The introduction of new characters during a competitive season turns the whole season to crap, and I think it has happened with almost every new character. Competitive mode is now; let’s see how this new character plays. The majority of players have 0 time or a few matches on her but they don’t care about winning just trying out the new character.
I understand that this move brings more players to the game, which is important - but it makes the game a nightmare for the existing players, it screws with your comp rating, you cannot enjoy most of the games played, team play goes right out the window, other players flame the player who has chosen the new char with no xp/time on them which tilts the whole team, which leads to ridiculous compositions as players are done with the match before it even begins, all game flaming etc etc etc…
If you crew are not going to manage the integrity of competitive in any reasonable way, and throw seasons into disarray so a new player can be pushed out then what’s the point of comp at all?
As a long time regular player it really makes me feel like Blizzard/Overwatch do not care about individual experiences.
During seasons 8 and 9, they stopped allowing new heroes and maps to appear until the start of a new season, however they reversed it to two weeks. Take a look at this thread and the backlash the community released upon it.
Not every new character was bad, since the skill levels are just different per new hero… BUT Ashe needs actual skill, and i havent seen any good Ashe yet… Some stayed alive a bit longer then the other but thats basicly it…
Its really bad…
Funny one guy had his profile public… Ashe… 135 Elims… 439 Deaths… i mean not bad right? Just keep it instalocked lol… Ugh
It happens with every new hero but it’s always 10 times worse when it’s a new DPS. You may had well be a team of 5 when you have some twit messing around on a new DPS they have no clue how to use.
as WyomingMyst said a few posts above, they tried holding heroes out of comp until a new season and the community threw a fit over it. People should now just view it like the new rookie hero is coming into play for a hero that got injured.
The real problem with Ashe is she requires a certain amount of aim while drawing players to her that can’t really hit the side of a bus. The way you can try to work around is someone has to call targets. Then hopefully your team of sniper’ish heroes can focus long enough to for their combined accuracy of 11% to over lap enough to finally kill something.
I’ve seen teams of Ashe/Widowmaker/McCree/Hanzo in QP go up against a team with no shield tanks and STILL not be able to kill anything. It’s rather comical that the highest aim based heroes will draw to them the worst sort of players. I have no idea why, they have to know they are not hitting/killing anything
reading through the first few pages of that thread it seems most everyone complaining about the characters being released at the end of season have no concern about the integrity of comp. Many of them state that quick play is a joke and they just want to play with the new character, are concerned about the “hype” of the new player,
one player even responds that comp “is the only place where you can seriously take time to learn a character because no one seems to take quick play seriously and everyone knows that arcade isn’t taken seriously.”.
another
“I think this is sacrificing fun for something completely worthless, the “identity” of a competitive season.”
Despite the fact it seems Blizzard made a competitive game when it’s player base doesn’t seem to care about playing competitively at all and just uses the game mode to get their kicks out of the title, it’s still something Blizzard can manage by just delaying the release and comms about the new hero’s.
Although there’s mixed responses in that thread and some people are happy with the decision, it’s disappointing that Blizzard decided to take the feedback of players who don’t seem to like the game unless there’s new content and don’t really give two tirds about the quality of competitive play, only playing comp because other modes are horrendous and they can’t find any enjoyment from the game.
A better way of fixing this issue would be to put a time cap on new hero’s and players cannot play them in comp until they have x hours on the hero.
Blizzard have a way of not thinking features and their possibilities all the way through, and they have a history of adding poorly thought out features and then removing them because they’re poorly received, and dismissing the idea all together rather than thinking them through and providing a solid thought out solution.
The ‘Avoid teammate’ feature is the perfect example. Firstly they added a preferred player system which everyone hated because players would just prefer good players and the winners were teams that had players which used that mechanic more than others making the game unfair. If you asked Blizzard after they removed that feature why blocked teammates are still matched with you they would respond that they added a feature that done something similar and it doesn’t work, so they cannot do it at all because the idea doesn’t work. Then months later some brain child realises that avoiding a few bad players at a time with a time limit basically fixed the issue and avoids players being matched with the same throwing, flaming horrible players.
That’s true for pretty much every game/sport/hobby once it becomes main stream popular. In defense of Blizzard on this issue, lets not forget that around 60% of the player base can’t even get past the gold SR range.
