Queuing
LFG is a GODSEND and it is amazing to finally find teams with organized picks. But for the love of God please introduce a clan system. Toxicity is down and comp games are more enjoyable but occasionally groups fall apart and adding people means that I'll never be on their team again.
A clan system + a specific LFG for clans would mean I could queue with people who I have played with before without inviting people from my friends list and hoping they fit the roles.
Lore
Gonna be real. The D.Va short was ok. The new lore that we got is this:
- D.Va has a male friend
- D.Va has a team
- D.Va has an engineering education
- D.Va has PTSD
Everything else was either already known or implied through voicelines. The animation was very good, maybe even one of the best. The score was also good but not as good as Bastion's short or Dragons.
D.Va short aside, I have discovered some new interesting revelations in the lore.
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Zenyatta’s “Pass into the Iris.” Zen is very focused on balance. Harmony and discord. Light and dark. The Iris of an eye is focused on letting in more or less light into the eye. In other words, it balances the light and the dark. Therefore, we can imply that Zenyatta is Thanos.
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Sombra’s “eye” conspiracy shown in her origin video: Somehow related to “The Iris?”
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Also related: Multiple AI have been shown to have the names of ancient Gods. Anubis and Athena specifically. Iris is the Egyptian god of Rainbows…
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Ok, enough Iris tinfoil hattery. Unfortunately though, I don’t have anything else, because, well, there’s pretty much no lore. Honestly, with that being one of the selling points of the game, I’m pretty disappointed we’ve gotten barely anything. TF2 has much better lore and it didn’t even mention lore until like 4 years after its release.
tl,dr: D.Va ok. Lore: woahh man, need more
Balance
Here's my best suggestion. Delete half of the heroes.
Bam. Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.
Real talk: Hanzo.
It's been some time since his rework. But he's still in nearly every game.
I want to take a moment during this Hanzo complaint and bring some attention to Ana. Ana has been buffed recently, and she has been made more fun (currently sporting a positive winrate too!). However, one thing that was not added was any mobility. Why?
And this is okay. A character needs to be weak in certain areas or you get things like Season 1 Genji, Season 3 Ana, Season 6 Mercy, and Tracer.
So my question is: Why buff Hanzo's movement AND consistency?
Don't get me wrong. I love playing Hanzo now. He went from feeling like TF2 Lucksman to actually feeling like a powerful Overwatch hero. But his weaknesses, horizontal mobility and inconsistency, were both buffed. This goes completely against the design thoughts regarding Ana's changes. Hanzo is now good in short and medium, and has capability for long range. Sure, it might be rare, but you can be sniped across the map with an arrow. He also has a semi viable escape if he gets dived, and high burst damage against deathball. I won't say he's the jack of all trades, because Hanzo isn't as oppressive as some heroes used to be cough mercy cough HOWEVER, as he is now, he simply towers over heroes who fill similar roles like McCree and Soldier, especially in lower ranks where the spammy arrows act as some kind of aim-crutches.
Now for my next hero: ROADHOOK! I mean, that's not his name, but it might as well be, since his entire playstyle revolves around landing hooks and missing one makes you an ult battery for 8 seconds. Good thing hook is a perfectly functioning ability that doesn't have any major issues with it, effectively gutting the character of any usefulness! Right?! i cri
The first problem is rather obvious, and although rare, is completely ruining the character. Hook breaks in the wide open. You will land the hook. Your target will take damage. Your hook accuracy will increase. You start salivating at the thought of pouring your tons of shrapnel into their nice, thick, meaty skull, then BOOM: the hook disconnects with no warning. No wall. No ability. Just gone.
This bug has been present for about 3 months, but nobody seems to talk about it because 80% of us have PTSD from when Roadhog could hook you from Dorado to the second point of Ilios, and the rest of us are D.Va mains who don’t want any other off-tank to be relevant.
The second Roadhog issue makes much more sense logically, but happens way more often and completely gimps the character. I know when Roadhog had an inter-dimensional hook, he was severely un-fun to play against. But now, in this post-rework world, hook is even more frustrating. Only this time, it's for the Roadhog player.
Hook is extremely easy to bait out. Anyone with a reaction time faster than half of a second (which is really slow reaction time) is able to use an escape ability if they see or hear Roadhog's hook. But what if you're one of those heroes without escape abilities?
ROADHOG MAINS HATE HIM! LOCAL MAN DISCOVERS WAY TO COMPLETELY NEGATE HOOK WITH THIS ONE SIMPLE TRICK
Walls. Corners specifically. And ledges. Strafing back and forth next to a wall while jumping nearly guarantees any hooks coming your way will bounce right back into the Roadhog’s face, laughing at him in his failure and loss of the fight. The same story applies to ledges. If you’re in the air and Roadhog has the high ground, his hook might as well be disabled.
Remember when Roadhog's hook was first changed, and they said it stopped all movement significantly? Well that no longer happens. At all. Time and time again easy targets will just fly off the screen because they hit the space key, breaking the hook. And the worst part is that this is the intended behavior.
As a completely unbiased, definitely NON-Roadhog player (only 80 hours out of my 900), I think these should have a genuine looking at. But it doesn’t look like they’ll be fixed any time soon.
And now, Reinhardt.
Everyone knows he has bugs. But the one I never see mentioned is where he is just randomly forced to turn, often a 180 whenever dropping his shield. I have shadowplay so I have a ton of examples of this… and it’s REALLY annoying.
Oh, pefect opportunity to earthshatter? Q!
NOPE SURPRISE YOU’RE NOW FACING YOUR TEAM AND THEY ALL YELL AT YOU FOR WASTING YOUR ULT
Everything else is already talked about everywhere.
tl,dr: Hanzo bad >:( Roadhog and Reinhardt help...
Features
All of the most recent hero gallery options are amazing. But after all that, we are still missing the key thing: PLAYER ICONS!
Let me just explain how terrible player icons are right now:
- They are not sorted by hero
- Or event
- I mean, some of them are. But others are just randomly thrown into the pile.
- They cannot be purchased
- They cannot be searched or found in any way other than randomly looking at boxes
- They will not show up for a competitive loading screen unless you equip it before the queue
PLEASE! FIX PLAYER ICONS!
That’s it. Thank you for listening to my obviously very important opinions.