This Game Makes Me Depressed and Toxic Towards Myself

General Discussion
1

Hey there.

I started playing Overwatch the moment it came out, enjoyed the hell out of it, found myself pleasantly surprised at my ability to take it casually and yet still care about winning enough to put in the proper amount of effort and loved pretty much every second of it. My friends quickly got into it, we played ladder together and had a wonderful time.

I played the first few seasons and quit. It was too stressful for me: school was hard, my relationship was failing and my home life was on the decline, so much so that I was talking to counselors, police officers and being visited by CPS. Personal life aside, I took a break with very few moments of re-visitation.

I’ve come back pretty solidly in the last two seasons, actually completed my placement matches and enjoyed myself to maybe 1/10th the extent I originally did years ago. Why? This game is the most saddening, depressing, infuriating, toxic and vile game I own.

Ladder, for me, is as follows:

  1. Join a game
  2. Be the first to load in, pick favorite DPS or off-tank or main-heal
  3. Be instantly picked over, now having three DPS, only one tank (me, an off-tank) or only one healer
  4. Immediate bickering and arguing, accusations and insults
  5. Someone leaves voice chat, if not a two or three-stack leaving voice chat together
  6. Pick what’s missing even though I don’t enjoy it, but I don’t mind because it’s for the betterment of the team and the game

At this point, it can go one of two ways:

  1. We start winning, bickering simmers down, match is finished out with a victory and we all disband with no good chatter, no compliments and no positivity
  2. or We start losing, the people who picked over those who first picked are now yelling at the tanks and the healers, as well as the DPS who they don’t think are picking up the slack. One of the healers switches to DPS while cursing at everyone over mic, claiming they’ll win the game single-handedly. One of the tanks switches to DPS and claims the same. We now have one healer and one tank, which is still doable. We lose the first round.

Second round comes and everyone is antsy and full of anger, mostly directed at each other.

We stick with the same team comp that we arrived at through impatience and rage last round. It can now go one of two ways again.

  1. We start to win, bickering is still low, anger is bottled, and we end in a victory or a draw
  2. or We start to lose, people are literally screaming over mic at this point, people are being told to kill themselves, people are threatening to r*pe one another and kill people’s families. We end in a loss. People instantly leave or leave while screaming.

Winning happens more often than losing does. It feels great. I get giddy, I smile like an idiot, I feel like I just finished a marathon, all shaky and ecstatic, but losing is harrowing. Losing is like witnessing an abusive relationship or domestic violence: half the time it’s triggering and reminds me of my r*pe and the abuse I went through at home because of the language used and the threats hurdled at one another, and the other half it’s just unpleasant and sad to witness.

The depravity in this community is alarming. How can I go more than 20 games in a row without any positivity? How can a person keep playing a game where ever 40 minutes they’re told to die, threatened, screamed at, accused of purposefully ruining everyone’s time, told to stop playing games and get off the internet? How is this game sustainable for anyone?

It isn’t for me. I’m sad to leave this game, but I am personally gone. The community that has been fostered around it is so aggressive, threatening and toxic that I can no longer spend time in it without feeling completely empty or having my PTSD creep back.

I don’t have a solution. I’m sorry for this negative post.

13 Likes
2

Your health is far more important than this game. Take care. hugs

11 Likes
3

Well, I think a lot of us are thinking the same thing in various degrees.

That’s why I’ve been trying to come up with a RoleQueue system that gets past some hurdles towards implementation.

It brings the best of LFG, without all the hassle. No fighting or bickering for roles. Multiple comps due to the Flex roles. And can even unlock roles with 4 votes.

Any feedback you have on it, especially possible flaws would be greatly appreciated. (Trying to iron those out).

🌟 [RoleQ] 2Flex-2-2 is the answer

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4

Try to get some posetivenes in the game. If ya not actually anjoy the game just dont play the game than 4 head.

5

Winning or losing in OW feels boring/bad (even worse if you lose).

Almost all the matches are identical to each other, you stomp or get stomped. You get a functional team or not since Blizzard removed all the individual skill cap from the game leaving only 2-3 characters (that mostly everyone hates and wants them to be nerfed/removed) that can do something by themselves and carry.

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I’d like to say something nice, but I stay the fk away from comp, its not my thing to get bent out of shape over something I do in my spare time. I’m sorry you got hurt, maybe you’ll come back to it someday, or you’ll find something more in your playstyle and meet really nice people and make lots of friends. I hope the best for ya.

1 Like
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As somebody who suffers from mild depression, mild anxiety, and is high-functioning autistic, I can attest that this game’s competitive mode - most especially the culture surrounding it - is actively damaging to mental health. It’s a high-pressure environment that teaches you to always be down on yourself - to treat victories as “expected” and not worthy of delight, and to think of losses as shameful.

