I finally understand why ow2 doesnt feel fun to play anymore

General Discussion
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yes, theres gonna be comparisons to marvel rivals. i am currently mostly playing rivals, but i still queue up for some ow games every couple of days.

the fundamental difference in how it feels to play rivals and ow is the following for me personally:

in rivals, both burst damage and heal is more present, but also in an equilibrium. assuming you play 2-2-2 or something similiar, it is pretty hard to get a lethal angle on the backline. sometimes theres gonna be a flanker thats overextending for an easy pick. that means that more often than not, the mid fight is mostly poking out cooldowns and gaining an advantage until finally, you can make the push or use some ults to win the fight and gain the advantage. the game feels much more ebb and flow than current 5v5 overwatch.

in ow2, the mid fight is much more lethal. many heroes have tools that can lead to something that cannot be outhealed. ultimates and cooldowns more often than not are unanswered and lead to a pick or 2 immediatly.

for me personally, in an ow2 game i am under constant stress, constant pressure. in rivals, when say the enemy luna ults (its a 12 second transcendence basically), you can disgengage and set up your play. sure theres gonna be moments where i have to land shots and have little margin for error. but for me, rivals doesnt have those sort of hard break points that in ow2 many heroes have.

another interesting point: the map design of both games is actually pretty similiar. both games have a distinct lack of cover and many open spaces/corridors. but as we all know from ow1, thats fine if you have a 2-2-2 composition. in ow2 this further leads to unavoidable deaths and angles you just cant cover properly.

i think overwatch should redesign the maps properly for once, if they stick to a 5v5 format. really think about the pain points of 5v5, what abilities (like ana nade or discord) are still broken and what can be done about it. not only changing the heroes kits but also the games design.

in rivals for example: healthpacks are or atleast feel way more accessable and frequent. and all of them are essentially megas, healing some portion as burst and some as heal over time. i think thats genius.

also: on payload maps/modes, the payload actually moves ever so slightly, even if nobody is on it. but its faster than in ow, if 3 people are on it. another thing that just feels like a more thoughtful solution than in ow (even though i get that this one is personal preference)

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Do you mean damage as in raw values? Or in HP%, because if it’s the latter, absolutely not.

Maybe in absolute values (cause Rivals generally has higher HP + larger hitboxes), but Overwatch is a game where burst healing is so powerful that OHK’s or other “insta-win” effects like Anti-Heal mean that the only reliable way to kill people, which is why Widowmaker is omnipresent and Black Widow is basically bin-tier.

Rivals is a game where sustain is relatively low (%-wise) outside ultimates and hasn’t had over half a decade of an arms race between burst healing and ways to punch through that burst healing. Overwatch is a much “high power” game by comparison.

A good analogy would be card games. Overwatch is basically like Yugioh or MTG at this point, where in order to keep the game exciting, the devs keep ramping up the overall power of the game until it gets EXTREMELY fast and very complicated.

Rivals would be more like early Hearthstone. Much simpler and much lower power where its main draw is specifically that its not as high powered as its competitors.

Of course, people aware of modern Hearthstone will know that its become much more like its competitors and is now an extremely fast, much more complicated game compared to its launch version, but thats the nature of long-running games.

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the problem on ow2 is bigger because is a core gameplay problem. the tanks are too strong and they are too good againsts x things and very bad againsts other things. then the best way to win a match on the majority of ranks, is just pick whatever to hardcounter the enemy tank.

also the problem on ow2 is 100% the team balance and how they are still balancing the game. they focus all the balance around 50% winrate and pickrates. they almost dont care about the gameplay experience or problematics gameplay mechanics.

just look how they are continous nerfing and buffing the same mechanics. mercy pocket, hog hook, ana nade, cassidy kit, widow, pharamercy, dva matrix or sombra hacks

another problem is too many low skills heros with very high value. wtf

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personally im playing less with both lol… i hopped on overwatch for a couple of games today but i havnt played marvel rivals at all today, yesterday i did tho… breifly

i guess i rather just watch boobtube videos and post on these forooms. also yea i am drinking atm some single malt scotch whiskey

dont know how some of these kids play 24/7 and grind all day, it would get rage crash burn out crazy

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see and thats the thing. ofc you can say “every game eventually runs into that problem”. but i dont think those problems are unfixable. reducing power creep to have some headroom for players to not be overwhelmed is extremely important. thats what the statistics dont tell you, how it FEELS for players to actually play that stuff. to get dove on by sombra, hazard and genji at the same time. how it feels to get doomfist walltapped without any chance to react bc he doesnt even need to charge punch to oneshot you.

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i remember when they reworked sombra and dont touched widow. just becausse widow dont had a high winrate/pickrate xd. BUT The worst part is that they let us play againsts this broken widow for like 6 months.

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I think this is a very good description of how these games feel. At least, I think it describes it for me as I was playing both.

It feels like in OW I’m in constant danger. In Rivals, I’m mostly threatened once everyone builds ults and readies themselves for the big plays, and can manage them correctly in the right order. Thus, OW is more stressful and MR feels more “casual” to me.

I think people get mad on Marvel Rivals with 3 supports, or how powerful or long lasting healing ults are, because that changes that equilibrium you’re talking about. It doesn’t give the rest of the players the break they need to make their plays and finally secure eliminations and win. As the game is like more about pacing, consistently building towards the next big fight, and that can hamper that effort.

So yeah, I think that’s a good take for a lot of players who might just not care for that pressure or competitiveness in OW. It probably adds to that “fresh feeling” we have when playing MR despite them seeing similar on a surface level.

Then, layer that with the lack of out of outside game objectives or achievements, things to earn, which leaves us with a fairly disenfranchised audience.