Why OW2 is less fun for some, but more fun for others

General Discussion
1

In my opinion, the game is moving more and more in a direction that some players enjoy more, but others enjoy a lot less.

Style #1 - Some players really love the game because they have fallen in love with the play-style and kits of a few select heroes. I’m one of these types of players. I love playing some of the heroes in the game, but detest the idea of having to play other heroes. Personally, what I enjoy is being able to master a hero’s kit to the point that I can make it work in any situation if I practice the unique skills needed for that kit hard enough.

Style #2 - Other players really enjoy playing the game by using the of strategy countering whatever the other team is playing. Winning by means of selecting the best hero to play and then applying that hero’s kit strategically is what they find fun. Sometimes the enemy comp will be the puzzle they need to solve by countering, and other times it might be the map or map situation that they enjoy playing strategically, but usually it’s a combination of both factors. Either way, the fun part to them is figuring out which strategy is the key to overcoming the enemy team.

OW has always been this way, of course. But in my opinion, the game is moving more and more in favor of players that enjoy Style #2, and making the game a lot less fun for those that enjoy Style #1.

This rift in what players find fun causes quite a bit of disagreement and honestly, misunderstanding across the community. While some players may complain about changes they dislike, others have trouble even understanding where these complaints are coming from at all, and then just assume it must be “mad cuz bad” or “skill issue” or find some other way to dismiss the complaint.

But in reality, it’s just a difference between what some find fun vs. unfun compared to others.

Because players that enjoy Style #1 tend to find the very thing that players who enjoy Style #2 to be fun as unfun and vise-versa. So these two styles are not just different, but they are polar opposites and conflict with each other.

Anyway, I just think it’s worth pointing out. Because this single rift is often the guiding factor in how people view almost every other topic that gets discussed in the forums.

If you are like me, Style #1, you feel like you shouldn’t have to swap so much and get frustrated with hard-counters that prevent you from being able to play the few heroes you enjoy. You feel like the game should reward skill expression more and strategy less.

But if you are a person that favor’s Style #2, then pretty much anything I think or say on the forums about this hero, or that hero, etc. is truly going to make very little sense to you because we are seeing the game from a totally opposite point of view in the first place. And this goes both ways.

Yet before even knowing what Style (1 or 2) another person favors, we jump right into debates with each other about detailed topics of the game and get absolutely nowhere, which usually end up in personal insult bonanzas.

I think the devs should take notice of this rift as well… Because really, I think like 75% of complaints in the forum can really be summed up by pointing out the simple fact that half of them are Style #1 players wanting the game to be balanced based on what they enjoy, while the other half are Style #2 players wanting the game to be balanced based on what they enjoy.

In the end, if the devs can figure out how to make their decisions with both types of players in mind, I think the community will be happier. Easier said than done, I know. But, possible.

In my opinion, the best way to go about it is to really be careful not to implement HARD-counters into the game, but still to allow plenty of soft-countering. And to take into consideration how each change is going to affect someone who mains this hero, and then someone who mains this hero, and so on, so that changes don’t start to make certain heroes feel totally unplayable, or at least not often.

Personally, as an Ashe main myself… the recent resurgence of Sombra’s and Doom’s has made it a lot tougher to pull off playing Ashe very well. Because trust me, if I play Ashe against a Doom, that Doom will literally make ME his overwhelming #1 priority the entire match. Sombra will do the same thing most of the time, but not always. So to me, it sucks because I just don’t get to play OW the way I enjoy playing nearly as often as I used to.

My example is just a small, tiny, single example of 1000’s I’m sure.

And from a Style #2 player’s point of view, I can see why they tend to hate heroes that feel impossible to counter. They tend to hate Hanzo’s and Widow’s, specifically the really good ones that seem to never miss, because it takes away their ability to do anything to counter at all. And I get that… It doesn’t bother me nearly as much, but I get it.

In the end, I just think the devs need to try to view the game from these two perspectives as they continue to balance the hero pool.

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The inherent issue is that they have already discerned the problem and actively tried to find solutions. It may even still be a work in progress for them. I am not entirely sure if they abandoned the idea or are just REALLY bad at basic analysis given the Sombra rework introduced two of the hardest counters in the game. She was already an amazing pick into Zen and Widow. Now there is basically no interaction between the two unless there is a massive rank discrepancy.

