From competitive players: a letter to the devs

General Discussion
1

YOU no longer care about the competitive aspect of overwatch. It’s all about the casual players who play QUICK PLAY, buy their skins to play in QUICK PLAY, etc.

There are so many bugs, glitches, complaints about ranking issues and none of that ever gets acknowledged. Nobody complained about the ranking system in overwatch 1. Nobody complained about having a SR number shown in their profiles. NOBODY - absolutely nobody - complained about having their rank icons being shown in game. The last one actually just seems like it was implemented so you wouldn’t get roasted by the community for throwing different ranks in the same game. Since we can’t see what our teammates actually are, we are less likely to complain about the matchmakings. But it’s become more and more obvious, 30 seconds into the game and you can tell that something is off.

Not everyone is a casual player, although diversifying the skill range in quick play might be a good thing, this should have never been added to the competitive mode.

Please listen to the competitive community. We play this game for a reason and you guys have been treating us so poorly. Even famous-streamer takes are not taken into consideration (Aka mercy update).

We are not pleased with the ways things are going for competitive overwatch and even though this may not seem like it, it will hurt the future of overwatch pro league as well. GM players are supposed to be playing the best of the best in the community (before pro) but they are being forced to play a totally different game because of matchmaking issues. It wouldn’t be a problem if it was one game every season but this is becoming a recurring thing that is not being addressed whatsoever.

Please listen to the community. Take the time to read the issues in the forum since we can’t just send a ticket for in-game issues without “transcripts” or whatever the requirement is.

We don’t want this ranking system, we don’twant immediate queues where the difference between players skills is atrocious, we don’twant hidden player ranks, and we don’t want to play a quickplay matchmaking version of overwatch when we queue for COMPETITIVE.

Thanks

16 Likes
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tell me when they actually care about competitive players, legit when what moment, we are getting casual events and skins everywhere just for casuals…

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It doesn’t appeal neither to casual nor comp players. It is just a bad system that nobody likes.

Also they never cared about comp mode but only about OWL. If they actually cared about fairness in comp, solo only queue would have been a thing long time ago and there would be a solution for leavers too.

17 Likes
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better matchmaking doesnt mean they actually care about competitive matches and competitive scene (leagues)

For real think it, when blizzard seriously care about overwatch competitive scene and ranked games.

My point? Its pretty clear, what a competitive games need its a solid matchmaking, solid anticheat, solid balance and updates, multiple answer for heroes/comps (counters)

We got road hooking behind walls for like what 2 years?
Goat meta for a whole year or more?
doom, brid being ultra meta for a long time

Maps: How much fixes you got on maps, how much balance on them
Anticheat/Boosters/smurfs: They did something anytime with smurfs? or boosters, we still having 1 MMR for solo/party, that means a GM soldier player can easily carry his girlfriend mercy to masters (sounds familiar to you?) even if that mercy real rank its plat or gold, she will get masters thanks to the fat bf

Its too deep too long, not even talking overwatch league, doesnt have real sponsors, real teams like fnatic liquid or eg, camera/spectator mode its actual garbage you cant understand what is happening, scrims/tier 2 leagues, what is that? exists in overwatch?

bruh its too deep, we just got: lore, events for skins, more skins from lootboxes, new gamemodes for arcade

Dont forget overwatch 1 died, with jeff in the head and died because the game doesnt have any reward for competitive players doesnt matter your rank, if you tryhard and try learn how to play the game properly the game says “hey friend i dont care that, we are going to force you to 50% winrate”

6

Whatever much they “cared” before was much much much better than this glitchy malfunctioning mode that we experience now. Go check the bug report forum regarding competitive issues. None of it ever gets addressed. Some of them being issues since season 1 of overwatch 2. There’s no effort to even acknowledge the competitive community.

