Topic: Minichan Overwatch Hero Society: the thread
more positive squeegee started this discussion 10 years ago #52,781
This thread is intended to be a catch-all for all Overwatch conversation and news.
I'll update this thread when there are new releases or anything related to Overwatch that might be of interest to people here. If you're thinking of making your own Overwatch thread, consider posting your thoughts here instead of making a new topic.
Part One - countdown to Overwatch
Denmark guy !jJEom8Ii3E joined in and replied with this 10 years ago, 2 minutes later[^] [v] #689,469
What do you see in that "thing"?
more positive squeegee (OP) replied with this 10 years ago, 1 hour later, 1 hour after the original post[^] [v] #689,513
there are now 5 of us in the Minichan Overwatch Hero Society, almost enough to field a team when ranked drops later this month. i've been giving everyone a bit of breathing room to play around and explore the game on their own terms, and i see no reason to talk a lot of strategy until ranked is a bit closer and everyone has had some time to get adjusted. but, as i see it there are only a few areas where strategy is even going to matter much. i do, however, have a few tips:
1. know your hero - if you're playing a flanker, then flank. if not, then don't. just like snipers are snipers, not close support units, and tanks are not generally doing much flanking. there are hero guides around (reddit.com/r/overwatch has a few) and some of them have really excellent info, so check them out to really excel. (like, i had no idea i could turn friendly healthbars ON for non healing heros and now i can play Zarya and use her shield when it counts, before i was just guessing.)
2. know your maps - there are a bunch of neat little secrets all over the map, little short cuts only some heroes can use, and attack paths that very few people pay attention to. this, of course, comes as you play, but you can also set up a custom game and play a scrimmage on any map and just run around with different heroes and see how they can use the environment. i've learned a ton of cool wall-riding tricks with Lucio that let's him get places no-one should really ever be coming from (basically he can wall ride the outside of some maps, lol - And Pharah can fly under some maps and pop back out behind everyone and kill them all.) and it's all totally legit. these are intended things, not glitches, like platforms placed on the backs of buildings inaccessible to everyone except a fully cooled-down Tracer. these little paths can be outstanding for flankers to get behind enemy lines and harass incoming reinforcements.
3. RTS strats work - meaning, if you're playing a flanker, then flank when your main army is pushing on the objective. flank when the enemy is preoccupied. in RTS games this is called a 2-prong, or multi-pronged attack. It's very difficult to manage 3 front lines, but it's easy to kill harass units when they can be focused on. frequently i see people die and then run back as fast as they can and just die again because they aren't waiting to attack, they just run in guns blazing. 6v1 is a terrible strategy, yet people keep streaming in one at a time to die. if you're flanking, wait for the tank and the DPS and healers to all get in position to push and start drawing fire. then flank and you'll have more success.
4. Group up - just don't be the guy that streams into the fight 1 at a time to die. if you die and see that the rest of your team is also dying and going to respawn, don't go running off to try and rescue the remaining units standing. they should be retreating or hunkered down, but will probably just die. wait for the rest of your group to spawn back in and then run back as a group. you stand way less chance of being picked off by a harass unit like that anyway, but at least when you get back to the front line you won't just be mowed down.
5. Get Behind the Shield! - you can totally shoot right through Reinhardt's shield and Winston's dome. stand behind them and shoot while protected. the enemy, however, can not shoot through them. no need to stand to the side to shoot around it, get right behind it and light people up.
6. Prioritize targets - turrets need to be focus fired if at all possible. there are counter units to turrets that can just go solo them and kill them, but in lieu of that, get behind reinhardt's shield and focus down the turrets. specifically the Bastions. the Auto-turret that Torbjorn builds is lethal, but Bastion is way worse. kill the Bastion first or counter hard with a bastion-killing Hero.
