The change
An obvious issue is that the damage queue is insanely long.
The root of the problem is Overwatch focuses on placing value on damage and the Damage role. Overwatch already has everything they need to fix this issue, are they willing to fix it?
A terrible focus
I learned about how Overwatch came to be by watching videos about the people who originally invented the game and the original concepts for the characters. These people explained that they enjoyed in their history of gaming, choosing their role in a team and succeeding in that role. Unfortunately that idea was not built into the entire architecture of the game.
The entire visible surface of the game is focused on damage and the Damage role. Let’s dig into a few of the most obvious things in this game:
Medals
I am a support main. I have zero hours in both comp and quick play in tank or damage. In support, I have hundreds of hours of footage of raw gameplay in Overwatch – while a majority was recorded at the Gold Competitive level, I do have footage from Bronze up through Platinum. This footage reveals that only three of one-hundred games will another support heal me intentionally. Originally (before 2-2-2), I was told by other support players that they wanted to get the gold healing medal and that by supporting me, this would decrease their chances of doing so. If you check my profile you will see that in more than 70% of competitive play, I receive the gold medal for healing (my Quick Play stats are the same). You can also check my Mixer broadcasts and my footage on my personal website and see this for yourself. Why are people focusing on medals in a team-based game? Is it because the value of medals is presented in Overwatch as higher than fulfilling your role? Yes.
I think this is made clear with my move this season from silver all the way to platinum - I focus on supporting my team over everything else. In one of my placement games (to silver), we won 4v6 because our tanks raged and left. We won completely alone without them (the clip of this is on my personal website) by playing for the team.
Forced 2-2-2
Only more recently has a new reason added to the problem: With the changes of forced 2-2-2 and rewards for queueing for tank and support, damage players regularly queue for support and then play full damage as Moira, Zenyatta or Baptiste. Again, I have recorded video (about 40 of these hours this season) in competitive play in mostly platinum. In this footage I clearly show these people’s profile where 75+% of their time is spent on damage heroes. For these players support heroes, for the most part, these damage players have less than 3,500 healing per 10 minutes, so I am not inventing anything here about them playing full damage. While I am on this topic, these damage players also queue for tank and then play full damage as Roadhog or Wrecking Ball.
There are a majority of damage players in the game, and when they split off into Support and Tank, all they do is make the team lose while it doesn’t affect them negatively since they are a Damage main. I have never once seen a damage main, play either tank or support appropriately, they always focus on damage and their team always suffers. According to my calculations for this season alone, if I were to remove the games where even just the support player was a damage main, my win rate would go up from 56% to 67%. Damage players ruin our experience in the game when they don’t queue for their role.
The kill feed
The kill feed is primarily focused on damage players, and tank or support players that focus on damage or last hitting. There is nothing in the game like this for tanks or supports – they did add things to the feed when Sigma or D.VA eat things like Sigma eating Tracer’s bomb, but seriously we need the kill feed to be redesigned if we want players to understand that value comes from other things than last hitting an enemy. I propose to remove the last hitter from the feed for non-environmental kills or just remove the kill feed.
Play of the game
I don’t need to say anything about this for those that actually play the game, but for those that don’t (e.g: The casters for the Overwatch League). In my 500+ hours of Mercy play, I have got 4 play of the games and all four were completely pathetic and undeserved. I have learned that if Mercy does not take her pistol out, it is impossible to get play of the game (under normal circumstances). I am not even going to say anything about the Moira and Zenyatta play of the games because they are almost always completely terrible. Aside from this, damage players almost always get play of the game and they are always focused on stupid things like how many last hits someone got in a short period of time.
One of the first things that anyone learns in first person games is how to aim and shoot. Focusing on this as valuable is like focusing on English players and how well they know the alphabet. Aiming and shooting is glorified way too much. Overwatch is not a first person shooter, it is a team strategy based game - don’t listen to me, read about it on their own website here.
Aside from aiming and shooting - ultimates that wipe out enemies is also dumb to watch in play of the game. There is no skill or strategy that is interesting to people to randomly shoot off a D.VA bomb or a High Noon and “randomly” hit multiple people and anyone in the world can do it randomly and get it. It is interesting how a team uses strategy to get a High Noon to work, but not worth a single player Play of the Game. The game is team-based and glorification in the game should be based off of team efforts, not damage or last hits of a single person (or more recently, a completely random replay of Moira).
Overwatch League
The Overwatch League is a core representation of all Overwatch’s issues. The number one problem is that watching the live streams is extremely boring. The voice casters randomly verbalize what is going on and give unprofessional opinions that are almost always completely wrong. The focus of every single broadcast is 95% on killing enemies. I have seen multiple times when supports have topped off the entire team which was each below 25% HP during a fight and nothing about it is even mentioned. This happened this morning at least twice and nobody said a word about it, either time. The tanks also ate ultimates and blocked huge potential enemy advantages and again nobody said a word. The stream focused for the vast majority of the time on players aiming and shooting. Boring. If one wanted to be entertained by players aiming and shooting, 24 hours a day, one could login to Overwatch, go to custom games, search for HSO and spectate the game – I guarantee you it is far more entertaining damage play than the Overwatch League.
Everything in the Overwatch League is purely focused on damage. Especially players who get last hits in quick succession. All the MVPs, and 100% of the replays are damage-player centered. I pose this question to Overwatch:
If all viewers of the Overwatch League only ever see and hear about the glorification of damage players that are constantly being broadcast and on top of this hear the casters talk about the mistakes that the tank and support players that are dying to damage players make – do you expect any of these people to even consider being a tank or support player ?
There was one instance this morning in the live stream of Overwatch League where a Tracer was the last one alive against 3 or 4 heroes and the casters said (paraphrasing): “It comes down to this 1v1 Tracer vs. Tracer here…” and Zenyatta killed Tracer and the casters continued, “It looks like [team name] came out on top here…” and they continued on without mentioning that Zenyatta player even existed!
Overwatch is not like other non e-sports which are specifically designed with broadcasting in mind, where the camera can follow the action and give all relevant players credit. Overwatch League needs to rethink how they broadcast the game. One of the ways they could do this is to keep their (99% boring) damage-focused stream up, and add a tank-focused stream and a support-focused stream, or have one stream for each player with a caster explaining the strategies and thought processes of what’s going on. At the very least, split the stream up into one stream for each team, and keep the stream team-focused. Constantly watching damage players is extremely boring and I have no idea what the team is doing and am learning nothing because I already know how to aim and shoot.
Another thing to mention is that overall, everything is highly unprofessional. Casters are regularly unintentionally muted, have lagging connections of their sound and camera, terrible commentary, absolutely terrible opinions - have these casters even played Overwatch before?
Summary
I recorded 340 SR of movement, between gold and platinum; during this move, the average solo queue time for support was 37 seconds while the average duo queue with a damage player was 14 minutes and 11 seconds.
Overwatch needs to restructure the glorification in this game and seriously redesign how they broadcast the Overwatch League if they want to fix their game and their queue. All they need to do is follow what their creators laid out and everything will be perfect.
Can you imagine a damage queue of less than 10 minutes? I just realized that my queue time might rise above a minute if they fix the game… It would totally be worth a 10 minute queue if damage players stop queueing for tank and support.