Overwatch Endorsement Systems Explained

in #overwatch6 years ago (edited)


As of July 26 2018, the Overwatch development team introduced a new feature to combat the large issue of toxicity within the game's many gamemodes. The feature is known as Endorsements, and will be detailed below.


How Do Endorsements Work?

To make it easier to understand, I'll be splitting how endorsements work into 3 categories. The current categories are:

  • Endorsement Rules
  • Endorsement Levels
  • Endorsement Type

Endorsement Rules

So the feature is not spammed by all players in order to boost their friends etcetera, there are restrictions to who and how often you're able to commend players with endorsements. The current rules are as follows:

  • You are only able to give 3 endorsements per match. This means you can give a combination of votes between your own team and the enemy team. For example, you're able to give a vote to each of your *cough* amazing healers on your team, and one to an enemy player you thought was particularly good. Any combination works - you can give your endorsements to your team, the entire enemy team, or even nobody.
  • You can only endorse players once per match. They aren't revertable and once you send an endorsement it is final. It's a particularly good feature considering its another preventative mesaure that reduces the amount of spam votes.
  • You can only endorse a player once every 12 hours. This means that if you have previously endorsed a team member that saved your ass beforehand, if you're placed with them or against them in the next game  (until 12 hours later) you won't be able to commend them again, as much as you'd like to.

Endorsement Level

As you recieve endorsements for your positive behaviour, your endorsement level will go up. Recieve more and more to increase your level. (Users on Reddit have speculated the progression from level 1 to 2 is at 50)

  • Maintain your level by recieving additional endorsements
  • The colored ring around your current endorsement level shows the rough percentage on what you've been voted for. These can be seen below.

Endorsement Types

I've included some variations above. From left to right, we can see that player one has been praised as a majorly  helpful, effective teammate, pretty positive and respectful and sometimes likes to be the team leader and strategise. Player 2 is once again majorly a helpful good team mate who is also pretty respectful. Player 3 overall is a good respectful sport, is relatively helpful but doesn't call shots all the time.

Ok, So How Do I Endorse People?

Excellent question. As your match is wrapping up or afterwards when you're at the main menu etcetera, you'll see an additional UI pop up at the bottom center of your screen. Click 'N' or whatever your keybind is to enter the endorsement menu.

You'll then be greeted with a menu in which to endorse your last team. If you click the arrow located at the right of the menu, you'll be able to select foes to endorse.

Once you've endorsed a player, a small icon will appear under their name.

Extras: Endorsing & Getting Endorsed

I've included a couple of gifs that detail what endorsing players and getting endorsed look like. See them below:


 


And that's the extensive look at the endorsement system. I hope you enjoyed reading - upvote if you found it interesting! -Ollie

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Overall seems like a good idea but I hope it doesn't reach the point people are judging too much by endorsements as a lot of it sounds like people would only really know for certain people were "calling shots" etc if they were in voice chat and I record 99% of the time I play Overwatch and I'm also often in discord with my partner and maybe a friend or two (so about half the team) so while I sometimes have it on I probably have voice chat in-game off more than I have it on (if not it is about equal time on and off and I'd never be on anything but push to talk if I was to talk) so I feel I'd get less endorsements just for that, even though I would be being a valuable part of the team. People can see if others are playing well or not but it's harder to work out if someone is calling shots or being good strategically without the voice chat backing it up so I suspect the average person wouldn't endorse those not using voice chat. I guess we will see. I just hope it doesn't become the defining factor in some people judging other players.

interesting insight @birchmark - As of right now in my personal experience, its encouraging healthy levels of communication and team play between players. From the game modes I've played in, quick play has seen slight improvements with communications, plat level comp has seen a lot more interaction with people actively using comms more often and talking about team composition and strategy. Gold league almost nobody is using the endorsement system etc and it's not allowed in arcade so it makes sense. I don't think it'll be a solid defining factor in gauging your teammates and enemies' interests, however it is a nice stat if someone has a high ranking and is well rounded from endorsements, meaning they are seen as a role model-esque player.

There's still vicious toxicity despite the new system, which I may go into on another post. Also the LFG system!
Thanks for your insight! I enjoyed reading it.
-Ollie

Oh the LFG system certainly sounds interesting. I have been in QuickPlay games where dumb things happen that that appears would stop. I had one where more than halfway through the game our only healer (this was before they were recommending two) decided to change to another non-healer character instead. We were doing well at that point and suddenly having no healer was likely to mess us up big time. I ended up going healer after I died, but that shouldn't have been a choice I had to make as the healer shouldn't have changed mid-game. There's also been quite a few times where I have been the very first person to choose a character and chose someone who wasn't a tank or healer and the people who chose later also didn't chose tank or healer and I ended up in the end having to change, and that's dumb because I was the first person to choose - someone else who missed the opportunity at the start should have gone "oh we need a tank / healer" and gone what was required for the team. It's not a huge problem but I have seen issues with team choices / team composition and that mid-game change from a healer was just dumb. It will also help with some of the stuff I do with Overwatch as I occasionally let other people vote for who I play as and it means I know I won't go into a match that needs x type of character when I have to play y type of character (in extreme cases, before this, I normally would write off that match when that happened and play as what was needed and start playing the character voted for on the next match, but it was still less than ideal). I think this will be quite interesting.

I haven't done competitive yet in Overwatch but I imagine communication and voice chat would likely be more important there than it is in quick play. I've been meaning to do a competitive match though sometime and see how I go (or do it with my partner and friends and see how we go). I suspect based on just how life goes, that when I do try it will be one of my shittier matches. I'd hope not, but life tends to do that sort of thing.

I'm glad to hear the endorsements seem to be having a positive impact atm.



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