7. Play the Hero the Team needs, not the one you want to play - caveat: play whatever you want, but, ideally you'll fill roles that need to be filled. if you see that no one selected a support Hero, sack up and play support. If no one is going tank, get out a tank. you'll win more matches that way, and you'll also gain more experience with the heroes, but really it'll stop you from banging your head against the wall too much. last night i played a match and no one went tank and i said fuck it, i just wanted to shoot some people anyway, but with a minute left we'd made zero headway. i got out Reinhardt and used his shield to push us unto the objective and we ended up at least taking A. we still lost, but at least we took some ground. and it really was that easy. death after death, then got out reinhardt and simply held up his shield and slowly walked over to A. my DPS was safe and started killing things and then we were there and Reinhardt did nothing but walk there. but, if i hadn't have done that then we wouldn't have even made it that far. composition matters, and if you can be the flex player that can fill in the gaps then you'll win a lot more PUGs than a group that has less flexibility. that being said: play whatever you want. let someone else be flexible if you don't want to be, losing a match nets you a little less XP than winning and it's all cosmetics anyway and nothing impacts gameplay. losing is more a formality than anything, so if you want to play the 3rd McCree on the team and roll out without a healer, fucking do it. you might win anyway, tbh.
8. Don't "main" a hero - it's fine to have favorites and preferences, but you'll bring more utility to a party if you can play multiple heroes. they are each like a key to a different lock, and not every key will work in every lock. even within a class, such as support, each hero brings different utility. if you want to "main" anything, i'd at most recommend maining a class. if you like tanking, learn how they all work and be able to bring any of them. same with the other 3 classes. a good example is from support: mercy is awesome in a push. especially payload maps when they are fighting you every inch of the way, in the last minute the opposition is streaming in from spawn and your team needs to sustain continuous damage and focus fire players streaming in keeping the payload from moving. her rez can be super clutch on attack in that situation, and her damage boost can swing fights. Lucio in that situation does great AOE healing and can heal through much, but not always all, of that continuous damage and doesn't contribute as much DPS as mercy does when buffing a heavy hitter. but, Lucio really excels at King of the Hill maps where getting on the point early is crucial. those maps are also very hectic and players are all over the place. not the best environment for mercy who needs to actively target switch and work hard to remain mobile. lucio is very fast and mobile by default and all his healing is passive letting you focus on keeping your ass alive and pushing people off cliffs and into pits. very different heroes to play, and either one could swing an engagement when the situation strongly favors them.
9. Play vs. AI - hard is actually very aggressive, but medium and easy are cake. great way to practice a hero. you'll play with a team of other players Vs AI, and the AI is pretty forgiving so it's much easier to practice a new hero than in regular games. but, hero's are easy enough to get the fundamentals down that it only takes a round or two to feel pretty competent with them. you'll also get experience gains from playing AI, so if you're looking for just a super low impact and mindless round where you don't have to try hard at all, play easy or medium and go shoot some shit.
10. if you keep dying over and over - switch heroes, you're probably hard countered. make a mental note that "bastion dies a lot to the fucking robot ninja" and grab some other hero that might do better. since this is a game of hard counters "not doing well" doesn't always imply a lack of skill. you're not doing poorly, in other words. don't get discouraged. If i'm not being effective with my favorite hero, mei, which happens from time to time, i try to recognize that before i've run back from spawn too many times. if i'm not being effective then i switch. usually i end up at least helping more. might not get PotG or anything, but maybe i'll get some kills and do better on defense if i bring out Junkrat and his grenade launcher or a different defensive unit. pretty much if you don't feel like you're playing well, switch up heros and see if you don't start doing good things immediately. in a game of hard counters, just existing and doing the things you do is enough to sometimes just kill them. you will feel strong when your hero IS strong in the situation he's in. you WILL feel weak when your hero is weak. learning what heroes are strong and when is next level play, you'll find you'll work less and do better. and yeah, you can take a hammer and drive a key into a keyhole and hit it until it opens the lock, just like you can win games without hero switching or worrying about team comp, but it's way harder than just having the right key when you need it.
