So is this being reconsidered or do I have to stop playing Overwatch until she’s available in Competitive just to prove a point?
3 Likes
Really dumb decision. I honestly hope this isn’t put through and only the 1-2 week comp restriction is put in place. 40 is too much
Season identity is based on unbalance of the season. So this is a horrible decision
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So…Fortnite anyone?
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I believe “season identity” and “plenty of time to learn the new hero” is just the same spin as EA’s “sense of pride and accomplisment”.
No one says: “Oh man, the season identity is way too low, please withhold the new heros and maps from us for months”, and people who want to learn new heros had 3 weeks on the PTR and 1 week of ‘QP only’ on the live servers already following the old system. That was “plenty of time” already.
The real reason for this delay is most likely that they want to keep the new content more in line with the OWL schedule.
I applaud the effort to reduce the OWL vs live gap, but the methods are wrong in my opinion. They should have done it like Riot where LCS games are played on an older patch for like 2 weeks, and new champions are banned from picking for another week or so.
But instead of introducing new patches a little bit faster in the league like Riot does, Blizzard went the exact opposite route and decided to withhold new heroes and maps from now on from regular competitive play for months.
I’m sorry, but this makes Overwatch as a whole uninteresting for me.
I wasn’t a hardcore OW player that invests hundreds of hours into competitive each season, but I regularly played the game, watched OW streamers and watched OWL games. QP and Arcade are probably my most played game modes, however having the new stuff available in competitive is very important to me. Not only for my own comp games, but also because it affects the whole meta: the OW streamers I watch and so on.
This decision fixes the meta in place for the next ~two months, and I’m sorry to say it, but this makes the game overall uninteresting for me.
It does not only affect my own comp experience, but also the streams I liked to watch, and even my motivation to play the game at all (“well, I could play some QP or Arcade, or watch my favourite streamers, but what’s the point… the game will remain stale for the next 2 months.”)
3 Likes
This is ridiculous. I’ve been playing OW for over a year now and it’s at a point where it gets stale very quickly unless new content is coming out frequently. I’m already bored waiting for the next event and I got all the new cosmetic items ages ago so loot boxes are zero incentive to play. I play comp but it’s still just toxic and matchmaking is terrible. Waiting 2 months for a new hero is moronic. I get what you’re trying to do but you shouldn’t have announced Brigitte until closer to the end of Season 9 if that was the plan all along…
4 Likes
While understandable for maps, I question the wisdom of withholding heroes for prolonged amounts of time.
The reason being that maps are something the players have to adapt to, but heroes are the tools used to adapt.
So you really need to ask yourself this: Are you okay with every support player in competitive growling in frustration every time they think to themselves: “I could fix myself if I could just swap to Brigette, but this is competitive so I have to just suffer and hope the DPS magically wake up and start protecting their back line for me,” for weeks? Is that really okay to you?
That said if you still intend to withhold new heroes from competitive until the start of a new session. I’d strongly recommend you withhold revealing said hero at all until 2 weeks prior to the start of a new session. As a fair argument could be made that it is borderline cruel to dangle a carrot in front of someone for weeks on end before you let them have it. So it’s far better to be cruel to everyone by withholding a new hero longer than necessary without anyone knowing about it, than to be cruel to a smaller group by withhold it from them where everyone knows what you are depriving them of.
If I may share a final thought on the matter, you might seriously consider hiring a cynic to help you/(all of blizzard’s games) with public relations. As this decision is on par with the foolishness of the Starcraft 2 legacy of the void blizzcon release. You know that one where any average SC2 player under the sun could have taken one look at you’re planed information releases and told you that it would go over poorly at best with protoss players.
While it’s great that you love your game, you are proving exactly what they mean when they say, “love is blind.” As the choice to withhold Brigette from competitive, for weeks on end, and not expect it to be perceived very badly by competitive players, falls outside the boundaries of common sense.
6 Likes
The problem with this rationale, Blizzard, is that people are going to play whatever the Other World they want anyway. People pick up heroes in comp RIGHT NOW that they have zero hours on in any mode. Now if you want to make heroes restricted to players in comp unless they have a certain number of hours or perhaps certain achievements, then that’s a discussion I’d be willing to have. But to restrict a new hero for so long entirely kills the hype around them.
