Overwatch is stated to be a “team-based shooter” by Blizzard themselves, but I am here to tell you 95% of the game’s players do not play as a team, they do not play Overwatch, they do not play their role be it: Tank, Damage or Support. Now this may seem confusing but allow to me to explain.
Overwatch is a really diverse game with three hero classes(used to be 4) and 30+ heroes to choose from. But many people don’t actually play their class, they just play [Insert hero(es]. For example, many tank players don’t actually play Tank, they don’t study the game maps, the best pathing for their team, how to secure and properly defend objects. They just tie themselves to one or two hero and their personality and playstyle revolves around said hero(es) and calling themselves things like a “Rein main” or “Ball one-trick” why would you do that to yourself? Why tie yourself only to 1 or 2 heroes in your class? When there’s others you can play, learn, and serve your team very well. Its from this one-tricks are born in each role and where the disparity about how the game should be balanced comes from. As soon as your main isn’t doing good, and another hero in the very same role as your main just happens to be doing better than your hero, your main is weak, they need buffs, the other hero needs nerfs. Now why that may be true, I still believe persons should expand their hero pool, within the same role they play and stop locking themselves around 1 or 2 heroes and also having their personality revolve around said hero.
As a support player myself, I could say Baptiste is my favourite and most played hero for a lot of reasons, but I’d never call myself: a bap main, a bap one-trick or bap abuser. I would play any support I can, be it : Brigittie, Baptisite, Lucio, Moira or Mercy comfortable when the situation calls for it be it from one of those heroes being Meta or my team requesting of such and my Overwatch experience is really healthy, I don’t mald whenever any of these heroes are nerfed, I try to recognize why. I don’t rejoice when any of these heroes are buffed, I take it as a blessing. If more Overwatch players take on this mentality, their games would become much more enjoyable.
TL;DR Stop forcing yourself to play certain heroes just because you like them and play the role you are most drawn to.
What? How am I being pretentious. I never said anything about me being better than you or anyone. It was a call to action to encourage persons to diversify their hero pool which will improve their game experience. I also never said to play “every hero”
a lot of the heroes, for normal players behaving as they would in most games, require committing to that hero to be able to keep at the level that you need to keep climbing. there is a card game element behind the FPS element and the moba element, the “strategy of picking your deck” at spawn, which is the least balanced and most unfun part of the game and we know we’ve moved away from it.
you are still quite literally playing the game, so i fail to see your point.
when you say 30+ you mean 32.
this is just you complaining about 1 tricks. even then they don’t need to play every single hero in that role to be a good at that role.
the reason why people do this is because its fun and humans like fun. i learn heroes that i enjoy playing, and if im not having fun playing a hero then i don’t want to learn how to play them. same thing for meta’s, i don’t want to learn rein or zarya even tho they are meta because i don’t enjoy playing them.
Oh man, you just choose to be blissfully ignorant huh? Well then, keep complaining about the game’s state instead of trying to improve yourself.
I wasn’t sure of the exact number and 30+ is being generous with sourjorn being teased and more to come in overwatch 2 so I fail to see your point of this.
I am not complaining about one-tricks, that was used as a harmless analogy. I have nothing against one-tricks
It’s also stated to be a “competitive” game. With Top 500s/OWL players matching with diamonds on their team. Yeah, no one’s playing Overwatch if the “competitive” descriptor is supposed to be true.
I’m going to apply this logic to many difference scenarios and let me know if you realize where your accusation falls short.
“You can’t call yourself a good driver unless you’ve driven in ever car/truck there is”.
“You can’t claim you cook unless you cook diverse meals every time, never claiming that your [insert dish here] is the best in town and make it frequently.”
“You can’t play pokemon unless you’ve studied and analyze every type matchup and team”.
I’m going to roll with the pokemon example for a second. What is the “correct way” to play pokemon? “Catch em all”? that’s the slogan! (just like overwatch is a “team-based shooter”). Alright. Now look at people who speedrun the game, or do single pokemon challenges. Are they not playing Pokemon?
The more I try to understand your viewpoint, the more it feels like you’re trying to gatekeep people from actually enjoying the game.
There’s 2 ways to play Overwatch, with role queue and without. You can’t flex to all the heroes you can adapt to in any situation when bound to one role, so in role queue the best way to play is to main. In open queue, you can flex your skill on several heroes and fill any role that’s needed on the fly. You can advocate for the way open queue players see things, but don’t diss the people who like the new direction, or both. Everyone is playing Overwatch.
You’re right, I don’t play Overwatch anymore…except every time a widow skin is released and I have to play flex queue (read: tank queue) in order to get credits =l
You’ve outlined the devs vision of what OW was supposed to be.
Players would have palettes of classes available to them to fill out their role given any particular situation , swapping back and forth as their opponents did the same.
However what was intended and what players did and will continue to do are entirely different things.
Any Dev will tell you that one of the more frustrating parts of releasing a “live” game (or really any game but live you can do something about it) is you can’t make players play a certain way. You have all these great ideas and lay out a “perfect” system and then players:
People gonna people, let them enjoy things how they want though.
Not better as in a moral context, but you learn so much by playing every hero in the game. Stuff that is really obvious can be overlooked if you only look through a few lenses.