1. know your hero - if you're playing a flanker, then flank. if not, then don't. just like snipers are snipers, not close support units, and tanks are not generally doing much flanking. there are hero guides around (reddit.com/r/overwatch has a few) and some of them have really excellent info, so check them out to really excel. (like, i had no idea i could turn friendly healthbars ON for non healing heros and now i can play Zarya and use her shield when it counts, before i was just guessing.)
2. know your maps - there are a bunch of neat little secrets all over the map, little short cuts only some heroes can use, and attack paths that very few people pay attention to. this, of course, comes as you play, but you can also set up a custom game and play a scrimmage on any map and just run around with different heroes and see how they can use the environment. i've learned a ton of cool wall-riding tricks with Lucio that let's him get places no-one should really ever be coming from (basically he can wall ride the outside of some maps, lol - And Pharah can fly under some maps and pop back out behind everyone and kill them all.) and it's all totally legit. these are intended things, not glitches, like platforms placed on the backs of buildings inaccessible to everyone except a fully cooled-down Tracer. these little paths can be outstanding for flankers to get behind enemy lines and harass incoming reinforcements.
3. RTS strats work - meaning, if you're playing a flanker, then flank when your main army is pushing on the objective. flank when the enemy is preoccupied. in RTS games this is called a 2-prong, or multi-pronged attack. It's very difficult to manage 3 front lines, but it's easy to kill harass units when they can be focused on. frequently i see people die and then run back as fast as they can and just die again because they aren't waiting to attack, they just run in guns blazing. 6v1 is a terrible strategy, yet people keep streaming in one at a time to die. if you're flanking, wait for the tank and the DPS and healers to all get in position to push and start drawing fire. then flank and you'll have more success.
4. Group up - just don't be the guy that streams into the fight 1 at a time to die. if you die and see that the rest of your team is also dying and going to respawn, don't go running off to try and rescue the remaining units standing. they should be retreating or hunkered down, but will probably just die. wait for the rest of your group to spawn back in and then run back as a group. you stand way less chance of being picked off by a harass unit like that anyway, but at least when you get back to the front line you won't just be mowed down.
5. Get Behind the Shield! - you can totally shoot right through Reinhardt's shield and Winston's dome. stand behind them and shoot while protected. the enemy, however, can not shoot through them. no need to stand to the side to shoot around it, get right behind it and light people up.
6. Prioritize targets - turrets need to be focus fired if at all possible. there are counter units to turrets that can just go solo them and kill them, but in lieu of that, get behind reinhardt's shield and focus down the turrets. specifically the Bastions. the Auto-turret that Torbjorn builds is lethal, but Bastion is way worse. kill the Bastion first or counter hard with a bastion-killing Hero.
7. Play the Hero the Team needs, not the one you want to play - caveat: play whatever you want, but, ideally you'll fill roles that need to be filled. if you see that no one selected a support Hero, sack up and play support. If no one is going tank, get out a tank. you'll win more matches that way, and you'll also gain more experience with the heroes, but really it'll stop you from banging your head against the wall too much. last night i played a match and no one went tank and i said fuck it, i just wanted to shoot some people anyway, but with a minute left we'd made zero headway. i got out Reinhardt and used his shield to push us unto the objective and we ended up at least taking A. we still lost, but at least we took some ground. and it really was that easy. death after death, then got out reinhardt and simply held up his shield and slowly walked over to A. my DPS was safe and started killing things and then we were there and Reinhardt did nothing but walk there. but, if i hadn't have done that then we wouldn't have even made it that far. composition matters, and if you can be the flex player that can fill in the gaps then you'll win a lot more PUGs than a group that has less flexibility. that being said: play whatever you want. let someone else be flexible if you don't want to be, losing a match nets you a little less XP than winning and it's all cosmetics anyway and nothing impacts gameplay. losing is more a formality than anything, so if you want to play the 3rd McCree on the team and roll out without a healer, fucking do it. you might win anyway, tbh.
