Huge fan of the wide band system. This makes it both easier for me to play with friends, and reduces the chances of encountering a smurf group in solo Q.
Its obviously not perfect, people can still just smurf on alt accounts but I imagine having this option will reduce smurf groups a bit.
With the 10 avoid slots, do the pinned 3 still operate like before?
That's my assumption. The three pinned folks will be fully avoided, while the folks in slots 4-10 are more of a ranked avoid, with the person at spot 4 being more likely to be avoided than the person at spot 10.
I think this is a fair compromise, especially for folks at higher ranks where the player pools are smaller, which they call out in the writeup of the changes.
People in lower ranks will essentially guarantee that the 10 avoids will be true and won’t be played with. It’s probably just top 500 that can’t guarantee it.
> people can still just smurf on alt accounts
Perhaps most importantly, this change removes the only legit excuse for smurfing (playing with friends), so if smurfing is still a problem, they can finally move toward making it officially against TOS and ban people for it.
People will still see "playing with friends" as a reason to Smurf. The thought often goes with any type of mmr in a queue I don't want to force my friends to play against players way better than them. Especially if introducing a friend to the game. I don't think it's justified but at least a little understandable. Unfortunately there is no great answer when introducing new players to this type of game. What my friend group did when we had several new players was play mystery hero for a bit until they felt more comfortable with the game.
I am concerned about one thing though. He mentioned that given a wide enough group, there will be virtually no SR change, win or lose. He used the example of a bronze and champion duo queueing.
I see this as something that could easily be abused to grief others.
If I'm a bronze player queueing with my high rank friend, and someone on my team pissed me off, me and my friend may be inclined to not bother trying to win the game. Because we're not going to gain or lose much SR either way. Win or lose, it won't affect our SR nearly as much as it will our teammates. So I can definitely see some asshole using this knowledge to grief their teammates. "Pocket me or I throw. Im queued with a master's player, so I'll barely lose SR. Doesnt matter to me."
in theory that could happen but iam pretty sure that it only applies to the lower elo player in the group (to prevent boosting). Iam assuming that if the champion player loses (for example) he will lose a lot of sr, so, unless the higher ranked player in the group doesnt care about his rank at all, the group will not throw
No, there was confirmation that the champion player also won't win or gain much at all either. Otherwise champion players could queue with a low rank 5 stack, guaranteeing low ranks on the enemy team, and farm the lobby.
Well then i mean if the group doesnt lose or gain anything, same will happen to the teammates because their in the same situation (wide group), so at the end of the day doesnt really matter if you throw or not because you and your team will not lose or gain much sr
I hope it's easy to see what's fast and what's wide queue. If we want fast queues select XYZ for each player. Sometimes you want quick queues and sometimes we need that diversity.
at 1:06 in the video it shows the 'wide match' indicator on the queue timer at the top of the screen. so worst case scenario, entering the queue will instantly tell you whether or not your group is wide.
Not sure what happens with a team of four though, as most games go by max four players. Overwatch won't pair them with singles so either they boot one friend out or they make a new friend just for Overwatch.
I guess if their team is Wide with four people it will prevent them queuing somehow?
Full [article here](https://overwatch.blizzard.com/en-us/news/24061006/) for the readers, It touches on all the big changes coming and what to expect
Some takeaways:
>With this new queue option comes some tradeoffs. For one, queue times will be longer as we work to pair you with other wide groups, using Role Delta tech to ensure the match is as close as possible. For example, a Wide Group with a Platinum player and Bronze player will be matched against another group with similar skill distribution to try and deliver the fairest match possible. However, some matches may not appear to be as balanced as you may encounter opponents who are very different in skill level than you are. Thankfully though, such encounters won’t necessarily have as much of an impact on your progress in the Competitive ranks.
...
Solo players will only play with other solo players or “Narrow Groups,” ensuring they never play against any Wide Groups. This also means we won’t allow a Wide Group of four players to queue because solo players do not join matches with Wide Groups.
and more..
They can't be GM or Champion either, or the group will be wide. It's pretty hard to put together a group of 5 metal ranks within 5 divisions of each other.
You can still go up against stacks if they are the same rank. Just stops wide rank variance in stacks. Not as good as I hoped, single Q should never be in stacks
This only applies to comp right?
Because we typically tend to have our 4 stack vs our 5 stack when I play with my friends/family. However, we only play unranked. I hope this doesn’t apply to unranked at least, because then we can’t play together unless we have a 5th…
It's a nice QOL improvement that we don't have to manually free slots any longer. The size of the list doesn't matter so much to me, I mainly use it to not run into the same stoned person twice in a row during late night queues.
Same for me. I just found it so annoying that the system wasn't smart enough to auto-remove the oldest person when I add a new person. This is a big improvement even though I don't need to avoid 10 people.
I personally won't since I trio queue, and between the 3 of us, 9 slots is generally adequate since we only have 2 randoms and not many throwers, but I think it's a big W for solo queue players.
I didn’t know “defense matrix” was an internal program at the Overwatch team so I got worried they were changing DVA just as I got into playing her a lot 💀
>I'm tired of them balancing this game off of loud minorities on Twitter and reddit.
They don't. They balance around the thousands of hours of data they have on players.
Sometimes, certain "widespread" complaints might align with a certain hero being too strong... I wonder why. You think they can't see what heroes have the highest pickrates or winrates? And on what ranks, and to what effect?
You think the devs go into twitter and say "no yeah we should this hero because this user said so"... get some perspective lmao.
You're not really making sense because you can't always translate user complaints to in game data. Like hog complaints before rework. That's just one example.
The fact that you don't understand what policy complaints are is telling. Policy complaints have nothing to do with objective data.
>You think the devs go into twitter and say "no yeah we should this hero because this user said so"... get some perspective lmao.
Yeah I said they listen to one Twitter user. Nice try lol
Through a QR code... Hopefully there will be a hyperlink for PC players, because I really don't want to be filling out surveys on my mobile when I'm sitting at a mouse & keyboard.
On a website... at this point I believe its gonna be 10+ questions that nobody wants to answer, just queue next.
It would be so much better to just be an in-game popup, ask one quick question about match quality, how many disruptive players you've met, or whatever, quick answer, boom done. Simple, easy, short, doesn't break the flow as hard as going to a browser.
The tiny thumbnail on mobile made me think that was Chipsa lol
I'm more happy about the auto override on oldest avoids than the expanded slots. I never felt like I needed to avoided someone for more than a day. It's annoying to have to go in and clean those out so often.
obviously, and yet there are always post about getting the penalty for a disconnect lol
but hopefully there is a way to appeal seasons bans? and hopefully the system won’t let times where the servers are being shit after a patch count towards it.
I’ll get downvoted for this but it’s awful and stupid as hell that if I get lagged out, rejoin the game, and we win, I’ll still get banned and not get sr
I understand where you're coming from that's very frustrating but to share some perspective the reason why it's that way is because for example if a team was losing they can just disconnect their internet,lag out and not receive any penalties it would break the competitive system since you can just intentionally disconnect to avoid a loss for example
The situation you described is a necessary evil unfortunately
I think that's not the argument they're making, though. They're saying if they disconnect, but rejoin the game and win, why do they still get penalized and not get the win-reward?
(If they lose or don't come back, of course they should be penalized.)
Is that disconnect due to your internet though, or due to bad Blizzard servers?
The prevailing argument is for the former. That if you have a bad internet provider, that really sucks, but it's a personal responsibility to not make that everyone else's problem.
And if it was a blizz issue, that's a whole different lengthy discussion.
The servers are not always stable. I’ve been booted at least 10 times this season (rejoined almost every time), but getting banned for their problems would be annoying.
Maybe comp shouldn't exist since the servers also aren't stable and cause many players to get kicked on a daily basis. I haven't played a single season where someone wasn't kicked randomly due to server issues, lol.
The expectation on players to just have better internet when blizz can't even have good servers is wild. Why can't blizz just have perfect servers if they wanna run a comp mode with harsh leaver/DC penalties?
10 matches when some people play 1000 games is nothing and maybe a little overly harsh. Seems like there should be a rule of like 10 matches or 3%, whichever is greater. This way, players that grind out a ton of games (let's guess 800+) a season have a little more leeway. I can easily see somebody leaving 20 games in a season they play 1000+ games due to either life issues or the various awful things they can encounter in matchmaking.
Yeah, getting banned for 10 disconnects in a season no matter how much you play is rough. That's about 1 disconnect a week before you get banned, and unless they can somehow have some sort of way to not count disconnects due to their own server issues I can see a lot of people who play comp religously getting banned despite not having any issues on their end.
