thought about putting this up because skimming through some posts this morning i get the sense that some people have a very warped idea of what this game is supposed to be…so i thought its worth laying down a framework of what OW is (a reminder) for the people that find themselves at odds with various things in the game
Overwatch is:
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an objective based FPS - pretty straight forward…its an FPS with various game modes where the objective might be slightly different from one map type to the next…but generally speaking the goal in the game is to capture a point and it is not unlike other games out there…dont think anyone has an issue with this really
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its a team based FPS - you play with others against a group of people (in some cases it is literally a group of people - you can group)…simply put youre not playing this game by yourself…the game experience is dependent on what everybody is doing
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its a hero based FPS - what you can do in a game is determined by who you play…and in this game in particular you have the ability to switch that up at any point in time…the game can look and feel extremely different at any point in time depending on what is being played (high variability - unless youre a meta-slave)
why do i think its important to mention this? because too many people i feel have lost sight of what the game is…and what you end up seeing on here (and other places) all the time is that LOTS people are not actually trying to play OW…theyre trying to play “their version of OW”…
ie - X is an issue not because theres something wrong in the game or because the game doesnt provide a way of dealing with something…X is an issue because people arent willing or arent interested in actually playing the game
the simplest example (with #3 at its center):
countering/switching/maining/one-tricking (theyre all related) - you see people come on here ALL the time complaining that some heroes make playing other heroes impossible and/or not fun…which is absolutely, 100% correct…some heroes work really well against others (this is also 100% unavoidable btw)…which is why the game allows you to switch what youre doing whenever you want to change/improve the situation…but some people dont like doing any of that…ie - “problem”
its a “problem” even though the game itself has a built in way of dealing with it…the actual issue is that you choose to play the game in a very specific way that places limits on the experience you can have…which is fine btw…theres nothing out there or in game that says “YOU MUST SWITCH”…but that doesnt mean theres something wrong with how things are designed/balanced when youre actively choosing not to use the thing the game provides to deal with that very issue…the problem exists for YOU…
the game is meant to be variable…its up to you if you want to do that or not
same goes for the team aspect of the game…
the team dynamic is fundamental to the outcome of the matches…its fundamental to how the heroes themselves play and are balanced (think of someone like sombra or sym)…its fundamental to your competitiveness/rank (99.999999% of every high rank player ive ever seen uses comms - something which i barely ever see in gold lobbies)…you got stuff like comms, ping system, lfg (back in the day), role switching (before RQ)…all sorts of things that are available to everybody and exist to help improve that team aspect of the game but many dont bother using…but instead what you tend to see is every variety of “if a team does really well then clearly there must be something insidious and/or its the games fault” (usually balance or matchmaker or blaming others)…
like heres something you may have heard before…“why is the game balanced around upper brackets (or even OWL) when most people dont play the game that way”…
for which the answer is very simply put: cause you balance the game around the way its meant to be played with all of its tools being used…and part of improving and being better at the game is you taking advantage of said tools"
you can aim to take advantage of that…or not…its up to you
now none of what ive written above is there to claim that this game is flawless and everybody is crazy…the game has PLENTY of issues and my god if we were to sit here and make a list it would dwarf this already lengthy post…
but there have been sooooooooooooooooo many posts over the years that Ive read for which the only real conclusion i can draw is “youre not actually trying to play OW” or “just what the hell are you expecting out of the game?”…
theres OW…theres Bobby’s OW (ie - OW2)…and then theres w/e some people think its supposed to be
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