You’d think you would WANT people excited to play your game. I was, until this announcement came down, because I’m sick of the constant CHEERS LUV and Shimada Excremental Waste #2 dancing around me with no checks on them because my DPS couldn’t hit water if they fell out of a boat! The thought of having another option for support was a happy thought! And telling me the OWL is another reason for it doesn’t make me feel any better. I’ve never watched a single OWL game. I’m never going to watch an OWL game. I haven’t even taken the free League skin I was offered because I don’t care about OWL. All I want to do is to play the game and have fun. New heroes are fun. So gimme, okay? 
Also I’ve censored myself sarcastically because profanity filters are gosh darn doodly dumb.
5 Likes
How are we supposed to learn a new hero, specifically one that requires great teamwork, in quickplay, where a majority of the time people just play DPS and do their own thing?
I get what you guys are trying to do, but either way, there are way more cons to this than pros.
The one pro I can think of is that there is organization in releases and in competitive. You guys may see the other pro being that there’s more time to learn the character, but what I said above just debunks that entirely.
There are many cons. People have to wait for new content, and it just slows everything down entirely. Maybe if it was at the end of a season I would understand, but this character has been hyped for almost a month now. It’s really not fair to us.
7 Likes
“How to slow down already slow patches, fixes, updates and new content” - directed by Blizzard Entertainment
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So since everyone hates this idea when will we get word of brig coming out in 2 weeks for comp and not 40 days 
?
7 Likes
Probably never because we don’t know what we really want and need and only Blizzard knows it /s
1 Like
Really big shame honestly
Just adding my voice to the chorus.
I’ve been very excited at the chance to be able to play Brigitte on console.
(I tried installing and playing her on the PTR on my PC but so many people insta-locked her in Quick Play that I never got the chance to play as her.)
Like Moira and Orisa before her, I had envisaged spending a week in Quick Play with Brigitte learning her moves and strategies and then playing her in Competitive.
Now you’re telling me that we need to wait for over a month before we can play her in Competitive?
As others have said, the only real way to learn how to play a new hero is in a Competitive environment where your teammates and the opposing team are all trying to win.
In Quick Play, teams rarely try to win. There’s no coordination. No communication. No teamwork. It’s just play whomever and do whatever.
The only thing you learn from Quick Play is that it’s a waste of time if you want to learn a new hero or map.
If you really want people to learn how to play with new maps or heroes, then please introduce an Unranked Competitive mode so that players may actually learn instead of just bide time til they’re unlocked for Competitive.
As for Brigitte, the decision to delay her availability in Competitive by more than 4 times previous lockout periods has completely killed the anticipation and enthusiasm for the character’s addition to the live game.
Why did you even bother to announce her if you were going to wait so long to add her to the game’s primary mode?
2 Likes
50 hours?!?
Unbelievable.
Selfish people like you are why people like me didn’t get a chance to play her at all on PTR.
Blizzard should have added a 1 hour cap on play time for Brigitte on PTR.
Time to get ready guys. Today is probably the only chance we have to get some feedback from Blizzard. I still doubt they’ll listen to the community about this change. They tend to go incognito when people need them the most.
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I don’t see the point of doing this. There is many people that don’t like QP and will prob do 1 game or 2 just to get a grip of her but that’s it. most people will try her at start… on placement of S10… can’t wait to see the placement mess it will cause XD
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With every new hero that’s been released I exclusively played them for a whole week in quick play to "LEARN’ them. The problem with that however is that I rarely get proper team comps to do anything worthwhile to learn much of anything aside from the basics. I had this problem with Doomfist the most because majority of my team wouldn’t push or defend like they should and I just sat there waiting for my team to do something. If you need 2 months to learn a hero who is essentially a Reinhardt/Torb/Lucio combo then you must be really new to this game. Comp will always be the best place to learn and actually get good at a new hero because once the 1 week was up I always grouped with friends and we made the new heroes work in all the possible ways we could.
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Competitive seasons would have a stronger identity if they had placements that mattered, role selection and/or a better player search system that aims for something in the ballpark of a 2/2/2 comp based on player hero selection. Its frustrating to be punished for flexing almost every match and when we get new heroes that seem to favor flex players but keep them out of comp for 2 months? Why do I even want to play comp at that point?
2 Likes
I think it’s going to help in lower ranks where she’d be picked because she’s new and misplayed in a way that essentially throws matches. It sucks for the rest of us who are itching to brawl out with her though.
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PLEASE fix the stupid render error bugs I keep getting, I got suspended for no reason. I shouldn’t be penalized for something that’s not my own fault.
1 Like