Why I've given up on Overwatch: feedback for Blizzard

General Discussion
1

Despite my love of the game, after constant bad experiences for months, I’m done and now playing other games.

About me

  • I bought the game when it launched on Switch to play competitive mode.
  • I’ve actively focused on improving. I stay up-to-date with balance changes, meta synergies, and have watched videos to learn how to play.
  • I’m level 580
  • I’m platinum rank (solo queue) in Tank and Damage and can usually hold it there, but usually pulled down to gold (especially as a Support) by poor matchmaking despite my best efforts to play better and play during peak times
  • endorsement level 4, and have 3 gold weapon skins.
  • I can play every role and most heroes proficiently.
  • I’m frequently on fire–often the only one on fire–and get play of the game reasonably often.

I’m not a bad player.

Some feedback:

  1. Matchmaking on Switch in my region is a joke.

It went from rarely being able to find a match (for months), to being able to find one faster but with terrible matchmaking.

I have no way of choosing to wait longer for better matchmaking and forming groups is difficult. So I either play and lose rank because my team are mostly significantly less skilled, or I play quickplay with beginner players.

I rarely have a match where I can use the full extent of my skills–maybe in 1 out of 20 matches. The rest is my constantly trying to overcompensate for my team members who have mostly no clue how to play. It makes improving and practice feel pointless, like doing a group project where I worked really hard to do my part of the work, and everyone else didn’t.

That’s not really their fault–the game isn’t designed to foster anything different. The problem is not a lack of good players; there are plenty of good players. But their rank isn’t representative of skill–it’s more representative of how many people were online during matchmaking and whether you teamed up before queuing.

  1. The game has a low player population.

Frequently the match time estimates for competitive mode say “>10 mins” during peak time. With the game reaching the end of it’s lifespan, and even before, numerous things (which I’ve detailed in suggestion and feedback threads before) could have been done to improve the play experience.

Most notably, ways to:

  • queue simultaneously for different modes (choose which mode to prioritise so when enough people who are waiting for that mode are ready, a game can start as soon as enough people waiting are available. A “play while you wait” strategy)
  • see if one is close to finding a full team while in queue (are you waiting for 1 more before you can start a match, or 10 more? There’s a big difference)
  • see when players are online in one’s region (like a weather report, but with active player times)
  1. The game is not designed to help people get better.

There are no tutorial videos in-game, the loading screen tips are bad, the medal and play of the game system cause people to prioritise the wrong things (“I’m gold damage!”; “I got play of the game!”), the stats is information overload and too complicated to be useful for improving and buried in a place people won’t look, and the in-game help text is incomplete and often misleading.

People routinely do stupid things–even high level, high rank players–because they know no different, and the game offers no help with that.

That’s a failure for a competitive team game that needs players, and needs players to improve, in order to survive in a competitive market.

YouTube has lots of excellent content. Most players will never use it. Content and help systems must be in-game. and ideally, designed into it. This is the biggest missed opportunity in every competitive game I’ve played.

  1. You seem to focus mostly on doing things that will benefit the best players, the Overwatch league, and PC players.

Sure, there are some things like workshop upgrades and saving replays, but for the most part, I don’t see changes or features added to help the core audience that makes up the bulk of your player base. In interviews, I’ve never seen this touched on.

There’s an endless fascination with constant balancing when other things would likely improve people’s experience more. It’s like you forgot the Blizzard donut principle.

  1. The game does not reward skill enough.

Randomness, opponents jumping around like idiots, and strange things (like the bazaar physics for characters like Junkrat and Doomfist, how many surfaces are invisible to Wrecking Ball’s grapple, or the anorexic size of certain hitboxes) frequently result in you losing, even if you’re more skilled.

It doesn’t feel good. It’s not fun. The game should reward strategic thinking–and not just for the small percentage of pro players who have amazing team coordination.

  1. Your feedback system sucks.

I.e. This forum is a mess–so much duplication and time spent on pointless stuff. You must waste so much time wading through endless amounts of crap to find useful things. There’s no easy way to know what’s being worked on, what’s being considered, and what’s not going to be worked on, and why. Nobody really knows where they stand.

There should be better ways to submit feedback and for you to communicate what you’re prioritising and why, so players know where they stand. You’ll get better feedback as a result and players can use their time for productive things.

==========================

It’s not just me

I’m not alone–my list of approx. 100 people I played with for the first 6 months rarely play, if ever. During peak time usually only 5 are online.

