I found out about people being able to look at your profiles when CTF came back and I was playing Widowmaker because I was getting asked a lot why not D va or Rein. I had no idea people could look at your profile and see what you played often or other things
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TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
on console it's not brought up much but it is nice to see the social thing in game just to see team rankings or their top five for a certain game mode. If anything I just need to know who the silver is in my group to cover their tracks when they inevitably overextend.
I don't need people knowing that I've got 150 hours on Mercy. My Awesome Mercy only appears when she is needed most, or I'm feeling sleepy and not up for the adrenaline rush of Tracer.
Speaking of, I thought I'd finished my next video - set to Same Thing by Gino Parks, a song I absolutely love and have been wanting to use for a long time - but now as I'm going over it, I dunno, I feel like it kinda' loses the vibe after the halfway point - and maybe I should use a different song or try something more modern... or maybe it is good, and I'm overexposed to it and can't see the forest through the trees. >.<
Decisions, decisions...
I wish I'd made it back to plat this season. Could finally afford another gold gun.
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
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BeezelThere was no agreement little morsel..Registered Userregular
I really thought your death nades were gonna' get Rein.
He was JUST far back enough to live through the tire before I got control of my character back. It got us the point because up until then my team were eating shit in the choke. I took the stupid flank on the left and bomb jumped through the high window and then up onto the building overseeing the point. Killed the widow up there and jumped down to give em a surprise.
PSN: Waybackkidd
"...only mights and maybes."
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TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
did the death nades get a radius nerf too like his primary fire?
Really not looking forward to private profiles. I think it's overprotectiveness for people who can't use the mute button.
And I'd still be fine with that, if it wasn't going to have a negative effect on the game overall.
I have in all my hours of Overwatch literally never had someone use the profiles for something helpful, so no, I don't think it will.
It's definitely abused a lot but I really find this hard to believe, and if you're not using them yourself, I don't know what to tell you. I find that when we're building a comp, knowing people's comfortable heroes is extremely useful in facilitating swaps to put together a functioning team. I have a lot more luck getting someone to swap around in their specific role or displayed hero pool and calling on them specifically than I do with just blindly telling the entire team that we need X and hoping somebody makes the swap. It also helps me figure out quickly whether or not I am most needed on main heals, off-heals, or flex.
That said, as a support main with a lot of Mercy playtime shown, I am also well aware of the kind of stupidity this information can trigger in teammates.
I'm certainly in the minority on this subject, though, I'm sure. I'm generally opposed to Blizzard's entire philosophy of controlling toxicity through hiding information. I still think the game should have a scoreboard, people should be directly accountable for their performance in the competitive modes. If they're underperforming so significantly that their play needs to be concealed in order to avoid toxicity, I actually think they're being toxic if they are insistent on motoring on without addressing it via hero swaps or communication with the team on what can be done to fix it, hoping to fly under the radar.
Access to information doesn't make people dicks. Being dicks is what makes people dicks.
Tell Blizzard that, because that's the fundamental reason behind their decision not to implement a scoreboard. That, and they don't trust their players' ability to assess performance in cases where player contribution isn't directly reflected in the stats that would be displayed.
It's a profoundly patronizing and simpleminded philosophy that they have on this issue. Made all the more glaring by the fact that they make this information available to casters and in OWL, often presented on its own without context.
Access to information doesn't make people dicks. Being dicks is what makes people dicks.
Tell Blizzard that, because that's the fundamental reason behind their decision not to implement a scoreboard. That, and they don't trust their players' ability to assess performance in cases where player contribution isn't directly reflected in the stats that would be displayed.
It's a profoundly patronizing and simpleminded philosophy that they have on this issue. Made all the more glaring by the fact that they make this information available to casters and in OWL, often presented on its own without context.
Meanwhile, I am so absolutely happy that scoreboards and stuff like that isn't publicly viewable. I can't even imagine how much more shit people would be throwing at each other to make themselves feel like tough little bros at the end of matches. And I don't see what casters having access to that info has to do with QP/ladder play. OWL players aren't going around using that info to flame or harass each other. If keeping those stats hidden in ladder play means a few non-shitty people get mildly annoyed at not seeing other peoples' stats, while also preventing a whole bunch of shitty behavior (which I am 100% convinced it does), I will happily take that. (And if you're more than mildly annoyed, you're taking the game too seriously, straight-up).
