(Skip if you just want the improvement methods)
Before I make my points, let me give you some context on my personal ambitions regarding the game. The instant it came out, I fell in love with it, and went from a starting SR of low gold to 3519, when I stopped playing consistently. School came around, and it was hard to put in the effort to improve, something I admittedly am at fault for. I loved this game so much, everything about it, that I made an oath several months ago that I would attend a LAN event as a spectator before I was 20 (I’m 15 right now) and that I would win a LAN event before I was 25. Thanks to a very VERY toxic and divided community, questionable balance patches both for and against DPS players, I feel this dream of mine slipping further away every single day. The purpose of this post is to make sure people don’t have to face what I’m going through, and that young aspiring players can someday make it in the big leagues.
Fixes for Competitive
Role Queue : I believe there were rumors regarding that this was going to be a thing, which is great, probably a good first step. I would also recommend a more in-depth role queue that would allow someone to highlight what heroes they play particularly well, and ideally, each team’s roster would be able to play all heroes.
Punishing, or at least penalizing toxic one-tricking : One-tricking may work as a “fun” tactic for the subject, but as an objective tactic, you may be getting your supposed $40 worth and losing, but you are also ensuring that others cannot get THEIR $40 worth and enjoy winning. Potential punishments or penalties I think of are probably not to the length of suspensions/bans, but probably things like lower XP, or maybe even tweaking the SR systems to lower SR gain for people who play exclusively one hero. I speak from the perspective of someone that, if offered the choice, would play exclusively Genji, but it has become a problem.
Promoting Flexibility - Generally speaking, being able to master most of Overwatch’s roster likely shows a better in-depth understanding of the game, and in most cases, better mechanical play. Ideally to me, the more heroes you mark as “playable” and actually delivering in terms of stats would grant the most SR gain.
Tiered Ranking Systems - Think of something like League of Legends or Rocket League, in which players are divided into further smaller subdivisions within their ranks, therefore removing the possibility of someone that is on their Master’s promo match getting matched with someone that has just won their Diamond promo match, therefore helping get rid of the whole “bad teammate” call. Admittedly, this probably is not a permanent solution, but I believe at the very least, it would help.
Mandatory Commendations - This is more so unnecessary, but I would like to see how it performs. When finished with a match, one gets a notification at the bottom of their screen on commending their teammates. I forget this half the time, and I’m certain many people do too. So, why not something like League of Legends, which when leaving the game, brings up your teammates and you commend whichever one you like, and as Overwatch uses a different system, commending not only one, but perhaps those you actually enjoyed playing with.
Advice I offer to Blizzard as a player
Show that you hear us : As a Genji player, I hate Brigitte, simple as that. Obviously, just me bringing up that fact is not going to get anything changed, but it is in my belief, or at the very least, in my observations which may be a bit narrow that a staggering majority of players hate Brigitte in her current state over a much smaller minority that believes she is a balanced character. (Keep in mind, I’m just using a personal anecdote, and I also hate Doomfist and Sombra equally.) With this said, I beg of you Blizzard, please please PLEASE show that you hear us, and offer your thought process in response to all of this outcry. Also, may I bring up two of the eight core values of Blizzard: “Every voice matters” and “Gameplay first.” Let people speak their opinions, and try to keep them civilized, and don’t let the gameplay turn people away like I did.
Sponsor the T2/3 Scenes more : Let’s look at Valve, who supposedly made $4.3 billion dollars in revenue during 2017. They sponsor 2 primary esports, Dota 2 and CS:GO. Ideally, you’d have a Stewie2k story, someone so incredibly skilled that rose out of high-tier pugs and helped North America win their first major tournament. Now let’s look at Blizzard, who sponsor 6 different esport franchises: The Overwatch World Cup, The Overwatch League, Starcraft 2 WCS, Hearthstone Championship Tour, Heroes Global Championship, and WOW Arena World Championship. Admittedly, assuming Blizzard and Valve follow the same percentages for esports to paying their employees, that does leave Blizzard with less money for each esport, which is understandable, as they have produced many large competitive titles. However, instead of keeping on layering more onto the absolute highest tier, how about equalizing a little bit? Obviously, Blizzard should be paying and pushing the highest tier the most, but at the very least, don’t just show the OWL and OWWC in-game. My favorite player, WhoRU, is on a contenders team because of his age, and if your purpose is to show the most talented players, what about the 16-17 year olds who gave up high school in order to pursue their dreams and simply aren’t old enough? Surely a bit more promotion wouldn’t hurt.
Don’t let people’s dreams fizzle out like mine did, and make a game that people can enjoy more as time passes, not less. Thanks for reading, now I’m going to play Quake Champions.
