Overwatch: Commendations
Overwatch is an online multiplayer game and relies heavily upon good team composition and great communication. The main way to win the game is through working with your team and getting the upper hand against the enemy in team fights through your teamwork. But like any other online multiplayer game, some people want to be heroes.
As seen throughout the history of online games, there is always a large number of kids that play the games and make them a bit less fun with their toxicity. This is seen in abundance in Overwatch, with a considerably large amount of its player base being kids. The game has many kids that can barely play the game and know one too many swear words for their age. They swear at you and report you whenever your team loses a game even though it’s usually their fault it happened in the first place.
But it isn’t just kids. There are many adults and teenagers that do the exact same thing and make you want to stop playing the game. Toxicity is by far the biggest problem in Overwatch and despite claiming to be fixing the problem, players of the game haven’t seen any major changes made instead of one big change which came a while back, in June 2018.
Blizzard introduced a new commendations system which allowed players to give each other a show of respect towards one another. The commendations system consists of 2 things, one known as the endorsement system, which is an awesome little feature in Overwatch which can be quite helpful if you know how to work with it.
The endorsement system was brought in to make players play more positively and respectfully, while also working with their teammates. The endorsement system also lets you separate the toxic players from the friendly ones, along with the good players from the bad ones. The endorsements system also lets you differentiate between what type of role someone plays in a team, whether they are a good leader or a good listener.
The feature is one that is highly appreciated but this is not all it does. The endorsement system has its own separate level system which grows over time if you consistently get endorsements from other players. There is a total of 5 levels when it comes to the endorsement system.
After your endorsement level grows, you get a loot box, much like you do when you level up in general. But as time passes on the game also gives you 1 or 2 loot boxes if your endorsement level is 2-5, giving players a type of reward for being positive and good teammates. You can give a maximum of 3 endorsements at the end of every match and can choose from your own teammates or even someone from the enemy team that may have impressed you.
The other commendations system is performance cards. At the end of every game the best players get performance cards that display their name and hero along with what they did that got the card in the first place. For example, you can get a performance card for getting the most healing in a match, most damages blocked, most kills, etc.
After these cards are displayed you can vote for one of the selected players who you think played the most important role. The cards that you earn yourself are kept track of in your personal stats menu and can also be viewed by other players if you have an open profile.
The commendation features have had a significant effect and according to Blizzard they are now getting 40% fewer reports for abusive behavior than they did before the system was introduced