Like, you just called an obviously passionate and talented dev team "patronizing and simpleminded" (yes you said philosophy but come on) because of this. If that's all it takes to get you to throw insults their way, how can they not do everything they can to minimize that among the actual playerbase? If I were them, reactions like yours would be more than enough to justify I made the right choice.
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TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
What I find amusing about the profile critiques is when people (QP) say something like "Why is our Mercy main going DPS when we have no healers?"
Perhaps because I just played 5 rounds as a Mercy/Zen and I'd like to change it up? No, no, no I am doing specifically just to spite you.
I would like an addition to the mini profile that shows up on your team which shows the last 5 characters you played a day and which map it was on. That way it should be enough information to let people see if they're outright one tricks or varied depending on the map or what.
The best Mercy picks and PotGs from the last week. Okay well the McCree PotG on Hanamura isn't my best, but he didn't see that shit comin' - felt badass!
I loved that I had the presence of mind to get that Pulse Bomb off the point in the final clip on Ilios, the 5K on Lijiang felt incredible (mystery heroes - we lost and half my team left, but the reds voted me an Epic card for my Tracer killstreak!), and the one on Route 66? Getting those last two picks at 19 HP? Awesome.
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
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KasynI'm not saying I don't like our chances.She called me the master.Registered Userregular
Access to information doesn't make people dicks. Being dicks is what makes people dicks.
Tell Blizzard that, because that's the fundamental reason behind their decision not to implement a scoreboard. That, and they don't trust their players' ability to assess performance in cases where player contribution isn't directly reflected in the stats that would be displayed.
It's a profoundly patronizing and simpleminded philosophy that they have on this issue. Made all the more glaring by the fact that they make this information available to casters and in OWL, often presented on its own without context.
Meanwhile, I am so absolutely happy that scoreboards and stuff like that isn't publicly viewable. I can't even imagine how much more shit people would be throwing at each other to make themselves feel like tough little bros at the end of matches. And I don't see what casters having access to that info has to do with QP/ladder play. OWL players aren't going around using that info to flame or harass each other. If keeping those stats hidden in ladder play means a few non-shitty people get mildly annoyed at not seeing other peoples' stats, while also preventing a whole bunch of shitty behavior (which I am 100% convinced it does), I will happily take that. (And if you're more than mildly annoyed, you're taking the game too seriously, straight-up).
I think this initial logic makes sense but I'm not sure it actually holds up. Players that are willing to be toxic are going to be toxic whether or not they have a scoreboard. Instead, what they do now is just direct it at off-meta picks or players of a certain rank or based on whatever hero their target happens to be playing. If anything, it can be argued that access to full information could - in situations where they were going to irrationally dump on somebody that in their weird mind was doing poorly - they could perhaps see that their impression is wrong and stay quiet.
I also believe that one of the biggest preconditions for toxicity is a losing team that is failing to adapt. Denying people a feedback tool that pretty much every other game of this kind has - one that might be used to right the ship for losing teams - is potentially just allowing those conditions to persist.
As far as my point about it being made available to casters goes - part of their stated reasoning for not implementing a scoreboard is that they don't think the statistics shown will be used to accurately assess player performance, given that there are contributions that can't easily be quantified. This is why I described their approach here as patronizing. They offer up these stats to inform casters and for display in between league games, but aren't willing to trust that the playerbase will be able to use it as an evaluation tool, and just assume it'll only be used to tee off on underperformers.
Like, you just called an obviously passionate and talented dev team "patronizing and simpleminded" (yes you said philosophy but come on) because of this. If that's all it takes to get you to throw insults their way, how can they not do everything they can to minimize that among the actual playerbase? If I were them, reactions like yours would be more than enough to justify I made the right choice.
What on earth? You can't just openly remove essential language from my claim and then start beating the straw man you built out of it. Is this an actual joke? I just directly referred to their philosophy on a specific issue, I very clearly did not call the devs themselves those things. How can you admit to having read something and then decide to just ignore key language because "but come on"?
I'm genuinely baffled at the degree of bad faith in your post there at the end.
Like, you just called an obviously passionate and talented dev team "patronizing and simpleminded" (yes you said philosophy but come on) because of this. If that's all it takes to get you to throw insults their way, how can they not do everything they can to minimize that among the actual playerbase? If I were them, reactions like yours would be more than enough to justify I made the right choice.
Normal people can have 'patronising and simpleminded' philosophies. I sure as shit have. It doesn't make them wrongbad people. We shouldn't protect them from being told that.