They already do punish “toxic” one-tricking via false reports. If you ask me, that is a far greater problem that hurts competitive more by creating an environment where meta slaves call the shots which makes for more boring and monotonous games, worse matchmaking because less players are willing to queue for it, and more toxicity which just ruins games in general.
The game literally already promotes flexibility. My Widow one-trick account is lower than my main because on my main, if something is not working as well, I can swap to Soldier or McCree instead. Ironically those are weaker pick; however, having the option nets me more wins and therefore more SR. It is basically a myth that one-tricking enables you to climb. That only works if you are playing that character at a level higher which is not gaming the system so much as giving the system more selective information. In other words, you are not losing because you have a one-trick on your team, you are losing because you are not playing around the one-trick as well as other similar teams have, or maybe you are just not as good. Who knows? A lot of people think that instantly locking Rein is the solution and on paper, it is; however, depending on the circumstances, maybe staying Genji WOULD be more beneficial. It is all very complicated and circumstantial.
Lastly, as I for whatever reason typed this all in reverse order. Role queue hurts flexibility and promotes one-tricking. Beyond that, it has problems well beyond player actions. Namely inhuman queue times that would occur if you wanted to play DPS which is most players.
I’m not saying the game doesn’t promote flexibility and teamwork, I’m saying the game isn’t punishing one-tricking hard enough. For these people to just go about and ruin other people’s days and matches is something that pisses me off truly and utterly. Instead of “you’ll lose more because you one-trick,” I feel like Blizzard should be breaking out the newspaper and spray bottle.
Okay, hypothetically, use me as an example. I play Widow only on one of my accounts, or at least I try to. If they punish me with SR penalties for doing that, who does that truly hurt. I play mid platinum and let us say the gains are negligible and I start dropping to gold which has just happened naturally from time to time. Do you know what start happens when a platinum Widow (I would argue my personal skill is closer to diamond and my teamwork is like silver which drops me just below where I belong, but perhaps I am delusional)? I start winning games for FREE. Do not get me wrong. I already dominate platinum games; however, a lot of them are smart enough to start running counter comps whether that be dive tanks, flankers because I stay REALLY far back, or double barrier. In gold, it is just open season. I am objectively hurting the game more because the game is artificially lowering me where the other players in the lobby cannot competently handle me. That is not fair.
And experience penalties mean nothing on my one-trick smurf because I am already in competitive and I am only buying cosmetics for one character.
Honestly, even suspensions would not matter as I can just make another account and do the same. And I have. Nothing is going to stop me from playing Widow, least of all my own salty teammates that I boosted or came short of boosting because they were too titled to focus on the game instead of me. I know I am great, but I thought they spent “$40” for the game, not me. I am flattered, though.
If someone is in your comp game, and they’ve been one tricking the entire time, then guess what? They one trick that hero at that level. You have the tools at your disposal (the aforementioned LFG) that you choose not to use. If you’re not using all the options available to you to avoid one tricks, then why would you think they should be punished just because you don’t like their choice?
No, this just becomes free unearned SR. As KangarooKnight already said, the game inherently promotes flexibility by increasing your odds by switching since it’s basically rock paper scissors.
The SR system is already the same as League’s Bronze 1, Bronze 2, etc. That’s why you get both an SR rank and a tier rank, and the system does its best to get a balance between SR & ping when determining matches.
No. Just, no.
Yes. Brigitte was literally designed around countering dive comps, which relied heavily on Tracer and Genji. They’ve already shown that they’re willing to listen to the players because they keep incrementally nerfing her while trying to find the state in which she’s best balanced, which even pros will tell you she’s in a pretty fair state right now. You just want her to be unplayable so you can go back to playing Genji without any real contest.
Yes, absolutely. Blizz is pretty garbage at promoting the tier 2 & 3 scenes, and actually making it a viable way to live while striving to reach the OWL. In physical sports, minor leagues are only able to exist because they’re either tied to academics, or they’re paid jobs, neither of which are being applied to Overwatch’s lower tiers, which will eventually lead to these talents moving onto other games that they can actually make money playing.
Queue, not stack. Many people find solo queue a more enjoyable experience than 6 stacking, and ideally, role queue would serve as a “controlled chaos.”
One tricking someone at that level becomes ineffective once someone switches to a counter of that level. If this person really is a one-trick, they become easy ult charge.
I’m not entirely disagreeing, and in hindsight, it’s a stupid idea to reward flexibility more. I just believe it should grant more success to both the team and the player than how much one-tricking brings down a team.
The SR system doesn’t work clearly within these lines if T500 players are put into matches with masters.
5+6. Consider the context included around these two very specific statements.
I completely agree with the Tiered Ranking system. I was literally just talking about that last week with a friend. There’s a huge difference between someone at the lower end of a rank and someone at the higher end of a rank and even the middle. It’s just way too broad. It could be like Bronze, Super Bronze, Ultra Bronze, Silver, Super Silver, Ultra Silver… You know something to that effect.
