Blizzard: Overwatch development is slowed by fighting toxic players
- Thread starter AndrewEB
- Start date
Recommended Videos
Like some others have said, it's probably not the co-operation per se, but the team competition that maximizes the odds that "toxicity" will happen. And this "toxicity" is not some aberration, but the standard emergent property of large groups of strangers that cannot be eradicated by scolding. It's about time these companies who expect to make tons of money from people playing against each other frankly acknowledged that, instead of perpetuating the fantasy of Nice Communities by Re-Neducation.JUMBO PALACE said:
There's this number called "Dunbar's Number" (after the anthropologist Robin Dunbar) that proposes the maximum size of cohesive communities that humans have evolved to support. That number is 150, and it's based on face-to-face interactions, without the documented dehumanization inherent in the medium of the Internet.
Good thing there is muting. At least that's what I hear, I avoid online multiplayer like I avoid syphilis contagion. Which is to say "almost all the time".
Edit: Sorry, I know it's bad form to post twice in a row. I meant to glue this to my previous post, but accidentally hit post.
Tu le connais, developpeur, ce monstre delicat,
- Hypocrite developpeur, - mon semblable, - mon frere!
That's amusing. The young bitty-loving Jeff K. lived the Thug Life, but now that he's old and jaded, he's making sure that those pesky kids know they're scum for doing as he so gloriously did. And forget about loving them tigole bitties these days, kids, that's a literal Hate Crime.Neverhoodian said:
Tu le connais, developpeur, ce monstre delicat,
- Hypocrite developpeur, - mon semblable, - mon frere!
This is one of the few competitive players I watch, and this explanation makes the most sense to me because... Yeah.
NovaWar (the guy in the upper left) asks MaximusBlack (the guy in the upper right and the only pro gamer in the podcast) how does it feel for him in Heroes of the Storm for ranking up.
If you didn't want to watch, MaximusBlack pointed out that you can not have a competitive situation that depends on other people reflect your position and status without people getting upset. Especially when the punishments for your "failure to win a game" invalidates hours of work and makes you start hours more again.
MaximusBlack goes on to say how in the previous night before the podcast, he was raging because in trying to rank up. He got MVP in HoTS four times in games that he didn't even win. He describes being a team player, making calls but no one is listening to him and they are constantly feeding the other team. Maximus then goes on to say he was playing the game for 9 and a half hours to get to his gold placement.
One game, a guy goes AFK, dips in, dips out, and Black's team is essentially a man down for his placement. The other game, one player keeps feeding, Maximus tries to calm him down but the other player keeps feeding, making the whole team rage. Both games lost. MaximusBlack loses the Gold Placement.
So this is where the toxicity forms. MaximusBlack smashes his keyboard because he knows (not due to his lack of skill), he will have to play and win for another two hours just to get back to his placement.
How does Blizzard really expect a non toxic environment in its games when the company sets up a system in which if you can not rank up due to who is on your team? Would anyone be as toxic if their individual stats was what mattered for level up? No one would care if all that mattered is how well they pushed the objectives, lead in kills, didn't feed other people. If the individual mattered more than the team, there wouldn't be so much rage.
Imagine, just imagine that you work for a company that rewards the team, not your efforts. Your end of the year bonus has nothing to do with all the sleepless nights you devoted on your project, the meetings you set up, the time you take to help others on your project team... the end of the year bonus that you're not getting is due to one of your teammate's breaking up with his girlfriend so he's not focused on anything. And another team member being promoted so there's no one left to fill her space and no one has the extra time to take up her responsibilities? Does anyone like those environments?
Simply put, trying to manage the levels of toxicity is like trying to manage the levels of actual skilled players playing every game. It's trying to control outside forces to regulate the experience for the whole. But why tilt it for the casual? Why not tilt it for the devoted, the ones who are spending hours and probably more money in the game than the casual?
