>Overwatch, like pretty much all competitive games, still has its fair share of toxicity—or as Blizzard calls it, “disruptive behavior”—but during a talk at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Blizzard research developer Natasha Miller said it’s down a whopping 40 percent since last year’s addition of two new social features. First, there’s the endorsement system, which lets players reward each other for communicating effectively, playing respectfully, and calling shots. Then there’s Looking For Group, which lets players hunt for others of certain endorsement ranks, hero roles, or communication styles.
>disruptive behaviour kek, AKA real people playing the game - let them fill the servers with 100% bots, they'll have their perfectly harmonious game community
Tyler Richardson
>Toxicity I'm guessing that means the player base is actually down instead, fucking based!
That is what happens when 40% of the player base leaves
Lincoln Sullivan
Can still find many full cs 1.6 servers and that's not counting 1.5. Haha burn in hell blizzard and valve. Hahaha
Jason Thompson
From peak when it released? More like 95% down. The game is on life support right now, even the artificially inflated OWL stream numbers are down, soon that’s gonna be nothing but bots/background streams.
Lincoln Jones
is overwatch gonna be the next WoW, where for over a decade the majority claim it's DEAD but somehow still know and played almost every single update
how the fuck do you even measure that? Isn't what is considered toxic subjective? Like do you just go through all comments and check how many bad words were said? How many reports per game? WTF WOULD YOU EVEN MEASURE TO SAY BULLSHIT LIKE THIS?
Juan Moore
And here I thought "toxic" was just a blanket term for idiots for "things I don't like." Who knew it was a legitimate measurable metric?
Landon Sullivan
It's some good advertisement if it's true, but still is a f2p game being sold for money, so no
Andrew Murphy
It’s PR hot air, Blizzard does this shit all the time.
Carter Parker
Probably by measuring the number of reports filed, dingbat. That's how crime statistics are gathered IRL.
Oliver Wright
What ? Everyone hate eachover, the game has never been more toxic
Xavier Anderson
Yeah, and player base is at least 70% down. Who are these retards trying to fool? The game is fucking boring.
>people unironically watch OWL With the new boop changes it's gonna be like watching bumper cars
Wyatt Murphy
How does one qualify "toxicity"? How does one get to the point in their life where they're so concerned about it that they need to qualify it in the first place?
Jonathan Moore
Chatting and communicating of any kind is way down because people are afraid of saying anything that will get them reported. You can play 10 games in a row without a word from anyone these days.
Logan Nelson
obligatory "playercount is down 90 percent" joke
Bentley Sullivan
Yeah there's less toxicity because there is less players
i wonder if it's someone's full-time job just to spread irritating buzzwords over the internet through repetition. the english language feels so hopelessly hijacked now.
John Cook
How does one measure toxicity as a number? What nonsense is this?
Joshua Taylor
>In other news, Overwatch player count down 40%.
Alexander Adams
>made over $2 billion dollars and is the most successful esport sure thing pal, CITATION NEEDED CITATION NEEDED CITATION NEEDED
Julian Miller
>the most successful esport Yeah, when we ignore the pedo and sexual harrasment accusations
Nolan Howard
It’s not a joke, it really is. Like the HotS kind of dying too where the seevers will genuinely close, not the WoW kind where they have an endless stream of retards that come back for every expansion.
Eli Sanchez
Toxic is a word for faggots who get their feelings hurt in video games
Landon Anderson
Are you a woman? Because you didn't answer the question.
How much has the player base gone down?
Ryan Fisher
Don't worry. We're getting events! and Lootboxes! And 1 new hero every 4 months! Overwatch is alive and good!
Kayden Wilson
Okay gamers, you can escape the real world for your fantasy world, but NO fun allowed. Follow real life rules in the fantasy world.
Have you considered the possibility that maybe the majority of people's fantasy worlds don't include someone spamming chat, purposefully failing and just actively being a little bitch?
