Toxicity is a battle Blizzard will never win, I'd prefer them to stop trying

General Discussion
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Alright I’m gonna make some comparisons to TF2 and Valve here so hold on to your hats.

Blizzard has a track record for trying very hard to make Overwatch a friendly & welcoming place for all. With It’s diverse cast of characters, bubbely artstyle and complete lack of any and all gore and edge (I don’t count Reaper) you’d think that a positive and open community would fit right in. As we all know this is not the case.

In an attempt to force this in to reality Blizzard has gone as far as banning people for playing a single hero, banning people for reporting to much, banning people for being mean (something thats very subjective IMO) or just regular old sh*tposting.

Using any of Overwatches social features I always feel like big nanny Blizzard is looking over my shoulder judging my every move, ready to kick me out at any moment if I don’t behave like a good little boy.

Aside from a temp forum mute for spicy language I haven’t actually been banned myself, although one of my fellow edgelords, one without a filter has been banned twice so far, facing permanent suspension if it happens again.

Now compare this to TF2, while the game does give players an option to kick people, the only thing Valve will actually suspend your account for is cheating. A regular game of TF2 often has the chat filled with racial slurs, death treaths and vulgarity that would make any good christian soil themselves. And yet despite (or perhaps thanks to) this I can say without a doubt that the TF2 community is more laidback, friendly and fun than the Overwatch community could ever hope to be.

Now before you all claim I’m some TF2 fanboy living in the past, I’m not, I prefer Overwatch as a game, and played it way more than any Valve game ever since I bought it at launch.

Since toxicity is a something that will never be erradicated, I’d rather Blizzard takes a page out of Valves book, and just stops trying to fight it entirely. Only ever banning people for straight up aimbotting and hardcore griefing, yes this means you’ll have to suffer a few n-words, death treaths and good old curse words in chat, without any of these heinous crimes (sarcasm) being punished.
But I’m sure all you fine adults playing this game recognize these meaningless and powerless words for what they are, just that.

For those that can’t, well I’ve played ranked, these things are already said constantly, is the thought of these people being punished really that important to you?

TL;DR:
Valve is like that cool uncle that you can smoke weed and get into trouble with, and Blizzard is that out of touch christian mom that doesn’t let you and your friend go outside after 6.

2 Likes
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I feel that poor sportsmanship is a bigger problem. “This hero fragged me, that means there OP and Blizzard should remove them from the game.”

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Let’s stop fighting criminals, murderers, terrorists too because we’ll never win those fights.

My opinion: let’s ban trash talkers and let them smoke weed and trash talk with their cool uncle.

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So in you’re opinion some angree, rando, tween flipping out and saying mean things because he lost a match is right up there with firing a machine gun into a crowd of people? There’s a difference between problems that are hard to solve and problems that deserve to be stopped.

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They should stop restricting information in hopes of combating it when in fact it promotes more. Give us all the info, ffs. A scoreboard, revert to public profiles.

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Something like that, I never got the private profiles and made mine public the second they introduced it, I’m all for giving people the ability to actually see whats going on.

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I would disagree.

They should keep on trying.
I am quite tired of people filling up the chat with flames, insults, racial slurs etc.
At that point, people are only paying attention to the chat and not the game and you are bound to loose. And this will keep on happening.

I for one am glad Blizzard is taking time and effort in silencing these people, they’ll surely be thinking twice before they go on an angry rant again.

I just disagree with the auto-ban/silence mechanic behind it.

This is a feature that can be abused by people that have gotten so mad at you for whatever reason that they’re just reporting you out of grief.

Adding negative penalties to your account.

Which will also happens in Valve games.

One of my cs:go accounts has been dropped in to the lower pools, because too many people thought I was cheating. While I never did. Valve could never confirm if I did so I never got V.A.C banned but they did lower me in the queue pools. Now I’m automatically queued with griefers or cheaters. So Valve ain’t great either.

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“My room will just get dirty again in a week, why should I bother cleaning it?”

2 Likes
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Why should I brush my teeth, when I eventually can get dentures?

1 Like
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“Why should I shower, my hair will just get greasy again?”

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Fair comparisons I guess, I just think Blizzard does more harm to the game in trying to fix toxicity, turning what should be a fun laidback experience into “Don’t yell to loud or daddy Blizzard will spank you”.

In my opinion toxicity is a minor issue, I’m from the “Sticks and stones my break my bones but words could never hurt me” train of thought, a dying breed it seems.

I just have a hard time empathizing with you guys, can you explain to me what exactly happens to you when someone says something bad.

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I don’t even think they’re doing that much to help with toxicity.
What are the right things to do? Well first find out what causes toxicity, then work on that source of problem. That is the only way to deal with it. Trying to patch things after the problem is caused is a waste of time, I don’t consider that productive at all.

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Toxic behavior is a form of throwing the game, so it works directly against what you try to achieve in the game, therefor the less there is hostility among your own team the better it is to achieve what the point of the game is: Win.

Once you start standing still and throwing crap around at people while doing nothing, you are directly nerfing your team by taking your self out of the fight, and most likely taking anyone else out of the fight who gets triggered. Don’t think it as bannable offense because it’s mean or anything like that, it’s simply sabotaging your own and your team’s success so it should be punishable on that merit alone.

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The only difference is the severity of those those things but both are unwanted. I think punishing toxic players shouldn’t be stopped. If someone plays a game that makes him angry then it is his fault. Perhaps he should play a different game in which defeat isn’t a possible outcome, a solo game without dependency on team mates or something similar. Instead of spreading his anger over his team mates he could start beating up his keyboard to lower his anger. I want blizzard to punish everyone who is a d### in my matches.

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As a counter argument to this I could also say that people who are hurt by words shouldn’t be playing multiplayer games, or be on the internet at all. I’m not someone who easely gets mad in a game, just generaly a foulmouth and a sh*tposter

1 Like
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Because trash talking is a necessary part of multiplayer games and online platforms. At least some want that to be the case. OW isn’t the internet and there are various other places for those who want to exercise their trash talking skills. In this game the only thing that requires chat is communicating strategy.

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So how many of you consider the constant griping about this hero or that being OP to be toxic?

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I don’t think that having hundreds of threads complaining about the same thing is desirable and constructive (and it’s against the CoC) but I consider it to be significantly less annoying/harmful than toxic and/or trash talking players in-game. Not to mention that the forums are read by much less people than those who play the game and on the forums one can decide to avoid such threads.

Moderation exists on some online platforms (like forums and in-game communication) because trash talking benefits only the toxic person (or no one) at the expense of many other people. There are much more cons than pros but it’s sad if this reason isn’t obvious for some. There are online places where being toxic is tolerated to some degree (just like in our physical real life) but people get fed up with toxic people everywhere after a point.

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All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

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If we don’t jump on the bandwagon and actually look at what blizzard has done it’s not that interesting.

They have a report system and that’s about it. The war on toxicity has never been that big of a thing and it never will be.