The game’s design is not really changing all that much. It’s true that the self-imagined “carry” potential is higher, but having been in beta let me tell you a lot of people are going to be doing just about the same, having imagined their teammates were the issue when it was just them. The game will favor the typical vaping twitch zombies to a point, perhaps low Diamond or so. After that, it’s back to strategy and tactics at the higher tiers.
The Devs failed because rather than deal with questions of hypermobility they just resorted to kits that created problems. They were strangely surprised when many of the issues resurfaced in OW 2 beta from less CC and one tank and Supports were really suffering. The devs really make you wonder… that being said OW 2 does flow better; but if you think you were unshackled, just think about how the other guy feels now and Supports who have basically said to hell with healing and are now acting like DPS. That is OW 2.
I mean, I said as much to mostly skip Support reworks except for Brig, the same week that the OWL PVP Beta was announced.
Cuts the workload down by like half.
And the primary purpose of this beta was to have a version of code for OWL teams to scrim on, then play on, by like early April 2022. When they started working on it in September 2021.
Throw in some holidays and Kotick nonsense during that time. And they did an admirable job fixing Tanks and DPS in that time. And Support wasn’t “horrible” just kinda meh and less fun.
MOBA is a fusion of games, just like Overwatch is. There are different MOBA’s the genre itself came from a starcraft map, so you can’t just lock down the definition. MOBA stands for multiplayer online battle arena. Overwatch maps are basically battle arena’s, where we have 3 lanes on our maps, just like League does. In MOBA’s two teams fight down three lanes to destroy or capture some objective. In MOBA’s players control heroes or champions with unique set of abilities and playstyle. When a hero dies they respawn to fight again, but there is an experience cost, with OW you can compare this to ults. In MOBA’s heroes typically fall into the roles of tank, damage dealer, support. MOBA’s generally have large rosters of heroes with different abilities that adds to the complexity of the game. MOBA’s usually have an action economy to fights, this comes from their rts background, one character does one thing, the other counters with another thing, think of it like Genji activates blade, enemy Zen activates transcendence.
Not all MOBA’s are the same, like there are MOBA’s that are 2d side scrollers, MOBA’s where you do not respawn when you die, MOBA’s without creep, it is not a one size fits all. When people are talking about Overwatch and MOBA’s they are talking about Overwatch having elements of MOBA’s. It is very basic, dont overthink it.
You are zooming out so far that every game ever can be said to be a MOBA thus making the term devoid of all meaning.
Maps with objectives pretty much describes most online games and those existed before and after the MOBA genre. Having an objective more complicated than “kill everyone” is not some MOBA element.
The ult thing makes no sense. You lose nothing when you die beyond respawn time (you do not lose ult charge) so if anything there is less a cost of death in OW than most other games (in many FPS games with respawn I at least lose my current weapons though again that is not universal and games have done it multiple ways for decades). Respawning has also been around basically since the first shooter came out so it is far more unique to the FPS genre.
While you mentioned classes and abilities I would direct you over to the WoW forums (or Everquest if you want to fight about what big game did it first) and point out that classes and roles are an RPG staple and not really a MOBA staple. They can exist in MOBA’s but they can exist in every game and they specifically referred to as “RPG elements”.
Genres are not some broad that you can go “well this one game in this genre did it therefore we can call it a part of the genre”. For example “Soulslike” (I hate that term) games are characterized by: high difficulty, story/world that unfolds as you go, checkpoints that allow you to regain some power, and a non permanent penalty for death. You can be 2d or 3d, you can have whatever art style you want, you can have your story be whatever you want, but those are the elements that make it a “Soulslike”. Similarly I could describe similar elements that allow the Metroidvania genre to exist. For the MOBA the elements are: single champion that you level who gains new abilities and powers as you go that you play in combination with others.
If you want to know an FPS game with MOBA elements that came out at the same time as Overwatch that would be Battleborn which checks all the boxes for the genre.