Overwatch has certainly passed its prime. The playerbase is objectively dwindling and that is mostly due to the game having an incredibly toxic community, infuriatingly one-sided matches.
The reason for this is that matchmaking is impossible for such a team-oriented game. Unless you have 5 others to play with consistently, matches have way too much going on that is out of your control. Your impact on the team is largely tied to everyone else to the point teamfights are consistently lost if just one player falls.
Lets look at Call of Duty, notice how solo-queue is so much more bearable and simpler. Your losses are not because a single little Timmy didn’t want to coordinate consistently, in Overwatch you CANNOT turn around games without mass coordination. If no one is coordinating, its an auto-loss and solo-queuers can’t change that whatsoever.
That is why seeing the DEFEAT screen feels so bad. OW2 is changing that. It is EVEN BETTER for Supports and Tanks than current game cause you are not at mercy to your “smelly” DPS. If no one is coordinating in OW2, YOU can change it, not everyone having to change it with you.
Yes there is way more reliance on kills but balancing a game around six-stacks like current game is just bad for solo-queuers which makes up a VAST majority of Overwatch and FPS players. That is why balance is so bad at Blizzard, it is incredibly hard to make a game team-coordination heavy and make it playable for solo players who don’t have 5 people to play with every day.
I posted a similar thread yesterday, I need to get the point out there. Overwatch is dying BECAUSE of how teamwork-reliant it is, if you like teamplay so much just know you are in the minority. Overwatch just can’t survive on team-reliance to the point its the most toxic community in the market.
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What ? There are far more toxic communities, get your facts straight.
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I mean tbh the DEFEAT and LEAD LOST sounds are pretty toxic the way they did them.
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True! The sound-design there definitely feels “tragic” in a way which can bring up anger.
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It’s just asinine to me that all of these complaints are the main features of the unique hero-based shooter that was derived from class-base shooters. Seriously, all of your complaints are intrinsic to Overwatch’s identity. So now we get our game perverted into a cod Frankenstein horror instead of rightfully telling you complainers to either suck it up, or play another game.
The truth is that Overwatch would have never declined this badly if people didn’t whine about nerfing or removing every mechanic instead of buffing the mechanic’s competition/counter. Nerf, nerf, nerf, nerf, nerf. The devs didn’t help either with designing heroes who do literally everything, and collapsed balance twice with Brig and Sigma.
I like strong dps heroes, strong supports and strong barriers too. I even like easy to play mechanics because a hero shooter makes up for them by having intense mind games.
But no, we lose all of that and now more with OW2 catering to the most disloyal crowd ever. A crowd who will leave a game for whatever the next shiny fps fad is.
Overwatch always required teamwork and an awareness of how to be a good teammate. When Overwatch was released it featured a rainbow of mechanics: from twitch shooter offensive mechanics to moba/wow/TF2 defensive mechanics like CC, Barriers, revival, extreme damage mitigation (Beat trans), etc.
and you complainers want to gut all of that except for a small, favorable subsection of the offensive mechanics.
Don’t like teamwork? Play a different game.
Don’t like CC or barriers? Play a different game.
Don’t like strong offensive and defensive heroes? Play a different game.
Don’t like low motor skill mechanics like Moira right click and Mercy beam? Play a different game.
No more catering, this is a hero shooter. Put up with its BS to enjoy its rich strategy and mind games or leave.
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Every hero is still unique in OW2, Mercy players for example are largely complaining about her being at mercy (pun intended) to her team otherwise she is a sitting duck.
Supports are like that in current Overwatch. Just tell me something, do you have many friends to play with? If the answer is yes, teamwork is in a good spot but only for you guys who have 5 others to play with consistently. That is what current Overwatch is balanced around, and due to that solo-queue is a wretched hive of toxicity and one-sided matches.
From my POV. I had to change my entire outlook and mindset on this game to enjoy it more in solo-queue, yet its still infuriating. I played Valorant last year for a good two weeks, losing many matches felt slightly less frustrating than Overwatch, I know why I lost, it was ME. Teamwork is still a big thing in Valorant, but you aren’t a sitting duck if the rest of the team sucks. You can still make great plays.
The playerbase dwindling is cause they have neglected the game for 4 years straight to focus on OWL which is a flop, and decided they shouldn’t cater to their core audience. It has nothing to do with making the game more like every other arcade shooter on the market.
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Oh FFS, OWL is an absolute scapegoat. It brought more interest to the game. since 2020 the drought was only cause they are all hands on deck on OW2.
I honestly think this would have worked. And this may be just me, but I’ve found all the counter arguments to be lacking.
My least favorite counter argument is the “well, if everyone’s saying the same thing, obviously Overwatch should listen, right?!” because its like some kind of “crowd mentality fallacy” that says "listen to the most voices regardless of context.
No, we shouldn’t listen simply because everyone’s saying the same thing. That’s what killed The Culling, and I do think its what’s killing Overwatch. Blizzard should have said “You don’t like strong defenses? You don’t like team work? Why’d you buy Overwatch, then?” when people started talking nonsense.
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Can’t make money if its unfun for most of the playerbase. If they kept it to “six stacks only” the mass-interest will dwindle. And unless you are in consistent six stacks, it gets very infuriating.
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It’s dying because Activision-Blizzard is a terrible company with awful management that only cares about profit and is overpaying their CEO.
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And being CoD like will lose tank and support players and then the game dies
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And as a last ditch attempt to keep the game on life-support they will remove role queue and add role limits so 2 suckers get stuck playing support.
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You know what? Apex Legends AND Valorant have supports and are way more popular games than current Overwatch. every role can hold their own, they have offensive AND defensive capabilities no matter who they play for.
Again, balancing a game around only people who are successful in social situations and have 5+ close friends (which is the minority) is gonna kill and dwindle attention.
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Neither of those games got their playerbase off supports who do actual supporting. Supports, like Mercy mains for example (which are a HUGE playerbase) do not want to play dps at all
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Nope.
All the balance changes continued to neglect what the community wanted. The severe lack of new tank/support heroes, new maps, fixes to old maps with really bad chokes, or any attention to the game that didn’t cater to OWL or popular streamers instead of their actual core audience is the problem.
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I’m just calling out why most other hero shooters are more popular than Overwatch. You aren’t 100% tied to 5 others who will not coordinate so you are a sitting duck. Mercy still has a recognisable playstyle in OW2. She’ll be more independent which a lot of Mercy mains want.
Independent doesn’t mean dps oriented. Literally no one wants dps Mercy.
Being a braindead fps isn’t what made OW popular though, and it’s certainly not why characters like Mercy/Lucio are popular
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The community is toxic and blames the team on everything they can’t control. Cause they CAN’T. They are listening to the general audience for OW2. The OW Team probably did try to cash in on OWL. People learn from their mistakes.
No, they don’t They are doubling down on what a lot of the player base doesn’t want, they still cater everything to OWL, they still have neglected the game for 4 years and aren’t putting anything into the base game before OW2.
Why are you kissing their butt? Genuinely curious.
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