Nathaniel Gray
i regret ever buying this pile of garbage
Juan Phillips
so how about increasing the enjoyment of the game?
Josiah Edwards
toxic player detected. initiate ban
Cooper White
WOOOOOOOOOOOOW
Evan Young
>but NO fun allowed.
>having to insult or be mean to people in order to have fun
Robert White
don't care only gave a shit about mercy porn
Aaron Taylor
The majority of people's fantasy world aren't oppressive and restrictive
Connor Garcia
Send both your asses back to that containment board.
Xavier Thomas
>40% What a familiar statistic
Nathaniel Hill
Pissing off the enemy team to make them tilt is a strategy. Ow should take after tf2 where we get to call each other niggers.
Brandon Roberts
>40% less people are playing overwatch
Ethan Lewis
When are they going to out one of their characters as gay again?
Wyatt Hill
Makes sense when this gets you silenced for 2 years.
Those are harmless. Jesus, might as well not use the chat at all.
Nathan Scott
How do you even determine that? do they survey people? that could all just be dishonesty.
Andrew Perry
well thats easy to do when nobody plays the game anymore
Parker Brooks
>playerbase down by 40%+
Justin Allen
Asking you for basic manners and cooperation in a team based system is not oppressive and you're delusional if you think otherwise.
If your fantasy is to be a wild shitflinging cunt that's fine. A lot of people do have that fantasy and there are plenty of places to indulge it. You can pick up GTA and run down as many people as you want, it's specifically built for you to do this as an anarchy simulator.
But don't show up to a co-op game and get upset with people because they expected you to cooperate with them. Not every game is meant to indulge the same fantasy.
Ryder Edwards
Just mute people if you don't like them
Luke Davis
>Nobody plays anymore >Means we're winning!
Jonathan Watson
Public matchmaking was a mistake. It throws everyone in with everyone, meaning nobody is happy. And the solution thus far has been some CMs / forum admins being given the position of social engineers and moral police for hundreds of thousands of people. It's a sick experiment that failed.
Bring back private servers. You can have a consistent playerbase with established norms of behavior and gameplay, and modifications to maps and game modes that suit said playerbase.
I will pick waiting 10 minutes in queue to join a 24 person server over insta-queue endless agonizing experiences any day.
Tyler Howard
It's easy to say that when your game has been hemorrhaging players for the past two+ years.
Grayson Watson
Every time a journo talks about a game with any form of multiplayer the first or second thing they mention is how "nice" or "toxic" the playerbase is and it's just fucking gay as fuck to listen to.
Was going to mention this too.
Matthew Jenkins
Did Soldier 76 get much new porn when he was announced gay? Or was it just cringy LGBT fanart from Twitter/Tumblr virtue signalers?
This I just want to play KOTH. I hate the 2CP/payload maps. They're absolute garbage design-wise. It would be a simple change if I could just play 24/7 KOTH servers
Juan Lewis
imagine being forced to play a team game where you cannot criticize underperformers
imagine if youre playing some sport and a teammate hands the ball to the other team and you can only say "uh please dont"
Easton Roberts
>Fantasy World >OW Wow wtf am I reading...
Noah Clark
>Yea Forumsirgin inches dangerously close to becoming self-aware.
Jaxson Rivera
>Blizzard employee1:JEFF SIR! we lost about 40% of our player base in the span of 2 patches! >Blizzard employee2: maybe people don't like the game in the current state...maybe we should focus on listening our fans instead of virtue signaling >Jeff Cuckplan:THE NEW GUD BOI POINTS SYSTEM GOT RID OF ALL THE SHITLORDS! WE DID IT REDDIT! i fucking hate nu-blizzard
No, ironically they like imagining/forcing a non-gay or hitherto assumedly straight character to be gay, rather than gay characters themselves That's why people still bitched about Tracer's ass even though she's a confirmed dyke, if anyone was consistent with their logic they'd support a homosexual expressing their body but since it was still an attractive female she gets burned on the pile with the rest of us
amount of praise pink haired women can receive with negative KDA and a playstation controller
Anthony Cox
I do, but if that person then proceeds to sit around and do nothing and turn a game into a 5 v 6 Because they're an asshole there's nothing you can do about that except hope you never run into them again UNLESS you avoid them or report them for being the worthless sack of shit they are and save someone else like you the pain of dealing with them in the future.
