i think flats put it perfectly: ow is a solved game but its also boring. heroes start to feel samish, many have lost their identity. all in the favor of balance and risk aversion.
some heroes, like dva or zarya, lost their identity bc 5v5. some never had any identity in the first place (illary). we have so many knobs but in the end, nothing is gonna save ow. its a game that had its time, back when it still had momentum and a soul. now its a shell and theres a thousand things wrong with it.
I think it’s almost as good as it’s ever been. My favorite time in the game was right before role queue was added, but current is a close 2nd. It’s a very tight, polished, competitive experience, which is what I most want from the game. It’s what sets it apart from other PvP games, especially in its own genre.
It’s not perfect. There are a couple of glaring balance issues like Doomfist and Ashe, and we need more hard CC back in the game. Otherwise, we’re in a time where every hero is best at something and viable in many situations. Nobody is a great pick all the time (except Doomfist), but that’s ok, because anyone who engages with the game’s primary mechanic (swapping throughout a match) won’t be as affected by temporary balance issues as the game continues to evolve. It’s the people who aren’t interested in real teamwork that have the most issues, and that’s how it’s supposed to be.
All that said, the game will never have the mass appeal it used to, because it’s not a great game for casual players. I’m ok with that, though, because there are countless other games for them.
Lol, Illari does not have identify… I guess Illari has much more identify than Juno… Our Inti warior has unique healing mechanics and DPS ult which makes her stand out among supports. But I will agree that Illari’s lore is cliche, bland and just bad. But now we are remembering about other new heroes whose lores also give nothing…
In my opinion the hero who totally lost its identify is Bastion…
Cause many games feel boring when they’re solved. It has nothing to do with heroes identity.
A solved game is when you can tell who’s gonna win and what’s the best strategy to apply to win or at least, to not lose. Tic Tac Toe is boring when you play against someone who knows how to solve it.
Nobody knows how to solve a game such as OW and I think coming with maths to define the best strat in OW would surprise a lot of people.
its funny that you mention teamwork to be honest. because never did the game actually require less teamwork than now. even compared to marvel rivals or ow1, ow2 in the 5v5 format is literally just 5 individuals doing their thing and hope its enough. weve lost so much depth, nuance and synergy. nowadays, ults charge much slower, so the midfight is where most things are decided. theres no tank synergies anymore. supports either dps or run for their lifes to kite some raidboss tank. and bc ofthe mechanical requirements of 5v5 overwatch with much more focus on the mid fight and shooter aspects, many people tend to onetrick. in fact many more than in ow1.
ow2 used to be a game about resource trading. it used to be a game where some strategies needed coordination to get outplayed. what you do now is just abuse the worst ppl on their team. thats it.
I had this discussion with some friends last night. The question is, how do you fix it? Flats brought up a good point that simply bringing back 6v6 won’t fix it and could even make things worse. Not because 6v6 is a bad format but because of the mess the team has gotten themselves into where many new players have only experienced 5v5 and many people might even prefer it now.
But let’s say you could bring back 6v6 and keep 5v5 and make both sides happy with the format. That’s not enough. So what then? IMO the team also needs to do a lot to fix the way monetization works and restore good will with the community there. I think they also need to work towards more lore also with bringing back the shorts. And little things that MR does right like having your % accuracy on the scoreboard would be helpful. It shows everyone nobody has an aimbot. And if they do, it becomes obvious real fast. And I think they need to alter their hero design principles, especially for tanks. Every single tank they’ve released in OW2 is a failure. They need to go back and find why people liked Reinhardt, D.Va, Winston, heck even old Hog. I have always hated Hog but he used to be very popular. Now he’s despised universally. They need to return to those design roots.
But even if they do everything I suggest, which would make me happy, I have a feeling some people here would still be very unhappy. And I don’t have an answer. One of my friends really thinks Hero Talents or Pickable Passives or something but I absolutely hated those ideas with the passion of 1000 burning suns. And I don’t agree there. But I’m curious about other opinions.
The problem is that Overwatch has become more and more boring, and in the long run, depressing.
This is counterbalanced by the addictive effect, because yes Overwatch remains an addictive game as everything is done to maintain and prolong this addiction, which ends up no longer being enough to compensate for boredom.
Players in the elite ranks, for the few who have not gone to Marvel Rivals, must still find pleasure, since the game is designed around these ranks.
Without wanting to seem contemptuous, they only represent a small percentage of all players.
The others in the “lower” ranks cling to the hope of reaching these famous ranks that they imagine are finally the moment when they can have fun, they are very many to hope and very few to achieve it.
Whether a Marvel Rivals-style change of direction will be necessary, and whether Overwatch could adapt to this change, I have no idea about that, I leave the thinking to others who have explored the game much more fully than I have.
In any case, I don’t think that continuing in the current direction is a good thing for the future of the game. It remains a personal opinion that only commits me.
I’m starting to think “lost there identity” is the new buzzword for “things are different and I don’t like it”. It means absolutely nothing and is mostly spammed when really cheesy or low skill/ engagement gameplay is altered.
Huh, what’s about Bastion who does nothing without turret? Do you ever see Bastions on high ranks? Why so many people say that Bastion is just bad version of Solider?
If blizzard actually balanced for high ranks and not there personal bias agenda Ana and Widow wouldn’t have gone to 5v5 with the stats that they did.
no, its actually not. its the fact that heroes in ow used to have way more specialized kits and purposes. nowadays, theres much more overlap in what heroes do and why you pick em.
orisa rework: shes a brawler now (like rein, rammatra, mauga, junker queen etc), used to be a spam hero.
spam comps? basically dont exist anymore since for a proper spam comp, you need 2 spam tanks on 2 angles.
reworks in general, not even only in ow2 but also beginning ow1, stripped heroes of their identity. sym and torb while hard to balance, used to be builder heroes. now they are just projectile spam with silghtly different use cases.
where its most noticable is the tanks. for 5v5, each tank needs to be similiar enough so that they can do their job in 5v5.
offtanks dont exist anymore. every tank needs to be some form of main tank.
ult combos? what are those? and why would you need em if theres only one tank that cannot possibly cover even half the angles you can get kills from in ow2 in any given moment.
what made ow unique is that it used to be a first person moba. now its a first person shooter.
look, i am a casual flats viewer. i basically only watch his rambling yt videos.
and its not like he said stuff in that latest rant that i didnt already think myself. he just found good words for why this game for me personally, doesnt click anymore.
If I’m not wrong, most of players thought tank role boring. Even today when people say that tanks are gigabuffed if I join to all role queue in 80% of times I am a tank. Players still are thinking tank role enough boring. Community says that DPS is cosmetic, but DPS is still most popular role. Most of players want kills not the assisting as tank, and I guess 5v5 solves this issue. Yeah 5v5 also has own problems like 6v6 also has own ones
Solved is a weird way to put it I think….more like everybody understands what it takes to win now.
But I do agree with flats in that video….you are not fixing the game by going back to 6v6…the games chief problem is not the format….its just it (and its players) have aged….
You could do a full reset and it wouldn’t fix the game….peoples approach would not be the same
It’s the single biggest difference between this game and MR…the games themselves are extremely similar…but learning and game growth hasn’t happened yet