I'm with @Kasyn here, what you've said there reads like an exaggeration of the 'safe space' mentality. I have a lot of time for that thinking, which is why I haven't called this whole privacy move "dumb" and "stupid" and "moronic". It's not. It comes from a genuine place, and I respect that. But maybe it IS patronising and simpleminded. But when you're levelling it against something like 'patronising and simpleminded philosophy'?
We need some perspective here. That was the most bland non-insult I've seen in a while.
i pretty much only use the heroes played info to go "hey [healer main that hasn't picked a hero yet] do you wanna heal? if so i can swap to a tank"
but i realise i'm probably an outlier
I don't even use it to suggest picks. I just flick through it to figure out which of the main roles hasn't been covered yet, or would be best covered by me. Eg, I see that we need two tanks and our last picker besides me is a D.va main with maybe an hour on any kind of barrier tank? Yeah, I'll be a better Rein than them even if I normally go Hog. But without that info I might have just picked Hog, and they might have gone Orisa without arguing, and now we have a suboptimal tank pick from our badass D.Va main and I never even knew it.
I even get to snag dps that way! When you see two tank mains and a couple of willing-to-heal players, you get to go Doomfist without a fight.
i pretty much only use the heroes played info to go "hey [healer main that hasn't picked a hero yet] do you wanna heal? if so i can swap to a tank"
but i realise i'm probably an outlier
That is how I use it and how I very often see it used in my games.
I know it's very popular to complain about the playerbase and how the game is unplayably toxic in competitive (not directed at you), but if I'm being honest, I see just about as many notably toxic and negative players in my games as I do genuinely constructive and positive ones, possibly even fewer because the negative ones are so much more memorable. I have a decent hero pool and use the career profile to try to help solve problems before the game begins, I'll be a bit disappointed to see that I no longer have this tool available to me because this is why we can't have nice things.
I mean be as offended as you want at how I took it, but if I were on their dev team and you told me our philosophy was 'patronizing and simpleminded' but then tried to assure me that you didn't think we were patronizing and simpleminded for having that philosophy, I would absolutely take that as an insult directed at me (whether you think that's rational or whatever, doesn't change that fact), and I would not be at all interested in anything you had to say from that point forward. Like you seem to be very insulted by their decision, but then seem very surprised that your reaction might also be pretty dang insulting.
If it matters, I'm saying this as someone who has worked for a game company and has had people talk to me about our philosophy/approach the way you're talking about the dev team. You can call it bad faith, I call it a completely natural reaction to being openly insulted about a perfectly understandable (and pretty minor) game system. Obviously it's not your job to care about the dev team, but as someone who's been in their shoes, your reaction is pretty out of whack and would not make me look at you as someone with a rational perspective of the game.
Also, "people will always be toxic" doesn't mean anything - they should still do everything they can to cut that shit out, and "I've mainly had positive experiences, so they don't need to do this" kind of ignores the fact that a large reason you've had mainly positive experiences is because they've been doing stuff like this.
Anyway, I've read your replies and don't really agree at all with your perspective, and I don't really expect you to agree with mine. Just wanted to clarify where I was coming from. Baaaack to lurking...
Even in the absolute best case that someone is using the profile data constructively to make suggestions to their teammates about who to play to increase the chances of winning, that's already irritating and not something that needs to be preserved. Mercy mains know they're good at Mercy and could switch to her to probably have a better shot at winning. They thought of that already without your help, and decided not to do it. They don't need to be peer pressured by their team. Your typical preference of heroes shouldn't feel like a burden keeping you from branching out once in a while.
It's not your job to be the team's manager. If you need someone to fill a role, ask for it. And if no one does, you'll just have to deal with it.
Zek on
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KasynI'm not saying I don't like our chances.She called me the master.Registered Userregular
I mean be as offended as you want at how I took it, but if I were on their dev team and you told me our philosophy was 'patronizing and simpleminded' but then tried to assure me that you didn't think we were patronizing and simpleminded for having that philosophy, I would absolutely take that as an insult directed at me (whether you think that's rational or whatever, doesn't change that fact), and I would not be at all interested in anything you had to say from that point forward. Like you seem to be very insulted by their decision, but then seem very surprised that your reaction might also be pretty dang insulting.
If it matters, I'm saying this as someone who has worked for a game company and has had people talk to me about our philosophy/approach the way you're talking about the dev team. You can call it bad faith, I call it a completely natural reaction to being openly insulted about a perfectly understandable (and pretty minor) game system. Obviously it's not your job to care about the dev team, but as someone who's been in their shoes, your reaction is pretty out of whack and would not make me look at you as someone with a rational perspective of the game.
