"...but the gameplay is good!"

General Discussion
1

This has been the excuse given for why we should overlook all the problems with OW2 and just be grateful to have it.

Skins don’t matter, we’ve been told. Progression doesn’t matter. If you care about anything other than the experience inside the actual matches, you aren’t a real gamer.

“Back in my day, we played games because they were fun! Not because of some complicated progression system!” I’ve seen this line of thinking everywhere.

OK. Fine. Let’s say those people are right. Gameplay is king, nothing else matters. A lousy UI, horrible sound design, a lack of new content, a stingy battle pass, a store with exorbitant prices – none of that matters if the core gameplay is solid.

But is it? Is the gameplay actually good? People were shouting it from the rooftops the first 2 weeks, that this was the best gaming experience you could find anywhere. And yet…

We are less than a month in and even those people defending OW2 as a fundamentally good game are starting to crack. [Edit:] Support queues are getting longer every day Queues are getting longer due to the support bottleneck, and most people seem to be in agreement that something drastic needs to be done to correct it.

That’s gameplay. That problem is the result of gameplay that players don’t find fun.

We just learned that balance updates are actually going to be happening less frequently than they were at the peak of OW1. At the start of each season, and then once in the middle, with extreme cases prompting faster fixes – which, in Blizzard’s case, still means 2-3 weeks, as we saw with Bastion and Torb.

That’s gameplay. That’s the core experience. Heroes being must-picks is still a problem, as it often was in OW1. If you are annoyed seeing Zarya or Sombra or Sojourn or Genji in every match, you are annoyed at the core experience. That’s not some extraneous thing, that’s the game.

Mei is bugged like crazy. Doomfist needs some serious rebalancing. The DPS passive has been a bad idea in every single iteration since we first learned of it. This is gameplay. If you think gameplay is all that matters, these things are all marks against OW2 as a good gaming experience. These things are all Blizzard failing to deliver.

If you want to dismiss the horrible monetization, the atrocious UI, and all the other problems – fine. But the gameplay isn’t perfect. It isn’t close to perfect. It has the same problems as everything else in this game, a lack of polish and a confused sense of game design.

91 Likes
2

I’m no shill, but name a better hero shooter experience out there. If it was so easy, there would be a better game already, js. TF2 comes to mind but its nearly 20 years old.

14 Likes
3

It is gameplay what gamers have left.
Nothing to collect, nothing to achieve.
You cannot play with friends who are low ranked

It doesn’t matter if gameplay is good because now it needs to be perfect because there is nothing else.

17 Likes
4

In my opinion, Overwatch 1.

83 Likes
5

Queues are getting shorter for me, not longer. I saw the tank queue at 3 minutes numerous times which is the fastest I’ve ever seen it.

3 Likes
6
  1. Skins are an issue because the base price line is too high. $26 might be okay for a baseline bundle and after discount moments more affordable, but $26 after 33% cut is too high still. In ability to get things individually and grind for them in a free way. Agreed here an issue.
  2. My preference is progression is built into the battle pass or the free methods in which to unlock things. That’s all the progression I think anyone needs.
  3. After getting used to the sounds I have no issue OverWatch on this. Playing headset I can still locate enemies with high degrees of accuracy and the balancing is right for me to hear other things.
  4. UI I have no issues with. Things are moved to new locations, but overall it is a clean UI and you can find everything.
  5. For a PvP game we have the content in new balances again maps and hero releases. That’s all PvP needs to stay alive. The real content update is how PvE will turn out which is touted as coming 2023, but it could be a year.
  6. I’m in the weird group that prefers support in its current iteration. Though I always put this on being I’m just in a better bracket where player behavior is usually improved and I have played so long I can play many of the support roster well enough to know when to swap to make my life easier. Just not tilting in general. Support has always been a thankless job even in OW1.
  7. I do think Doomfist is highly usable, but very high skilled to get value out of compared to an easier hero like Winston. DPS passive agreed. I keep forgetting they even have one for how useless the current one is.

My consensus is the gameplay is fine. I put in like 2.4k hours over the last several years and even during the drought of content I still played. Its a PvP game. The game play loop and content has always come from randomized player vs player fights and how people always react differently each time.

2 Likes
7

Sure, the game isn’t perfect. It definitely has its problems. But I’m still having a lot of fun besides that and the problems that do exist aren’t, imo, unsurmountable. I certainly prefer it to OW1.

10 Likes
8

OW when it was popular or when people were leaving? Because most people who left agree that OW2 is OW being good again.

The reason why it’s a valid point is because it is a fantastic game. And people who don’t care about cosmetics are enjoying it.

