Tag: Overwatch

Blizzard Again Promises Tough Punishment For Overwatch Trolls


If you could formulate a plan to effectively punish, and get rid of, toxic players in your community, you might just become the richest person in the gaming industry. Until then, we’ll need to sit back and watch as developers continue to commit to punishing toxic community members and hope that everything works out for the best.

For Blizzard, the ongoing discussion of toxicity has come back up after director Jeff Kaplan posted on the official forums regarding an account that had miraculously accrued more than two thousand complaints, been silenced for more than a year’s worth of time, and has been suspended three times.

"That account has a total of 2247 complaints filed against it — making it one of the worst offending accounts we’ve seen. The account has also been silenced for a total of 9216 hours. There are 3 gameplay suspensions on the account as well as 7 silences against this account (these are for abusive chat and/or spam). There is also a manual GM account suspension for "massive griefing" levied."

Blizzard’s plans to alleviate grief include removing silencing altogether and utilizing suspensions/bans more. For competitive, Kaplan stated that the company is in the process of handing out bans/suspensions for players who boosted in Season 5 of competitive mode, also adding that players will be permanently banned from competitive if they are found to be abusing it repeatedly.

"We will do this as it is our responsibility but we’d like to spend more time rewarding good players rather than having to focus on poor sportsmanship and unacceptable bad behavior so much. Like it or not, this is an "us, the OW community problem" and not just an "OW team problem". For better or for worse, we’re in this together."

Long term plans involve promoting positive behavior. Toxic behavior is a problem that MMO Fallout has reported endlessly on, with various developers flexing their muscles and threatening harsher punishments and longer bans. For developers, especially those with large competitive communities, the fight against toxicity is a constant uphill battle.

Overwatch Promises More Bans For Bad Behavior


Blizzard wants you to know that they are completely committed to dealing with toxic behavior in Overwatch. Effective immediately, offending players will begin receiving harsher punishments for cheating, griefing, trolling, spam, and match disruption (intentional AFK). Exactly how strict Blizzard’s punishments will be will need to be seen.

We know that making Overwatch a truly welcoming environment is an ongoing process, and this is only the first step. Over the next several months, we have plans to make additional improvements based on your feedback, including scaling competitive season bans, a notification system that will alert you when a player you’ve reported is actioned, and functionality that will allow us to more aggressively penalize players who attempt to abuse the in-game reporting tool.

Overwatch has had ongoing problems with toxicity, a concept not at all unfamiliar with heavily competitive titles.

(Source: Overwatch)

Impressions: Uprising Is A Positive Sign For Overwatch PvE


Following Overwatch’s rather simplistic Halloween event, it was only a matter of time before the game received another cooperative game mode. This new mode has two separate versions, but for the sake of starting out I’ll focus on the story mode. Story mode takes place seven years in the past and sets you up with a team of four made up of Mercy, Reinhardt, Torbjorn, and the rookie Tracer. Your team is given orders by Commander Jack Morrison (Soldier 76) to take on an extremist faction of omnics called the Null Sector that have taken over a portion of London.

The second version of the game is the same concept, but there are no character restrictions.

Effectively, your goal is to take over three locations in a row, escort a payload, and finally kill a boss robot, all while a bunch of other robots stand in your way. The mode itself feels like Overwatch’s take on Valve’s Left 4 Dead, except with robots instead of zombies. It’s also a nice change from the Halloween event, placing the players on the attack rather than defending a single point. Lore and collection enthusiasts will also find something to enjoy with the new skins and dialog discussing the characters as they existed those years past. The concept gives Blizzard a virtual wealth of lore that can be spun into its own story, focusing on specific characters and events in the game’s timeline.

Taken as the story mode, Uprising gets pretty difficult above easy mode. The free hero mode is much less difficult as open access to heroes makes way for less balanced, virtually broken encounters. Regardless, the event is far less static than the Junkenstein Halloween event, is more relevant to the overall story, and overall has gameplay that is more inviting for multiple playthroughs.

Hopefully this leads to more permanent cooperative modes, or even something similar to Valve’s Mann Up mode with a set of loosely connected campaigns

Blizzard’s Court Victory: Bossland Hit With $8.6 Million In Damages


Blizzard has emerged victorious in its lawsuit against Bossland, a cheat maker based in Germany. The court ruled that Bossland is to pay $8.6 million in damages, with the potential for more to cover Blizzard’s legal costs, and set forward an injunction preventing the company from selling their products in the United States. Bossland has already been prevented from selling their cheats in the UK.

