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[racketpunch]

C'mon Blizzard. Bring back the ability to avoid players at least. It's so frustrating when reporting a toxic player but only to be grouped up with said player in the next match.

 

[RoninChaos]

My kid was asking me if he could get overwatch the other day so we could play it together on PC. I've played it on Playstation without much issue but now I don't think I'll be doing the PC with him if the community is like that.

 

[aeolist]

"just don't talk" isn't a solution especially for this game, team voice chat is hugely important and better communicators will usually beat a less organized team of individually better players.

telling people not to talk is the same thing as telling them to give up on any hope of competing, which is a major part of the game's appeal.

 

[wildfire]

This article indirectly (by not countering the anecdote of one of their quotes) claims voice chat can't be monitored but that's very inaccurate. Phone companies did it since their existence. Youtube now shows how feasible it is to automate it. Game devs simply never bothered to implement such functions at this point.

 

[Algebrah]

Man, this makes me really sad. This is what has steered me away from a lot of modern multiplayer games.

I have been giving Rainbow 6 a shot over the last week and the community has been surprising nice in my experience.

 

[TankRizzo]

shit like this is why mute all forms of voice chat with randoms. Fuck dealing with this childish nonsense.

 

[hampig]

I'm surprised to hear that many people use voice chat. It sucks, but this is one of the main reasons I don't even bother with it anymore. Discord or private chats only.

 

[Roubjon]

I wish muting was a quicker process because I end up doing it a lot while playing overwatch.

 

[Akuun]

I play with my wife and while we haven't run into any sexist assholes harassing her so far, I dread the day we do. I know it'll happen sooner or later.

 

[Shake Appeal]

I've been lucky in encountering very little harassment in Overwatch (general toxicity and griping, but not awful shit), and I'll usually call things out — e.g., male teammates saying "kill that bitch" when referring to a Tracer on the other team (and it's always directed at female heroes, never male ones). I rarely get anything other than scorn back, but at least I've made them aware I don't think it's acceptable.

The couple of female friends I have say that they get infrequent harassment, but anecdotally it's better — or at least no worse — than other games with voice chat.

The couple of times people were dumb enough to make jokes about the Holocaust or Orlando shooting in text chat, I've reported them and asked my group to do the same.

 

[Innolis]

I feel for this people, but I'm not sure what can Blizzard do. I don't have access to statistics but if most of the abuse comes from teenagers then you'd need to have their parents intervene.

 

[Pilgrimzero]

The people who really deserve abuse are people who play Torb on attack.

 

[RipperGrim]

Neogaf already pre selects who can even sign up. That's not going to happen with games. With overwatch, you'd at least have to buy the game again after a ban, but with a huge amount of online games there are no barriers to signing up at all. Banning these people isn't a good enough solution and it won't solve the problem.

That's before the issue of banning people who are innocent. Ban too quickly and you'll ban a lot of the people you want to protect. That works fine on a free forum, but for a product you bought? Eh....


I don't want to give the impression that i'm against companies doing something or that nothing needs to be done, i'm just arguing against the idea that the only thing needed to fix this, is blizzard spending a couple of millions more on customer support.

You have to buy the game which I would say is a bigger barrier than joining Neogaf because you have to use cash. I would say there's only so much times a parent would spend money on a game for their kid, especially if they confront the company banning them and that company shows them evidence of harassment, obviously there are also adults as well that are part of the problem but you would think they would learn the lesson after a few bans and wasted money.

I know that you aren't advocating in favour of the harassment but I don't believe at all that these companies have done even close enough to combat this situation and there are most definitely ways that be can be developed to do so. There has been very little innovation on this front for years now besides muting.

 

[Fisty]

My kid was asking me if he could get overwatch the other day so we could play it together on PC. I've played it on Playstation without much issue but now I don't think I'll be doing the PC with him if the community is like that.

My son has been dying to get Overwatch, is the community decent on PS4? Honestly this is like the 4th time I've heard stuff like this about the game, and since communication is pretty important in games like this, I've just shut him down everytime.

