A year after release, Overwatch players on PS4 and Xbox One now have recourse for the trash Mei who won’t stop icing her teammates into the spawn point.
Overwatch
Overwatch, a pleasant game that recently has taken a turn for the toxic, has gotten flack for how long console players waited to get their reporting system. Rampant griefing and poor teamwork, which are reportable offenses on PC, could make Overwatch‘s play environment on console rough.
Today’s patch, which also includes a new Deathmatch mode and map, made reporting someone on console about as easy as reporting someone on PC. To summon Blizzard’s righteous fury on some shitlord player, you can select that player from your “recent players” list. A drop-down menu now has the “Report” feature. You can report them for abusive chat, griefing, poor teamwork, and any of the other myriad other fun Overwatch play strategies — I mean, troll behaviours — listed.
Overwatch
Overwatch
Previously, console players’ only “reporting” options included muting the player, blocking them through their console’s systems, or reporting them online. It was not exactly effective — players could still be paired with personae non gratae. So between last year and mid-winter, fans seethed. In July, Kaplan explained that the delay was because adding the feature was “extremely challenging from a technical standpoint because it goes beyond a simple change to the Overwatch game client”.
Adding a reporting feature to Overwatch on console is Blizzard’s latest move in its battle against its semi-recent plague of toxicity. Late July, after complaints that Overwatch‘s reporting system is toothless, the dev team ramped up punishments due to the unruly on PC. Today, speaking to DotEsports, game director Jeff Kaplan went a step further, saying that “Pretty soon, we hope for silences to go away all together and only have suspensions and bans for punishments”. Players who are toxic in competitive matches will get booted much quicker, too, he added.
Will Blizzard’s recent efforts against rude behaviour be enough to get me back into Season 6’s Competitive Mode queue? We’ll see.
Additional reporting by Heather Alexandra.
Comments
9 responses to “Overwatch Finally Gets A Reporting System For Consoles And Here’s How It Works”
Interesting, so no bad connection option? On PS4 I was playing one game the other day and this guy was untouchable. As a McCree at one point a Reaper didnt see me and was standing still and I perfectly landed a headshot and then a body shot , no damage, I flashbanged him, he didnt stop, then fan the hammer him, he took zero damage. This happened a few times in game. By the end he had 69% team damage.
I dont feel comfortable reporting he as cheating but it was all kinds of questionable.
That sounds pretty intentional, I’d report that as cheating.
did you have your network status settings on? it wasn’t you with lag? until that feature became available on console I had no idea how badly my ping affects my accuracy, some heros are literally unplayable, especially Mcree.
the little icons of the top of screen? yeah I had none flashing up in that particular game, I was able to land shots on pretty much most of the rest of the team, actually except for him and the guy he was teamed with.
nah nah, go into your settings and under the gameplay options and advance you can turn on a static box that will show your ping as well as client send rate etc in the top left. only became available in the last update. since Lucioball started I’ve been getting into alot of matches with 180 ping, (for comparison 24 ping is about the average) Heros like Mcree, Soldier Zen and Hanzo are just about useless as you’ll be hitting where they were constantly. Even Heros like Mercy and Sym have a delay when locking onto a target with their streams.
oh thanks, I didnt know about that. I will look into it.
also the Reaper may have been the one with a high ping, I was playing with a friend lastnight and my Mercy had a huge delay when trying to lock on to him because his connection was poor. 69% Team damage isn’t all that uncommon for Reaper if they’re good enough, and a single that wipes out a whole team is high damage.
the Report feature is limited to competitive play only right? you shouldn’t be able to report people who want to have fun in Quickplay. Also, whats the case when you match with a 5 stack and they’re all going to blame the one person not in their squad? I’m glad the reporting system is here but I know it’s going to be abused and misused by people who are complete asshats and twelvies.
Wut? So you’re saying misbehaviour should only be discouraged in CP? Is that the only arena in which bad behaviour exists? What if cheating in QP is one person’s idea of fun? What if someone is being racist, or sexist, or bullying, or just plain abusing others in QP? What if they’re not playing fair or even contributing to the gameplay? Sure it might be fun for the abuser, but is that still counted as fun for everyone else?
Reporting features should be available in all areas where players are able to meet and interact.
I get the reporting feature is an attempt to curb that behavior (PS4), but you are not attempting to curb what causes that behavior in the first place, only the effect, so you’ll end up with abuse of the reporting feature. What features have been introduced to curb the rampant player and teams leaving competitive matches, then not being replaced. Personally, my SR took a severe beating in Season 5 because of this inability to solve a simple game play problem. Also I’m really surprised your choosing to test this out (which shouldn’t be tested, no need to reinvent the wheel on this, follow what is already successful) on the doorstep of the Destiny 2 release, which could mark the beginning of the end for Overwatch. Loved the game when it came out, it’s severely underwhelming as of late.