Also, "people will always be toxic" doesn't mean anything - they should still do everything they can to cut that shit out, and "I've mainly had positive experiences, so they don't need to do this" kind of ignores the fact that a large reason you've had mainly positive experiences is because they've been doing stuff like this.
Anyway, I've read your replies and don't really agree at all with your perspective, and I don't really expect you to agree with mine. Just wanted to clarify where I was coming from. Baaaack to lurking...
I described their approach to this issue as patronizing because of my above point about how they've said they don't think players would be able to use the information to reach credible conclusions about player performance. I described it as simpleminded because of the very many dynamics that I detailed in both posts, reasons as to why I think it 1) might not have the intended effect and 2) might actually be doing more harm than good, or at the very least could be a missed opportunity.
I agree that you should go back to lurking, you do not seem willing or capable of actually having this conversation without responding to things I never said, or accusing me of feeling a way that I never claimed or really even implied. I very, very seriously doubt that people at Blizzard, of all possible developers, would find as reasoned a disagreement on one of their game systems as the one I've presented to be an 'open insult.'
I have immense respect for Blizzard, I think they're an order of magnitude ahead of everyone else when it comes to how sound and sophisticated their design and balance approaches are. They're willing to be wrong, to evolve, to not always be swayed by the greater hordes in the community, I've seen their devs demonstrate all of this over the years, across almost all of their titles. I'm just on the other side of them on this one, and I find their stated history on it to be unconvincing. I'm not going to simply take claims that this design is actually to credit for good behavior as self-evident. My entire point is that I think that is a misreading of the dynamics here and that the best practice might actually be one that they're intent on moving further away from. I think that's unfortunate, and I'll be the first to revoke the 'simpleminded' descriptor if any of their community reps actually demonstrate that they've considered that when they actually weighed in on this.
I call for changes by calling out team comps and formations such as Deathball, Dive, Bastion, Pharmercy, Swarming (I don't have a better word for this), make my changes and suggest players make swaps accordingly. Suggesting them in the context of comps and formations rather than individual enemy picks seems to get more results both in players and in victory. Even if we lose, the team mostly just plays better.
Cantido on
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H3KnucklesBut we decide which is rightand which is an illusion.Registered Userregular
edited June 2018
@Kasyn Aren't you like GM or Masters rank? I'm sure there are assholes at every level of play, but I think you're kidding yourself if you believe that you don't enjoy significant privilege at that kind of rank in regards to your competitive teammates' play and conduct. Like, I count myself blessed for having only had to report people a handful of times given my scrub-tier rating (I suspect it's mainly because I usually play at very off-peak hours where people are mostly silent, and play very little comp).
I call for changes by calling out team comps and formations such as Deathball, Dive, Bastion, Pharmercy, Swarming (I don't have a better word for this), make my changes and suggest players make swaps accordingly. Suggesting them in the context of comps and formations rather than individual enemy picks seems to get more results both in players and in victory. Even if we lose, the team mostly just plays better.
This is good - I've had success with this as well, I just also find success in asking players directly because otherwise there is a phenomenon where people are just going to stay quiet and assume somebody else will handle it. I don't feel put upon if somebody asks me to maybe play one of my other used heroes so that we can accommodate a player with a limited hero pool, so long as they're not being a dick about it, and I try not to be a dick about it if I ever ask the same of someone else.
I call for changes by calling out team comps and formations such as Deathball, Dive, Bastion, Pharmercy, Swarming (I don't have a better word for this), make my changes and suggest players make swaps accordingly. Suggesting them in the context of comps and formations rather than individual enemy picks seems to get more results both in players and in victory. Even if we lose, the team mostly just plays better.
This is good - I've had success with this as well, I just also find success in asking players directly because otherwise there is a phenomenon where people are just going to stay quiet and assume somebody else will handle it. I don't feel put upon if somebody asks me to maybe play one of my other used heroes so that we can accommodate a player with a limited hero pool, so long as they're not being a dick about it, and I try not to be a dick about it if I ever ask the same of someone else.
Funnily enough, even though we're on the same side here I have the complete opposite approach: stay out of voice chat, mute toxicity immediately. I just don't find most comms very useful in this game at the SR I'm at.
Information? Useful. Communication? Very mixed.
