Players of Overwatch need to acknowledge that aim is a skill

There’s that one dude who’s a former CSGO player who picked up Overwatch after a very long time and he had zero gamesense, not even knowing abilities of the character. He got to diamond with his insane aim as far I know, but that’s the point where a person has to really start to hone their game sense to climb higher to masters and gm.

Then there’s streamer named Violet who got to support rank 1-3 with brigitte accounts and brigitte is certainly not a character who beats the rest in aim ability, nor is she strong enough any longer to cheese into higher ranks. And yet the streamer has also great brigitte mechanics and very good game sense that got them so high.

There is mechanical skill without aim requirement too, even if aiming is part of one’s mechanical skill. I would argue that overall mechanical skill is vastly more important than pure aim point and click skills. Even great aim widow is not going to beat other widows in 1vs1 if they don’t master their footwork. Great aim widow will beat other widows even less if they don’t have game sense. Far too frequently I see widows who get beat upon when they get dived and they don’t even bother to come to me for heals and just die on their lonesome. Even myself with my garbage aim can beat proficient, practiced widowmakers if I get better positioning. And all I need is to get lucky with aim, it happens more than you think and it’s not exceedingly difficult to kill someone if you got oneshots.

Sustained damage is far, far more difficult to score kills with than burst.

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I stopped reading here.

Not even going to bother at this point.

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I wouldn’t even say that. He has native FPS game sense from playing FPS shooters at a high level, and a lot of that is transferable, which I guarantee helped him get even that high. But yeah, there is stuff he’s missing–cooldown tracking/management, composition coordination, etc. Diamond is where the game really begins to stress the necessity of higher level skills like communication and team play, so if you don’t have those, you’re going to really hit a wall. This is where I think MOBA players have a bit of an advantage, and why salty aim elitists who don’t adapt to the reality that Overwatch is a different kind of game find they struggle in higher ranks because (speaking as someone who came from a lot of FPS games like Halo, Destiny, Battlefield, and CoD) those skills aren’t as critical in traditional FPS games. It’s a lot easier (in my opinion) to improve your mechanical skills like aim to a satisfactory degree than higher-level skills like game sense, communication, etc, too, so MOBA players are just coming in better equipped than FPS players, which I suspect is part of the fundamental motivation behind threads like these.

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A skill, adam. Not the only skill.

Do you mean ever player, or every hero? Because the two things are very, very different. Every player pretty much does require some level of aim. The only exceptions to this are support players who play Mercy and Moira exclusively, and tank players who play Reinhardt and Winston exclusively.

…and it’s good that there are heroes in the game that don’t require aim because there are people who physically cannot develop the skills necessary to learn high levels of aim, and it’s nice to see them included for once (my brother is one such individual, for instance, and I like playing games with him from time to time).

They already are. Don’t act like they’re not. Crits are a thing for a reason, and you main freaking Widowmaker. You’re rewarded for aim. In fact, you main a hero who is rewarded for having nothing but aim more than most heroes get rewarded for having aim, positioning, and game sense.

She’s one of two supports with relaxed aim requirements, and she was put in-game for a very specific reason: To keep Genji in check.

How do you propose we knock Genji down a peg after Moira gets gutted to make you feel better about yourself? Without Moira is goes completely out of control like he was for the entire life of the game before Moira was introduced.

Pure hyperbole. All of it.

In a meta seen across all skill brackets (something that never happens) that specifically hard-counters her, she sees play. She sees play and a positive win-rate in all brackets above the mean of the normal curve (plat and above).

Her pick-rate is a bit lower than normal, but again this is a meta that supposedly hard-counters her, and she’s still picked more than a number of heroes who should be capable of performing better against double-barrier than she can.

If you can aim, Widowmaker will reward you for it by completely invalidating the enemy’s strategy. Run two barriers and stay behind them for protection, and she can grapple around your flank and still get a pick, and there’s not a damn thing you can do to stop her if her player knows what they’re doing.

She is very rewarded for being able to aim.

Never, because it’s not a balancing factor.

It’s a meta-requirement. Once you put in the practice and learn the aim necessary, you are no longer balanced.

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And if an easy hero counters a hard one, the hard one is rendered useless.
Having soft counters with proper counter play among equals is a thing, having too rewarding easy heroes is another.

Yeah, about Roadhog… He used to be the worst designed hero in the game for quite a while, but then Doomfist and Brigitte happened.

GM players are also much harder to hit.

