The REAL reason OW lost it's fun

General Discussion
1

The game was once accessible. Each hero felt unique and powerful in their own way—you didn’t need to have amazing aim to enjoy playing. Period.

Many of us had friends who weren’t the best at FPS games, but they could still contribute by playing heroes like Mercy, Reinhardt, Torbjörn, Symmetra, and Winston. But gradually, the game started leaning toward elitism. New heroes increasingly required good aim, and even some older heroes who originally didn’t were reworked to depend on it.

Heroes Felt Unique

Torbjörn used to be all about his turret. That was his thing. Playing Torb felt like a different experience—you’d pick him, place your turret, tend to it, collect scrap, and give your teammates armor. It was a unique concept and made Torb stand out. Now? He’s been reduced to just spamming projectiles, and his unique playstyle is gone.

Symmetra was all about her teleporter. You’d find strategic spots to hide it and protect it with sentries. Now, she’s just another DPS in the fray with a beam like Zarya’s.

That was the game people loved—the game that won Game of the Year in 2016.

What Do We Have Now?

Now, it’s like Call of Duty with cute heroes. Either you’re good at aiming, or you might as well not play. It’s as if the message is: “We don’t want you messing with our MMR.” And this is coming from an Ana main! Ana, Widow, Ashe, Zarya are among my most played heroes. But I can’t stay quiet as the core spirit of the game is slowly being washed away. We’re losing a huge part of the community—our friends who used to jump in just to have fun, regardless of skill level.

Balance Issues?

Sure, balance issues will always be there, and players will always complain. But that’s no reason to sacrifice what makes each hero unique. Making every hero play the same might solve balance issues, but is that really the path we want? It feels like that’s exactly where the game is headed.

Can We Blame the Overwatch League?

I think we can. Ever since it launched, the developers started balancing the game around that ultra-high competitive level. But they overlooked a critical detail: most players aren’t pros. The majority of us play a completely different version of the game. Balancing solely for the elite tier comes at a huge cost to lower and mid-tier players, who make up the bulk of the player base.

Then came the reworks. What the developers didn’t consider is that if the game becomes less fun or, in my opinion, inaccessible to the average player, people will simply stop playing. And if they stop playing, they’re certainly not going to be tuning into Overwatch League matches.

Overwatch became popular because it was fun and welcoming for everyone. It’s that broader community that fuels its popularity—not just the high-level gameplay.

39 Likes
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I think you dont understand how games evolve. You still have those heroes and especially with the S9 changes it made the game easier to play. The main reason why the game is different than it used to be is that the people who play the game learned how to play the game and what to do. You can compare OW currently to what it was in 2016 or 2017. The general skill level has risen and what in 2017 master was is now around gold level gameplay.

Watch old gameplay footage and you will see that people were just worse. The longer a game is around the more skillfull the average player becomes, because of the knowledge that is around.

If you refuse to learn, you will stay behind, until you are at the bottom of the barrel.

And quite limited. Current Torb is much stronger and more “mobile”. If you had old Torb in the game, he would be unplayable.

And now its even MORE about the teleporter and using it often and as a team.

A lot of people are NOT good with aiming and OW still provides a lot of oportunities for those people.

You know what supports are meta currently? Brig and Juno. Brig needs no aim at all and Juno also just rudimentary.

Just because Widow is running wild in one season, does not mean that OW is suddenly an elitist game. You should calm down.

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3

That is simply not true. OW2 is all about Aiming and “SKILL SHOTS”

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4

What heroes have really changed that make them way more aim focused now? Plus we got the bigger hitboxes now making it more forgiving than ow1.

5

Yup, a lack of Eudamonic Happiness.

  • https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/feeling-it/202409/there-are-two-types-of-happiness-but-only-one-lasts?amp
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I feel as if you need less aim to enjoy the game now than you originally did. The projectile size changes helped a lot with making the game more accessible.

The game is definitely more homogenized, but there are still standouts such as Reinhardt. That’s more than enough for me, at least.

