its absolutely ridiculous that this discord even exists.
if anything, the community should get at the very minimum a rep there, because the pros deciding everything for us is frankly something i dont want,
why cant i suggest what i actually want inestead of having to latch to what some Pro says?
This game is a competitive game, always has been. If people prefer the structure, then they are part of the “hardcore” groiup and not the casual side of the game as the caasual side will generally stay in QP, Arcade, and Custom Games.
That is not true at all. You only recieve competitive points if you win or draw a game.
That’s not how that works. Those modes describe the game structure, not the type of people who play them. The devs themselves have explicity stated that there are a lot of people that would never play comp in the game mode, if it wasn’t for golden guns. And the number one complaint of people in those ranks is the number of people in their matches that don’t care about winning. Those players are casuals, regardless of the game mode they are playing. Some non-one trick playing D.va and Hog into double shield is not a hardcore player even if they are playing comp.
Also this being a competitive game doesn’t define whether or not it’s casual, like in real life you can absolutely play a casual game competitively. The difference is in the dedication, not the game itself. Smash Brothers is one of the more successful esports and it’s also almost exclusively developed for casuals. Overwatch isn’t much different to that. From the very beginning, the developers have cultivated both audiences, and the casuals are one of the largest.
I wish we would’ve never added any cosmetic items to Competitive. I think the people playing Competitive should only be there because they really care about playing in Competitive mode, and they want to rise through the tiers – that’s who I think belongs in Competitive.”
Kaplan explains further that it “takes a really special mindset to be in Competitive” and that currently, his team seems players who really “don’t belong there” being forced to grind out games in order to get desirable cosmetics.
Straight from the horses mouth. It’s a fact that golden weapons has caused people to play comp that never would otherwise. They don’t play the game with a competitive mindset and just want their golden weapons. They literally don’t care. They are not hardcore players just because they are in comp. The majority of the player base is casual and that’s why they are gold. They don’t care about being gold. They don’t care about team comps. They don’t care about anything but having some fun on their favorite heroes.
I think my main issue with the developer/pro player discord is that they’re specifically looking for advice from people whose gameplay experiences do not look like the vast majority of people playing the game, they’re balancing a game for 1% of the audience, that’s definitely what it feels like sometimes. OWL is their special baby so they cater hard.
Maybe they DONT want to? I mean they get a lot of flack for the experimental cards already. Why do they have to announce every idea they have? They might have a lot of bad ideas that get filtered out through release but if people heard them they’d freak out.
They don’t have to be that transparent. If they didn’t officially announce it then it wasn’t really planned to. You’re going to hear about it anyway. This feels like a none issue.
I just find it silly that the official forum provides less info than some random reddit/discord post.
Fair enough, but this also applies to QP and the such as well meaning that players that are there for the competitive aspect of the game are there as well.
I would actually argue that’s what most people do in QP because the people there are intent on winning and the better and more balanced that experience is, the healthier the game is.
What is “better” and “more balanced” will be defined differently by different crowds. A lot of the people who watch streamers think the game will be better balanced if the non-mechanical heroes are trash and the top is dominated by high mechanic heroes making exciting, high risk plays. A lot of people not into that scene think the game will be better if every hero has a real presence at the top. The streamers have a financial incentive not to agree with that philosophy, because it’s not interesting to watch. But being able to play whatever they want without feeling like they are sacrificing anything is absolutely appealing to the masses.
It’s a bias to be aware of and acknowledge, it doesn’t make their opinions bad or mutually exclusive to a more casual audience, but it’s a bad idea not to acknowledge these kinds of biases when formulating opinions or when considering who the devs are getting feedback from.
If the game is fair and balanced then people will be happy. The issue is that people perceive balance differently, though I believe most people have the same general idea as to how the game should be.
This is quite misleading. Most people don’t look at heroes and think “If they don’t require much aim then they are completely low skill”. Look at Rein and Monkey. Both require almost no aim and yet people consider them to be decently high skilled.
People generally enjoy watching people play high skilled heroes because it’s more interesting. It also so happens that for the game to be balanced, such heroes should be dominant at the higher tiers of play and the lower skill demanding heroes should be the opposite for the sake of the competitive integrity.
Streamer and pro players and the such want the game balanced and have more riding on the success of the game then the average Forum user so they are more likely to take things more seriously in comparison.
Not really. They always break out those 2 exceptions, but that’s about the only ones they accept.
I literally said the first part, as for the latter, I think you haven’t been paying attention if you haven’t noticed a very clear divide in competing balance philosophies here, and who is more likely to subscribe to one. Much of the “dps vs support” mains stuff here isn’t actually dps vs supports, it’s about the difference in the two philosophies of “Every hero should be equal” vs “Only the high skill heroes should be good at high ranks.” And high skill mostly means mechanically intensive, with really only Monkey and Rein as the exceptions.
Some of the most popular heroes in the game among the casual crowd have not been “high” skill. Some of the game’s most complained about heroes among the casual crowd, Tracer and Widow are some of the most beloved by Twitch set. You’re treating your preference as universal here, and it’s absolutely not.