But in pure shooters everybody has to aim.

Yeah, she is pretty useless, just like the vast majority of DPS heroes.
Tanks and supports are way too oppressive with their no aim abilities.

Just kill Genji…

The only thing that’s like actually good about Genji is dragon blade, which is kind of what Reinhardt has as a main weapon, so all melee heroes need to be gutted too for the same reason.

15 out of 16 dps heroes are very weak.
I called that role lock will inflate the stats of dps and people will use that to avoid facing the massive cross class imbalance…

And then there is Orisa rewarded more for putting a bearing ball on the E key.

Getting good is not balanced! You heard it here for the 10000th time!

Even when he plays in Platinum with me and my buddies, his aim is worse. Find a better excuse.

Which doesn’t defeat my point at all…? Even in games where aim is valued disproportionately more, where team-focused skills are highly devalued, aim is still not such a critical skill that it makes or breaks your performance. In Overwatch, which specifically strives to not overvalue a single skill like many FPS games do, that’s even more true.

There’s been no meaningful argument that aim isn’t a skill or that it shouldn’t be rewarded. That’s a complete fantasy propped up from aim fetishism. Seriously, it’s laughably dishonest. Wanting other skills to be rewarded / wanting heroes who depend on multiple skills to not be devalued by a hero who largely depends on just aim =/= thinking aim is not a skill and that it shouldn’t be rewarded.

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Its a skill, its just not the hardest or most important one.

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No no no. You can’t use this. It’s already a trademark of Spamrat™

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Skill requirement is NOT a balancing factor if something is OVER POWERED. IT IS TOO POWERFUL REGARDLESS OF HOW YOU DO IT. Jees man, look the damned word up. I dont care if you have to do a flying rubics cube first, the result is OP. Its about the result, not the process.

Cool, you admit that the OP thing i said was OP, but still required aim. You also said that if things required aim, they COULDN’T be OP. Which one is it?

Yeah, uh, i’m talking about variance. A widow 1v1 can dominate an entire team fight, don’t you want it to be fairer?

Yeeah, i’m calling 1 in 3 high, because it is. Bad beats good 1 in 3 times. Shouldnt that be lower?

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This is even more true for Moira LOL. She outvalues every support by far…

Hanzo needs good aim, arguably more aim than widowmaker if he wants to be consistent.

And if a hard hero counters an easy one, the easy one is rendered useless.

You’re talking about standard pick-counter-pick mechanics.

The big problem that you don’t want to face because it hurts your argument is that skill-based defenses have the same problem as skill-based killing: You can out-skill your counters if they have limits and you do not.

What you want is to be able to play Widowmaker in every scenario, on every map, in every comp, against every possible counter-comp and always dominate. That is what you are asking to be able to do.

If there is give, there must also be take. Widowmaker, like all aim-reliant heroes needs limits to what she can do so that other heroes that operate under different rules have room to be played.

Aim requirement is not a balancing factor. It never has been and it never will be because skills like aim are persistent. If a hero is weak when your aim is bad, and strong when your aim is good then that hero is strong. Not “balanced”. Not “weak”.

Strong. Because once your aim gets to the necessary level, your aim won’t ever go away unless you cease to maintain it and get rusty. You will start games strong, and you will end them strong. At that point, the hero in question is strong, and the only way to “nerf” them through aim is to replace the player with someone who doesn’t have enough aim to make them work as well.

The vast majority of dps heroes are rendered useless by widowmaker.

Why take soldier:76 when you can take widowmaker instead and get more killing power, faster, with more mobility?

Why take genji when you can take widowmaker instead and get kills during the poke phase where genji would merely be charging his blade?

The moment barriers go away again, we’re going into dual sniper and Widowmaker will be replacing every other DPS again. Only this time the other team can’t pick goats and play the objective. They have to have 2 DPS squishies that she can one-shot, which means mirroring since dive doesn’t counter her (because Grapple is too good).

That’s why they made Moira.

JFC dude. How about you just say what you really feel, that OW should just be all snipers all the time?

DF is strong because he ignores barriers. That’s the only reason.

Once barriers go away, Widowmaker will once again invalidate every other DPS hero in the game. Just like last time.

Do you smell toast or anything? Because this makes zero sense.

Nice. If something proves you wrong, just ignore it! You remind me of president cheetolini.

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But you should, because basically what you said is that “good players are overpowered”

Aren’t you among the crowd that’s here to tell me that aim isn’t the only skill?