This is very simple user, there's no actually good defense for what you guys are whining about, just ways to pass the buck for your inability to function like a member of society. If you spam the chat or act like a cunt you're denying your team a teammate that they can communicate with normally and possibly making it harder for them to communicate until the point where they mute you.. If you're a piss baby who won't switch off an ineffective character when you're not getting kills or who just gives up entirely if they don't like the criticism you got you're actively stacking the fight against the people you were meant to be working with.
It's basic social contract. Blizzard marketed a co-op game and I bought a co-op game so if a significant part of the player base doesn't want to deal with you because you can't cooperate with others Blizzard has no reason to keep you around. You can argue how much is too much, what words should be allowed, the actual value of a on-trick etc. but the basic principle is sound.
Benjamin Gomez
I can confirm we've gone from approx. 1.2 NPG ("nigger"s per game) to 0.7. Lots of the data is skewed by people spamming the "nigger" word when they are frustrated or wish to disrupt the game, and this is being cracked down on.
tbqh im at like 4.7 NPG famalam, i can do better as a fellow white man
Gabriel Myers
Hey I'm sorry, what does toxicity define, the general edgy shit you'd find in Yea Forums and /pol/ and /r9k/?
Brandon White
Or it's the annual yearly tranny self-purge
Dylan James
When your players base is down 90 % so you can say toxicity is down and say we won but in the end it doesnt matter.Current state state of nu-blizzard is shameful.
>Player1: "Hey Player2, stop playing bad!" >Player2 reports P1 for toxicity >P1 is banned while P2 keeps shitting up the game while receiving a "well done good boy" message from Blizzard for reporting toxicity.
Jayden Long
Yep, That's what I was afraid of. Fucking cesspool.
Noah Smith
I think you actually hit upon a point. Who is playing right now? Fanboys. So they're not going to be 'toxic' because they know their account that they've invested thousands in will become worthless.
Brody Wilson
So the playerbase is down 40%?
Sebastian Rodriguez
If only newfags niggers would go back to resetera
Wyatt Sullivan
So there's just 18 gorillion "agents" worldwide now?
Colton Flores
>esport
i'll never stop laughing at this
Colton Mitchell
>less people play than ever before >toxicity goes down >surprised WOW! it's as if Blizzard wasn't more obviously aware of the situation, rh guys?
Jeremiah Taylor
The endorsement thing does absolutely nothing besides from labelling you as a 'kind player'. Literally anyone can and will endorse you for being a good teammate, even if you do absolutely nothing (Reference: me. a shitty player)
I don't know how LFG manages to lower toxic players, but it does filter them out if you don't want to deal with random assholes in every match i guess.
but then again, anyone can get a high endorsement if they play long enough, and that's really the crutch that makes up that 'filter'. So it's more or less the same either way.
and like many have said before, that 40 percent rate is their own fans leaving the game, so hooray for them for doing that?
I don't even see much SFM porn for overwaifus being made anymore, Overwatch's overall population must be down by 80%
Nicholas Gomez
More like 95% down, the cool kids are playing Fortnite and Apex Legends now.