5 Likes
9

It’s not an excuse to overlook problems, it’s simply a reason to get the problems fixed. If the game were bad, it’s just straight up abandon it.

2 Likes
10

I… didn’t read this. I’m sorry.

No, it isn’t good. Or rather, it isn’t that good. It hasn’t been for quite a long time, but it was popular and a thing to do, so no one really worried too much about it. They’ve wanted to own and control an e-sport ever since Brood War was a hit and League of Legends “stole” an entire genre from them.

Overwatch is… fine. I mean, it was. I actually like the 5v5 format more than the 6v6, but the format exasperates many of the issues the game already had (and, in parallel, they removed quite a few of the things that made the first one feel worthwhile… others can argue if the dopamine drip design was immoral to begin with). At it’s heart, Overwatch is TF2 with more flash and less player agency. It’s not a competitive game, and I don’t think it ever was. Catering to streamers, “pro gamers”, their simps, and the thirsty corpo uppers/shareholders turned what was/could have been a fun game into a functional nightmare if you engaged with the game on any higher level than picking the hero you want to play in the spawn room.

I like this game and this is my opinion of it. And to be fair, from very early on the identity of the game was inclusive for everyone, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I don’t know the exact demographics of course, but I’ve always wanted to share gaming, and my personal experience has been that Overwatch was, as a game, more inviting to a wider audience. But… I really can’t ignore that playing Team Fortress 2 Medic on a variety of community servers was both more engaging and a more socially rewarding experience.

Granted, I don’t present at someone who might be unwelcome in that environment, but that leads me to the conclusion that Overwatch’s major contribution to that front was simply being new, not due to the game itself but due to a community not already (apparently) poisoned against inclusivity. I am a gamer. Remove your preconceptions for me, as I mean I love games, I’m here to play, I’m here to have fun, and stripping away everything else, any politics and style and monetization…

Overwatch just isn’t that compelling. I swear to gods if Battleborn hadn’t dookied the bed as hard as they did pre-release, they’d have had a comeback this year. I played it. It was always better than this, Blizzard just had a bigger budget for marketing and a larger built-in fan base (and as previously implied, Overwatch was more approachable which, again, not a bad thing per se).

I still play Overwatch, of course. It’s a thing to do. I sometimes eat more of a bag of Doritos than I should, too. I don’t pretend that’s Haute cuisine. It’s fine to like Overwatch… but there’s better out there in basically every area. The only draw over the others, at this point, is that it’s popular.

9 Likes
11

here’s how to tell if a person speaking out of their butt

my guy support queues are nearly instant at this point

2 Likes
12

It’s actually how you can tell if someone mistyped, becuase the point being made is obviously that support bottleneck is making other queues longer.

I’m terribly sorry that I wrote the opposite of what I meant, but I guess I find it a little weird that someone can be such a gigantic a-hole (or simply such a moron) that they can’t just roll with what I obviously meant.

9 Likes
13

I dont care anymore about grind, still not enjoing 5v5, unless open q play with multiple tanks, what people seem to have problem existing even.

1 Like
14

Don’t play it then? Is cosmetics being more affordable going to make you enjoy the game more?

15

Did I say that cosmetics are problem for me? Or gameplay?

1 Like
16

Agreed, but it is no longer relevant since it doesn’t exist. Can you name a better hero shooter that currently exists?

17

Yes. Literally this.
Even at the deathbed of OW1 I was on the grind for those weekly challenges that got me nice new legendary skins.

Don’t play it then?

What a terrible take, I want to play the game, and I want to do it with skins that I got by playing the game. Cosmetics are a great way to reward players for the time they put into the game, and I want to play with my cool shiny skins.

What I don’t want is a paltry amount of coins for completing 11 WEEKS WORTH OF CHALLENGES not to mention a battle pass that gives no currency even if you buy the premium version. So no matter what I won’t have enough coins to purchase the thing I want without paying. It’s not a show of the effort I’ve put in, it’s a show of how much disposable income I have.

What about any of that is supposed to entice me to play more? The thought that I can pour money into Blizz’s pockets and get nothing in return?

13 Likes
18

Of course it’s relevant. Why wouldn’t it be? We don’t all have amnesia. You can’t just erase one of the top ten best selling games of all time and pretend it didn’t exist.

16 Likes
19

Exactly, and it’s even more apparent when compared directly to the stuff we got in OW2. People do nothing but compare it to the old version.
It’s not like Blizz doesn’t have the money to add more polish, or fix things.

1 Like
20

I agree. But you can no longer play it. At all. So it is irrelevant in the context of my question. I am assuming you are unable to name a better title in the genre. I know thats not an excuse for mediocrity, but it is the unfortunate reality.

1 Like