Blizzard adds a nice LFG system and people still want to complain about solo Q comps. I quit for a few months and went to play R6 and came back to do my placements over the weekend and wow did everyone get toxic. Not a single game did someone not to cry about something. Blizzard is making massive strides in-game and yet I join a game and get railed on the whole time for a hero pick. Before anyone gets all bent out of shape… I can proficiently play any hero and do tend to fill and carry. I have sat in masters for easily the last 5 or 6 seasons.
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While I sit bored af at work and continue posting on everything I agree. Maybe it’s not Blizz I just think the community has gotten way worse than past seasons. I have never had such trouble rising in rank between quitters, people who dont give ashot, people who autolock and can give 2 shots about playing as a team. They were always there but it seems like they’re are 10x more
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Every competitive game is going to have some level of toxicity, but OW’s current state is definitely Blizzard’s making.
For starters the format and design of the game itself has an inherent level of player frustration. If this was CS:GO, CoD, Quake, or really any other FPS team game then a player’s capacity to carry a game is capped only by their skill. Overwatch is fundamentally different because the average damage output by heroes compared to the life pool of an entire game is heavily stacked against individual play. Not to mention its not a kind of combat where engagements are segregated into 1v1s, 1v2s, etc… Unfortunately, this also results in a game where the capacity to sandbag a team by under-performing, not cooperating, or throwing is much more effective than other games as well.
I’ve won 4v5 games of CS many times. I’ve never won a 5v6 in OW.
This leads into the second design problem. Blizzard wanted a culture of political correctness without any kind of blaming or shaming (the irony). Some how someone thought it an amazing idea to eliminate basic competitive elements like having a scoreboard with informative stats.
Here is a basic fact of humanity. When things are going bad people get frustrated. When people get too frustrated they look to vent by outwardly blaming. Taking away the scoreboard doesn’t shield anyone from blaming it just make everyone a target. Meanwhile, players have lost a key tool for potentially correcting the situation. Imagine if a team could see all damage and healing done and taken for each person. One could see that maybe the reason one DPS isn’t doing much is because they are getting focused and not healed. A team could see which person on the enemy team is really the one they need to focus.
tl;dr OW is a game where an individual has less control over a winning outcome and more power to cause a loss. Meanwhile Blizzard doesn’t want blaming/shaming so they make teams statistically blind to how everyone is performing, which just leads to blaming/shaming everyone.
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The toxicity is completely Blizzard’s fault. They shouldn’t have handicapped Competitive Play with Match Making Rating.
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You have all the control you could want… a great LFG system that was never there before… what more can you ask for? If you solo Q you take that risk and you have no right to complain about it.
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It’s called people. They act like that in competitive games. What kills me is how many people let themselves get worked up about it. Mute, Block, Avoid, Report… WOW! No more toxicity. Amazing how that worked.
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I played about 20 games this weekend and almost every single one of them had some kind of toxic attitude yelling… being jerk… what ever it might have been was awful.
Played more R6 probably double that and not a single game was toxic. I play at a comparable elo there as well.
This isn’t a video game problem it’s an overwatch problem.
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I do agree that all the coddling Overwatch does (hiding EVERYTHING except actual SR) encourages overly-sensitive types to flock to this game. A little reality would go a long way toward fixing these issues. Whiners would eventually leave if they saw a scoreboard lol.
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You do realise that the game overwatch is a solely team based game? In cs:go and cod, there isn’t a team. Just people thrown together in a side. The sides with mist kills wins. You don’t have to play objectives. It’s just a elimination chamber. Overwatch is the opposite. It’s a group of people thrown together in a team. You have objectives you play. Where in cod, you can go the whole game without capturing anything and still win, in overwatch you must capture or push etc or else you fail. The problem is people think this is a game like cod where you can do without communication and basically it’s all you. It’s not. There are no healers in cod, no tanks. Only DPS. Everyone is the same.
Not to mention the fact that for each hero, there is a counter. So playing as you would want is an automatic no go. You must work together. That is the whole point of overwatch.
There’s no need to check who’s doing what and who’s not pulling their weight or who to focus. There’s no need to check every detail. Why? Cos it doesn’t matter. You shoot an enemy rein to half health, he comes back with full health. Why? Obviously he’s been healed. Your teammate Genji is dying too much to the widow, your Genji is obviously poor. Everything is right infront of you. The problem with overwatch is people don’t want to know who’s Not pulling their weight, they want a team they like. They don’t care if the widow is killing all members of the enemy team, they want widow gone bcos people don’t like her. That’s the problem that needs to be fixed. And it’s easy. There’s mute, block and report.
