Blizzard Gives Overwatch Players The Ability To Avoid Trolls And Toxic Players

MOBAs are excellent breeding grounds for toxicity within the player community compared to most other multiplayer genres, and Blizzard’s Overwatch is no different. The difference, however, is that now players of the highly popular game have been given the tools to actually avoid the trolls. All the gamers have to do is click on a certain button to make a player non-teammate material.

This new development comes courtesy of a forum post by Scott Mercer, which is a lengthy piece that provides details on the updates that Overwatch is getting. A lot of it is clarifying certain details about player behavior, particularly those with toxic tendencies. What fans of the MOBA will likely be most interested in, however, is the part about how they can avoid such players.

"If you use the 'Avoid as Teammate' option on a player, that action will be effective in the next match," the post reads. "The matchmaker will no longer place you on a team with the avoided player for one week. Sometimes you don’t want to play with someone as a teammate because you disagree with their playstyle or hero choice. Sometimes your personalities or communication style simply clash. These can happen without either party being toxic."

There were a few details that needed to be qualified by Mercer in the post, though, particularly with regards to what can or can’t be considered toxic behavior. As PC Gamer notes, the post stresses that a bad game does not necessarily mean players are being toxic. The same goes for choosing characters that are non-meta during the game.

Categories such as Gameplay Sabotage or Griefing can only be applied to cases where players are intentionally trying to harass teammate and throw the game. Otherwise, it’s just a matter of different playstyles and personalities clashing, which is part of the package in multiplayer games.