This has been a fundamental issue since OW’s release and I don’t see many people touch on it.
The fact is, OW has always had an issue with the player being able to ‘counter’ other abilities vs being able to ‘outplay’ them.
What I mean is, the dev team seems to think along the lines of
“X is an issue, so we need a hero that has an ability that directly counters it”
Instead of
“X is an issue, so we need a hero with the ability to outplay it”
In a nutshell, low vs high skill floor. They tried so hard to make heroes easy to play that it created horrible balancing that still plagues the game today.
Instead of outplaying your opponent, you just counter them.
Zen doesn’t outplay with his ult, he counters by pressing Q.
Mei doesn’t outplay her opponent, she just freezes by pressing shift.
Illari doesn’t outplay she just throws out a healing beam etc.
Hopefully you get the idea. OW will always have balancing issues as long as they focus on low skill floor with high impact
What is this high skill some of the people here are so fond of? Can you give me an example of high skill ? You gave zen as an example of noskill counter but what ult is high skill exactly ? Are you saying ults should be removed ?
Forcing out those abilities is the “outplay” part of the equation. Take Doom and Ana. If Doom is blindly holding is arms up in front of Ana, he deserves to get slept. Whereas an Ana that sleeps prematurely is open to be abused by Doom. It’s a dance of who flinches first.
No, they don’t mean the same thing. I feel like I’ve already explained this as simply as I can though, sorry.
edit
You added your Ana and Doomfist example, that’s part of outplaying of course, but it does take skill to land and time the Ana sleep.
Something like a Zen ult, Zarya ult doesn’t as much. It’s more about game sense, understanding when to use it, rather than having to land it.
Which, of course, game sense is a skill and you can use Zarya or Zen ult at bad times.
But, the effect of them even if used incorrectly is huge, and while maybe not an issue on their own, when you take OW as a whole it can create frustrating gameplay and balancing issues.
So, did the Ana outplay the Doom by landing her dart? yeah, I’d say so.
Did Zen outplay the Genji by pressing Q? I don’t think so.
You’re not quite there, but pretty close. Still the following examples…
Are especially bad examples. Though, Mei is probably the only one that could make sense, given it is a defensive ability that clears out or eliminates a lot of offensive power (though with some severe drawbacks).
Rather, the above examples are examples of outplaying your opponent, especially within regards to Zenyatta’s Ultimate, as this is not always available. Additionally, Illari’s healing is a form of outplaying your opponent, because it is a defensive and supportive ability that requires aiming and tracking; and in general, healing skill component is through active triage, not a post-damage, "wait-until-they-get-hit’ form of healing.
A few better examples that, until recently, existed is the form of denial or rescue abilities that can be utilized with a press of a button. One of the biggest issues is (or was) the disparity between hitting something and recovering their health or denying damage.
You work really hard to eliminate an enemy character or team, and in comes Mercy with Revive to bring up the whole team back to life with just a push of a button; and she’s invincible while she does it. Revive may have been an ultimate, but it was also one of the cheapest ultimates in the game. The second-lowest next to Tracer’s Pulse Bomb.
Thankfully, Blizzard caught that issue, but there are still a number of long-standing issues in the game, that Blizzard has tried to address and never has quite hit that mark yet. Barriers were another issue, Blizzard has made some partial improvements to address this, but it is still easy to deny nearly an entire role of what they do best with just a push of a button.
Zarya’s Particle and Projected Barriers is another form of easy denial. One that’s more limited than typical barriers and comes with bonuses of powering up Zarya herself.
Other forms of denial exist, personal invincibility and clearing of debuffs exists on about half the roster and most of these are okay, but some offer more benefits than others. The most powerful ones tend to be on Supports and some Tanks. Kiriko has a 35 meter teleport, on a lower cooldown than Flight or Jump Jets, clears all debuffs, and offers brief invincibility while also doubling as a kind of rescue ability for an ally. Mercy is the fastest and most mobile hero in the game, along with Lucio. Both have active self-healing and both can be very powerful offensively via ultimates or through general play, and both have strong denial via Revive, Soundwave, or Sound Barrier (though one is an ultimate, and has some sufficient counterplay).
Fade is just a flat out better mobility and escape tool that Wraith, Blink, Rejuvenating Dash, or Calvary Gun. Travels three times the distance all of the above, and generally can’t be tracked, while also clearing out debuffs and on a lower cooldown that all of the above.
Self-Destruct can’t be stopped once activated and works as an incredibly denial that has very limited counterplay.
Immortality Field can deny groups of kills, but it has been made more fairer after several iterations, and still does take some element of skill to place it right, as well as getting players to stay under it. Still this is one that can outright deny ultimates like Dragonstrike and Rip-Tire.
If you can think of fighting games and can think of Street Fighter wherein Ryu or Ken has a special move called Dragon Punch that deny a jump-in attempt or pressure after a knockdown (via a wake-up attack), you can kind of understand how difficult it is to pull off a Dragon Punch.
