Even non-gamers fell in love with your product at the beginning, back when the game prioritised chaotic fun over competitive ideals that did nothing but water down everything. Innovative heroes being reworked because they were deemed unhealthy by “professional” players. “High skill” heroes being kept in an OP position because “high skill”. Resources being poured into OWL rather than the game itself, leaving Overwatch without new content for 2 years now. I also blame the glorified DLC for this, but that’s not the point of this thread.
Notice how the game didn’t become toxic until they added a competitive mode, almost like the game was never destined to be competitive in the first place. This showed in every season of OWL - horribly boring metas and mirror matches galore. Literally no one wants to watch this. Now I’m sure that all 3 of OWL’s stans are going to comment otherwise, but not everything is about you. A much larger group of people have since left this show behind so OWL could “happen”.
I’ll despise OWL until this franchise dies. Stop trying to market off an eSport that’s barely acknowledged as an eSport. Y’all got teamspeak and cola I guess…
What killed overwatch was Blizzard’s refusal to pick a side. They made massive anti-competitive choices (like Hanzo, Widow, Hog, the way progress works on capture-points, 50% hero winrates, etc.) for the sake of making the game quirky and fun.
They, then, made a massive push for “competitive” gameplay, ditching a lot of fun in favour of making the game “competitive” without, actually, establishing a competitive philosophy.
This thoughtless, lazy, middle-of-the-road mentality meant that the game had no longevity and never would have.
It just meant that the moment people understood how to exploit the mechanics and interactions, the game becomes more about using those exploits than actually being good or having fun. R6 Siege has kneecapped its self in the same way. These problems were very evident since beta, but the OW team are too awful at their job (in this context, specifically) to do anything about it.
With or without OWL, the game was never going to be the next Q3 or CS:GO, or even CoD/Battlefield.
You really believe that this game is balanced around OWL? If this game was actually balanced around pros I promise you sht like 2/2/2 would’ve never entered the game
Exactly, one patch it would be semi around pros and the next would be semi about the casual side. I think they just have a dart board now considering the last change
When I say Q3, CS, Cod and BF, I don’t mean “competitive shooters”. CoD and BF aren’t competitive; they’re fun-focused. Nor do I mean ditching Overwatch’s ‘style’.
I’m speaking, exclusively, about it’s ability to stick to it’s own goals.
Also, there’s a distinction between people being sweaty and a game being competitive.
having the devs actually listen instead of doing what they want. Having the devs actually listen to their pros. Games like valorant and R6 have a pretty decent meta cause the devs actually balance around their pro players. Honestly the devs should choose one not both but its a shame Geoff Goodman thinks Double MT is abusive. That guy is pretty much the reason why the game is in such a horrible state for pros and casuals
Personally, I didn’t mind GOATS, but then again, the characters I played during it were pretty much favored during that time (Junkrat and Mei).
As for the later statement, it’s merely the next era: the majority want a game to either be competitive or fun with friends; you can’t have both, but one is more lucrative than the other.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Not in the bloody slightest.
Pros have no idea about game-design or competitive-design philosophy. They can identify when something feels ‘off’ and that’s about it.
Listening to fans/pros is a great way to make a game fun, but not competitive. Plus, R6 has some of the worst meta I’ve ever seen in my decades of gaming. Jager has had a >60% pickrate for years. Ops like Clash, Tachanka and Fuze are, hillariously, under-picked. Shields, one of the best-designed parts of the game, got nerfed into being unplayable, because of “player frustration”.
Valorant’s doing alright, though. It’s abilities are ‘eh’ and shooting mechanics are squiffy, but it’s working for the same reasons CS is.
When it comes to competitive game design, relying on the community and pros isn’t how you fix it. it’ll just push you down an endless game of whack-a-mole.
theres a lot of “balance is bad” in there…and i hate to break it to people but balancing around the top tiers of play (with or without OWL) is still what they shouldve done…and it still would be “bad”
youre right about competitive and toxicity…but thats a things across like all gaming
Not just OWL hated Goats, ladder players like myself hated it too. There was nothing competitive or skillful about rushing down the opponents with Goats pressing W.
And chaotic fun is only fun for a month or two, not forever.
Even coaches are still clueless. Their job is just different to the game-designers’.
Sadly, giving them a say is a really strange choice because their entire experience is around the ‘what’ and nothing about the ‘why’. It’s like asking a real-estate agent to build a house.
They said it was a competitive shooter from the start, and comp launched like a month after the game came out. It wasn’t there from the start a changes were being made.
Overwatch League didnt kill Overwatch. If Blizzard actually choose to full commit on OWL the game would be in a much healthier state. Content drought also really hurt the game. Most importantly if OWL actually had that big of an impact than Bap, Brig, Orisa, Sigma and Zenyatta would be addressed
You can be bitter about OWL all you want but at the end of the day the community and most importantly Blizzard killed Overwatch.
You ask someone like crusty why is X hero strong. You get exact feedback on what you need to and how to play around it. Like you cant tell me a pro owl coach wouldve nerfed baps exo boosts instead of literally anything else in his kit
Exactly, they’re great at advising players about how to avoid situations and make-use of others. Like countering Pharmercy.
If you ask a coach why Pharmercy is an issue, none of them will point to the lack of granularity with hit-detection and skill-expression for aiming mechanics. You’re more likely to get ‘hitscans are too weak’ or ‘Mercy’s healing is too high’, throwing you down the whack-a-mole spiral.
show behind so OWL could “happen”.