what is so wrong with spectating people in comp? is there something wrong about it that I’m missing??
I find it no different then watching two teams in OWL with a huge text chat of spectators(viewers)
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You can use spectator mode to scout and Discord or Skype to tell your friend the information. Probably this.
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You can feed information to your friend(s) who are playing the match.
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Unfair advantage due to spectators being able see everyone and give info to their friends
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but you will only be able to spectate your friend’s team, just like you would in QP
Yeah but you could still feed them information. You could have the spectator be a dedicated ult tracker or shotcaller.
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I’m not sure either why it’s not allowed. And for those that claim it would be cheating, there’s a simple solution: delay the game by 1 minute for spectators.
Even indie companies have this, why Blizzard doesn’t is beyond me.
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I have a feeling the whole delay the spectator feed by 1 minute. Is tied to the replay function that people want. Till they build that. There’s no way to record data past 25 seconds.
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Actually, this is exactly what I’ve wished they’d do for Overwatch League games. It’s impossible to begin to appreciate the nuances of a match and all the individual game play without some kind of QP-like spectator mode. I’d gladly trade the feeling of seeing something in real time for a delayed spectator mode. Wouldn’t you like to follow around Carpe, Linkzr, or JJonaK as they flank around for picks? It would make the matches far more interesting to me.
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Not only that, you can look outside the LOS of the character you’re spectating and warn him of approaching flankers, among other things.
In the third person spectator view you can look behind your allies and tell them when someone is sneaking up on them
All spectators do is talk trash anyway!
CSGO puts Spectator mode on a timed delay, not sure of the exact time but I think it’s about a 1 minute to 2 minute delay.
This isn’t a new concept either, a lot of games have this mechanic.
It would be simple to implement the same concept and would alleviate the issue.
There isn’t a valid reason not to implement a spectator mode for comp.
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People would use it to unfairly give their friend 2 sets of eyes
That could work but the tech might not be there to even make this possible yet.
You have to remember that Overwatch is on a new engine, unlike CS:GO, so adding new features like that is more strenuous.
You may be right. I don’t know the technical details, but it seems that if such a mode already exists for certain modes like QP then it wouldn’t be difficult to port it over to comp and OWL. The only apparent new factor would be the time delay.
The OWL really needs a different spectator experience. I don’t think I’m alone in having difficulty following the matches. The shouting of the announcers over a great Widow pick or Reinhardt hammer just doesn’t do it for me. It’s like watching a football game and missing a touchdown pass while the camera was focused on the tight end blocking the middle linebacker.
As mentioned above by CombatRock, it could be entirely possible the technical aspect may not support it.
However, given a company with the prowess that Blizzard possesses, being pioneers in the industry, I find it very hard to believe they didn’t make a modular game that can be modified extensively by their team to last the game’s lifespan, especially by today’s video game standards. Overwatch was designed to last a very long time, the devs keep saying this. Overwatch wasn’t built to be a Call of Duty title, replaced every year with a fresh new gimmick, it was built to sustain.
As again stated by CombatRock, I find it hard to believe that a modification to the existing spectator mode that operates on a delay, potentially with Ult censorship (really the only thing that can potentially be a negative factor if left unchecked) woudn’t be all that difficult to apply to the game, especially given that they’ve modified the existing Highlight captures, UI’s, and even adding an in game browser that didn’t exist in any capacity in the earlier and even launch builds of the game.
Again, I do see where you’re coming from, but I don’t think Blizzard is naive enough not to have made a game that is overly difficult to modify and adapt to trends, features, and various aspects of existing mechanics and tropes especially in today’s industry.
It’s not the game, it’s the engine.
If this were on an old engine that has had tons of work and tools built specifically for it like Unity, Unreal or even Source, it’d be pretty easy to build something like that.
But Overwatch, as you said, is made to allow blizzard complete control and freedom over the game so they can change and add anything they want. That comes at the price of there being no existing tools for things, meaning they have to develop everything from scratch.
It wouldn’t be impossible, obviously, but such a feature would take a lot of development as they’d likely have to use tech they don’t yet have.
I’m not a game programmer, but I figure if they wanted to record and off set game footage by 1 minute, they’d first need a solid way to record game footage from everyone’s perspective. And if they were able to do that, I think they’d much sooner be able to give us a replay system (which is far more requested) than comp spectator.
Right now, the Spectator view is as simple as plugging a client into the game server, just like they’re able to do for the 12 other players. Setting it back a minute is probably quite tricky by comparison.
Even the current highlight system feels jury rigged. Randomly having a 36 file limit. Technically 41. Not tied to your HDD space. Can only record 3 highlights in a game. No in game way to change directories. You gotta edit a game program file. Can’t turn off intro animation or end animation. Can’t mass render videos. Highlights get deleted after a patch. They’re working with some hard limit setup. Back when they created the engine. Reworking it to allow all the stuff for a replay. That does everything people want. Takes a lot of dev time. Which is probably gonna take a while. Being split up with everything else.
Extra callouts, ghosting, extra sightlines, etc. basically gives everyone a playable jojo stand.