Overly focusing on Team play and Lack of self agency is hurting Overwatch.
Blizzard has made 2 games that overly focus on Team play to the point that players feel like that they can’t make a difference.
These games are the currently 2/2/2 balance of Overwatch and Heroes of the Storm. Both these games took popular genres and “improved” them by focusing on increased team dependence and reduced require mechanical skill. This is bad because a very important part of peoples enjoyment of a video game is the strong feeling that what you do matters that you can make a difference in the outcome of a fight.
Shooting a shield for 2 minutes and waiting to ult with your team really doesn’t give you this feeling.
Knowing the enemy can just instantly switch to another hero and hard counter you with little skill doesn’t give you this feeling.
Compare these game to their counter parts at Riot.
Both LoL and Valorant have Worse polish, Worse graphics, less memorable characters but these games are sitting at number 1 and 2 on twitch with over 700K viewers. Yes, Valorant is new but CS:GO has a major happening right now with 300K people watching which should be pulling people away from Valorant. While Overwatch is sitting at number 27 on twitch with 17k and I can’t even find HoTS anymore.
So what is the difference?
IMO, RIOT knows the secret sauce of how to make a team based game where players feel like they can make a difference. They focus on competitive game play with tough mechanics that if you put in the time to learn you will see results in game. You feel like you matter more in these games, if you do well you can carry.
Overwatch and HoTS are both great game but the core game play needs to be looked at. Slapping band-aid on the issue is making things worse not better.
Kind of. Like, I get what you mean but the fact is that “carrying” is a holdover from a period of game design where things like matchmaking either didn’t exist or was still heavily under development.
Assuming you’re actually getting sent into balanced matches the chances of you carrying are way lower - basically dependent on either you having a good day or an opponent throwing. If you have too many good days in a row you’ll rank up, and you will be right back to a very low potential to do any carrying. When all else is equal the only chance to carry you have is the same 1/10 (or however many people are playing) no matter what. Stepping back further, with the understanding that everyone is reasonably well matched and undergoing their own cycles of good days/bad days - then you can see with X total players, and 1 of you, then the chance that a game went a certain way more than likely has to do with the X-1 other players all together having better or worse days than your individual input.
The more a game goes to value individual impact, the more it feels like just trading kills, the team part is just about the tatics of how to do it. How to trap, how to find, how to engage enemies, and that’s it.
OW goes into team play too, but there’s healing and damage mitigation, which conflicts with damage by stopping or reverting its efforts and it goes into a battle of one trying to outplay the other until ults.
If you are at the wrong rank you will quickly move to the the correct rank.
When you are at the correct rank. You lose because you didn’t dodge that skill shot, You took a bad trade. You can clearly see I was outplayed this game and that is why I was weak. When you dodge that skill shot and then land your combo perfectly you are reward.
To most people this is why they dump hundreds of hours into learning a game and certain characters
kaplan is the definition of ‘‘failling up’’ by any metric the guy has precided over epic failures regarding this game. and yet people worship him and act like he is a god. i think they actually want to phase out ow as a competative game and move it over to a casual co-op pve game. no point trying to understand it, just go play a riot game if you want to play a serious competative game.
And if this is actually what I experienced I wouldn’t be mad about it - problem is this isn’t even close to what I get.
OW is so messed up right now, I just finished a match with a level 15 Zarya, no stars at all, who dominated, did nothing, then dominated again for each round, clearly a smurf just drawing things out. They got us up to 99% on the last match only to soft throw us into Overtime and then laugh at us in chat when we couldn’t cap it 5v6.
I also happened to get shot while leaving spawn from an entirely invisible enemy shot - it happened at the very beginning of the match so I know the enemy couldn’t have left spawn to get to our spawn, there was no time. It was clearly some kind of wall hack. I’ve never seen anything like it before though.
Between the hacking problem that seems to be perpetually getting worse in spite of ‘they’re fixing it!’ claims, the smurf problem, the fact that we have zero social structure or way to guild up / play with the same people in a satisfying way that is facilitated by the makers, Blizzard’s actual gameplay experience is basically trash.
And it didn’t used to be. There’s so many factors - all the crazy mobility heroes they’ve added, insane amounts of unpredictability with characters like Doomfist and Hammond and now Echo - it gets to a point where it’s one too many jenga blocks on the tower of ‘is this game fun?’
Sure, but the difference between team impact and individual impact is that you can personally master your own fate and succeed/fail on your own merits. But team games are automatically opposed to this, because if your team loses you will still rank down regardless of how well you were doing.
That’s why I’m talking about ‘carrying’ being an outdated concept. The only way you can carry is if you’re in the wrong rank - because carrying means that you are able to succeed in spite of your team, not because of it. If you make that perfect shot but none of your teammates do and, then you die to a hail of gunfire, you still lose and you still rank down regardless of how well you were performing as an individual.
Yeah, for every match that I play amazingly well it literally doesn’t matter anymore, because there are so many things that mean I can’t take down the entire team by myself as ANY character.
I remember back when I was working my butt off to be good at Tracer, I actually was good enough to carry sometimes if I was in the zone, and it felt AMAZING. Tracer had just enough of a skill cap that she could be a beast if you knew what to do with her, but it always felt really challenging and not unfair. When I play characters like Echo it feels unfair because she’s got everything kind of handed to her on a silver platter; mobility, range, great verticality, a great ult. Tracer was all… well if you land the shots, if you manage your cooldown blinks, if you don’t waste recall, if you land your stickybomb.
Now when I play Tracer I can’t do enough damage to kill anyone, or even when I do there usually is not enough follow up from my team to distract the enemy enough to let me make a successful retreat and reset, it’s a full trade off most of the time. When I make good plays with ANY character half the time it feels like my team is just… busy having a tea party, can’t be bothered to follow up on my Sym wall or my Blizzard or anything else. And I do wait for them to be near/within shot so that they can, there’s nothing worse than a player that EMP’s alone y’know. Gotta make sure the team is THERE so that they CAN follow up.
But damn it doesn’t feel like anyone is paying attention half the time, idk man. I’m just frustrated with this game.
Yes, in team games you will always need your team but game mechanics can drastically affect how much .
I will compare LoL to HoTS because it super easy to see the difference.
In LOL all the power I gain goes to me. When I play well in a match I get stronger.
In HoTS you share it with your team so you only get 1/5 of the gains for playing well cause you give the rest to your team.
The end result is you are in a better position, more often to decided if your team wins in LOL when you play well. Even if you have a bad player in both games
