benicillin
Banned
Basically competitive is one of the worst things about Overwatch.
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"Why Does Everyone Hate Mercy?" [Overwatch exploration of support stigma/misogyny]
- Thread starter Spring-Loaded
- Start date
Basically competitive is one of the worst things about Overwatch.
This is a great post. +1
Drillary Clinton
Banned
Even with the toxicity and annoyances, competitive will always be more enjoyable and fulfilling than Quickplay.
Skyball Paint
Member
Honestly, in my experience, it's DPS players who get the most shit. Especially if you're Tracer, or Sombra, who want to keep out of the thick of the fighting, and thus your contributions aren't always obvious. I had this jackass harassing me a whole match to switch from Tracer, up to the point we won the match.
The medal system makes it worse because it punishes you for carefully picking your targets, and not dying/feeding, instead of racking up useless damage, so when the game starts to go badly, the Reinhardt, who can easily rack up tons of points of damage with a couple hammer swings, blames you because he's got gold damage and you're the DPS (I've also heard Roadhogs bitch about having gold damage/elims, and it's like bruh, you're friggin' Roadhog).
The medal system makes it worse because it punishes you for carefully picking your targets, and not dying/feeding, instead of racking up useless damage, so when the game starts to go badly, the Reinhardt, who can easily rack up tons of points of damage with a couple hammer swings, blames you because he's got gold damage and you're the DPS (I've also heard Roadhogs bitch about having gold damage/elims, and it's like bruh, you're friggin' Roadhog).
I have definitely noticed an increasing hate for Mercy for one of two reasons:
1. People are obsessing about SR and how supposedly Mercy gets a free pass to grandmaster.
I don't care if some twitch streamer showed you this or you looked at some leaderboards and also decided these guys are just shit for some reason. I have played hundreds of hours of competitive, and mostly Mercy this season. I have stayed around the rank as the past seasons, in and out of master. Maybe for the elite few that know how to manipulate SR by battle-mercying just right, I don't know and I don't care. It doesn't affect me and it's not as big of a deal that people make it out to be.
2. It's so easy, my braindead comatose dad could play her.
I don't get this one because people can reduce anything to just pressing a button. Mercy is not the easiest character, especially in higher ranks, especially with the current dive meta when a good Winston/Genji will and is on you every time they see you. Add to that the stress of getting your res off at the right time, and being alive at the right time and not getting killed while trying to be in the thick of your team and it's anything but easy. But, because you didn't get 50 eliminations this game, you're not given any credit despite the 30% of the teams damage you healed or the multiple resurrections you pulled off.
I'll always be a healer main though, even when people don't give you credit for the help you're giving them.
1. People are obsessing about SR and how supposedly Mercy gets a free pass to grandmaster.
I don't care if some twitch streamer showed you this or you looked at some leaderboards and also decided these guys are just shit for some reason. I have played hundreds of hours of competitive, and mostly Mercy this season. I have stayed around the rank as the past seasons, in and out of master. Maybe for the elite few that know how to manipulate SR by battle-mercying just right, I don't know and I don't care. It doesn't affect me and it's not as big of a deal that people make it out to be.
2. It's so easy, my braindead comatose dad could play her.
I don't get this one because people can reduce anything to just pressing a button. Mercy is not the easiest character, especially in higher ranks, especially with the current dive meta when a good Winston/Genji will and is on you every time they see you. Add to that the stress of getting your res off at the right time, and being alive at the right time and not getting killed while trying to be in the thick of your team and it's anything but easy. But, because you didn't get 50 eliminations this game, you're not given any credit despite the 30% of the teams damage you healed or the multiple resurrections you pulled off.
I'll always be a healer main though, even when people don't give you credit for the help you're giving them.
PedroLumpy
Member
So Mercy can subvert the competitive ranking system by hitting big revives, win or lose? Seems crazy. I would've thought the only metric for raising/lowering rank would be "Did you win or lose?" full stop. Sure sometimes you have shitty teammates, but that balances out in the end. Trying to measure contributions is largely guesswork, and any benefit is usually ruined by people responding to the incentives in such a way that does not benefit the team.
Keep it simple stupid, as the saying goes.
Keep it simple stupid, as the saying goes.
crabhammer
Member
You've got it slightly twisted here. Its easy as getting your ultimate then hiding and doing literally nothing until everyone dies, essentially making it a 5v6, then flying in for the res. Rinse, repeat. If you win you get crazy high SR. If you lose you don't lose as much. It's very easy to do, and is far less effective than being in the fight and ressing 2-3 people during a fight or even ressing one person because you know they have ultimate and can swing the fight back in your advantage.
