https://thumbs.gfycat.com/LongDeliciousGallowaycow-small.gif
…JUST KIDDING many of you have fair legitimate concerns about the behavior and concept of “smurfing”, though some perceptions of this issue are a little overstated.
Aside from obvious troll posts, its often skin complaints in general. I think the “Mei-rry” skin outrage is probably the biggest facepalm from me. I myself am an artist, and I also know how much work the development team puts into skins. The arguments about the Dragoon Mercy skin are also becoming… annoying. You don’t have to like a skin (or any element of art in this game for that matter), but like all art I find it disheartening to where I see posts that begin to severely trash talk the development team for no reason, when in reality it takes as much as 2 years to even make many of these skins.
The problem is that the line of text saying this was one tiny footnote on a blog post on Blizzard’s website. See this topic for details:
I personally believe in many situations “limited-time” skins don’t need to be “exclusive”, though I understand the logic of most BlizzCon bonuses (Bastion, Winston) and preorder cosmetics for staying exclusive to that event. BlizzCon Virtual Ticket goes for sale for over 4 months each year so there is PLENTY of opportunity to get it. Preorder cosmetics I see it as a “thanks for having faith in us as we make this game” reward. Though I enjoy physical goodies more than preorder goodies myself.
Well in all honestly… I hate that purple ball myself.
This is more legitimate complaint to me. Much like Brigitta’s release, the rework of Mercy to some extent was not properly planned, but when you change a hero so drastically it can be very difficult to see how much the community will exploit it,
Four megathreads about this subject (including the third one which kept getting flagged to the point being locked for 24 hour intervals constantly) have appeared among both generations of the forums.
While the hashtag is a troll, the concerns about Brigitte were truly legitimate. Even Geoff Goodman admits to badly missing the mark when I asked him about the biggest mistake in a balance change.
The argument is equally seen when damage heroes are adjusted.
A former Youtube content creator by the name of Aria Rose was a huge advocate to the balance of Mercy. Frustrated by her perception that Blizzard did not care, she rallied her followers to spam the forums with posts on a specific date, Blizzard was made aware of this and deleted most threads and to my knowledge applied forum actions to those who spammed the forums (any legitimate posts with constructive feedback typically remained). I watched the whole incident that afternoon eating popcorn.
While I typically get aggravated when people trash talk about skins due to artistic values, these I see as more valid complaints, because they both bring in political issues. (In regards to Brigitte’s Riot Police the Hearthstone incident in October 2019 didn’t help matters.)