Overwatch

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Araxen

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Seagull's State of the Game:
It's a good video, but I feel the problems with Overwatch are too big to fix with Blizzard being at the helm of it. It's something they'll have to work on for the eventual Overwatch 2 on mobile.
 
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Needless

Toe Sucker
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I dont even think the dot is that bad at all, it's only 20 damage per second, so it's very easy to deal with if you have at least one healer
 

BoozeCube

Von Clippowicz
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It's been a while since I have played this game but it still feels like it suffers from the same issue as last time I played it. In that 90% of the games feel one sided, either it's a complete blow out victory or it's a stomp loss. Granted I am only at gold so maybe it's my level of play but it really doesn't make for a fun experience, after a few games win or loss it's boring.
 

Avatar of Nyx

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When my blood pressure is low enough to play Overwatch, I play mystery heroes 95% of the time these days. I prefer leaving it up to rng to supply a team capable of winning rather than depending on five other people picking smartly/strategically.
 

Ravishing

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I haven't played this game in over 6months but yea, OW has a problem with creating real rage moments. I understand completely what Seagull is saying. I think my health has improved not playing this game.
 

Volto!

Lord Nagafen Raider
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It is rough for sure in the gold ranks. My experience in gold/plat is the same: 90% of matches, win or lose, are complete one sided victories that don’t make the game fun. I also switch over to mystery heroes once I eventually get sick of people making the dumbest hero picks. I can handle shitty rng much easier than I can shitty hero/comp choices.
 

lost

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yeah lot of leavers, triple dps games, torbs and widow dps only mains, games are exactly that: hulk smashing you or hulk smashed them, rarely a tug of war. lots of doomfists wtfpwning everyone and no one switches to counter (gold and plat levels) but cries how we're losing. makes me want to start picking up doomfist cause hes retarded OP right now if you ask me.

lastnight i had a team with a 2 stack taht only went dva and widow, then we had a hanzo and a symmetra, with an ana and me as zen. we did decent, but couldnt keep them off 2nd point in temple of anubis defense. offense came around, widow goes bastion, i decide to go orisa and dva goes healer then swaps back to dva again leaving us with just an ana to heal. we smashed the team, other team says report my team theyre all throwing we need a 2/2/2, and our team is like dude we've had one healer one tank most of the game lulz.

sometimes you just have wtf moments when you look at your team comp and then you win anyway. makes me miss WOW arena though, was way more rewarding.
 

Araxen

Golden Baronet of the Realm
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Click to the tweet to read the rest of his comments. He rips into Tigole's philosophy of the game which I feel doesn't get enough criticism. Tigole willfully admitted he didn't think people would toxic in the game about a year ago, which was a very naive and a surprising viewpoint for him of all people to have.

Edit: Rest of his tweets.

Regarding the state of Overwatch: I've been playing OW since closed beta day 1 (Oct 27, 2015). I have more hours of ranked play in Top 500/GM/M than some OWL players. I've watched every tournament.

Overwatch might be the most frustrating playing experience in all of esports.

I've played tens of thousands of hours of high level Quake. Thousands of hours of CSGO and Starcraft/SC2. And watched esports games for more than half my life. None of those games have brought me to the level of helplessness that I get from playing Overwatch. For a few reasons.

Overwatch stands atop the now deserted mountain of the 'hero shooter' genre which merges FPS gameplay, modes and maps with MOBA gameplay, most notably abilities and ultimates. All this combined with Blizzard's Team 4 philosophy on the game:

Spoiler: You're gonna have a bad time.

Purely on the game design perspective, Overwatch and hero shooters in general are likely the most team reliant games of all the major team esport titles, with the least amount of ability to individually carry the game yourself. This makes for a really rough experience.

Sure League of Legends and Dota have similar problems if someone is trolling, griefing, throwing. But Overwatch's issues are exacerbated by a range of shields, barriers, and stuns in a FPS game, and a vastly smaller total hero pool leading to stagnant metas and mirror matchups.

Overwatch and hero shooters are predicated on elements such as CC and stuns that are just not fun for FPS players. OW has no movement mechanics, only abilities. Movement + positioning reign king. Add in lack of heroes and OW has always had one or two 'best' compositions to win.

Overwatch's main game mode is payload, borrowing from older class-based shooters such as TFC and TF2. I would argue that TF2's main 5CP game mode is a better standard for a competitive game than OW's payload or control. And OW's own idea - 2CP - has been a disaster since launch.