But what most of what people think needs comms in this game you can learn yourself by just improving your awareness and constantly looking for information by yourself. Especially since Blizzard has generally agreed to provide more info than they used to. Default killfeed, friendly ult status, etc. Making the killfeed default is exactly the kind of info that could potentially increase toxicity, because then I might notice when our main dps keeps feeding. And yet Blizzard made it a feature, and no one is suggesting removing it either.
And yeah, @Kasyn you're probably blessed by your high SR. Dumb opinions are probably rarer where you are. I just don't think that's an excuse for hiding players' playtime.
@Kasyn Aren't you like GM or Masters rank? I'm sure there are assholes at every level of play, but I think you're kidding yourself if you believe that you don't enjoy significant privilege at that kind of rank in regards to your competitive teammates' play and conduct. Like, I count myself blessed for having only had to report people a handful of times given my scrub-tier rating (I suspect it's mainly because I usually play at very off-peak hours where people are mostly silent, and play very little comp).
Does that significant privilege only kick in at Plat or above? I certainly didn't start out here. If I actually stop to consider it - and I have! - I just really can't say that at any point have I felt like games were more or less toxic, full of leavers, full of throwers, or full of hopelessly useless teammates. Honestly, I see just as many griefing pieces of shit at this rank as I have at any other SR range I've ever played it. The flavors of awful have simply changed.
Just the other night, we have a double sniper comp on Route 66 attack, we have a Zen offheals. I was feeling my Moira that night and without a Brig I didn't want us to get instantly shit on by dive or flankers with no great GA targets, so I lock in Moira. Our Hanzo, high GM / a bit shy of t500 SR, immediately asks for a Mercy instead, I oblige, and tell him if flankers are a problem I'm swapping to Moira immediately. First engagement, Tracer/Genji clear our backline while he misses everything, I swap to Moira. We then completely roll the first point with me as Moira. At this point, he has apparently noticed that I swapped, announces in all chat that our healer is throwing, leaves voice chat, and proceeds to throw the entire game. A game we were winning, he literally did this after we dumped on them after the swap, most of the team on fire.
I have seen this kind of nonsense happen just as often at lower ratings as I have in 4300+ SR games. I'm telling you guys, being a toxic piece of shit knows no rating. Being bafflingly, utterly out of your depth knows no rating. Dumb opinions, off-meta picks, one-tricks, refusal to cooperate, I assure you, it is roughly the same level right in the middle of the SR bell curve as it is when you land in a game near the top of it.
The most noticeable difference between ratings, in my own personal experience, is that hero picks and team comps get more volatile the lower you go, and the meta is a little more strictly adhered to higher up. On the whole, though, none of these things have driven a noticeable difference in the net awfulness of the playerbase. I take your point and don't entirely disagree, but I've played large shares of games across a pretty broad swath of the playerbase, my perspective on the relative awfulness of OW's players or the psychology of toxic gamers is plenty valid.
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KoopahTroopahThe koopas, the troopas.Philadelphia, PARegistered Userregular
Access to information doesn't make people dicks. Being dicks is what makes people dicks.
While I agree with this sentiment, we'd have a much easier go of it if Blizzard just hid the stats during gameplay than we would trying to convince all the children online eerywhere to mature.
give mcree roll with no cooldown, just rolling around all day every day never shooting at anything, just roll roll roll.
I was thinking yesterday about this and how to make officially classy, and I present this proposal:
Combat roll gives you the auto reload every 8 seconds as is the style at the time, but you can also roll after that as much as you want.
BUT, each roll takes away a bullet from your ammo and you can only roll so long as you have ammo at the ready. So it can either give you increased mobility at the cost of fighting, from which you have to reload at some point, or you stand your ground with the current auto reload.
This is brilliant and has clear pros and cons and lets McCree get the mobility he needs boom nailed it Bingle Bangle.
McCree uses flashebang! His target is shielded by Zarya! McCree rolls rolls rolls away like a leathery tumbleweed, to return when flash is off cooldown.
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
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Blizzard: Pailryder#1101
GoG: https://www.gog.com/u/pailryder
And I'd still be fine with that, if it wasn't going to have a negative effect on the game overall.
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
And if he's teamed with Lucio, you might say he's rolling around at the speed of sound.
Speaking of, I thought I'd finished my next video - set to Same Thing by Gino Parks, a song I absolutely love and have been wanting to use for a long time - but now as I'm going over it, I dunno, I feel like it kinda' loses the vibe after the halfway point - and maybe I should use a different song or try something more modern... or maybe it is good, and I'm overexposed to it and can't see the forest through the trees. >.<
Decisions, decisions...