Actually, it isn’t, that easy hero can still be used at skill levels, where people can’t play the hard hero efficiently.
Though I’d agree that hard counters are bad game design, but so are easy heroes…

I’d love to have more high skill cap heroes you know.

I’m currently also defending heroes like Tracer and Genji that counter Widow…

That’s like the point of getting gud, and competition.

Because he has consistent and much higher sustained damage, with some nice utility here and there, like healing, and a few seconds of literal aim bot.

Genji is a dive hero, of course Widow is better at poking.

No, Moira was made because people failed to kill Genji, even though the existing supports were already very much capable.

FYI the first golden gun I bought was Genji’s.

Yeah, you probably read why I think Doomfist is broken, so I’m not going to repeat it.

And that never really happened. If anyone invalidated any dps, those were the healers, who really hurt sustained damage heroes.

“Easy” is relative.

Mobile heroes counter aim-intensive heroes. For Genji or Tracer, it’s incredibly easy to duel an Ashe, because it’s harder for Ashe to hit them.

Mobile heroes are countered by heroes who require less aim. Genji has a problem fighting Moira because his main defense is rendered useless.

Heroes who require less aim are countered by heroes who are aim-intensive. Moira has no right winning a duel against an Ashe or a Widowmaker because her ease-of-aim has a hard range cap, like every other easy-aim ability in the game.

That’s how the game is designed, that’s how it works. If you are losing as Widow to a Moira, then the only person at fault is you. You have no business being close enough to Moira at that high of a rank for her to kill you.

You’re only solidifying the idea that you’re not as good at Widow as you like to think you are. Aim is an important skill for Widow, but so is positioning, and it seems to be something you lack.

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Please stop trying to defend your main, who is busted, while you continuously complain about the heroes who give your main issues.

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Nope, i’m saying “good players shouldn’t be overpowered”. Ever. Regardless of any kind of skill, Overpowered means “having too much power” and is not acceptable. Somehow, you’ve got the exact opposite of the message. Why do you think having to aim makes it OK to be OP?

I noticed you removed the double headshot kills the team example because you didn’t have an answer.

Yup, i am - aim isn’t the only skill, but that’s irrelevant to my point. If bad beats good 1/3 of the time purely on aim skill, that’s not a good thing, right?

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Widow and Hanzo are literally the strongest DPS in the game, and over rewarded for aim in a game like Overwatch.

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Except she does win a lot of duels. Immobile heroes have a worse chance at escaping no aim heroes. Never mind that Moira is a mobile hero herself…

20m is gigantic in this game. The maps in OW are really small.

Great, personal attacks.

Good players deserve to have a high impact in the game.
Why is this even up for debate?
This principle is perfectly accepted in symmetric fps games, why would classes change this?
Overwatch is a pvp game too after all.

Skill requirement is a balancing factor. If something takes more skill to do, it should be more rewarding when done perfectly, because people won’t do it perfectly most of the time…

Nope, it’s perfectly fine. It’s a mirror match on high skill cap heroes, it’s as fair as it can get.
Over time, like during the course of a 10 minute game, the damage done will average out on the 1:2 split, whether it’s burst damage or sustained.

I’m not even vaguely debating that good players should have high impact - of course they should. I’m saying they shouldn’t be overpowered. Overpowered means too powerful. Even the best player in the world should be limited to a level that is not too powerful.

Yes, skill requirement is a balancing factor. At maximum skill, players should not be overpowered. The rewards for doing something perfectly should NEVER be overpowered.

I dont think you understand the concept of Overpowered?

Average damage really matter as much when it comes to 1 shots - you hit that shot, the enemy team is instantly at a massive disadvantage. I was talking about duels. Over the course of 100 games, a widow with half the accuracy still wins 33 times. The better widow should dominate, but they dont.

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In a healthy competitive environment, people aspire to match those players in skill, instead of dragging them down…

Actually, it really should. It has to be. Because people will make mistakes, quite a lot in fact.

I’m pretty sure it’s the other way around. You are still confusing good players with overpowered heroes.

They really aren’t… DPS are disposable, one support is enough to keep people alive behind shields, the only time where a pick actually is a massive disadvantage is when a shield tank dies. Now they are actually ridiculously over powered.

They are linearly rewarded for their accuracy, assuming every other variable is the same.
You really should play some instagib. The difference between good and bad players is massive. And it really doesn’t matter that the best player in the worst can get unlucky, and be one shot by the worst.