I Gotta Ask, What Happened?

(roughly 3 pages, no tldr provided)

Seriously, I have to ask it by this point. What happened to this game?
I’ve only begun playing since late December and just looked forward the whole time, though recently I’ve begun looking back.
As far back to the Beta in fact.

Before I get to that, I’d like to point out where we are currently and how I think it all came to this.

Currently, we are on the eve of a forced 2-2-2 role lock across both Quick and Competitive Play. As it stands as of today, 2-2-2 is only enforced in Competitive Play.
Not only this, but new hero Sigma is out, a new tank utilizing a deployable barrier that can be called and recalled on command.

Now that that’s wrapped up, let’s talk about how we got here.

Reworkings
Somewhere along the line, the developers failed to account sheer human nature and didn’t expect people to main heroes. I mean, this game has taken massive inspiration from tf2 and it shows through the Original 21.
To say, or even believe, maining in hero/class-based shooters isn’t a thing is just nonsense. Every character is unique, if someone grows attracted to their personality or their skill set, they’re gonna want to play that hero more.
If the developers didn’t want this to happen, they may as well have just made one hero and have them all play the same.
After all, you can’t main if there’s only one hero.
https://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/selectall/2017/02/09/09-roll-safe.w700.h700.jpg
(to save time and space, im reducing this particular image to a link rather than an actual image)

Now to get back on topic, I feel like because of this belief, is why we have a merged DPS roster from both offensive and defensive ones. While defensive characters were meant to be used in a certain way, people didn’t use them like that and they had to be “adjusted” or better put, Reworked to be viable on both Defense and Attack. Or in the case of Mercy, not give her an ultimate that has the power to invalidate the entirety of the enemy’s work.

Moving on to the next point:
You do You Buu

And what I mean with this is that the developers didn’t really put any emphasis on just how we’re supposed to play the game “properly.” Heck, I can’t even say properly simply because that never quite existed since day 1.
Sure the hero selection menu tells you that you don’t have X hero or Y Hero but it doesn’t say you need them. Not even in the game’s tutorial does it give any sort of example as to how teams function. Like seriously, you don’t even have AI allies in the tutorial. Nor do you have any understanding of how every other hero aside from Soldier: 76 works.
Fun fact, when I first started playing, I thought every hero had a run button.
The tutorial also never goes in-depth about synergy. and I don’t just mean things like Roadhog + Orisa. I mean team synergy. Like how well a Zenyatta would work in a team of 4 DPS and 1 tank.

While we’re on this topic, the tutorial could’ve explained team strengths and weaknesses such as how 4-1-1 leaves little support, little tanking, but a ton of damage.

Would’ve even been nice to explain what to do in a situation if you’re being hard countered. Take Reaper vs Pharah as an example of this. Reaper could swap off and go to a Hitscan, a Pharah’s weakness.

I understand part of this argument would be common sense, or the developer spoonfeeding or forcing people how to play the game when they could learn it all themselves, but at the same time, look where we are now.
We’re being forced on how to play the game now because they never made an effort to teach or regulate before. The whole game was just figured out by the community and everyone just kinda rolled with it.

oh yeah, let’s not forget how compositions back then were viable and worked most of the time.

All these shots are from different videos dating back to the closed/open beta.
Notice how the team with 5 DPS and 1 Lucio win? lol.
Spoiler alert, the Mercy on Route 66 loses to a 5 DPS team as well.
I’ve watched a ton of these matches from back then and a majority of them had like 1 solo healer and 5 DPS, 4-1-1, and even 3-2-1. I never saw 2-2-2 once.
note im not completely against 2-2-2, but I do see it as a failure on the devs part if it came to such a point where we needed to be locked in what we play after 3 years.

I had other points to make but since I’ve been writing this for a good hour I forgot most of them so I’ll summarize the rest in the last point

When Things Get Worse

after 10 new heroes, an esports league, inconsistent cries for nerfs coming from outlets blizzard notices, mainly this one or through streamers, things just feel like they’ve spiraled to a whole new level of chaos.
GOATS meta completely did away with the DPS role and could’ve been countered rather easily if people picked up Pharah and Sombra earlier.
Those Stage 3 finals were the stuff of legends.
We’re sitting in Power Creep at the moment and stepping outside the shield will most likely get you sniped. Just being Tracer will make you die pretty fast. Soldier got a buff on his primary back to 20 dmg per bullet and he’s still deemed mediocre and outclassed by every other hitscan simply because they take fewer shots to be more effective. Also, with the inclusion of Sigma, the sniper meta might die-off since he can cover their sightlines better than Reinhardt or Orisa if he’s acting as an off-tank.

And lastly, the cries for hero nerfs which led to Sombra getting nerfed into the spot she’s in now. Symmetra’s teleporter nerf which renders her to taxi status, Torb’s nerf that weakened his secondary fire, and Brig’s shield nerf. The list goes on.