“The Bossland hacks destroy the integrity of the Blizzard games, thereby alienating and frustrating legitimate players and diverting revenue from Blizzard to defendants,”

During the court case, Blizzard successfully argued that Bossland bypassed Blizzard’s anti-cheat tech, thus violating DMCA rules against circumvention and reverse engineering. Blizzard’s case, while requesting a large sum, was likely an easy win as while Bossland did attempt to have the case dismissed, they didn’t actually show up in court to defend themselves.

(Source: BBC)

Blizzard Promises Bans For Overwatch AFKers


Blizzard has put AFKers on notice: According to a recent forum post, Overwatch is targeting some bad hombres, specifically players who create or join custom games with the intent of farming experience. Going forward, if players even think about joining a custom game with the intent of farming experience while away from keyboard, they may be on the receiving end of an account ban.

If you create a Custom Game that in any way encourages players to gain experience while inactive, you risk having your account banned. If you join any game mode – including Custom Games – with the intent of gaining experience while being inactive, you risk having your account banned. Also, do not name your Custom Game that in anyway even implies that gaining experience while inactive is OK – please do not even do this as a joke – because you are putting yourself at risk of having your account banned.

Director Jeff Kaplan asks that the community not force Blizzard to remove experience gain from custom games by reporting servers and not joining in on such shenanigans. More information can be found at the link below.

(Source: Overwatch)

[Video] Nano-Boosted Bastion Is Nearly Indestructible


Who says using the test server can’t be fun? Blizzard’s latest test patch for Overwatch is up for players to enjoy, take advantage of, and suss out potential game breaking issues not unlike the one you see in the video above. Among the various changes to heroes are a variety of tweaks meant to make Bastion more viable. While Bastion’s deployment time has been reduced by a third and his magazine size buffed from 200 to 300, bullet spread has increased and both critical hits and head shot multipliers have been removed. Bastion can now heal while moving, however this is tied to a limited resource that refreshes while not being used. Oh and he also gains a passive defensive buff reducing damage by 35% while in sentry mode.

That last bit is important, because as players are finding out on the server, that buff stacks with Ana’s Nano Boost ultimate, which reduces damage by 50%. Nano boosted Bastion may be one of the best things to come out of the Overwatch test realm, but if you want to check it out for yourself you’ll need to do so before Blizzard patches it out.

Overwatch Hits 20 Million, Opens Halloween Event


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What better way to celebrate Halloween than with your old friend Junkenstein? As you might have anticipated, Overwatch is selling like water in the desert, thanks to the 20 million people who have picked the title up on various consoles. As part of the October festivities, Blizzard has opened up the latest seasonal event: Halloween. Form a team of four and take on a new PvE mode as Soldier 76, Ana, McCree, and Hanzo.

A new event means new lockboxes and thus new sprays, skins, emotes, and more. The good news is that many of these new items can be purchased with credits. Check out the trailer below.

Overwatch: Square Enix And Sony To Face Off


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Square Enix CEO Yosuke Matsuda and president of Sony Interactive Entertainment Japan Asia Atsushi Morita will be squaring off in the battlefield later this week. As reported by our friends over at MMO Culture, the heads of both developers will be putting together their own teams of six to fight it out in Overwatch (presumably not on Xbox), with the event to be streamed live online.

This is not the first time that the two companies have met on the digital battlefield, playing a match on Call of Duty: Black Ops III on PS4 which ended in a major win for Square Enix. You can watch the highlights, it is quite the sight.

The announcement video is linked below, but you won’t understand any of it unless you speak Japanese.

(Source: MMO Culture)

Overwatch Introduces Ana, Healing Sniper


Following Blizzard’s recent reveal of a sniper rifle with healing capabilities, gamers are finally being introduced to the latest playable member of Overwatch: Ana. The mother of Phariah, Ana’s biotic rifle is capable of healing friendlies and inflicting damage over time to enemies.

Her sidearm, a sleep dart, is capable of putting enemies to sleep (naturally) and interrupting several ultimate abilities. A biotic grenade heals allies while damaging enemies, and her nano boost allows allies to move faster, deal more damage, and take less damage.

Check out Ana’s origin story below:

Overwatch Teases Healing Sniper Rifle


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If a recent tweet by the official Overwatch account is anything to go by, the ability to headshot your teamates back to health may soon be on its way. Posted on the @PlayOverwatch Twitter account, the image shows blueprints for a sniper rifle with healing abilities.

Commentary from Overwatch heroes in the image adds a bit to the lore, showing Mercy’s opposition to what she sees as a slippery slope toward a weaponized gun. Torbjorn, meanwhile, insists that it will only be used as a healing item.

The Prototype Biotic Rifle may or may not be related to Sombra, a possible hero whose teasers can be found in multiple locations within Overwatch.

(Source: Overwatch)