Reaper counters her and yet I feel the need to get off of him if she decides to focus me regardless. And you are correct, as a “Type 1,” I abhor getting off a hero I want to play just because the only character with intrinsic defenses against Sombra is another Sombra. It is a blemish on what is otherwise the most fun I have had in this game since 2016.

I have had to actively choose to not abuse Sombra and specifically adopt a playstyle that completely throws the game just to make sure that she has about as much fun as I am having. Ideally less.

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Yep, you get it. When I play Support, I feel like I have no choice but to go Kirko… and I ENJOY Kiriko, but not when my job is to follow Sombra around the whole match.

But yeah, just the fact that some heroes can literally make it impossible to even bother trying to play other heroes, then the game becomes very unfun for certain groups of people.

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Its a competitive game pretending to be a casual game for cash grabbing purposes

5

You have got some good points there. I would definitely view myself as a style 2 Player.

And as a Style 2 Player since OW1 Launch Day I can tell you there is no uncounterable Hero. The issue for me personally lies more within how this is a team game and sometimes it feels like your team doesn’t trust you as much as they should do and doesn’t follow up on your plays while sometimes the enemy team goes out of their way to quadruple pocket the obvious hacking Widow of their team.

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It does feel that way lately more. I mean, I love new content and new heroes, and I appreciate the devs putting in the effort to rework heroes as needed. I do applaud them for giving the game attention and not leaving us all in the cold forever like they did for a long time in the later years of OW1.

But on the other hand, it seems like they are just rushing one new hero after another into the game without really being careful about how the game is changing and how it can crush the viability of some of the heroes that many of use have enjoyed playing for years. It feels like the growth of the hero pool is too much for the balance team to keep up with, but I’m sure it brings in the $.

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Nah that’s literally what ow2 was created to do…

Its kind of ironic, that ow1 was built upon the fundamentals established by tf2… and ow2 to is essentially copying the things that lead mainstream tf2 to become the cesspit it is today…

Its funny because blizzard doesnt realize they are only pushing the game into a death spiral, that we have been seeing the early consequences of reflected by matchmaking and other small things

1 Like
8

You forgot another reason. Collecting skins. Honestly, if there were no skins to collect, I wouldn’t feel the need to play.

Of course it means that these people aren’t having fun.

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The issue isn’t really about which style you play, but more so the favoritism from the devs for style #2. The devs refuse to remove abilities that provide 0 counter-play on one hero and then absolutely obliterate another hero (who requires precision, timing, and awareness to pull off) with a similar ability with no actual reasoning behind the change. In essence, the allow more gimmicks than they do skill.

They have the ability to rework these abilities into a manner that requires more risk for the reward, but they again, refuse to do so.

You will never be able to make this a 100% fair fight, however, you shouldn’t have a guaranteed death just forced on to you. If you are the better player, you should be able to shut them down and the game should provide you the means to do so. If a Doomfist manages to close the gap between you, the fight should lean heavily in his favor. That is the requirement he had to fill in order to reap the benefits of his reward.

The issue is that Ashe can do just as much lethal damage at close range as she can at a distance. Doomfist can only do lethal damage at close range, therefore his should be more lethal than yours or far easier to produce.

The simplicity of a character should also be taken into account (and by simplicity I mean how versatile their kit is) for how much damage they do/how fast they move/how much health they have. If you have a cheese ability, you should be reliant on that cheese ability to survive.

I really don’t get this. How can someone hate on a character that is entirely dependent on player input to be useful? (more so Widow than Hanzo) The frustration that I get from playing against a Hanzo is more so on the fact that he can randomly spam and land magic arrows into my head on accident than it is a skilled Hanzo who takes his time to line up shots and accurately predict where I’m going to be (albeit he’s still a bit strong).

I don’t agree that Style #2 is like “solving a puzzle” as you put it because I could also “solve the puzzle” by having my team mirror the enemies and just smoke them using the same gimmick heroes. I’m aware it’s an option to do so and it would be incredibly easy to win doing it, but it’s A.) not fun, B.) not a challenge, and C.) just lame to do.

It is really not that hard to Torb, spam down a choke, and have my turret somewhere to protect the angle I can’t see. I know that I can just go Soldier, spam rockets, and hit more of my shots than the enemy Soldier. It’s not “problem solving”, it’s a crutch for bad players.

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I would argue that Overwatch has always been designed with Style #2 in mind and the fact that Style #1 worked for so long was a bug rather than a feature.

In other class-based FPS games (like TF2) people usually have a ‘main’ but it’s generally accepted that the best players can play most characters/classes with some degree of competency - you can’t be ‘good’ and a one-trick.