I’ve watched friends of mine drive themselves deeper into depressive states because of competitive games - they continue playing well past the point of enjoyment and just degenerate into angry meat machines. It’s no way to live, and I’ve felt such an improvement when I stepped away myself. We were all suckered in by the hype and the glitz - the game seemed so beautiful and polished when it came out - but as I look back on the wreckage three years on, I wonder what the hell happened to the art-game I fell in love with. I think so much of it has to do with unfulfilled promise - this game was one that was made to appeal to people from all backgrounds and ages - but it didn’t help us learn to talk to one another, and after promising that every style of play would be catered to, so many of us have found ourselves on the garbage heap.

After that, I joined a gym, went onto online dating, found some new friends, joined an amateur orchestra, resumed work on Minecraft, bought Hitman 2 - I’m doing so much better now. Is life perfect? No. Do I think cutting out Overwatch has helped? Hell yes.

5 Likes
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simple solution : stop putting too much importance on that stupid number that is SR. It’s just the same subjective number as the number of likes on an instagram post.

  • SR does have a cap for each single person
  • not everyone can be a top player, it’s a hard truth but it’s a truth. It depends on way too many factors.
  • pushing your cap further takes a lot of work, self-analysis, game analysis, flexing, game sense, team building skills, communication skills.
  • which differs from people to people, so enjoy your own cap as long as you pour the efforts you’re willing to put
  • don’t be mad at yourself if you can’t hit right now the cap you feel you deserve, you’re not the only determining factor (matchmaking randomness, perfect momentum randomness, etc)
  • in a word, put absolute success into perspective. Let the time factor express itself
2 Likes
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At OP:

It’s truly a mess, it really is, and when you also throw in the rampant smurfing (not alting), its bad.

The only real solution is find a good supportive group, they do exist, but it takes time to network to find one. The guilds will help a lot if they ever get off the ground.

Rank shaming, having a portrait that is high but not having good aim makes you a target, picking off-meta characters, etc… it all combines then having the twits come in with dumb comments or people utterly unwilling to ever flex, and no one is happy except for handful of Master/GM/Pro players who get to play what they want in the meta. OW in theory is a great game, but its fundamental flaw is that it encourages you to play based on characters you like, then allows a game that punishes you for 1) not doing as well as someone else who is naturally more gifted mechanically and 2) playing what you like, instead of fitting in a composition playing a character you don’t necessarily want to. I can flex, but then the flexers can’t ever get as good as the one tricks, and lose twice over, by not getting to play what they want and on top falling behind in experience.

Playing for over a year now I am beginning to see a trend; if you don’t quit, you often end up saying “screw it” and doing what you want regardless while just ceasing to communicate altogether out of frustration and trying to glean what enjoyment they still can out of the mess. The real underlying problem is no real good in-game way to organize regular teams where one can operate in tandem with what one wants to play, it all has to be friends lists and social media.

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Stop playing the game. It’s what I did and my life improved a lot. Same for one of my friends.

11

My advice is to just avoid competitive and play arcade modes because stuff like Deathmatch n Total Mayhem are saving grace in terms what fun left OW has to offer IMO or just ignore the rages n rants even if its towards you…

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14

It sounds like your IRL issues have bled into this game, and since this is the game you were playing during this time, it will always give you those memories, remind you of those bad things. My suggestion is to pick up a different game to get into, sort of like starting a new chapter in your life, then maybe one day pick Overwatch up again and see of those memories attached to the game are still there.

Much love :purple_heart:

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Just wanted to highlight this old thread because it’s still very true. OP said it better than i could.

Ive been playing FPS and online games since i was 16 (now 31), but no other game has made me hate it so much as this one. The sentiments are the same; people including myself liked it in its early years (2016-2018) but over time has caused too much of a hyper competitive scene around it which lost its spark qnd soured; reflecting the community of sweats it engulfed and embraced

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real. (i also have suicidal thoughts abt this game)

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…I usually just block/mute the player and go on with my day…? :thinking:

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What? Self-loathing?! They didn’t say this in back of the box!!! I’m calling my Lawyer and the Surgeon General there will be Hell to pay Blizzard!!!

19

Do yourself a favor and I mean this with complete sincerity, uninstall the game.

It’s not a surprise to literally anyone, nobody will blame you, overwatch 2 / just overwatch sucks…

This game, it’s not worth the emotional turmoil some people give themselves, there are other better games and there are other better companies that actually care about the products they create with communities that thrive off passion for the product… Not distain for one another.

20

im sorry you feel that way, just play quickplay and arcade and enjoy yourself.

21

When I go on a losing streak against teams that are clearly more skilled then me and my team mates it makes me very depressed. I hate one sided games.

I go from my team stomping to their team stomping sometimes back to back. It’s discouraging when you are on the recieving end.

22

Take a break from competitive TEAM based games. You just need to accept that you will lose, and often. The issue is we never remember or think much about our wins because we’re constantly trying to get our next dose of dopamine yet we always remember our losses.