Recently I played a game with someone in solo competitive queue. We were both support roles–I was gold rank, he was platinum. Only 3 players (including he and I) were in voice chat. He was saying, “what’s going on in this game? It’s all over the place.” I told him check the players status: 3 of them are unranked. He saw and said “Why are we here? We shouldn’t be here!” Despite he and I coordinating, we lost. I explained that playing ranked on Switch, get used to people not using cover, grouping up, using voice chat, listening to in-game voice commands, or even knowing how to use their hero.

This is my constant experience–skilled play, good matchmaking, and teamwork is the exception. Even when I get platinum players in my game, most of them play like this. Top 500 players are usually better players, but still don’t know how to team up and tend to play as if they expect their team to know how to play, which they don’t. You have to use custom strategies for bad teams–playing normally (i.e. well) doesn’t work, since they can’t keep up.

I’d much prefer having only players of my rank in my game, rather than being platinum and gold and getting silver, bronze, and unranked players.

=========

I still want to play, but the experience I have while playing saps my desire to play. I’ve run that loop too many times. It was fun when I sucked at the game and other people were at my skill level.

Unless Overwatch 2 addresses these issues, I doubt I will buy it. I’m also wary of other Blizzard games, since Diablo 3, while fun, was mostly forgettable due to similar bad design decisions (bad PvP; boring gear; lack of end-game content, other than the purgatory of rifts).

Design like this was fine 10 years ago, but it’s 2020 and I expect more. It’s not unlike bookstores going out of business because they failed to innovate where it mattered, thinking business as usual was fine, until Amazon came and showed them it isn’t.

I’m now searching for another competitive game–one that gets ticks the aforementioned boxes. It’s a tall order; developers don’t seem to get these things.

A shame, because I really enjoy the core gameplay of Overwatch, just not how the game has been stewarded and designed. If it were a subscription service, I’d be unsubscribing.

I’m sure you’ll keep making money because people aren’t aware of these issues going in (I wasn’t). I hope another well-designed FPS or other competitive game comes to force you to innovate and prioritise what matters.

You might say what matters is subjective, but it isn’t. Overwatch is a competitive team strategy game, and people’s experience with that aspect of it should be amazing for the most amount of players possible. Everything else should be secondary.

Right now, it seems like a great game for PC players in areas with high player populations who are above average in terms of skill, but that will change when the amount of players drop off. Skins and seasonal events won’t retain players–great gameplay experiences will.

The way to fix all of this in Overwatch 2

Assume the game will eventually have a low player population (for many people, that’s their frequent experience) and design around it before you launch the game. You can’t completely solve it, but there’s a lot you can do to retain players who would stick around if they had a better experience.

Part of that is to help people improve. All the systems should be designed around helping people be better players and team mates. One example:

  • pay great content creators (like Ashkon esports) to edit Overwatch league content to spotlight what players should and shouldn’t do with their characters, and as a team.

  • Showcase strategies as players improve to foster creative play. Don’t just unlock skins: unlock new, short guides that help people improve and show the best players. Force them to watch it before they can play more matches–it can be part of a progression system.

  • Communicate game changes though short, in-game videos (like SI Not Found), not patch notes that few people will read.

  • Teach people how to shotcall. Add more features that allow better shotcalling since many people don’t use voice chat. You added new communication wheel options. I hardly see them being used, and they aren’t even very practical for reasons already described.

All this content should be baked into the game, not external stuff most people won’t look at.

It’s not enough just to make a game; you have to make a great experience with it.

9 Likes
2

I agree with some of your points. But one thing I have to say… you bought the game on nintendo switch. I mean… it was released THREE YEARS after the initial game… did you really think it was gonna have a playerbase? Honestly? I’m not saying it’s fair, but… if you were trying to play overwatch competitively, switch was the absolute worst place to do it

Edit: They clearly dont value switch. You dont even have a visible profile. That’s how little they care about the switch port.

9 Likes
3

I don’t agree with a lot of your points but you do hit the nail on the head here. As someone who’s been here since the forums launched, I can say that the main assumption to any feedback written on here is - the devs don’t read it.

I’ve no idea if the mods and/or community managers even attempt to sift through whatever’s being discussed on these forums. Given what happened when Mercy was reworked, I would guess not.

But yes, it’s frustrating. These forums have been left to frankly rot ever since the first year, because moderation was confined to “delete obviously outrageously racist/homophobic etc statements” or “stick any topic regarding Mercy into a mega-thread where we can ignore it”(yes, we still remember that).

