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This is an interesting study, and helps highlight why Overwatch needs a scoreboard. With 6 random people on a team, very limited personal statistics, and no gam

This is an interesting study, and helps highlight why Overwatch needs a scoreboard. With 6 random people on a team, very limited personal statistics, and no game length team statistics, everyone tends to get toxic once you start losing. I've played everything from high gold (tanked rank for a few seasons) to low masters, and its the same pattern every time. Someone makes an accusation about a player not pulling their weight, demands a swap in a rude way, and the player being accused defends themselves. Then the name calling starts. It would be interesting to see what roles the author was playing, and the exact SR of the accounts, as there seems to be a great deal of variation in what people will say on voice comms (usually higher SR, because voice comms > chat) and what will be said in chat. People also like to blame DPS first, then demand a Reinhardt (if they don't have one) and then finally blame support. Without hard data as to what is going wrong with a team composition, toxicity is almost guaranteed when losing.

quxbar 8y ago
To be fair to the paper, toxicity is almost guaranteed when losing while playing with a feminine name. It's pretty rare otherwise.
wlesieutre 8y ago
> People also like to blame DPS first, then demand a Reinhardt (if they don't have one) and then finally blame support. As someone who mains support, I don't think this is true. I've had plenty of games where I do a shitton of healing, get the healing card at the end, and still had people blaming me for "0 heals" all game. A scoreboard would help with that, but it'd be a trade-off with having 5 angry people shitting on you if you ever have a bad game. I'm not sure that's better. EDIT: Plus there's all the times when your stats are bad but you're not the right one to blame, like when the whole team can't move up through a choke because the tanks are too chicken to go first, but it gets reflected in poor DPS eliminations. Ultimately it's a team game, and failures of teamwork aren't reflected well in a stats scoreboard. I think you'd incentivize poor team play by people trying to pad their own numbers at the team's expense. And no matter what information is available, some people are just looking for someone to blame when they lose. I'm not sure how to fix that. If matchmaking is working right you're going to lose about half the time, there's no point in getting worked up about it but people still do.
- greedo 8y ago
  Exactly. I average around 10k healing/10min, but if the team isn't working well, that can drop 90%. If no one peels for me, or if we just get rolled because of an infinite number of variables, my individual stats can look like crap.
jdietrich 8y ago
I'm not entirely sure that a scoreboard would help. I play a lot of CS:GO matches where people are playing for the scoreboard rather than playing for the team. Statistics can never perfectly capture the contribution a player makes. Scoreboards can also give people license to be toxic. If you're on the losing team in CS:GO, it's pretty common for the top fragger to start cussing out the rest of the team as noobs, even if that player is greedily hunting frags and the other players are making a useful tactical contribution.
cloverich 8y ago
there are so many nuances I’m skeptical there are meaningful metrics that would help. I’d honestly prefer no medals or scoreboard leaving just the win or loss. I’ve never seen anything constructive come out of it.

quxbar 8y ago

To be fair to the paper, toxicity is almost guaranteed when losing while playing with a feminine name. It's pretty rare otherwise.

wlesieutre 8y ago

> People also like to blame DPS first, then demand a Reinhardt (if they don't have one) and then finally blame support. As someone who mains support, I don't think this is true. I've had plenty of games where I do a shitton of healing, get the healing card at the end, and still had people blaming me for "0 heals" all game. A scoreboard would help with that, but it'd be a trade-off with having 5 angry people shitting on you if you ever have a bad game. I'm not sure that's better. EDIT: Plus there's all the times when your stats are bad but you're not the right one to blame, like when the whole team can't move up through a choke because the tanks are too chicken to go first, but it gets reflected in poor DPS eliminations. Ultimately it's a team game, and failures of teamwork aren't reflected well in a stats scoreboard. I think you'd incentivize poor team play by people trying to pad their own numbers at the team's expense. And no matter what information is available, some people are just looking for someone to blame when they lose. I'm not sure how to fix that. If matchmaking is working right you're going to lose about half the time, there's no point in getting worked up about it but people still do.

greedo 8y ago
Exactly. I average around 10k healing/10min, but if the team isn't working well, that can drop 90%. If no one peels for me, or if we just get rolled because of an infinite number of variables, my individual stats can look like crap.

jdietrich 8y ago

I'm not entirely sure that a scoreboard would help. I play a lot of CS:GO matches where people are playing for the scoreboard rather than playing for the team. Statistics can never perfectly capture the contribution a player makes. Scoreboards can also give people license to be toxic. If you're on the losing team in CS:GO, it's pretty common for the top fragger to start cussing out the rest of the team as noobs, even if that player is greedily hunting frags and the other players are making a useful tactical contribution.

cloverich 8y ago

there are so many nuances I’m skeptical there are meaningful metrics that would help. I’d honestly prefer no medals or scoreboard leaving just the win or loss. I’ve never seen anything constructive come out of it.