In-Depth Analysis of a Console Widow and Torb Main

I know Blizzard is aware of the current terrible console banning system. This thread is to show you just how bad it is through collected data. This all took place on the Xbox One. Sorry, I’m trying to keep this as short as possible. Skip to the conclusion for the summary.

INTRO

I decided to run a little experiment during season 5 where I only played Widow and Torb. I recorded all my stats in an excel sheet to hopefully see trends. I created a new account so it wasn’t affected by previous placements. To ease the pain of only picking these two characters, I decided to go with the gamertag ‘Widow and Torb’. In retrospect, maybe it wasn’t the greatest name for someone who wanted to be taken seriously. I sank 120+ hours in playing Widow to make sure I was efficient on all maps. I also watched lots of Khephrii for strategy. This is the worst possible meta to run Widow because any dive character basically counters widow. As you look over the stats, you’ll notice it still worked though.

My intent of the experiment was to see how high of an SR I could get playing only these two characters. I wanted to see how many games I would be harassed or blamed for the loss and whether or not it was justified. Lastly, I wanted to see how many games it would take before my account’s reputation suffered.

I made sure to always be in game chat and always call out to the best of my abilities. I would always try my hardest and never intentionally “throw”. I would solo queue every match.

I consider myself a seasoned FPS player. I started to really work on my skills in Destiny. I ranked top 10 for the PvP at one point during year 1. I ranked top 200 briefly when Halo 5 came out. I also ranked top 500 during season 2 of Overwatch. During season 3 and 4, I would reached grandmaster and then quit. I’m typically a DPS (Tracer, Mccree, or Hog) main.

DATA

I am extremely satisfied with how the data collecting turned out. As you can tell by the publishing date, I did not make it all the way through the season. It only took 41 days out of the 3 month season for my account to be fully banned. (I’ll explain what I mean by fully banned later).

Placements: Placed at 2477. 6 Wins, 4 Losses. 9.96 K/d. I averaged 1.5 gold medals per game. I played Widow 5 of the matches, Torb 2 matches, and a hybrid for 3 matches.

I then grouped up my games into blocks of 10 and averaged the stats. You can view the chart here. The bottom row is all the games averaged. The final block of 10 actually has 13 games in the group because I didn’t end on a round number. I was only able to play 94 games. I was really hoping to make it to 100 but (shrug emoji).

Disclaimer: My data isn’t really standardized. I was planning on standardizing my data by creating a ratio of total damage done to damaged done in 10 minutes and then applying that ratio to Obj kills, Headshots, etc. As I started to do this, I noticed the difference between the standardized data and averaged data was negligible. So I decided to just leave it as is. (This may be why my averages don’t exactly match the averages listed in the game. Blizzard must be using a much more complicated algorithm to properly standardize the data.)

I was hoping to compare stats like accuracy over time to SR, or KD to accuracy, but I was unable to gather enough data to properly do that. I was unable to play enough games before getting banned to see any change over time. After 94 games, I had a 56% win percentage. My SR was still climbing fairly easily and did not reach a plateau. If you would like to see two stats compared a certain way, just leave a comment and I could do it. One major thing I noticed was the change in gold medals earned after they changed total damage to hero damage. I went from averaging .875 golds per game to 1.159 golds. Widow and Torb are some of the best characters for supplying a massive amount of damage over time.

Now the fun stats: all the toxicity that was laid upon me in such a short period of time.

It took 44 games for my reputation to change to ‘needs work’. The main complaint received was filed under unsporting because my teammates believed I was throwing. After 44 games, I had a 61.7% win percentage. I was ranked #170 for Widow according to Overbuff (I personally do not like the ranking system of Overbuff, but it means something to most people so I am incorporating it). Here are my Overbuff stats after the 44 games.

Midway through this experiment I learned that I could view my feedback and see complaints filed in almost real time. Here is the report after 78 games. My record was 46-32 at the time and I received 25 reports. If we assumed all the reports came from my teammates after a loss, I was reported 78% of the time after my losses. 5 people reported me for cheating. My guess was this could come from the other team because they may have believed a smurf was intentionally playing at a lower level to dominate. 3 people reported me for voice. I believe this could be an “I’m mad with your pick but not sure what report to file that under.” I never yelled at anyone even if I was being verbally abused. Here are my Overbuff stats after the 78 games.

Most of the hatred came from verbal abuse since I was always in game chat. Widow was always the scapegoat for anything that failed. I was either a god or I threw the game. I was directly blamed for 17 of my 40 losses by teammates telling me over voice chat.

Most notable reports: There were 4 instances (5 total reports. This could have happened more times, but these 4 games were the only ones I noticed) where I was reported by my own teammates before the match even started. All 4 of those matches ended in a victory for us despite me going Widow and Torb.

At game 93, I received my 32nd report and my status turned to avoid me. This basically is a ban on your account. The game only matches you with other avoid me players. I searched for a quickplay match, but canceled the search after a 55 minute search. The comp search time was a bit more reasonable. It only took 32 minutes. This comp game had the SR spanning from 1760 to 4034. 6 DPS were instantly chosen on my team. Team chat was disabled. The enemy team had a Mercy who sat at our spawn and tried to be friends. My final stats

CONCLUSION

It is basically impossible to main Widowmaker in console competitive. I didn’t throw a single match, was engaging in voice chat, reached top 150 for Widow, and was still banned within 100 games. I received 32 reports for maining Widow despite having a 55+ win percentage. As a Widow main, I was the natural scapegoat for any failed push or lost capture. Teams would refuse to recognize any other weak points because blaming me and accepting the loss was much easier. Even with 3 golds, my team would tell me medals mean nothing and to switch. For anyone wanting to main an off meta character, I would highly recommend you duo queue so your friend can vouch for you. It is much easier to fight mob mentality when a friend has your back. Even then, it still doesn’t stop people from reporting you. But for real Blizzard, I’m hoping you fix this report system. You announced a report system is coming next patch, but it will do nothing for folks like me if you don’t disable the console report system. I hope you all had fun reading about my struggles. I thought some of you might be interested to see just how many reports and threats a console Widow main actually receives. It’s sad to me that I also mainly did this to see trends in my stats (I took a stats class recently and wanted to apply my knowledge) but I couldn’t even play enough games to properly see any change over time.

Here are a few clips that I gathered while playing. During the Torb clip, my team was blaming me the whole game. I received 2 reports from them even though I defended the point 5v1(ish) and won. I am very crucial on my gameplay so I do not warrant many moments to be good enough to record. [Widow 4 man] (https://streamable.com/ubp8w) and Torb play described earlier.