8. Don't "main" a hero - it's fine to have favorites and preferences, but you'll bring more utility to a party if you can play multiple heroes. they are each like a key to a different lock, and not every key will work in every lock. even within a class, such as support, each hero brings different utility. if you want to "main" anything, i'd at most recommend maining a class. if you like tanking, learn how they all work and be able to bring any of them. same with the other 3 classes. a good example is from support: mercy is awesome in a push. especially payload maps when they are fighting you every inch of the way, in the last minute the opposition is streaming in from spawn and your team needs to sustain continuous damage and focus fire players streaming in keeping the payload from moving. her rez can be super clutch on attack in that situation, and her damage boost can swing fights. Lucio in that situation does great AOE healing and can heal through much, but not always all, of that continuous damage and doesn't contribute as much DPS as mercy does when buffing a heavy hitter. but, Lucio really excels at King of the Hill maps where getting on the point early is crucial. those maps are also very hectic and players are all over the place. not the best environment for mercy who needs to actively target switch and work hard to remain mobile. lucio is very fast and mobile by default and all his healing is passive letting you focus on keeping your ass alive and pushing people off cliffs and into pits. very different heroes to play, and either one could swing an engagement when the situation strongly favors them.
9. Play vs. AI - hard is actually very aggressive, but medium and easy are cake. great way to practice a hero. you'll play with a team of other players Vs AI, and the AI is pretty forgiving so it's much easier to practice a new hero than in regular games. but, hero's are easy enough to get the fundamentals down that it only takes a round or two to feel pretty competent with them. you'll also get experience gains from playing AI, so if you're looking for just a super low impact and mindless round where you don't have to try hard at all, play easy or medium and go shoot some shit.
10. if you keep dying over and over - switch heroes, you're probably hard countered. make a mental note that "bastion dies a lot to the fucking robot ninja" and grab some other hero that might do better. since this is a game of hard counters "not doing well" doesn't always imply a lack of skill. you're not doing poorly, in other words. don't get discouraged. If i'm not being effective with my favorite hero, mei, which happens from time to time, i try to recognize that before i've run back from spawn too many times. if i'm not being effective then i switch. usually i end up at least helping more. might not get PotG or anything, but maybe i'll get some kills and do better on defense if i bring out Junkrat and his grenade launcher or a different defensive unit. pretty much if you don't feel like you're playing well, switch up heros and see if you don't start doing good things immediately. in a game of hard counters, just existing and doing the things you do is enough to sometimes just kill them. you will feel strong when your hero IS strong in the situation he's in. you WILL feel weak when your hero is weak. learning what heroes are strong and when is next level play, you'll find you'll work less and do better. and yeah, you can take a hammer and drive a key into a keyhole and hit it until it opens the lock, just like you can win games without hero switching or worrying about team comp, but it's way harder than just having the right key when you need it.
(Edited 9 minutes later.)
Fake anon !ZkUt8arUCU joined in and replied with this 10 years ago, 2 hours later, 3 hours after the original post[^] [v] #689,573
Ok just played a bunch of games vs AI with squeegee. Game seems ok but there are a LOT of heroes, and I'm not sure that is such a great thing. I can barely remember which person does what, and I have to hit F1 about seven times per game to remember what my character does. We'll see if this grows on me.
more positive squeegee (OP) replied with this 10 years ago, 22 minutes later, 4 hours after the original post[^] [v] #689,584
@previous (Fake anon !ZkUt8arUCU)
with so many heroes i didn't even know which one was my favorite till i was a good 15 hours in. but at this point i have favorites for specific maps and some go-to heroes i bring out to fix a problem. there was a point pretty early on where it all clicked and i didn't need to look up abilities anymore, the heroes are all distinct enough they get to be very recognizable too. i hope it does grow on you, the better you get the more powerful each hero feels. it can be very satisfying gameplay when it's just right.