Bizzare is the perfect word for this. Maining characters makes you such a liability in ranked, especially so if someone else picked that character and you can't play up to your current level with anyone else. Which is ironic because as pointed out, the SR gains actually discourage the ability to play multiple heroes so it ends up being SR vs likelihood of winning.
People have been saying this for literally a year and Blizz is pretty insistent that their system is fine.
DizzyCaffeine
Member
I have over 70 hours on Mercy on PC, and I really don't feel like I get harassed much at all. Once in a blue moon, sure, but most people are very appreciative for the heals. I get a lot of positive shout outs in chat if I'm doing well.
I'm in GM. There's a lot of Mercy mains that don't belong in GM. Not all Mercy mains who are in GM don't belong there, but a lot of them don't because the SR system isn't rewarding the right behavior right now.
Skyball Paint
Member
The thing is, good Widows do focus on the objective, and there's more to playing the objective than standing on the point.
A Widow who takes out the enemy healers and gives your team a decisive advantage in a team fight is playing the objective more effectively than someone who is just running to the point and feeding.
No way. Mercy is hugely fun to play. It's just a case of different people coming to games for different reasons. For me, concentrating on keeping my team alive and being there to support them is much more satisfying than just getting kills. (If I really want that, I go over to Titanfall 2.)
old manatee
Banned
In my experience people are thrilled when I pick Mercy because it means they can play a damage hero.
A good _______ is always beneficial to the team, especially when only six slots are available, but on an objective-based map where the only real goal is to "Get on the Point", playing a hero who has a role dedicated to not being near said goal, well... it doesn't always go so smoothly or coordinated.
dr.rocktopus
Banned
I play a decent amount of Mercy (though I do flex to Zen/Lucio/Zarya/Winston/Rein/Soldier) but I am pretty low rank (high/mid silver on Xbox/PC) so a lot of the time you just tend to get thanks for being a healer on a team with no dedicated healer/support. You do get shit sometimes, and a lot of that shit is sexist until they realize I'm a guy. I imagine those toxic players would get even worse if I was woman and played into the stereotype. It seems the toxicity gets worse as you go higher in rank. So even just from my personal experience I can understand where the writer is coming from. I don't see a need to apologize for the game because sometimes the game does get there.
Mercy's that are overranked are definitely a problem. I think if you are at a rank consistently you should be around a 50% winrate. If you are up in GM on a 20% winrate that's a fault of the SR system over correcting the base ELO system and rewarding Mercy players too much. This much is known and has been tested. It is a legitimate issue with system. And when matchmaking primarily uses SR to create games, there is an issue there.
I think if a Mercy gets the fat rez off against you, that's your team's problem in handling that Mercy. If you know the Mercy is there, and especially with the prevelance of dive right now which should clear out these types of priority targets, that's a team play issue. Saying "git gud" brushes aside the issue but coming from competitive Smash where the meta takes time to develop, the sometimes knee-jerk reactions and cries for change in OW is weird. Everyone said D.Va was dead after the armour nerf and now she's defacto in the meta.
I mean, this almost comes down to old "I can't rank up my team sucks". Can we really say "my Mercy sucks! They have a low win rate! But your Mercy gets 4 and 5 man rezzes every team fight!" How can there be that dictomy if both have access to the same kit? OK, sometimes that will happen due to randomness/luck and maybe you get the low win rate Mercy and the opponent gets a real-deal 50% Mercy if it so happens two are in a game. Feeling the game is out against you sounds like a lack of self-reflection.
Mercy's that are overranked are definitely a problem. I think if you are at a rank consistently you should be around a 50% winrate. If you are up in GM on a 20% winrate that's a fault of the SR system over correcting the base ELO system and rewarding Mercy players too much. This much is known and has been tested. It is a legitimate issue with system. And when matchmaking primarily uses SR to create games, there is an issue there.
I think if a Mercy gets the fat rez off against you, that's your team's problem in handling that Mercy. If you know the Mercy is there, and especially with the prevelance of dive right now which should clear out these types of priority targets, that's a team play issue. Saying "git gud" brushes aside the issue but coming from competitive Smash where the meta takes time to develop, the sometimes knee-jerk reactions and cries for change in OW is weird. Everyone said D.Va was dead after the armour nerf and now she's defacto in the meta.