I wish I'd made it back to plat this season. Could finally afford another gold gun.
"...only mights and maybes."
I really thought your death nades were gonna' get Rein.
He was JUST far back enough to live through the tire before I got control of my character back. It got us the point because up until then my team were eating shit in the choke. I took the stupid flank on the left and bomb jumped through the high window and then up onto the building overseeing the point. Killed the widow up there and jumped down to give em a surprise.
"...only mights and maybes."
Not that's ever been documented or noticed. They've always had a very small AoE.
It's definitely abused a lot but I really find this hard to believe, and if you're not using them yourself, I don't know what to tell you. I find that when we're building a comp, knowing people's comfortable heroes is extremely useful in facilitating swaps to put together a functioning team. I have a lot more luck getting someone to swap around in their specific role or displayed hero pool and calling on them specifically than I do with just blindly telling the entire team that we need X and hoping somebody makes the swap. It also helps me figure out quickly whether or not I am most needed on main heals, off-heals, or flex.
That said, as a support main with a lot of Mercy playtime shown, I am also well aware of the kind of stupidity this information can trigger in teammates.
I'm certainly in the minority on this subject, though, I'm sure. I'm generally opposed to Blizzard's entire philosophy of controlling toxicity through hiding information. I still think the game should have a scoreboard, people should be directly accountable for their performance in the competitive modes. If they're underperforming so significantly that their play needs to be concealed in order to avoid toxicity, I actually think they're being toxic if they are insistent on motoring on without addressing it via hero swaps or communication with the team on what can be done to fix it, hoping to fly under the radar.
Perhaps because I just played 5 rounds as a Mercy/Zen and I'd like to change it up? No, no, no I am doing specifically just to spite you.
In what little Comp I play I get a lot of this if I try to play not-a-tank.
Or that's how I used to think of it, when I felt like my Tracer was only middling at my SR (some days, she still is).
Tell Blizzard that, because that's the fundamental reason behind their decision not to implement a scoreboard. That, and they don't trust their players' ability to assess performance in cases where player contribution isn't directly reflected in the stats that would be displayed.
It's a profoundly patronizing and simpleminded philosophy that they have on this issue. Made all the more glaring by the fact that they make this information available to casters and in OWL, often presented on its own without context.
Meanwhile, I am so absolutely happy that scoreboards and stuff like that isn't publicly viewable. I can't even imagine how much more shit people would be throwing at each other to make themselves feel like tough little bros at the end of matches. And I don't see what casters having access to that info has to do with QP/ladder play. OWL players aren't going around using that info to flame or harass each other. If keeping those stats hidden in ladder play means a few non-shitty people get mildly annoyed at not seeing other peoples' stats, while also preventing a whole bunch of shitty behavior (which I am 100% convinced it does), I will happily take that. (And if you're more than mildly annoyed, you're taking the game too seriously, straight-up).
Like, you just called an obviously passionate and talented dev team "patronizing and simpleminded" (yes you said philosophy but come on) because of this. If that's all it takes to get you to throw insults their way, how can they not do everything they can to minimize that among the actual playerbase? If I were them, reactions like yours would be more than enough to justify I made the right choice.
I would like an addition to the mini profile that shows up on your team which shows the last 5 characters you played a day and which map it was on. That way it should be enough information to let people see if they're outright one tricks or varied depending on the map or what.
The best Mercy picks and PotGs from the last week. Okay well the McCree PotG on Hanamura isn't my best, but he didn't see that shit comin' - felt badass!
I loved that I had the presence of mind to get that Pulse Bomb off the point in the final clip on Ilios, the 5K on Lijiang felt incredible (mystery heroes - we lost and half my team left, but the reds voted me an Epic card for my Tracer killstreak!), and the one on Route 66? Getting those last two picks at 19 HP? Awesome.
I think this initial logic makes sense but I'm not sure it actually holds up. Players that are willing to be toxic are going to be toxic whether or not they have a scoreboard. Instead, what they do now is just direct it at off-meta picks or players of a certain rank or based on whatever hero their target happens to be playing. If anything, it can be argued that access to full information could - in situations where they were going to irrationally dump on somebody that in their weird mind was doing poorly - they could perhaps see that their impression is wrong and stay quiet.
