So I just got unbanned this morning after serving a 15-day long ban from overwatch. I have received a few bans before on my account for using ‘toxic’ language in-game and have served those too. Now that I’ve also been unbanned from the forum I just want to warn people that the overwatch moderators seem to use the word ‘toxic’ to describe a lot of things. I haven’t sworn on overwatch for months and these are the examples the moderator told me were abusive:
"Chat lines such as “noobs”, “u obviously suck tbh” or “too ez” are against our Terms of Use. "
So now the overwatch moderators are labelling these as ‘abusive’ chat messages. Not complaining just letting the community know that now the word “noob” is also defined as abusive so just be careful what you chat or don’t chat at all because I wouldn’t be surprised if “gg” soon also becomes abusive. In simple terms don’t say anything that could make other people feel ‘down.’ But aside from all this I still have people using racist language in games through voice/text chat so I don’t get why they haven’t been banned?
Aside from that be careful when you use text chat.
“gg” is sportmanship when sent by the defeated team/player (this is what usually happens for example in StarCraft 1v1). It is usually the opposite of sportmanship in overwatch where “gg” is sent mostly only by the winning team even if it was a bad steamroll.
The primary purpose of text/voice communication in overwatch is improving the gameplay strategically. Having casual social interaction is also possible for those who want/need it (a minority of players in my experience). Both of the previously mentioned things are optional and your messages belong to neither of those categories. In my opinion the only purpose of your messages were to upset people, those messages are useless and improve nothing in the game. This is why they are “toxic”. A lot of people know this without receiving any kind of warning.
A less skilled player wants to receive a “noob” message from you probably as much as you want to receive “noob” from someone who is better than you. (Empathy) Can someone become a better player by receiviving more “noob” messages from top 500 players?
Can you tell us with your words what your intentions were when you sent those messages? What purpose they served? How did they improve the match?
It’s the receivers interpretation that makes something toxic from their perspective but perspective doesn’t equal fact. It is still only their opinion.
“gg” means “good game” and that’s a positive term “good” is by its very definition a positive descriptor. I used to use “gg” in other games regardless which team I’m on or if I won or lost. These days I use “ggwp”. You can choose to take “gg” as being toxic if you wish but I know that Blizz are smart enough to never change their official definition of this positive term into something negative / toxic just because the player base have chosen to perceive it that way.
“ggez” is completely different and Blizz can easily justify defining it as a toxic term. You can’t do that with “gg” though.
Well don’t get me wrong but yeah those are toxic words. But you are right on a point you will get banned for anything. I never even used those words last time, I just said FUN in the end, or told asked mercy why aren’t you healing?. I got silenced So called game masters at work (or not working at all?)
The text/voice communication’s primary purpose is communicating strategy or gameplay related information. A few people use it for socialisation too. Sending messages to the enemy team (match chat) is usually not required at all. Yeah, you can be reported for anything but you are unlikely to get too many reports and be punished if you use text/voice communication for the previously mentioned things like me.
Let’s imagine you have an unlucky streak and someone asks you “why aren’t you healing?” or “why aren’t you doing damage?”. The problem with these questions is that they usually come from frustrated people who’s intention isn’t helping. This is often my perception based on the tone when the question comes through voice chat. For this reason these “why aren’t you” questions have very negative connotations. While your intention might be helping and fixing the problem, most people asking these questions are just angry and want to lower their frustration by punishing someone with these words.
In my opinion it’s very easy to tell apart mercys who are just bad and trying to heal but perhaps die too often due to lack of skills, and those who are intentionally using pistol only or healing only their friends. With some other healers (ana, moira) its more difficult to tell if they are playing DPS only because they don’t know how to balance heal/DPS. In that case I simply say “please heal more and do damage only when you have some idle time” with a calm voice not like someone who is next to a nervous breakdown.
If you have to ask “why aren’t you” then something is already bad and asking the question will not fix it. It’s inflammatory in all cases without good results. If you think he isn’t simply bad (lack of skills) but intentionally not healing low hp players when he could then simply use “report for gameplay sabotage” and optionally write there the reason in the provided text box and don’t send anything into the chat. This is the correct way to handle that situation and in my opinion it should be enough to lower your frustration too.
If he is simply bad then try to help him with some advises but don’t push too hard with this because most people don’t like being schooled. In my opinion bad beginners are very receptive though. A lot of mercy’s who die simply position themselves in a bad way or use the left-shift ability the wrong way. I usually recommend them to stand behind the team and to avoid flying after bad overextending players. Also recommend them to press shift twice to prevent its slow ending animation by cancelling fly a few meters before reaching a fighting tank or DPS player. Or ask them to prioritise DPS healing when tanks have enough HP. I never ask “why aren’t you healing?” or “why aren’t you [anything]?”.