I mean, this almost comes down to old "I can't rank up my team sucks". Can we really say "my Mercy sucks! They have a low win rate! But your Mercy gets 4 and 5 man rezzes every team fight!" How can there be that dictomy if both have access to the same kit? OK, sometimes that will happen due to randomness/luck and maybe you get the low win rate Mercy and the opponent gets a real-deal 50% Mercy if it so happens two are in a game. Feeling the game is out against you sounds like a lack of self-reflection.
https://clips.twitch.tv/HotFlaccidFriesWow
probably things like this, but that's just the SR system being flawed.
probably things like this, but that's just the SR system being flawed.
In my experience, people who say Mercy is easy to play do horribly when they pick her. It's like, if she's such a free ride to GM then why aren't you there right now? Oh right, because you're bad at her and don't know how to stay alive against a Winston/Genji/Tracer dive comp when you're a 200hp hero who's constantly being hunted by the entire enemy team. Forget even trying to play her at higher than gold level if you don't have a mic. You'll spend the whole game dying to Winston if you can't call this stuff out.
Ghost is Bad
Banned
expecting a competent dive in gold LUL
You play as a healer you are target #1 for the other team (if they're good). My favorite character is Zenyatta. At least I have the dps to possibly kill someone before they kill me if i'm singled out. If I play as Mercy, and tracer or Winston is tracing me down, and no one on my team is protecting me, it's pretty difficult. She probably IS one of the easier characters to pick up but it can be hard to stay alive especially with thankless teams who are then going to yell at you for dying.
I'm a peak 4200 DPS/Flex player with only a few hours on Mercy. I've played her in high elo scrims and in queue before and get wins without even thinking about it. I'm pretty sure every GM player here will tell you the same thing.
Switching can make a world of difference, but there's also data that actually suggests that one-trick players have a higher winrate. So I don't think it's really that they're playing the game the wrong way. It's just crappy when you have teammates that won't switch when they should switch.
You know though that its just your perception right? there is no proof for what you are saying is in anyway true. at best anectodal evidence....
Yeah, one tricking is more than an SR thing. It's a bit of a positive reinforcement loop type deal where you go one trick > SR boosts > get better at OTP > etc. IIRC there is a bit of a breaking point on hero pool stuff where in the end it would be better to not one trick if the SR rewards were a bit lower, but the data still says it's not as bad as some people think.
Also some of the data is a bit skewed by the general skill differences in SR tiers right now. They talk about it on the subreddit a bit. It's not conclusive that OTPing itself gets you a better winrate, but we do know for a fact it's better for SR gains if you can even approach 50%.
Newtype-001
Member
Theres people in masters and gm ive played with who think Dive is just pick winston and press shift into enemies by yourself i have no idea what Dive in gold would be
Can confirm. Anyone at that level can pick up and casually play mercy and do well. She's just a very easy to play character that excels at support.
Leafhopper
Banned
Comp has been awfully lately so I forgot that SR actually hates you switching. I meant the game itself encourages switching based on the situation but, the fact that Comp punishes you for that kinda goes more into my point on the way Comp as a mode still needs work lol.
That doesn't even make sense how silly this is at this point then. Comp should just make you not be able to switch at this point if that's case. If they really want that they should start basing the game around maining characters, problem is there isn't enough characters in the game start maining anyone for enough diversity of gameplay yet sooo.
I will say this is not a bad thing in and of itself. Having a hero with low mechanics that can be rewarded on generally knowing the game flow and maps is good for the game. What's not good is how what mechanics are there are not very punishing which makes her a prime target for boosting. What's worse is she's a low tier character that people think is OP because her rez is one of the easiest mechanics in the game to misinterpret.
It's not just the comp system. It's the character designs, the way they are presented, and actually a good chunk of the marketing that push players that way.
Nuno Pinto
Member
Team chooses dive composition.
Stays at the choke fighting against the rein shield.
D:
I said above gold. In my experience, mid plat is where people start to figure out that focusing the mercy is a winning strategy and you need to start communicating with your team to stay alive.
Okay so if picking mercy means that you "get wins without even thinking about it", then what happens when the enemy team has a mercy too? Do both teams get free wins? No, obviously not. The team with the better overall composition and performance will win, and part of that is having a mercy that knows how to stay alive and rez properly. Do you honestly think that there's some skill ceiling where all mercies are the same and it doesn't matter any more? What happens if red mercy dies 3 times over the course of the game and blue mercy doesn't even die once? Which mercy do you think was more effective and skilled?
