Competitive Spectating

General Discussion
1

It’s been bothering me for the longest time. I don’t know, maybe I’m just not getting the reason behind it or I’m not seeing their point of view, but how come we can’t spectate competitive matches?

There are so many times where I don’t really feel like playing but I wanted to watch my friends play. I don’t understand why we don’t have that option. It would be great.

Can anyone explain this to me? If you agree with me then lets try getting the Dev’s attention.

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2

I can’t really tell you why it isn’t an option. I’d just like to throw in my 2 cents and say that I’d really like this as well.
As someone who’s extremely anxious about the idea of getting started in comp, it would help a lot to see how players select heroes and how they use them differently from QP.

I suppose the only possible reason would be that you could spy on the enemy team for someone else, giving away the location of a character who’s trying to flank or sneak around.
Seems silly, but I can’t think of anything else.

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3

I suppose the only possible reason would be that you could spy on the enemy team for someone else

I think that’s the reason too.

It’s sad that we can’t have nice things because people abuse the system…

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4

They prevent you from spectating to avoid making call-outs/ helping out the team.

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5

There would have to be a decent time delay. (Don’t want people giving away positions)

  • Would you be able to change your camera with a time delay?
  • Does that mean all competitive matches would need have a 30 second recorded buffer just in case someone joins to spectate midmatch? (I guess you could just delay the spectator 30 seconds before you start streaming in this case)
  • How would a spectators experience differ from a player who just died but was in the match’s experience?
6

you can see 3rd person, so you can see behind your friends teammates, if you want to watch them play try to get them to stream, but spectating in comp would give a decent advantage to the team with the spectator.

7

They can add time delay to the spectate. like 10 or 15 secs.

8

Then why not just prevent people from being able to contact anyone?

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9

You could be in Skype or Discord (or Xbox Live party), talking with someone in the match, feeding them information. It could really undermine the competitive nature of the mode.

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10

You can’t stop people from using something like discord… but yeah I wish it was a thing.

Maybe they could force you to only watch one person, and from first person? And have it be another thing that the matchmaker takes into account when finding a match. “This team has x spectators so the other team also has x”

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11

I think the idea of a delay addresses that, and I’m fairly certain that’s an option while streaming nowadays to prevent people from kicking your butt using your stream as a reference point. Not exactly the same, but maybe the same in practice?

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12

Please look at my post above relating to potential issues caused by a delay:

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13

Thank you! I jumped right over that somehow. Those are all good points to consider.

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14

They can do it many ways such as via through party chat, cell phone etc.

15

cheating becomes an issue.
having a second pair of eyes and potentially talking to that friend in a discord call, or something.
makes it less competitive.