 

[RipperGrim]

My son has been dying to get Overwatch, is the community decent on PS4? Honestly this is like the 4th time I've heard stuff like this about the game, and since communication is pretty important in games like this, I've just shut him down everytime.

What other games do they have? Because if they are online it wouldn't be that much different (CoD,GTA V, BF 1 )

 

[Fisty]

What other games do they have? Because if they are online it wouldn't be that much different (CoD,GTA V, BF 1 )

This would be his first legitimate FPS, his friends seem to be all about it. He's 12

 

[Shake Appeal]

It's anecdotal, of course, but I honestly believe I've seen and heard less harassment playing Overwatch than any of the popular military shooters (CoD/Battlefield). Obviously Overwatch is a hugely popular game, but I think it being a pew-pew, colorful, diverse, "cartoon" world makes it self-selecting to a degree.

95% of the toxicity I encounter is game-related: People are mad about the comp or hero choices or how things are going, so they tilt, throw, go nuts in chat. That can never excuse typing stuff like "kys," though.

This would be his first legitimate FPS, his friends seem to be all about it. He's 12

I'd be wary about letting a 12 year-old play FPS games, but if you're going to do it, Overwatch is a better choice than anything else out there. Like I said above, it's colorful and friendly. It's not realistic or gory. The violence is a little abstracted. I'd be super-wary about having any 12 year-old talk to strangers via voice chat online, though.

 

[Enter The 36 Chambers]

"just don't talk" isn't a solution especially for this game, team voice chat is hugely important and better communicators will usually beat a less organized team of individually better players.

telling people not to talk is the same thing as telling them to give up on any hope of competing, which is a major part of the game's appeal.

I never said don't talk, I said don't solo queue.

There is absolutely no need to play with random teammates.

None.

 

[chrisPjelly]

My son has been dying to get Overwatch, is the community decent on PS4? Honestly this is like the 4th time I've heard stuff like this about the game, and since communication is pretty important in games like this, I've just shut him down everytime.

People barely talk on PS4, and the ones that do, from my experience are the ones that legitimately want to coordinate. Online PC gaming with chat has always been more toxic than whatever Xbox Live was responsible for (even during the pre party chat days).

 

[Mariip]

My son has been dying to get Overwatch, is the community decent on PS4? Honestly this is like the 4th time I've heard stuff like this about the game, and since communication is pretty important in games like this, I've just shut him down everytime.

I never saw a living person speaking in team chat, if he's got friends, set his game to auto join group chat and he'll be mostly fine(the game has a button to auto join team chat tho, but having another people on those channels is pretty rare on ps4)

 

[Mesoian]

My son has been dying to get Overwatch, is the community decent on PS4? Honestly this is like the 4th time I've heard stuff like this about the game, and since communication is pretty important in games like this, I've just shut him down everytime.

He'll get destroyed in competitive.

Which, like 80% of the rest of the community, means he'll just stick to quick play and arcade.

Honestly, if you're that worried about it, you should just disable chat at the system level. This is not a problem unique to Overwatch, which is why that "console open chat is dead" thread from a few days ago was so ridiculous.

 

[RipperGrim]

This would be his first legitimate FPS, his friends seem to be all about it. He's 12

The game itself should be fine for a 12 year old considering how it's all cartoon violence but man the community really can be stressful on competitive mode. If he just sticks to quick play and arcade it should be good because you can at least mute since communication isn't vital like competitive.

 

[Apathy]

Avoid player with more punishment for people who get reported for abusive behaviour would go a long way to fix the issue, but in blizzards infinite wisdom, 99% of people have to suffer through shit like this because a top 500 widow had to wait a little longer for a game.

 

[Deleted member 325805]

This would be his first legitimate FPS, his friends seem to be all about it. He's 12

I very rarely hear people speak on PC, and you can mute text and voice chat anyway.