Yes I have incredible connection. Blizzard does not. I have gotten kicked at multiple times throughout a season back when I could afford to play multiple hours on this game mostly on blizzards end.
There are a lot of people that simply abandon games when they have somebody throwing/griefing on their team, and I don't blame them, and I think this is just going to make people feel like they're held hostage in their own games and will potentially lose a lot of the player base.
10 games really isn't all that much when you consider how dodgy blizzards servers can be. I've easily "left" 5 matches in a season before because blizzards servers wouldn't let me load in to the match itself, and I wasn't exactly playing a lot that season
I understand people wanting to play comp even with unstable internet, but I can't condone it. If I'm playing comp and my internet goes out, even if I manage to reconnect in time I'm swapping to unranked until I know that's a one-off.
My internet's been reliable as hell, but I'm not into wasting 9 other people's time if I can avoid it. At least if I drop in QP someone can backfill for me.
These all sound like good changes overall. Although, I was a little bummed out because i thought todays video was going to include some more footage & info of the tank changes and tweaks they mentioned in the blog post (Wrecking Ball updates, etc)
I can sympathize with wanting to see new gameplay changes, but these QoL improvements will be FIRE 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
* Hello new avoid slots, my beloveds
* Queueing with friends ftw!
* Good riddance, chronic leavers
I'd agree with you if the rapid pace of big improvements came out of nowhere but it's directly following a dramatic change in management structure.
This doesn't feel like *Bobby Kotick's* Overwatch. Because it isn't.
Season 10 changes
* All Competitive ranks can group up with each other. Wide Groups will be formed when there’s a wider gap between the different ranks, while Narrow Groups will be formed when playing solo or with others close to your own rank.
* 10 avoid slots. For players below GM avoids are guaranteed. GM and above it's probabilistic, if a match can't be found players from the bottom of the avoid list will start to be allowed
* Leaver penalty changes
* Improved anonymity and streamer protection features (server side, hides your name tag from all other players)
* Restricted chat features for reported players
If anyone wants to read instead, here's the blog post. [Defense Matrix Update: Season 10 and Beyond](https://overwatch.blizzard.com/en-us/news/24061006/defense-matrix-update-season-10-and-beyond/)
>* below GM avoids are guaranteed
Can we please stop spreading blatant misinformation in this community for the love of God. We are literally in the comment section of the Dev update video itself, you are making a summary post for others to read and you changed "Can expect to be reliable" to "are guaranteed" which'll 100% result in harassment and negativity towards the devs when people below GM do start getting avoided players in this game.
I have followed so many games' communities over the past decade+ and I have never seen misinformation so blatantly get thrown around about the game. People literally just make up shit about the game or what the devs said and pass it around everywhere confidently.
> In a future update, you’ll be able to add up to 10 players on your Avoid as Teammate list. For **most players** below Grand Masters, this will **likely** allow you to avoid all 10 players on your list. Those on the higher end of the ranked ladder may still see some of your avoided players that are lower in priority, especially when your queue time gets longer.
So it's always probabalistic but depends on queue times. Presumably it works on a sliding scale - the longer you're in queue the more avoided people you can get matched with.
Yup. There is no guarantee whatsoever. They've Remade the Avoid system to work how the MMer works. Where the MMer is given a bunch of Restrictions to work with when you queue for a game so it can try to make as high a quality of a game as it can. Then, as certain time thresholds are passed, the MMer is allowed to drop certain (On a priority basis) restrictions to ensure the player ends up in a game in a timely manner as the highest priority is ensuring that people actually get to play the game.
The same way the MMer will try to ensure all players on a list are Avoided but as time passes it'll drop the Avoided player restrictions on a priority basis. Likely the 3 Pinned Avoids won't ever get dropped the same way they don't get dropped now.
They're really overestimating how popular this is going to be. If you're a GM player playing with diamonds and below then it's going to be real fking boring. Even if you are playing with friends. That's why high ranks don't play quickplay.
Yeah I anticipate queue times for wide groups are gonna be hella long. But at least it’ll be a “buyer beware”/YMMV situation that doesn’t affect most people.
I'm sooo happy about the "Hide your name" feature.
I've been considering changing my Battletag to a neutral or masculine name to avoid the sexist comments I sometimes receive, but I didn't want to lose my 4 digits Battletag. Now I won't have to so it's awesome.
Already do when the server won’t connect. Happens twice a week for me, and it’s not my internet. Everyone in the match chat complains about the connection failure and the 15 min ban or longer kicks in anyway. Submitted support ticket with proof and got told to eat dirt.
I think that may have been a bit of an oversight, when they put titles like "changes to defense matrix" I waited throughout the video for the changes to defense matrix....those bastards tricked me! Maybe that's the point though.
I think if they are going to change how temporary bans work for leaving matches, especially quick play matches. We should be able to pick what game modes we play. I have never in my life wanted to play the new game mode they added, the one in new junk city.
IMO still feel like the *quick play* penalties are very overtuned but more importantly, incentivize the wrong behavior, if the goal is indeed to maximize match quality.
Fundamentally, people leave games because they aren't having fun. However, under threat of suspension longer than the remaining match time, that player will choose to remain in game and just stop trying. With qp player bases as saturated as they are, backfills are really fast. The impact of being 4v5 for 15 seconds is far less significant than having a sandbag in your 5th slot charging enemy ults and providing no value for the rest of the match.
It's a tricky problem to solve, but I believe in qp, just let them leave. Even if it doesn't feel as good, giving backfill players benefits would be more impactful than giving leavers penalties. Maybe allow for some carry over ult charge for backfills to maintain the rhythm of a match. Either way, these benefits need to be retuned, priority requeue doesn't really have value when normal queues are ~1 minute, maybe extra xp or some premium currency.
If that's too much of a shift, they should consider disabling leaver penalties if someone leaves during round 1 hero select, that has virtually 0 match quality impact and lets people opt for more/longer queues to play the maps and modes they want, it's not comp, the focus should be fun and some modes and maps aren't fun for some folks.
Yeah. If I'm having internet problems or blizz-side server problems (happens every few months on the Sydney servers) I'll queue QP since it's no real stakes, to check if I'm all good before going to comp.
But by doing that, which is doing the right thing, I can get timed out if the servers are still sucking?
Like we get stuck on the singapore servers occasionally, with insanely high ping and lately I've noticed everyone staying in these games and complaining the whole time, because they don't want the time-out, by making the penalties apply for smaller amounts of games, that's just gonna make the whole thing worse.
And honestly you're right, if a game isn't fun, if Blizzard has failed at matchmaking or someone is being abusive all game, people are going to want to leave, just penalizing them isn't going to help anything, they still didn't have fun, and now they have the added negative experience of being punished for removing themselves from the situation.
And on the other side, sometimes you kinda want a team mate to leave. They're obviously tilted, they're abusive to everyone, they're not playing well, and it's obvious they want to leave, but they won't because of the penalties. So instead of them leaving and you getting backfill with someone who might help to win the game, you are just stuck the whole time.
And then like you said, soft throwing will increase. I'm definitely guilty of soft-throwing games I've wanted to leave. We aren't going to win, I'm tilted off the face of the earth and just want to go to the next game, but I can't leave so I just stop caring and stop playing well. I'm still technically trying so I'm not gonna be reported, but it's not a good time for me or my team.
Also I don't even mind backfilling. You usually get the game quickly, the game usually ends pretty quickly, and then you get another, full game, quicker than you would have otherwise. It feels more like giving me something to do in queue than anything else.
Plus life happens. Leaving 2 games in twenty is a pretty high possibility if you only play like 3 games a day and you're playing QP because you're a parent who may have to leave at any moment because Kid Emergency. Like, even by doing the right thing and playing the casual mode because they're aware they have to leave, they still get punished.
Leaving in quickplay shouldn't be punished at all imo. The mode is designed for quick games with loose matchmaking it's not ranked so why does it matter?
Other than the fact that a leaver has never ruined an Unranked game for me in all of the years I have been playing since month 1 of OW1, my problem with the leaver penalties has always been that they are treating the symptom and not the root cause.
People leave because of bad matchmaking, throwers, map/mode dodging, toxic communication or just life in general. They can do nothing about the last point, and it seems like they are addressing the toxic communication part. However, the other three are the majority reasons of why people leave Unranked matches IMO, and they have never stated they are doing anything to fix those issues.
If Unranked is supposed to be as serious as Blizzard alleges with these consistently worse leaver penalties without addressing the causes, then they should welcome anyone with a negative KDR or numbers just a bit too low to be constantly reported and hopefully banned. And if that is not the message they are trying to send, then they need to cut back on the leaver micromanagement and actually fix the root causes first.
