Overwatch silences players with bad reputations on Xbox One

Blizzard has released a new patch for Overwatch that stops players with a bad reputation from using voice chat on Xbox One. Overwatch players with a reputation level at Avoid Me will no longer be able to use the game’s voice chat feature.

Alongside the penalty of silence, all players with the Avoid Me reputation are grouped together in their own matchmaking pool. It’s probably best to dump the bad lot into their own area than have them ruining the game for others. The patch went out to all users yesterday, along with the new Junkertown map.

These changes have been implemented following the ongoing issues around toxicity in the Overwatch community, where some folks can’t seem to play nice, or fair, acting all petulant and so on. The game’s director, Jeff Kaplan, spoke out on the matter in a Developer Update, and even wrote about it in a blog post, saying that, ‘It really bums us out to spend so much time punishing people for being bad sports.’

The rating system relies on players reporting each other for bad behaviour, but this could prove to be a problem for Blizzard’s new patch. Players have claimed in the past that they’re reported or given bad ratings based on the character they’ve chosen being a ‘troll pick’ rather than their behaviour in the game.

This latest patch also adds a few tweaks to Mercy, including her new ability Valkyrie (https://www.videogamer.com/news/overwatch-gives-mercy-a-new-ultimate-and-buffs-reinhardt), which boosts all of her stats such as healing beam range, bullet damage and her cooldown period. D. Va also gains a new ability with Micro Missiles, a barrage of small rockets that detonate on impact, dealing damage in a limited radius around each explosion. Neat-o.

You can read the full patch notes over on the Overwatch blog.