 

[Gattsu25]

People barely talk on PS4, and the ones that do, from my experience are the ones that legitimately want to coordinate. Online PC gaming with chat has always been more toxic than whatever Xbox Live was responsible for (even during the pre party chat days).

Pretty funny post considering that the single most toxic gaming community was the early Halo 2 community. Xbox Live launch day was a clusterfuck.

 

[HMD]

I never had an issue with OW because I play on console and in my 180 levels I've literally never heard people talk lol. But games like CoD/GTA5 and other big titles especially on PS3 were so bad. The party chat system saved us from having to speak to idiots to be honest.

 

[Kinyou]

Shit like this is the reason why you cant chat in Hearthstone at all.

I also have the feeling the more competitive the game is the worse it gets

 

[balohna]

My top two heroes are D.Va and Hanzo.

Someone asked me once if I have an Asian fetish. Like... What? I think a lot of it comes down to edgy teenagers, but obviously that isn't going to make people getting harrassed feel better.

I block, mute and report every asshole I meet.

Spoiler

I have 0 hours on Genji and Mei

 

[Hyun Sai]

God Bless party chat, that wall made online great again.

 

[John Kowalski]

Frankly doing this kind of shit should be a straight permaban.

 

[Violet_0]

My kid was asking me if he could get overwatch the other day so we could play it together on PC. I've played it on Playstation without much issue but now I don't think I'll be doing the PC with him if the community is like that.

good luck finding a game that isn't niche with a player base that isn't like that. You'll find this sort of behavior in every popular game simply because the players themself are the problem

 

[Mesoian]

Shit like this is the reason why you cant chat in Hearthstone at all.

I also have the feeling the more competitive the game is the worse it gets

Overwatch is in a unique position from other FPS because the only modes that really work are Quickplay and Competitive, so people have no choice but to take them seriously or fall off the game entirely. There's no side mode that you can do for light playing or bullshitting where bots aren't involved because the modes in arcade basically don't work well and the players have to be incentivized to interact with it at all in the form of 3 loot boxes a week.

So people lose their minds a little more when someone makes mistakes, which leads to a lot of toxic shit because it's way easier to blame others for a mistake you could have helped with. Overwatch is, interestingly enough, more of a pressure cooker shooter than the rest of the competition because the only thing ever worth playing is the thing just played out in front of you. There is no distraction, there are no excuses, and every time Blizzard puts in a new mode to be a distraction, it is dramatically worse than the current standard mode.

Arcade has just as much bullshittery going on within it, but that sort of gets waved off because No Limits is bullshit, Random is bullshit, 90% of the arcade brawls were bullshit, they don't matter as anything but a means to get more boxes. Quickplay and Arcade though...they are so rigid that the first semblance of bad play leads people into furvored fits of anger. And I won't lie, it's happened to me too, but I know to turn my god damn mic off if I'm going to start berating people. You still need to get it out, but no one has to hear that shit.

Behavior is tied to any one specific game, it is tied to the player. Everyone has the ability to make it so they can swear like a sailor, up and down, day in day out, and no one else can hear it. The problem is we have too many people considering that sort of behavior to be acceptable, sometimes endorsed, because "that's how it's always been" and "boys will be boys", which is bullshit.

"just don't talk" isn't a solution especially for this game, team voice chat is hugely important and better communicators will usually beat a less organized team of individually better players.

telling people not to talk is the same thing as telling them to give up on any hope of competing, which is a major part of the game's appeal.

Honestly, the only thing that will sort of rally the wagons is if this sort of behavior is tied to losses. "xxSephiroth420xx has 18 text chat strikes on his account, and that stinks and he should probably be banned, but more importantly, he's gone 2-48 in the past month. People who talk shit are bad players."

The irony being Overwatch purposely obfuscates that information in order to make people feel better about their play over the course of time.

 

[PMS341]

Frankly doing this kind of shit should be a straight permaban.

There should be harsher consequences, yes.

