Before reading this, I’d like to make it very clear to all of the readers that this is going to discuss multiple topics regarding the game. This is why I have put it under the General Discussion topic rather than the Competitive Discussion topic. This is also not meant to be a personal attack but rather, an aggressive approach to Blizzard and the Overwatch development team since this is the only way to get their attention.
Dear Blizzard/Overwatch Dev Team,
There are a lot of problems with your game. Every developer knows that there will be problems with their game and people will point them out hundreds of times. So I completely understand that it’s hard to keep up with all of that. Especially considering the fact that your primary focus is being moved to Overwatch 2.
I’m sure we can all agree that Overwatch has more than just a handful of problems. And I’d like to take a moment with whoever is reading this post and is either a representative for Blizzard, a development team member, a moderator, or even Jeff Kaplan himself to think about this from a fan’s perspective.
The first problem that should be taken care of is how you handle community members and their actions in game. Specifically in the competitive play mode. When a team member leaves the game and they never make an attempt to rejoin, they should be banned from competitive for the rest of the season. No exceptions. The match should end immediately and nobody’s SR should be changed. I understand that some teams can work together and pull through something like this. But honestly, when you think logically about this, why should they put up with it when 9 times out of 10, the rest of the team will leave on their own. Most people who play competitive don’t actually care about anything but the numbers and they don’t want to put up with Quick Play where people leave religiously. This entire system makes the competitive community more toxic every time it happens. Especially when you’re someone like me, who has given up on their placement matches because their first 3/5 matches had a leaver in their team. There is no excuse for something like this. You can’t use the excuse of people with bad internet because people who have bad internet shouldn’t be knowingly playing competitive in the first place. It sucks but it’s true.
Next up, the character design. Myself and most of the community love the characters in this game. They’re all filled with great personalities and there is a lot of representation in the game. So I must applaud you guys for that. But the way their kits are designed sometimes make absolutely no sense at all. There is nothing wrong with the difficulty level of a hero. Most would say that the characters who have star ratings for difficulty are accurate. But why do we have heroes like Symmetra, Moira, and Torbjorn?
Symmetra’s turrets shouldn’t have been given extra health. They are supposed to be easy to kill one shot targets. Any hero should have no problem killing them if they know where they are and have basic aiming skills. The problem here lies with the health because if the turrets start attacking, someone can easily stack them at a high point and they can’t be one shot by every character. It’s especially annoying considering the fact that they do so much damage and even slow you down. I think the idea of a shield-granting support hero was great. But instead, you turned her into a damage hero and made her even more annoying after two reworks.
Moira has been a topic of complaint since her launch since she has a very similar weapon to the original Symmetra. Moira’s kit makes a lot of logical sense. Her abilities are like Dark Blue Moon’s barnacles. It drains energy and takes that energy to make it useful to Moira. But why in the hell is Moira a support hero if she has limited healing? She does a lot of damage per second that can easily be taken care of by a healer and another damage hero. The problem is how much of a pain in the [Bad Word] she is to take care of when you’re a one man, non self-healing, and squishy army. Counters play a big role in this game. It allows for great strategy but, the orbs should really go and Moira needs to be reworked to be a more healing based character since that’s the original focus of her. I’m not saying to nerf her into oblivion to the point where she can’t even defend herself. I’m saying that she needs to be more focused on what you really want out of her character. It’s similar to Genji and Hanzo. Maybe, it would be better if the character was split in two to make a kind of duality in the story. It would easily make games more interesting and less annoying.
Torbjorn is a weird case for me. I honestly don’t dislike his kit that much. He should have the turret level up come back and the turret should be a squishy in general. By squishy, I mean 150 HP at maximum for the turret at any level. The biggest issue with torb is how his turret tracks you and his ultimate. I like the idea of torbjorn shooting out his molten core in chunks that can do damage over time. His ultimate could go back to the original one he had. With a kit like the one I’m describing, it would be an amazing devastating ultimate. Now, about the tracking. Why exactly does the turret show a direct line to it’s target? It’s a turret. Not a tracking device. The turret should be able to find you and occasionally miss shots if you are fast enough. Not when you use an ability like Moira’s fade or Symmetra’s teleporter. If a teleport-like ability is used to get away from the turret, it should be disoriented like a person would, and rotate to find either the target it had previously lost or a new target.
If these changes or similar ones are made, it would be a lot better for the game. These characters have a lot of potential to have the player be more active with them instead of just camping or harassing squishies.
Now I would like to talk about the community for a moment. You cannot blame the community for every little hiccup in or about this game. Especially when your endorsement level is based on activity in game. If someone is generally a nice person in games and are showing good sportsmanship, shot calling, etc. You shouldn’t just assume that because they take a break from the game, they aren’t going to be as good when they come back. Instead, endorsement level should be based on what it’s put in place to do. I personally hate the system. It adds nothing to the game and is a waste of time. People will automatically assume someone with a level 1 endorsement is toxic as all hell and someone with 4 is nice and peachy all the time. No, it’s not that way at all. People’s moods change all the time. Your stupid in-game system can’t determine that. My suggestion, remove the endorsement system.
And Finally, listen to your community more! Changes like the ones I have suggested and many more that are way better than mine have been suggested since these things started existing! It’s your game but the community is what makes it. The community is always displayed as toxic and salty because you guys never seem to listen. I fully expect maybe one or two people who aren’t working for Blizzard or the Overwatch dev team to see this and that would be the end of it. But if by some miracle, you guys actually do see this post, please take it seriously. Take a step back and ask yourself how much you guys enjoy the game that you’ve made yourselves.
TLDR: Get your stuff together guys.
Good luck,
-Karen