Really though, poor teamwork should still be reportable because of situations that don’t fall into “gameplay sabotage” or griefing as it once was. Because there are players who have tunnel vision and don’t pay attention to their surroundings or they don’t help out teammates and just shoot forward at the enemy. There are players who have crappy focus and will just shoot at tanks days on end rather than focusing down the other dps or the healers.
The only thing that I could think that fits into both “Poor Teamwork” and “Gameplay Sabotage” is when people don’t switch off of heroes that are clearly not working. Overall, you could say these examples fall into just being bad at the game, but if you’re being placed into Plat and above you’re clearly not bad. So then how are we supposed to report these kinds of players if there is no category for them anymore? It clearly doesn’t fall into the new “Gameplay Sabotage” so where do they fall?
Playing poorly is not against the rules. The entire “poor teamwork” category was vague and allowed people to report any ridiculous thing they didn’t like about a team mate… like your example of “crappy focus”.
Tunnel visioning and being generally bad isn’t reportable. This better clarifies what the reports should actually be responding to. It is only for when someone makes the concious decision to ruin a game.
Bad play isn’t really reportable. I took poor teamwork to mean not just bad play, but a combination of not trying to work with your team at all and playing badly.
Really big difference between the two as we all have bad games, where we tunnel vision or suck at various factors. Usually people are playing in good faith and would work with the team though if people are formulating a plan.
I think for the most egregious actors avoid as teammate is probably your best option. If someone rises to a level beyond that and you think they’re throwing the game purposefully then hit them with the gameplay sabotage.
The problen with “supposed to rank up past them if I’m better” is that it’s these kinds of players that prevent ranking up. Just because 1 person is better doesn’t mean that the whole team is gonna be carried by them. So it’s not as easy as “ranking past them” when 50-75% of the time I’m being paired with people like them.
Yes it helps to be better, but if the majority of the team doesn’t have the same basic senses (ie: having focus, area awareness, etc) as the “better players”, then they fall behind and bring down everyone else with them. Granted it’s Plat and not everyone is perfect, but you’d think by that rank players would have these kinds of things developed already, at least to a basic level of development.
Straight from the game’s description of the Gameplay Sabotage report option
Gameplay Sabotage is:
Actively harassing or disrupting your own team through the use of game mechanics or player actions. This includes placing a Symmetra Teleporter exit at a cliff edge, or intentionally allowing yourself to be eliminated by the enemy team (i.e. feeding).
Gameplay Sabotage is not:
Simply making a mistake, playing poorly, or an unwillingness to switch heroes.
And also, straight from the patch notes.
The report option is to combat negative behavior, not to punish players for being bad.
Playing poorly/making a mistake should never be a strike against your account that could end in Blizzard suspending your game license.
If you dislike a particular person because they’re a one-trick, or they keep poking at tanks instead of prioritizing targets, you have a new option of Avoiding them as Teammate. This doesn’t put a strike against their account.
I remember getting reported for poor teamwork and feeding when I was playing League of legends. I had no idea why I was trying my hardest but I was a noob and mever liked playing classic. Just really loved playing ARAM. I think it has similiar issues with this topic in that sometimes it’s silly to report for ignorance or disagreeing with team mates strats.
Everyone at every given rank is in the same situation as you. You get just as many bad players on your team as there are bad players on the enemy team. Not equally in every match, of course, but spread out over time it’s equal.
You want to complain productively about something? IMO complain about performance-based SR and the ‘group tax’. Reporting people for ‘poor gameplay’ (which is what you are describing) is such an incredibly horrible idea because literally everyone in the game is guilty of it from the perspective of a higher-skilled player,