my last game, I did a lot of healing, got insulted of not doing enough heal. And the extra thing, being a girl, I got asked to go back to my kitchen and let the men play real games alone.
I quit the ranked game facing too much hatred. And I got punished for leaving. Seriously, you must endure this kind of behavior just to play an game. The conclusion is I’m not gonna continue if Overwatch doesn’t wake up.
I also reported with picture a cheater on the forum and I got banned for 15 weeks. Because a screenshot with a username is of course a way to identify someone in real life …
So I think Blizzard really needs to think carefully of how they manage their community. People are leaving and will keep leaving if they don’t take measures. It’s easy enough to solve … You check the reports, authorized people to post screenshots (in real life, people are held responsible for what they are doing… If you do something wrong and got filmed, you’re charged, fined and can do some time, …). Just check the reports and ban people for 15 minutes, 30 minutes, etc …
Even the reputation system is a failure … The only way you can go up is to say gg to everything. It’s not the way a game is meant to be play. You quit a ranked game because you face hatred … you got unranked. You play a ranked game where everyone leaves, you got unranked …
It’s automated so basically it’s X amount of reports = ban. Blizzard doesn’t care about the casual community so they automate it all to ensure they don’t have to interact with it.
The only thing that matters to Blizzard is OWL and E-Sports. Meaning that all attention and care is directed towards that. So reporting doesn’t matter so to speak.
That I can understand but … they must keep in mind, that without the player’s base. There are no e-sport, no OWL. We are the base of the pyramid which makes it possible. Blizzard without gamers is nothing less than a suburban company. One nice thing videogames industries should never forget.
It’s been a long time since Blizzard cared about their gamers. Back before Activision, they were a completely different company. A bunch of nerds with love and passion for game design. It showed in the quality of their work and their dedication to the community.
Now a days it’s all about margins and profits. They see that E-Sports pay potentially a lot of money, so they gladly sacrifice their casual players to profit on it. That’s just how Blizzard operates these days. Don’t expect rational thinking from them, it was the first to be killed off.
I would like to add that it seems to work just fine, i just yesterday reported 2 players in a QM (they where grouped so probably friends). They where both using bad racial slurs (N-word) and complaining to their teammates in team voice. I told them to stop… their reply was a nice compilation of curse words followed by “i’ll never be banned you N-word”
Today when i just logged in I got a message that actions had been taken against these players and their accounts.
As a male I’ve never been subject to these types of insults, i really hope you don’t let those types of low life maggots affect your will to keep playing games. And keep reporting them, i always report such behavior.
I appreciate people like you. But most of other gamers find that “normal”. I have experienced the first times of online gaming … People were so nice back in the days. Now every game is toxic. I had to try a 15 years old online game still running to find my old chums. When you play very well, that community congratulates you.
Now you say to someone nice shot, they don’t answer or they say :"**** you piece of ****". I to be honest, I am starting to play solo or pve games more and more.
Not long ago I just came across a russian team who heard I was a girl and said to me **** you ******* ****. Let’s mute her. All I’ve done is saying Hello !
Mod Edit:Removed inappropriate language from post. Even masked language is against our Forum Code of Conduct so please refrain from posting such language.
i’m really sorry to hear you’re experiencing a lot of sexist behaviour. i agree, the game felt a lot more friendly and welcoming at launch, and in the past few years, i’ve done a lot of research into managing disruptive behaviour in multiplayer online games. there’s probably a couple of different reasons why things feel different now compared to then:
bigger playerbase meant a lot more neutral/positive encounters to cushion the blow of the toxic ones. one of the researchers at riot games talking about gameplay toxicity pointed out that toxic behaviour spreads - someone is crappy to you in a game, and it’s possible that frustration carries forward into you being toxic in turn - but also that positive behaviour spreads too, and can stop the spread of toxic behaviour to boot. with a smaller playerbase, and one that’s typically more focused on their gameplay and improvement, there’s less chance of encountering those random silly moments that made early OW feel fun and alive. i will say that mystery heroes is consistently one place where the population of matches feels more in tune with this positive mentality and when i play OW solo now, that tends to be where i go.