However, this all boils down to money. Clearly this method would cause a good amount of people to be outright banned, and so the install base would be naturally reduced. To the CEOs and shareholders, this means less profit, which means no-go.

What does it take, truly, to deal with this sort of issue?

 

[aeolist]

I never said don't talk, I said don't solo queue.

There is absolutely no need to play with random teammates.

None.

i can't group for comp because my friends are out of my SR range. i literally don't have anyone to play with.

again, you're just telling people in situations like this to not play or to hobble their experience when the onus should be on blizzard to put some of their unspeakably gigantic profits towards policing their community.

 

[C.Olimar788]

Gamers are garbage, more news at eleven.

Makes me wonder if the devs couldn't put in word recognition software for this sort of thing. It could log occurrences and record chat when it heard trigger words, and possibly dish out auto-bans at the end of the match. If people contested the ban, the recordings would be reviewed. Seems like it wouldn't take back-end that Blizzard doesn't have access to. Even easier for text chat.

To my knowledge console Overwatch doesn't even have a way to report harassers, which should be the absolute bare minimum for this sort of thing.

 

[Mesoian]

There should be harsher consequences, yes.

However, this all boils down to money. Clearly this method would cause a good amount of people to be outright banned, and so the install base would be naturally reduced. To the CEOs and shareholders, this means less profit, which means no-go.

What does it take, truly, to deal with this sort of issue?

The community to come together and agree that this sort of behavior is unacceptable and should be curbed.

Which, as the past 24 months have shown, will not happen.

I never said don't talk, I said don't solo queue.

There is absolutely no need to play with random teammates.

None.

I have 4 friends on either side of the skill rank who I can't do competitive with because we're out of skill range.

There are reasons to solo queue, even if it's just grinding out SR.

 

[CraigerGamer]

Shit like this is the reason why you cant chat in Hearthstone at all.

I also have the feeling the more competitive the game is the worse it gets

I thought the same until I started getting into the slightly higher ranks in CS:GO. Silver 1 and 2 is just complete toxicity. But as I've ranked up the games and the players become more serious. So the more competitive the game gets, it seems the community gets better. Its not 100%. I still end up playing with trolls or racists or sexist shitheads, but it just doesn't seem to happen as frequently now.

 

[Zakalwe]

I never said don't talk, I said don't solo queue.

There is absolutely no need to play with random teammates.

None.

Actually, there are plenty of reasons to solo queue. Stop it.

 

[PMS341]

Actually, there are plenty of reasons to solo queue. Stop it.

Yeah, I've had a good time with solo queue. Not all of my friends admittedly focus as well as some of the others I've played with.

 

[tearsintherain]

There should be harsher consequences, yes.

However, this all boils down to money. Clearly this method would cause a good amount of people to be outright banned, and so the install base would be naturally reduced. To the CEOs and shareholders, this means less profit, which means no-go.

What does it take, truly, to deal with this sort of issue?

Don't permaban people for harrassment. Instead, globally mute them - chat and voice. That way they can still play the game, they just can't ever talk to anyone. First time you get caught being an asshole, 3 day voice ban. Second time, 2 weeks. Third time, your account is permanently banned from ever communicating with someone else.

Voila. People can still play, they just can't be an asshole to someone else anymore. No whispers, no voice chat, no text chat, nothing.

Nothing drives someone more crazy than WANTING to say something and being unable to do so. After a few months of this people will be way more careful of the vile stuff they spew. Implementing the triggers and reporting functions so everything is a bit more automated (and has appeal processes for those who get wrongfully accused) but it pretty much already occurs in MMOs and MOBAs for text chat.

It also seperates game play from communication. You have shown you lack the ability to communicate properly so that is taken away.

 

[balohna]

Actually, there are plenty of reasons to solo queue. Stop it.

Agreed, it's a great game to just jump into and have a few minutes of fun. I almost exclusively solo queue and have a great time.

I do play on PC though, so very few people voice chat. Usually mostly text.