Overwatch doesn’t really have difficult reversals like those found in fighting games, or for that matter, in other PvE games. When you lose a character in FF7, for example, you usually have two options, using a Phoenix Down or the Raise spell. Raises are costly on MP and Phoenix Downs can consume a limited supply, but there’s also the element of time to bring back the character and the additional amount of time to heal them up and prep them for the rest of the fight. All of that puts you on the defensive, and against offensive pressure or difficult opponents, spending time to bring back one death is fairly difficult. And like above, in Overwatch this isn’t always true and wasn’t true during the first year or so in Overwatch 1.
Overwatch 2 is “fairer” but still has some problems with denial. They’ve made it easier to play Damage-role heroes, and have given them some utility and value (denying full, unfettered healing against a target taking damage). But the ability to deny a kill might still be too easy compared to the difficulty of bring one target down. It doesn’t help that there is two roles dedicated to denying kills, while also bring out offensive power with fewer defensive measures to counter theirs (for example, there’s only two heroes in the Damage-role that can deny or defend against a Firestrike for the entire team).
This is where mind-games can come in, but the difficulty here lies in Ana’s ability to hit Sleep. Doomfist doesn’t really have a way of shutting out a Sleep Dart.
A more neutral game of outplaying would be something like Tracer vs. Soldier, as both can recover health and predicting where Recall will end up with Tracer means Soldier can accurately predict and land a Helix Rocket. Conversely, Soldier landing a Helix Rocket can trigger Tracer to Recall and start the fight over, and Soldier can run Biotic Field to recover lost health.
Another fairly even example would be with Junker Queen and Sigma since their cooldowns are incredibly similar and both can deny and play to weaknesses and strengths.
There’s no real paper-rock-scissor equivalents in Overwatch. Certain heroes have certain advantages over others, but none so great as to prevent the disadvantaged to netting a win. Though this mostly applies to the Damage-role match-ups, there are still some in cross-role match ups that can be favored to Damage-role over the Support (and vice versa).
I guess this would depend on how much you buy into the tank meta being rock, paper, scissors focused.
I’m not too sure, but I was replying to someone that said forcing out abilities is an outplay, so the rock, paper, scissors example was just trying to explain the concept.
I hope that OW can continue to strive for higher skill floors with less impact but it doesn’t seem to be the case since this has plagued the game since launch and continues to.
Rock-paper-scissors is basically out-thinking your opponent. Not necessarily forcing out an ability. If you’re forcing a player to use an ability, you’re baiting them into using it so that they can’t use it later. And generally when you’re baiting something, you’re able to defend against it.
Using the above Street Fighter example, you bait out a Dragon Punch by either pushing against the opponent in a knockdown state (forcing them to either block on wake-up, or come out swinging with a reversal like Dragon Punch), but you instead block their reaction, or DP; leaving them open for a counter-attack.
In that sense, it could be seen as a Paper-Rock-Scissors situation, but Overwatch doesn’t really have these type of situations, and either way, the above example is still outplaying the opponent.
In Overwatch, if I play Junker Queen into Reinhardt, I don’t have anything to stop a Firestrike, I pull out a Command Shout and let my Overhealth take the damage, but that puts me at a disadvantage, since Firestrike has two charges, and is on a lower cooldown. Moreover, Jagged Edge and primary fire can’t bypass Rein’s barrier so I have to advance with caution to avoid a Charge and Firestrike. I generally want to have Command Shout ready when I engage at melee range with Reinhardt, and I know Carnage will pierce his barrier, but Reinhardt will still hit harder than I do. So it is less about abilities, and about outplaying a disadvantage and watching my opponent and getting hits in while mitigating his.
Most Tank brawls are actually like this, not really like Paper-Rock-Scissors.
I’m aware, but there isn’t really a situation like that with Tanks. Most Tanks bypass most defensive abilities other Tanks use. Zarya and Sigma might be the only ones who can defend against all of them, but even that is limited.
Rather the issue is more nuanced and more about team compositions being able to compensate for weaknesses or exploit those gaps that Tanks have.
I agree and have said the same. Instead of learning to play around a character people just pick whichever character has the advantage over the other. It’s why I can’t stand swapping being in this game. Nobody gets better just simply going with the easier option, in fact swapping makes the game mindless.
Reminds me of an interview I saw of Bobby Fischer where, later in his life, he said he hated what chess had become. It was no longer about creativity, it was about memorization and theory. There’s almost no human input in the game, everyone is just a mindless computer that goes with the scripted openings and moves based on what an algo told them go with.
It’s exactly what Overwatch has become…if player A does this, then player B does that. No thought, everyone just going through the motions and playing exactly the same characters in the same scenarios. Not good for the game at all.
I think it’s the biggest reason as to why I stopped playing, it’s just not fun at all.
I understand for some people they don’t mind it, but I just can’t enjoy a pvp game where all it takes to counter me is for them to just press a button.
So another pointless topic of “I failed to understand interactions on the battlefield and lost my potg… change this pls… I don’t knownif it is even possible, but I don’t care, I am here just to complain”
We’re kind of just going in circles now, you already think my post is pointless even though you engaged with it.
And you believe it will only have purpose if it included ideas of character reworks when that’s not the point of it, so I’m not sure why you’re asking me this question when you’ve already made up your mind.