Overwatch 5 biggest issues

General Discussion
1

For most of the problems here I wrote comments in the past but decided to finally make a post about the subject and here your opinions.

Here are the 5 biggest issues with Overwatch in my opinion.

Number 5 : Content dry

Number 5 : Content dry

I put it at number 5 as this is not the worst thing they’ve done but for sure hurts the player base quite a lot… Almost 2 years without any new hero and no real new map. In a game that focus mostly on building a team from different heroes and sending them to different missions on different maps… In 2022, where multiplayer games can only survive with new content.

Number 4 : Giving up too quickly

Number 4 : Giving up too quickly

While this point connects pretty well to the next one, it’s better than it as at least here they succeeded at changes just didn’t succeed at much. The problem here is the fact the devs sometimes did have a good idea or concept and just like many other good ideas in the world, it needed a bit more changes and fixes to be perfect.
But instead of doing that, they just gave up on concepts they tried once only for them to never be seen again.
Maybe they were a failed concept and maybe not, but they never gave us- the community the chance to experience these small tweaks before changing something completely…
If to give some examples, mass rez could have tried many ways to nerf it but instead got a full rework before trying anything. Or Brig’s armor packs that actually gave armor…
Even if the current situation is better or worse by different people.
The fact we just gave up on ideas without trying to fix them first, is a big problem.

Number 3 : Lazy Changes

Number 3 : Lazy Changes

Over the years, there was a lot of changes that even if they were good for the game or bad.
Didn’t really come from the right place, most of them got the feeling of lack of thinking behind or even worse- of lazy respond to them.
For example, role queue might have been good for the game according to some and bad according to others.
But the fact it was implemented to deny goats instead of actually balancing the problematic heroes right is a problem showing a lack of thinking behind the move.
There are many others problems I can give revolving around things like shields or Brig but I believe this one explains the point well.

Number 2 : Ignoring the community

Number 2 : Ignoring the community

At the end of the day, the goal of a game is to be fun for the community. Even if the community isn’t always right, I would expect anyone who wants to sell its product to ask customers about it and act according to feed back - video games aren’t different…

So why only in here the whole community can be against an idea or a concept or on the other hand give really positive feedback about an experience and yet get completely ignored.

Not only that, but the fact we get close to no feedback on any post here unless it’s a technical one or overwatch 2 specifically is a big shame as well.

Number 1 : Lack of direction

Number 1 : Lack of direction

The number 1 problem in my opinion and probably the biggest one is the lack of direction the game has.
I’m not even sure if it was mean to be so general to attract many players or just lack of thinking but at the end of the day, it’s very unclear what this game supposed to be.
On one hand you’ve got aim based heroes like Soldier or Widow, on the other hand you’ve got moba and fighting game heroes like Reinhardt or Symmetra.
On one hand you’ve got team reliant heroes like Bastion or Mccassidy on the other hand you’ve independent heroes like Tracer or Lucio that can do fine even by themselves…
Long story short. I know heroes need to be balanced. But I first need to know what is balanced in the first place… And the game doesn’t give me any hint or detail about its goals.
This just results in many big problems that could have easily be solved with a clear direction, like mobile heroes in an aim based game vs moba game or the concept of shields or one shots.

Did I miss anything? Is there anything you think isn’t such a problem? Would love to hear it in the comments :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

2 Likes
2

They have a direction now. Actually since the goats disaster and had to implement role lock ,they have had a clear direction of what they wanted the game to be from that point on and led them to all the changes coming to Overwatch 2.

Here is one of the several articles and developer comments where they have stated this.

h ttps://www.dexerto.com/overwatch/jeff-kaplan-wants-overwatch-more-like-valorant-than-lol-in-sequel-1400587

3 Likes
3

If that’s the direction they want, no problem.
But connecting a bit to points 5+2, at the end of the day if I look at the current version of the game and official platforms where most players see messages.
Noting really tells me that’s what I should expect.

The official website still talks about “a colorful team-based action game” and the game still contains more than 50% of the heroes relying quite heavily on “less fps” kits like Rein’s pretty much all kit or Pharah that even if she does rely on aim, focus much more countering some heroes and being countered by others over just being about skill…

Even if it does help btw, it still doesn’t tell me enough about what to expect such heroes… Will they still be moba/fighting games heroes? Would they become fps? And if so how much… There many things that still don’t connect enough and might not connect even after ow2 releases.

What about stuff like mobility for example? Mobility counters aim… So is it something that would be removed or would the game still contain some elements of moba just… less.