The whole "low skill hero" argument is so vapid and pointless, I don't know how people can take it seriously. Winston and Reinhard don't require aiming to play either, but you can definitely tell when there's a shit player playing one, because they do the wrong thing and lose team fights. In my experience, the worst thing a player can do in comp is get frivolously picked off because it leads to uneven team fights. And mercy is one of the hardest heroes to stay alive as when you're being focused. There's a skill there, even if you don't want to acknowledge it.
I think I got lucky that I was finally able to get a golden wep by end of last season, seems the hate on Mercy this season is at an all time high with the broken SR gain and Ana being less dominant.
Will stick to QP forever now. My aim was never the best on FPS'es and Mercy and Symmetra are my saving grace in this game 😋 I do play DVa too, pls don't hate me.
Will stick to QP forever now. My aim was never the best on FPS'es and Mercy and Symmetra are my saving grace in this game 😋 I do play DVa too, pls don't hate me.
I think this. I've heard pros say this. This is a thing that has happened before in other games. When you have a character this linear that only relies on such a basic skillset, it's kind of expected. You can take any top level player and let them play Mercy for like a day and there will be no significant difference between them and a 1000 hour Mercy. There have been some, um, interesting streams where T500 DPS/Tank players just randomly pick Mercy and get wins while meming around lol
Like I don't want to hurt Mercy player's feelings too much, but it's the truth. She exists for this purpose too, Blizz wants an option where literally anybody can pick support and be effective at their relative skill level.
I totally agree with you. This is a case of their matchmaking system causing resentment over the character rather than the character herself being a product of broken mechanics.
BinaryBear07
Member
Maybe Mercy isn't problem. Maybe the SR system is the problem.
If no one on the team is going to be a support character, then I opt out for Mercy. If people have a problem with that, then they should play support instead.
Honestly, Mercy is an easy go to character for those learning how to play healer and people just hate it since they think that Mercy playing healer is "removing a player from the team" just because they aren't on the offensive like other healers can be. Not to say that I'm completely right on the matter, but hating on a character just because is just... stupid. It is like hating on Widowmaker or Hanzo players; if they can play the character well enough, then who the hell cares if they pick them?
Honestly, Mercy is an easy go to character for those learning how to play healer and people just hate it since they think that Mercy playing healer is "removing a player from the team" just because they aren't on the offensive like other healers can be. Not to say that I'm completely right on the matter, but hating on a character just because is just... stupid. It is like hating on Widowmaker or Hanzo players; if they can play the character well enough, then who the hell cares if they pick them?
Speaking of the "huge rez" kind of Mercy that are trying to climb the comp ladders - Blizz should just copy the TF2 Medic completely, including the "lose you Uber (or ult 
)" on death" for Mercy only. That ought to teach them selfish Mercy's.
And I agree, there might be a few very good Mercy players around but the vast majority, including me, are serviceable. She is very noob friendly, you feel useful to the team right away even if you never played OW before.
)" on death" for Mercy only. That ought to teach them selfish Mercy's.And I agree, there might be a few very good Mercy players around but the vast majority, including me, are serviceable. She is very noob friendly, you feel useful to the team right away even if you never played OW before.
Spring-Loaded
Member
Is that what you got from the article? I really didn't get that impression from it, and I actually took from it what you said: it's often what sexist people latch onto.
The intersection of the game meta and sexism occurs and when that misogynist hostility happens, it can't be separated from gameplay reasons for hating those players. Trying to discern what comes first seems akin to a "chicken or the egg" scenariowe can't know whether someone who's harassing women playing Overwatch with gendered insults is prompted by hem being women, or for gameplay reasons, but the sexism is irrefutably present.
If don't have as much faith in gaming communities as you to think this has nothing to do with misogyny. And "have to do with" doesn't mean "is the core cause of," if that's where the disconnect is coming from.
I don't think top 500 players is really a good comparison. We're talking about what? The top 1% of players in the world? You could probably run the same experiment with Winston or D.Va and get similar results, since those characters' kits are also super simple. Besides, streams where players are picking random characters they don't play and "meming around" isn't exactly a sterling example of evenly matched competitive play. After all, the very notion that these players are goofing around and not playing seriously implies that they're playing sub-optimally. To me, this undermines your argument that all mercy play is the same past a certain skill level.