-Unfun mechanics to traditional FPS players; ultimates, abilities -Poorly implemented game modes; 2CP, spawn system, map chokes -Small hero pool and unfun hero mechanics; stuns, defense matrix

And then you get Blizzard's approach to online gaming.

Jeff Kaplan and the Blizzard Overwatch team really want everyone to 'play how they want to'. It just doesn't work. Jeff wanted no hero limit in Overwatch against the wishes of both pro players and casuals. It took seeing 5 Dvas and Tracers stalling games to finally overturn it.

Jeff Kaplan and the Overwatch team have/had the following philosophies:

  • No soloq (wants you to play with friends)
  • Play any hero you want no matter team comp (freedom)
  • No scoreboard or stats (increases toxicity)
  • No custom game automation (PUGs/FPL/RankS)
You take the above issues regarding Overwatch gameplay. Add in how Blizzard balances the game. Combine all this with Jeff Kaplan's overall game design philosophy and for online Overwatch.

You get one of worst online ranked experiences in gaming and OWL is a nonstop mirror meta.

The competitive/pro Overwatch community of OWL and Top 500/GM/M players is so split from the larger more casual OW community that there is rarely consensus or concrete data for Blizzard on what to address. The community must unite for specific requests to better the game.
 
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BoozeCube

Von Clippowicz
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Speaking of toxicity, I am not sure when it started to get thrown around but goddamn is it such a stupid buzzword and not the job of the game designers to control player behavior. When I think of one of the most fucked up and arrogant aspects of Blizzard over the last few years it’s the desire to control player behavior that isn’t your fucking job, make a good game should be the only thing these assclowns should focus on let the community take care of itself.
 

Needless

Toe Sucker
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That’s essentially how I felt about hots too, game was ruined by blizzard trying to mandate player behaviour which in turn makes the game even worse and more toxic

Ow is the same
 

Penance

Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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Although Seagul brushes over it in that 20 minute video, I think the main thing comes to stats. They turned off stats and have never really had real time stat analysis in order to reduce toxicity and it has completely backfired. Turns out if you treat people like children they'll act like children.
 

Araxen

Golden Baronet of the Realm
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I think the game is less toxic than it was before. The root of the problem is the game is so tilting when your team is sucking ass. I play R6 Siege from time to time and I never get tilted in that game. In Siege though, you can overcome a retarded teammate which can't be said of Overwatch. It just takes one fucktard on your team in Overwatch to ruin a match and there is nothing the rest of the team can do.

They really need a scoreboard at the end of a match. The card system is worthless.
 

Avatar of Nyx

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If you've got the time to kill, there's a sorta follow up discussion video to Seagull's original. This one is Seagull, Jayne, Surefour, and XQC discussing the original video, the points Seagull mentioned, and the game itself. It's nearly 2 hours long though....

 

rad

Lord of Guk
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This is all the result of creating a game that is focused solely on competitive play. Most of the dominant FPS titles did not start out as 'league' games, they grew into that. They have this wonderful and original character design that is completely gated behind a format that they're pushing to be a professional sport and it shows.

Its crazy to look at the current FPS market, technology aside it feels like we've taken a few steps back.
 
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Ravishing

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I dont even look at OW as an FPS.
The characters are MOBA/Fantasy.
The maps are FPS.

OW characters would have been fantastic in an MMO world with battlegrounds for PvP.
And OW characters could make a sick MOBA game, but you need a lot more, + bans.

I also don't think OW is terrible, it's just not a game I want to play seriously. I played it a lot, they do a lot of things right, but there are definitely an abundance of rage moments, and I haven't really played with the newest heroes, so maybe the game is really much much worse than I even remember. Sounds like they need to tone down Birgitte and some others. Also add more heroes and then add a ban phase.
 

Penance

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Seriously though what's with the stat ban? Imagine playing on a football team and you couldn't see how many completions and interceptions your QB threw. It's about the most ass backwards thing I've ever seen. If you really want to coddle people hide that shit in QP. OW can't be taken seriously as a competitive game until you make stats public.

Imagine playing league and not knowing your top lane fed all game. Not knowing they were the weak link and that maybe it would be wise to shut that shit down in some way or another. Then imagine how much more toxic league would be because of that and now you have Overwatch.