This Week's Arcade Modes Disappoint Me

General Discussion
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Well, here we are.
The Anniversary Event.
And for the next week, here’s what I have to look forward to:

  1. Mystery Heroes. The mode that won’t die.

  2. FFA Mirrored… where everyone plays the same hero. The way I see it, I stand about a 3/26 chance of getting someone I’m really good at and like, and a much larger chance of getting someone awful. So far, that’s involved Widow, McCree, and Hanzo. My plan: keep queuing and pray for Junkrat or Reinhardt. Or maybe not queue at all.

  3. FFA Gauntlet: Where I get to rotate through all the heroes… or maybe just get stuck on someone I’m awful at. If I -do- get lucky enough to get someone good and/or score a kill, my “reward” is to move on to someone else. Current plan: Pray this game ends quickly. Or maybe not play at all…

  4. 3v3 Elimination. Another mode where, if I do get lucky enough to do well as a character, I can’t play them in the next round.

  5. Seasonal modes like Lucioball or Junkenstein. Fun, sure, but most of these aren’t ones I necessarily clamor for. Some are gimmicky, some are tedious, and in some there’s no real choice of character.

So tell me, for this first week of the anniversary, whose idea was it to load up the Arcade with modes where we have no control over who or what we play? Modes loaded with randomness, uncertainty, and in some cases, a general lack of fun for many players? Who thought that the best way to celebrate the game’s anniversary and showcase its features was to make it -harder- to play what we want? Who thought we needed this much FFA?

Blizzard, if you really wanted to celebrate this game, you’d bring back the old, interesting brawls once more. I’d rather play actual games with a twist, like “High Noon,” “Charge!” “Tanks!” “This is Ilios” or even “We’re All Soldiers Now.” You know, games with a point other than “hey, who’s the best at killing 20 people in the Chateau dungeon…” There should have been at least one mode where people have agency over what they play. Y’know, like No Limits. No Limits would have been more appropriate, since that’s more of a callback to early Overwatch anyway.

This entire week promises to be a letdown for me, personally. I hope that other people enjoy their FFA Gauntlet or their Sniper Deathmatch, but this just doesn’t inspire me to play much, if at all.

1 Like
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At least Junkenstein is on today, you can finally get those easy loot boxes in arcade without having to slam your head in a dresser drawer out of frustration.

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Me too, man. Me too. I hate FFA, elimination is just as bad, and mystery Heroes isn’t terrible but not my idea of a good time to play 24/7.

As for the seasonal ones, Lucio Ball didn’t really trip my trigger. And that’s a shame, because I really enjoy rocket League. Junkenstein is super fun, but only here for the day. I kind of burn myself out on Yeti Hunter last Wonderland. And, archives is fun, but like junkenstein, it won’t be in the arcade very often.

In short, this week kind of stinks I just hope next week is better.

Also, on a side note, I can’t believe we lost capture the flag for the whole week, just so we could have 2 FFA modes :roll_eyes:

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News flash, OW arcade rotations suck and aren’t worth waiting for!

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Yeah, but quick play gets dull. Comp is toxic as all hell. And custom games, while fun, lack a lot of Basics that the other modes have, like backfill and something even remotely resembling an MMR. Which, can make the games kind of crap. Plus, I heard anything made in the workshop, you can’t gain XP while playing. Not really helpful when you’re trying to farm boxes.

Edit:

Honestly, I hate the fact that arcade only has five slots. And that those five slots can be taken up by very similar game modes. For example, I’ve seen elimination 3v3 and elimination 6v6, in the arcade, at the same time. I’ve also seen multiple mystery modes, at the same time (during LNY, 3 out of 5 slots were Mystery Something or other). And, currently, ee have two FFA modes. It makes your options very limited, to say the least

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I’m really a Mayhem Fanatic, so last week was pure gold for me as far as satisfaction goes. Honestly, I was just hoping there’d be -any- of the modes I find fun to any degree. (No Limits, Team Deathmatch, and Chateau FFA all being acceptable…)

Instead, they found ways to make the stuff I do like feel even worse and unsatisfying than usual. In a game where I’m just not good at so many heroes, anything involving mystery/random/uncontrolled hero-switching just doesn’t light my fire, y’know? I’ve spent a lot of time getting decent at a handful that cater to my personal strengths, why should I have to endure all the ones I -know- I suck at?

Overwatch, where no matter how good you are at what you want to do, or how versatile you are within your skillset, they’ll find a way to make things worse for you.

I took one look at FFA all-Widow, and noped out of there quicker than a cat at a dog show.

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Oh, that sounds like a fantastic idea /s

Great place for all them GM Widows to wreck Bronze players, without even having to Smurf/de-rank. Awesome. :roll_eyes:

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So for reasons I personally hate, I actually played a full round of Mirror FFA, thinking maybe it wouldn’t be too bad after all.

What the everloving hell was that, anyway?
I figured okay, standard FFA rule, it ends at 20 kills and I can get on with my life. Nope, all of a sudden we go from McCree to Soldier. WTF? Is this a bug? No… a minute later, we’re all Zenyatta, and the guy in the lead just keeps pulling further ahead, past 20. When will this nightmare end, I ask? When will death claim me for good?

Another minute, and we’re Ana. Another minute, and we’re Doom-freaking-why-me-fist. And it finally ends. The leader has 42. 2nd place has 24. I’m somewhere down in 7th, only due to pure dumb luck.

And at no point does the description of this Hell Mode explain that it lasts 5 minutes and involves 5 random heroes. I could -possibly- get behind the idea of a FFA where we were 8 of the same for the duration, as hey, that’s enough time to get used to a character.

But no. This is the pentathlon of FFA Deathmatch, and Gauntlet is, of course, the ultimate Ninja Warrior Challenge. I stuck it through a full round of Gauntlet, and got… 6 kills by the time the leader hit 22. Mainly because for the longest time I was stuck on freaking McCree and Soldier, characters I do not play because I do not have good aim.

Ugh. Thanks, Blizzard. A mode where the basic entry requirements are stacked in favor of your standard DPS players, instead of those with other skillsets and specialties. Talk about frustrating. Yeah yeah, I know. “Git gud.” But if I haven’t gotten gud in three years, I doubt it’s happening now.