 

[Enter The 36 Chambers]

i can't group for comp because my friends are out of my SR range. i literally don't have anyone to play with.

again, you're just telling people in situations like this to not play or to hobble their experience when the onus should be on blizzard to put some of their unspeakably gigantic profits towards policing their community.

Actually, there are plenty of reasons to solo queue. Stop it.

Majority of my solo queue experience is negative. People picking hero's that don't fit the map or mode or team comp. And refuse to work as a team or just harass the others.

I know the Xbox has a lfg feature that you can state your SR and find people in your range and we've used it multiple times to find tank and medic mains with no issues. AFAIK there's websites for this on other platforms.

Solo queueing in a team based competitive shooter seems counterproductive imo.

Id prefer just to work around the unfortunate reality of comp rather than listen to the toxic manchildren plaguing comp queue.

I usually stick to quick play or arcade when o solo queue.

 

[tkscz]

While this is shitty behavior, it still bugs me people here still say "why are the gaming communities only like this?" Like have you been to sports communities outside of GAF? It's the same shit. Same goes with media communities, hell, even book communities. This is just how some people are, and honestly, I don't think there is a solution other than mute them and ignore them. It's not the best plan, but taking away their ability to speak to you does get them to shut up.

 

[underscore_underscore]

It's definitely a huge issue, and it's why I mute everybody by default. Easiest way of doing it on consoles is to start a party chat (it can be just yourself in it) so by default you won't hear game chat. It's not a perfect solution, but it works. It's more of an issue on PC where muting can be more of a hassle on an individual game basis, especially since most of the harassment comes from text chat. Best solution on any online service is to report any and all harassment.

 

[Head.spawn]

That's terrible.

Juxtapose this with the thread the other day about people upset that people don't use regular voice-chat so much... this is the main reason.

 

[killdatninja]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjjhF6G3eUA

One of the most oddest examples, character selection doesn't even start and things escalate quickly...

Community can be toxic but not more so than other games I played, I noticed a lot of people having thin skin because some of the shit I hear on youtube labelled as "toxic" is tame as fuck and not actually toxic, some people can't take criticism. "Hey dude can you switch off Hanzo, you're not getting picks anymore", "BRO STOP BEING TOXIC, I HAVE LIKE 6 GOLD MEDALS, I'M PUTTING THIS ON YOUTUBE".

 

[Crayon]

If this were my game I'd be trying all kinds of ideas to bring some justice.

 

[CyanideFuse]

While this is shitty behavior, it still bugs me people here still say "why are the gaming communities only like this?" Like have you been to sports communities outside of GAF? It's the same shit. Same goes with media communities, hell, even book communities. This is just how some people are, and honestly, I don't think there is a solution other than mute them and ignore them. It's not the best plan, but taking away their ability to speak to you does get them to shut up.

Yeah, sports forums can be something else. Even sports that are considered to have a lot more decorum and decency e.g. not football (soccer) but rugby and cricket forums. And the word these idiots use to excuse their behaviour? Banter; it is used as a get-around for foul and disgusting messages all too often.

 

[Zakalwe]

Majority of my solo queue experience is negative. People picking hero's that don't fit the map or mode or team comp. And refuse to work as a team or just harass the others.

I know the Xbox has a lfg feature that you can state your SR and find people in your range and we've used it multiple times to find tank and medic mains with no issues. AFAIK there's websites for this on other platforms.

Solo queueing in a team based competitive shooter seems counterproductive imo.

Id prefer just to work around the unfortunate reality of comp rather than listen to the toxic manchildren plaguing comp queue.

I usually stick to quick play or arcade when o solo queue.

Fact remains, there are plenty of reasons to solo queue even if solo queue has inherent problems.

It's your initial blanket statement that people had issue with.

 

[therealist]

C'mon Blizzard. Bring back the ability to avoid players at least. It's so frustrating when reporting a toxic player but only to be grouped up with said player in the next match.

because people would abuse it to avoid players who they think sucks or picks a non-meta hero.