Why is this community specifically so terrible in comparison to others?? I thought League of Legends and Fortnite had awful communities…but they pale in comparison to this.
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Here, have a cookie🍪
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Can’t say that is a quality answer as to why OW has the worst community…but at least you verify my findings.
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IMO there is a lack of accountability and incentive to be better people
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Because, it’s a domain that functions on the internet where everyone is anonymous and has no accountability or responsibility for their actions. They can be pessimistic, negative, entitled and have a lust for “status” among their ranks. Making them indifferent to the thoughts and feelings of those around them.
In some way, we are all guilty of it.
You are observing Human Nature. It’s a mostly dim sight, with a few glimpses of sunshine.
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Because people forget this is a team game and there are so many egos floating around.
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OW is an intense first person game based on killing other players at a fast pace. It’s naturally violent. So we are just violent people I guess lol…
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simply stating one example, a somewhat large amount of players in this community have really poor sportsmanship.
They be like “oh this match’s 75% over and I haven’t won yet, better leave”.
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Example? Every game I’ve played has an extremely toxic group. WoW arena forums are toxic. LoL is notorious for toxicity, CS: GO is toxic. idk, man.
Yeah there’s no doubt toxicity in OW, but I experience more cooperativeness than Toxicity when you talk to people like they’re from Earth.
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Extremely different views of what the game “should be”.
I believe this game (or competitive at least) is about swapping characters on the fly during the game to create advantages for your team, synergizing picks with your team, and communicating for the win. Many other people have the idea that competitive is a place to play 1 hero and turn off all chats cuz some people are mean to them. This alone creates a huge divide immediately out of the gates which is a problem.
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Honestly when you delve into gaming communities your going to see things like this in every single one of them that I can think of. I try to always be accountable of any actions I take. Be that on forums or in person. I’ve actually met a few people that aren’t toxic and I’ve definitely found some great people on the forums as well. It’s all about just weeding through the bad to try and find the good. It may not be very much but it is there and hopefully it will be enough.
Anonymous nature of the internet and bad people stand out in your memory more than decent friendly folks.
Then Overwatch has an added kicker of being very team dependent and like it or not, a lot of the heroes and tactics flat out don’t work unless the entire team is on the same page.
plus a whole lot of the player base just don’t understand the game, at all. They are not very good at playing Overwatch but all seem to think they are being held back by their teams for some reason.
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Because we have to rely on other people a lot more in OW to win games compared to other games.
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because only one player is allowed to have fun, maybe two because of how necessary tanks and supports are…
But like, there is accountability and incentives. If you’re mean you can get reported and silenced or banned. If you’re bad at the game and ruin ranked matches for humans then you can get banned. If you take time to learn and improve, you rank up. Why do people even play ranked if they have no idea what’s going on or don’t care about winning? Isn’t that what quick play is for…learning or not caring?
I think it has to do with the type of people they advertise the game to, because in other games that are even more in depth and take more skill, I don’t see this kind of stuff going on. Even in the lowest ranks of League of Legends or CSGO for example, people at least know the basics…People try to improve and practice in other games, people take criticism and suggestions, but here if you ask someone to do something that benefits the team they baby rage and harass you for not being Master+. Plus the player base is small in relation to other games.
I think they need to make the prerequisites higher to join ranked, and make punishments more severe.
Most people aren’t too worried about the reporting system. It does not solve all matters of toxicity or throwing. Unless there’s blatant sabotage or harmful communication, the majority will be untouched. Accountability and responsibility is something the gaming world lacks in general. It’s escapist nature allows one to feel this way, when in the real world they know it’s not possible. Hence, why you’ll have people threatening each other, racism, sexism, etc. They know they are virtually untouchable and not within arms-reach.
Every community has a negative side. And some are worse than others. Overwatch has a major issue with new players. It teaches them nothing. It simply gives them a look left, look right, shoot some targets, stand in the big empty box and tutorial is completed, you’re ready to play now!
It does nothing to instruct incoming players about the different heroes. The purpose of roles. How the objective matters in a game and how this isn’t a Call of Duty, Run N’ Gun, Kill Them All, shooter game. Many people actually believe that’s what it is initially. Blizzard is relying on these people to learn all from a blind approach and hopefully they meet those who are willing to help them out along the way. This is why people have such stark contrasts in their own view of the game. Most of it derives from ignorance.
Some people are opposed to criticism or suggestions. This is Human nature. However, I have found the Overwatch community to be predominantly unhelpful, condescending and very conceited. Their suggestions don’t always originate from the desire to assist someone, but from a place of control. A place of “I want you to play the way I want you to”. I learned about this game on my own. From Season 1 I had a fair share of toxic players who thought they knew everything. And it never changes no matter how high of a rank you reach. I’m in Master’s and they are still like this.
The other third of the community are those in denial and believe they are better than they are. They carry, but lose. Etc. Common human trait to save their self-esteem or worth…as if a game should be a measure of that. They don’t want to have to learn or improve. They just want the rank they think they should rightfull have.
