Free weeekend and trying to pull in friends and smurfs

[Deleted]

My son picked this up for the free weekend, playing on PC on EU, and mostly dominated his matches, if there were smurfs they were a bit shit. He mostly plays objective based FPS anyway and had reviewed each characters abilities he played (including counters).

He won't buy it because of the amount of salt about, he described most of the people he encountered as babies (he's 15 for reference).

[DeadmanWalking]

Yes, I know that, but that has nothing to do with the comment you posted.

Since the entire thread is about new players not buying the game because of Smurfs it has everything to do with my comment. Blizz designed It so Smurf’s couldn’t spend the whole weekend in 0 star land.If within 2 games the smurfs are pushed out of 0 stars it helps to keep smurfs from eating new players out of the game. I shouldn’t have to explain this.

[xChurch]

My son picked this up for the free weekend, playing on PC on EU, and mostly dominated his matches, if there were smurfs they were a bit shit. He mostly plays objective based FPS anyway and had reviewed each characters abilities he played (including counters).

He won't buy it because of the amount of salt about, he described most of the people he encountered as babies (he's 15 for reference).

Stuff like that always makes me smile, people use kids as a derogatory term a lot and yet in my experience younger people tend to be better than some adults. What's sad is that for the most part he's not wrong, I swear Blizzard games attract more toxicity than most other companies.

[DeadmanWalking]

Stuff like that always makes me smile, people use kids as a derogatory term a lot and yet in my experience younger people tend to be better than some adults. What's sad is that for the most part he's not wrong, I swear Blizzard games attract more toxicity than most other companies.

The toxicity is everywhere, it is a culture and it isn't something one game company is responsible for. Accusing a game company of attracting toxic people is not going to solve anything because all it does is shift the blame from the people responsible, the gaming community, to the man behind the curtain who isn't really an all seeing wizard. He is just a guy pumping out video games.

[Kithelle]

That's what I've heard but I've seen a lot of smurfs still in low level games even after being 25+. Also, stars are just levels and doesn't mean much in terms of skill.

Yup, I was playing with my friend and a friend of his...we ran into smurfs we saw, more than two times.

[xChurch]

The toxicity is everywhere, it is a culture and it isn't something one game company is responsible for. Accusing a game company of attracting toxic people is not going to solve anything because all it does is shift the blame from the people responsible, the gaming community, to the man behind the curtain who isn't really an all seeing wizard. He is just a guy pumping out video games.

Don't get me wrong, I know toxicity can be found in pretty much every online game, it just always seemed someone more common in Blizzard games. Perhaps it's just a downside of their games tending to have so many players. It also didn't help in Overwatch specifically starting out thinking toxicity wouldn't be a big issue.

[DeadmanWalking]

Don't get me wrong, I know toxicity can be found in pretty much every online game, it just always seemed someone more common in Blizzard games. Perhaps it's just a downside of their games tending to have so many players. It also didn't help in Overwatch specifically starting out thinking toxicity wouldn't be a big issue.

Blizzard always seems to build games with an ideal playerbase in mind, that people will come in and enjoy the game while having fun with others, but the truth is they really didn't think toxicity would be an issue.

Look at the original lfr, and I am not going to get into people liking or hating it, since I spend so much time in overwatch I use lfr to see the parts of the game I no longer have time for, but the cataclysm deathwing lfr was designed for a perfect gaming society, where people rolled on things they needed and didn't roll on stuff they didn't need. Instead we got people claiming items and offering to trade for gold. We got raid groups who wanted to gear a friend up to raid so they would all go into an lfr on an alt wearing the same armor and then all of them would bid on it filtering the gear to their friend, giving them 10 chances at the same gear everyone else had 1 chance at. Blizzard obviously didn't think people were going to take advantage of the system. How many times have I pugged into a raid group in orgrimmar/mist and did the most damage and executed the fight perfectly only to have the raid leader boot everyone buy his friends out so we couldn't get the loot? Now we have personal loot because people just couldn't behave responsibly.

Blizzard makes games, they shouldn't have to police people too, in fact it takes away from development of the game to have to police the playerbase. It only makes our experience worse and takes away from that which we came to enjoy, yet people seem incapable and unwilling to control their actions and reactions. It isn't on blizzard to punish us for tilting, it is on us to not tilt.

[xChurch]

Blizzard always seems to build games with an ideal playerbase in mind, that people will come in and enjoy the game while having fun with others, but the truth is they really didn't think toxicity would be an issue.