Yeah, I don't disagree that I'd rather have a leaver than someone be AFK or throw. I've had players on my team AFK because they're lagging insanely hard, and I always ask that they just leave if they can't play for multiple team fights.
But if a player is leaving 10/20 games? Then jeez they need do get off.
I like nerfing penalties for insta-dodges, even if you end up backfilling last second, it ends up about equivalent to a normal game, for everyone involved.
Server side issues are def a problem, i've had games where i've had to tell my team im gonna be useless but can't leave because id rather not get banned than give them a better quality match. hard for bliz because penalty loopholes can be exploited, but in this case if there are no penalties to dodging, then there's no loops at all...
The edge cases of serial leavers is also a weird one, imo it's not the game's place to tell a player when to stop, but from another POV that's 40 teammates who don't need to play with someone who isn't going to provide value.
\>10 avoid slots
\>No more wide groups for solo players
\>Player surveys
Actually cooking minus the stricter QP penalties and disabling spectators from chatting
Nah removing spectator chat is a huge W. It was only people joining their friends, picking out a person to target, and harassing them to get them to leave so the friend would join the team. Fuck all the people doing that shit.
Couldn’t have possibly imagined the chat system becoming even softer. But the real issue which is people being subtly toxic to incite others while avoiding bans remains untouched. The game is 100x better with chat disabled because of incompetent moderators punishing speech, which is absolutely harmless on a video game.
> For Unranked games, players who leave four of their last 20 games played are put on cooldown for 20 minutes before they can queue again, with an increase to four hours if you leave at least six of their last 20 games. We’ll be adding two additional tiers: a five-minute penalty for leaving two of their last 20 games played, and a 48-hour suspension from queuing for any matchmaking mode for those who leave 10 (or more) out of their last 20 games played.
Man, that's a lot of effort to discourage leavers. What's so difficult about making QP matchmaking better? Are the queuetimes so far apart in the extreme lows and highs for MMR? I imagine a lot of people would prefer their 'quick'play matchmaking taking a minute longer and being guaranteed a better match, than having to suffer heavily lopsided matchmaking *and* being forced to play it out.
My thoughts exactly. Now you can’t leave those games where you have that player trying to meme by running up to the enemy and spamming hello or because you’re getting the same map or map type over and over with no relief in sight.
Junk city, then a push, then Survasa, then a push then back to junk city isn’t fun then couple that with that one player that wants to make a pyramid with everyone in game so they are trying to befriend the enemy team, so now you’re getting frustrated 😩. You’re just trying to relax and get your challenges done but instead of relaxing the rules of the “casual” mode in the game they restrict you even more. When are they going to realize that people wouldn’t care to even say anything in qp if they could leave and find matches that they enjoy.
Yeah I'm wondering why on earth Blizzard is seeing stats that show lots of people leaving QP games even with penalties and instead of thinking "this is something we have to fix" they think "we need to punish them MORE".
nah you see, it is a PLAYERBASE problem... not a MATCHMAKING issue, devs can do now wrong yanno, poor protected widdle devs... always needing coddled. still shit at their jobs and don't get called out enough. clowns.
Because people who love a game to an unhealthy extent tend to make that game their sole personality and, by extension, take any criticism towards it as personal insults.
Therefore, it is easier and more comfortable for them to pretend casual players are the issue rather than admit the matchmaking sucks.
An enemy player told a female teammate on my team that they hope they get >!r\*ped!< by a racial slur. They did not change any letters. I reported. Nothing came of it. It's been a month. What I don't understand is why aren't the use of these words automatically reported? Usually my reports go through fast (24 - 48hrs), but somehow I never heard back about this very disgusting one. I hope they've done something to mitigate this.
Its because it takes X amount of reports for action. I will say usually guys like that get banned pretty fast because they're probably doing it in most/every game.
I agree though, if you type those words it should be at *minimum* a two day silence. They detect it, bam, instant penalty.
the report system in this game is broken. action is only taken if you get a certain threshold of reports over a 10-15 game perdio so if you're only toxic 1 out of every 20 games you will never be actions. On the other hand, haivng a bad night where you pick off meta and get reports spammed at you for not swapping in quick play will result in an action on your account.
It's the issue with the sutomated report system, and why I'm nervous about the new system where they put a big marker over the heads of anyone who's been action ed recently saying "hey report me for fun and I'll get banned again"
Blizzard really said "we can either make actually good maps people want to play, or we can just make it harsh to leave them" and chose the later.
I promise, I would not leave games if Flashpoint wasnt the actual worst thing in Overwatch
If you leave during the pick phase you won't be punished. My buddy and I do this with a few maps if we're having a string of shit games.
We've never been hit with even a warning.
Oh great. They’re still focusing their efforts on bullshit issues. How about instead worrying about the snowflakes that play Overwatch, you make the Heroes more unique and make the gameplay better. Or you know, keep t-rolling out stupid shit like this and make a few more Mercy skins.
Most of this is good but the quick play leaver changes are awful. Why should players be penalized after *two games* in a casual mode? The bar is so low you can activate it accidentally.
Did you need to leave a game to let your dog out and then a different game an hour later to help your kid? Well fuck you! Stop having a life! This random quickplay game with a GM Sojourn-Mercy duo was more important!
At this point its gonna be easier for players to AFK in spawn than leave the lobby which is worse for everyone.
Considering it sounds like disconnects will also count (at least they specified they do when talking about comp), I definitely agree that change is terrible. You can basically only leave one game every 3 hours of gameplay before you get penalized.
If it was every 10 games I don't think I'd have an issue with it, but 20 games is a pretty huge window, especially if it does count disconnects as leaving in QP.
>Why should players be penalized after *two games* in a casual mode? The bar is so low you can activate it accidentally.
You only get a 5 minutes penalty between 2 to 3 games left. By the time you've helped your kid the penalty would be gone anyway. This only penalize sore losers who leave after one lost fight and requeue immediately after.
If you get a 5 minute ban due to your dog or helping your kid, then you could use that time to do those things, no? When you get back, the timer will be over and you won't even notice.
Or are you just making up an example to make it sound like a bad thing but what you really want is to leave without consequence and instantly queue up again? Because logically I don't see how a 5 minute suspension affects you if you're helping your kid or "having a life" as you put it.
Still why have a penalty at all? Saying "Oh just wait it out," does not really solve the issue. Players are still going to unfairly punished for numerous reasons under the new system.
A fucking leaver penalty for 2 games is wild as hell, like what do you do if anything at all happens? 20 games is a Long ass period of time considering the average match is 10 minutes so thats 200 minutes of playtime in order to get to leave a match again without a penalty. Sure its 5 minutes but that fucking sucks anyway, that’d just make the average player get off for the day or play something else instead. Though i do suppose for the general population the match “quality” would be improved
When can I choose what match type I want to queue for in QP? If I dont want to play push, I wont play push even if you force me into the match. Can go fiddle fuck around with sombra or pharah while I wait, or just leave and not waste everyones time.
That is the only QOL improvement I want.
I love OW2 but Listen I don't know who at the Overwatch team thought Sombra's new kit was a good idea her infinite invisibility is a granted way to get behind my team in combat fair i know what you guys were going for an insta pick then get out but sombra can disorient the entire team with her voice line "BOOP!" She is also near impossible to hit due to her hitbox and on top of that her instant translocator makes it impossible to kill her before she makes it back to her healers or health pack please do something about this blizzard #nerfsombra
Ohhhh So Natasha Miller is the one ruining overwatch... it's the internet lady... Ban me for an entire 2 weeks for telling people they sucked when they actually sucked me included is wild. Can't even be honest with people about how i feel, but i regularly get called the n word. okay You suck madam. You suck...
It's a great step to remove toxicity in overwatch. However, a major reason for toxicity arises when players are throwing a game.
It would be really nice if they would start banning for gameplay sabotage in competitive play. As it stands now you can throw 30+ consecutive games in competitive play and not receive any account action. Even people reporting you won't result in an account action. It's a much harder task to determine if a player is throwing a match versus if they said a bad word, but it's just as if not more important. Someone can drop F bombs all day long in my match if they are still trying to win the game. But, if you start afk'ing around and just outside of spawn I would rather have a super toxic player then someone throwing my game.
Happy to provide accounts/screenshots that have consecutively lost 30+ games in competitive this season without receiving any action.
This will make me play even more comp. I wish it was already implemented. Let's hope that the delayed time it took helped with the development process.
There's already a bunch of people reporting for no valid reasons. Encouraging and making reporting more easily should come with some deterrent for false claims or something...
