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Flaming, blaming and toxicity are common problems in the Overwatch community. In my ranked session yesterday I was flamed and blamed a lot for nothing. It is really frustrating to play the game like this especially if the flamers are not even right. I have the feeling there is an insane lack of understanding the game, frustration and Blizzard seems to not care about that very much.
In this article I will talk about low self esteem players, ignorant players and possible solutions.
Yesterday evening /night I played a lot of ranked games. Like 20 rankeds in a row I guess. I am a main support player and this season I have most time on Moira, Zenyatta and Ana. I have a combined time of like 10 hours on tanks as well this season so I guess I am kind of a support that flexes to tank if necessary.
So I had this one match on Horizon Colony. We were attacking first and I picked Doomfist. I immediately got flamed and asked why I don´t play support and stuff. Maybe because I don´t want to fucking play the same characters all the time and I actually like the game and want to learn more about it so in order to do that I have to play more DPS. So the match is already over, because the guys already found someone they can blame the loss on. Sometimes I have the feeling that people don´t really want to play the game they rather want to find a way to not feel responsible for a potential loss. So the sooner they can identify someone to blame the better. Low confidence in your own skills that is if you ask me.
Anyways, I sucked at attacking first point but I carried second point really hard. When both teams were poking at each other on the left I saw that the high ground was free. So I went the right way on the high ground unnoticed. I killed their Genji there who was spamming his shurikens to build ultimate. After that I did fancy Doomfist things and murdered two other people on the point. I died but no problem we captured the point. On defense I played Ana, because I think she is really good there. You have really nice spots to land some juicy anti heal grenades on first point. On second point you have nice line of sight on your team members and on enemies most often. However, we got steamrolled.
So back to attack I played Zenyatta, because I was just tired of all the flaming. Eventually we lost the match and they still kept flaming me despite me carrying the first attack and switching to supports. They just tried to find every little mistake I made to continue the blaming so they don´t have to reflect on their own gameplay. I was called a retard and I should kill myself, because I HAD THE AUDACITY TO PLAY DOOMFIST! I LITERALLY DESERVE CAPITAL PUNISHMENT! Really come on. I am not a rapist or murderer or something wtf. They focus on me so much, because they cannot handle the reality. The reality that they make mistakes and that their mistakes hold them from climbing to a higher rank.
I get it. Most of my Doomfist experience is on quickplay. But you know that is not the business of anyone to be honest. I have very little experience on Mercy, too. However nobody ever flamed me when I picked her. It is the opposite. Actually people ask me to switch to Mercy all the time when I play Ana. The last 4 seasons my average playtime on Mercy was 1 hour per season. Yet nobody fucking complains if I play her. People demand me to play her. WHAT.THE.FUCK. So people often get flamed before the actual match started just because some people feel the need to check the profile of the players.
I had a lot of games like this last night. Even if this is terrible I can kind of handle that. What I cannot handle is if people flame me out of ignorance. If they flame me, because they think I am a worse player than them and their "criticism" is based on ignorance or simply not understanding the game.
Defense on Watchpoint Gibraltar and I play Ana. The most common way to defend on this map is to get high ground and than drop to the corner before the first point to defend there as soon as the payload is pushing through the tunnel.
You can also play more cheesy things with Sombra and play around the mega health packs. Anyways high ground , drop, defend at corner is the standard play that you will see 90% of the times. Well, my team positioned on the high ground and I went directly to the high ground on first point.
From this position I can see them, heal them and I don´t have to run to this superior location when the enemy starts to push through the tunnel. If I drop from high ground over the tunnel and try to reach the position in the picture I might get killed doing that lol. I also lose valuable time.
Nope, the Soldier in my team explained to me in his infinite wisdom that I am positioned too far back. I did not comment on that. I just thought that if I am too far away you just pushed too deep. The enemy´s spawn is just a couple of meters away from the payload. Most teams drop down very quickly. Anyways we got pretty much owned. So the situation was that nobody defended the corner, they simply pushed through, people in my team died and Soldier and our Dva were doing useless stuff on the high ground over the tunnel completely ignoring that the payload already reached the said corner.
Suddenly a wild Roadhog appeared next to me on the high ground. I have no clue how he got there. Whatever I slept him and called the sleep. But I was alone there. So I decided to stay on my position allow Road to kill me on purpose. I was dead anyways in this situation. Road next to me and an enemy underneath me. Me dying there was the best thing so I respawn faster. If I would have tried to run they would have killed me anyways and I would have respawned later which makes it more difficult to setup a proper defense on street phase.
