Why Can't Overwatch Have A Similar-enough Competitive Environment As Other Online Competitive Multiplayer Games?

Competitive Discussion
1

Seriously, why? Why can’t this game have the same competitive experience as Rainbow Six Siege, CSGO, DotA2, LoL, or even Paladins (this discount and janky version of Overwatch)?

I don’t even care about raising the number of my rank. I do care about the experience of try-hards vs try-hards, because that’s the point of Competitive, because the incentive is to get better and let your improvements show if you’re worth ranking up. I don’t mind smurfs who beat me, but I do mind the smurfs on any team that wants to lose for whatever reason. I don’t mind if I play with players who, in terms of mechanics, game-sense, or both, are “bad”, but I do mind about players who intentionally want to ruin the competitive experience for his/her team for whatever reason through throwing/trolling/griefing.

“But its just a game” but it has Competitive in the mode’s name, do you understand that? The fun is to try to win. You take the losses to the heart, to the chin, or whatever, you accept the reality, learn from it, and then use what you’ve learned to win the next match.

Rainbow Six Siege, by design, mechanics, basically a large chunk of its gameplay, is just asking to be toxic, yet the ratio of it compared to Overwatch is smaller, as if most players agree to really play off each other even if its the first time they’ve met. CSGO, by all means, has been a hot mess (because if your pro players have moved on to sticking to third-party matchmaking services, that’s saying something… but even then, Valve’s making mad stacks out of it… speaking of which, even Ubisoft pretty much lets third-party matchmakers have a service for Rainbow Six Siege as well, despite that the game doesn’t even really need 128 tick), but its a game that caters to try-hards despite that it can alot of the times attract casuals. DotA2 and LoL, by all means, has a fair lot more of a “hand-holding” experience because, whether you like it or not, you have to depend on your teammates to pull their weight, have a much less of that “hand-holding” experience than Overwatch. Paladins… for whatever reason, it seems like HiRez looks at Overwatch’s forums for feedback on how to make their competitive mode actually competitive instead of their own (the Paladins community has their own complaints on the game within their own forums, just like other games within their own forums… but it seems like HiRez looks here first).

If I can be indirectly boosted to mid-Masters (last season… twice) because I got way too lucky in two separate days where most of the throwers/trolls/griefers are on the other team, do I deserve my rank? My honest answer is no. Every time a true match came, where its try-hards VS try-hards at low to mid-Masters, I was holding my team down because I honestly didn’t have the skill, so I’d de-rank (and I deserve it). Scrims are hard to come by, and alot of the times I’m just not home to do so. But how do I get better as a player if my matches are too one-sided? There’s little to no adversity in it. First to second week of LFG was great, but too many players who took it for granted (thinking its an “ez-win” feature) started polluting it, and later on its barely often enough to warrant using it over solo-queue, since not all of us can spend more than 4 hours a day (let alone 2 hours a day) to play games at all. We can put in the time, but the time being idle is a time wasted.

And when it came to private profiles, lets get real. Ubisoft recently just made profiles private, so you cannot see player levels in Competitive mode in Rainbow Six Siege (You’d have to search them up in a stat-tracking website). In CSGO, you can’t even view someone’s lifetime stats in the middle of game, so you have to tab out to check. LoL also needed you to do the same thing. In Overwatch, where the game allows mid-game switching, why is this even necessary? Is it because of people who main things? What’s wrong with learning more tricks?

Most of my guesses have lead me to just lean on the answer of: Blizzard doesn’t put enough care towards the competitive experience of the game. Thus why the community’s more divided than it needs to be, and so many are not happy with the state of the game.

If Overwatch didn’t indirectly basically kill the arena-shooter genre (Quake Champions has a small enough population that you might as well call it a dying game due to not being able to attract newer players) and basically monopolize the hero-shooter genre, I could’ve happily left Overwatch. But Lawbreakers died September earlier this year, TF2 is not really in Valve’s priority list at all (Skins money on their games alone is probably a good reason not to care about TF2), Paladins is too janky and would probably be killed off by the devs since HiRez has a reputation of killing off an old/er active IP for a new IP they’ve come up with, so that leaves FPS’ that not only have even half of Overwatch’s movement speed (most of them don’t even have verticality in terms of movements), which is a shame.

The reason I love this game is because it hit critical spots on why I love TF2, and even added to it. But somehow started deteriorating on its own. While other developers have tried to do the same, they failed for various reasons… and its a sad sight to behold.

6 Likes
4

The common denominator here is the ‘people’ playing the competitive mode, not the mode itself. You want the competitive seen to become better, the people playing it have to become better.