with so many heroes i didn't even know which one was my favorite till i was a good 15 hours in. but at this point i have favorites for specific maps and some go-to heroes i bring out to fix a problem. there was a point pretty early on where it all clicked and i didn't need to look up abilities anymore, the heroes are all distinct enough they get to be very recognizable too. i hope it does grow on you, the better you get the more powerful each hero feels. it can be very satisfying gameplay when it's just right.
more positive squeegee (OP) double-posted this 10 years ago, 41 seconds later, 4 hours after the original post[^] [v] #689,585
pic relatedbhutam joined in and replied with this 10 years ago, 2 hours later, 7 hours after the original post[^] [v] #689,617
RWBY Rhubarb? !!iNo3FkiZx joined in and replied with this 10 years ago, 1 day later, 1 day after the original post[^] [v] #689,984
I just saw this thumbnail on YouTube.
Is it canon???
Is it canon???
(Edited 54 seconds later.)
RWBY Rhubarb? !!iNo3FkiZx double-posted this 10 years ago, 17 seconds later, 1 day after the original post[^] [v] #689,985
bhutam replied with this 10 years ago, 33 minutes later, 1 day after the original post[^] [v] #689,988
Fake anon !ZkUt8arUCU replied with this 10 years ago, 8 minutes later, 1 day after the original post[^] [v] #689,989
@689,985 (RWBY Rhubarb? !!iNo3FkiZx)
There is a LOT of overwatch porn fyi. Since you like dumb animu shit you probably knew that already though.
There is a LOT of overwatch porn fyi. Since you like dumb animu shit you probably knew that already though.
RWBY Rhubarb? !!iNo3FkiZx replied with this 10 years ago, 7 minutes later, 1 day after the original post[^] [v] #689,990
@previous (Fake anon !ZkUt8arUCU)
The gaming press has mentioned it, actually. Said Blizzard has been trying to stamp it out.
@689,988 (bhutam)
I think it is.
The gaming press has mentioned it, actually. Said Blizzard has been trying to stamp it out.
@689,988 (bhutam)
I think it is.
Fake anon !ZkUt8arUCU replied with this 10 years ago, 3 minutes later, 1 day after the original post[^] [v] #689,991
@previous (RWBY Rhubarb? !!iNo3FkiZx)
"My friend told me about it"
Sure thing bud. Also lol @ blizzard trying to get rid of porn on the internet. Seems likely to succeed.
"My friend told me about it"
Sure thing bud. Also lol @ blizzard trying to get rid of porn on the internet. Seems likely to succeed.
more positive squeegee (OP) replied with this 10 years ago, 24 minutes later, 1 day after the original post[^] [v] #689,993
the rumors are true! new heroes will be added soon.atm they have discussed working on 3 new heroes, but they aren't saying much about them. Speculation is that Sombra will be added, and that her role will be that of a "support sniper." right now there are only 4 support heroes, so a 5th will be very welcome. you can find clues about her in the Dorado map, including pictures and references. Reaper also mentions her in a voice line, asking, "where is sombra when you need her," and it is likely that Sombra is actually Pharrah's mother, one of the Founding Members of Overwatch along with Soldier, Reaper, Tracer, and Reinhardt. in the lore, she died in the same disaster that killed soldier 76 and reaper and fans speculate that she was revived, along with the others, by an early version of Mercy's resurrection technology (the same technology that made reaper a kind of undead dude.)
