I think the biggest problem with this game is keeping players!
But why is it like that?
If you look at the Twitch viewership over an extended period of time, it’s noticeable that the numbers have declined more than ever in recent years, while the numbers for titles like CS: GO still look pretty stable.
The lack of new content cannot be the biggest problem, because the numbers were pretty stable for a long time although we didn’t get any more new content. I mean, there are enough other games with a stable number of regular players, even without getting new stuff all the time.
I wonder what the biggest trigger is for players to leave…
- Is it any annoying meta?
- I mean, I haven’t played as much on every meta as I did before. All the tank metas in particular were that annoying to me that I uninstalled the game several times and didn’t play it for months.
- Is it 2-2-2?
- I know 2-2-2 is very popular. For me as a flex player, however, it wasn’t that great. Above all, I’m an analyst and tactician. I look at my entire team, try to identify their strengths and weaknesses and then I made suggestions for swapping roles. It was never just about giving myself the right role, I also made suggestions to others. So players then swapped their roles or even individual heroes with another. If you said why in a friendly and quick manner, every teammate was ready to follow the instruction and most of the time we were victorious. We were able to win even hopeless situations.
Well, I understand of course that there are also many players who had bad experiences where no one wanted to play healer or tank. So I understand the reason why 2-2-2 is important. However, it is important to me that these people understand that there are also many players like me who have rarely seen something like this.
And if I now see a tank, healer or dps who is not doing his job, then it means: eat or die! You can no longer optimize the roles and tasks of the individual players. If someone sucks at what he’s doing, then I have to deal with it. Now I can usually say after 2 minutes who will win. I don’t say it out loud and still try to do everything possible to win, but I’m usually right with my assessments, which ultimately makes the whole match seem like a waste of time.
- Queue time is a different story I guess!
- Is it balancing in general? (Well, meta and 2-2-2 are also part of balancing.)
- For me it felt like the balancing got worse and worse over the years. Sure a lot has improved and it feels better again. But I also have a feeling that inequalities between roles are now simply accepted since 2-2-2. If tanks were so overpowered that no one wanted to play dps anymore, this was seen as a problem, whereas today it doesn’t seem to matter because you can’t have more than 2 in your team anymore, and OW2 even goes a step further, even tank mains don’t seem to like that.
- Are there any other reasons I don’t see?
It’s only popular because most players that don’t like 2-2-2 already left. They should’ve kept OQ when RQ was released, but oh well.
For me personally, I’m pretty bored with the game. It’s the same thing over and over and over again. No new content updates has made this game quite stale.
Toxicity is this game’s biggest problem.
And that’s why I quit yesterday.
It is a combination of both: bad balance decisions and lack of content, which just leads to a bad gamming experience as a whole.
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I wish they made subtle changes to the maps, that is all it would take for me. Closing off one route and opening up another totally changes the map dynamics and the way you play.
I am sure they are only quick changes that wouldn’t take up too much developer time. Remove wall, add staircase etc.
Ironically, many find the balance pretty good right now. With a longer time period without new mechanics being added or characters or maps every experimental had the potnetial to put us closer and closer to equilibrium. Overwatch league feels pretty balanced. The top 500 seems pretty good right now.
The only part that feels bad is just lower tier which is more a result of people picking easy to use heroes over riskier harder to play characters. However, the people who are skilled in lower tiers can carry themselves out at some point. Though the lower tiers have ALWAYS been largely about player inability than character power except in a few extreme cases like Reinhardt after shield nerfs, mercy on rework, and just brig in general.
Even if the game is perfectly balanced for the 1% (which I don’t think is) it is meaningless for the rest of the 99% if their experience will remain bad. So ofc most ppl won’t want to have anything to do with the game.
Perfect balance is goal, but everyone should accept it will never happen. Only limit the power between strongest and weakest.
A big issue is people want stuff balanced around their skill level not where it should actually be at which is at the top. One says the top 1% and bad for the rest. Well, the bottom 5% doesn’t care about the 95% of the game either. Nor do usually people who are stuck in platinum care about the plight of people at 75%percentile or the people at 20%percnetile.
‘Balance’ at all levels is impossible and a dumb idea anyway. The lower tier imbalance is only a result of people being poor at the game being unable to use the variation of a character’s kit to max potential. Another person will pick up that character and get great leverage out of them. Is it the character being explicitly bad? No, its the player being poor at it.
The ‘meta’ at bronze is different than the ‘meta’ at gold and is different yet again at ‘GM’. Though the people who are platinum level and certainly raise through the ranks through bronze, silver certainly. Though even the people are platinum probably play a couple of characters a lower level because they lack the ability.
