Today, I had the opportunity to chat with my students about gaming and popular games. I asked them what games are currently trending, and they mentioned Fortnite, Valorant, Counter-Strike, Apex, and also Overwatch 2 (OW2). I told them that although I don’t have much time to game, I do enjoy playing OW2 when I can. Almost everyone was familiar with Overwatch, but then some interesting points were raised:
Students: “You can’t just casually play with friends anymore.” Me: “Sure you can, Quick Play is always an option!” Students: “The game is too complex, with too many heroes, each with their own unique skill set.” Me: “Well, your friend who’s a newbie could just pick something simple, like Soldier 76.” Students: “Yeah, but that doesn’t help much. You also need to know the abilities of all the other heroes to understand what’s happening around you—the ultimates, the effects, what each ability does, how to counter them, when to switch heroes to counter effectively… And then there’s the Sombra problem—she appears out of nowhere, disables your abilities, and you’re dead in 1.5 seconds.”
In short, they felt that OW2’s learning curve is so steep from the start that many players are discouraged right away. It could take months to get a decent handle on the game’s complexity. Additionally, they mentioned that you can’t even settle into learning a single map because every Quick Play game seems to throw you into a different one (at least that’s how it feels for newcomers).
So, that was our little Friday coffee chat. Here are some conclusions:
We should seriously consider dialing back the complexity:
Fewer (better NO) new heroes—focus on balancing the existing ones (perhaps at least no new heroes for the rest of this year).
Slow down the gameplay—make fights last longer to allow for more strategic play.
No new maps—just improve the existing ones.
Expand Practice vs. AI with real AI improvements—this should be a key area of development. Also, allow players to choose which map they want to practice on.
It would be great to see Overwatch focus on being more accessible and fun for everyone, not just those who have the time to dedicate months to learning it!
A beginner would struggle even just with the base game from 2016 and most of the playerbase are OG veterans who are bored of the lack of content. It’s just a consequence of any game with a lot of characters over extended periods of time and not exclusive to Overwatch.
Do not get me wrong, I WISH they focused more on designing unique heroes instead of recycling abilities and whatnot which would make their identities more obvious at a glance for less knowledgeable players. But it’s too late for any of that. Especially when new characters are the reason we even get new players. Junes probably lead to a spike in the playerbase because she is adorable.
The real problem is all of these new modes. That’s going to be highly confusing. We should have just stuck to Payload and Control if I am being perfectly honest because the rest of the new modes are just variations of one or the other.
Better tutorials and in-game ability information would go a long way, but developers never update these things and expect you to do your homework with content creators and our CC scene ain’t what it used to be.
OW has one of the most complex learning curves of all the FPS on the market, as you mention this is a big problem when it comes to attracting new players and I can attest to this.
On some occasion I tried to introduce this game to some friends who played other shooters and in the end none of them could get hooked to the game, they told me similar things, you simply had to process a lot and added to the disastrous MM that the system manages, what we get is a game with a very difficult learning curve and an unfriendly environment with new players.
But slowing down the pace of the game is not a good idea, what would happen to the current player base? We have to find a middle ground in all this, I think the biggest problem lies in the MM and smurf accounts, the current system is not friendly to new players and it is necessary to make improvements in these points.
I think that is the goal with the braindead DM playstyle that 5v5 enforced.
However OW1 had more of structure and the fact that it was slower meant it was easier to stay as a team and just support whatever the others are doing.
We have the advantage of gradually learning new heroes as they are slowly released. A new player doesn’t have this. Just memorizing all their names and abilities will take time and energy.
Probably a reason why they started adding some previously unique abilities (such as cleanse, speed boost, anti-heals, etc) to heroes’ kits. Try to lower the entry bar a bit.
This is more or less why the kiddy pool, exists where every on is limited on their hero pull. And limits this issue till your use to the simplified game state.
Game will be dead, simple as that.
As much as some people don’t want to engage with it’s complexity. Others love that sort of thing. While existing players will want to see continious new content to stick around.
You would be twisting the core experience for players that wouldn’t want to play the game anyway.
And even this is all kind of just gesturing at nonspecific issues. And can come down to preference from player to player.
This is a good idea tho.
Also you can already do the latter in few different ways via custom games. You can just load into bot lobbies and or have a friends play into bots with you.
Do you really want healing to be hard with how bad ppl are at aiming?
Because if they are bad at healing, you will be in disadvantage as well because of them.
Well i mean… its a hero shooter. Thats kinda the point? It’s supposed to be complex with lots of various interactions between characters and abilities. Thats the game.
dumbing it down would only make the game worse. It would lose it’s identity.
One of the things that draws me to OW is that it’s complex. You can be in a losing match, look at your teams comp and the enemy comp, decide "if we had ____ that could turn this around " and often it does when properly executed.
This is not about what I want or not, we are talking about the complexity of the game and its different characters, as I mentioned I feel that the new heroes have a different and more friendly approach to new players if we compare them to the classic characters .
I still disagree especially considering newer heroes have also more bloated kits compared to old ones (еxсер maybe Venture).
If you look at rein, all he has is a shield and attack and a charge.
Now look at ram with all of his nonsense kit that changes based on what form he is in.
i still think overwatch is a lot simpler relative to marvel rivals and deadlock so honestly it is in a pretty good state in terms of complexity until you get to heroes like genji, doomfist, wrecking ball, dva, yada yada
