Tanks are the reason Overwatch failed

General Discussion
1

This is going to be an extremely controversial take but the reason Overwatch failed is because of its diversification of balancing. Specifically tanks.

There are a ton of “team” based FPS games on the market but Overwatch plays incredibly differently from the majority of them.

Most other team based FPS are teamed based simply because they require coordination with the rest of your team. The specific character you play is less important.

Overwatch is different. Not only is coordination with the rest of your team incredibly important but half the battle is simply which character you pick from spawn.

Open queue can be fun but does not work in a competitive sense because of this fact. In Overwatch a team without a tank is not a team.

Requiring a tank, support or DPS in a team is fine but the problem lies with how each category is balanced.

In Overwatch, a tank is not simply a hero with defensive abilities. A tank is a hero with 300%HP and 300% larger hitbox.

This diverges balancing massively, with this setup it is basically impossible for players to have remotely the same level of impact on a game.

At least with support and DPS, all heroes have a similar health-pool and hitbox. This makes the game more consistent across the board and is closer to a lvl playing field.

Tanks throw this completely out the window. The game is no longer even remotely a lvl playing field. The team is purely based around your tank/s.

This is Overwatch. Sadly, it doesn’t work that well. It is great when you are in a pre-made but in my 6 years of playing I have only had a full pre-made team 3-4 times.

With a team of randoms, you want each player to have a similar level of impact. This is simply because what makes any competitive game frustrating is losing control. When you feel like nothing you do matters, that is when you simply want to log off.

Overwatch is the worse game I have ever played in this regard. The keystone of any team is the tanks, with the rest of the team being the supporting structure.

The problem with this set-up means that teams live and die together. There is no back and forth on which team is winning. 99% of the time whichever team gets the first pick wins that team fight.

This sucks. players want to make an impact. Players want to be able to carry a losing fight but no game makes this harder to do than Overwatch simply because,

Overwatch is not a level playing field.

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2

Yeah, the tanks are so good that… nobody wans to play them. :relieved:

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The trinity system would be insanely hard to work with in an FPS for a competent dev team let alone an incompetent one.

Just having such a large hitbox makes it that much harder.

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OW1 failed because of no content for to long. Stop searching for “reasons”. Its simple as that. It was not role queue or brig or anything else. It was simply no content and outside of events nothing to do.

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In context of Overwatch tanks are not “good” or overpowered. They are simply the linchpin of a team and are by far the most important heroes.

This doesn’t mean that they are more fun to play, quite the opposite in fact in a lot of situations, so I am not surprised a lot of people don’t want to play them.

It is by far the most stressful position on a team and you are also the one that has to take all the BS mechanics in the game, from stuns to anti-heal etc. Your job is to take it and smile.

I am simply talking about in terms of a level playing field from hero to hero, player to player.

Overwatch is massively flawed in this regard. By design.

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The tank issues were largely negated flat out by going to 1 tank… I’d go so far as to say it fixed 80% of the issues surrounding them easily. They are and always have been about space and aggro, not sure you thinking this is “wrong” somehow is quite justified, but I agree at least two tanks caused most of the issues, particularly with two both having shields.

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How so??

It is even more of an issue now imo. 1-tank makes the game even less of a lvl playing field because the tanks had to be buffed even more to do their job solo.

I am personally concerned that competitive might turn into a simple tank players climb and you are just there for the ride.

Any difference between tank skill level on each team is going to have a HUGE effect on the outcome of a game.

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It’s less of an issue because their health is less and there is one of them. One buffed tank /= two tanks in the least. What buffs they got were necessary for one tank, but yeah, in a team game playing around your tank (and Supports and DPS) is the game. Not sure why you think tanks being “tanky” is an uneven playing field… there is now 1 to many for them to deal with. They should overwhelm most DPS or Supports in a one on one…

I assure you Ladder will not be in the least a tank climb, can’t be. All players and roles have more impact in OW2, but DPS/Supports gained more than the Tank role lost.

If two DPS and two Supports and a Tank can’t deal with a tank that is just crap play to be honest or the tank is quite good.

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I hope you are right but I see major issues on the horizon.

Some tanks counter other tanks. Winston into Hog is not a fun time for example, so it is paramount that your tanks switch to an effective hero to counter or mirror otherwise automatic loss. This is slightly less of an issue with 2 tanks.

The other problem is still difference in skill. I think it is unarguable that no single player is going to have as much as an impact as the tank player. The tank player is going to be the most powerful and most important hero.

If your tank is losing 8/10 times to the enemy tank. It is going to be an incredibly hard up hill battle for the rest of your team to even have a chance of winning.

Yes. 2 DPS and 2 supports should easily be able to kill a tank but you are completely ignoring the fact that 1-side will still have the tank advantage.

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I would argue that healers are way more important because killing them means killing the supply chain.

Tank without good healers is dead tank.

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yes and no. ow1 failed 100% because the team balance used a terrible logic to balance the game. they balanced the game with this logic “buff the counter to fix the problem”. creating a massive powercreep and never fixing the problem.

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This is the answer. It had nothing to do with tanks whatsoever. Nevermind that supports are actually the most impactful class. It wasn’t supports either. It was simply lack of meaningful content over an extended timeframe. People got bored!

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100% this. The fact that tanky DPS like Cass or Mei pisses apparently everyone off should have been a good indication that there were issues, and with one tank it’s never been more apparent. Hoping the devs will realize this and start distributing spatial control tools and responsibilities across the team, because the impact it has on support queues means that the game’s future truly depends on it.

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arent you a hanzo main? the most anti tank hero in the game rn

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Depends, if they threw in the CC removals and knockback resistance for Tanks into OW1, I could assure you that double barrier wouldn’t be meta.

Since those features were acting as offtanks, in the absence of a Tank that’s an offtank.

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Is more ‘‘Ana’’ made overwatch fail since tanks are unplayable because of her and the tons of other ccs-

fixed

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True but supports are only so important because of how important the tanks are.

In a game with only DPS and supports, is still very easy to burst down players, they don’t have a big enough health-pool to actually take full advantage of the healing.

Tanks are the odd ones out in Overwatch. They massively diverge from standard balancing because they have to due to their massive hitboxes.

The point I am trying to make is that when a game is built around not having a level playing field like Overwatch is, it means each and every player is incredibly reliant on the rest of your team.

One domino falls and the entire team falls. This is not as severe in other games because of the level playing field aspect.

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If that ever happens the burst dmg dps will be OP.

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The reason that overwatch fails is the whole bunch of no skill charaketrs like Mercy.

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Hanzo does perform good against most tanks but doesn’t mean I am going to solo them.

If it is me against a tank on point, I would have to play incredibly well to be able to beat them and it would depend on which tank but the vast majority of the time I will lose and I should lose because that is how Overwatch is designed.

Which is the point I am trying to make.

Lets say all heroes were McCree. You got 2 enemy McCree’s on the point, against 1 other McCree. All other players are dead

In this situation, it is feasible for that 1 McCree to win. He could get god-mode aim and carry.

Current Overwatch doesn’t allow this remotely because it is not a level playing field. If there is even 1 tank alive, you are not going to be able to carry simply because of the health-pool difference.

It is an aspect of the game that takes control away from the player. It doesn’t matter how well your perform in the situation. You will lose.

Other games don’t operate like this.