It isn’t balance. It isn’t 5vs5. It isn’t stupidly overexpensive skins. It isn’t that PvE was abandoned or even F2P (although that enables the actual problem).
The playerbase is the problem.
And Blizzard does nothing to fix it because we won’t blame ourselves enough.
Competition: a situation in which someone is TRYING TO WIN something or be more successful than someone else.
I have the day off, I’ve not played competitive for a while and I want to catch up - what do I get?
Tanks on defence that only start moving out of spawn when the countdown starts. DPS constantly rushing in and feeding alone before their tanks have respawned. Some of the most casual people I have ever encountered in the game splitting up and treating the game as free for all - with zero concept of being on a team.
This is mid-gold I’m trying to climb out of, not troll bronze and all I get in reply to any comment about gameplay is variations of ‘idc’ and ‘you’re a loser’.
Blizzard needs to finally:
- explicitly explain to players that Overwatch is a team game requiring co-operation.
- but good news! There are many casual modes (custom, some arcade) people can screw around in - as they seem to want to relax by getting their face stomped in over and over again they can do it there without wasting the time of people wanting to play a game of Overwatch
- competitive is a mode where you try to win - some of you might call it tryhard - if tryhard means to you not switching your brain off and not ‘chilling’ to an fps objective-based team game where you try to kill people then yes it is tryhard.
- a compulsory and this time real tutorial that explains the strategic goals of competitive games (the objective) and the tactics you can employ to win (team gameplay).
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All of that may be true, but if you are better than the rank you are in then you will climb out of it. If you are stuck there then that’s probably where you belong. The other team can be filled with trolls and throwers just like yours. You are the constant and if you can’t climb then you are around where you should be.
I felt the same as you the only time I delved into comp and got stuck in Gold 1 and thought everyone else was bad and holding me back. It then dawned on me that Gold 1 was where I belonged and I was actually just as bad/good as the others, but couldn’t see it.
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Please no, do not turn this into a thread about elo hell, that is irrelevant.
No, cheater infestation and rigged trashmaking* are the biggest problems in this game, everything else is secondary.
I did not cover it but yes cheaters are part of the playerbase problem - people wanting to switch off and still have a warm feeling of unearned dominance.
Rants like these make me feel like i get better teammates in qp than people get in comp.
Maybe i would be able to get past gold if i tried, but it feels very unrewarding to grind that.
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And that is a problem that cant be fixed from the devs point of view. You have to create a game that works with the players and therefore they need to change how things currently are.
5v5 is a problem (but so was 6v6)
Skinprices are a problem
that PvE was abandoned is a problem (even tho it was the correct choice)
All they can do is try to fix the game with balance and MM and bring out content that people enjoy like the Lab and create heroes like Juno, that are not frustrating to play against and people love playing.
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Trash game makes a trash community not the other way around.
Clearly the community wasn’t like this when the game first came.
Why does the game even requires you to win with 4 other idiots to rank you?
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I agree that 5vs5 is a problem, skin prices are problematic, abandoned PvE is a problem - they can all turn away good players.
Juno is good, Junkenstein’s Lab just exaggerated the problems of 5vs5 and it was the only mode where the tank role was the longest queue.
But before all that, ignoring all the side-stuff - look at the base game - can I get some decent games of competitive Overwatch? Winning or losing. No I can’t (well maybe 1 in 10) - and it’s not because of the design of Widow. It’s not that Orisa’s numbers have been tweaked. It’s because of the players on my team, on the enemy team - they aren’t playing Overwatch.
And I’m in mid-gold - where the majority of people are. This is why the playerbase needs instructions.
And yes Hieiko is right the grind is too painful. I played at the start of OW2 sporadically and like many people got put into bronze for the 1st time ever. I didn’t play enough and OW2 seemed to start thinking that’s where I should place - and I’ve climbed easily out of bronze before several times and now start placing gold (was gold/plat in OW1). Leaving bronze and silver is nowhere near as painful as hitting mid-high gold where you are meant to start getting competent players.
I play in low to mid Plat currently, so I think I know exactly what you mean, but the problem is that OW is a very complex game and many people just want to vibe or just dont understand how complex the game is and why something works sometimes and when its not. The thing is that you can make people understand that. Its still a game. A very complex game that looks easy, but still a game people want to play for fun. In the end you need to pray that you get the correct people on your team.
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I’ve expressed this sentiment before
I call it “my overwatch” syndrome….
that is to say that the biggest issue is that everybody has their own version of what they think overwatch should be…and anything that would lead things away from that is a “problem”
You’re a dva player and the enemy has a zarya? Or I like to play mobility type heroes and there’s a cc ability - OMG counters exist and hero balance/design is a problem!!
You like to play behind 1/2 tanks? - 6v6/5v5 is a “problem”
You think you should be higher rank than you are? Or everyone isn’t on the same page? (Impsibru!)- the matchmaking is a problem
You only like to play 3 maps - all the new game modes suck!!!
“This match isn’t going how I want it to go, everybody sucks, im outta here” - leavers/penalties are a problem
Etc etc
Like none of those things are actually issues with the game itself really…but they don’t mesh with how you want to play it - therefore the game sucks
Then add in online player behaviors (trolling, cheating, toxicity, etc)…and yeah…a LOT of the issues with the game are player related ones moreso than game “problems”
That’s really the balance and design issues I was referring to Baja - I think in most mid-level games the playerbase problem trumps balance problems and makes them effectively irrelevant - that is, if people won’t even start to play basic Overwatch.
This is probably one of my top 5 problems.
+99% of the times theres always that one DUDE on defense, that gets to the keyboard the moment the round actually starts, and you will probably lose the first point/fight cuz you were 4v5.
Call me what you want, but theres got to be a more strict timer at least during assembly/prep time.
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Unfortunately it’s not something you can really fix…like if you look back through the years I think people will find that there’s been a surprising amount of changes specifically aimed at addressing player behaviors (with varying degrees of success)…at the end of the day you cant make everybody fall in line though…so most (if not all) of those issues will probably always be there…
and after 8 years of this game now you have to wonder when people will realize that many “problems” are just features…theyre part of the package…they are not getting “fixed”
I’ve played since launch in 2016 and I’ve seen nothing with regards to encouraging teamplay - all the while ‘it’s only QP’ got louder and louder as an excuse to tune in, turn off and drop out - and they take that into competitive.
It’s not about winning and losing (although it is) - it’s about quality games.
It’s clear enough that casuals aren’t playing the same game as people who want to play actual Overwatch - and ultra casuals aren’t even playing a game.
The devs need to stop being coy - explicitly explain the game and funnel the casuals into arcade and custom modes - I’d even be ok with them moving the golden guns over there.
there was lfr for a while…which nobody used
wide groups let you play with friends now
they also reworked respawns to reduce trickling
like there really isnt all that much that you can do to get people to actually play as a group…at some point its on the players themselves to do so…
and to some degree that already happens…its part of the climbing process…teamplay becomes more and more important as you go up the ladder… 
Interesting that Supports never cause any issues. Only those villains in the other roles could possibly do that!
The casual game-modes have competitive punishments for playing casually. The problem is still very much so Blizzard.
Don’t feel left out - dps fake healers like Moiras with 2k damage and 1k healing are very much a problem too.
Biggest problem is the game tries to appeal to casual players in aesthetics and then punishes them with a game with long match times, a lot of losing and rarely fun while losing. I don’t imagine many people want to spend an hour or two after work doing that.
I can get behind that there are even casual players with relatively honest intentions - even more reason to clarify what game modes are best for them and maybe even create some.