4

Wasn’t their intention to mix up styles and include different players, but then OWL polarized it and pushed the game into FPS competitive direction?

1 Like
5

It also felt like the devs also weren’t having any self-awareness, they did stuff and most of the time, it was just proving more and more that the devs weren’t even knowing what they were doing.
I think the devs definitely asked themselves: “Is this really the right decision?”, but they most likely left their own question unanswered and just pushed it into the live servers.

The devs just had so much of an ego that feedback wasn’t seeming to get through for at least a year or two. If the devs would have admitted that they had made a mistake and would start changing something earlier, this game wouldn’t be in the state we see right now.

1 Like
6

Maybe so, unfortunately I can’t really give a straight answer.
Even if it was supposed to be a mix up of styles. I would have still loved to hear that this is the direction…

Not to mention, I would have loved to hear about the end goal of the game. What skills and aspects should be rewarded more and what less.

What situations are fine and what not… Etc… It just feels like the game kind of throws you in, to figure out for yourself but its appearance it is so general you’re most likely not gonna think what many others think and vise versa.

Absolutely agree. Did they ever revert anything really…? Or just changed it back years later and not even under revert but under power change or something like that?

I wish patches had more communication than just “hero is too strong/weak”. and a bit more into detailes about why this specific change and how it should impact stuff…

7

meh…for the type of game that it is it has plenty of content…most of which isnt used or is just hated…

i dont think they intended on releasing this game in 2023 when they announced it…circumstances have made the situation far worse than it shouldve been

agreed

depends on what youre talking about because a LOT of what is in the game is due to community feedback…including a LOT of what we see in OW2’s direction

maybe in terms of balance…but the game is very clearly a mix of game styles…im not sure theres much doubt about what its supposed to be…

i have a very different #1 on my list several months ago…

either way i dont see things changing much even with OW2 (outside of #5 i guess)

1 Like
8

Is it weird that i read the title as in “Overwatch 5, biggest issues”?

In my mind i was like "they skipped OW2, OW3, OW4 and made OW5

2 Likes
9

Paladins release a new champion every 2 months or so.
Valorant release a new agent every around 3 months.

Overwatch… Last hero was released 2 years ago…

Same rate about maps and modes…

I’m not even sure what content this game has to begin with you referred to but either way, the content that is hated is not because it’s new content, but because of the other problems I mentioned.

New heroes for example can be loved, Ana,Doomfist and Moira do have their own respective fan base. But a lot of times the devs just put heroes in an op state or in a buggy state in the game despite the problems that come with that…

Also, new dps is always a problem when tanks and support have so little heroes compared to dps.

Perhaps. But there are still many other problems not related to it where they started an idea and gave up on it.

For example Brigitte’s armor packs or Moira’s experimental utility.

Most of the things they change according to the community only happen after a very long time. and only some of them.
Even if it does happen, they still never send replies or never discuss about these subjects with us.

Only do things quietly if at all.

Even as a mixed gameplay you still need to put priorities and explain the goals.
What should be more important and what less if at all? aim,team work, dependency etc…

It’s not even like things were too mixed lately.
Hit scans are all over the place (Soldier:76,Mccassidy,Zen,Bapetc…) while the more moba heroes don’t get any attention (Bastion,Junkrat,Orisa,Moira etc…)…

10

The reason this was implemented is because players wouldn’t stop crying about wanting role queue. Even when we were explicitly told that Qtimes would go up dramatically, especially for damage players, the vocal majority still begged for it.

1 Like
11

I would argue they do listen to the community eventually

They just take so damn long to implement the simplest changes, it took like 7 months to nerf McCree. The dev team are so slow to react to things that most people have quit by the time they make the change.

1 Like
12

U forgot bot characters with free value

13

as far as content…its a shooter…you dont need a thousand heroes/maps…you just need a good amount of them (solid ones)…i think 32 is more than plenty (and yet many people only play a handful at best)…you also got arcade modes…which is mostly ignored…and you have workshop which is completely ignored…

like the game used to get the same frequency of heroes and maps and such and that didnt stop people from complaining that there wasnt enough content (cause theres no such thing as “enough”)

but then you also have people trying to restrict the content on top of that - what heroes are “allowed”, people requesting hero bans (cause most of the added heroes are hated) or map votes and such (hell we just deleted 2)…

its important…but apparantly not THAT important just based on how people approach it…the game has much bigger problems than content imho

and i can see the giving up thing…ive said as much with regards to stuff like lfg…i thought you were referring to OW1 in general

the communication thing…i dont know…they were definitely more communicative before…i think it just ceased being useful feedback a long time ago so they just dont bother anymore

but ill go back to one thing i said which i do think ties in to all the above…i dont think the time thing is insignificant…if they knew back in 2018 that things were going to go like they have (with the delays and scandals and such) i imagine things look very different

1 Like
14

Fair although I do think goats had more to do with it considering the timing of the feature, I can go for many other features just felt like this one was the safest to talk about without haters of a certain hero arguing for here and there.

