Children, why do you do this to each other? Why?
Some context: I’ve played OW for about a year now. I’m a “hardstuck” plat; because I just don’t play comp anymore after I got flamed in 8 of 10 placement matches a few seasons ago, despite winning 7 of 10. It’s just a terribly negative experience. Ok, I get it. People take it too seriously, and I don’t want to deal with their repressions, so I just play QP.
So, I enjoy QP a lot, and I mostly play in the little hours. It’s great fun, actually. You generally get decent team comps, a lot of people actually lock tank/healer and play those heroes to something of a standard, everyone’s spamming voice lines, making silly plays and just having a lot of fun. Yes, you get a bad game ever so often, but that is still the exception.
Now, I recently got back from a one month getaway and my sleep pattern was very different from the usual, so I ended up playing Overwatch in the morning and in the daytime. And you know what, you people who complain about everything and anything that has to do with the game: I finally understand you. Everything is absolutely terrible for you. I am very sorry for you.
The daytime QP is basically just a deathmatch mode for kids where you are handed teammates so you can blame someone other than yourself. 6v6 DPS all day. God forbid if you pick a tank or support. No one will utilise a tank. Any tank other than DPS Winston, choke defence Orisa or Zarya for dragon combo is a fat throw pick, because you won’t get played around. (That Hanzo’s gonna tilt in chat if you dare combo with someone else, instead of waiting for his sorry butt to respawn after he over-extended massively.) No one will peel for a support, either, so I sometimes try to do that myself if someone finds themselves making the grave mistake of picking a support.
So I played the morning QP like I would play the midnight QP, and I did so for 5 days. And five days was all it took to get my account silenced for 7 days due to “multiple reports of abusive chat”. What? I barely chat. I mean, I sometimes write a few lines. I have a tendency to say “okg okp” instead of “gg wp”, and I sometimes make remarks about things like “almost locating” the objective or one’s teammates, but that’s pretty much it. I’m just doing what I’ve been doing for a year. And all of a sudden I got actioned within the span of 5 days after a one month break, simply because I played the game at a different time of the day.
Now, I wish I was kidding and just being outright racist, but at the core of all this, multiple packs of angry French kids mass reported me, because they don’t like losing to a Symmetra who says “Impressive!” after thwarting some poor DPS kid’s unimaginably unimaginative flank. And they do let me know they’re going to report me. They always do. They are very vocal about reporting people, often in ways that give you reasons to report them in return.
Blizzard seems pretty trigger happy with the actions, too. They basically advertise the game using the raw number of actions this report lottery produces. I don’t report a lot of players, but about once every three days the game hands me a fat thank you for reporting. Once or twice, I’ve found myself reporting a player for a reason I later find petty, and I wish I could take it back, but no, Blizzard be like “Thanks for helping us pad our stats!”.
The appeal process is a joke all of its own. You have to provide government-issued ID and all that jazz. And I’ve seen too many forum posts about actions not getting overturned for me to even bother trying. Maybe I should have tried appealing, for science. Well, it is too late now, since the penalty has ended.
Ok, so I got silenced. I go to the forums to talk about it… and I see so many topics about false reports. Well, great, I’ll just share my experience in a relevant thread, right…? Well, I can’t. I’m silenced. For using voice lines. So naturally I can still use voice lines as usual, but I can’t post on the forums, because the kids who mass report you because they don’t like you apparently just use “abusive chat” for a cover-all.
Now, with the endorsement system, and maintaining a rating of 4 being tricky enough, it is even easier to observe how you get reported for basically everything. Said “okg okp” instead of “gg wp” after a stomp? Reported. Making any critical remark to actually help your team? “st*u ur trash” + reported. Four gold medals as Symmetra on defence, payload hasn’t moved in several minutes? “sym switch ur countered very badly”. No, I’m not switching, thank you. Reported. Emoting while waiting for your teammates to respawn? REPORTED FOR OBVIOUS INACTIVITY. (This one really is my favourite.) I think my record for # of times dropped from rank 4 to 3 in one play session is 3. I can have a game where I did fantastic and receive 3+ endorsement from my teammates, only for the game to tell me I’ve dropped from rank 4 to 3, again.
Pretty much the only way to not get reported is to pick a hero, whose character kids would not judge, and play like a bot. I play Symmetra a lot, so I get reported for simply existing, it seems. “u play sym ur trash already”. Ok, kid, whatever you say. No, her rework hasn’t helped her reputation within, uhh, this age group, much. You’re “trash already” for picking a moderately pigmented female character who wears the hottest technology and nail polish to war. “u play sym what kind of person r u ??” Dude, you play hitscan DPS only and you’re asking me. What kind of person are you?
So uhh, yeah. Daytime QP. Oh boy…
, and the increased latency (15ms → 115ms) doesn’t bother me, on some moments it feels like a advantage.