Again, you have the ability to control your matches to an extent through the use of friends and LFG. That is 100% on you for choosing not to use it. Your options are to either solo queue and accept the fast that you only have a say over what you pick, or you can use LFG in order to have more of a say over what/who you queue with.
If it was that easy to out-do someone then they wouldn’t be at that level, or at least they won’t be for long. Yeah, it sucks, but sometimes you just have to accept the L and move on while they just keep dropping. Remember that you do have the ability to avoid being put on a team with 3 people. If you run into one of these one tricks then just slap them on the list. After all, strict one tricks are significantly rarer of an issue that some people make them out to be. Not like you’re running into one every match.
Remember that, per Blizzard’s own numbers, Masters is about 3% of the total population, GM is <1%, and T500 is basically in a bracket of their own. Obviously not all of that population is always online at the same time, so it’s fractured even further based on time & location. Yes, there was an issue a while ago where that was more common, but for months now it hasn’t been a problem more than once in a blue moon. The higher tiers of players will often get stuck with the “it may take a longer time than usual to find a fair match” notice, and a 10 minute queue. Blizzard took that feedback and put out the best fix that they could.
Points one and two for fixes to competitive… I dunno, to me seem a little contradictory to an extent. To me a Role Queue would bring up the problem of one tricks even more. With this there wouldn’t be a reason for them to flex onto a different type of hero to make a somewhat balanced team comp. Role Queue as well unless it went super in depth I think would still not give desired results. Along with that, the first post gave a reasoning of perhaps making it to the big leagues in comp. Forcing something like a 2-2-2 might be more hurtful than helpful with a meta being possibly as diverse as now with other options like Goats.
I don’t like the idea of stats being used to see what “Playable.” Stats can vary depending on so many different factors, many being outside of what the player itself can control.
This seems like what shouldn’t already happen in comp with how it should try to put close players as close as they can in SRs together. I feel like having small sub-tiers could cause some people to be even more toxic as its another rank they could lose on a bad day.
Sorry, but I really dislike this idea. If I feel like commending someone, i’ll remember to do it after the match. If someone felt like their team played like crap, why would that player be forced to give false commendations? I’d be worried about giving any kind of player run feedback to players. Even if it was on a number base of how much you enjoyed playing with someone, even on a close loss many people will give whoever they felt was holding the team back very low scores no matter of how their actual performance was.
If Blizzard listened to the community, what side should they listen to? For every hero there are going to be thousands of people on each side of balanced or broken with even more offering different suggestions on those problems. Theres people who think Brig should be nerfed to the ground to the point of deletion and theres ones who think she could use some minor tuning to keep her strong against those she is supposed to counter like Genji but doesn’t turn into a powerhouse against something like Reinhardt. And theres all of those arguments for every hero. It’d be a mess to listen to one part of the community, because then there is still that other large part that they basically say “Hey, your opinion doesn’t matter as much as this other’s. Deal with it.”
I do agree that they should help promote the T2 and T3 scenes like you do, but not for the reasons listed. They need to help it overall but also if they did that would need to push the agenda that being even T2 doesn’t guarantee they’ll make it to the big stage. For younger players it’d be nice if they helped set them up with something to fall back on if it doesn’t work out.
I can relate to that “Widow above one rank”.
Back on S4 I did my placements with only Widow. As I always played QP because me ISP is shiet. I always played the 10 placement matches and stopped with comp. And remember that back on S4, you basically carried your old rank after the placements (no matter how well you performed)?
So, I was a little better after almost half a year.
My intention was actually to derank to bronce, but I didn’t want to be reported, so I thought “well, I’m gonna hit only bodyshots” (in reality, is the only thing that I can do with Widow).
I didn’t take in account one thing.
Low gold can’t strafe.
I ended up as a body-shotter, gold elim, potg Widow.
Even pharmacy was easy.
It was a fail, I didn’t deranked more than 3 SR after placements. But was a very fun fail.
Might not be a bad idea to add in daily/weekly challenges to promote flexing. It sort of works in HotS. The biggest issues that plague this game is the absolute snail’s pace to make any changes and when they happen it’s beyond excessive 90% of the time.
“Why make consistent tweaks when we can just rework it, watch it fail and spend months fixing the mess we made?” seems to be the balance philosophy. They rarely hit it right, and take far too long to adjust anything. At this point I doubt anyone on the team even plays the game anymore.
Actually judging by that survey Magy made it seems that the majority believes she’s balanced 51.9% of the 1000+ survey entries believe she’s balanced, however a large chunk (24.7%) believes she’s overtuned still and 21.1% believe she’s overpowered. So this is more of a split issue where a large chunk of the community believes she’s balanced and another large chunk thinks she’s still too good
tough crowd…