Doomfist may fill in the 6th Tank slot. we don't know much about Doomfist except he's teased all over the Numbani map. In fact, the objective of the map is to transport Doomfist's Gauntlet to a museum. Doomfist is a generational character in the lore, meaning the Mantle of Doomfist has passed from one person to the next more than once. not sure what happened to him, except that Winston "beat" him. in the lore Overwatch was being destroyed from within by corruption and there was a schism over the whole Omnic War, so it's possible Doomfist is a villain, or at least an ambiguous character. the different Doomfist's have been called the Savior, the Scourge, and the Successor. it all fits with how they have teased new heroes previously (Lucio was also on Numbani, and D.VA was teased on Hannamura) so i wouldn't be surprised if Doomfist ends up being added as a melee tank. but, his identity is purely up for speculation. i like to think it's going to be the little kid from the Cinematic Trailer who was wearing a cast on his arm. he was talking all about doomfist and they helped save Doomfist's Gauntlet from being stolen. it'll probably be a large african man, but i like to think it'll be the kid.
i don't think we know anything about the 3rd possible hero. if they do 2 supports and 1 tank then there will be 6 heroes in each class. it's very possible that's what they are aiming for and if so then the next support hero is a complete mystery. They've mention a few other heros, notably soundquake, but he sounds like offense/defense, he was a huge robot that launched missiles or something. but, definitely Sombra the Support Sniper is looking really good for the next addition.
they are also working on new maps and game modes, but are pretty quiet about details.
bhutam replied with this 10 years ago, 44 minutes later, 1 day after the original post[^] [v] #689,997
¿¿¿quien es sombra???
only the sombra knows
only the sombra knows
hamfist !0Ynig1RSDc joined in and replied with this 10 years ago, 4 hours later, 2 days after the original post[^] [v] #690,024
i got disconnected from a match i had two gold medals in fuck this
squeegee joined in and replied with this 10 years ago, 2 hours later, 2 days after the original post[^] [v] #690,061
i'm sick and in enough discomfort that it's too distracting to play. so i'm watching movies. ugh. shit ones too.
more positive squeegee (OP) replied with this 10 years ago, 2 days later, 4 days after the original post[^] [v] #690,598
bhutan replied with this 10 years ago, 1 hour later, 4 days after the original post[^] [v] #690,622
more positive squeegee (OP) replied with this 10 years ago, 13 hours later, 4 days after the original post[^] [v] #690,910
i'm feeling better, so i'm back to playing me some overwatch. one thing i've noticed is that it seems to be easier to defend than attack. usually attackers are favored, i'm not exactly sure why that is but it probably has to do with losing mobility when you're holding a position and being open to flanking. but usually when i lose we lose on attack, and defense games just feel easier. it may be because attack isn't always grouping up, and defense is forced to by holding an objective. probably attack will start to get easier once people learn how to break troublesome defenses. but for now even most communities like reddit and the official forums believe defense is easier.
one thing people are learning is how best to prioritize targets. in groups if you have a lead calling out targets then it's easy to know what is getting focused down, but in pugs where there's little leadership and (people sometimes reject cooperation) target prioritization isn't obvious things get a lot sloppier. it's not dissimilar to (again, sorry i'm talking about WoW) WoW PvP. tanks would pull large groups of enemies, and DPS would kind just toss their damage around and it would take forever to kill them all. in a lot of instances a team can "one shot" a creature (or player) by focus fire, then switch to the next priority and one shot it. much faster. in WoW players could set visible icons on enemies (like a skull) to indicate high priority targets, but in overwatch there's nothing like that except voice chat.
since target prioritization is difficult to do at the team level, then in a great idea to prioritize targets of friendlies rather than try to 1v1 some other player running around. of course it's situational, but if you're in a brawl and will die to the reaper who's about to shoot you, it might be better to shoot a friendly players target that you can help kill rather than take a pot shot at a reaper who will make himself invulnerable and go heal. there's really no such thing as "stealing kills", so throw DPS downrange when you can to assist friendlies rather than run off looking for 1v1.
prioritize turrets, especially bastions, above anything else. hopefully someone else knows to shoot him first too and you'll both focus him down. if the bastion is behind a shield, prioritize the shield, then the bastion. too frequently i see teams push into Bastion denied territory and shoot players running around in front of the bastion and only look at the lead slinging Gatling gun when everyone closer is dead. and usually the bastion ends up with a kill streak. same with Torb's turret. after bastion, that's your next best target to focus. it does a ton of constant and passive and focused DPS against squishy hero's, but is shittier against armor and active shields (like reinhardt.)