So congratulations Soldier is able to look at the killfeed and he made a sarcastic comment on me dying to Roadhog although I slept him. After that he started to make these comments of "No wonder we lose with this Ana. Getting killed by sleeping Roadhogs" and stuff like this. Really provocative, passive-aggressive and sarcastic. So this guy has no fucking clue how to play this game, but he thinks he has kind of the right to blame people for losses.
This is not an isolated incident. Stuff like this happens all the time. Dvas are like "I am helping", boosting around a corner , die immediately and than scream in voice comms "WHY NO HEALS YOU RETARD".
Well, guess what if you break line of sight (los) you don´t get heals you gosu lol. It is not the responsibility of the supporter to keep los, it is the tanks responsibility. If you play on a proper skillrating and you leave your good positioning as a supporter you get fucking murdered immediately. So expecting your support to join you in your stupid actions is like asking him to jump off a cliff. Seriously jumping off would be even better so the enemy doesn´t get ult charge for killing you.
Winston on attack Hanamura wastes his bubble in the choke to eat poke damage despite his shield breaks within 1 second. I am zenyatta and I like all this poke damage. I can just sit there, relax and heal all this damage up....sweet, sweet ult charge....Winston used his bubble two seconds ago so he is certainly not going to jum....Winston jumps in, gets murdered"WHY NO HEAL ORB BITCH?!"
Or Junkertown defense. Our hanzo is climbing to this rotating thing in the middle of the way to 3rd point. I play Moira and by doing this he constantly breaks line of sight. I cannot follow him there. I mean technically I can but I have to heal other people too. We lose and he complains that he never received any heals the game. Like yeah dude you didn´t and it is YOUR fault. This guy played McCree on attack and he always used high noon in the midst of a fight just to get killed immediately. Like this guy had 30 hours on McCree in this season alone and he has no clue how to use his ultimate. You basically use it to zone enemies or to reload or maybe to kill people if you flank but flanking as McCree is no good idea. Again this guy has no clue how to play the game, but has the hubris to blame others for his own failplay.
Now let´s talk about solutions and let´s begin with the low self esteem players. They need to be punished. Punished hard even if it means a permanent ban. Some might find perm bans too harsh. In the end they payed like 30-50€ for Overwatch. However if you behave like this in let´s say a tennis club you are going to get kicked even if your equipment is worth thousands of Euro. Also, I think Blizzard should implement some "privacy options". Let me get this straight. I don´t want everybody to see what heros I play. If people on my friendlist can see it fine. But if I play Doomfist and everybody can see that I am not a Doomfist player than toxicity is the consequence. Just give me the option to block people from looking at my profile.
I think the ignorant players might get a little bit more humble if there would be more official information on the game. Blizzard is actually doing a terrible job at educating players about the game. Let´s take Overwatch League (OWL) for example. We can witness the best players in the world and take them as an example of how to play the game properly. Unfortunately OWL is terrible to watch. We don´t get a minimap and see how players move and position. The camera is on Tracers and Genjis 70% of the time who just do small 1vs1 all the time. So, yeah their mechanics are impressive, but we have no clue what is happening on the other side of the map. Why did this Winston just engage? Did Lucio follow him or peeled for Mercy? Stuff like this is what I am interested in. If I want to see crazy mechanics I watch a Quake montage or something like that.
This alone wouldn´t fix it of course, because you have to actually watch OWL. But with all the knowledge of high rated players Blizzard might put in some quick tips when a game starts. In League of Legends you have something like that. That toxic player will be banned, some info about the lore and some gameplay tips. I would like to read sentences such as "keep in mind that most supports cannot heal through walls" or "Taking high ground gives you significant advantages over your enemy".
I just brainstormed a little bit so don´t take the following too seriously. Maybe blockchain and cryptocurrencies might help us to create incentives to not flame. There are already services that pay you for playing games. Let´s say we have it based on blockchain. What if my client finds a match and recognizes that everybody has a wallet of the let´s call it "AntiTox"coin. There is a smart contract being created and every player pays some percent of his wallet (maybe limited to an equivalent of 10€ or something) into this smart contract. When the match is over the money goes back if there was no veto within 24 hours or something. Let´s say I got flamed and I use my veto. I upload the Vod of the game (of course you need to proof the flaming somehow), give timestamps to show that this one guy was toxic. Now a jury decides if the player should be punished and doesn´t get his money back. The money that the flamer loses is going somewhere. Maybe into my wallet or maybe into a wallet to finance some human rights organizations or whatever. Everybody should put some coins into a pot also. The coins in this pot are being used to pay little amounts to the guys in the jury who investigated it.
So I have no clue about coding and stuff and if this can work. But with this flamers would lose money and righteous players would have the incentive to "police" the community. 
To be honest I am really angry. I am close to quit Overwatch. Don´t get me wrong. I love Overwatch. It is the best FPS on the market right now. The community is destroying this game though.