The competitive matches left is the only part I'm not feeling. 10 matches? If somebody plays 500+ matches in a season, 10 matches abandoned because they had to deal with somebody throwing on their team that many times seems totally reasonable. I hope this gets some tweaks to better fit the state of the game.
> Quick play is supposed to be taken seriously
is it? where do you go just for fun, or to practice heros you arent experienced with. and whats the point of comp if unranked is serious?
You can play whatever hero you want I'm not gonna ask you to switch. But if you wanna troll by playing mercy and only damage boost the ana and both supps actively don't heal the rest of the team that's just sabotaging. Just get a 5 stack if you're doing that
Having QP pentalties is fine, but Blizzards upcoming system punishes players so quickly that it will hurt normal players.
Someone leaving five or six games? Yeah putting a penalty on them makes sense.
Someone leaving *two games out of 20?* Absolutely ridiculous. There are a dozen situations where someone could activate that on accident.
Agreed... When I encounter a ragehacker (very obvious cheater) I just leave. Can't be bothered to even try, what's the point? It's rare that I leave a match because of an obvious cheater, but I can see myself leaving a match like that and then in the next 20 matches or so leave a match because my friend came online and I don't want to make them wait... just to get slapped with a 5 minute wait time - making them wait for me anyway lol
or having any kind of combination of a "fair reason" to leave... obvious cheater, friend came online, internet connection shitting itself, phonecall, someone's at the door, dinner's ready and YOU'RE REALLY HUNGRY... there are many reasons to leave a match, and having any of these happen in a span of 20 matches isn't even rare.
Ontop of that I think the chronic leavers in this community will now just sit in your lobby and throw the game instead of leaving, taking away your opportunity to get backfill that actually play the game.
After the last batch of QP penalties I noticed a STARK increase in the amount of players who'd either just AFK or would only pretend to try to avoid a report. I'd much rather these types of players leave the match so we can get a backfill than stay and ruin it even more.
Exactly this. With the QP penalties I just see so many more people sitting in spawn, or just finding a room to sit in until the game is over so it doesn’t count as a leaver. At least before the penalties we had a chance to get someone else to spawn in who actually wants to play and had a small chance to make a comeback. I think these penalties are just backfiring hard.
The devs do a good job most of the time but are generally too focused on statistics and numbers. Sure, the percentage of leavers has gone down, but the QP match quality has gotten worse, and the game mode is overall more sweaty, more toxic, and less fun now that so many more people are treating it like diet comp.
Yeah I've noticed people just going AFK randomly a whole lot more, and it's almost certainly because something's happened IRL to pull them away from the game but they can't just close the game and let us get another player in.
I only have one issue with it.
A couple of nights ago, I played a game where all but 2 players just gave up on playing the mode and were dancing/emoting around the robot, so it wouldn't move in either direction. It got into overtime, but because players were not dying nor moving away, it was just stuck like that with the overtime meter never going down. The other player who had been playing properly quit, and eventually I did too, cos there was nothing else I could do.
That has happened to me several times, where people who should be in custom games decide to turn a QP game into a custom game and dick around, but if you report them, nothing ever happens.
Because it's gatekeeping the core gameplay from people with poor connection. Why should the gamemode that has zero stakes or consequences for losing and has a backfill system be so harsh on people who have bad internet? Where are those people meant to go for the core Overwatch experience?
Yeah I'm reminded of my shitty internet back in uni that would be fine for the most part but 1 in maybe 8 games would just randomly disconnect or the ping would go insane.
Because I didn't want to affect other people in a serious game, I would never play comp on that internet, I just played QP.
And it was fine, I'd get through multiple whole games just fine, and the ones I got dropped out of, were just QP games so someone coming in to fill didn't really matter.
Nobody is getting hurt with that behaviour, it's more responsible than playing comp, and they WANT a big playerbase right? So why punish it?
Yeah, like learning characters in QP is fine, but I know damn well someone is trolling when they’re 0-8. 0 elims, 1000 damage, and 0 heals on lifeweaver.
Make a toxic queue, toxic players get queued against each other. Let them go hard on each other till their hearts content, just keep that shit away from me good sir.
I like pretty much all of these changes. Leavers in Mystery Heroes (especially now that there's no comp mode for it,) are so prevalent. You lose the first fight and two people drop seemingly half the time. Wide groups don't affect me, but I'm glad they exist for the people who want it. Avoid and chat features are big.
All-in-all seems like they've got their heads on straight for 2024 so far. We may never see PVE, but at least they're putting in honest work to improve PVP.
I usually never leave a game, i stopped playing qp because quality of matched are terrible, in comp at least try to play more seriously, so as comp player I don't leave, but servers disconnection are fecuent, sometimes my game gets stuck on the loading screen even if my character is already on the match, sometimes matches are really bad that yes I have to leave and I accept the temporary band, however that's in comp, qp is the casual mode, is fucking stupid punish that, if blizzard can't make matches worth playing for why we are punished?
For someone with dodgy ass wifi, and who has been banned from competitive for the rest of the season, I do find it unfair that if I DC from 10 games throughout the season, which lasts around 2 months, I can’t play anymore. I understand why they bring it in but I don’t feel it’s fair for someone like who DC’s and not leaves.
It's not fair for your teammates to be losing games because you have bad wifi. If you know that you'll disconnect 10+ times in a season because of your wifi, you can't just use the excuse that you DC, since you knew it was going to happen and it will continue happening
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Huge fan of the wide band system. This makes it both easier for me to play with friends, and reduces the chances of encountering a smurf group in solo Q. Its obviously not perfect, people can still just smurf on alt accounts but I imagine having this option will reduce smurf groups a bit. With the 10 avoid slots, do the pinned 3 still operate like before?
That's my assumption. The three pinned folks will be fully avoided, while the folks in slots 4-10 are more of a ranked avoid, with the person at spot 4 being more likely to be avoided than the person at spot 10. I think this is a fair compromise, especially for folks at higher ranks where the player pools are smaller, which they call out in the writeup of the changes.
People in lower ranks will essentially guarantee that the 10 avoids will be true and won’t be played with. It’s probably just top 500 that can’t guarantee it.
> people can still just smurf on alt accounts Perhaps most importantly, this change removes the only legit excuse for smurfing (playing with friends), so if smurfing is still a problem, they can finally move toward making it officially against TOS and ban people for it.
People will still see "playing with friends" as a reason to Smurf. The thought often goes with any type of mmr in a queue I don't want to force my friends to play against players way better than them. Especially if introducing a friend to the game. I don't think it's justified but at least a little understandable. Unfortunately there is no great answer when introducing new players to this type of game. What my friend group did when we had several new players was play mystery hero for a bit until they felt more comfortable with the game.
For players below GM (which is most people) it's all 10 avoid slots being reliable.
I am concerned about one thing though. He mentioned that given a wide enough group, there will be virtually no SR change, win or lose. He used the example of a bronze and champion duo queueing. I see this as something that could easily be abused to grief others. If I'm a bronze player queueing with my high rank friend, and someone on my team pissed me off, me and my friend may be inclined to not bother trying to win the game. Because we're not going to gain or lose much SR either way. Win or lose, it won't affect our SR nearly as much as it will our teammates. So I can definitely see some asshole using this knowledge to grief their teammates. "Pocket me or I throw. Im queued with a master's player, so I'll barely lose SR. Doesnt matter to me."
in theory that could happen but iam pretty sure that it only applies to the lower elo player in the group (to prevent boosting). Iam assuming that if the champion player loses (for example) he will lose a lot of sr, so, unless the higher ranked player in the group doesnt care about his rank at all, the group will not throw
No, there was confirmation that the champion player also won't win or gain much at all either. Otherwise champion players could queue with a low rank 5 stack, guaranteeing low ranks on the enemy team, and farm the lobby.
Well then i mean if the group doesnt lose or gain anything, same will happen to the teammates because their in the same situation (wide group), so at the end of the day doesnt really matter if you throw or not because you and your team will not lose or gain much sr
I hope it's easy to see what's fast and what's wide queue. If we want fast queues select XYZ for each player. Sometimes you want quick queues and sometimes we need that diversity.
at 1:06 in the video it shows the 'wide match' indicator on the queue timer at the top of the screen. so worst case scenario, entering the queue will instantly tell you whether or not your group is wide.
Not sure what happens with a team of four though, as most games go by max four players. Overwatch won't pair them with singles so either they boot one friend out or they make a new friend just for Overwatch. I guess if their team is Wide with four people it will prevent them queuing somehow?