There’s never been any coordinated effort from Blizzard to clean up and organize these forums to be a useful means of feedback. There’s no community trending topics, no blogposts about what the devs are thinking, everyone’s flying blind.

Except, it seems, for that select group of pro players and content creators “worthy” enough to be invited to the Super Secret Discord.

10 Likes
4

Sorry you wasted your time. Blizzard doesn’t really read the forums. They prefer reading the subreddit, it seems.

6 Likes
5

It’s really funny to me how in the patch notes section, there is literally a button to take you to the forums as if they care.

6

That was long, if you want competitive game switch simply isnt the platform player count would be too low.

That said blizzard shouldn’t put a comp mode for switch just call it a normal mode.

7

If you want something like a competitive experience playing OW you should play on PC.

1 Like
8

The main down-side of this game is the horrible MM system combined with a heavy focus on the 1% at the top. Makes the game more frustrating than fun to play. And since it’s only PvP, the entire gameplay hinges on a functional MM system.

Balance issues can be glossed over as no games are perfectly balanced, but when the main gameplay area doesn’t work, the entire house of cards collapses. That’s basically what’s wrong with Overwatch, a horrible MM system that brings down the entire game. The worst part is that it has been like this since the game was released. At first they promised they would make improvements when competitive was released, but competitive was released based on the foundations of the MM system in QP, meaning it was inherently flawed from the outset. And that’s how it has been ever since. And since the developers mainly focus on E-Sports and the 1% at the top, the MM system has not seen any attention over overhaul in the game’s existence.

The best solution is simply leave the game behind. While technically well made, it’s horribly run by a developer that cares more about the revenue stream and maxing it out, than they do about their players enjoying their product.

2 Likes
9

One issue I feel would occur with adding video content to the game is that it would increase the amount of space that it requires. One of the best things about overwatch is that it does not require very much space. This is especially important on the Nintendo switch where space is quite limited unless you have an SD card.

However I suppose that it would not be an issue if the video content was simply a YouTube in bed that does not start the video inside the game but is simply a link that still plays off of YouTube. However I suppose that it would not be an issue if the video content was simply a YouTube embed that does not start the video inside the game but is simply a link that still plays off of YouTube

They do have quite a number of educational videos on the owl channel

Furthermore I feel that even if there was educational content and it allowed people to improve how would that improve your experience? Because everyone would also be improving so you would be left with the same thing where games are still hard because everyone improved

10

You are plat on switch. Thats about high bronze pc.

11

It’s Master equivalent
Harder controls = more game sense neded

1 Like
12

This is exactly my point. I agree good balance is important, but what they’re doing now is like trying to make self driving cars perfect. E.g. Companies making self-driving cars can make them good enough to do well in most situations. To get them to do well in all situations takes significantly longer and is more difficult than all of what is required to make them good in most situations.

Point being, “good balance” probably is okay and striving for “amazing balance” when there are other issues seems not ideal. Balance only matters when you reach a certain tier of play. If most or many players aren’t reaching it, you need to address that first, or at least simultaneously.

Also, lots of what I suggest would improve the play experience for all players. That seems true for balance changes, but technically isn’t. If your team members are like weighs weighing you down frequently, “amazing balance” doesn’t mean much.

I understand your point, but yeah, I expected it to be playable. If it wasn’t likely to be very playable, what’s the point on releasing it? It’s a game that, apart from workshop custom games, requires a playerbase.

My issue isn’t necessarily with a lack of a player base, although that’s a factor. There is a playerbase still, and there was a bigger one for about 6 months after release. My issue is that the way they’ve designed the game, and what they’ve focused on since the release, doesn’t support a good experience for platforms, ranks, and times of day that have low player populations. There’s lots they could do that would fix that, as I said, and it would help retain players. The way it’s designed right now is a good way to drive them away.

There may be valid reasons for that–great, tell us about them so we know where we stand. I’ve never seen them comment about it. Maybe they have, but I try to stay up to date with most of the news about the game, and I haven’t seen anything.

The reason for my feedback thread is that I hope they read it and take it seriously. I would like to play Overwatch, but most importantly, have a good experience with it.

I don’t regret buying it–I’ve gotten value from it. But I don’t recommend it to other people for the reasons I mentioned unless they live in an area with lots of players, and I’m unlikely to fork over any more money unless they change their design approach. For a company, it’s bad news when fairly active users of a product say that.