The way Blizz have structured OW’s competitive scene actually makes a lot of sense. Sure, there’s things they could add to tune/streamline it a bit, but the cost of finely tuning matchmaking comes at the cost of time spent finding matches (made even worse if you’re stacking 3+), it’s a trade out. Sure I wouldn’t mind spending an extra minute or so finding a fairer match with less toxicity, but when you start hitting the 10min mark to find a game EVERY time you search, it’ll become pretty tedious.

Basically, the quality of in game matches come down to a question of mass psychology, not a question of how well Blizz has designed the competitive mode. Because more likely than not, you’re probably going to get match with people of near skill to you (with the exception of smurfs, but that’s still only a small percent).

2 Likes
5

Yes, but how come the people in other games in their competitive modes treat competitive modes with respect via entering it with try-harding in mind?

Aside from endorsement levels (because as far as I know, it doesn’t work at all), what incentivizes people to get better in this game?

How?

What about coming up with a more effective algorithm in dealing with reports? Sure, no algorithm is perfect, but there must be something better. Heck, why not add more staff to check or double-check the reports? Sure, it’d cost money, but the game pays for itself, those people, and probably more.

I’ve gotten to play alot of games where I’ve hit 1 hour queue times. Sure, I really hate it when games have that low of a population to cause the matchmaker to do it that way, but more often that not, if its a competitive mode of a game, it more often than not has the lowest possible thrower/troll/griefer probability to be in it.

But why does it happen more often in Overwatch than other games?

I don’t know about that…

2 Likes
6

Bring on the long lasting ques, it beats getting a quicker trash game. 10 mins or more, idc, make people need a mic, que for role. Making competitive more demanding like this will just help get rid of the people that don’t give a damn, they can go be an idiot in quick play and get a fast game, cater to the people that want it and are willing to do more to engage in the experience of how the game should be played

3 Likes
7

I mean, I can’t exactly go 100% on making people need a mic part because it’d be hypocritical of me to make people do it (I’m friends with people who are born mute, and I used to exclusively duo with one and we do very well, actually), but overall I’m 100% down for this.

4 Likes
8

It’s competitive, competition is inherently ableist. But even buying a mic to plug in and not use shows they give more of a damn than others that don’t care enough to do that.

9

My guess is that Overwatch has become a victim of it’s own success. As you noted, most other similar games are significantly smaller, and so only the hardcore players who really want to win are still playing.

Overwatch has a significantly larger playerbase, and so the hardcore players get diluted by a lot of people who aren’t that serious about competitive.

If something happened to cut OW’s playerbase by a ton, I’ll bet that only the most serious and dedicated players would stick around.

10

Oh, my mute friend did that. Heck, there was a time he resorted to TTS (text-to-speech) just to make it easier on our teammates… He kind of lost his patience after a rather unfortunate week where we got teammates after teammates who ended up muting him because the TTS was distracting (both of us found it pointless and a waste of money to pay for a TTS that had more variety in voices, since the free ones he used were all given the same feedback… a mute).

I just said I wasn’t 100% on requiring a mic because if I said that, then that’d mean I’d be inconsiderate of players who are deaf and/or mute (you can be both deaf and mute, but unlikely to be deaf if you were only mute). But overall, I’m down for a more competitive environment for this game.

I mean, sure the games I mentioned are significantly smaller in total and concurrent population, but they still have a relatively large population anyways (and aren’t LoL or DotA2 more popular than OW atleast to a point?) and have competitive modes that are, more often than not when compared to Overwatch, respected.

1 Like
13

The problem is that Blizzard has not accurately defined and enforced what competitive is. This means it is up to the playerbase to decide what Competitive is. This is problematic because you have players that think competitive is only for try-harding with meta comps and meta heroes, and anyone deviating is throwing. On the other side of it you have players that treat Competitive as a glorified quickplay, in which they can one-trick a niche hero, even if they are countered, because it is “just a game”.

Until Blizzard clearly defines, and enforces, what the Competitive experience is, you will have these groups of players getting into the same games together and being toxic to one another.

2 Likes
14

To be honest, I’ve seen meta games in other games where even at high level play, all people care about is having enough supports, enough front line, and enough damage, sometimes going for the bare minimum provided it followed a semblance of structure, and rely heavily on communication and information, as well as trusting teammates to try-hard.

The current meta-game of Overwatch, even though alot of people say there are more heroes viable in this meta than ever before or something along the lines, all it ever feels like is an X v X, Y v Y, Z v Z, and its only GOATs where you can counter it like an X v Y due to its glaring flaw of lacking hitscan range. So, I can see why alot of players consider deviation as throwing, even though I think its stupid depending on context.

Blizzard has had two years to clearly define and enforce what Competitive should be, yet the moves they do to do so are, well, half-baked, half-hearted, or just lazy and unmotivated. Like, they don’t care enough.

1 Like
15

Verify phone numbers to accounts for competitive play.