I don’t really have any more points to make here and I think the commenters can add more insight especially if they’re veteran players.
Before I go, here’s some other stuff like how the Play menu got reduced to minimalism or how some UI changes got ugly and even some old features the game had before such as sunrise Numbani



18 Likes

It is as simple as this… They catered to the casual players day one. Check out the first patch, McCree and Widow nerfs. That should tell you all you need to know. Weakening hitscan (despite the opposite narrative running rampant) and buff damage mitigation to ludicrous heights turned what everyone played as a 411 into this monstrosity.

3 Likes

i cant tell if im just tired or dumb but i feel like i dont fully understand what you’re saying.

primarily this

He is saying if they nerf tanks / supports into the ground, and have the glourous overlords not need them, then everyone can play DPS, because tanks and supports will not be wanted or required.

Then get rid of roleQ, and boom, it is team deathmatch like he always wanted.

It also solves the DPS roleQ length…

12 Likes

ah. considering how old torb, sym, and bastion were, you really didn’t need them sometimes

1 Like

Okay. So Overwatch was an FPS, but the first characters people went after were the premier hitscan. To this day, people still pretend hitscan is broken because Widow is viable at the highest levels. Back when Soldier got buffed by one damage, the community, as a whole, pretended he was broken and got it reverted. And once Blizz brought it back to little effect, because it was never a great buff to begin with, they call it powercreep.

Were you around recently? When everyone was crying Wolf at McCree’s fire rate buff? That sort of stuff has been happening since the very beginning.

Heck, even Sombra and Tracer are victims of it. All the characters that shoot traditional guns, they are not allowed to be powerful because the people on these boards are tank and support mains that cannot aim themselves. So when they see a hitscan that can aim… They are broken regardless of what the stats indicate.

Blizzard sees that feedback and it reflects in their balance. This used to be a FPS with MOBA elements and now it is a watered down MOBA with FPS elements.

1 Like

Over half my games for the last 6++ months have been decided by hitscan, but hey, let’s just call it “pretending”…

5 Likes

Weakening hitscan? Just after the most recent fan the hammer buff iddqd played and won a ridiculous game where all he did the entire game was use fan the hammer.

Just think that it was actually worse than that too.

1 Like

Ok, so lets talk about why it would fail.

Let me give you some names of games.

Lawbreakers, Quake Champions, hell, ANY kinda FPS arena game in the last 5 years.

What has been Successful?

Fortnite, Paladins, and Overwatch.

You see, WITHOUT the casuals, you don’t have a player base, and can’t afford to keep the lights on.

The game is a success BECAUSE it did what it did.

Every time someone comes along and asks what people want to play, and they get “fast paced twitch DPS arena shooter”, it fails, because what people SAY they want, they don’t want.

95% of the people who log on to the servers, and get WRECKED, and they leave.

18 Likes

Nah. I do not mind supports. I know a lot of DPS have beef with them, I think they are underpowered as a whole. If it were up to me, I would have more heroes like Soldier, Hog, or Mei. Heroes that can do more than a standard FPS character, with fun kits, and have the healing and tanking come from the whole team instead of dedicated tanks and supports. But that is just me.

I hate tdm.

3 Likes

i feel like theres two sides of the coin here. overwatch was meant to be casual from day 1. and thats ok. FTH doing, what, 750 dmg, was pretty busted. and i think where the hitscan heroes stand now would be balanced even for back then.
especially with each class providing heroes that can fulfill another one’s job. torb and sym were pretty much tank/support hybrids

1 Like

So essentially poor balance

2 Likes

poor balance, lack of accountability, and lack of instruction. thats how we got here

Let’s just say every time they release a big update, more people leave. You can cite time as the reason, but when they come back to check the game out again, they sure do not seem to stay long.

1 Like

This I agree with.

We lost a LOT of support players over the Mercy changes.

A HELL of a lot. They left, and they never came back.

7 Likes

Toxikk, sigh… I had hope for all of them.

But yes, I’ve always viewed Overwatch as a… “everyone’s shooter” and it’s the reason why it initially even took off, it has something to play for everyone… Even those that wouldn’t normally be interested in FPS games.
There’s literally no way for something as hardcore as Lawbreakers was to take off these days, there just is no demand for it at the moment.

1 Like

Exactly. It isn’t even something you can point at and hey - “hey they even didn’t do it properly”

Lawbreakers showed without a doubt that genre was done for now.

1 Like

Lawbreakers was one of the most fun months I ever had. It was like Overwatch if Overwatch was predominately an FPS. I miss it so much.

3 Likes

It was good fun, yes. :disappointed_relieved:
DOWN WITH THE WRAITH PLAYERS THO.

1 Like

So do I. Seriously.

It is a crying shame it died.

I FELT like if it could keep the lights on a little longer people would have discovered it, and it would have rocked their world, but it was not to be.

2 Likes