Avoid as Teammate

Avoid as Teammate is a system that allows players to "blacklist" other players, preventing them from being matched together in the same team. It was first introduced in Overwatch, in the April 10, 2018 Patch, with the goal to tackle toxicity in the game and provides players more control over their gameplay.

Functionality

Anywhere you can access a player's profile, such as from the in-game chat or the social menu, one of the options available as you interact with the player's profile is to "Avoid as Teammate". Once avoided, that player wouldn't be paired with you for seven days, however they could still be paired against you on the enemy team. At the end of the seven days, they're automatically removed from the list, but can be re-added if avoided again.

To see avoided players, you go to your social menu and there's a separate section to view avoided teammates. From here, you can also remove players from your avoided list to make room for other players.

Development

History

Avoid as Teammate was first introduced in the April 10, 2018 Patch. Initially there were only 2 avoid spots, as developers knew that this new system would increase queue times and believed limiting it to 2 players would help mitigate this issue in the higher tiers. .

After release, developers had been analysing the effect the avoid as teammate feature had on queue times and matchmaking and decided to increase the number of slots from 2 to 3 at the start of Season 12 of Competitive. .

Future plans

New Avoid as Teammate Features

It was announced in a Season 9 Developer Update that it was going to be revisited and altered by the Defense Matrix Initiative. In response to requests for more avoid slots, the Defense Matrix Initiative had to rethink what it meant to avoid players, to try best help improve the user experience of the game.

During the announcement, it was stated that the number of avoided players on the avoid list would be increased to a limit of 10 players. However, because simply increasing the amount of avoid slots would lead to impossibly long queue times for high ranked players, the functionality of the avoid list will be changed as well: Avoid slots are prioritized instead of guaranteed, and as queue times get longer, the Matchmaking system will start ignoring avoided players at the bottom of your list. However, the majority of the playerbase can still expect to be able use all 10 slots with high reliability, as there's more players below Grandmaster.

The management of your avoided players will also get easier: You can prioritize the players on your list, and if you have a full avoid list but are trying to avoid a different player, you will automatically remove the oldest avoided player from the list to replace them with your new avoided player. This feature will help players more quickly avoid people and no longer require them to manually remove avoided players from the list to make space. Players will also have the option to pin avoided players, prioritizing them over all others and ensuring that avoiding new players will not remove them from the list..