PROBLEM
Overwatch has a counter swapping problem. This Flats video of him and the other tank staying in spawn not playing the game (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsECifHrs14) has become a bit of a meme and it’s for a reason.
Countering is normal for games and is usually seen in like a talent system or build system (Let me cook I am not advocating to add talents). I used to play a bit of Paladins and you would be locked to a certain hero, however you could build talents to counter whatever they were playing. You had to use these points to actually earn these talents to counter the enemy team. In no other mainstream competitive game are you able to just instantly replace all your talents to counter them. In Overwatch you do not earn your counter, if you just died and used ult recently, or if you just started the round, you can instantly switch without earning anything. All you had to do was click “H” and now you’re Roadhog and the enemy Doomfist is hard countered. INSTANT NERF. This is an inherent game design flaw.
SOLUTIONS
There are only two solutions that I can see to this problem. I am not talking about selecting your heroes before the game starts because it completely goes against what Overwatch is about.
The first is to rework most specialized heroes to make them more similar. I feel like Overwatch is heading down this direction already and players aren’t liking it (Mauga, Ramattra…). This would just lead to the tank role, for example, to be a ton of Ramattra’s, Mauga’s, and Orisa’s, instead of having specialized identities like Doom or Junkerqueen.
The second is maybe putting hero swapping on a resource. Honestly any solution that includes this I think the is the right way to go, however, I have thought of one that I feel makes the most sense. I think the best, to make things less complicated, is that it costs 50% of your ultimate charge to switch. That way you cannot switch at 10% or even 40% ultimate, you have to earn it. I don’t think this needs to be implemented in quick play but competitive it might need to.
HOW IT WORKS
Let’s say I’m playing tank and I’m on Roadhog, defense, at the start of the match. Unfortunate for the enemy team cause they’re playing Doom. Normally in the current game, they just go straight back into attackers spawn and switch to Orisa. But now, the Doom actually has to play with the character he chose at a disadvantage. His main mission is now to gain that ult charge so that he can switch… or… maybe he tries his Doomfist and actually learns strategies to mitigate Roadhog’s advantage. It allows for Overwatch players to actually try and learn what they wanna play instead of being flamed in chat. Now that they have their 50%, they have to make the decision, is it worth it to switch?
Let’s say they do switch and they counter me by picking Orisa. Now the whole thing starts again in my head as a Roadhog… Do I choose this ultimate to possibly win a fight, or give up on a fight to switch to another counter. This actually encourages players to not instantly switch but possibly learn positioning strategies to mitigate a counter.
Let’s say I’m a Roadhog main and am not very good at Zarya but I hear that’s the “Rock Paper Scissors” counter. So I pick Zarya and Orisa is now suddenly worried (I know Orisa’s are rarely worried in current games but it’s the example I’m using let me cook). Orisa, though, actually gets to learn how good I am at Zarya. I am punished because there are two options for the Orisa player. Either he realizes I’m bad and keeps killing me on Orisa… or he gets countered a little bit, he switches with his ult advantage to a character he’s ACTUALLY MASTERED and completely demolishes my terrible Zarya playing until I get 50% ult charge. I get punished as a Roadhog main trying to pick the “easy” counter. I should have picked another character I am good at and flexible with.
In the current game however, if, let’s say you’re a Doomfist and the enemy switches to Roadhog, it doesn’t matter how good you are at Roadhog. Just the mere presence of Roadhog is scary enough to the Doomfist that he will switch immediately because it’s not worth the risk.
TL;DR
Being able to counter heroes without earning that advantage is an inherent game flaw. When playing Overwatch, if the enemy switches to a hard counter, it’s better off to just switch and delete a hero off your hero pool. The game discourages learning to play around it and encourages players to “scare” on characters they may not even be good in. It doesn’t have to be this way however without getting rid of hero swapping. If hero swapping is put on a resource, this encourages smart switching and hero mastery whilst discouraging easy counter swaps.
Some extra counterarguments (not fully needed to understand my point)
Something that I have thought of that could possibly be a problem is everyone playing “safe” characters to avoid that risk of needing to swap and losing ultimate charge. However, I do think this is already an issue in Overwatch, where people won’t play their specialized characters because someone can just go into spawn room and instantly counter them hard. Even if they are playing “safer” heroes, does that not encourage you to possibly play a specialized hero to frag out. Because you know they are less likely to just click “you are now at disadvantage” button right after they get back to spawn. This game isn’t horribly balanced. Maybe unbalanced but not HORRIBLY. What makes it feel horribly unbalanced is that I can’t pick my niche picks like Reinhardt because they just switch to Reaper and Mei and I just can’t play the game anymore.
Another argument that I see Samito talking about is 6v6 would mitigate this problem. I don’t feel like it makes it not a problem it just puts duck tape over a wound. It’s like adding more complexity to the tank role so that hard counters are a bit more complicated. A casual gold player may not know how to counter a Winston AND D. Va but they will know how to counter just a Winston or just a D. Va. This still doesn’t fix the counter swapping issues we see in Damage and Support roles. It isn’t like counter swapping wasn’t a problem in Overwatch 1 neither. I am not disagreeing with 6v6 but I disagree with it as a complete solution to counter swapping.