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There are only 2 types of ppl.

  • those who hate the terrible matchmaking
  • those who exploits the heck out for it with smurfing and pre made stacking.
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12

I agree, and the bug was the reason why OW was initially so much successful. The game favored more and more style #2 through many updates/new characters and people #1 left the game, then this is the right place where OW should have been.

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Originally it was, but even mid-OW1 they were moving away from it because of the prevalence of style #1 throughout the playerbase. Then going into OW2 it was specifically stated that toning down hard counters and massively lopsided matchups was a design goal for the team moving forward.

14

Yeah, I know that a lot of people see it the way you do. Again, it’s the rift I’m talking about. I always saw OW as a game that had such amazingly unique heroes, many of which have such an incredibly high skill ceiling… that different players could “master” over time in a way that is so amazing, it’s almost like an art in itself.

To me, the fact that you can become so good at one hero with tons of practice, yet still really not have the first clue how to play another hero that you haven’t played much, is what makes the game so unique. It’s what I found appealing about the game from the very first second I played, and it’s what drew me in the most.

Part of it I think, at least in my case, comes from our experience as gamers up until we tried playing Overwatch. I came from a very inexperienced history of gaming overall… The only game I really ever played at all before OW was COD and a few Battle Royale and Open World games. I’ve never played a MOBA game before, so in my head, I never had expectations of OW to be MOBA-like. I expected it to be more of an FPS with unique heroes, but which were all just as viable to use while playing the game as each and every other hero, as long as you were good enough at playing your hero.

What I’ve learned is that this isn’t the case. It’s also much more about using certain heroes at certain times than I had originally anticipated.

As far as what the creators of the game originally intended, you may very well be correct. I have no idea.

To me, it seemed more like as long as you were good at 2-3 heroes from each role, you would be in good shape to succeed. So I never expected to be able to just one-trick, but I did expect to be able to 2-3 trick each role. And I know some people CAN one-trick and CAN 2-3 trick… I fully admit that they are quite simply a lot better than me at the game. I’m talking more about someone like me, just an average joe gamer.

I hear you… I hear you both, you and xx9. Just like both of you, I have always tended to see the game my way and have argued that the game should be designed in favor of my style, Style #1. And I know that both of you favor Style #2.

But on the other hand, I guess the point of my post is to say that I’m just coming to a reckoning and realizing that I have no more right to expect the game to be my way, Style #1, than those like you who favor Style #2.

I can’t speak for what the devs originally envisioned… But I’m going to just change my overall attitude moving forward and just accept the fact that there are, indeed, many players that favor Style #2 and I have no right or basis to say they are wrong and I am right. I’d rather just work on having a mutual respect for those that favor both styles… not only because it’s a much more fair approach to take toward all of you Style #2 players, but also just for my own sake… If I can’t accept that the game isn’t just how I think it should be, I’m gonna just be a pissy, unhappy players forever and that does no good.

15

I’m definitely #1, and I’m happy that certain heroes weren’t as powerful in OW1 as they feel now.

But part of my problem is I’m basically a one trick, so I absolutely dislike when I get burrs up my butt all game.

So I guess I don’t like this new shift to more independent gameplay.

16

Maybe people who like style 1 shouldve listened to blizzard when they stated in no uncertain terms that style 2 is the core component of ow

17

That’s great for Blizzard. I love that for them. I just do not care…

18

The main problem with overwatch is that it is a competitive team game played by mostly selfish players (in the west anyways).

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On this note, one thing that can make players more selfish is simply being new and lacking overall awareness. One thing I’ve always thought should be an option to turn on or off in the settings is to be able to see your teammates that are at “Critical” HP, even if you are not playing the Support role.

This would allow newer players to at least be more aware overall of when their teammates need help, peel, etc.

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I like overwatch because I win a lot and I know how to play the game properly which gives me a lot of wins. Winning is fun, competitive is fun when people aren’t yelling into their mics. The balance is mostly fine but still needs a lot of work. Heck even losing doesn’t feel bad, as long as I play above my team and feel like I’m actually improving then losing doesn’t phase me. The only times I ever get frustrated with this game is dealing with cheaters in high ranks or if I feel that I have hit a skill cap on myself. In a weird way, I rank myself as I play. I could care any less about the actual rank system in this game, it’s flawed anyway. I have to feel like I’m improving and breaking my limit. I ironically just happened to reach GM by winning but I had fun just simply getting really good at the game.