And frankly, although I know you don't mean to insult anyone, the tone of this whole thread is super condescending. It's easy to take for granted the work that mercies do keeping themselves and their teams alive, but I guarantee you'd notice if your mercy-playing teammates started dying all the time and whiffing their rezes. Her learning curve isn't exactly steep but climbing the ladder ranks presents challenges for players to overcome in terms of adjusting to the play styles that are popular at different ranks and learning to to play well with your team. There's more to it than just learning the mechanics of your kit and holding left click.
People keep saying this.. but it just seems like there's more to it. What I think is interesting is if you look at the leaderboards by time played, you'll see people who have played Mercy competitively for hundreds of hours, and the top ones for time played are gold rank, gold rank, platinum, platinum, etc. All these players have around 50% winrate, so why aren't they all masters since it's supposedly a free pass to grandmaster? Why are they different than those twitch screencaps of the masters with 20% winrate?
For reference, https://masteroverwatch.com/leaderboards/pc/global/hero/17/mode/ranked/category/time
Look dude, I've been in this weird spot where I've been playing competitive games online for 10+ years part of which were as dude and part of it as a girl. I'm well aware of misogyny and what that transition was like. Shit's rough out here. In this particular case, the person writing the article is just off the mark from my experiences and others I know. People just fucking despise this character for gameplay related reasons, then they lash out with whatever ammo they have on the person playing them.
If you want to talk about misogyny related to the OW community, there's stuff to talk about regarding Mercy and support in general, but you also gotta go into context about other stuff like it. The same thing has happened in MOBAs with other characters.
The author is also extremely disingenuous about the nature of the character and the situation. Mercy is a huge design issue on almost every conceivable level. The amount of frustration and differing opinions on her in this thread alone can tell you that much. That's going to create a lot of toxicity in general when it starts affecting the ranked ladder. A good chunk of the article is just blatantly going "but guys Mercy requires skill to play at a high level" when we know for a fact that it's not true. If it were true, we wouldn't have people literally AFKing in games as Mercy while their carry sets them up.
So like, I''ll concede the idea that misogyny around support role and this whole Mercy nightmare thing is kinda interesting, but it's really a much different situation than the author presents because, frankly, it seems like they don't understand what's going on in the game or community very well. There are misogyny problems, but going after Mercy specifically over it like this is just flat out incorrect.
Edit: I want to add that I also agree this is purely the fault of Blizzard. It is pretty unbelievable how long they've let this go on for. The problems with the community are amplified by 100 when they give them something like this to keep latching on to.
Edit edit: I Want to clarify that Blizz isn't to blame for misogyny in the community duh. Dudes like Gale will exist always and should continued to be called out for shit. What I'm saying is they are amplifying toxicity in general with their ranked ladder and design issues to an absurd degree. Misogyny is only a small(er) thing that got blown up along with a bunch of other horseshit.
TheRedSnifit
Member
Because they aren't abusing the rank system by letting their team die so they can get a bunch of 3+ rezes.
The fact that with Mercy win rate and ladder rank are inversely proportional should make it clear what the issue is. Played straight, Mercy mains are doomed to the lower ranks because of her low skill cap. The only ones that make it to the higher leagues are more or less cheating their way up.
Why would Mercy mains be doomed to lower ranks because of her low skill cap? I'm not real familiar with skill caps, so maybe you could clarify for me?
Can you point me to stats for the inversely proportional win rate/ladder rank? I'm having trouble finding evidence of this. Not saying there isn't any, I'm just not successfully finding those stats.
I see. Sounds like Blizzard just needs to fix how much they're giving out to keep people from taking advantage. I thought it was that people were saying just playing Mercy is easy SR train to GM. I think people are skewing their view of Mercy players with this though, as I imagine the people taking advantage of it are probably the minority. In master rank I've never noticed people specifically exploiting this.
SpiceMelange
Member
I just can't fathom why Blizzard don't just use win/losses to calculate SR, like every other sane ranking system. The moment you introduce arbitrary performance metrics besides if you won or lost the match people will find patterns and abuse the system.
They probably don't do this because Overwatch is a team game (you can't win by yourself) full of asymmetric characters who rely on different gaming skills to properly utilize, and thus basing it on just the win/loss ratio isn't going to be an effective measure of an individual player's skill.
ZeroGravity
Member
Overwatch currently has a few problems, and both of these are among them.
TomcatTheLion
Member
Hmm, I've never noticed any hate or harassment directed towards me when I play Mercy (my highest played character still). Is it based on performance or just being unlucky enough to end up in a specific party?
Nuno Pinto
Member
Seagull just said on stream that he's changing his schedule because he can't take morning games anymore after having a mercy on his team that didn't rez a single time lol