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I'm interested to see how Blizzard is going to handle its Overwatch community. It's very likely Overwatch will become incredibly competitive, and I don't think

by joshmn 10y ago

I'm interested to see how Blizzard is going to handle its Overwatch community. It's very likely Overwatch will become incredibly competitive, and I don't think Blizzard has ever been a part of that scene (competitive WoW, anyone?) Time will tell.

thenipper 10y ago
What about hearthstone? Or you can't chat in that right?
- Cyph0n 10y ago
  Nope, but it's still surprisingly a toxic community. You can select 1 of 6 emotes, all of which can be taken negatively by players. Also, you can play slowly for no reason.
  - ntumlin 10y ago
    To show an example of this, here's some pro players spamming the sorry emote when they are sure they'll win. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__WBdA5FvE0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__WBdA5FvE0
- Ftuuky 10y ago
  Sometimes players add you to their friends' list just to insult you, I stopped counting the times I was called a faggot in HS.
erics32 10y ago
I don't think Blizzard is a stranger to the esports scene. Every single one of their current game offerings has a competitive scene with the exception of diablo 3.
Rezo 10y ago
Overwatch does several interesting things to try to limit bad behavior. For example, there is no scoreboard at the end of a round like you'd typically find. As a result, there's very little "git gud" trolling or toxic chats were a player will blame his whole team when losing. It's a much friendlier atmosphere overall, and seems to attract a more diverse crowd.
- Cyph0n 10y ago
  Sorry, but that doesn't help with flaming. The losing team will find a way to criticize your play if they want to. You may not see that in the game now, but you will when ranked play is released. What it does help with is teamwork imo, as the scoreboard in other games like CS usually diverts attention and makes play focused on individuals.
- doktrin 10y ago
  In my experience with Overwatch, it feels about as toxic as LoL when adjusted for match length and the ease of dropping out. There's a lot of "gg ez", "trash [hero]", "kill yourself" - at least in my games.
  - fenomas 10y ago
    Maybe it varies by region (I'm playing in Asia) but I've played tons of Overwatch and seen no toxic chat whatsoever. (I've also seen very little positive chat. Most matches have no chat at all, or just some default "Hello!"s.)
    - ryanlol 10y ago
      I've had the same experience playing on both US and EU, the chat gets very little use.
mbell 10y ago
> I don't think Blizzard has ever been a part of that scene I'd argue that Blizzard was largely responsible for defining modern eSports. Blizzard games helped drive the creation of many of the gaming leagues, ESL/IEM started with Warcraft III and the original Counter-Strike. Starcraft and Starcraft 2 had huge competitive communities in their prime and really drove the growth of eSports. Starcraft 2 is tapering off today but Hearthstone is huge and Heroes of the Storm, while not nearly as popular as LoL/Dota2 is still built as a competitive game.
- errantspark 10y ago
  I'm curious how you're evaluating a game being competitive vs. not. Maybe my bar is just set a lot higher but I don't really see HotS as being a game that's really intended as a competitive game. I'd say Starcraft, SSBM, DotA, Q3 CPMA/Reflex are games that are geared toward competitive play. Whereas HotS, LoL and Overwatch seem much more aimed at being fun and satisfying to play for the average person who isn't interested in sinking 40 hours into a game just to learn basic skills like how to strafe jump or tech/wave dash. I'm not really trying to push a particular viewpoint though, just curious if you'd expand on what YOU think makes a game competitive?
  - mbell 10y ago
    As a baseline I'd say that any game where the 'prime content' is ranked PvP it is a competitive game. Sure HotS and LoL have non-ranked play but they aren't the focus of the game. Another simple metric is to look at eSport tournaments by prize pool. If people are playing the game in an attempt to win hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, it's a competitive game. I get the impression that you are conflating 'competitive' with 'difficult'.
    - jzelinskie 10y ago
      Ranked play is nothing other than a mechanic to match you with players of equal skill at a game. I posit that maybe every multiplayer game should have it, even cooperative games, since it removes the terrible experience that is having experienced players play with brand new ones. I understand your point about conflating "competitive" and "difficult", but there is a reason why people couple the concepts together: there's no point in competitively playing a game with a low skill ceiling. An extremely contrived example of this: Rock-Paper-Scissors is a competitive, PvP game and yet no one would ever host tournaments for it because of the ridiculously low skill ceiling; there's not enough to differentiate an experienced player from a brand new one.
ryanlol 10y ago
>I don't think Blizzard has ever been a part of that scene (competitive WoW, anyone?) Arenas? starcraft? WC3?
munchbunny 10y ago
Overwatch in general seems to be a pretty nice community compared to the others. However, I'm noticing that as I've ranked up into the sub-population of more experienced or dedicated players, in-game chat has gotten uglier, with people ending games typing "gg ez" or "l2p noob" in chat. Compared to the kinds of things you'd see in League of Legends, that's pretty benign, but I'm definitely seeing a steady increase in the number of angry or bad-mannered messages in my games of Overwatch. Fortunately there are "avoid this player" and "block this person" buttons that you can use to tune them out and avoid ever playing with them again. Part of me wishes that Blizzard would shove players with high incident rates into some sort of toxic player purgatory.
- joshschreuder 10y ago
  Maybe that's more a product of the player base as a whole becoming better at playing. The longer a game is out the bigger the gap will be between new players and experienced players. You can see a similar trend in lots of online games like Rocket League or TF2.
joshmn 10y ago
Forgive me I totally forget that SC2 was a thing. I haven't touched PC games in a while :(

by joshmn 10y ago

thenipper 10y ago

What about hearthstone? Or you can't chat in that right?