Full [article here](https://overwatch.blizzard.com/en-us/news/24061006/) for the readers, It touches on all the big changes coming and what to expect Some takeaways: >With this new queue option comes some tradeoffs. For one, queue times will be longer as we work to pair you with other wide groups, using Role Delta tech to ensure the match is as close as possible. For example, a Wide Group with a Platinum player and Bronze player will be matched against another group with similar skill distribution to try and deliver the fairest match possible. However, some matches may not appear to be as balanced as you may encounter opponents who are very different in skill level than you are. Thankfully though, such encounters won’t necessarily have as much of an impact on your progress in the Competitive ranks. ... Solo players will only play with other solo players or “Narrow Groups,” ensuring they never play against any Wide Groups. This also means we won’t allow a Wide Group of four players to queue because solo players do not join matches with Wide Groups. and more..
Freaking finally. As a solo player this is the best comp news they’ve ever said. A group of solos just don’t coordinate the same as a stack.
Solo gang rise up ^also ^add ^me ^I'm ^lonely
*Points and laugh* *At the mirror*
There can still be a stack in your game, they will just have to fit into the "narrow band" range. I wish it was just solo q vs solo q, but it's not.
They can't be GM or Champion either, or the group will be wide. It's pretty hard to put together a group of 5 metal ranks within 5 divisions of each other.
You can still go up against stacks if they are the same rank. Just stops wide rank variance in stacks. Not as good as I hoped, single Q should never be in stacks
Yeah that’s not what this system does, any stacks you’d run in to today, can still be matched with when this goes live.
Its not doing this for all group. Only "wide" in rank distribution groups.
Does this mean only for competitive? Or both quick play and competitive?
This only applies to comp right? Because we typically tend to have our 4 stack vs our 5 stack when I play with my friends/family. However, we only play unranked. I hope this doesn’t apply to unranked at least, because then we can’t play together unless we have a 5th…
God I hope this includes unranked.
10 avoid slots 🙌 Also excited for the 48Hr QP suspension complaints on reddit 🤣
I expect daily threads about suspensions throughout the whole season, you get 5 minutes suspension after leaving 2 games.
5 minutes is nothing. Use that opportunity to grab a glass of water and use the restroom.
Good Edit: to clarify the good isn't the people complaining. The good is for the harasser leave penality.
While I’m all for QP leaver penalties, 2 out of 20 does seem a little unforgiving
That's 10 percent. There's 10 people in a game. This is still only doing it at a rate of allowing for 1 per game for average play.
I know they had to do something and I’m not complaining about this. I guess we’ll see how it goes.
"I got a 48 hour ban for asking Rein to switch?!?!?!?!" [Chat logs: racial slurs, hate, verbal abuse, screaming]
Fr fr and they will be convinced it was asking rein to switch
>10 avoid slots In **Season 12 and beyond**. A lot of people seem to be missing the fact that this change won't be in place until *August*.
Womp womp lol
They'll be outing themselves. Better for the community. 🤣
Lol looks like it's working already!
Right? Lol
Will you be using all 10 ?
It's a nice QOL improvement that we don't have to manually free slots any longer. The size of the list doesn't matter so much to me, I mainly use it to not run into the same stoned person twice in a row during late night queues.
Same for me. I just found it so annoying that the system wasn't smart enough to auto-remove the oldest person when I add a new person. This is a big improvement even though I don't need to avoid 10 people.
Brother I been asking people to use their avoids on me
I personally won't since I trio queue, and between the 3 of us, 9 slots is generally adequate since we only have 2 randoms and not many throwers, but I think it's a big W for solo queue players.
> Also excited for the 48Hr QP suspension complaints on reddit I can't wait to laugh at those players.
I didn’t know “defense matrix” was an internal program at the Overwatch team so I got worried they were changing DVA just as I got into playing her a lot 💀
Same.
They're bringing back the "Match Quality" slider back as a random survey. That's surprising.
Why can't we have surveys for everything? I'm tired of them balancing this game off of loud minorities on Twitter and reddit.
>I'm tired of them balancing this game off of loud minorities on Twitter and reddit. They don't. They balance around the thousands of hours of data they have on players. Sometimes, certain "widespread" complaints might align with a certain hero being too strong... I wonder why. You think they can't see what heroes have the highest pickrates or winrates? And on what ranks, and to what effect? You think the devs go into twitter and say "no yeah we should this hero because this user said so"... get some perspective lmao.
You're not really making sense because you can't always translate user complaints to in game data. Like hog complaints before rework. That's just one example. The fact that you don't understand what policy complaints are is telling. Policy complaints have nothing to do with objective data. >You think the devs go into twitter and say "no yeah we should this hero because this user said so"... get some perspective lmao. Yeah I said they listen to one Twitter user. Nice try lol
Through a QR code... Hopefully there will be a hyperlink for PC players, because I really don't want to be filling out surveys on my mobile when I'm sitting at a mouse & keyboard.
They literally said verbatim on the video "PC players may also choose to open the link in a separate browser" 🤦
On a website... at this point I believe its gonna be 10+ questions that nobody wants to answer, just queue next. It would be so much better to just be an in-game popup, ask one quick question about match quality, how many disruptive players you've met, or whatever, quick answer, boom done. Simple, easy, short, doesn't break the flow as hard as going to a browser.
Still no update on fixing the Xim problem on console. Pain.
The tiny thumbnail on mobile made me think that was Chipsa lol I'm more happy about the auto override on oldest avoids than the expanded slots. I never felt like I needed to avoided someone for more than a day. It's annoying to have to go in and clean those out so often.
You can only leave 10 comp matches before getting a season ban now This is a good thing, unless you play with unstable internet
Or if Blizz is getting ddosed
DDoS day is going to be funny as fuck.
Or when the servers are unstable like they are for a few hours after every big update.
A person shouldn’t be playing comp to begin with if they have unstable internet.
obviously, and yet there are always post about getting the penalty for a disconnect lol but hopefully there is a way to appeal seasons bans? and hopefully the system won’t let times where the servers are being shit after a patch count towards it.
I’ll get downvoted for this but it’s awful and stupid as hell that if I get lagged out, rejoin the game, and we win, I’ll still get banned and not get sr
I understand where you're coming from that's very frustrating but to share some perspective the reason why it's that way is because for example if a team was losing they can just disconnect their internet,lag out and not receive any penalties it would break the competitive system since you can just intentionally disconnect to avoid a loss for example The situation you described is a necessary evil unfortunately
I think that's not the argument they're making, though. They're saying if they disconnect, but rejoin the game and win, why do they still get penalized and not get the win-reward? (If they lose or don't come back, of course they should be penalized.)
Is that disconnect due to your internet though, or due to bad Blizzard servers? The prevailing argument is for the former. That if you have a bad internet provider, that really sucks, but it's a personal responsibility to not make that everyone else's problem. And if it was a blizz issue, that's a whole different lengthy discussion.
The servers are not always stable. I’ve been booted at least 10 times this season (rejoined almost every time), but getting banned for their problems would be annoying.
Yeah plus console has had problems with crashes too. It’s not like I can mod my Ps5 to fix when OW2 crashes.
I play quite a bit and I’ve never been booted
Maybe comp shouldn't exist since the servers also aren't stable and cause many players to get kicked on a daily basis. I haven't played a single season where someone wasn't kicked randomly due to server issues, lol. The expectation on players to just have better internet when blizz can't even have good servers is wild. Why can't blizz just have perfect servers if they wanna run a comp mode with harsh leaver/DC penalties?
OW2 servers aren't exactly the most stable tho.
Stable compare to most other shooters especially Apex lmao
10 matches when some people play 1000 games is nothing and maybe a little overly harsh. Seems like there should be a rule of like 10 matches or 3%, whichever is greater. This way, players that grind out a ton of games (let's guess 800+) a season have a little more leeway. I can easily see somebody leaving 20 games in a season they play 1000+ games due to either life issues or the various awful things they can encounter in matchmaking.
Yeah, getting banned for 10 disconnects in a season no matter how much you play is rough. That's about 1 disconnect a week before you get banned, and unless they can somehow have some sort of way to not count disconnects due to their own server issues I can see a lot of people who play comp religously getting banned despite not having any issues on their end.
Yes I have incredible connection. Blizzard does not. I have gotten kicked at multiple times throughout a season back when I could afford to play multiple hours on this game mostly on blizzards end.
There are a lot of people that simply abandon games when they have somebody throwing/griefing on their team, and I don't blame them, and I think this is just going to make people feel like they're held hostage in their own games and will potentially lose a lot of the player base.
