Your Season 18 Review

General Discussion
1

2 weeks left of Season 18, so once again it’s time to share some general thoughts, and a rating from 1 to 10.

As always, here's a list of the things we got this season:
  • New support hero: Wuyang
  • Hero Progression 2.0
  • Stadium Quick Play
  • New Stadium Heroes: Winston, Pharah, Brigitte & Tracer
  • New Stadium gamemode: Payload Race
  • New Stadium maps:
    • Thames District - Payload Race
    • Powder Keg Mines - Payload Race
    • Oasis Gardens - Control
  • New perks for every hero
  • Summer Games 2025 event
  • Anniversary event:
    • Week 1: Prop Hunt + Classic 2016
    • Week 2: Mirrorwatch + Classic 2017
    • Week 3: April Fools 2025 + Classic 2018
    • Week 4: Junkenstein's Lab + Classic 2020
  • Persona 5 collab
  • Play Like Luka - challenges, which awarded 77 lootboxes in total
(If I missed something important, let me know and I'll add it to the list)

My thoughts:

Season 17 was my least favourite season of Overwatch 2 so far, and I definitely enjoyed my time a lot more with season 18, but my feelings are still very mixed. Mostly because almost all the fun I had came from the classic modes that got brought back for the anniversary event, and they have consistently been the most fun I’ve had in Overwatch 2’s entire existence. But if it weren’t for that, I honestly don’t think I would’ve played very much this season, since the map voting system still continues to make quick play very off-putting to me.

I did play enough to get a feel for Wuyang though, and I do think his kit is pretty fun all around. Not fun enough to persuade me into maining support again, but still pretty fun. Can’t say I feel he’s that much of a step up from Freja in terms of his story and character though, but he is still better, as boring and derivative as he is.

I also tried playing Quick Play Stadium for a bit, but didn’t really take to it. Maybe once all the heroes have been added I’ll try it again, and my friends might be more inclined to give it a shot with me then as well.

And to quickly go over the rest: don’t really care for hero progression 2.0, the new perks were a mixed bag with some good and some meh, summer games didn’t interest me, the non-classic anniversary modes are alright (looking forward to the april fools one still), the Persona 5 collab was rubbish like all others (but at least there was only one this season), and lastly the 77 lootboxes was a whole lot of nothin’.

For my rating, it’s kinda tricky. If it’s just based on the classic modes (since that’s what I played the most by far), I’d say maybe 7 or 8 out of 10. But as a whole, I think I’d give season 18 a 3 out of 10.

Thanks for stopping by, and I wish you all a very lovely rest of your day/night :brown_heart:

7 Likes
2

Easily a 10/10 for me!

The best OW2 season so far!

For reference I gave the last season 8.5/10 - I think this season is a HUGE step up!

:partying_face:

3 Likes
3

I think it sums up a lot of my views as well here. I wanted to love this season more but with so many bugs and no one really being able to progress in stadium due to its issues I feel a lot of it fell off. The events are ok. They weren’t the best but they were there. Last season was definitely better in most regards. I’m glad they want to release new heroes all the time but we really need to get the game stable first and that revolves around getting the bugs fixed so people can at least enjoy things.

2 Likes
4

When you consider the sheer number of things we’ve gotten this season and many of them objectively add to rather than detract from the experience!

The fact finally after all these years that we’ve got mouse and keyboard support on console is massive!

I can understand negativity for the point of being constructive and I can understand if some of the additions don’t personally appeal to you or me - for example I don’t play Stadium so none of that really appeals to me personally - but at the very least you have to appreciate the effort that went into this season!

I can’t imagine anyone seriously (in good faith and trying to be objective) giving this season less than 5/10 - at that point I would straight up reevaluate whether this is the game for me and I’d just move on to something else!

But that’s just my opinion and everyone is entitled to their opinion!

:heartpulse:

1 Like
5

At least a 6.9/10 because I appreciate being showered with golden loot. The Wuyang hype was real, as was returning Hog to us. It was a lot of fun. I got Wuyang to level 18 and leveled Hog 10 times. That is the most I played Overwatch in years! But… And this is a big butt; I somehow became a Reinhardt one trick again? That is not the title of an anime, by the way. I am being serious. No idea what came over me. I was playing 6v6 exclusively until I wasn’t. Weird. Not sure if this is a blessing or an omen for the game as a whole.

Anyways, Mercy in the catsuit makes my score jump to a perfect 10. I have been playing Silent Hill F and the way Hinako swings her hammer makes me want this collab for Reinhardt. I will rate that season an 11 out of 10 which is the only conceivable way to defeat the Persona collab. The path is written, Blizzard. Follow it for peace and prosperity.

7 Likes
6

FYI not everyone is having the same issue in Stadium. I get 220 points on a win, and have for most of the season (was getting 300 or 240 per win earlier in the season, but only maybe 70 in the first week).

1 Like
7

I give this season a Wu out of ten. This guy is crazy fun and somehow, despite being OP, there aren’t even that many complaints about him.

My main concern at the moment is that next season, they screw up the nerfs that we all know he needs to get. It’s probably unfair of me, but I don’t have much faith that they’ll nerf him in a way that doesn’t also mess up how much fun he is.

6 Likes
8

Pretty much everyone I know is having the issue with points. It typically pops up around late pro 2 - pro 1. Getting 4 points a win is a waste. They have yet to address it. I don’t expect to finish stadium this season.

9

Apparently the point system was adjusted to supply more or less points based on where the matchmaker “expects” you to be. It adjusts your scoring upward if you’re below your expected rank. But they didn’t supply many details about what happens if you’re at or above that rank… in my case, my rank is Pro 5 for dps. Maybe I can try a few more dps games and see what happens, but I can say I got 220 points at Elite 1/2 when I ranked up.

