I have asked myself many times why we have to ignore the people who insult us in this video game, why we have to stay silent if they don’t ban our account.
I have been silenced for a few days for defending myself and for insulting back someone who was insulting me. I’m tired of not being able to defend myself, even though reporting tools exist, don’t I have the freedom of expression to respond hostilely to someone who acts toxic?
Your policies are pathetic and absurd.
Blizzard: No, please stay quiet, and report.
Of course, when that person gets banned, they continue messing with people and they don’t say anything to them, or they troll your game and they won’t be able to say anything to them. It’s pathetic.
You gotta leave your ego at the door when you sit down to play this game.
They’re strangers you’ll never meet, why even worry yourself over their meaningless opinions? That’s why it’s called ‘trolling’… they’re not attempting to get to know you or do anything positive, they’re not even explicitly targeting you most of the time… they’re just looking to make someone, anyone, react… so they can start hurling insults to kill time/boredom.
That’s why you frequently hear others saying “don’t take the bait…”. You don’t owe them a second of your time. Save your mental faculties and mood for things that matter.
um that’s not the answer. unless you want 95% of your remaining user base not to join vc to begin with, to avoid ban baits. if that happens, ow will be even closer to being discontinued. since vc is privately discouraged, compared to days of OW1, fewer logins occur daily. this is bc no game can survive if the social aspect is suppressed.
Turn chat off. Text chat in particular needs to go and has no business being in the game - the number of times I’ve had a teammate sitting around typing instead of playing is stupid high. It actively makes the game worse. Voice is debatable, especially since THEY STILL HAVE NOT IMPLEMENTED CLANS.
If someone starts in on you IRL and gets physical. If you have NO other way out of the altercation, you can defend yourself (within reason.)
In a videogame that approach doesn’t work. No one is in any real world danger and there is no way for the altercation to become physical (unless you’re in the same room as each other… in which case why they’re wasting time in chat is anyone’s guess.)
Therefore, launching off on the offensive at people insulting you in chat is no defence, it makes you just as bad as them (and therefore subject to the same disciplinary measures.)
You have the freedom to say what you want, but ‘freedom of speech’ laws means the government can’t haul you off in an unmarked van with a bag over your head for speaking badly of them on social media.
Those laws do not mean ‘you may sling insults and bicker with people in a videogame without consequence.’
Blizzard are a private company, and they have made their own code of conduct that applies to all customers. And that means, if you want to play this game, you should abide by those rules.
If you do not abide by those rules they reserve the right to take action against your account up to and including closing it entirely. There is no legal recourse for that, you agreed to those Terms of Service when you created an account.
TL;DR: No, you don’t have the right to smack talk people even if that person was toxic first.
I don’t like everything about their disciplinary system, it’s too hands off for my liking, but them’s the brakes.
Someone being toxic in response to other people being toxic… is still being toxic? It’s really not a hard concept… it’s also not a potentially wrong action that has some other justification like the protection of one’s life or property. The only thing you’d be protecting is your ego.
Doing something wrong in response to wrong is still wrong either way.
Just because you insult someone who insults you does not mean that you are toxic, but that you are defending yourself.
Anywhere in the world, if someone messes with you and you respond to that, it’s completely normal. Go to the street and insult someone who messes with you and they record you and even if there is no real danger, I believe it is a right that we all have. Being able to defend ourselves against accusations and disrespect
They have based their code of conduct on censorship, a code of conduct that a few years ago I would understand, but that today is ridiculous. And yes, I accepted the terms, but although I accepted them at the time, today I can blame for them.
The fact that I respond to someone’s insults for defending myself does not make me as bad as that person, I did not start the toxicity, He started it, and that is the real situation. Nor could I insult myself as a joke with a friend, and if my team sees the chat, they think I’m insulting, they report me and I also lose my account because of a joke with my friend? Don’t you see it’s censorship?
Have you seen the number of posts that are being opened in the forum with people saying that the muted ban thing is getting out of hand? Don’t you want there to be competitiveness in a competitive game? We all know that competitiveness has always also brought anger, irritation and sometimes comments.