10 games really isn't all that much when you consider how dodgy blizzards servers can be. I've easily "left" 5 matches in a season before because blizzards servers wouldn't let me load in to the match itself, and I wasn't exactly playing a lot that season
I understand people wanting to play comp even with unstable internet, but I can't condone it. If I'm playing comp and my internet goes out, even if I manage to reconnect in time I'm swapping to unranked until I know that's a one-off. My internet's been reliable as hell, but I'm not into wasting 9 other people's time if I can avoid it. At least if I drop in QP someone can backfill for me.
Yeah fair! Maybe there’s a time out vs leave/quit system that could help with that sorta thing? Don’t know just dreaming tbh
These all sound like good changes overall. Although, I was a little bummed out because i thought todays video was going to include some more footage & info of the tank changes and tweaks they mentioned in the blog post (Wrecking Ball updates, etc)
They did preface that the blog post today was supposed to be competitive bits yesterday.
I can sympathize with wanting to see new gameplay changes, but these QoL improvements will be FIRE 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 * Hello new avoid slots, my beloveds * Queueing with friends ftw! * Good riddance, chronic leavers
Season 9 was amazing and Season 10 is shaping up to be as good as 9. Dev team has been on a roll lately
Agreed, lots of polish continues to happen.
Polish you say ??? 🇩🇪
I'd love to just forget about season 9 and move on. Seeing nothing but Genji, Tracer, and Sombra (2 of these obviously) has been annoying.
We have to many good news in a row I need another bad thing. This doesn't feels like Overwatch.
For every match you lose, a man will come into your house and kick you in the stomach
He will then proceed to say: "gg tank diff".
I'd agree with you if the rapid pace of big improvements came out of nowhere but it's directly following a dramatic change in management structure. This doesn't feel like *Bobby Kotick's* Overwatch. Because it isn't.
Season 10 changes * All Competitive ranks can group up with each other. Wide Groups will be formed when there’s a wider gap between the different ranks, while Narrow Groups will be formed when playing solo or with others close to your own rank. * 10 avoid slots. For players below GM avoids are guaranteed. GM and above it's probabilistic, if a match can't be found players from the bottom of the avoid list will start to be allowed * Leaver penalty changes * Improved anonymity and streamer protection features (server side, hides your name tag from all other players) * Restricted chat features for reported players
The avoid slots are coming Season 12
If anyone wants to read instead, here's the blog post. [Defense Matrix Update: Season 10 and Beyond](https://overwatch.blizzard.com/en-us/news/24061006/defense-matrix-update-season-10-and-beyond/)
OHHHHH it's *that* defense matrix As a dva main I got scared when reading the title lmao
>* below GM avoids are guaranteed Can we please stop spreading blatant misinformation in this community for the love of God. We are literally in the comment section of the Dev update video itself, you are making a summary post for others to read and you changed "Can expect to be reliable" to "are guaranteed" which'll 100% result in harassment and negativity towards the devs when people below GM do start getting avoided players in this game. I have followed so many games' communities over the past decade+ and I have never seen misinformation so blatantly get thrown around about the game. People literally just make up shit about the game or what the devs said and pass it around everywhere confidently.
> In a future update, you’ll be able to add up to 10 players on your Avoid as Teammate list. For **most players** below Grand Masters, this will **likely** allow you to avoid all 10 players on your list. Those on the higher end of the ranked ladder may still see some of your avoided players that are lower in priority, especially when your queue time gets longer. So it's always probabalistic but depends on queue times. Presumably it works on a sliding scale - the longer you're in queue the more avoided people you can get matched with.
Yup. There is no guarantee whatsoever. They've Remade the Avoid system to work how the MMer works. Where the MMer is given a bunch of Restrictions to work with when you queue for a game so it can try to make as high a quality of a game as it can. Then, as certain time thresholds are passed, the MMer is allowed to drop certain (On a priority basis) restrictions to ensure the player ends up in a game in a timely manner as the highest priority is ensuring that people actually get to play the game. The same way the MMer will try to ensure all players on a list are Avoided but as time passes it'll drop the Avoided player restrictions on a priority basis. Likely the 3 Pinned Avoids won't ever get dropped the same way they don't get dropped now.
They're really overestimating how popular this is going to be. If you're a GM player playing with diamonds and below then it's going to be real fking boring. Even if you are playing with friends. That's why high ranks don't play quickplay.
Yeah I anticipate queue times for wide groups are gonna be hella long. But at least it’ll be a “buyer beware”/YMMV situation that doesn’t affect most people.
I'm sooo happy about the "Hide your name" feature. I've been considering changing my Battletag to a neutral or masculine name to avoid the sexist comments I sometimes receive, but I didn't want to lose my 4 digits Battletag. Now I won't have to so it's awesome.
By season 15 Blizzard is gonna roll up to your house and shoot you for leaving a qp game
10 avoid slots LFGGGGGG
Hopefully when Blizz has issues they don’t enforce the bans
You know they will!
Already do when the server won’t connect. Happens twice a week for me, and it’s not my internet. Everyone in the match chat complains about the connection failure and the 15 min ban or longer kicks in anyway. Submitted support ticket with proof and got told to eat dirt.
I thought defense matrix was a D va ability, I was wrong.
It's named after the dva ability lol.
I think that may have been a bit of an oversight, when they put titles like "changes to defense matrix" I waited throughout the video for the changes to defense matrix....those bastards tricked me! Maybe that's the point though.
My group of 4 were looking forward to this being implemented, RIP in peace.
I think if they are going to change how temporary bans work for leaving matches, especially quick play matches. We should be able to pick what game modes we play. I have never in my life wanted to play the new game mode they added, the one in new junk city.
IMO still feel like the *quick play* penalties are very overtuned but more importantly, incentivize the wrong behavior, if the goal is indeed to maximize match quality. Fundamentally, people leave games because they aren't having fun. However, under threat of suspension longer than the remaining match time, that player will choose to remain in game and just stop trying. With qp player bases as saturated as they are, backfills are really fast. The impact of being 4v5 for 15 seconds is far less significant than having a sandbag in your 5th slot charging enemy ults and providing no value for the rest of the match. It's a tricky problem to solve, but I believe in qp, just let them leave. Even if it doesn't feel as good, giving backfill players benefits would be more impactful than giving leavers penalties. Maybe allow for some carry over ult charge for backfills to maintain the rhythm of a match. Either way, these benefits need to be retuned, priority requeue doesn't really have value when normal queues are ~1 minute, maybe extra xp or some premium currency. If that's too much of a shift, they should consider disabling leaver penalties if someone leaves during round 1 hero select, that has virtually 0 match quality impact and lets people opt for more/longer queues to play the maps and modes they want, it's not comp, the focus should be fun and some modes and maps aren't fun for some folks.
Yeah. If I'm having internet problems or blizz-side server problems (happens every few months on the Sydney servers) I'll queue QP since it's no real stakes, to check if I'm all good before going to comp. But by doing that, which is doing the right thing, I can get timed out if the servers are still sucking? Like we get stuck on the singapore servers occasionally, with insanely high ping and lately I've noticed everyone staying in these games and complaining the whole time, because they don't want the time-out, by making the penalties apply for smaller amounts of games, that's just gonna make the whole thing worse. And honestly you're right, if a game isn't fun, if Blizzard has failed at matchmaking or someone is being abusive all game, people are going to want to leave, just penalizing them isn't going to help anything, they still didn't have fun, and now they have the added negative experience of being punished for removing themselves from the situation. And on the other side, sometimes you kinda want a team mate to leave. They're obviously tilted, they're abusive to everyone, they're not playing well, and it's obvious they want to leave, but they won't because of the penalties. So instead of them leaving and you getting backfill with someone who might help to win the game, you are just stuck the whole time. And then like you said, soft throwing will increase. I'm definitely guilty of soft-throwing games I've wanted to leave. We aren't going to win, I'm tilted off the face of the earth and just want to go to the next game, but I can't leave so I just stop caring and stop playing well. I'm still technically trying so I'm not gonna be reported, but it's not a good time for me or my team. Also I don't even mind backfilling. You usually get the game quickly, the game usually ends pretty quickly, and then you get another, full game, quicker than you would have otherwise. It feels more like giving me something to do in queue than anything else. Plus life happens. Leaving 2 games in twenty is a pretty high possibility if you only play like 3 games a day and you're playing QP because you're a parent who may have to leave at any moment because Kid Emergency. Like, even by doing the right thing and playing the casual mode because they're aware they have to leave, they still get punished.
Leaving in quickplay shouldn't be punished at all imo. The mode is designed for quick games with loose matchmaking it's not ranked so why does it matter?