Look at the original lfr, and I am not going to get into people liking or hating it, since I spend so much time in overwatch I use lfr to see the parts of the game I no longer have time for, but the cataclysm deathwing lfr was designed for a perfect gaming society, where people rolled on things they needed and didn't roll on stuff they didn't need. Instead we got people claiming items and offering to trade for gold. We got raid groups who wanted to gear a friend up to raid so they would all go into an lfr on an alt wearing the same armor and then all of them would bid on it filtering the gear to their friend, giving them 10 chances at the same gear everyone else had 1 chance at. Blizzard obviously didn't think people were going to take advantage of the system. How many times have I pugged into a raid group in orgrimmar/mist and did the most damage and executed the fight perfectly only to have the raid leader boot everyone buy his friends out so we couldn't get the loot? Now we have personal loot because people just couldn't behave responsibly.

Blizzard makes games, they shouldn't have to police people too, in fact it takes away from development of the game to have to police the playerbase. It only makes our experience worse and takes away from that which we came to enjoy, yet people seem incapable and unwilling to control their actions and reactions. It isn't on blizzard to punish us for tilting, it is on us to not tilt.

I agree with pretty much everything you're saying, but I have to add that it is also on the player base to ensure they report bad behavior. If no one reports someone being toxic, they likely won't ever get any punishment. So while Blizzard can implement more robust ways of combating toxic behavior, none of it will as effective as just reporting people. It would be nice if no one ever tilted, but I'll settle of just getting rid of those that do.

[Jessicka]

Stuff like that always makes me smile, people use kids as a derogatory term a lot and yet in my experience younger people tend to be better than some adults. What's sad is that for the most part he's not wrong, I swear Blizzard games attract more toxicity than most other companies.

Kids are better behaved because they think the disciplinary system works. Adults know it doesn’t.

[Gandrake]

Don't get me wrong, I know toxicity can be found in pretty much every online game, it just always seemed someone more common in Blizzard games. Perhaps it's just a downside of their games tending to have so many players. It also didn't help in Overwatch specifically starting out thinking toxicity wouldn't be a big issue.

There is always going to be "toxicity" in a competitive environment that doesn't have an established set of rules and values but are instead left up to personal interpretation no matter what game you are playing.

Games are competitive in nature as the entire objective of any game ever created is to win.

Where the problem arises is when players don't feel like other players on their team do not want to win as much as them. Take these "One Tricks", for example. Everyone else has queued up for a game of competitive play, they can play this or they can play that.

but in blizzard's infinite wisdom, they have created a matchmaking system that tries to kick players matches they will always have a 50% chance of winning and unfortunately you are paired with a one trick whose hero is not even good on the map type you are playing. while everyone else on your team is flexible and dedicated to winning, using words like "I can try", a One Trick player does not have to say anything at all to tell everyone else on the team "build around me or 5v6 and throw, dont ask me to swap because i wont and i don't care about your bitching" and is decidedly not as competitive as the rest of the players on their team.

You see, this is very insulting. It makes the game mode a lie. You were promised an environment to play the game in that is ONLY for serious players focused on winning, but here you are in games with inflexible players throwing games with a terrible pick KNOWING how bad it is and you are no longer playing to win games, but to lose as little SR as possible - a far cry from the experience competitive play was promised to deliver.

A lot of people see "toxicity" as just acting like a cunt, but to me it always brings up the age old question of which came first, the chicken or the egg?

[Lucetia]

Since the entire thread is about new players not buying the game because of Smurfs it has everything to do with my comment. Blizz designed It so Smurf’s couldn’t spend the whole weekend in 0 star land.If within 2 games the smurfs are pushed out of 0 stars it helps to keep smurfs from eating new players out of the game. I shouldn’t have to explain this.

Because your original comment implied the other way around and hence why asking for clarification.

Yup, I was playing with my friend and a friend of his...we ran into smurfs we saw, more than two times.

Yup, we had the same issue where we ran into them multiple times. Some when they were 3 and again at 25. Sorry, but by 25 it should've calibrated to your appropriate SR.

[Kithelle]

Because your original comment implied the other way around and hence why asking for clarification.



Yup, we had the same issue where we ran into them multiple times. Some when they were 3 and again at 25. Sorry, but by 25 it should've calibrated to your appropriate SR.

Then they were such dicks about it, bragging about how they played so bad even when they steamrolled us and trying to pretend they didn't know what smurfing was. Didn't bother me really (Since this isn't my first shooter and I play a f2p shooter where people like to smurf) but assholes like that will only further deter new players from purchasing the game.

[Player Twelve]

Since the entire thread is about new players not buying the game because of Smurfs it has everything to do with my comment. Blizz designed It so Smurf’s couldn’t spend the whole weekend in 0 star land.If within 2 games the smurfs are pushed out of 0 stars it helps to keep smurfs from eating new players out of the game. I shouldn’t have to explain this.

Yeah, that's not true. I started a new account myself to try it out myself, keep in mind I'm just high plat/low diamond, I didn't face any people I'd consider good until like after 30 games. It's not 2 games.