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My friend he only plays skirmish because he gave up playing the actual game, because he gets too angry at his team and toxic towards them
And now he takes Skirmish so serious and even constantly complains about it… so either way this person is never gonna stop complaining, I bet if he even played VS AI he would complain lol
the person in question has been punished so many times to the point where he has like 20+ acct too… people like this person I know will never learn and won’t ever change their attitude as long as they can just get a new account so cheap and easy.
That’s actually a legit concern for those that regularly play that mode. Due to how the AI work its very possible for a few characters to continually wreck a whole mob of AI or for players to actually play in a fashion to abuse the AI making it unfun for everyone else.
Usually, its the result of one person being pretty good (usually platinum or higher) on a character that’s good at mass damage. Pharah can hit multiple AI. A good barrage over their walk path can decimate the whole thing. Sort of out damage other players.
You can’t balance for everyone but you can balance for the majority.
From a business standpoint it makes more sense to balance around the masses rather than the 1% if you want your game to be played at all.
The 99% never feel the full impact of balance changes though. They could dumpster Rein for the 1% and he would probably still be the dominant tank pick for the 99%.
rein barrier now has a 10s cd that starts upon deactivation or destruction of barrier
bet you 100% people in lower ranks are going to feel that one and not just higher ranks.
why does this hypothetical change sound so familiar? look at sym’s tp.
alternatively,
<insert ranged projectile hero>'s projectile fire now has a 25m/s projectile speed alongside a sniper-tier low firerate of 1s charge up.
people in lower ranks will feel that too. also sounds familiar? yeah that’s sym’s orbs.
Well yeah if you made a change that stupid to Rein everyone would feel it, but Symmetra is actually in a fairly good spot right now. She has her niche and she performs well in it. The game would be miserable if Symmetra was a very highly-picked hero.
yes because you are still doing the balance from the viewpoint of the 1%.
If you are going to balance for the masses you will have to think of a change that doesn’t make him a must pick there.
and they legit have made changes that stupid. heck sym’s whole balance history can attest to that, let alone other heroes’.
this is analogous to saying bastion is in a “good spot” right now and “has a niche that he performs well in”. like no.
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simply having a “niche” isn’t enough when objectively a niche is only balanced when the said niche hero is proportionally stronger in their niche for how narrow it is to actually justify how narrow the niche is for it to be worth it.
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calling sym’s “niche” a niche is being pretty disingenuous given how blizz literally nerfed out any reasonableness of her getting decent uptime herself (which various other heroes, even supports and other “utility dps”, can for their respective jobs btw) and forcing her to have to rely on people building comps and active playing “escort the sym w+m1” for her to get decent uptime, much like how bastion heavily relies on a team pocket for pirate ship.
- to make this point more relatable: it’s like if blizz 1 day deleted reaper’s or tracer’s mobility abilities, and so the only way to actually play them decently is to get the whole team to deathball pocket you into effective range for as long as you need to be there to get value, and then subsequently calling that those heroes’ “niche”.
and this sort of mentality is a big factor as to why blizz won’t be able to get balance right.
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Pretty much this, the game is balanced around the top 1% but to everyone else they still have to deal with crap like Widow smurfs, weird Doomfist rollouts, crappy teamwork, Pharmercy, and all the other crappy things that happen in low ELO Overwatch.
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Many of these things I don’t even think are really that problematic.
- Replace the elite sniper player in overwatch and find it plagues like any other game from battle royales to even just 10v10 team deathmatch. That’s kind of been an issue in all shooters. Meanwhile when you don’t get those rare good players ranking up or intentionally bombing rank widowmaker players are proportionate to their level.
- Several team based games there is usually crappy teamwork which generally improves as you go higher in skill. Which most games ‘fix’ by ignoring teamwork even existing and just say play solo and just be good and kill everything yourself. Which Overwatch tries to avoid doing by preventing any person from taking on a 3v1 even against poor players and say I win.
- Pharamercy really isn’t much of an issue for many tier levels either. There are so many people complaining about how ‘bad’ pharah is as soon as people actually swap to double hitscan even as low as like silver. Since poor pharah players are sort of proportionate to poor hitscan players.
So many issues at lower ranks has nothing to do with balance of heroes. It has to do with player issues. Either from knowledge, intentional sabotage, naivety, lack of practice, or poor choices. You rarely balance characters around player ineptness.
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I don’t think twitch viewership is that important. TF2 just had their all time record high on active players last month and is consistently in the top10 most played steam games, while the entire category of TF2 on twitch has like 200 people at average watching.
That being said, OWL moving to youtube streaming was not smart and probably the result of some suits and contracts.
How many of those players are bots though? TF2 still has a massive bot problem.