It’s not Overwatch League that killed the game, nor was it smurfs, balance or queue times.
It’s the distinct lack of individual impact that makes every match infuriating.
The game is clearly balanced around six-stacks with solo-queue being pretty much “whoever is more coordinated and grouped up wins”. MANY pros, coaches and content creators have said Overwatch is way too team-dependent for it to be even remotely enjoyable without a team or group of friends that play regularly, which is a rarity in the gaming population.
In Overwatch 2, supports are now able to defend themselves and tanks are no longer tied to who is going to coordinate with them. The game is going to be balanced around individual play. solo queue is going to be saved.
No, it was a mixture of all of these. Plus the lack of content that came with the development of OW2. That I’ve said many times now, no other sane developer would do to a successful IP.
You do realise it was OWL that created this situation, right? Even the Top500 don’t have the coordination of OWL, which inevitably resulted in hero combinations being nerfed and in so doing killed individual performance at the same time.
The League of Legends community (which, by the way, that game is an absolute behemoth in terms of playerbase) had the same complaints.
And tbh, I feel like you’ve got similar carry potential between both games, both are extremely team-reliant.
As much as people claim to hate not being in control, team-based games offer something really nice–the ability to work together and to have better output because someone else is supporting you.
You put up with times when your team is crap for those awesome times when you work with your team and everyone shines.
(TBH, OW is really just struggling because they put the game in a content drought and made serious issues with heal creep, leading to damage/burst creep, and lowering defenses.)
when u maximally rig away sum1’s agency via forced 50-50 outcomes (in expectation, not winrate) then you are algorithmically deleting what someone should “naturally” affect over the contest. All of SBMM promotes this. It is well known in online comp gaming circles ez research ez results.
it’s plain as day even to my 3 y.o. but aaron and scott just don’t get it. can we pls let them go yet? they haven’t shown up for work in years…
profit over playfair i guess.
I agree and OW2 should have a bit more of this while still having team play.
A team based FPS game that has carry potential still has team play.
In many team FPS games like Valorant, CS:GO, Battlefield, Unreal Tournament and a bunch of others, you can carry if you are good enough, but also the teams that have better team play win matches more often than not.
So both are important.
In Overwatch only team play is required to win matches almost all the time. It isnt 50/50.
Its rare when you can actually carry without heavily relying on teammates.
Yes a DPS can carry sometimes in OW but what isnt mentioned is that the DPS is usually being pocketed by a support and usually also getting help from a tank like DVA matrix protection, etc.
Having carry potential doesnt mean you suddenly have 0% team play.
finally sum1 understands. teamplay can mean “i count on you to hold 1/2 the map and not play clumped in the choke like every scripted all-in ult bot”. winning duels on the flank with 0 resources is absolutely helping ur team.
sumhow i kno this but im bot500 and others dont kno this?
it’s a mixture of a lot of problems, owl was one of them and blizzard balancing around good to watch and not good to play.
But the rest is general blizzard attitude where they just rotate the meta around with sudden ridiculous buffs and nerfs on day and barely any meaningful change the next.
Also, blizzard is disgustingly overbearing in imposing how “we’re supposed to play the game” adding extremely harsh nerfs and removing everything that is unintended, while enforcing. Remember when they started randomly ban heroes instead of implementing a proper hero ban system like EVERY OTHER MOBA/HERO SHOOTER?
But i’d say that is the main issue for me. Some people will say “duh it’s a TEAM game”, but they are missing the point. Overwatch is just too much.
Also another issue is the lack of ways to countrr heal/shield spam. Games like paladins have systems in place to prevent stacking of these two and all shield and heals are balanced rather well around it.
Okay, but, the game was huge for like 3 years. Clearly people didn’t mind being part of a team and playing their small part in a big victory. If that sort of egotistical, self-important attitude has always been predominant, then the game would’ve been dying much sooner after launch. Something else happened, and I think it started with Brig and culminated with Sigma.
not really.
sure 1 less tank means 1 less potential flanker overall (and 1 less peeler possible overall), but in
making all tanks more yolo aggro you increase the likelihood of 1 tank being up in your face; and
culling essentially the only 2 tools to deal with that (sustain and cc), you increase the severity of a dive tank flanking you.
like you’re not going to give a support so much burst that they can reasonably threaten out a tank with primarily damage alone as it defeats the purpose of the direction of making tanks more aggro in the first place.
and that’s just talking about dive tanks, and not yet considered the fact that those points kinda apply to general flankers as a whole.
the “reason” is another: to have made OW2 the thief of the updates that could / should have arrived in OW1. The ping system, a more functional interface in the signals, arranging the current 32 heroes to prepare them to welcome new heroes without “breaking” the matches … where are they ending? all in the big OW2 container, already extra big with the announcement of the PVE content.
The biggest fear of this beta is that the general impression will be that 2 and a half years have passed since the announcement of the game, and you will have the impression of having “ONLY” a new hero and other maps when over the years previous there was a consistency of 3 maps and 3 heroes per year. The rest is still a top secret project closed in a drawer of the Blizzard offices, returning to ask us for the umpteenth time “why the Overwatch story campaign could not have been there since its dayone?”. The answer is the frustration the community associates with Overwatch Esports, which is now becoming a publicity tournament.
but all of the points you made (that i quoted) essentially apply to OPEN, TDM, etc. It’s a faster tempo with more self-reliance more micro-driven agency less all-in blatantly obvious ult-dump scripts etc. better hero-shooter gaming.
i absolutely welcome faster 5v5 pewpew 222 is clunk by comparison