That is your opinion. Many people would rather see the game balanced by having all of the heroes equally viable at high ranks. And some would go a step further and say the game shouldn’t be balanced by high ranks at all, and that the game will only be balanced when every hero is used equally when you look at the majority of the playerbase. And that no special attention needs to be paid to the top, because the cream will naturally rise to the top regardless if they are catered to or not.
That’s not a completely incorrect philosophy. It’s one that has made Smash Brothers a success, for example. And plenty of people would like Overwatch to essentially be the Smash of FPS games. Something that would be considered an insult by a more hardcore crowd, a joke to not be respected.
Most people fall into a casual audience, but hardcore audiences are going to have far more engagement with social media, reddit, forums, Twitch, etc. There voices are louder, but they absolutely aren’t the majority. That’s why Blizzard has a variety of skill deltas in the first place. The casuals outnumber hardcore players, it’s why also why mobile games make so much money, fyi. And those players just want to be able to pickup any character they want and have fun and win games.
Because those are the most noticeable. It also doesn’t help that the easiest heroes don’t require much aim.
People on the Forums are just to quick to assume that they mean that aim is the only issue, it’s just the most apparent.
I already aknowledged the second way of thinking. The first one is just greatly flawed, especially in a game like this.
The second way is what makes the game fair and healthy and is good for business as well since having easier heroes is good for new players.
Maybe, but the most popular heroes have been ones that require a lot of skill, especially for tanks.
Not true at all. Widow is actually hated quite a bit by most streamers. Not sure about Tracer though as I haven’t heard much about her from the pros and streamers.
It isn’t. It’s the only realistic way to go about things.
A very flawed line of reasoning. It isn’t possible in a game like this where each hero is completely different from the rest. Plus, you need heroes that are easy for new players.
OW is vastly different from Smash. OW is a team FPS, Smash is a brawler.
Do you wonder why those content creators with all this super unknown information don’t use them for content?
- Because Blizzard won’t let them. They probably have to stay silent until the news are out or they get a permission to “leak” that information.
It’s prob to give them content so they can advertise OW for free for them 
Blizzard has done a complete garbage dumpster job using their own forums for communication to their community.
Even if something is initially communicated on Discord, Reddit, w/e it could easily be reposted with minimal effort by a social media person on the Blizzard team.
It seems they flat out just don’t care anymore at this point. Sucks.
tbh, it almost feels like they’re obligated to keep this forums and minimally interact on it, but if they had the choice to remove it, trust and believe, they will.
Everything that the dev have said in the past have been derailed and taken far out of context.
Devs divert some resources to get OWL started apparently becomes devs divert all resources for OWL 24/7.
Or Changes to Mercy somehow ******* turned into Mercy reverts, and when it didn’t happen, you people attacked and whined and whinged and said they should be fired.
And that had been the same consensus around here for literal years now. Everyone is always screaming and yelling, no one is civil anymore. No one cares about other people opinions and ideas beside themselves.
Ok I might go full Joker if I continue, but the point still stand. You forum frequents take stuffs out of context, overhyped yourself on **** that most likely would never exist and then went out of your ways to send some really vile attacks towards the dev. And with the mod on this forum doesn’t even exist anymore, they would eventually go to other sites that’s not only have an active mod team, but people actually voiced their concerns and backlash in a more civil manner.
Call r/competitiveoverwatch a hivemind all you want, that place is at least much more pleasant to read and think about than this toxic wasteland filled with idiots.
The point of a customer engagement strategy is for Blizzard to start talking, keep talking with its customers. It doesn’t matter if the message is not welcome as long as the messenger is persistent, candid and honest.
The problem with Blizzard is that they are not talking to us. We are long past the first Overwatch years when dev updates were substantive, regular and frequent. Nowadays, a lot of what Blizzard does have no explanations from the top brass.
If this was an old game that Blizzard is curating because they’re just waiting for the new sequel to come out, I’d find it understandable. But Blizzard has OWL, they need to engage us regularly so that we’ll watch them. They’re failing at this, so they’re turning to streamers fill this role.
I don’t know who their public relations people are over there, it must be nonexistent because they are not public and not relating anymore – it’s a fatal mistake for Blizzard to stop talking in its customers in its own platform.
your jealousy is showing
there’s no need for a game company to share any kind of plan with it’s players, yet they allow for those “leaks” to happen because it boost the player’s in question views on youtube etc
They don’t talk to you or to most people in this forum because you guys are an unreasonable lot who think you understand the game better than people who literally spend 8+ hours working on and/or playing it
There is a reason for that.
I did say that everything they said have been taken out of context, misunderstood or just… flat out wrong. The whole Mercy thing was just a bunch of players seeing “Mercy changes” and claimed/believed that it was a revert. When that eventually didn’t arrive, they attacked the devs.
And even after everything died down, for a while everything that the devs said and announced, someone has to come and bring Mercy up. To which if they say anything, the cycle begins again, even when they said their final decision on her, these players just wouldn’t let it go.
And also the forum population has significantly went down. Like, only the regulars are around here and most of them are dumbass who claimed to make good threads then proceed to attack and try to shutdown others when an opposing side to the matter is presented. Hell, it has come to the point when I read the name of the OP I know what their content is gonna be.
Most of them (like current OP) is either going to be dev bashing or using Sym to do some dev bashing.