I used to love playing Overwatch and even played full time. I owned 3 grandmaster accounts and 5 more masters accounts. I was the head coach of my Overwatch team at my university, and personal coach to many players. I used to be on a Contender’s team in Season 0 (If that really counts) but I still brag 
. However, I also quit Overwatch about 5 months ago. I planned to quit indefinitely, and that plan has not changed. I had many issues with the game and the issues were so seemingly obvious to me, other higher elo players and even professionals, that I was dumbfounded by the fact that none of these issues were being addressed in a timely manner, because they are very non-negligible and they actually only continued to get worse. I recently just watched Seagull’s “The State of Overwatch” video, (Very well made, I suggest watching it before reading on. Link at end) where he talks a lot about the exact issues I had kept addressing on numerous occasions with my teams and friends. I was provoked to write a more in depth analysis of the issues he has addressed in the video, mention some additional topics he didn’t go into much detail about, and my ideas for solutions. I am by no means stating my solutions are the best or the only ones out there. I am only offering my suggestions since I have played the game a long time and have been able to achieve enough mastery that I could comfortably stay in the top 1% of the player base so hopefully some merit there. However, if the reader believes that the opinions of a low GM player like me are negligible still because I am still not a former/current pro player, many of the issues I will mention are being echoed by former and current professionals. That being said, here is my review:
The Primary Issues with the Game:
-
I completely agree with Seagull’s statement that what has become of Overwatch, is this spreadsheet type scenario where each team just needs to look at the enemy’s teams heroes and choose a hard-counter pick to push the odds into their favor to win. Seagull gives examples (Brigitte vs Tracer and Pharah vs Hitscans) on this, however he only addresses that the hero’s existence as the problem. Also, another issue is that even though these are good examples, those who have not played the game a lot or who aren’t at the highest levels, are not able to quantify the “effectivity” weights (If someone is performing well in a game) because it seems that the only differences are a preference of hero existence at that point. One (who doesn’t have a greater understanding of game mechanics and strategy) can easily make the same argument that the existence of one of those counter heroes also limits the “effectiveness” of the Pharah, just as a Brigitte does to Tracer. I will go into more detail as to why these are good examples nonetheless, against those who want to make the argument that there seems to be a contradiction when there really isn’t and its due to ignorance. To summarize, I agree with him on the fact that certain heroes’ existences do just make other heroes completely irrelevant, but I want to take it further and address more depth why this is the case. These may be obvious already, but I will still go into it later for those who do not understand why.
-
I wanted to address this next issue which I found separate and wasn’t addressed in the video directly, however is directly related I believe to the problem 1. The fact that Overwatch heroes are being reworked to put “training wheels” on older heroes and new ones are being released with abilities that have such a low skill floor and ceiling actually greatly hurts retention rates of players. Any time any hero is put on these “training wheels” or a new hero has abilities that are just too easy to use, it makes the game very dull after just a relatively “short” time period because there is not much to master or learn.
-
Which brings this to the statistical analysis argument (Which I also agree with) that there is no way for lower level players to determine if someone is performing well with a hero in a given game. Without access to said statistics, there is no way that a player is able to tell if someone is objectively being useful, and so this can lead to a lot of false accusations mid game about whether someone is pulling their weight.
-
I also agree with the ultimate argument, where ultimates are just way too powerful in themselves so that they alone can cause team fights to essentially be guaranteed losses or wins depending on who has more ultimate’s. This is something that although I had issues with in certain heroes and combos, I didn’t probe into why or how they are an issue until Seagull really went into it and so that really started provoking my thinking. The ultimate’s do need changing.
-
The last thing I want to address is something that Seagull has mentioned a few times throughout the video and is something that is much more subjective and an idea I will don’t necessarily disagree with, but something that needs to be adjusted carefully. Seagull states that there are many times in which due to the nature of certain heroes, a solo queue player will need to rely on their team in order to either survive or perform certain maneuvers against said heroes (He gives example scenarios like Sombras that hack you and Doomfists in higher ground positions). He says that this is extremely frustrating to those who understand these concepts and know what needs to be done in a team sense in order to counter these heroes but encounter the scenario that their team mates lacks this knowledge/understanding themselves.