I don't play hardcore. I don't play ranked in any game at all. I just played Splatoon 2 the other day and got frustrated with the situation, so yeah, I get it. I don't understand if you're casual, why are you trying to rank up in the first place. Stay in free play.
It might be from growing up in the Bronx, but I've always had the mentality of if there's an area that has a mindest or a vibe that you're uncomfortable with... avoid it.
NovaWar (the guy in the upper left) asks MaximusBlack (the guy in the upper right and the only pro gamer in the podcast) how does it feel for him in Heroes of the Storm for ranking up.
If you didn't want to watch, MaximusBlack pointed out that you can not have a competitive situation that depends on other people reflect your position and status without people getting upset. Especially when the punishments for your "failure to win a game" invalidates hours of work and makes you start hours more again.
MaximusBlack goes on to say how in the previous night before the podcast, he was raging because in trying to rank up. He got MVP in HoTS four times in games that he didn't even win. He describes being a team player, making calls but no one is listening to him and they are constantly feeding the other team. Maximus then goes on to say he was playing the game for 9 and a half hours to get to his gold placement.
One game, a guy goes AFK, dips in, dips out, and Black's team is essentially a man down for his placement. The other game, one player keeps feeding, Maximus tries to calm him down but the other player keeps feeding, making the whole team rage. Both games lost. MaximusBlack loses the Gold Placement.
So this is where the toxicity forms. MaximusBlack smashes his keyboard because he knows (not due to his lack of skill), he will have to play and win for another two hours just to get back to his placement.
How does Blizzard really expect a non toxic environment in its games when the company sets up a system in which if you can not rank up due to who is on your team? Would anyone be as toxic if their individual stats was what mattered for level up? No one would care if all that mattered is how well they pushed the objectives, lead in kills, didn't feed other people. If the individual mattered more than the team, there wouldn't be so much rage.
Imagine, just imagine that you work for a company that rewards the team, not your efforts. Your end of the year bonus has nothing to do with all the sleepless nights you devoted on your project, the meetings you set up, the time you take to help others on your project team... the end of the year bonus that you're not getting is due to one of your teammate's breaking up with his girlfriend so he's not focused on anything. And another team member being promoted so there's no one left to fill her space and no one has the extra time to take up her responsibilities? Does anyone like those environments?
Simply put, trying to manage the levels of toxicity is like trying to manage the levels of actual skilled players playing every game. It's trying to control outside forces to regulate the experience for the whole. But why tilt it for the casual? Why not tilt it for the devoted, the ones who are spending hours and probably more money in the game than the casual?
I don't play hardcore. I don't play ranked in any game at all. I just played Splatoon 2 the other day and got frustrated with the situation, so yeah, I get it. I don't understand if you're casual, why are you trying to rank up in the first place. Stay in free play.
It might be from growing up in the Bronx, but I've always had the mentality of if there's an area that has a mindest or a vibe that you're uncomfortable with... avoid it.
MB is probably one of the worst examples you could pull from gaming to support a point about teamwork.ObsidianJones said:
I don't know if you've just completely missed him playing team games, but ranging from League, to Paragon, to HoTS, to Overwatch the guy is flat out toxic. He's the kind of guy that thinks he is god tier in every game and everyone else is trash.
Going back to his HoTS experience, he had high level players coach him and he basically proceeded to ignore their advice because he thinks he knows better. This is one of those guys who will proceed to ping the shit out of his teammate who is currently being ganked to run away despite them already trying their best, then throw up his hands and go I TOLD HIM TO RUN FUCKING RETARD. He can "shot call" all he wants, but no one is going to listen to some guy who just called them all retarded.
Every game he ever plays, he learns one trick and proceeds to repeat the trick over and over and then dips out when he fails. He doesn't bother to learn metas, doesn't bother to learn strats, teams have to work around him or they're shit. That is the exact kind of person who should fail. Just because you spend hours slamming your head against a door doesn't mean the door should just open because you were there for so long.
