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Abuse of Well-intentioned Features5/9/2018 Competitive games have historically always drawn in more intense players. Regardless of skill level, people of all ranks can have volatile personalities. It is unavoidable and frustrating. However, the real problem with this stems from many different things, and not all of it is because of the competitive experience.
Overwatch originally had a feature in the beta stages called “Avoid This Player”. Basically by pressing this button under the player in your match, you will place them all the way down on the priority list of people who could possibly match up with. While this feature was a means to try and contain and put toxicity out of the door, it brought about a way to manipulate and more bad vibes. This one highly skilled player in the game suffered because of how much people abused it. “We looked into it and found that hundreds of other players had avoided him {he’s a nice guy - they avoided him because they did not want to play against him, not because of misbehavior)” (Rock Paper Shotgun). The company Blizzard wanted it so people could avoid those who promote negative behavior in games and take away from the fun, but in this case, these players blocked out this one guy just because of his skill level. Another hot topic that contributes to negativity are smurfs. Not in anyway related to the blue creatures from the movies or television shows, ‘Smurf’ is a term used to describe a player’s alternate account. There are a multitude of reasons that people use these, none of which are, in my opinion, great. They could be used for a means to play with lower level friends, against lesser skilled players, or to just mess around and practice on so it does not ruin the main accounts statistics. Some of the reasons, like playing against lesser skilled players so they can easily win, are really bad and ruin the experience. From experience on Xbox, there is a program that if the primary account attached to the console is a Gold Member (access to online features), any future account created on the console will automatically be a Gold Member as long as the primary one is logged in at the same time. With this, players can create as many ‘Smurf’ accounts as they want. I have personally spoken with multiple people who have claimed to have over six different accounts. It makes players at all skill levels frustrated when they go into a game and lose because it was obvious that the skill gap between them and these alternate accounts were massive. Fairplay and toxicity go hand in hand, and features such as ones mentioned when abused, begets more negative behavior.
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