within the smaller population, more people are using tools available to them to avoid negativity: blocking, muting, turning off text and/or voice chats. one stand-out encounter for me playing competitive in early OW - maybe season 5 or 6 - was where a guy heard me speak on voice chat and start complaining. “oh man, a girl tanking, we’re definitely gonna lose.” everyone else started calling him out, and it turned out he was on a full team of women. we did lose the match (he kept picking heroes he was bad at, on purpose, and telling us this), but it was a great moment of solidarity with my teammates to know this guy is so buttfurious about women in his game, he will tank his SR on purpose. now, i don’t join voice chat anymore, because like you, the sexist/racist experiences were too many without any of the lovely solidarity of that other encounter. it was lonely! but the flip side of it is, now my voice isn’t present pushing back against that behaviour. so the toxic players get less pushback, less people hear or see what they’re doing, and less reports go out overall, meaning less actionable trails for the repeat offenders of toxicity.
even if people don’t leave voice or text chats, they often don’t report, because either they don’t know how or they believe reports don’t have an effect. in 2021, i had to guide a user on reddit through the reporting process, because they weren’t even aware overwatch had a reporting system! if you’re trying to report mid-match, you’re limiting your participation in the match until you’re finished typing up your report. and if you don’t think reports lead to actions, you’re far less likely to report even though repeated reports in a short time span are the most effective in getting action.
sometimes i report someone for using a racial slur, and i get a notification the next day that a report lead to an action. but i’ve also had instances where i’ve reported someone for a bad username (again, with a racial slur in it), and encountered them repeatedly over the week, no name change, and that makes me wonder.
i know riot isn’t perfect, but they’ve been very open about their behavioural systems (for ex: https://playvalorant.com/en-gb/news/dev/valorant-systems-health-series-voice-and-chat-toxicity), how they work and their weak spots, which is really helpful for learning how game companies try to manage toxicity. you can never really eliminate it, because some people are always going to skirt the line, or make new accounts, or new disruptive players can replace old banned ones. to combat that, i think item number 1 is really the key factor there. you need a large, healthy population of players, most of whom will be either positive contributors to your game’s community, or at the very least, neutral ones, to make player-based reporting systems effective and to cushion the experience of disruptive play with a majority of neutral or positive experiences.
First off all tahnk you for your comment, makes me feel better.
The problem is that you can’t block a huge amount of players (limit) and there are so many toxic people. Muting the chat is a bad idea because you’ll miss some nice people …
the limit on blocking players is tough, i agree! it would be nice if it was bigger, since it doesn’t affect matchmaking, or if there’s a technical reason why it can’t be bigger, maybe implement a first in, first out system, where the newest blocked player pushes the oldest off it.
Endorsements system is a total joke and is still to be fixed. You can tank eveyrthing, block every ult, move all the payloads, but you drop down a level because your team didn’t win, so you didn’t get a vote in 2-3 games. And yes, that’s how it works. Don’t play for a year, you still stay on the same level, but then you can lose it in an hour.
Yup. They’d tell you spamming reports doesn’t count, but it sure does. Someone gets mad at you, tells their buddies to spam reports and that’s it.
There shouldn’t be any limit to block people. You don’t want to play with them it’s your right. As Moira says :“Stupidity is not a right”. If you don’t want to play with toxic people who by their behavior show how smart they are … you should be able to.
I experienced the same thing with Rainbow Six, I bought it because it was a tactical game. Then they lowered the price … and guess what ? We inherited all the anker-biter COD/CSGO community. They start changing everything into arcade style. I didn’t agree for that. When I bought OW, I bought a product to consume in a certain way with a certain community. Not the ultra toxic, troll, insults combo game it is currently.
If you want proof that the report systems are garbage, go look at various unranked to GM videos on youtube, especially pro players
Jake threw to get placed into gold and was reported and absolutely nothing happened.
It’s really sad how pathetic Blizzard is when it comes to in-game behaviour. I guess that kinda makes sense since this is a company with a huge sexual abuse issue (they are getting sued for it by the DFEH and it’s the largest lawsuit of it’s type currently outstanding in the largest superior court in America). So it’s no wonder that if they don’t even care about the well-being of women in their own workplace, they’re not going to have any issues with abuse in-game.
Don’t expect the company that was publically exposed for its ultra-toxic, sexist, and abusive environment to practice what it preaches when it comes to it’s consumers.
I just mute all chat and never interact. That way the neckbeards can scream obscenities into the void as much as they like without ruining my gametime.
99% of players are reasonably sound people, but that 1% are the human equivalent of a septic tank, I want nothing to do with them.