They clearly dont value switch. You dont even have a visible profile. That’s how little they care about the switch port.

My profile should be visible (it is in-game), but I agree the console experience feels neglected, Switch especially.

When I sought support for Switch, I had to submit a fake directX report, and other PC-specific nonsense. I told them that’s unacceptable, and reported it to the appropriate team, and it’s still like that. I understand there’s a pandemic, so I’ll cut them some slack, but if it were my product, it would have supported all platforms at launch, and PS4 and Xbox have been out for longer than the Switch.

13

What? Name one pvp multiplayer game where that is the case, please. Tutorials and in-game trainers are notoriously bad. Players rarely play the way devs intend.

14

The forums aren’t letting me reply to each of you, so I’ll try reply in one post.

I appreciate the questions and discussion–it would be nice if what I mentioned in my thread got the attention of the developers and if other players let them know if issues I mentioned are also issues for them.

(also, why are these forums so bad?! --that’s another issue… I’ve had Switch players say they won’t post on here because they can’t figure out how to with the silly permission limits you must fulfill before you can post).

If they allow simultaneous queuing, which I’ve suggested before and exists in other games, you can have lots of game modes. Right now the game is like having one queue for a fast food store, and if you’re in that queue, you can only be served by the staff member at that register, but you also can’t see if there’s a staff member there. So you wait in the queue, wondering if you’ll ever be served.

A simultaneous system would mean you can queue for whatever you want and, once a game becomes available, you’re put in it, and once a game is available for what you really want to play, you’re put in it. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than what they have now. I know–I’ve done it in other games.

Also, being able to see how close I am to having a game be a reality while waiting in queue would also help. I’ve suggested that, also.

I know, it’s not common. It is, however, found in very good products that understand the reason people buy things isn’t just to use them, but to have a great experience with them.

Tutorials and in-game trainers are notoriously bad. Players rarely play the way devs intend.

Not all tutorials are bad, nor do they need to be. Check out the Fantasy Strike YouTube channel. It has a bunch of developer made tutorials that are also available in game. There’s not enough of them, but even just something like makes a huge difference and increases the amount of people who will access tutorial content before becoming frustrated and dropping the game.

Also, I already mentioned featuring content from Overwatch league matches as a way to share innovative strategies. That’s a good way to capture things players discover developers might not. There’s a huge untapped resource in player communities that developers are mostly ignoring, much to their detriment.

And there’s lots they can do beyond tutorials to bake “help players get better” into the game. I’m not saying it’s easy, just worthwhile and fairly important to their product. If it’s done well, it would improve the experience significantly.

I’m unaware of the technical challenges–that was just one suggestion.

Though surely they can stream it, somehow. I mean, you can watch the Overwatch league. (Or, you should be able to. I think I tried a few times and it didn’t work, though maybe it worked once.)

Also, Fantasy Strike has good tutorial videos in-game. I’m sure there is a solution that can be found.

They do have quite a number of educational videos on the owl channel

I had no idea about those, which tells me most players don’t, either. That’s part of the issue.

Furthermore I feel that even if there was educational content and it allowed people to improve how would that improve your experience? Because everyone would also be improving so you would be left with the same thing where games are still hard because everyone improved

My issue isn’t that the games are hard. I love hard games! My issue is that, due to matchmaking and other issues that contribute to it being poor, often a critical mass of my team mates or opponents are nowhere near my skill level.

I can do a lot to win games, and do. I’ve been at the point where I thought I couldn’t improve anymore to win games, and I went beyond that. But there’s only so much I can do, especially in the support role. I watch popular Overwatch streamers carry games from zero to high rank and there’s a big difference between the skill of the players they have in the games and what I encounter. The issue is usually that one team has players far better than the other, so it makes it very hard to win in those situations if your teammates act like walking ultimate powerups that auto-deliver to the enemy team. :slight_smile:

Blizzard have acknowledged this by saying Switch players are still new, so they can’t expected to be very good. But I know there are good players out there–I’m just not getting matched with them. That’s the problem. And it’s why I suggest helping players improve should be baked into the game.

People don’t want to suck. They don’t want to lose all the time (losing is part of the game, but there’s difference between “that was a good match!” losing and “my team mates have no clue” losing). But many people aren’t serious enough to, say, go on YouTube and wikis to get better. They might, however, if it was part of the game.

As I’ve said, my point is that while that is true, there are many things they could do to address it.