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I agree with this. Aiming is a skill that can be learned, and if you learn it well in OW, it rewards you with access to more heroes.

I was a Symm main and even I had to learn aiming thanks to Skyline’s YouTube guide.

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Aiming is an important skill, but positioning, timing, teamwork, synergy, combos and other stuff is much more important. You dont need to be crazy in terms of aim to be good at OW.

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9

To some extent I can agree, but I’d argue that in the pursuit of competitiveness the ‘skillful’ aspects of the game had power boosted, so they had to balance with that in mind. The result is that easier/simpler kits can feel less impactful aside from a few outliers.

Imo it’s fine for “low skill” heroes to have power, just make them have clear downsides and moments of vulnerability .

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Hey I hate to break it to you but overwatch has always largely been about aiming and skill shots. Heroes with low mechanical requirements are the exception and always have been.

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It’s interesting to think how ranged instakill heroes are kinda, anti-teamwork.

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Maybe a bit off topic, but in many ways it’s true. It takes a lot more teamwork to take them down than it does to play one shot heroes. When sojourn was op what teamwork did that really take. When she needed mercy pocket for one shots, again what teamwork did that take. Widow takes very little teamwork to peel for her either.

To actually kill them you sometimes need 2 maybe 3 people to cut through the pocket healing that they get which is often very easy to output.

In my mind this is one of the core issues that one shots have had. Why work with your team when you can just, by yourself, get a pick. Or if you do need your teams input for the one shot it’s often minimal and easy to achieve

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While I agree that Sym is now just a bootleg Hanzo or weaksauce Zarya, Sym before her rework barely used her TP outside QP or low ranks.

Preach.

Widow at her core is an anti-OW hero. OW is about teamfights, about every hero contributing in their own way.

Widow not just dominates the enemy team, she can basically always ignore her own team. She can be shoehorned into any comp, even the comps that allegedly counter her.

Dive counters Widow? More like Widow joins Dive.

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The real question here is how to determine what is ‘‘low/high skill’’.

Some people swear that Sym 2.0 was a low tiers brainless hero, despite not being played in low ranks and being considerably more complex and difficult that many other DPS heroes.

Am I supposed to believe that shooting at legs with Soldier 76 (and being rewarded with 250+ burst in 1s) requires more skill that blocking an ultimate or a flashbang with Sym’s moving shield? Or that Torb players being able to stop Hog oneshots by throwing an armor pack right in the hook’s path?

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Juno don’t require aim? Just as much as any hitscan hero.
Brigg being the only added hero with no aim requirement, we can clearly see a trend.

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Monke?!?!?!?
20 char

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I don’t think it’s too bad really. To me it’s a balance of three things: how difficult is it to use a tool, how often can it be used, and how effective successfully using it is.

I like what League does by creating balance levers with timers, hitboxes, and skill cost.

More skilled players tend to hold on to skills until they’re needed while lower skilled players use them almost on cooldown. So if a champion is doing too well in lower ranks a nerf that affects that rank more than higher ones would be to increase the cooldown and or the cost of the skill slightly.

On the opposite end of the spectrum higher skilled players tend to hit skill shots more often so a nerf to that end would be to make the hitbox smaller. Lower rank players already miss their shots/combos so it affects them less, but more accurate players take a bigger hit.

More general balancing can be done using health, damage, and/or healing.

Of course there will be some overlap or edge cases, but in general I think those are good rules to go by.

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The approach you took to the discussion at hand is so well thought out and logical that I am honestly really shocked to find this sort of reply in OW forums in 2024.

I think that you are one of the few people here that I have seen acknowledge not only the mix of different skills that comprise the broader ‘‘skill’’, but also its mix of mechanical and mental skills too.

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The sentiment is appreciated.

Before the corpo emptiness machine got to me, I dreamed of being a game designer.
I still listen to tons of talks and keep up with different ideas.
Somewhere deep inside I still hope…
[looks at dusty ideas notebook]

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Juno requires more aim than 80% of the supports lol

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