So…what actually determins the “play of the game” because it seems totally random. Aside from 80% of the time being DVA or Junk Rat ults.
Had a game where I repeatedly wiped the enemy team off of the point to save the game, but POTG goes to a random hanzo who missed all but 1 shot, and ultied a single person…
I just started playing and I’m trying to see what other people do to learn, and already wondering if I should just leave game soon as it ends instead of waiting to see that.
I almost feel like it’s linked to “on fire” points.
i always thought it was tied in with multi-kills? but yea could be multi-kills and how long you have been “on fire” whatever the algorithm is for that. it seems to be different with each hero too
It’s a strange system. We had a multikill from one DPS, but our other DPS got the POTG for one headshot “sharpshooter”.
Arbitrarily-assigned values determine it, from what I can tell. It’s linked to damage done, healing done, finishing blows, multi-kill announcements, ults stopped/cancelled, environmental kills, preventing kills (like if Mei freezes someone and you kill her instead, this is the only one I can think of atm but I think there’s more) and kills on airborne targets. I actually got a sharpshooter potg on Junkrat recently where I killed two people in the air by myself. 
Consecutive headshot kills often times do the trick. Especially if they’re from far away. Dva bombs are my favorite though. Torb plays second because they are usually just an overview of my torbs dead body will his turret kills everyone.
It’s usually what gives you many on fire points, but sharpshooter (hitting headshots) and lifesaver (explained by itself) gives quite some points
I just remember that period where I always got potg as Moira or Brig because healing allies was weighted the same as killing enemies so anyone with aoe heals could just exist and get it.
is Lifesaver potg still a thing? Bacause I feel like I havent seen those pretty much ever
Same
Tbf I’m not sure but they should be
But I don’t remember ever been saved by a stun or freeze in ages, so
off topic but remember when tempo rez was live for like a week and every single potg was mercy?
Originally it was based on who got the highest number of kills in the shortest amount of time, or something pretty close to that. So if you got a double kill, but someone else got a triple, they’d get potg over you.
Then they fiddled with it so that it was more about taking into account your -personal- ‘bests’ with that character and contrasting them to the other characters in the match, in the interest of making healers and tanks more viable for getting potg as their kills are often less common, but their contributions are still important to the game.
So now it’s more like ~ How much do you play that hero? If it’s a hero you play a lot, and well, you’re less likely to get potg because the game factors that in and assumes you should be getting high stats (it looks at what your averages are with the hero and compares them to what you’re doing now) so basically like ~ the best way to get potg is to play a hero you don’t play a lot so your stats aren’t good / or one you’re bad at, and do well. If the game notices you’re doing disproportionately well, better than your average, then you’ll get put up for potg.
And remember you are competing with 11 other people, so if someone just picks Mercy on a whim and they never play her, they’re probably gonna get potg unless they did a super sucky job.
I’ve legit had games where I get quadruple kills and some healer gets potg for getting like a single kill and healing someone, or something, and it’s really just that that person has low averages with that hero and did a better-than-usual-for-them job that game. But since it was my main hero and I usually do quite well, that’s not worth rewarding by the new metric. (zero judgment btw, I frankly don’t care about potg, it’s kinda weird these days.)
I mean, Zarya and IF are about all the ‘lifesaving’ you can do I feel like, outside of just pure healing
Yes, they’re live saving
But
IIRC correctly, the only things that count as life saving are killing an opponent that had CC’d another one
Example
Kill rein after he shatter
Kill Mei after she freezes
Kill mccree after he stuns
Kill hog after he hooks
Etc