There are so many parallels between the two that I do not understand why it would be a surprise that they are often compared. They are both hero shooters and their initial betas started very close together, so it is interesting to see how they both changed from there. Paladins has quite a bit of features or choices - both good and bad - from which Overwatch could potentially learn.
- Paladins has been a F2P game from the beginning.
- Paladins has been 5v5 from the beginning.
- As of next month, Paladins will have 58 champions available.
- Paladins has 4 classes: Damage for dealing consistent, long-term damage; Flank for high mobility, burst damage dealers designed to finish kills; Front Line for making or taking space for their team using damage mitigation to sustain; and Support for healing and offensive or defensive utility.
- Paladins ranked play starts with a draft mode with picks and bans.
- Paladins has Supports who are survivable due to having escape abilities and the ability to defend themselves.
- Champions in Paladins can auto-heal when out of combat, which lessens some of the pressure on Supports.
- Champions in Paladins can be customized to play differently by choosing different Talents and a deck of (usually pre-built) cards at the beginning of a match.
- Paladins has some extremely unique and well-designed champions. Examples include Mal’Damba, a high skill hitscan (and occasional ground AOE) healer with a stun; Evie, a high skill-cap Flank who is an ice witch who flies around on a broom and has a projectile weapon and a blink ability; Atlas, a time-manipulating Front Line who can “Tracer” reverse himself or others; or Imani, a dual-mode caster with fire and ice powers.
- Paladins has no-cost, earnable golden skins after playing with a particular hero for quite some time.
- In the darkest time in Paladins’ life, and what likely marked the initial decline of the game, Paladins went pay-to-win and eventually relented after a massive and outright wholesome player base revolt that included hilariously bad art of the game.
It sure sounds like there are a lot of ideas Overwatch could glean from Paladins, which would have been more successful if not for their own management issues and an unfortunately very messy code base.