16

I have played quite a lot of CS:GO and Dota 2 and the competitive experience is nearly the same.

Sure there are some small details that differ. I’m not a fan of private profiles either, but that is insignificant. They all use MMR systems for ranking, attract the same types of players, and see the same the behavior (both positive and negative).

I honestly don’t know what you think is different in Overwatch. If I had to hash out details, I’d say CS:GO is a little better than OW and Dota2 is a little worse for the same reason: more or less reliance on teamwork, which seems to draw out toxicity and frustration.

2 Likes
17

then deduct sr for mouth breathing into the mic, verbally tilting during a match, having music on, chit-chatting, trying to flirt with teammates etc…
can we get an algorithm for that?

18

The very nature of overwatch means we will never find a solution to throwers and bad teammates.In this game, in order to carry you have to be far above the rank you’re currently in. In other games, you can carry if one players is useless. The way overwatch is built, it is far more difficult. If you’re down 1 guy before a fight you have to wait and push together. In Rainbow Six Siege you can clutch a 1v4. In overwatch you will almost never win a 1v4 on the objective against players of your skill level.

19

you give praise to all the other games in the title, but then this paragraphs gives examples to the contrary… um

20

Not sure about that since you can get sim cards (pre-paid) for less than a buck.

The thing is more of I encounter more players (even behind all the anger I hear and see in voice and text chat) who respect the competitive modes of those games than in Overwatch. There’s less players who do willingly throw in those games, and its a sad sight to see, really. Structurally, the FPS aspect aside, MOBAs compare evenly enough with Overwatch, yet in their competitive modes, atleast with DotA2 and LoL, atleast the community is more in agreement to work with each other whether they like it or not, compared to Overwatch. There’s nothing to even remotely scare throwers/trolls/griefers, the types of players who, by all intents and purposes, want to lose on purpose with teammates who want to see that “Victory” on the screen even in their own way.

I mean… to be fair, even if Blizzard or any company does end up finding an algorithm that figures that out, it’d prolly breach through enough online privacy laws or freedom of speech laws that it’d be a lawsuit waiting to happen at worst… or basically be a can of worms on its own at least.

I mean, most of my concern is with teammates who choose to be bad (by that I mean play destructively towards the team by throwing/trolling/griefing), not really with teammates who are mechanically and game-sense-wise just bad but try to play to win.

The thing about Siege and CSGO about allowing you to ace and what not. The thing about the game is that despite having 1 guy who can carry to the top, and even plow through games that are, on paper, un-winnable due to deliberate throwers/trollers/griefers, it goes back to games where that 4 frag or that ace wouldn’t matter when you’re at a rank where there’s more than just firepower and tapping heads or having very cheeky spots (basically when you hit your peak). Teamwork goes back in to the system, so even one guy who underperforms can really make you lose, and a thrower just makes things wrose and effectively unwinnable.

I praise more of how the developers of those games actually put in the effort to legitimize the competitive aspect of the competitive modes of their games and their community, not the games themselves. Because honestly, in terms of gameplay, I’d really prefer arena shooters, but I really don’t want to either wait in a near-endless queue time (and by that I mean hitting the 2 hour mark… 1 hour queue time I can deal with), I don’t wanna play a janky-feeling version of Overwatch (not anymore after the first 300 hours I spent on it), and I don’t want to play against basically the exact same 15-20 people every day in every match (if I was gonna get my butt handed to me, can I have it handed to me by someone else? Its like being slapped in the same butt cheek by the same hand and its getting old, and they don’t wanna slap your other butt cheek because they don’t want to… its reading the same book, even if you understand it, it’d suck if its the same book as you get burnt out on it overtime).

23

The problem is that the ranked system in overwatch is trash. They put you randomly in a division and climbing it´s actually impossible, that´s why people are leaving competitive or they just dont play it. It´s frustrating to see how someone who should be in silver is in platinum and you are in gold but you have the skill of a platinum or diamond.

24

I think its way more than just the ranked system being flawed to the point its unforgivable, its way more of the developers not caring enough.

25

Obviously needing phone number isent a perfect solution, but it’s another layer of deterrent. It’s also one they have implemented in top500.

26

Agreed. And a huge part of why Comp is broken is the forced 50% winrate. It leads to long winning streaks, and then, to compensate for you popping off, pairs you with absolute potatoes for the next few games – leading to a losing streak. When you have 2 potatoes who aren’t getting kills AND are constantly dying – which quickly feeds the enemy team’s ULT charge, there’s really no amount of hard carrying you can do to compensate for 2 players who are basically leaving you in a 4v8.

Here’s a post I made a weak ago about the forced win/loss streak. Hopefully the more people post about it and shine a light on this issue, the more likely devs are to take note of it and do something.

My thread for reference: