its just a lot harder to follow now
the structure is weird as hell - i never know what matches count for what now…team stability seems to be all over the place - every time i look it feels like the rosters are totally different…never know when matches are on…etc etc
Competition and pursuit of profit are two of the main drivers behind human civilization.
The spectacle of it is rather diminished. The schedule is all over the place, as are the teams. At OWL’s outset I remember thinking that having teams artificially anchored behind random cities was silly, but it wasn’t all that artificial. The teams were often representing the cities of their parent organizations, for instance: the owners of the NY Excelsior were also the owners of the NY Mets. There was more structure and watchability to the whole thing.
I know you don’t want to hear this, but I was in the sold-out arena in Dallas in 2019 for the first live OWL homestand event away from the Blizzard arena where they normally had them, and it was packed full of high-energy OWL fans, all kinds of people. They absolutely cared.
Just because you’re never happy doesn’t mean other people aren’t. You should spend time around actual fans sometime instead of just the forums, which have always been full of doom and gloom and aren’t an accurate reflection of the community.
True. I never know what’s going on with OWCS unless I go looking for it. They need in-game info if they want new fans.
So much so that they had to scrap the whole arena thing altogether.
Read the room dude.
I literally read the room because I was inside it. That’s what I’m saying. It was scrapped for many reasons, mostly related to covid, but people not caring wasn’t one of them.
OWL was my favorite e-sport to watch. Rocket League was fun here and there but haven’t watched OW since the league.
Covid had something to do about that, don’t you think? The biggest problem behind the idea of teams having their own home arenas was the fact that 13 teams were based in North America, 2 in Europe and 5 in the APAC region. This part was poorly thought through and did not seem to be tenable in the long run, imo. As a whole, however, OWL was a worthy endeavor. Had certain things been done differently and it didn’t luck into the biggest pandemic in generations, it might still be around.
E-sports are fine as long as they dont become the entire focus of the game’s balance and design.
Sadly, Blizz started balancing and designing the game around meta enforcing for the sake of viewership.
I’m not sure that this an entirely fair assessment. I’ve always viewed it as something OWL detractors clung to because it was flashy and just specious enough to be a flagship argument to rally behind in protest of changes that they didn’t agree with. There’s no evidence to support the argument that if there was no esport aspect to the game, it would not be balanced in a similar manner.
No thanks. OWL was largely responsible for bringing this rotten 5v5 format, without even warning the players. We only found out that OW2 would be in this new format when the closed beta started.
You can watch paint dry instead, it’s just as fun as OWL and there are no ads.
They have literally said multiple times they have nerfed heroes entirely for OWL usage even if they are bad in ladder.
The most recent case being the Symmetra nerfs, despite being picked entirely because of the Mauga meta.
Other cases like Moira, Mei, Orisa, Sigma… basically any hero that isnt a popular dive tank or hitscan DPS gets the hammer if they arent part of the chosen elite of ‘watchable’ heroes.
I enjoyed OWL especially when it was on Twitch. I supported Boston, unfortunately they never quite got the prize. I have no interest in supporting the OWCS or especially the esports World Cup for umm political reasons. Let’s just say that.
I’m not claiming that OWL did not figure in balancing considerations whatsoever, it most certainly did, especially when they were trying to figure out what to do about goats. However, there’s a narrative that if it wasn’t for OWL, Overwatch would be some kind of magical, wonderful game of whacky characters, where no one is OP because everyone is OP.
Everyone has their own idea of their own “perfect” Overwatch; their own set of “fun” heroes that they would like elevated at the expense of others. Like this:
Opinions like these are highly subjective and it’s all too easy to zero in on some outside perceived reason to blame for why things are not shaping up the way you want them to. OWL was just such a magnet of ire, long with Kotick, streamers and youtubers and so on.
OW would be a better game if OWL never existed; OWL affected OW in more negative ways than I most players know, from balance and 5v5 to over competitive mindset and its negative ramifications…
If OWL existed in a bubble, I would be neutral about it, but it wasn’t the case; my former main, Mercy, for example, was nuked with nerfs because OWL…
Yes, this is a perfect illustration of my point. Thank you.
owl is what brought the downfall of this game it was a get rich quick scheme by bobby
What dev time did it suck? The only things you could ever argue it got was the improved replay viewer we got in 2017 and then a few skins every year. That is hardly a lot of dev time.
Matthew Hawley (Senior Game Producer on Overwatch) When asked about how the Overwatch team chooses which feature to implement over another:
“The Overwatch League last fall, like the actual employees in the Overwatch League was very small, and Team 4 helped carried a bunch of the weight in terms of team branding and all that stuff. That was a conscious decision where we pivoted dev resources to help make sure Overwatch League was successful, instead of perhaps working on a new feature we could’ve potentially added to the game.”
Lol there is a 0% chance of OWL coming back.