Proposed Solutions to Said Issues:
(1) There are a multitude of solutions to normalize the “counter” pick situations. I think to get into the source of the problem, which Seagull did a good job of starting to identify, but not go deep enough into the source of the issue is that it’s not the champion’s existence alone that just straight counters another hero, it’s their abilities and options. I will use the same examples in his video; Brigitte’s existence just counters Tracer because her abilities can almost guarantee that the Tracer will not be able to effectively do something without certainly dying for it. When someone chooses a hit scan to counter Pharah, they may ultimates that counter her with almost the same certainty, but not just plain abilities that are quickly recharged. Therefore, they rely a lot more on their mechanical skills and positioning to be able to counter her more effectively. One thing I hated personally and for a very long time, was Mercy prior to her rework. She had a very low risk/skill, high reward ultimate that was almost like the punisher for a team that exhibited high quality team play and individual skill. Everyone higher level knew very well how this ultimate was incredibly frustrating to deal with and I will confidently say, completely unfair. The same can be said about hero abilities and changes since Ana’s release. The issue is that there are too many heroes that are given abilities that are this low risk/skill, high reward which is very unfun and very unfair to those who have dedicated a lot more time strategizing and improving their mechanical and game sense skills. So, in order to address these issues, these heroes need to be reworked, just like Mercy was, in order to deviate from what Seagull calls a “spreadsheet” counter pick type of game with little to dynamics and also to avoid the quick succession into dull gameplay. The other solution could be that picks in a game are locked for a round (Meaning that players that select a certain hero cannot switch for an entire round), so that this counter picking issue will be subdued quite largely while promoting individuals and teams to work around their weaknesses based on hero selection alone. I don’t think the game is ready yet, but once there are enough heroes in the game, players should also be able to ban certain heroes prior to a match.
(2) I remember clearly my friend who is currently a T500 Lucio main (I rather keep him anonymous) say that the devs “put Lucio on training wheels” after his rework that allowed him to wall ride pretty much indefinitely and with little to no mechanical skill intervention by the user. The intention may be to lower his skill ceiling/floor so that new players may be able to pick up the character easily, but it surely does affect the long-term players in the way that it just makes the character way too easy to play and therefore, there isn’t much to work up to after mechanical mastery since that is achieved in such a short period of time. Yes, there are heroes that just have low mechanical mastery to begin with, and I am not saying that every one of them needs to be reworked in order to become that way, but certainly there needs to be a greater care when changing mechanical changes of heroes, based on their role type in the game.
(3) Along the lines of statistical analytics now, I will first and foremost say that I think the justification behind being able to make a profile private, is a very fair and good way to avoid judgement and automatic categorizing of players so that they are stuck in certain roles every game. However, there does need to be a way for players to judge their teammate’s effectiveness within the game they are currently in. That being said, there must be a team statistical panel that is updated live and easily accessible to everyone on the team during the game. Everyone on the team needs as much information as possible in order to efficiently determine why they may be losing/winning a game. I have also seen in way too many of my games, how players argue over who has done more healing, damage, kills, etc. in order to justify why they shouldn’t change anything they are doing and a lot of the time that is because there is no way at all to objectively determine that when there is no team panel. Basically, the game needs to create a UI interface that integrates this. Too many false accusations fly around, and toxicity is promoted without it.
(4) The issues regarding ultimates really became prevalent to me only after hearing what Seagull had to say about it, and for that I am very thankful for, because it is something that does have a very non-negligible effect on gameplay. There are a number of proposed solutions to this. One of which being that overall ultimate charging time should be increased and should not be so easily decreased by activity or ability in fights. I agree that they should have an effect, but not nearly as much as they do currently. I think the gameplay should be focused way more on basic team play rather than relying more on ultimate usage to win a fight. This would help reduce the number of completely one-sided games since players who may be much better in a certain game than their counterparts, will have to rely more often on their basic mechanical and strategic skills rather than spamming their ultimate’s because they will be almost guaranteed to have it every new team fight in the current game.
(5) Overwatch is a team game, and we all know this. It’s beat into our minds all the time by the devs and the community and fundamentally that concept should just be extremely obvious. And because it is a team game there will be times where we need to rely on our team mates in specific situations where no matter what, we as an individual will do, it will not be enough. I will be injecting my experience here, because like I said before, this is a subjective idea about the game. Whenever I made a new account, it usually got placed in either plat or diamond. I knew that as I climbed to GM on those accounts that I needed to alter my gameplay in certain elo levels because I knew on average that the teams I played with and individuals for that matter, had a lack of knowledge and/or experience to be able to perform their roles in the most effective manner. Being able to closely analyze myself first, then my team mates in all elos, and alter my gameplay in a lower elo to accommodate for the shortcomings either in ability and/or experience of others is what had helped me to develop as a better individual and team player. The team dynamics will always be there, therefore one needs to communicate with their teams at all levels and if something occurs that loses a team fight or a game, it is up to the individual to rationally decipher the cause of the issues. However, just as Seagull says, this is solo queue, not a professional match up where players have consistently practiced together and understand the synergy prior to going into a match up. I believe the game has shifted too far into the team play direction and it is more difficult now more than ever to solo carry in any role you are playing in. This is extremely aggravating and demoralizing to those who performed significantly well in a game, and still lose SR because their team did drag them down. SR gain and loss needs to be wighted more towards the individual’s gameplay, rather than the win/loss factor alone. I heard that the devs had said that this is already being implemented, but I will say in response, not enough so. This does need to be adjusted carefully though, and I actually think that the game does not take into account, enough factors to decide whether a player performed their role effectively, so more effort needs to be put in by the dev team to address how the software may be able to start addressing those aspects that are currently being ignored. To reiterate and to make as clear as possible, I am not saying change the game so that anyone can solo carry and climb without any team play at all nor should the system of performance-based matchmaking be reimplemented. I am just saying that the individualistic talents must be weighted more than team play/wins when gaining/losing sr (Maybe a ratio of 60/40 or 65/35 individual/team weights). I am a strong believer that no one’s potential should be limited due to the lack of effort/talent of others, because if it is, people will run out of patience and eventually give up, as we are seeing now.