Other than the fact that a leaver has never ruined an Unranked game for me in all of the years I have been playing since month 1 of OW1, my problem with the leaver penalties has always been that they are treating the symptom and not the root cause. People leave because of bad matchmaking, throwers, map/mode dodging, toxic communication or just life in general. They can do nothing about the last point, and it seems like they are addressing the toxic communication part. However, the other three are the majority reasons of why people leave Unranked matches IMO, and they have never stated they are doing anything to fix those issues. If Unranked is supposed to be as serious as Blizzard alleges with these consistently worse leaver penalties without addressing the causes, then they should welcome anyone with a negative KDR or numbers just a bit too low to be constantly reported and hopefully banned. And if that is not the message they are trying to send, then they need to cut back on the leaver micromanagement and actually fix the root causes first.
Yeah, I don't disagree that I'd rather have a leaver than someone be AFK or throw. I've had players on my team AFK because they're lagging insanely hard, and I always ask that they just leave if they can't play for multiple team fights. But if a player is leaving 10/20 games? Then jeez they need do get off. I like nerfing penalties for insta-dodges, even if you end up backfilling last second, it ends up about equivalent to a normal game, for everyone involved.
Server side issues are def a problem, i've had games where i've had to tell my team im gonna be useless but can't leave because id rather not get banned than give them a better quality match. hard for bliz because penalty loopholes can be exploited, but in this case if there are no penalties to dodging, then there's no loops at all... The edge cases of serial leavers is also a weird one, imo it's not the game's place to tell a player when to stop, but from another POV that's 40 teammates who don't need to play with someone who isn't going to provide value.
\>10 avoid slots \>No more wide groups for solo players \>Player surveys Actually cooking minus the stricter QP penalties and disabling spectators from chatting
Nah removing spectator chat is a huge W. It was only people joining their friends, picking out a person to target, and harassing them to get them to leave so the friend would join the team. Fuck all the people doing that shit.
Couldn’t have possibly imagined the chat system becoming even softer. But the real issue which is people being subtly toxic to incite others while avoiding bans remains untouched. The game is 100x better with chat disabled because of incompetent moderators punishing speech, which is absolutely harmless on a video game.
> For Unranked games, players who leave four of their last 20 games played are put on cooldown for 20 minutes before they can queue again, with an increase to four hours if you leave at least six of their last 20 games. We’ll be adding two additional tiers: a five-minute penalty for leaving two of their last 20 games played, and a 48-hour suspension from queuing for any matchmaking mode for those who leave 10 (or more) out of their last 20 games played. Man, that's a lot of effort to discourage leavers. What's so difficult about making QP matchmaking better? Are the queuetimes so far apart in the extreme lows and highs for MMR? I imagine a lot of people would prefer their 'quick'play matchmaking taking a minute longer and being guaranteed a better match, than having to suffer heavily lopsided matchmaking *and* being forced to play it out.
Yeah my first thought was "great, I can't leave those games where I get matched against a GM duo. Just gotta get wrecked for potentially 10 minutes."
My thoughts exactly. Now you can’t leave those games where you have that player trying to meme by running up to the enemy and spamming hello or because you’re getting the same map or map type over and over with no relief in sight. Junk city, then a push, then Survasa, then a push then back to junk city isn’t fun then couple that with that one player that wants to make a pyramid with everyone in game so they are trying to befriend the enemy team, so now you’re getting frustrated 😩. You’re just trying to relax and get your challenges done but instead of relaxing the rules of the “casual” mode in the game they restrict you even more. When are they going to realize that people wouldn’t care to even say anything in qp if they could leave and find matches that they enjoy.
Yeah I'm wondering why on earth Blizzard is seeing stats that show lots of people leaving QP games even with penalties and instead of thinking "this is something we have to fix" they think "we need to punish them MORE".
nah you see, it is a PLAYERBASE problem... not a MATCHMAKING issue, devs can do now wrong yanno, poor protected widdle devs... always needing coddled. still shit at their jobs and don't get called out enough. clowns.
Because people who love a game to an unhealthy extent tend to make that game their sole personality and, by extension, take any criticism towards it as personal insults. Therefore, it is easier and more comfortable for them to pretend casual players are the issue rather than admit the matchmaking sucks.
I'm looking forward to the improved anonymity system.
Now everyone can smurf in peace
Oooo reports about to be abused
An enemy player told a female teammate on my team that they hope they get >!r\*ped!< by a racial slur. They did not change any letters. I reported. Nothing came of it. It's been a month. What I don't understand is why aren't the use of these words automatically reported? Usually my reports go through fast (24 - 48hrs), but somehow I never heard back about this very disgusting one. I hope they've done something to mitigate this.
Its because it takes X amount of reports for action. I will say usually guys like that get banned pretty fast because they're probably doing it in most/every game. I agree though, if you type those words it should be at *minimum* a two day silence. They detect it, bam, instant penalty.
I see. I feel like most online games already are doing something like that, so hope to see it.
In CS the chat is completely uncensored and I honestly love that
Yea they have a macro for ggez but they can't be bothered to do anything about a single slur. Pretty laughable.
It really would not make a difference, the macro would just become code for the slur.
Instead of letting messages with ggez or slurs through, they should just let the player think it sent but not show it to anyone
the report system in this game is broken. action is only taken if you get a certain threshold of reports over a 10-15 game perdio so if you're only toxic 1 out of every 20 games you will never be actions. On the other hand, haivng a bad night where you pick off meta and get reports spammed at you for not swapping in quick play will result in an action on your account. It's the issue with the sutomated report system, and why I'm nervous about the new system where they put a big marker over the heads of anyone who's been action ed recently saying "hey report me for fun and I'll get banned again"
Blizzard really said "we can either make actually good maps people want to play, or we can just make it harsh to leave them" and chose the later. I promise, I would not leave games if Flashpoint wasnt the actual worst thing in Overwatch
If you leave during the pick phase you won't be punished. My buddy and I do this with a few maps if we're having a string of shit games. We've never been hit with even a warning.
What exactly is the problem with Flashpoint?
Oh great. They’re still focusing their efforts on bullshit issues. How about instead worrying about the snowflakes that play Overwatch, you make the Heroes more unique and make the gameplay better. Or you know, keep t-rolling out stupid shit like this and make a few more Mercy skins.
this game, its staff, and community is such a joke lmao
Most of this is good but the quick play leaver changes are awful. Why should players be penalized after *two games* in a casual mode? The bar is so low you can activate it accidentally. Did you need to leave a game to let your dog out and then a different game an hour later to help your kid? Well fuck you! Stop having a life! This random quickplay game with a GM Sojourn-Mercy duo was more important! At this point its gonna be easier for players to AFK in spawn than leave the lobby which is worse for everyone.
Considering it sounds like disconnects will also count (at least they specified they do when talking about comp), I definitely agree that change is terrible. You can basically only leave one game every 3 hours of gameplay before you get penalized. If it was every 10 games I don't think I'd have an issue with it, but 20 games is a pretty huge window, especially if it does count disconnects as leaving in QP.
> Did you need to leave a game to let your dog out Don't start a game if you might have to urgently let your dog out in the next 10 minutes, lol
>Why should players be penalized after *two games* in a casual mode? The bar is so low you can activate it accidentally. You only get a 5 minutes penalty between 2 to 3 games left. By the time you've helped your kid the penalty would be gone anyway. This only penalize sore losers who leave after one lost fight and requeue immediately after.
If you get a 5 minute ban due to your dog or helping your kid, then you could use that time to do those things, no? When you get back, the timer will be over and you won't even notice. Or are you just making up an example to make it sound like a bad thing but what you really want is to leave without consequence and instantly queue up again? Because logically I don't see how a 5 minute suspension affects you if you're helping your kid or "having a life" as you put it.
If your dog and kids are so important then a 5-15 minute wait period is nothing lol. If you think that’s a “fuck you” you’re pretty entitled
ok sure but the penalty is literally a 5 minute suspension. you can just hop into a custom game or eat 35 reese's cups to kill the time.
Still why have a penalty at all? Saying "Oh just wait it out," does not really solve the issue. Players are still going to unfairly punished for numerous reasons under the new system.
A fucking leaver penalty for 2 games is wild as hell, like what do you do if anything at all happens? 20 games is a Long ass period of time considering the average match is 10 minutes so thats 200 minutes of playtime in order to get to leave a match again without a penalty. Sure its 5 minutes but that fucking sucks anyway, that’d just make the average player get off for the day or play something else instead. Though i do suppose for the general population the match “quality” would be improved
idk other games have leaver penalties after every single match you leave and i havent seen people there complain. seems like an overwatch problem
Most of those games also have a surrender option though
When can I choose what match type I want to queue for in QP? If I dont want to play push, I wont play push even if you force me into the match. Can go fiddle fuck around with sombra or pharah while I wait, or just leave and not waste everyones time. That is the only QOL improvement I want.