I also believe that one of the biggest preconditions for toxicity is a losing team that is failing to adapt. Denying people a feedback tool that pretty much every other game of this kind has - one that might be used to right the ship for losing teams - is potentially just allowing those conditions to persist.
As far as my point about it being made available to casters goes - part of their stated reasoning for not implementing a scoreboard is that they don't think the statistics shown will be used to accurately assess player performance, given that there are contributions that can't easily be quantified. This is why I described their approach here as patronizing. They offer up these stats to inform casters and for display in between league games, but aren't willing to trust that the playerbase will be able to use it as an evaluation tool, and just assume it'll only be used to tee off on underperformers.
What on earth? You can't just openly remove essential language from my claim and then start beating the straw man you built out of it. Is this an actual joke? I just directly referred to their philosophy on a specific issue, I very clearly did not call the devs themselves those things. How can you admit to having read something and then decide to just ignore key language because "but come on"?
I'm genuinely baffled at the degree of bad faith in your post there at the end.
Normal people can have 'patronising and simpleminded' philosophies. I sure as shit have. It doesn't make them wrongbad people. We shouldn't protect them from being told that.
I'm with @Kasyn here, what you've said there reads like an exaggeration of the 'safe space' mentality. I have a lot of time for that thinking, which is why I haven't called this whole privacy move "dumb" and "stupid" and "moronic". It's not. It comes from a genuine place, and I respect that. But maybe it IS patronising and simpleminded. But when you're levelling it against something like 'patronising and simpleminded philosophy'?
We need some perspective here. That was the most bland non-insult I've seen in a while.
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
but i realise i'm probably an outlier
I don't even use it to suggest picks. I just flick through it to figure out which of the main roles hasn't been covered yet, or would be best covered by me. Eg, I see that we need two tanks and our last picker besides me is a D.va main with maybe an hour on any kind of barrier tank? Yeah, I'll be a better Rein than them even if I normally go Hog. But without that info I might have just picked Hog, and they might have gone Orisa without arguing, and now we have a suboptimal tank pick from our badass D.Va main and I never even knew it.
I even get to snag dps that way! When you see two tank mains and a couple of willing-to-heal players, you get to go Doomfist without a fight.
It's awesome. It's a really awesome feature guys.
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
That is how I use it and how I very often see it used in my games.
I know it's very popular to complain about the playerbase and how the game is unplayably toxic in competitive (not directed at you), but if I'm being honest, I see just about as many notably toxic and negative players in my games as I do genuinely constructive and positive ones, possibly even fewer because the negative ones are so much more memorable. I have a decent hero pool and use the career profile to try to help solve problems before the game begins, I'll be a bit disappointed to see that I no longer have this tool available to me because this is why we can't have nice things.
If it matters, I'm saying this as someone who has worked for a game company and has had people talk to me about our philosophy/approach the way you're talking about the dev team. You can call it bad faith, I call it a completely natural reaction to being openly insulted about a perfectly understandable (and pretty minor) game system. Obviously it's not your job to care about the dev team, but as someone who's been in their shoes, your reaction is pretty out of whack and would not make me look at you as someone with a rational perspective of the game.
Also, "people will always be toxic" doesn't mean anything - they should still do everything they can to cut that shit out, and "I've mainly had positive experiences, so they don't need to do this" kind of ignores the fact that a large reason you've had mainly positive experiences is because they've been doing stuff like this.
Anyway, I've read your replies and don't really agree at all with your perspective, and I don't really expect you to agree with mine. Just wanted to clarify where I was coming from. Baaaack to lurking...
It's not your job to be the team's manager. If you need someone to fill a role, ask for it. And if no one does, you'll just have to deal with it.
I described their approach to this issue as patronizing because of my above point about how they've said they don't think players would be able to use the information to reach credible conclusions about player performance. I described it as simpleminded because of the very many dynamics that I detailed in both posts, reasons as to why I think it 1) might not have the intended effect and 2) might actually be doing more harm than good, or at the very least could be a missed opportunity.
I agree that you should go back to lurking, you do not seem willing or capable of actually having this conversation without responding to things I never said, or accusing me of feeling a way that I never claimed or really even implied. I very, very seriously doubt that people at Blizzard, of all possible developers, would find as reasoned a disagreement on one of their game systems as the one I've presented to be an 'open insult.'