That’s ok, everyone starts some where. Yet lets not act like comp for maybe up to around 70% of the player base (of you count low plat) really needs to be held to some sort of ridged game structure when it comes to adding new maps and heroes.
It’s like those golfers who worry about if their clubs have banned square groves or if the golf ball is PGA acceptable, only to go out and shoot +28 over par anyways.
Worst case, don’t play comp for a week when a new hero comes out, problem solved.
I agree new heroes shouldn’t be released in the middle of an ongoing season as it ruins everyone’s experience (especially when the hero in question is bugged and still not fixed). This might force people to only do their placement matches at the very end of a season if they know a new hero will be released when there’s still 30 days until the end of it.
Had I known Ashe would be available for the current season, I wouldn’t have started playing mid-season. I feel like it’s different when a hero is reworked though. I didn’t like it when Symm and Torb weren’t available in comp right after their rework since they weren’t new heroes per se. Symm and Torb mains couldn’t play their hero for weeks.
As far as Brigitte is concerned, I think she was released at the end of season 9, that’s why she was available right at the beginning of season 10. I guess it depends on when a new hero is released. Since Ashe was released at the very beginning of this current season, it may explain why Blizzard decided not to wait 30 more days to the end of it.
I can’t agree with that, firstly because a popular game/sport/hobby doesn’t become popular if people don’t care about it. But each of them effectively have their own competitive modes and quick play. Sports have competitive leagues, enthusiast create competitive through hobbies via their communities (take PC overclocking as an example, or rubik’s cube solving.) and games - well poker and the rest… But each can be enjoyed with friends or in a non competitive setting.
I don’t feel that someones skill level makes those players less worthy of a good, even and positive competitive experience just because they’re not the best at it.
If they were just having a hit around that’s ludicrous and the equivalent of Quick Play. Though if they were playing in an amateur competition and they were rules then they would obviously need to worry about it.
Yes and no…
even at a park and rec level, like say summer softball leagues, people are expected to play the game correctly and fallow the rules etc. So that’s fine.
still, at some point it’s important to not lose track of just exactly the level of competition that is being played. As in no one at a lower SR is 100% losing game being Ashe came out. Odds are each team has an Ashe, so it’s a wash anyways. It’s not rocking the meta team boat at lower SR being the game isn’t as meta down there anyways.
Then most of all lets not forget that even at the tier 1 OWL level the game STILL has mid-season patch changes and heroes added into the game. They hold off between stages being there was a map to map issue but other wise stage to stage the game changes, just like it does for everyone else. So those changes are part of Overwatch to it’s very core.
Being able to roll with changes to the game and new heroes and maps mid-season is just part of the game. If it’s ok for the mega-million dollar esport side of the game than it’s fine for the normal match making ladder play too.
IMHO, Off-Season really should be the time to test new maps/new heroes in comp-style. At least it still keeps a competitive vibe all while giving off-season some meaning.
Releasing new map/heroes mid-season is really rough for the game due to the fact that you now have people that know the map/hero struggling with playing with people that don’t know that map/hero.
Personally I’m ok with a new map in competitive since I feel like while I don’t know the map, that also means that there are chances some of my enemies don’t know it AND I can get away with stupid flanks until the map’s been played for a while.
With a new hero, I tend to stay in QP/Mystery Heroes until I myself can get a really good feel for the hero and how they can fit into team compositions. That way, I know what that hero can do for the team all while understanding how I can help them do work.
Our current off-season lasts only 72 hours (3 days). Originally it was intended off-season was to be the time to plan for new changes in Competitive. It used to be off-season was 2 weeks long way back in the day, but we as a community cried about that too.
All good points, I understand where you’re coming from and can agree with all of that. I thought in high level comp that there was more management over when new heroes were playable, I didn’t think they were released in those comp games at the same time the regular game released them.
The finally released a skill baseeld hero, only for people to have no skill. Seriously y’all finally got that skilled character you wanted and you can’t even perform on her.
Say, for example, they waited for the start of the next season. Then what happens? The moment they become available, everyone still insta-locks the new hero to try them out in competitive, and just instead of the middle of the season being crap, it’s just the beginning.
Nothing would (or did) change. Waiting for a brand new season is just delaying the inevitable.
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