7

i understand your point and i agree the state of the matchmaking is garbage at this moment, but its not far from overwatch 1, again remember overwatch 1 was not even top 20 on twitch, que was 15 or 20 min for pro players, literally remember necros switching accounts and regions because he was not viable to get a single match, oh wait what about jay3 watching food videos for 20 min while que thats funny, “hey guys im playing overwatch but im actually not playing im just watching food videos” 70% of the stream was around youtube videos lol

8

This is Overwatch 2, not Overwatch 1! Money talks here! (Which, I’m told, therefore makes it 1000% a HEALTHIER + BETTER game!) :crazy_face:

Let’s see…

  • Overwatch League brings in the bacon with all the claimed hordes of captivated braindead viewers sitting glued to their Twitch/YouTube/Twitch channels watching all day and all night long (some even entertained by interacting with ads, lol!), so it makes sense to appeal to them. :white_check_mark:
  • Casual players with varying levels of deep pockets fork over money for skins, so it makes sense to appeal to them. :white_check_mark:
  • Competitive players have no reason to spend a dime. They already get to play entirely for FREE (Wow! So generous! Blizzard is such an amazing company!) Therefore, it does not make sense to appeal any further to them. :x:

(For that matter, just why do we have competitive again? Did some developer skip out on a meeting or not get the memo? Does someone still think the company runs this expensive Live Service game as a charity??) :sweat_smile:

4 Likes
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They’re simply caught between a rock and a hard place.

You can’t market a “sequel” (lol, expansion) that invites all these new players in but has them waiting upwards of 10 minutes to play what might only end up being a 5 minute game.

Aaron already admitted that was the case, they tuned the match maker to find faster games as the cost of mis-matched ranks in game.

Now they’re saying they’re tweaking it, but there are probably a few new employees handling this and they’re having to learn as they go while they “tweak” things.

The last developer update went over a lot of this.

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Most people are way happier with comp.

Matching players against people of the same skill in the same class was the best idea they have had yet.

12

Just wanted to say this guy doesn’t speak for me and I think his take is extreme, bias and full of lies. So please don’t listen to him.

Signed
A competitive player

2 Likes
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I wish I was playing the same game as you, then. I couldn’t stand comp in the late years of OW1 as the queues were roughly as long as the games themselves and god forbid you were unlucky enough to roll 2CP. Stale metas on both sides, games either steamrolling or stalling out forever… The only thing I agree with is that the SR system was better. I don’t know why they switched to this weird Valorant like system, probably to appeal to the mainstream majority.

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I’ve been criticizing Aaron Keller for this very reason. The man has a serious lack of direction for the game. Deletes most cc in the game for less cheese and more skill then says stuff like “we’re not nerfing sojourn cause she’s not op in low rank” and then scraps all SR brackets for ranked matchmaking.

He says “we’re reducing the amount of hard counters in the game so switching isn’t important” then gives us a 30% ult charge retention on switch.

And this is just on the gameplay side of things, I have plenty to criticize creatively too like the voice acting has all taken a nose dive in both dialogue and delivery and I don’t blame the actors for that, it’s a result of poor direction.

And how the new rank icons are nothing but a massive downgrade from the originals just blows my mind how that was ever approved by the director.

His lack of direction is making a game with no target audience.

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Not everyone, but the majority are.

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lol no, matchmaking has been bad and complained about LONG before overwatch 2. I don’t want OW1 matchmaking back which was just as bad/rigged/broken whatever you want to call it. We need an entirely new matchmaker that doesn’t tinker with the teams as much. MMR needs to go, SR needs to stay and be displayed, and teams should be chosen by SR ONLY and no other criteria.

17

The game might have bugs, but that store sure does work fine.

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18

Yep, they’re killing their own game.

I actually like the new format and all that. But with the matchmaker being this broken the games just aren’t worth playing.

Stomp or be stomped provides no entertainment value.

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19

I do not know their reasoning for the new ranked system except “get rid off ladder fright players”. To be honest, that’s me. Though I had already decided I wanted to try Ranked in OW2, as I never did much in OW1 (I did get masters in S3 of OW1 though!)
I don’t even know if the new system achieves that…
The rest, is all bad. The hiding of rank symbol plate is bad.
The lack of clarity of your own rank is bad…

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One of the interesting aspects is while OW cared casuals so much in their own way, most usual casuals just play typical FPS like CoD/Valorant/etc… It looks like the casuals the devs think of are rather a minor type of gamers.

21

isnt valorant literally a csgo clone?

22

If OWL wasn’t a major thing, this game would probably be better. TF2, as old as the game is, is entirely supported by its community now after valve poored all the sweat and tears into it. It likely also helps with the way Steam is built unlike battle.net.

2 Likes