I have immense respect for Blizzard, I think they're an order of magnitude ahead of everyone else when it comes to how sound and sophisticated their design and balance approaches are. They're willing to be wrong, to evolve, to not always be swayed by the greater hordes in the community, I've seen their devs demonstrate all of this over the years, across almost all of their titles. I'm just on the other side of them on this one, and I find their stated history on it to be unconvincing. I'm not going to simply take claims that this design is actually to credit for good behavior as self-evident. My entire point is that I think that is a misreading of the dynamics here and that the best practice might actually be one that they're intent on moving further away from. I think that's unfortunate, and I'll be the first to revoke the 'simpleminded' descriptor if any of their community reps actually demonstrate that they've considered that when they actually weighed in on this.
This is good - I've had success with this as well, I just also find success in asking players directly because otherwise there is a phenomenon where people are just going to stay quiet and assume somebody else will handle it. I don't feel put upon if somebody asks me to maybe play one of my other used heroes so that we can accommodate a player with a limited hero pool, so long as they're not being a dick about it, and I try not to be a dick about it if I ever ask the same of someone else.
Funnily enough, even though we're on the same side here I have the complete opposite approach: stay out of voice chat, mute toxicity immediately. I just don't find most comms very useful in this game at the SR I'm at.
Information? Useful. Communication? Very mixed.
But what most of what people think needs comms in this game you can learn yourself by just improving your awareness and constantly looking for information by yourself. Especially since Blizzard has generally agreed to provide more info than they used to. Default killfeed, friendly ult status, etc. Making the killfeed default is exactly the kind of info that could potentially increase toxicity, because then I might notice when our main dps keeps feeding. And yet Blizzard made it a feature, and no one is suggesting removing it either.
And yeah, @Kasyn you're probably blessed by your high SR. Dumb opinions are probably rarer where you are. I just don't think that's an excuse for hiding players' playtime.
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
Does that significant privilege only kick in at Plat or above? I certainly didn't start out here. If I actually stop to consider it - and I have! - I just really can't say that at any point have I felt like games were more or less toxic, full of leavers, full of throwers, or full of hopelessly useless teammates. Honestly, I see just as many griefing pieces of shit at this rank as I have at any other SR range I've ever played it. The flavors of awful have simply changed.
Just the other night, we have a double sniper comp on Route 66 attack, we have a Zen offheals. I was feeling my Moira that night and without a Brig I didn't want us to get instantly shit on by dive or flankers with no great GA targets, so I lock in Moira. Our Hanzo, high GM / a bit shy of t500 SR, immediately asks for a Mercy instead, I oblige, and tell him if flankers are a problem I'm swapping to Moira immediately. First engagement, Tracer/Genji clear our backline while he misses everything, I swap to Moira. We then completely roll the first point with me as Moira. At this point, he has apparently noticed that I swapped, announces in all chat that our healer is throwing, leaves voice chat, and proceeds to throw the entire game. A game we were winning, he literally did this after we dumped on them after the swap, most of the team on fire.
I have seen this kind of nonsense happen just as often at lower ratings as I have in 4300+ SR games. I'm telling you guys, being a toxic piece of shit knows no rating. Being bafflingly, utterly out of your depth knows no rating. Dumb opinions, off-meta picks, one-tricks, refusal to cooperate, I assure you, it is roughly the same level right in the middle of the SR bell curve as it is when you land in a game near the top of it.
The most noticeable difference between ratings, in my own personal experience, is that hero picks and team comps get more volatile the lower you go, and the meta is a little more strictly adhered to higher up. On the whole, though, none of these things have driven a noticeable difference in the net awfulness of the playerbase. I take your point and don't entirely disagree, but I've played large shares of games across a pretty broad swath of the playerbase, my perspective on the relative awfulness of OW's players or the psychology of toxic gamers is plenty valid.
While I agree with this sentiment, we'd have a much easier go of it if Blizzard just hid the stats during gameplay than we would trying to convince all the children online eerywhere to mature.
Twitch: KoopahTroopah - Steam: Koopah
I was thinking yesterday about this and how to make officially classy, and I present this proposal:
Combat roll gives you the auto reload every 8 seconds as is the style at the time, but you can also roll after that as much as you want.
BUT, each roll takes away a bullet from your ammo and you can only roll so long as you have ammo at the ready. So it can either give you increased mobility at the cost of fighting, from which you have to reload at some point, or you stand your ground with the current auto reload.
This is brilliant and has clear pros and cons and lets McCree get the mobility he needs boom nailed it Bingle Bangle.
Steam: MightyPotatoKing