Yas the “Why aren’t you healing?” question is never helpful.
I’ve had it asked of me before and the answer is that I’m either healing someone else, you were in a position I couldn’t get to, I was locked in a res cast, you were purple or my favourite: you were just insta-gibbed. The amount of times I’ve had people get pissy boots over coms after they’ve just been head shot by a Widowmaker … They know healing doesn’t help in this situation, but their natural reaction is to go right to blaming the healer.
The game is very immature in the aspect of it’s code of conduct, either say nice things or shut up because you will hurt someones feelings and that’s bannable.
If you treat people like children I guess that’s what you get, people are hurt by all the little things now days.
Oh noes they said gg ez, that hurt my feelings, let me go to blizzard and cry.
Yeah when I die I see a mercy dancing behind me or a moira who is only attacking enemies is something you praise. Or a support who only heals one person all game. So you praise those? You side with throwers? Nice.
Perhaps you failed to read my post. I said simply report them for gameplay sabotage instead of whining both in-game and here on the forum. You’ll probably continue whining no matter what advice you receive here. Some of you should probably avoid team based games with random people. Or avoid team based games completely if you are unable/unwilling to build your own team of compatible players. Play 1v1 PvP or single player.
Thanks for telling people what to do. I am sure everyone will listen to you. You must be the authority of sending useless forum posts.
Listen to your own advice from me :
“Perhaps you should stop whining about peoples posts on forum and don’t write on forums? Perhaps you should avoid any contact with people in your life too. You might get beaten around if you behave like that, it is for your own safety.”
I gave recommendations. You can do whatever you want with them. Or continue doing what you’ve been doing so far even if you know it has never worked.
I provided a very good solution to your dancing mercy problem but you completely ignored it and continued whining.
I said instead of team based PvP you might be better off with 1v1 PvP or single player. This applies to real life too. If you don’t find the right environment for yourself and continue doing the same thing that is known to be not working then you are masochist.
Completely true in real life. You have to find your place. Groups will not adapt to you. You have to adapt to groups or find groups that are better suited for you.
You do know it takes a significant amount of reports for blizzard to decide it’s necessary to take action? From my assumption, you were being an arse more often than not. Don’t make it out like you’re hard done to because you behaved in a manor that incited a toxic environment.
Sorry I have lots of works to do and add things to society unlike you. I get into forums a few moments in a day. No more time to answer your pointless arguments. You are the type of person who starts arguing and make pointless answers to everything, get a job. Oh I work in teams making animations, sorry forgot that. I know much better than you how to work in teams, who doesn’t do their jobs in the team gets fired by the way, which never happened to me.
Yeah if I say “FUN” at the end of games, some salty loser will report everytime and that will amount to lots of reports, and so called game masters who doesn’t do anything all day. You can even report everyone even if they did not do anything and that will add to their report sum without anyone checking it and bam they will get silenced.
You guys have no idea what is really going on, and make pointless arguments in forums all day long. Good luck in your life, you will need it.
Thanks no. It’s not for everyone. I prefer making money in other ways.
I worked in the games industry for a period of time. Animators were sitting silently at their desks 90+% of the time doing their own things. I’m not saying this as a negative remark, just as a comparison between teamwork there, and constant cooperation required in some other cases like overwatch gameplay. Doing you own thing and having a meeting occasionally with people you know is very different from teaming up for short periods of time with strangers.
You know what actually really makes me mad about this? Is that you have been caught multiple times committing the same infraction against the Terms of Use and still continued to do it. Then on this forum you show that you obviously still don’t understand why your behavior is wrong.
Yet your account is still not banned!!!
The only huge fail here is blizzard. You should obviously have had your account perma-banned. But they don’t have the backbone to actually do what they should in this blatantly obvious case.
Yet we still have discussions on this forum asking why the community in this game is so toxic. SMH.
Ok, so there’s a lot of people saying that those are toxic words. I’m sorry but I’ve been sworn at twice today and even called an n-word, so reported them. Hope they get banned.
Also, it’s true overwatch is sensitive to anything, are they really toxic? Noob is a word used in the online gaming community, it’s not toxic. It’s a word that people use, but apparently it’s “abusive”, there’s a difference between toxic and abusive. Blizzard don’t know the meaning of “abusive”
So called game masters at work (or not working at all?)![:joy:](https://d1kzxbyyijk9k6.cloudfront.net/en/overwatch/images/emoji/twitter/joy.png?v=6" ":joy:")