I find this a really interesting topic. On paper, overwatch should be one of the biggest e-sports and it was for a long time.
I see a lot of people blame different things for it’s downfall. Overwatch League, GOATs, the lack of content for the past three years.
I love the idea of Overwatch League. An e-sports league that mimics a real sports league seems amazing and for its first and second year it was. But I must admit, with how much pro overwatch we are given, the feeling and hype that OG Apex and contenders tournaments had are gone.
Do you think OW2 will be enough to save OWL? How would you improve OWL? Should OWL be scrapped entirely and we revert back to a few mega-hype tournaments throughout the year? Possibly even ran by over watch, so the tournaments would happen, however the League itself would be gone and it’s more individual pro teams entering a “summer showdown”?
Should OWL be scrapped entirely?
I’m so confused because I genuinely don’t know what the best way forward is.
Does anyone have any idea of how to improve the e-sports scene of overwatch?
Step 1 - Keep blizzard’s filthy hand off of it
Step 2 - profit
Yes, should have been a long time ago.
Overwatch is a game first and a “sport” second yet the letter is taking priority when Blizzard makes decisions. 99% of people aren’t “pro” and don’t care about micro balance optimisations, they just want to have fun. Let the game be a game, stop trying to force it to be something it isn’t.
try to make a good game and you will have a good esport, not the other way around.
Dont. Focus on the game to make it good. Fix the problems with how supports feel and focus on making interesting changes to problematic heroes.
Step 1. Go back to twitch.
Step 2. Let people watch by the perspective they want to watch like the past.
I like how twitch would give you notifications for token drops. Now in order to check if you’re getting your tokens, you have to launch the game.
A puzzling thing for me has always been why there’s 20+ minute breaks between matches. What is going on during all that time?
They either need to swap rounds/maps way faster or do something more interesting with the dead space in between.
Plus the ability to choose whose POV you’re watching would be absolutely incredible.
Throw it in a volcano.
Step 1 - MAKE MORE COMMUNITY LEAUGES
Step 2 - Improve Production Quality for OWL
Step 3 - Implement All-Stars matches for the funsies (where pros and fans can play together in a wacky setup server)
they should have stayed on twitch. why they went to youtube is beyond me
Massive agree, I can’t see a single reason why anyway?
I’d say YouTube offered them money but I honestly don’t think YouTube cares about OWL enoigh to do that.
It truly is a my$tery.
OWL is, generally speaking fine, and it’s already run (perhaps embarassingly) cheaply.
I do, think, though that they should
- use the existing platform, where unobtrusively possible, to instill some interest in lower tier and/or unofficial games, and
- offer a larger set of features for free or nearly for free (and certainly with an inital—things like the ability to watch the match from any PoV via simultaneous streams, perhaps to out-channel the caster audio for those who’d rather hear only the game itself, etc.
I do not think so, though neither do I think that’d be a horrible outcome, provided it transfers to that new state smoothly enough.
I enjoy OWL, for the most part, for what it is—persisting teams names and yearly seasons included.
I just feel like it’s become increasingly barebone, in itself and relatively speaking (as we’d expect functionality and quality improvement over time).
Move back to Twitch. Allow people to individual spectate players they want to watch. Actually make good balance decisions where getting more heroes involved. Because mirror comps in OWL are boring. I don’t want to see Hanzo Widow or Sojourn 24/7. It’s boring to watch.
I used to watch OWL a lot, but these new casters are like nails on a chalkboard for me. Their enthusiasm doesn’t match what’s going on in the game at all. It feels over exaggerated.
It 100% needs to be back on Twitch.
And as Positive said, there needs to be more heroes involved. It’s sad when they’d pull out Torb or Sym and the audience and viewers would lose their minds but only for a brief moment 'cause they swapped off to some overused hero. 
It’d be a lot more interesting if off meta heroes got used for more than some 2 second gimmick.
Fully agree with this point, but to their credit I think we are in the most diverse meta we have ever had. Nearly all tanks and supports have seen some amount of playtime, a fair amount of DPS are being played. Far from a perfect meta where every hero is viable but definitely making great steps in the right direction.
Also yes. Please move back to twitch and allow for player POVs, this seems like something we shouldn’t even have to ask for.
Maybe even bringing hero bans back. Show a players dedication by having them learn other heroes and try different comps in a competitive pro scene. Less repetitiveness.
Less mirror comps. I think mirroring comps is boring enough as it is. When I play game of OW and someone switches to mirror me I just switch to try and counter them. That’s more fun than banging my head against the keyboard and hoping I get lucky enough to win the duel.
Dont they play on their own build? Make use of that. Incorporate hero changes into the build and have them play each other. Make something interesting out of it. New modifiers, whether its negative or positive – or both.
But in general I think OWL has taken its course. If people aren’t interested in it now then theres little reason to invest a ton of resources into it. Plus you cant tell me most of the viewership wasn’t there just for the free tokens.
It had a good run and served its purpose. I realize people should be paid and sometimes you feel obligated to keep paying them for this stuff but… it’s not any more terrible to shut it down than it is to let it slowly fizzle out.
shutdown OWL, let esports scene grow organically like it did for starcraft.
The problem there, since they’re not about to balance the whole game around OWL, is that they’d need to balance OWL separately, which would then mean that it has even less bearing on and connection to the actual game.
Now, there are concessions that could be made to have both high-level and mid-level play be diverse (the same problems in diversity in OWL tend also to affect Masters and up), but then you’d have Plat Pundit Perry wailing about OWL balance ruining his games, and he’d actually potentially have some basis for his claims, as OWL would finally be a balancing consideration.
Examples of decent concessions would be things like Reaper being made more effective —less dependent on teammate composition and coordination— via new opportunities for skillful play, whereby those additions would more affect the upper tiers of play than the lower tiers at which he already performs well.
They typically require at least some change to the characters performance profiles, though, not just to their raw power, which is trickier, more time-intensive business.