I often compare overwatch with going to a bar. The drinks are meh, the place is meh but having fun with your friends or meeting new people is what makes it enjoyable. For me the game is a 4/10 on a bad day and a 7/10 on a good winning streak. Having friends or fun people to converse with adds +3 points to it no questions asked. But overwatch 2 has taken a lot of the human interaction away and nobody seems to care for it.
A small list of things taken away are as goes:
- general chat
- specific endorsements (this matters and I will explain later)
- GROUP FINDER!!!
- End of match cards
- And some more miscelanious stuff that has indirect effects like hidden profile by default or filters
Now most of the reason for removing these either boil down to removing toxicity or not caring about it to remake it in ow2. I feel like im in a small group trying to defend these as most people straight up never join chat or voice chat to avoid toxicity not knowing what they are missing out on. I have a TON of awesome memories and stories that simply came about these small social mechanics (I will post some of the better stories in chat) and I know a ton of people who have similiar stories.
The 3rd party systems aren’t as smooth as group finder and come nowhere close to convenience either.
And the biggest problem is blizzard probably pats themselves on the back thinking they fixed toxicity. Toxicity still exists in overwatch. As long as humans exists toxicity will exists too. What blizzard did is simply remove human from the equation. I wouldn’t even know if I was playing against ai or not sometimes. Blizzard just wants you to play the game without interacting with anyone because interactions mean possibility of toxicity.
Well if reducing interaction isn’t the right choice then what is?
The answer is encouraging positive behaviour.
Now blizzard has obviously failed on this aspect but atleast they tried it a bit better in ow1. This is where the specific endorsements come into play. Back in the day endorsements were split into categories of 3:
- Shotcaller. You would give this to Leaders or REALLY good players
- Sportsmanship. You would give this to people who were positive and talkative
- Good teammate. This was basically the default goodjob, thumbsup endorsement.
The player would showcase their endorsements and at a glance you could tell if someone would give good callouts or be fun to be in vc with. The rewards were also a few lootboxes which was not much but more of a pat on the back.
In ow2 endorsement means nothing as you simply endorse people who do their job well enough anyways. And whats the reward? Like the equivelant of 2 qp games worth of xp.
If blizzard wants people to be nice, then they should give substantial rewards for getting endorsed and WHY you are endorsed. Something where people will want to attempt to be nice for it. Stuff like premium coins come to mind. If people are out here grinding weekly challanges for 10 coins, im sure they will start being really nice for just 30-40 coins. Exclusive cosmetics come to mind as well. Not just skins but voice lines, sprays etc. These shouldn’t be locked to the highest endorsement level or be super legendary items either. That would bring “endorsement begging”. Just epic rarity, novelty items.