a lot of "impossible" to crack defenses can be broken with focus fire and good target prioritization.
one thing people are learning is how best to prioritize targets. in groups if you have a lead calling out targets then it's easy to know what is getting focused down, but in pugs where there's little leadership and (people sometimes reject cooperation) target prioritization isn't obvious things get a lot sloppier. it's not dissimilar to (again, sorry i'm talking about WoW) WoW PvP. tanks would pull large groups of enemies, and DPS would kind just toss their damage around and it would take forever to kill them all. in a lot of instances a team can "one shot" a creature (or player) by focus fire, then switch to the next priority and one shot it. much faster. in WoW players could set visible icons on enemies (like a skull) to indicate high priority targets, but in overwatch there's nothing like that except voice chat.
since target prioritization is difficult to do at the team level, then in a great idea to prioritize targets of friendlies rather than try to 1v1 some other player running around. of course it's situational, but if you're in a brawl and will die to the reaper who's about to shoot you, it might be better to shoot a friendly players target that you can help kill rather than take a pot shot at a reaper who will make himself invulnerable and go heal. there's really no such thing as "stealing kills", so throw DPS downrange when you can to assist friendlies rather than run off looking for 1v1.
prioritize turrets, especially bastions, above anything else. hopefully someone else knows to shoot him first too and you'll both focus him down. if the bastion is behind a shield, prioritize the shield, then the bastion. too frequently i see teams push into Bastion denied territory and shoot players running around in front of the bastion and only look at the lead slinging Gatling gun when everyone closer is dead. and usually the bastion ends up with a kill streak. same with Torb's turret. after bastion, that's your next best target to focus. it does a ton of constant and passive and focused DPS against squishy hero's, but is shittier against armor and active shields (like reinhardt.)
a lot of "impossible" to crack defenses can be broken with focus fire and good target prioritization.
(Edited 1 minute later.)
FuckAlms !vX8K53rFBI joined in and replied with this 10 years ago, 4 hours later, 5 days after the original post[^] [v] #691,108
@previous (more positive squeegee)
> a lot of "impossible" to crack defenses can be broken with focus fire and good target prioritization.
There was a time when everybody knew these things because they'd worked their way up to these type of games over many years. Now you've got little Johnny who gets whatever video game he asks for because his mom is too busy to take care of him and needs an electronic babysitter, and he hasn't got a clue what he's doing except mashing random buttons and screaming profanity into his mic.
> a lot of "impossible" to crack defenses can be broken with focus fire and good target prioritization.
There was a time when everybody knew these things because they'd worked their way up to these type of games over many years. Now you've got little Johnny who gets whatever video game he asks for because his mom is too busy to take care of him and needs an electronic babysitter, and he hasn't got a clue what he's doing except mashing random buttons and screaming profanity into his mic.
squeegee (OP) replied with this 10 years ago, 5 days later, 1 week after the original post[^] [v] #693,324
back to feeling good enough to play some blizzard games. did some fishing in wow on my rogue to finish getting her pre-expansion maintenance done. been playing a bit of overwatch too. they did the McCree/Widowmaker balance patch and pretty much i just tend to see few of them in every game now. i think it's just a perception thing, people migrate to whatever is considered over powered even if they aren't technically abusing the very specific thing that makes that hero OP. McCree still kills everyone the same as before, except for tanks who he was never supposed to kill to begin with. so the "nerfs" haven't really changed games too much, but comps are more varied now.i noticed fake anon and ash haven't been playing much, but that hamfist and button have been. looking at stats it appears that hamfist favors more of an offensive role, and that button tends to favor more support heroes. i lean pretty heavily on tanks and defense with my most time played in those and support roles. ash has mostly played the offensive heroes but without more stats it's hard to say what he'll favor.