Prerequisites can be higher, but increasing a level number isn’t going to change things. If nothing tells you you’re doing it wrong, and you’re not a person who is self-critical, then you’ll never learn how to do it correctly. This game needs a much better introduction. It needs to be clear on what the roles are, what they are supposed to do and emphasize that this is a team effort.
Punishments…as much as I am a fan of, they are hit or miss. I don’t see many logical or reasonable suggestions as far as that goes. You have people out there that want people banned for playing their favorite hero and doing so the best they can. Some think someone should be banned if they disconnect randomly. Honestly, people want someone banned if they believe anything or anyone is depriving them from where they think they belong. I am unsure how one is to create such a system of “justice” in this environment.
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I mean, 7 out of 10 of my placements were ruined by leavers. I’ve had 5 separate people leave my matches in the last 24 hours alone. It’s absolutely ridiculous and I can never climb. I honestly just want to sell my account for a loss at this point, because it looks totally and entirely hopeless that I will ever get to find my actual rank or ever get to play with competent people.
That’s true about “if nothing tells you you’re doing it wrong, then you’re not going to learn how to do it correctly”. For instance, if a team picks a comp that doesn’t synergize, they position poorly and then somehow still win then they’ve learned nothing except that all those things can be good.
I don’t know what the punishment is for leaving games or if there even is one, but it should be like 24hr competitive ban, and more if it’s a regular occurrence for the leaver. It is extremely out of hand, at least in my experiences and totally ruins the game. I have never had 10 out of 10 placement matches with 6 people in each game. I’ve never had the will power to play for a full season, even half a season, because of this behavior and I’m sure my motivation to ATTEMPT to rank up will die out in a week or less with how everything has gone since my most recent placements. I’ll end up doing my placements next season, having more than 50% of the games ruined by leavers and then saying forget it until next season. I want to try to improve from what my actual rank should be, not get punished by other people into being at least 1300 sr below where I should be. Unless I just man up and uninstall, accepting that I wasted 120 dollars on a game that has a terrible community.
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No role queue
people have to play what they don't want in order to have bigger chance to win, resulting in seeing someone that has a fraction of your skill, and you being his squire knowing that u would have bigger impact than he does -
No real punishments
which encourages trolling, you can just pick a hero that doesn't fit at all in your comp, flaming doesn't result in ban , only in chat restrictions so you can flame how much you want and the only thing you may have is an inability to speak to others which isn't a punishment at all if you ask me but thats just my opinion -
No community way to punish bad behaviour and praise good behaviour
we have avoid player , but avoiding 2 players a week is like not having the option at all since every other match most of us want to avoid at least half of the team, the only way you could praise good behaviour was getting somebody on your prefer list but we both know that it didn't work at all(usually when i hit prefer player i didn't play see them at all after that and if i did they were usually against me, thanks blizz), a couple of days ago i wanted to get a player on my prefer list and i saw that the option disappeared from my game , i don't know if it's a bug or something but i don't have it anymore. -
Performance based SR in lower ranks
This i think is an overlooked one, since it doesn't concern diamond+ players so influencers rarerly talk about it. We all know for a long time how bad performance based SR is, even Blizzard. That's why they removed it, but by removing it just from higher tiers of play results in about quarter(i think it's 20 something %) of all playerbase being in plat. Guess what that does. After you hit plat(and I'm here for at least 4 seasons) you get the biggest difference in skill i have ever seen. Even when i was in gold i didn't see such a differences , and i did a journey there quite recently and i have to admit , gold is much more reliable in a way where you can tell what these players can and cannot do. In plat there are a lot of players that abuse the performance based SR and get stuck in mid-plat , low-diamond resulting in a much more random matches most of the time. You get mercy's farming heals without trying to think , reinhardts farming dmg not thinking, because they know even if they lose the punishment is going to be far less than the reward if they do this constantly, which makes normal players even more furious when every other match there is this situation. I bet after they removed performance based SR in higher tiers , the ammount of people that went from plat to diamond and higher dropped significantly. It would be good if it happened just for 2 seasons , but i think the number drops constantly . I recently found my VOD's from like a year ago on my hard drive and i rewatched them and compared them to my recent VOD , i play better in every way , since I'm training every day and i practice my micro and macro play all the time while I'm playing, Yet it means nothing. If you can't play the system , you can't get higher , which is a pathology in itself.Hope i answered clearly
lots of reasons, not listed in any particular order, some of these have more impact than others.
- non cosmetic game changes take forever, gameplay, qol, ranked system changes and bug fix’s.
- hero swapping is in part to blame for flaming for playing off meta but this cant really be changed so
- automatic report system literally causes mob rule
- rules against lots of different things aren’t enforced
- a lack of transparency possibly
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because overwatch is far far far more chaotic… comparing fortnite to anything is a joke, you literately hide and go seek items and look out for the random person