Before you make an angry reply “YOU’RE STUPID, THIS ISN’T TRUE, YOU’RE JUST SALTY, BAD, DUMB, THIS GAME IS STILL REALLY POPULAR, PEOPLE AREN’T LEAVING, etc.” please consider reading this whole post.
So recently I noticed that on xQc’s stream and on Reddit that people have been leaving or taking very very long breaks. On xQc’s stream, he was chatting with Moxy and it was brought up by someone in chat if they were going to quit to play different games. Moxy says some things about Overwatch getting boring. xQc reluctantly agrees and tries to cover it, but it’s pretty obvious that he’s agreeing. I thought about this and wondered why people are actually quitting the game. After a bit of research, time and searching the forums I came up with a couple reasons why people might quit.
The community. For many, it’s VERY frustrating to have people constantly misusing and abusing offensive terms like “salty” and “noob” and “Bad” or excluding people from trying to play the game for fun. Even on the forums people just can’t help but leave a nasty comment disregarding terms mentioned in a post, or trolling and being unhelpful. It gets pretty tiring.
On top of that, there are people being unresponsive in chat, unwilling to help or switch heroes when needed, and general disregard of the team. This game is a Team Based First-Person Shooter. People should know by now how to play properly and nicely. To finish it all of it’s almost impossible to express an opinion without immediate repercussions.
The gameplay. This game, in a sense, (I’m gonna use a harsh term here) is Broken. The rise of an increasingly broken stun meta has thrown the game into a spiral of previously unneeded nerfs, changes, and patches that have made some heroes unplayable. There are plenty of bugs which the devs are trying their best to fix, and I respect that wholeheartedly. But when a game is needing fixes so often, it makes it hard to sit back and enjoy some of the most basic elements of a team-based shooter.
What I mean here is that most team-based shooters have some pretty basic elements which are:
Teamwork
Team playing
Balanced Weapons and Characters
A general focus on competitive based gameplay by players
Non-Abusive Gameplay Mechanics
I personally don’t see a lot of this happening right now in the game. Stun, Freeze, Slowing, and Hacking are slowly turning this game into a mess of ability abuse. It’s also Very Frustrating
Other Games. This one is pretty obvious. With the rise of the BR genre (which I strongly don’t enjoy) people are leaving older games to fit in with the crowd. It’s pretty lame considering that this game had something going for it for quite a while. It was original and fun and vibrant, and ever since it’s become pretty bleak and toxic. The ease of earning fame and sometimes money from newer games has driven some veterans who kept the community going to leave.
These are most of the reasons that I found people agreeing on. Please think about what you say before you post it. I know I’ve had a history of posting things that are generally pretty negative, but this is really something people need to pay attention to. If you guys want this game to stay alive things need to be done.
-Roadhog
Since the WoW expansion has come out I have pretty much stopped playing Overwatch for the most part. My life has been a lot less stressful because of the switch. I doubt I play the game regularly again.
People get burned out. Simple as that. XQC isn’t someone I would personally use as a good example, given his history, but people do take breaks from games, or outright stop playing for one reason or other.
I stopped playing Overwatch because my discord clan doesn’t play the game, and because even with in-game LFG I still somehow wind up with people who can’t take competitive seriously (and make every rookie mistake possible after a single win). And because other games have taken up much of my time.
You also have Fortnite, which somehow managed to become the next League of Legends type of global hit for reasons I will never understand.
Yeah it’s mostly burn out…
The game has also made a lot of balance shift that demand better over all team play and we just don’t have that right now. The stun meta just killed a HUGE chunk of goodwill from the player base towards the game. You can’t keep average sort of players around if the game play is 2-3 players get to have tons of fun avoiding CC and/or just dishing it out and the rest just have to take it like punching bags all game with what feels like very little player control and way less impact in game.
So we are left with a game that demands more team play than ever before but with a higher ratio of bad team players, as they are not effected by balance issues or crud team comps as much being they just do whatever they want anyways.
I don’t think the game is going to die or anything but I really hope one of the current balance passes on the way infuses some more good old FPS like fun back into the over all game play.
I find stun meta frustrating but the game is actually balanced right now. So many comps/chars are viable. The real problem is variety. Control point and payload being the only two modes is stale af
The game needs several new ranked modes. Permanent ones.
Team dm(possibly introduce a 6v6 one for comp too)
Ffa
Ctf(maybe make one for comp)
More modes. I’m amazed it’s gone so strong this long with just two modes. Feels like a beta at times.
The general attitude of the competitve ayers can be unhealthy to be aroind for extensive perioda of time. With how the sr system works its become blatantly clear that quickplay is the more competitve gamemode as there is more cooperation from team mates and everyone seems to be more in sync compared to the competitve gamemode.
The balance changes have also been very questionable and the rate at which issues are adeessed and how they are adressed has added further frustration fir players.
original D.va nerf
hanzo
-mcree
Roadhog
Bastion
Torb
Symmetra
junkrat
Mercy
Sombra
Have all had to wait ludicrous lengths of time to be even remotely adressed/are still ignored/ or received changes that were uneeded due to refusal to rebert since chanhes to the game can make previois chages unnecessary but instead they quadruple down on the changes and throws everything out of whack.
I got into this game understanding that blizzard is always balancing, always adding things, and always evolving. However, I’ve seen more TLC given to Warcraft lately than in all of Overwatch lifespan. I know that they’re different genres, but both are blizzard.
I got it because blizzard promised lore, heroes, a casual fps, all of which I like. Blizzard has promised things like this in Warcraft, and delivered, so I had hopes that they would deliver similarly in overwatch.
Sadly, that’s not so.
Now, with this decline in content on all levels, the game is getting boring. Warcraft suffered this in WoD, and blizzard redeemed themselves in Legion.
What overwatch should take away from Warcraft, is that you can’t suddenly slow down on content after being consistent. Your customers will leave.
League of Legends has the same problems. It has retained a playerbase of over 100 million people and around a 5 million person active player base for 10 years despite this. It’s just a matter of what people want, like with any video game. Some people don’t want the direction that OW is taking, some people do. It will continue to be a huge presence for at least 2 or 3 years on streaming services and gaming in general.
