I’ve played Overwatch since beta and stuck to the game since then. Had multiple copies from friends who left the game forever. These are my personal opinions from what I observed from people quitting the game / having no fun after a while.
1. Player’s mindset
People are more likely to find faults in others and attribute themselves for impressive feats. Too often have I found players who reached their peak SR start to blame everything around them and feel helpless in every small setback.
Remember when we first played the game?
Everything was cool, when you die, you tell yourself that you screwed up. When you see a good team mate or opponent, you appreciate their skills. Everything was a learning opportunity. Everything about the game was fun and new.
But fast forward a few months, you start learning about advanced concepts of the game and the in depth team strategies people can pull off. Mistakes are not obvious anymore. Even using an ult to save your team could be a huge mistake. People became a victim to the Dunning Kruger effect where they do not even have the skills to know that they have made a mistake. Leading to feelings of helplessness even when that is not the case most of the time.
To make matters worse, with no indications in the game that proves otherwise, the game makes players think that they are much better than they actually are. Worrying about stats being utilized the wrong way has cut off the only reminder that what they are doing might be wrong. OWL has proved that they are able to put the hidden stats on display but refused to implement it into the game for some reason. External software such as pursuit offered incredible insights for player with just a few simple stats. A Moira player with 5 medals may not know that she is simply feeling ults for the enemy’s healer and a tank may not know that he is simply a standing duck with his playstyle.
All in all, I believe that the devs could do a better job in guiding players along the way. Knowing when something is wrong is a step to re-initiate the learning process rather then getting stuck in a rut without any meaningful progress in the game.
2. Hero reworks
A character’s design is like an invisible contract with the player. A lot of people bought the game simple because of how the game appeals to their playstyle. Reworks/nerfs is like breaking the contract. Suddenly, everything they played the game for has changed.
I don’t even touch Mercy. In fact, there is a period of time where I would ignore everything just to make their lives miserable in games. But changing a game changing, guaranteed POTG support ult into a flying moth just doesn’t cut it. This is the reason why the forums are still flooded with mercy threads even when she has never been more balanced from a general perspective.
Then there’s Symmetra who players just want to relax and watch things die, only committing with huge risk and reward to do things herself. But now, she is required to do everything herself at close range to be effective even when she was designed to be fragile. Meanwhile, she was given an incredible teleport which can only be utilized by dedicated teams which most of the players don’t have access to.
Then there is Doomfist who players loves the thrill of getting a kill and escaping in strategic plays. He was given a shield buff which made him unkillable even when played recklessly. When that is a problem, the fun part of him that really only mattered to Doomfist players were removed. When all they needed to do was to make him kill able again. Sadly, he is still incredibly tanky after hitting his abilities while feeling worse to play.
True, they are definitely in a better state now in terms of balance. But they have all lost some if not all of what people played them for. Sacrifices has to be made when re-balancing certain mechanics but devs need to spend more time to make sure to avoid and compensate in a similar way if possible.
3. Balance
Balance is actually easier than most would imagine. However, balancing while keeping things interesting is what game design is all about. Overwatch is rough to balance due to how mechanical diverse each character is varied from another.
However, some things can be changed. In terms of SR, it will always be a zero sum game. Hence it is limited on how much the devs could use it to balance their playing experience. But no matter how a game goes, one of the most rewarding thing a player can have is the ability to play the game as they want. You guys have made the most interesting FPS game in history in terms of the diversity of gameplay options.
BUT it was destroyed.
If any of the devs happen to read all the way here, this is probably what you wanted to know from the surveys. We see talks about how people wished they could go back to season 2 but not many people put out reasons as to why that is the case. That was because the meta was not defined. Overwatch was played in the most enjoyable form. Structured, team oriented play did not skew the perception of the game.
But most importantly, everyone could be effective in their own way. There was individualism. Traditional FPS players treasure this a lot, being able to make a difference on your own is a huge reward. Almost any character in the cast could utilize their kit freely and make a difference in many instances of a game.
Then the CC era came. Sleep dart, hack, slams, shield bashes, all of them hated except for sleep dart. The conclusion is easy to follow. CC is never a problem. The ease of executing them is. When players wants and needs to execute their character’s kit to their fullest potential, all the enemy had to do was to pick the most effective counter against it and you are back to playing the meta.
Back then, Overwatch was as advertised. A team based shooter. Even the most irritating abilities requires aim to pull off except for Mccree which you have no trouble escaping or even killing if you are mechanically better. New heroes however, do not follow this rule. When played defensively, there is almost no possibility to remove them without the team while they can easily shut you down. This effectively forces players to play the meta.
It might be true that Overwatch is a team game too. But a group vs a team is a huge difference. The game is designed around the word “team”. But in reality, all we had are “groups”. Unless everyone is playing as a team, there is bound to be frustrations coming from this design philosophy.
Hence my conclusion, a solid team game is great, but we can always design it such that it doesn’t take away the freedom of individual playstyles.
Thanks for reading.