Cyph0n 10y ago
Nope, but it's still surprisingly a toxic community. You can select 1 of 6 emotes, all of which can be taken negatively by players. Also, you can play slowly for no reason.
- ntumlin 10y ago
  To show an example of this, here's some pro players spamming the sorry emote when they are sure they'll win. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__WBdA5FvE0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__WBdA5FvE0
Ftuuky 10y ago
Sometimes players add you to their friends' list just to insult you, I stopped counting the times I was called a faggot in HS.

erics32 10y ago

I don't think Blizzard is a stranger to the esports scene. Every single one of their current game offerings has a competitive scene with the exception of diablo 3.

Rezo 10y ago

Overwatch does several interesting things to try to limit bad behavior. For example, there is no scoreboard at the end of a round like you'd typically find. As a result, there's very little "git gud" trolling or toxic chats were a player will blame his whole team when losing. It's a much friendlier atmosphere overall, and seems to attract a more diverse crowd.

Cyph0n 10y ago
Sorry, but that doesn't help with flaming. The losing team will find a way to criticize your play if they want to. You may not see that in the game now, but you will when ranked play is released. What it does help with is teamwork imo, as the scoreboard in other games like CS usually diverts attention and makes play focused on individuals.
doktrin 10y ago
In my experience with Overwatch, it feels about as toxic as LoL when adjusted for match length and the ease of dropping out. There's a lot of "gg ez", "trash [hero]", "kill yourself" - at least in my games.
- fenomas 10y ago
  Maybe it varies by region (I'm playing in Asia) but I've played tons of Overwatch and seen no toxic chat whatsoever. (I've also seen very little positive chat. Most matches have no chat at all, or just some default "Hello!"s.)
  - ryanlol 10y ago
    I've had the same experience playing on both US and EU, the chat gets very little use.

mbell 10y ago

> I don't think Blizzard has ever been a part of that scene I'd argue that Blizzard was largely responsible for defining modern eSports. Blizzard games helped drive the creation of many of the gaming leagues, ESL/IEM started with Warcraft III and the original Counter-Strike. Starcraft and Starcraft 2 had huge competitive communities in their prime and really drove the growth of eSports. Starcraft 2 is tapering off today but Hearthstone is huge and Heroes of the Storm, while not nearly as popular as LoL/Dota2 is still built as a competitive game.

errantspark 10y ago
I'm curious how you're evaluating a game being competitive vs. not. Maybe my bar is just set a lot higher but I don't really see HotS as being a game that's really intended as a competitive game. I'd say Starcraft, SSBM, DotA, Q3 CPMA/Reflex are games that are geared toward competitive play. Whereas HotS, LoL and Overwatch seem much more aimed at being fun and satisfying to play for the average person who isn't interested in sinking 40 hours into a game just to learn basic skills like how to strafe jump or tech/wave dash. I'm not really trying to push a particular viewpoint though, just curious if you'd expand on what YOU think makes a game competitive?
- mbell 10y ago
  As a baseline I'd say that any game where the 'prime content' is ranked PvP it is a competitive game. Sure HotS and LoL have non-ranked play but they aren't the focus of the game. Another simple metric is to look at eSport tournaments by prize pool. If people are playing the game in an attempt to win hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, it's a competitive game. I get the impression that you are conflating 'competitive' with 'difficult'.
  - jzelinskie 10y ago
    Ranked play is nothing other than a mechanic to match you with players of equal skill at a game. I posit that maybe every multiplayer game should have it, even cooperative games, since it removes the terrible experience that is having experienced players play with brand new ones. I understand your point about conflating "competitive" and "difficult", but there is a reason why people couple the concepts together: there's no point in competitively playing a game with a low skill ceiling. An extremely contrived example of this: Rock-Paper-Scissors is a competitive, PvP game and yet no one would ever host tournaments for it because of the ridiculously low skill ceiling; there's not enough to differentiate an experienced player from a brand new one.

ryanlol 10y ago

>I don't think Blizzard has ever been a part of that scene (competitive WoW, anyone?) Arenas? starcraft? WC3?

munchbunny 10y ago

Overwatch in general seems to be a pretty nice community compared to the others. However, I'm noticing that as I've ranked up into the sub-population of more experienced or dedicated players, in-game chat has gotten uglier, with people ending games typing "gg ez" or "l2p noob" in chat. Compared to the kinds of things you'd see in League of Legends, that's pretty benign, but I'm definitely seeing a steady increase in the number of angry or bad-mannered messages in my games of Overwatch. Fortunately there are "avoid this player" and "block this person" buttons that you can use to tune them out and avoid ever playing with them again. Part of me wishes that Blizzard would shove players with high incident rates into some sort of toxic player purgatory.

joshschreuder 10y ago
Maybe that's more a product of the player base as a whole becoming better at playing. The longer a game is out the bigger the gap will be between new players and experienced players. You can see a similar trend in lots of online games like Rocket League or TF2.

joshmn 10y ago

Forgive me I totally forget that SC2 was a thing. I haven't touched PC games in a while :(