If you want another one in exchange.
People complained about Widow being too strong, why she was too strong? Some would say range (snipe across the map), some would say one shots (some claim one shots have no place in the game), some would say safety (small body, far positioning, lack of counters at the time).

They implemented a small change that did technically solved the problem but not because it actually fixed what was strong but rather made her bad in one aspect in exchange for her being very good in another one.

Even if some mentioned her hp being part of the problem, I don’t recall people complaining about her being too tanky, they complained about her primary fire mostly.

It’s probably not the best example as here as well some would have one opinion and some would have another but overall a lot of times they solved a problem by simply nerfing a random stat or buffing one. That indeed solve the problem in the short run but for the long run creates problematic situations for the hero.

Maybe you are right, but even if that’s really the case. They never really reply to most posts about such subject.

And don’t really show any direct communication with us about different aspects of the game… There are also a lot of other problems the community did talk about that never were addressed.

Orisa’s shield, Bastion’s condition, Symmetra’s design, some april’s fools patches some players liked etc…

So even if there is some communication, it’s still far from what I would expect from a big game that basically rely on the experience of players.

That connects to the last point of direction. For some of the players such thing is a bad thing that should erased. For some it’s actually a very cool addition.

If this is a normal fps, fps skills should be rewarded and lack of aim with free value should be punished.

If this is a moba-fps hybrid, this heroes should be as good but in exchange rely more on the team or be countered more easily.

Relating back to the last point, it all depends on the direction.
If it really is truly a normal fps in direction, I completely agree.
8 of each role is more than enough.
But we can’t say it’s one for sure as long that there isn’t something big that completely state it for all of us. (I’m not saying there aren’t interviews or stuff that connect to it, but a new player should know what it buys based on what the game says, not by who knows what video game news site wrote who knows when or where)

As for the heroes getting play, it all depends on the balancing.
If you’d look at the heroes that do see play, it’s not the old ones players learned to love and already connected to, it’s always the new broken ones that are just too good.

It’s hard to say there are too many heroes because the players don’t play them all if at the end the ones who do get play are the new ones…

As for arcade and qp, Idk if they are really less people there or not. Is there a way to check?
I wouldn’t count on the forums as an example considering very little of the player base actually comes here to the forums but maybe I’m wrong. All I can tell is that from my experience I do play arcade when and if I play, and usually I find games pretty fast.

Maybe you are right, but even if the limit is unclear, I think there are spots where everyone can agree that there’s no content or too much.

New hero every day would be too much for example but so is not getting anything at all (even if the game doesn’t need any content, 0 content is still no content).

2 years without content justified or not is still 2 years where players got noting and a lot left because of that or because of other things but it still result in many bad stuff.

That’s more because of balancing. New content can be balanced but also can be problematic.
Pokemon for example released ton of new content every new game but players like it because it’s balanced and adds positivity to the game.

But in Overwatch when you release some heroes are considered too strong by the whole community and don’t get any changes- then that’s the balancing speaking not the new content as a new content…

For sure, that’s why it’s only #5 on my list. But at the end of the day many left also because of that.

Balance is important not only in the game but also in real life, the fact there are many bigger problems don’t mean we don’t need to treat the small ones. We need to try fixing them all as efficiently as possible. If a small problem needs small fix - no reason not to fix it. and if a big one needs big fixing also try to put as much as possible.

At the end of the day it’s not like some of the things also don’t connect… For example when a new hero is released it buffs and nerfs some heroes just by existing (for example Hammond was a “nerf” to widow as its another character in the game that counters her)

So it’s also important to note that when looking at the other problems.

It’s a big shame… Id you don’t get what you want- ask for it.

I believe there’s still a lot they can still get from the feedbacks here like opinions on balance changes or just learning about the community.

At the end of the day the game is for us the player base. We’re the ones who play it and we’re the ones who pay the devs. I would expect them to at least try to communicate with the customer instead of ignoring it completely.

Maybe you are right. There’s a good chance things would have gone differently. But at the end of the day- what’s really important at situations like that are what you do when you find out about them.

They had many steps and they chose their own for better or worse.
And for that they should be punished or be rewarded accordingly…