Overwatch is too "casual" to be an esport

General Discussion
1

No offense but this a bottom tier dribble take.

I don’t know if the visuals of the game has continuesly been tricking you people since launch but this game is way too hard to play to be considered a casual game.

It’s been how many years now? And people still don’t understand how to play it well. If we look at the highest level of play and subtract everything that has to do with playing with a consistent team and are left with everything that just makes sense as something people should know and be able to do, then literally 99% of the playerbase gets a hard F.

You might think you know how to play but I’d be willing to bet that your actual gameplay shows otherwise.

Overwatch is the only game where playing the game correctly and playing at the highest level are one and the same thing because people genuinly don’t understand it until they get in to mid GM it seems.

There are plenty of games where players in lower tiers play the game correctly but lack the mechanics and coordination to actually make all the plays necessary to happen, that’s where the difference in skill tiers come to show.

In other games it goes like this:
Bad, ok, good, better, best

In OW it’s like this:
Mega dribble, dribble, dumb, less dumb, average

I just woke up and it’s 8:15 and these really bad posts are tilting me

7 Likes
2

i agree that its too casual for esports, but whats your point?

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3

My point is that it isn’t.

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4

When did you get the game? Genuine question.

You’re about 4 years too late.

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5

Because people are dumb.
I’d still say its a casual game compared to other Team-based games. The nature of team-based games is that average pubs are super low quality.

6

the game doesnt transfer skill well on screen, thats its problem. i’ll explain if you dont get it, watch lets say Quake duels, you will see what the player is doing, how is his aim, his positioning, how he menages resources on the maps…
you cant see that in overwatch, apart from silly widowmakers head clicking…thats as skillful as this game gets, which is just well, casual

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7

Replay viwer is a thing on top of all the educational and pro game analysis content out there.

8

Overwatch is difficult to watch due to the overabundance of visual noise which in turn makes it unsuitable to be an eSports.

Furthermore Blizzard’s poor mismanagement of Overwatch as an eSport as well the restrictions they place on community tournaments all greatly weaken the longevity of Overwatch as an eSport.

While on paper, OWL has gotten a lot of views. You have to also take into account twitch drops and Blizzard paying sites to embed OWL streams which brings seriously doubt on those numbers…

3 Likes
9

Unreal Tournament is hard.

Overwatch has too much simplified mechanics and I dont like it. Should be harder. Skill must be rewarded.

10

I dont think there is a correct way to play game.
Goats, double sniper, 4dps, death ball ← all were 'incorrect ’ ways to play.

There are no correct or incorrect ways.

11

This showed when Goats was meta and everyone was saying braindead comp. Not fun to watch but at the highest lvl was for sure not braindead.

12

While I think at the highest level of play the competitive spirit of the game truly shines, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be casual for the rest of the playerbase.

13

I love playing OW (when I’m in the mood) but I do agree they forced OWL way too early and are now in a bind and things aren’t going well.

14

It was launched as a casual game and that was its strong suit.

Unique characters, a “hero for everyone”, random events to play. It was casual with wacky characters to be competitive in.

I recently used LFG for the first time in forever after dropping 500 Sr in solo queue tanking. Absolutely punishing.

When I started in 2/2/2 in my new account (I didn’t want my match making to be tainted by previous seasons) I placed like high plat/low diamond except for tanking, which I just did placements and then never touched again for several seasons.

So I drop… so low, to silver. Wasn’t using voice chat bc I don’t like the constant gay/race slurs and tanking was so hard to expect follow up with no coordination.

Found a group, casual laid back guys that were in the low Sr I dropped to (the last season I played in masters I was literally just getting people in chat to throw my games bc I was playing brig, good luck finding anyone casual in mid diamond and above). Because of the extended queue times we were playing games like color run, sigma dodgeball, 12 hogs 1 hole.

It was the most fun I’ve had playing overwatch since the first year it launched. Finally random event games to play against with people who didn’t take themselves too seriously, but could still try for some coordination.

It feels like with OWL-centered features like hero bans, support roster homogenization, echo added when the roster needed a support, retconning the whole “we don’t believe in forcing people to switch because of a player decided meta”, etc… my joy for the game just slipped.

I really hope they start doing what they did when the game launched and focus on breaking the barrier-centric tank roster and healbot supports and just get back on to the whacky personality aspect of overwatch, bc it’s just not there like it was previously

15

why i don’t consider it a competitive game is because it’s a team game that doesn’t let you stack at the highest rank.
meaning it’s a team game that’s being sold as a solo qeue experience.

2 Likes
16

That is true, I also found it very odd that they decided to go with that route. However I also understand how it can be frustrating to play against literal OWL players in a stack, I don’t think the point of competition is to be “fair” in that aspect. Better players are better players.

17

I still think they done the block how many high rank players can play, to stop people from teaming up at hours when there is not many players, and play agains lower ranks… like really lower ranks, insted of just block stuff like that from happening back then.

18

The game didnt use to be. 222 made it this way :woman_shrugging:

19

I don’t think 2-2-2 made it less competitive, to me it made it more competitive because before people would way too often just tilt and swap off to something else to “carry” but what they really did was throw. It made it more competitive on ladder IMO.

20

yeah but would you really complain about playing against a stack of pros if you were self stacked and were competing for the highest rank on ladder?
the sense of pride and accomplishment to go toe to toe with the best and not lose super hard or even squeak out a victory is pretty fulfilling.

also you could have seen some epic battles take place between pros who stack aswell.
all this would have promoted team play to a much higher degree to the masses or at the very least to the casual elitists/tryhards that occupy the ranked ladder.