10

With mine I was doing find until I hit halfway through pro 2. I wrapped the match and at that point I was normally getting 210. It cut me down to 5, then 7, then 1, then up to 60, then 1 again. It’s been quite the mess. :weary:

11

Ohhh boy. Hm. When you list out all that happened this season, I’d be inclined to rank it low, honestly.

  • Didn’t care about Stadium this season
  • Actual events (SG, Anniv, Halloween, etc) are such nothingburgers these days. A recolor of Weaver’s worst skins… yay. I don’t much care for the modes on offer; I don’t hold OW1 on this platinum nostalgic pedestal I see around here, just because I remember my feelings when it was at its lowest points.
  • Wuyang is fun, but yeah, as everyone got used to him, his strengths became very apparent. Surprised he wasn’t hit harder with nerfs, much less not any to his damage. (But Lucio got his damage nerfed this season, so that knocks it down too…)
  • A lot of skins this season. I don’t know if it’s just me, but they seemed to stockpile a lot of big bundles, so there aren’t as many recolors? That’s nice. Will be nicer when they’re inevitably in boxes. Same heroes as usual, too. At least Roadhog got his best OW2 skin yet… in the Ultimate pack. :face_exhaling:
  • Most new perks are fun. I still haven’t played with them all. I still like perks.
  • Unmentioned, but big fan of the Hog (un)rework. He might be a bit strong now, though; I wouldn’t mind some more tweaks.

Overall, this season leaned heavy on the actual game feel, which I’m still enjoying. Brutal mm this season though (Have you ever played QP… with a lootbox on the line?). 8/10 on that front. 1.5/10 on everything else.

1 Like
12

Some of the new perks have been so bad/off-putting I’m having a very hard time ignoring that, especially since the issues were ignored during the mid season patch (though, otherwise, that patch was reasonable in who was targeted for balance changes).

I hate stadium, so everything they do there is irrelevant to me. I think 3/10 is a pretty fair assessment of the season. There’s just too much they iterated on that wasn’t significantly improved or became worse, and not enough new stuff of interest besides Wuyang who I was not at all interested in.

1 Like
13

It was decent. I got to play Reaper, so it’s better than any previous season in that regard. Lootboxes were nice too.

6/10.

2 Likes
14

Not going to lie-skipped the vast majority so far. Not because I think it’s bad, but I think for the first time I’m experiencing burnout-it’s catching up with me unexpectedly and in a big way. Been playing since the OW1 beta and for the first time I’m skipping sessions over the weekend, so I’m skipping the rest of the season to recharge.

From the games I’ve played though I did have a good time, but I won’t rate it out of 10 as that would be disengenuous to the devs due to my much reduced playing time.

2 Likes
15

Overall, 5,1/10.
We got showered with free loot, got a new support hero, as well as quite a lot of stuff for Stadium.

Why not a 6 or higher.
Balancing. It’s THE core feature making or breaking this game, and in Overwatch’s case, it’s clearly breaking it.
The last patches were somewhat agreeable, but that’s only because the balancing team is usually completely daft.
And since the state of balance, as always, is atrocious, this game will not get something higher than barely-more-than-half. In fact, it should be lucky to get so far, because for the new perks introduced at the beginning on this season alone, I would rather nudge the score down by 1 point.
The bias is unreal.
And truly dangerous for this game.

Because the last patches were better than most (for Blizzard standards), I’ll give it the extra 0.1 point.

2 Likes
16

At least give it a 6.66, Sassay.

2 Likes
17

I was actually planning on taking an extended break from Overwatch (probably for about a year or so), but then a friend of mine recommended that we should try stadium out because we had never played it, and somehow we ended up getting addicted.

Stadium has somehow surprisingly reignited my interest in the game once more, if it wasn’t totally obvious from the (cough, cough) Great text of China post I’ve been making.

So, exclusively rating this season on my stadium experience alone, and nothing more, I would give it an 8 of 10, which is quite a 180 from the rating I gave it last season. Lmao

It’s going to be a 0 for me. :x:

1 Like
18

So my thoughts
Good new support hero
Good update to hero progression
Good new stadium heroes
Good new payload race
Good events and collabs

Bad
Stadium quick play. Completely unnecessary just make this 5 round version the default and make it competitive and open queue we don’t need two.

New perks, some are fine, some are the same, some are actively bad and nerf the hero who got them.
Please be way faster at reverting these issues it really sucks to play a character who just misses an option.

Draft in stadium is an extra 2 minutes of pointless downtime in a mode with too much downtime to begin with. The group I know that played it has since stopped other than the occasional quick play version of it for quests.

Still have hero bans and nothing remotely to address the underlying problem and toxicity with them. The stale games they produce, or the fix of the always banned heroes to get them to be playable in the game.
Clearly at this point it was a cost cutting measure and a kick the can down the road patch rather than fixing the problem. This is a very very bad sign of the direction of the game and the development effort. Big signs of winding down, it should probably make you nervous about the longevity of the game despite it being at a very high point right now. High points drop fast.

Map voting feels like another waste of time that could be spent playing. Allow mode selection at queue vs map voting for players to avoid maps they hate while others can queue for all. The less you queue for the longer your queue time may get but if searching for all the queue time mathematically stays the same. It’s a win win. People who want to avoid can people who want variety get it.

So I guess my grade is C-

1 Like
19

Way better season than the previous one (but that’s easy to beat, especially when it’s a season with new content that’s not bannable through voting in QP).

In two weeks we’ll be back to a boring and “meh” season but it won’t be as bad as Season 17 which was one of the worst in Overwatch history.

1 Like
20

I would, but I hate decimals.

2 Likes