And an individual has control over wins and losses equally. That’s why there are terms like throwing and carrying. The problem is most people are not good enough to carry. A lot of people are frustrated and some people don’t want to even bother and just leave. It sucks but there are punishments for that. A team can absolutely win a 5v6 even 4v6 in overwatch. Happens loads of times. It’s just when they enemy switches to counter your Tracer or Genji, most don’t think to switch from those heroes.
The problem with overwatch is 100% caused by the players. Not blizzard. Okay let’s make that 99% cos sometimes blizzard can kick you out, disconnects and all that. But they’ve given everyone an equal chance. Some people are just better than others at certain video games. But the beauty of overwatch is that even those who ate not so good can rise to the top with a lot of application of sense, patience, practice and obviously teamwork.
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They one thing that would be nice is a simple scoreboard that would let the team at least know who’s sitting on medals. It’s a good indicator of a silent carry or someone slacking very hard.
They do have the right to complain about it because solo Q is presented as a viable option to competitive gameplay, which is misleading. There’s no disclaimer message on the screen saying “Solo queuing will provide a poor experience. You’ve been warned.” or “Solo queuing is subject to our matchmaking laws, in which we decide what teammates to give you for reasons you may or may not agree with.”
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We are going to take 12 people who have similar SR and put them together - make it work or don’t… or make a group… that is a given… if you can’t give that out play quickplay.
Of course it’s not Blizzards fault.
The more popular a game is the more toxicity comes with it especially if there is a competitive mode.
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It really won’t.
If it’s a general rule that medals don’t mean anything then knowing won’t do any good.
It’s true, blizzards has nerfed, tweaked and changed so much about the game but its still playable. It ain’t blizzard, it’s the players
I really wish that was true, but the fact of the matter is that it is 100% Blizzard’s fault. They only care about the Overwatch League and treat their Competitive mode like a joke. Note how they rarely, if ever, comment on the Competitive forums, and you wonder why people on these forums take anything Blizzard says with a grain of salt.
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What they said. Also to add though, Blizzard’s lack of open discipline action and lack of rules (the latter somewhat addressed by Hackusations) is also to blame. Their rules on what you can report - especially game play sabotage - are extremely vague after all. Their lack of any reports on “We banned X players for cheating, Y players for Z time for being toxic” also does not help. The best we get is a “Thanks for reporting, we swear we did something about it” notice but with how many reports I at least send out a session it’s clearly not enough to hold anyone back from being toxic or throwing. Plus the “we did something about it” could be anything from a ban, to a simple temp muting, to a short term ban, or just a “please stop it” notice to a player. Hell, at this point I wonder if that pop up message is just to try and make me feel better while not actually doing anything.
EDIT: Also when specific players can knowingly troll highly popular streamers for nearly a year before getting any actions taken against them, well it basically just screams to everyone else who wants to troll that it’s open season and Blizzard really doesn’t care as long as they make $$
If only there were a solo comp with role lock so everyone can play on even terms, which is, you know, essential for competitive envierment. Or balance for that matter.
But its clearly palyers fault to expect online only “esports” game to follow rules of competition.
Agreed yesterday I joined a lfg with plats and we lost and they of course blamed me bc I am gold…while I was sitting on 4 golds on Zarya on fire almost half the match
If I am sitting on 3 gold medals the whole game + obj time for most of it, on fire for most of the game… but playing 1cp Torb in a ELO 800sr Lower than I usually play where I can sleep walk myslf into diamond… how is that trowing toxic or anything?
I did my job… I got play of the game… I got a card on the board… do I deserve nasty messages?
How about me playing widow attack? with all of the golds… do I deserve that?
Keep in mind I usually don’t say anything until people get toxic to the point I can’t let it go or they start sending me messages. I can EASY carry a plat / Diamond game playing my strongest heroes but I choose not to so that the game is still fair… I don’t see how someone wanting an easy carry automatically makes me the ahole especially when it’s solo Q comp.
Over the last 4 days I have had nothing but ultra toxic people.
This is so true. Don’t want to get into bad games near as much? Then don’t solo Q anymore. It’s literally that simple. But people don’t get that for some reason.