Looking at Echo can honestly give perspective on what went wrong with Overwatch as a whole - let me address some things:
Lore:
Echo kinda popped out of nowhere, she is linked to the main lore, however this has been an issue in general - Bap and Sigma were out of the blue too. Blizzard, instead of connecting the dots is adding more confusion to the messy story that Overwatch is. Why not release someone like Mauga, or Sojourn (yes, I am aware she is confirmed) and slowly introduce these other characters through narration?
Characterisation:
When the community was first introduced to Echo, she was mysterious and intriguing. She appeared to be elegant and poised in her mannerism but her ingame persona is far from it. It’s almost like she is trying to replicate Tracer’s happiness but failing. Other than that - she seems pretty … boring? Unlike Orisa, where her background suits why she is so… cold and programmed, Echo isn’t meant to be this. She’s meant to be adaptive, so it would seem like this would’ve atleast translated into the game but instead it always feels like she’s shouting.
Hero Design:
The first mistake that Blizzard did was switching Echo to DPS. The second mistake they did was doing it just because of her ultimate, the third mistake was announcing it to the community? I’ll be honest, at first, the idea of copying someone else’s hero seemed cool, but it very quickly fell off and was shoved aside by the community. You can’t be doing these things Blizzard. If anything, her ultimate has become a stagger to the team more so than anything else. It’s poor and it backfired. Don’t just abandon years of planning, designing and story writing for ONE feature.
So how does Echo represent OW in this way?
Well, everything that seemed like it was promised, like it would continue, has not continued. Many people bought the game for the fact of how much lore was promised and how much the game itself promised to its audience - only for these things to slowly stop happening, for the devs to become lazier and eventually it all dropped off and we are in this limbo.
You single handedly managed to make the whole community doubt you and question your actions. It’s sad
I wouldn’t say Orisa is cold. Her VA does a good job of adding inflections which make her sound, um, more human, for lack of a better term. “Current outlook: concerning”, for example, sounds cheery.
Echo’s just boring. “But she’s meant to be a tabula rasa!” She’s got the brainwaves of Dr. Lmao loaded into her, you’d think a bit of personality would come with that.
I don’t like her Uncanny Valley face, Rayman limbs and lack of personality, but her actual gameplay gels together pretty nicely, imo. I don’t think she’s any sort of failure in that regard.
My only issue with echo is her ult. She should not get the healthpool of a tank, but be capped at refilling her own max healthpool with a proportional distribution of armour and shields. Triple tank was banned from the game for a reason, and creating an ult that is basically exclusively used to bring back triple tank was a huge mistake.
Dr. Lmao Bahahahahahahaa I can’t that’s amazing! The one time autocorrect helps hahaha.
In all honesty, I feel like her kit does complement the character really well, but its not like the decision to make her a support was last minute or anything as she wouldn’t have had those abilities on other heroes that I would think of. I for one can’t imagine her as a healer unless they redesign her character, story and abilities to suit the support change.
Echo is an awesome hero, you’re just a salty support main who wanted echo as a support. every support they’ve released recently has been broken, thank goodness she’s not a support
She was the chance to make a high skill mobile fun hero for supports that could of tempted a few dps mains to give support a go but no, Dps needed another fun fast hero -_-
Not to mention she totally steals Pharahs thunder.
Also the lore wtf? Liao felt responsible for the Omnic crisis and creating machines of war so she dealt with this issue by… creating a machine of war LOGIC!
There is big dissonance between gameplay and lore of character. Dr. Lamao (loving that) was so destroyed she made killer robots that destroyed humanity that she decited to make better killer robots that kill humanity and wear their skin. At least it is what I am getting from this story.
Alamak! Iam still salty they changed that line. Echo was in minds of development since beggining. Even in first cinematic her first prototype was shown. She is like bit older Orisa, still child like wonder but know things. If Robo Cow is toddler than Echo is preteen.
Only thing Blizz done wrong was to keep her for so long. I always thought they should release key story heroes first.
It’s funny how boring/crap she is. Before she released. I thought she was going to be OP. Because her frame makes her look small visually. But in game hit box makes her a truck. It’s so easy to shoot her. I remember one time she ulted and I just headshotted her out of the ult with Ashe. I was like, I’m not even trying. Echo basically feels like she got tweaked everywhere. Which made her bad. They where scared of difficulty. Cranking up the easy to hit factor.
Echo has existed in some form since well before the beta. Her character may not have been fully established in the universe until later on in her development, but it’s clear that they’ve had plans for this character for a fairly long time.
The actual lore we have had so far has been limited to only a handful of characters so we don’t know what the OW universe is really like, neither do we don’t know how much the lead story-writers have produced yet. There’s plenty of room for previously unknown characters to show up (at least from an outsiders perspective) that fit into lore drops later on (where their inclusion is necessary).
the only issue with echo is that she’s a copy character, as in she will use other characters abilities.
these sorts of characters are generally left to the end of a games release of characters as adding more abilities into the game will prove a tonne more difficult just by virtue that echo exists and she has to be balanced around these new abilities that comes after her.
so every character after echo will make echo have to get rebalanced.
For anyone who doesn’t take sides in the nonsensical DPS vs Support war, Echo is a fitting and poetic conclusion to OW1.
Her design is elegant, the her kit is straight forward but also has so much potential for skill expressions, I m scared of a great Echo but also don’t have to worry about some plebs picking her up and wrecking my team.
Her ult is the love letter to all OW players, you always find something you love to do with her. I see my tank, supp, DPS friends all enjoy her playstyle, because she is wicked fun without being braindead or OP.
Characterization:
She is still very mysterious, intriguing and elegant to me. Her release didn’t change anything for me. I think her character design is very nice.
Hero Design:
I can understand that supports were disappointed about her being a DPS instead of support. As for hero design, very well designed and very unique.
Sorry for not being a salt merchant here but overall she’s an awesome and unique addition to the roster and also one of the more balanced hero releases.
They could’ve changed her ult so she can target enemies and gets their ult without transforming into them. So she could still support her team while charging ults.
I see them releasing OW2 with 3 DPS, 1 Tank and 1 Support and promising once again “We know there are too many DPS. We’re working on Tanks and Supports”.
So, I don’t think this is fundamental in the least. I do think it showcases one thing, and that is supplying too much to the DPS roster in scale to tanks and support… but that’s about it.
You don’t like her character or her presence in the lore and the direction Blizz has taken in supplying Lore and world-building…
But I don’t think this fundamentally explains what is wrong with OW or how Blizz is building OW…