Firstly I'll admit to not reading the entire article but I wanted to give my two cents on the subject.
I also took a rather long break and then returned with new positive energy and ready to work together for the team. But after only two matches my will to live was diminished. 4-5 dps each round, rude/insulting people in voice chat and generally no teamwork.
I used to be mid to high diamond but am now hardstuck in plat.
The community in OW wears me down and I refuse to play it alone, the odds of ending up with 5 idiots are higher than they should, there are great, polite people out there sure, but they never seem to be on my team.
I will definitely keep playing it, it's just sad that a video game tears me down the way it does because of a rotten/toxic community.
Oh I completely agree with you. Thats why I stopped playing a year and a half ago. But since coming back, I haven't noticed these problems being as severe as they were before. I think I've had one game with openly toxic people. Maybe I've just been super lucky, I dont know. I was initially surprised when I started playing again.
And yes. it is a bit of a long read. I could have probably cut out alot of the fluff. For the next one. Thanks for contributing !
Thanks to the new report system some reported people are getting banned, and you will get a notice when one of your reports has resulted in a ban. But I feel like this is just a tiny band-aid on a severed limb. People buy smurfs, so in a sense, Blizzard is actually capitalising on the toxicity.
What's more is that I feel they now do all their balancing to suture the pro players.
My favourite is Sombra, which got a nice buff a while back. But the pros complained about her being OP instead of learning how to play around her so she got a nerf merely two weeks after.
I'm guessing she was too big a threat to Tracer and Blizz don't wan't to set their posterchild in a bad light.
I've always hated smurfs. In every game. There really needs to be a better system to allow people to play at an appropriate rank regardless of how many accounts someone buys.
But with regards to balancing. They are trying to build Overwatch as a watchable esport so its understandable that they would balance for pro players. Its just a pity that it has a much larger effect on the rest of the playerbase.
I get the concept of smurf for some, like me who played a lot of different roles but I excel at DPS. But when I play DPS people see that I have playtime with tanks and healers and refuses to play a supportive role since it seems I have more experience with it. I mean I'm an ok healer and I hate being tank. So in that regard I kinda want to buy a smurf to make it a DPS account.
But again this just makes me part of the problem. I think they need a "role check" or something for when you queue to solve this issue. That way everyone joins and pick their respected roles.