Hell his claim to fame is infamy, in part because he was a rager. He's basically part of an early generation of streamers like DSP. And he fell out of popularity just like DSP because people got tired of watching his bs. God know why you're trying to use him as a shining example of teamplayer in a failed system.
Oh, I know about his ego. I like... liked Life's A Glitch for their SC II casts, but I don't really care about his career.Rednog said:
And honestly, I think that makes him one of the best people to address if we're talking about why people are toxic. You go to a toxic person and you get his view point. If you get casuals and people who don't rage, you're just going to get a loud sounding board of "Guys, it's just a game. Why can't we all play nice?"
If I can't fathom why people will act that way, get the ones who can express themselves the best and get their views. They might say things that makes sense every once and awhile. And that's good. Because a mind not opened to both positions can not make a truly amicable move.
My thoughts are summed up by one of two words: Scapegoating, or Incompetence. The former being the case if they're just behind schedule and decided "hey, let's blame this undesirable element", the latter being the case if it actually is as they say.
I'm not saying not to try to curtail the toxicity. Far from it. The thing is, however, blaming player toxicity for development delays should be nonsense. It only makes sense to me if we assume that the development team is the same as (or at least has significant overlap with) the community management team and they're prioritizing the latter over the former. And if that's the case, that's a severe failing in organizational management on their part.
I'm not saying not to try to curtail the toxicity. Far from it. The thing is, however, blaming player toxicity for development delays should be nonsense. It only makes sense to me if we assume that the development team is the same as (or at least has significant overlap with) the community management team and they're prioritizing the latter over the former. And if that's the case, that's a severe failing in organizational management on their part.
off topic I know but that is a false equivalence. Because in most jobs your performance most certainly is determined by your team. Most jobs aren't solo affairs anymore. Your performance is based on your results and results are based on team. Game development, academia, publicity, news reporting, management, and more all depend on how a team performs and you have to pick the slack for your team if they are failing. And being toxic only makes matters worst, even when you are frustrated about doing OT to cover another's fuck ups. There might jobs that can be done completely alone, but most these days aren't.ObsidianJones said:
On-topic: It might be necessary to dedicate some time to the problem but aside from an automated system or more robust reporting and monitoring it is a quite hard problem.
...to be fair to them, having visited the Battle.net forums over the years, the level of toxicity they could - and would - be dealing with is certainly significant enough to cause development delays. It's like a decade and a half of piss and hate all concentrated into a single place, preventing that from leaking into their games is a herculean task. Especially given Overwatch is a competitive game... whew, talk about an uphill battle.
You know, a decade ago i would have said that Activisions standoff against itself over asserting control over Blizzard was a preferable (though not ideal) situation as long as Blizzard got to make what it wanted.
Today im just counting the days until Blizzard fucks something up hard enough for Activision to come crashing down on it.
Slowing down game development because you dont like some people who paid for and are playing your game? Thats a bad omen if ive ever seen one.
Today im just counting the days until Blizzard fucks something up hard enough for Activision to come crashing down on it.
Slowing down game development because you dont like some people who paid for and are playing your game? Thats a bad omen if ive ever seen one.
I know, but I don't know what most people's jobs are. I was a personal trainer before I became a broker. I normally work in institutions that my efforts were mine to enjoy solely. I don't know what jobs people on the forum have, so I'll put this scenario.kurokotetsu said:
And more to the point, I know people who work in this scenario. More than I know people who have jobs like myself. None of them are happy. None of the are motivated. Why? Because their efforts mean nothing. And more over, everyone of them complains about the one worker who doesn't do their share but is cozy with the boss.
None of them like their jobs. And most of them call their work places some variant of toxic. And instead of firing the person who is causing more work for the office, they hold mandatory "Revitalizing Meetings" as my cousin says her job calls them, to try to convince people to view their extra work differently instead of making the office better by losing the dead weight. The Toxicity isn't coming from people with bad attitudes, the bad attitudes are arising because there's a flaw in the system that management willfully overlooks and then puts the onus back on the co-workers, creating toxicity.