Yes, it makes you as bad as them. They don’t care ‘who started it.’ All they see is two people bickering like children, both parties are culpable.
This isn’t the real world, it’s a videogame, you’re in no real world danger. You agreed to the ToS, you have to behave yourself. Sometimes that means holding your tongue.
There has always been a steady stream of people complaining about bans/chat silences. They’re screaming into the void, there’s nothing we here can do.
If you now disagree with the ToS, you need to withdraw your custom to Blizzard. That means stop playing their games, giving them money, and closing your account.
Competition comes with stress and heightened emotions. And most people involved in any form of competition swiftly learn to manage their emotions. That includes not reacting to snide comments and insults.
Anyone who does react in kind is dealt with accordingly. ‘Freedom of speech’ does not mean ‘freedom from all consequences.’
Someone insulted you, you gave as good as you got. Your account was silenced. If you intend to keep playing you should learn from that experience and don’t do it again.
It’s called stooping down to their level. You get taught pre-kindergarten that it doesn’t matter who started it. You get taught in kindergarten that it doesn’t matter who started it. You get taught in primary school that it doesn’t matter who started it. You get taught in middleschool that it doesn’t matter who started it. You get taught in highschool that it doesn’t matter who started it. And then you act surprised? Stop playing pretend and go grab a handful of grass to remind yourself that for a fact a bunch of randoms acting childish shouldn’t matter to you. Even less so online.
Welcome to the world of civility. If someone stole something from you and you stole something from them, that also makes you a thief. Why would being toxic back somehow make you immune? Report and block the player, simple.
Think of it from this perspective. If you block the player instead of engaging, they are shouting into the ether talking to themselves. Let them look like the weirdo while you chill. Other players may start to report them since it suddenly becomes one sided harassment.
It’s actually the best way to make a rambling crazy person realize how crazy they look. When someone escalates the situation and responds with equal craziness, the person that started it will feel justified in their outburst. Being the adult in the situation really will make the other person feel like a child.
Yeah, this “bubble wrapped world” mentality is nonsense pushed by lemmings who haven’t had to interact with real people or are too afraid of how icky the real world is. Living in a vat of disinfectant makes you weaker, not stronger.
Be the bigger person, simply mute, avoid and move on. Giving the time of day to anyone toxic always causes problems. Its not worth wasting your breath on those people either, fighting back is literally giving them what they want. Don’t react to their insults, learn to have some thick skin and mute them. You can even report them and it might take a week or a month but people like that do get banned.
I don’t like this. It should be a reportable offense to ask other players to report someone.
Players should decide for themselves if they want to report someone.
I say this because it has happened to me a few times that someone on my team has falsely accused me or someone else of racism or things like that.
Whenever someone from the enemy team asks to report someone from their own team, I report that player instead.
Yup, it use to be a person could respond to bad actors in this game and typically a mod would read it and decide whom was at fault for starting the fight. They dont do that anymore.
THe person that typically instigates these types of fights in chat are the ones that also report, because their feelings become hurt. (even though they deserved it). When someone use to call me out on bad performance, I’d state the obvious, its the match maker’s fault for putting me in a match im not suited for, and the person would go on a wild rage in chat about how I need to , uninstall and they would threaten me with all sorts of violence. until I finally told them 2-3 extremely off-the-wall things to put them in their place… I’d report it to the mods and tell them that the person instigated this problem in chat and typically I received a ‘thanks for your report’.
Today, that doesn’t happen.
The standards of this game’s problems come from folks that have to find someone to blame and they want to receive feedback from someone so it fuels their justified reasons… If they are not responded to, it makes them even more mad and infuriates them. So they have to engage in an argument so in their minds they can justify their reasons.
The other issue is always the disruptive specators that join into their friend’s games. They want to find someone on their friend’s team to annoy and bother, so the person leaves the match. So they scapegoat and say “such and such is throwing” in order to attempt to gaslight people. Again. another problem in Overwatch.
Again, why I leave all forms of communications and chat OFF.