The player count isn’t as low as you think, and a decent competitive experience is possible, but not with the current design.

Saying “if you want to play X game, but it on another platform” is kind of silly, don’t think think? Last I heard, Fortnite had a very popular competitive scene. It’s possible to do on consoles.

2 Likes
15

True they could have tutorials as a replay

16

This is how the competitive system works. Instead of random matchmaking within an SR limit, the matchmaking bot tries to create ranked matches where both teams have a 50% chance of winning. It’s selective matchmaking, and if you’re a player with good stats the game actually uses you as a carry and pairs you with worse players because you are determined more valuable by the system. If you were to be paired with 3 other good players, the bot would flag it and say “this team is too skilled” and it would redistribute to give each team a mix of good and bad players. Essentially this guarantees that every game some good players will lose and some bad will players win. This is why ranked is such a disaster and why it feels like rank doesn’t = skill. Ranked overwatch has been a joke since day one. It literally has the worst competitive system of any game out there. It’s just designed to keep people addicted.

1 Like
17

Thanks, I didn’t know that.

I concur–it creates a terrible user experience, and I frequently feel like my efforts to improve are wasted, and like I want to go play a 1vs1 game where I don’t have to deal with some or all of my team mates feeling like a ball and chain. I persisted in spite of that, but my desire to do that has mostly run out. And to be clear–I don’t care about my rank. I care about my experience. If I feel like bots would be better team mates than my human team mates, that’s an issue and not very fun. Sometimes I wish when they die in game I could absorb their power like Ulah in The One and just fight the enemy team myself, powered up, Captain Planet-style, like a 5x Nano boost. :smiley:

If my thread helps raise awareness and create a discussion around this issue, that’s great. Given that, from what you said, the developers are probably aware of this issue, I’m not very optimistic about a change being made, but I’m open to being surprised. As I’ve said, I’d still like to play and recommend the game, but at as it is, I don’t feel it is respectful of my time or very enjoyable.

18

I agree with everything you said 100%, but I agree with this the most. Oh. My. God. It is honestly maddening to see how badly Blizzard has wasted their game, which had such amazing potential.

I just don’t understand how no one, NO ONE, on the Blizzard team said to the group:

“Hey guys, we made a team game, a game where you’re really only rewarded by developing tactics and practicing with the same team. We promote that on OWL and all. So maybe… idk… People should have… a way to make regular teams? Y’know like a GUILD?”

If we had Guilds, even a low player population wouldn’t matter because you could reliably have your guildmates fill in your team, so you’d always have a team of people that you know, have played with before, and are motivated to keep playing well for / being sociable with. Guilds do literally nothing but improve the game and yet Blizzard is faffing around making us this mythical OW2, which no one will want by the time it actually gets here because OW1 drove us all away!

1 Like
19

Personally, I would say all of your main points are spot on. People might tell you, “Oh geeze, play it on pc and you’ll have way more fun!” you don’t really get as much fun as people exaggerate on PC. The problems can have better outcomes on PC, but because people mostly play on smurfs on PC the games end up being the same hypothetically… People are just usually smarter/faster, due to more older players on PC. But by the end of the day on PC, if you’re not throwing and having a good time then you’re probably hoping and praying that the enemy team has less smurfs and more throwers than you.

To tell you the truth and I’m going to speak using statistics and probability, RuneScape probably has better and less rigged odds to win than OW. Why? RuneScape’s system is flawed; make no mistake. No matter what, the odds of beating some one in PvP is going to be 51/49 from the PID system (this was fixed to be non-manipulable, however the probability is technically still the same). In OW, the odds wildly fluctuate; even on PC - all from hoping for a good game of smurfwatch. At least on RS, the odds are more fair and determinable and I’m comparing a game that’s just over 20 years old to a game that’s just over 4 years old? Get with the game.

1 Like
20

I play on PC and it’s not more fun. I also have it on x-box, so while I can appreciate that each console climate is different, it’s not magically better on PC despite what any fanboy might say. The matchmaker is absolutely abysmal everywhere because Blizzard can’t figure out how to sort us and give us a consistent game experience. I’m so sick and tired of people acting like me being too good or too bad is somehow MY fault, when I’m not the one who chose to be sorted into that game!

Like, do you realize you’re blaming me for something that I have literally zero control over? I just want to play Overwatch, not get hard rolled or hard roll anyone else! it’s a crummy feeling!

1 Like