Liam Bell
Conversion Symmetra version 7.0 Looking at life Through the eyes of a tire ult
Throwing games as a pastime activity The toxicity of our shitty, of our shitty
Team! What do you own the medals? How are you plat gold border, gold border Now! Somewhere between the sr boosters Sr boosters and sheep Somewhere... Between the sr boosters and sheep Disorder, disorder, disorder
More charge for their zaryas bad reapers Flashbang while he's CC'd already by hog
Throwing games as a pastime activity The toxicity of our shitty, of our shitty
Team! What do you own the medals? How are you plat gold border, gold border Now! Somewhere between the sr boosters Sr boosters and sheep Somewhere... Between the sr boosters and sheep Disorder, disorder, disorder
Team! What do you own the medals? How are you plat gold border, gold border Now! Somewhere between the sr boosters Sr boosters and sheep Somewhere... Between the sr boosters and sheep Disorder, disorder, disorder
When the game became unfun I threw comp until we bronze When the game became unfun I threw comp until we bronze
Juan Bennett
i think you're mostly right but it should be noted that most of the toxicity is directly caused by blizzard's game design. dota 2 and CS GO have their occasional thrower, but they havenowhere near the same problem with their communities as overwatch does. i played solo ranked in dota 2 for like 4 years, then started playing overwatch, and I STILL managed to get unbelievably mad with people in overwatch. the reason isn't because people are naturally shittier in overwatch, it's more that:
>you can't "carry" as easily in overwatch as in other team games due to larger team counts and higher reliance on teamwork >roles are incredibly rigid. if you aren't playing the perfect meta comp, often comprised of 6-8 heroes, you are at a massive disadvantage. it's rare that everyone gets to play what they want to play, which leads to massive amounts of frustration >healers and tanks generally just aren't fun to play for most people, but you need 4/6 of your team's players playing them usually >fights are utter clusterfucks because of tons of particle effects, random instakill abilities and ultimates flying everywhere. also, game is in first person so you can't realize what's going on >map design sucks, ults cause snowballing, shields are obnoxious, healing is also obnoxious, most hero designs are shit, and other problems that the dev teams are too conceited to recognize instead of combatting "toxicity"
really, the problem has always been that overwatch just isn't that fun of a game when you start getting into it seriously, and that shit causes people to get mad and later burn out and quit. there's no other real explanation to it. dota 2, LoL and CS are still popular after 10+ years, yet overwatch has almost completely run out of gas in 3.
>toxicity—or as Blizzard calls it, “disruptive behavior” toxicity is such a gay term
Cameron Rodriguez
>join a game >don't have a good performance >people report me for "trolling" made me drop the game.
Easton Roberts
>esport lmao
Leo Sanchez
Jesus isn't it though? I thought it was an in joke when people first started using it but nope they were totally serious. Sounds like the type of term that could only come from tumblr or reddit
Alexander Reed
Not shown: game population down 65%
Evan Sullivan
>Toxicity is down 40% How do you even measure such a thing? I'm guessing it's based off number of reports of a certain category.
Liam Evans
toxicity may be down 40% but faggotry is up 200%
go figure
Jacob Parker
Did they mistake "toxicity" for "active players" again?
Adam Cooper
Damn I didn't know Aretha was stacked like that
Joshua Phillips
"Toxicity" was one of Overwatch's goals they were forced to meet by Communist China
Asher Howard
...
Caleb Cox
i get shot caller endorsements constantly and i never speak. the system is a joke and worthless
Colton Sanchez
You don't have to do anything for that, they do it themselves.
Honestly I've really found myself enjoying the game more with the endorsement system in place and I think anyone who thinks people being assholes online is funny or a good thing is exactly the kind of person I'm glad I don't have to deal with.
Luis Cook
No, WoW became an entire lifestyle for a lot of people, that's why despite the game becoming a parody of itself many people kept playing it. In the case of Overwatch players are just jumping to Apex or Fornite.
Hudson Taylor
DOH-HO-HO-HO-HO-HO!
Michael Peterson
You assumed its gender, reported shitlord.
Samuel Phillips
>mfw I was a kid I remember being offended when an ESPN announcer went on an autistic rant about how he'd quit the day that they show esports on ESPN >mfw as an adult I understand his frustration
That said sports are arguably just as childish as video games in its own way
