It’s been a weird weekend, in all the time I probably should have been spending writing, instead I’ve just been in an Overwatch coma. I don’t actually like writing about Overwatch that much, despite how much time I sink into it. It’s because there are so many people out there that focus the entirely of their content around the game and its community. Although, If I shied away from a topic just because there are people out there who know more about it than I do, then I wouldn’t be writing very much of anything would I.
In my recent binge, I’ve started to see a few reoccurring kinds of people who end up ruining my games, now I’m not talking about people who refuse to use mic or when three of the team instalock DPS as soon as they are able. It’s annoying, yeah, but that’s just the experience by this point. These are the kind of people who actually seem to care about playing the game enough to use a mic and talk to their team mates.
So here are the five kinds of players, in no particular order, who have made my life the most miserable when playing Overwatch this past month.
The “Bipolar”
I played with one of these people last night. It all started so well, she and her friend were warm, friendly and bubbly in their first game, they communicated well and we won quite handily. It was nice playing with them both, so I elected to stay in party with them. Things continued in this manner for a few more games, that was until we hit a game where two guys in their own party decided to pick Widowmaker and Hanzo before anyone else could pick heroes.
My party members invited them both into our party, which they joined, and asked them if they could switch off two snipers. They responded with a rather blunt negative, and all hell suddenly broke loose. The young girl who had been nice and chatty previously, now became an emotional mess. Now, despite the name of this section, I intend no offence to people with genuine mental health problems. I just get blind sided by people who seem affable with one person and then become a lunatic as soon as someone says something they don’t like.
These two guys had every right to say no to the request, they might have been amazing. But they weren’t given the chance and as soon as this person started to bite at them, they bit back harder. Suddenly the party was yelling amongst itself before the game had even started. I ended up muting everyone. And we ended up losing people as a number of the team obviously started throwing.
Personally, I see getting into deputes with people online as a waste of energy. But the type of player I’m talking about here seems to take any perceived slight as a damnation of their character and need to argue back. This isn’t the only example of this though, I’d had many a game in which everything is great, we stay in a party to play more, and as soon as things go even slightly bad, they flick into a toxic mess. Some people don’t understand you can’t win them all.
The “Lad”
These guys, and it’s always guys, are most likely join in a party of two. They’ll play alone and only really seem to want to help one another out. If they’re invited to a larger party though, they will join, and bring whatever conversation they’re having between themselves along into a new dynamic.
I’ve played a lot of games with these kinds of people, and some of them can be fine, amusing even. But more often than not they end up saying some of the worst things imaginable to the rest of the party. These guy’s main mission when playing is to make the other laugh, and they do this by coming out with the most vulgar things imaginable. Last night again, the first people I’ve ever reported in Overwatch fell into this category.
I was playing with a girl and her friend who was obviously black by his accent. As soon as these guys heard that they started dropping the N-Bomb at him and cackling between themselves as they did it. While the guy just went quiet, the girl took exception to this and exploded at them, rightly so. They continued to find things hilarious as they started making sexual slurs towards her and asking if it was “her time of the month”.
These “lads” probably think it’s all a bit of banter, in good fun. But it’s the type of behaviour is flat out unacceptable.
But nothing gets done about it. It’s the problem with a lack of accountability for your actions on the internet. We all reported them, but I doubt they’d get any lasting punishment for their horrible words. And they’ll probably continue doing it too, stopping anyone but white dudes from wanting to interact with video games going forward. It’s real sad.
The “Twitch Streamer”
While the previous kind of person usually ranges from being in their early 20s to their early 30s, this kind of player ranges much younger. Probably in their early teens. You can tell one of these kids right away as the party chat opens.
They must spend some significant amount of their free time watching Twitch streamers. Which is fine in itself, it’s free entertainment. When it becomes annoying for people like me is with their need to bring that excitement over their favourite streamer into their own playing experience. They feel the desperate need to replicate a streamer and act like they’re “on” throughout games.
These kids are loud, they overreact to pretty much everything and end up screaming memes over the people genuinely trying to make call outs. They’re generally unhelpful and like to boast about their “god tier” Genji or their accuracy rating with Hanzo. They’re also the types who get incredibly excited when they see a Zenyatta get a few picks in the kill feed. Guys need to chill. It wouldn’t be so bad if any of their jabbering was ever helpful toward winning the game.
Now, there is a chance that they actually are streaming. But I play on Xbox, so the chances these kids have anyone actually watching their streams are slim to none. But hey, maybe they do have a single viewer and feel the need to give them one hell of a show.
If that is the case though, I wish they’d go into the menus and learn what push to talk was…
The “Bilingual”
Playing from the U.K. I oftentimes find myself in games with people from continental Europe. Thankfully, because they’re all far more cultured than I am, they all speak pretty good English. If they don’t then we simply do the best we can without speaking. More often than not though, we communicate well enough.
That is unless things start to go wrong. Sometimes, no matter how clear and coincide our communication, we will end up losing. It’s how the game works. Some people can’t handle losing. There is a (sadly) common combination of these kinds of people who seem to forget which language the rest of their party speak mid way through the game. As they get more frustrated with the game, they speak less and less English until they’re yelling angrily in their native language.
This falls into the generally toxic bracket of player. But these are a particular breed in that I have no idea what they’re saying. Are they still trying to make calls and forgot I’m a scrubby English speaker, are they calling me trash or are they having an argument with their Mom? I’ll never know.
At which point I just stop making calls myself as my ears are filled with what is essentially noise, which is no help to me trying to win this team game.
The “Statistician”
This is the kind of person who loves stats and numbers. Don’t get me wrong; I love stats and numbers too. The difference is, I don’t weaponize them. These kinds of players dive into everyone’s career profile before each and every game and tell people what they’re supposed to be playing based on their hours spent with particular heroes. No matter how much I tell them I’m sick of playing Orisa, they conclude I must play her because they need a tank and I have the most time on that particular type of tank they want.
It’s generally used to benefit them and them alone. They’re quick to dictate what everyone else plays, but no force on earth can get them off that Widowmaker or Sombra pick.
Once that’s over though, and the game begins, they’re still announcing numbers throughout. They’re constantly telling people which how many eliminations they’ve got, especially if they’ve got golds. Guy, nobody cares that you have gold eliminations one minute into the match when gold eliminations is still less than five.
These are the same kind of people who obsess over their kill to death ratio in Call of Duty, not interested in the team aspect of the game,, only their individual performance. So obviously, you’ll never see these guys playing support. They’d rather go without a healer than play one themselves. But it won’t stop them spamming the “I need Healing” voice line regardless.
I like Overwatch, I really do. I just think the level at which I play it is the bracket where the absolute worst people reside: High Gold to Low Platinum. One day, maybe I’ll crawl my way up to diamond and realise it’s just as bad up there. At least I’ll be getting more golden guns…
A Richard Wood Text Adventure 