Not sure why I expected anything different in OW2, but the toxicity makes the game unenjoyable. Blizzard spent so much time/money on implementing Defense Matrix, but did nothing to implement a social contract or put in a system to get rid of the toxic players that ruin the game for many of us.
Edit: To clarify, I do not consider asking someone to switch characters or because they have poor gameplay (sabotage not included) as being toxic. It is when they demean others on their/opposing team and cause a negative experience for those playing the game. The entire purpose of their chat/voice communication is to bring others down. For example, “expletive team is trash”, “expletive healers suck”, etc.
The problem is that toxicity is subjective. To some anyone saying anything is toxic. Asking to swap heroes is toxic to many people even though for many other people it’s no big deal.
Just leave the chat, or mute people if they’re troublesome.
I’ve yet to experience any toxicity at all. So either we have different opinions on what is toxic or you’ve gotten very unlucky, either way, you’ve been given tools to avoid and report toxicity.
Toxicity in online gaming!
Water is wet!
The sky is blue!
report. mute. move on.
It’s not that difficult. I hate that it happens but you just can’t stop it entirely. Too many virgin neckbeards hiding behind anonymity to try and act as if they’re worth anything.
Only play with friends as a sort of surefire way to avoid toxicity in your games.
The problem is how do you predict people are going to be toxic? It’s impossible. Blizzard needs us to report these people so they can take action after the fact. There’s no way to predict who is going to be toxic. Even people who have never been toxic before can sometimes snap and suddenly lose their cool. You can’t account for that in your plans because you don’t know it’s going to happen.
I’m actually experiencing the opposite. I’ve had exactly 1 game where one person is going ballistic on, someone I forgot who, and insisted they change heroes. Beyond that psycho, its been cordial even. Lots of GG WP, even some GLHF.
The wildly different experiences we can have by the random chance of who you’re grouped with.
I feel like this is insanely simple to start tackling. Obviously you can’t catch everyone on coms laying into people without others reporting them. However in the realm of chat is where I seem most of the toxicity. Implement a perma-ban trigger on key words if typed. Obviously these would have to be non subjective abusive words. Such as racial slurs, slurs bashing ones sexuality, and any other key words that I may not be thinking of. Obviously saying things like trash, diff, or something along those lines isn’t great and is toxic but I feel at that point its not abusive just more rude and ego boosting.
Send the complaint to… parents, I guess? Schools? I don’t see how Blizzard can implement any “social contract”. If somebody lack said contract in-game - by that time it’s too late to “implement” anything, you can only enforce some rules. Alas, no rules can force people to “be nice”.
So you have a problem with peoples freedom to say their team sucks? Are they attacking you personally do you feel you are in danger? Do you know you are trash but hate being called it? This may not be positive but it is FAR from being truly toxic and there is 0 issues with people being themselves and punishing something like this is exactly how games meet their ends from the community, How can you enjoy a game and play at your best always having to second guess yourself and worry you might say “heal me not them” and end up getting banned for being toxic. We are humans the more filters we have the more mayhem that follows and overworks the employees who have actual toxicity to deal with to prevent things like suicide and children being harmed. Report and move on and maybe use a more extreme example next time.
I dunno, being perma-banned for hurting someone’s feelings seems a little harsh, ngl. It’s a video game. This sort of thing happens. People aren’t nice. Especially in team based games. If an individual is sensitive to that sort of thing then they probably shouldn’t be in chat because humans are humans, and they lose their cool and say things they don’t mean sometimes.
Honestly, they should just hand chat bans easily. Doesn’t stop one from playing, effectively stops one from being toxic. Text chat bans, voice chat bans. with cumulative length to some point.
Honestly, you sound like a big complainer that probably thinks most of the people here disagreeing with you are “toxic” as well. Everybody knows what real toxicity is, and it’s easy to report and ban that stuff, easier now than ever. Anything else and it’s on you. Mute your mic, play with people you know, but man I can’t stand it when people think they are immune to criticism because they think it’s " toxic"
I had one really toxic person so far. He goes in as brig, we kill some of the enemy. We all back out but him. He’s swinging after them in front of the enemy spawn and he gets killed by an ash shooting him from inside their spawn. “WHERE THE HELL DID YOU GUYS GO? WE KILL 3 AND YOU ALL RUN OFF!?!? WHY WEREN’T YOU WITH ME? WHAT HAPPENED?”
Then I, not thinking about how this person might be an irrational so and so go: “Uh yeah well, I don’t think any of us wanted to be where they could shoot us from their spawn. That’s what happened to you, you went too deep.”
The whoooooooooooole rest of the match this person gave me never ending crap. And the very last thing they typed was “I guess I shouldn’t be mad.”
“Trash dps” is not criticism that should be protected. It’s not said to be constructive, it’s said with the sole purpose of being insulting. I’m sick of people thinking all criticism is good.
