Blizzard’s upping their penalty game.
Everyone’s had that experience with some overbearing player that goes ballistic when you don’t take commands like their little soldier. Then, when you lose, they throw a fit and put a pox on your mailman and insinuate that your dog had children out of wedlock. Well, Blizzard’s decided to take a more aggressive approach in Overwatch towards people that act like unsportsmanlike douchenozzles to their teammates. To that end, community manager Lylirra made a post on the Overwatch forums detailing the change in the penalty system:
We believe that our in-game reporting and player penalty system is one of our most important features, and it’s something we want to invest in significantly over the next year. To this end, effective immediately, we will be issuing increased penalties to players in response to verified reports of bad behavior. In Overwatch, that means anything from abusive chat, harassment, in-game spam, match inactivity (being intentionally AFK), and griefing. If you see someone engaging in any of these types of behaviors, report them. Players in violation will be silenced, suspended, or even banned from the game as a result.
Aside from all that, they’re also adjusting based on feedback in regards to the system previously in place.
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.
TL:DR, being an asshole to your team, or other players in general, can be really bad for you. They’re also planning on making reporting features available to PS4 and Xbox One players. not to mention, making false reports can soon backfire on you in a bad way. They’re not, however, aiming to swing the banhammer any more often than they already do. And you can avoid all of this if you don’t act like a jackass while playing Overwatch.
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