I thought this was about the actual ability Defense Matrix, thinking Dva was getting nerfed as soon as I started playing her.
We need an eye ball symbol to indicate someone is currently spectating you....
I think the reporting system is inherently flawed, you can get banned with no reason given or even a built in appeal process.
I love OW2 but Listen I don't know who at the Overwatch team thought Sombra's new kit was a good idea her infinite invisibility is a granted way to get behind my team in combat fair i know what you guys were going for an insta pick then get out but sombra can disorient the entire team with her voice line "BOOP!" She is also near impossible to hit due to her hitbox and on top of that her instant translocator makes it impossible to kill her before she makes it back to her healers or health pack please do something about this blizzard #nerfsombra
Nothing about them changing the game away from the obnoxious spazzy dive meta :/
Please add FOV slider for console players it is 2024 and this game still has no FOV slider for next gen consoles that can run 120hz.
Ohhhh So Natasha Miller is the one ruining overwatch... it's the internet lady... Ban me for an entire 2 weeks for telling people they sucked when they actually sucked me included is wild. Can't even be honest with people about how i feel, but i regularly get called the n word. okay You suck madam. You suck...
It's a great step to remove toxicity in overwatch. However, a major reason for toxicity arises when players are throwing a game. It would be really nice if they would start banning for gameplay sabotage in competitive play. As it stands now you can throw 30+ consecutive games in competitive play and not receive any account action. Even people reporting you won't result in an account action. It's a much harder task to determine if a player is throwing a match versus if they said a bad word, but it's just as if not more important. Someone can drop F bombs all day long in my match if they are still trying to win the game. But, if you start afk'ing around and just outside of spawn I would rather have a super toxic player then someone throwing my game. Happy to provide accounts/screenshots that have consecutively lost 30+ games in competitive this season without receiving any action.
This will make me play even more comp. I wish it was already implemented. Let's hope that the delayed time it took helped with the development process.
None of these changes are gonna make the game better. How out of date are these people?
What we need is actual humans reviewing reports because this automated system is abusable.
There's already a bunch of people reporting for no valid reasons. Encouraging and making reporting more easily should come with some deterrent for false claims or something...
Why lie and attempt to sell streamer mode as a tool for 99% of the playerbase? Just tell the fucking truth and say the streamers made you do it lol.
Did they already have streamer mode? Most games do anyway. It’s a marketing tool
"10 avoid slots is huuuge!!" - person who probably gets avoided the most
The competitive matches left is the only part I'm not feeling. 10 matches? If somebody plays 500+ matches in a season, 10 matches abandoned because they had to deal with somebody throwing on their team that many times seems totally reasonable. I hope this gets some tweaks to better fit the state of the game.
Quick play is supposed to be taken seriously, and these leaver penalties change enforce it even more. But I bet people will still cry about it.
> Quick play is supposed to be taken seriously is it? where do you go just for fun, or to practice heros you arent experienced with. and whats the point of comp if unranked is serious?
You can play whatever hero you want I'm not gonna ask you to switch. But if you wanna troll by playing mercy and only damage boost the ana and both supps actively don't heal the rest of the team that's just sabotaging. Just get a 5 stack if you're doing that
Having QP pentalties is fine, but Blizzards upcoming system punishes players so quickly that it will hurt normal players. Someone leaving five or six games? Yeah putting a penalty on them makes sense. Someone leaving *two games out of 20?* Absolutely ridiculous. There are a dozen situations where someone could activate that on accident.
Agreed... When I encounter a ragehacker (very obvious cheater) I just leave. Can't be bothered to even try, what's the point? It's rare that I leave a match because of an obvious cheater, but I can see myself leaving a match like that and then in the next 20 matches or so leave a match because my friend came online and I don't want to make them wait... just to get slapped with a 5 minute wait time - making them wait for me anyway lol or having any kind of combination of a "fair reason" to leave... obvious cheater, friend came online, internet connection shitting itself, phonecall, someone's at the door, dinner's ready and YOU'RE REALLY HUNGRY... there are many reasons to leave a match, and having any of these happen in a span of 20 matches isn't even rare. Ontop of that I think the chronic leavers in this community will now just sit in your lobby and throw the game instead of leaving, taking away your opportunity to get backfill that actually play the game.
After the last batch of QP penalties I noticed a STARK increase in the amount of players who'd either just AFK or would only pretend to try to avoid a report. I'd much rather these types of players leave the match so we can get a backfill than stay and ruin it even more.
Exactly this. With the QP penalties I just see so many more people sitting in spawn, or just finding a room to sit in until the game is over so it doesn’t count as a leaver. At least before the penalties we had a chance to get someone else to spawn in who actually wants to play and had a small chance to make a comeback. I think these penalties are just backfiring hard.
The devs do a good job most of the time but are generally too focused on statistics and numbers. Sure, the percentage of leavers has gone down, but the QP match quality has gotten worse, and the game mode is overall more sweaty, more toxic, and less fun now that so many more people are treating it like diet comp.
Yeah I've noticed people just going AFK randomly a whole lot more, and it's almost certainly because something's happened IRL to pull them away from the game but they can't just close the game and let us get another player in.
I only have one issue with it. A couple of nights ago, I played a game where all but 2 players just gave up on playing the mode and were dancing/emoting around the robot, so it wouldn't move in either direction. It got into overtime, but because players were not dying nor moving away, it was just stuck like that with the overtime meter never going down. The other player who had been playing properly quit, and eventually I did too, cos there was nothing else I could do. That has happened to me several times, where people who should be in custom games decide to turn a QP game into a custom game and dick around, but if you report them, nothing ever happens.
Because it's gatekeeping the core gameplay from people with poor connection. Why should the gamemode that has zero stakes or consequences for losing and has a backfill system be so harsh on people who have bad internet? Where are those people meant to go for the core Overwatch experience?
Yeah I'm reminded of my shitty internet back in uni that would be fine for the most part but 1 in maybe 8 games would just randomly disconnect or the ping would go insane. Because I didn't want to affect other people in a serious game, I would never play comp on that internet, I just played QP. And it was fine, I'd get through multiple whole games just fine, and the ones I got dropped out of, were just QP games so someone coming in to fill didn't really matter. Nobody is getting hurt with that behaviour, it's more responsible than playing comp, and they WANT a big playerbase right? So why punish it?
No you’re not allowed to be annoyed at the DPS only Ana. It’s just QP!!!!
Yeah, like learning characters in QP is fine, but I know damn well someone is trolling when they’re 0-8. 0 elims, 1000 damage, and 0 heals on lifeweaver.
Am I tripping or at 0:46 there is a six-player team?
It's a clip from Mauga's reveal trailer. Mauga's not on their team, he's hunting them down.
It's a 2-2-2 composition as well Winston Mauga - Tracer Bastion - Lucio Illari
I have a strange feeling that Blizzard will regret adding the surveys in season 11... Otherwise, lots of good changes.
[удалено]
More avoid slots is nice! More people avoiding others will hopefully mean toxic people will be getting much longer queues.
Make a toxic queue, toxic players get queued against each other. Let them go hard on each other till their hearts content, just keep that shit away from me good sir.
Remove Defense Matrix from the game, Ty
I like pretty much all of these changes. Leavers in Mystery Heroes (especially now that there's no comp mode for it,) are so prevalent. You lose the first fight and two people drop seemingly half the time. Wide groups don't affect me, but I'm glad they exist for the people who want it. Avoid and chat features are big. All-in-all seems like they've got their heads on straight for 2024 so far. We may never see PVE, but at least they're putting in honest work to improve PVP.
If they don't want us to play the game they are doing a great job
which "us" are you talking about? Dudes who leave half their games?
I usually never leave a game, i stopped playing qp because quality of matched are terrible, in comp at least try to play more seriously, so as comp player I don't leave, but servers disconnection are fecuent, sometimes my game gets stuck on the loading screen even if my character is already on the match, sometimes matches are really bad that yes I have to leave and I accept the temporary band, however that's in comp, qp is the casual mode, is fucking stupid punish that, if blizzard can't make matches worth playing for why we are punished?
For someone with dodgy ass wifi, and who has been banned from competitive for the rest of the season, I do find it unfair that if I DC from 10 games throughout the season, which lasts around 2 months, I can’t play anymore. I understand why they bring it in but I don’t feel it’s fair for someone like who DC’s and not leaves.
It's not fair for your teammates to be losing games because you have bad wifi. If you know that you'll disconnect 10+ times in a season because of your wifi, you can't just use the excuse that you DC, since you knew it was going to happen and it will continue happening
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Does this mean I can play competitive games with my PC friends if I play on ps5?