Hey everyone, to start off with I just wanna say I don’t mean or want this to be a doom and gloom post or anything. That being said, I need help. You can skip to the last paragraph, the middle is mostly just explaining issues while the last paragraph is the actual question.
Overwatch has progressively gotten less and less enjoyable for me. I used to play Quick Play all the time a few years ago but now I almost exclusively play Custom Games or VS. AI. I don’t think i’ve played Quick Play just to play it since shortly after OW2s launch. And I only play it if I have to to unlock something I want now a days.
I play a few matches a day and I’m already wore out but I WANT to like this game, i’ve played for 5+ years, sunk who knows how much time into it and spent money i’ll never get back.
Sometimes I’ll go a few days or weeks and sometimes even a month or two not opening the game and its a nice break but as soon as I jump back in I quickly fall back into the dread and only play a handful of matches for a few minutes to an hour before needing to stop.
So i’m asking, what are some things anyone and everyone who even sees and responds to this do to not burn out on the game (or atleast not burn out as quickly) and actually have fun in matches whether you are winning or losing?
I enjoy matches even when losing because I enjoy playing the hero more than the win, that’s just the cherry on top. Yeah, I might be losing but that doesn’t stop me from trying to make plays, etc.
As for burn out, I put the game down and play other games, sometimes for months on end. I don’t really care about my comp rank, I always climb back up after a bit of a teething period.
Stop playing.
Come back in a month. Stare at the start screen. If you feel the desire to hop into a game, do so. If not, come back the next month and do it again. Eventually, you’ll either get the itch to play or realize you were wasting your time here and have found more enjoyable things to spend your time and money on.
Always remember: The game needs you, not the other way around.
Incidentally, the reason you’re burning out, is proportional to the amount of “social second guessing” you are having to do.
To the extent you could give yourself “Rules” for all of your stressful social situations, to the point that you don’t make full freeform judgement calls, you just follow “The Rules”, the better
I’ve been learning about this stuff recently, but I don’t have any direct solutions yet.
Also this isn’t really directly what you’re dealing with. But man, is it an eye opening philosophy talk. Life changing.
(And kinda long. Try putting it on as a podcast)
Step 1. To fix this for Overwatch is just giving the community some sort of visual guide to how to deal with common “social second guessing” issues.
Step 2. Is to figure out the specific symptoms of “social second guessing”. When that happens, what were the details, what were the triggers that really got ya tilted or despondent.
Step 3. Then figure out the root causes of that
Step 4. Figure out some technological countermeasures for that. (i.e. Systems Design, and Hero Balance etc)
Step 5. Bug the devs to see if they can add some of those
Oq qp gives you freedom to change your approach whenever you want.
Oq mystery heroes gives you whacky comps and has no counter picking, it’s not a mode you can really tryhard in.
Rq mystery is toxicity central in comparison to oq, don’t go there. The arcade mystery heroes also counts for several daily and weekly challenges for grinding.
And when everything feels bad, i play something else or have a pure custom game day.
Also the most important part, don’t play daily unless you really really want to.
Some days I wonder if Open Queue with Role Limits would have been better all along.
(Especially if they create an optional “psuedo-Role Queue” for Tanks/Supports to get dibs)
I do prefer the wild oq with the option of 5 tanks, but a limited queue instead of hard rq would be better.
Max 2 tanks and max 2 support. Max 4 dps.
That would probably be pretty ideal for most players.
Honestly, take a break. Do something else for a while.
Then when you feel like playing again, come back. Play a few games and stop whenever you start to get bored or frustrated or tired, anything that makes you not want to keep going. That’s your brain signaling you to stop. Do anything else, or just chill and do nothing, your call.
Bottom line, if you aren’t feeling it, don’t play.
Another thing that might help; don’t think about any unlocks. Ignore the skins, the challenges, events, battle pass, these are just chores to get you habituated to play even when you don’t want to. Stressing about them and forcing yourself to play when you’re not having fun is working against you.
For me, I played vs AI for a solid month or so and while you will bulldoze the bots, you will feel better. Even now, the Junkenstein story modes should be fun to try out. As speaking as someone who had a massive fallout a few years ago, I just accepted the fact I won’t be anything notable in this game so I basically have the mindset of let me try to do my best rather than worrying about proving something, cause frankly being good in a game isn’t that notable or impressive.
Too Add on, as people said find a second game, for me WoW is my true main game and if I want to “prove something” I can go to WoW for that. I also dusted off my gamecube and switch and started playing mario sunshine.
you cant. the game is dying… this update just showed it… might take a few more years, but overwatch is seeing the beginnings of its deathknell… a character got gutted and left in the main game as an incomplete hero… no character is safe from the same treatment…
Watch a YouTube guide then apply it on practice vs AI. We don’t want to keep doing the same thing we want to improve.
This may sound shallow but the new skins get me motivated to play too. I play witch Sombra, JQ and witch bane Sojourn. I watch guides for them then test/apply it.
Also try praying and searching for God. Seek ye first the kingdom of God then all these things will be added unto you.
I hope you find what you’re looking for. God bless.
Nah, I think between Kotick, Hong Kong, Harassment Lawsuit, COVID, Microsoft, and this Election Year.
Overwatch just hasn’t been able to go for long without something cutting it’s momentum.
But that shouldn’t be an issue by this time next month.
Then it’s a matter of doing the 6v6 Launch, and China relaunch. And see how far that goes. Maybe with some amplification on the Microsoft marketing arm.
except they broke a level of trust that can never be repaired… they gutted a character and left it an incomplete character in the main game… that now shows that it’s not off the table for any other character…
yes yes i would. at least then she’s a complete character… there has yet to be any hard statistical evidence that has given the least bit of credance to the notion that sombra has EVER been a game breaking aspect… for -any- version of the character.
I’m quite sure levels of trust beyond just horrible game balance were demolished long ago. I’m surprised this game wasn’t canned after the debacle of OW2 basically being ousted as a cash grab.
I’m right there with you. I have started the trend of just not playing as often anymore. I’ve made a delete-game scoreboard in the past 2 months for my own sanity This was/is my aspie stress relief game bubble, one that I could share with the kids, instead of being isolated! Instead, I’ve reverted back to just playing clickers/puzzle games on my phone away from everyone in my car more often.
Out of 20 points per month, I’m only one point left from deletion and we are barely halfway through the month.
My board:
Obvious hackers 3+ in match = 1 point => 3 total
Obvious hackers 3 or more (individual games) out of 10 = 1 => 5
Wipeout match (win or loose) back to back = 1 => 7
Backfill a loosing match in the last 10 seconds = 1 => 2
Non-functional rework = 5 => 5
semi-nerfed but playable rework = -5
Amazing rework = -10 => 0
Horrible rework not corrected within a week = 3 =>0
Comp leavers 2 out of 5 matches = 1 => 1
Enjoyed 5 matches in a row (win or loose) = -1 => -1
Enjoyed an entire evening overall = -3 => -3
Probably best to just drop the game all together. It is a lost cause. They no longer balance they just rework heros because they no longer know how to balance.
My breaks have gone form just a few days go spanning months now. The game is so boring and yields 0 enjoyment.
I played played for the first time in 3 months and the games have either had Smurfs or cheaters and when they didn’t the games were constant swapping to win. Hard to believe this was game of the year and isn’t even a shell of itself.