Since this goes along the lines of (5) however a more ambitious attempt to fix the current issues I left the following ideas separate. This section is dedicated to some recommendations I have made to attempt to make the SR system more accurate in determining individualistic talent. These ideas have been brainstormed with the intention of allowing anyone in any role to be able to feel more viable and climb if they are performing well (It tries to avoid any unfair biases towards certain roles). The following are some examples of stats the game should either start to track, or explicitly state on a UI panel (If the stats are being tracked but not stated clearly enough):
a. Relative damage contributions. What percentage of the team’s overall damage has a certain player contributed.
b. Relative healing contributions. Same as damage, except for healing wise.
c. Kill to objective conversion ratio/score. This is basically, how an individual’s kill/kill participation contributes to objective winning. Example: A person who solo kills two enemies capturing an objective. If the enemy objective capture percentage was 22% and the point capture shifts into friendly hands, the amount of percentage “shutdown” contributes to their kill to objective contribution score. Essentially it deciphers if a player’s kills contribute directly to objective wins.
d. Enemy contact score. Determined by how often a player engages enemies. This can also really put afkers in the dirt. However, it is not just having “vision” of an enemy that determines it, it is how often the enemy is in vision, within a certain radius of the player and if the player is actively taking damage or dealing damage on the target. Therefore, this will greatly assist “effectivity” determination of tanks who take a lot of damage from enemies (To be clear this is not damage blocked by shields, but damage received directly by a hero).
e. Kill location score. Killing a target near their spawn or objective is weighted more than other “random” areas of the map.
f. Kill shutdowns. If a player has been on a killstreak and you are the first person to kill them on their streak.
g. Map control ratios. If you contribute to map control, (Not to be confused with objective control) so this goes along the lines of if a player is causing a significant distraction in the back line or if a team is pushed up against the enemy team into their spawn, rather than staying on point. Being able to restrict enemy movement in this way should be rewarded.
h. Dynamic vision control. How often is someone looking at spaces on the map, the rest of the team is not, to watch for flanks and add to vision control? This rewards awareness.
i. Crowd control score. How often heroes with CC abilities use them and if they are used to shutdown ultimates or certain heroes. Example: Ana sleeping nano-blade Genji or ulting Winston.
j. Solo kills score. How often and how many kills did a player get without any assistance from their team mates. This score is also increased if the enemy was killed while receiving assistance from a team mate. Example: A Mccree killing an enemy Mccree while he was getting pocketed by a Mercy.
I believe all these stats should contribute to SR gain/loss. They are aspects that are important to the game and that from my understanding, have not been tracked explicitly.
I want to first thank Seagull for the awesome video he made. He addressed all the main issues that have plagued the game for a long time now. I will also say that I can relate very well to what he said about how these ideas and thoughts were there but they were suppressed for a while because for him it was the “professional” bubble and for me, it was the fact that out of all the games I have ever played, I was never as good at a single game before as this one. Although I no longer feel the same way and still have no regrets about quitting, I still care a lot about the game because I can really see the potential that it has if these issues are fixed. The next question is, are those who can fix them going to listen to people who have played the game full time and mastered it to such a degree that they can clearly point out these flaws? The fate of this game relies on them.
Seagull’s Video: The State of Overwatch - YouTube
Link to Reddit Version of this Post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Competitiveoverwatch/comments/9z0rwp/an_analysis_of_the_current_state_of_overwatch/
TLDR: I state 5 issues with the game that most higher elo players are concerned about and then go on to promote solutions. The lined out section is related to solution 5, but more focused on additional statistical tracking mechanisms to try to make the SR system more accurate and tailored towards individual skill and efforts.