Yesterday I uninstalled Overwatch (playing it since Ana’s release), and believe me, it was not a very easy choice. It breaks my heart to do it, but I have to express myself to justify my decision. Also, coincidentally, Seagull posted yesterday (I saw it today, so he never influenced my decision) a video on YouTube explaining why Overwatch is getting into trouble, and he actually has some arguments similar to mine. Here are the arguments we share:
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The CC characters, especially Brigitte and Doomfist. Why this? Because of hard countering, and the constant, I mean the CONSTANT feel of unfairness against these characters, specially Brig because of the unbalance with her health (and passive) and the damage she can deliver (this is why Sombra can get free from this judgement because of her low health, lack of defensive passive, or lack of damage burst, even though the Hack is the most broken skill in the game that can also be interrupted). Brig vs Tracer is almost a win for the first. Doomfist vs Ana or Zen, Doom will mostly win. The 21 original characters didn’t have a very extreme CC, maybe except for Junkrat, Mei or McCree, nevertheless, their skill pack was nerfed to a certain fair point. Needless to say, these skills are not compared to the Shield Bash or all the Doomfist’s skills that imply on CC (at least he is having one massive nerf that will help a little bit).
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Hard counters. They make you RELY on your teammates, and if they are not good enough, you die (and worse if they focus you constantly because you will eventually get triggered or you give up playing). Also thanks to hard counters, people NEED to switch characters to become reliable. But the worst thing is that many people (almost everybody), tend to one trick, or use very popular characters (that maybe are already taken by other teammates, making you unable to switch to that specific character), and if you don’t switch, toxicity comes in place. This is really not a good thing if you are solo queueing, and being in a good group is mostly a hard thing to achieve.
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Ranks are a flip coin game. Doesn’t matter how good you are, how hard you try, how reliable to the team you are… it just takes ONE teammate to be bad, to be a thrower, or simply disconnects accidentally, you will certainly lose. This point, in particular, is the one that made me took my decision to uninstall. I was master, halfway to GM last season, now I’m near Platinum, and it was thanks to people I just described. Most people would tell me I’m the bad one, perhaps, but you should know I’m a healer main, and my main concern is to protect and heal my teammates, not kill the enemies. Flex healer, normally using Mercy, Zen and Moira, almost every match I had gold heals. In the case of Moira, even 4 gold medals (and the heals higher than 15k per game, so is higher than the average), so this made me realize that I lost 6 games in a row thanks to the lack of good DPS players, or at least is my bad luck to be queued with throwers, trolls and definitely bad DPS players.
Thanks to these three points, Seagull and I coincide that Overwatch is in real trouble, but it can be fixed! How?
- Stop designing characters with CC abilities (thanks for Ashe! She is the example).
- Rework and stop designing broken characters. By broken I mean: low skill - high reward, like Briggite.
- Rework extreme CC characters, like Doomfist, or give longer cooldowns to these abilities. A good example of a certainly balanced CC character is Wrecking Ball, who’s CC skills have long cooldowns and can be stopped during cast time (Ana’s sleep dart, McCree’s flashbang, Sombra’s hack, to name a few).
- Release characters more often that can counter the actual hard counters. For example, we need a character that offers anti-CC or anti-Debuff (like hack or anti-grenade) to the team. Maybe switch from 3 characters per year to 4.
- Role queue. I guess you are already working on that. This will help me, as a healer main, to get into a team with competent tanks and DPSs.
- Skill level per role. This can be handy with the previous point. People would try to troll, by queueing into a diamond level as a healer, when they have never tried one. So to fix this potential issue, have placement matches for every each role, so things can get fairer.
- Skill numbers to be redefined: A loss equals to -10 points. A win equals +20 points. Simple as that. This to compensate the uncertainty of the actual matchmaking with bad players (this could be rebalanced after seeing if rank improves with role queue).
- Make the postgames cards to really matter. If you get 5 votes or more (yours won’t count now) when getting in a 4+ gold medal or MVP card, you could be saved from readjusting your skill level if you lose. This means that you really did a good job and you DON’T deserve to be punished with lowering your skill level, precisely in that match.
I just wanted to get that off my chest. Sorry for the drama, but is the truth many of us can be experiencing. I guess this is something that can really help Overwatch fix its current issues with rank, the best mode in the game. Thanks for having a platform like this and express how we feel with this beautiful game. Please fix it the best you can, so people like me return to enjoy it to the fullest.
Peace and Love.