fake anon is being a lazy jew and going to make the rest of us do all of the work for him.
so we're getting a pretty good mix of interests here, and we'll have plenty of versatility on the support end of the spectrum. between us all there's a ton of time as every hero. and we've got players who will play snipers and with the new "support sniper" hero being added we should be able to work her into the comps as well. hamfist also has a fair amount of time with D.Va, which is great, she's a skirmisher tank with a strong offensive Ult. i think we can be pretty strong on assault with the kinds of heroes people are favoring atm. seems like a good aggressive mix.
we do need to pick up one more player. 2 if fake anon just wants to be "team manager." of course i think that position should go to FuckAlms. we'll be needing logos, and t-shirts, and posters and the whole 9 yards. all we really need is for r04r to agree to the possible monetization of the word Minichan on twitch and give up all rights exclusive to and wherein that name is used including merchandising and ad revenue.
bhuatan joined in and replied with this 10 years ago, 22 minutes later, 1 week after the original post[^] [v] #693,326
@previous (squeegee)
wow revenue and all!!!!! lol I didn't know you could check out other people's stats ha ha wow ah creepy
I'm getting s little better and it's fun learning the maps and how they work and how to use which heroes and I know how the dang games work now but it's just so bothersome when people just don't appear to know what they're supposed to be doing
a flipping symettra set a teleporter up that faced off of a cliff last night it was funny but also crazy dumb
wow revenue and all!!!!! lol I didn't know you could check out other people's stats ha ha wow ah creepy
I'm getting s little better and it's fun learning the maps and how they work and how to use which heroes and I know how the dang games work now but it's just so bothersome when people just don't appear to know what they're supposed to be doing
a flipping symettra set a teleporter up that faced off of a cliff last night it was funny but also crazy dumb
(Edited 59 seconds later.)
squeegee (OP) replied with this 10 years ago, 26 minutes later, 1 week after the original post[^] [v] #693,329
@previous (bhuatan)
yeah, that's why teams are going to generally play better games. everyone gets on the same page after enough games together. in WoW running with groups of friends was better because it was very predictable, but playing with randoms you never knew how it would turn out. sometimes great! other times just awful. and right now people kinda complain about match making, saying that it enforces a 50/50 win loss rate by serving up nothing but 1 sided fights, you either crush them handily, or they stomp you entirely. win too much and matchmaking puts you in with a group of retards, evidently, until you've lost enough it puts you on the other side to win a few times.
i suspect that really what happens is after a match if no one leaves game then your team is considered "an assembled premade" with a group MMR (match making rating) and you get placed against actual pre-mades with an artificially enforced MMR. idk, as they say ranked will fix a lot of things, and hopefully giving more competitive players lobby to assemble in will lead to more competitive games.
yeah, that's why teams are going to generally play better games. everyone gets on the same page after enough games together. in WoW running with groups of friends was better because it was very predictable, but playing with randoms you never knew how it would turn out. sometimes great! other times just awful. and right now people kinda complain about match making, saying that it enforces a 50/50 win loss rate by serving up nothing but 1 sided fights, you either crush them handily, or they stomp you entirely. win too much and matchmaking puts you in with a group of retards, evidently, until you've lost enough it puts you on the other side to win a few times.
i suspect that really what happens is after a match if no one leaves game then your team is considered "an assembled premade" with a group MMR (match making rating) and you get placed against actual pre-mades with an artificially enforced MMR. idk, as they say ranked will fix a lot of things, and hopefully giving more competitive players lobby to assemble in will lead to more competitive games.
squeegee (OP) double-posted this 10 years ago, 2 minutes later, 1 week after the original post[^] [v] #693,330
@693,326 (bhuatan)
> wow revenue and all!!!!!
uh, yeah. there's prize money involved. it'll have to be split among the players and unless r04r sponsors us then all that money could be lost trying to license the team name
> wow revenue and all!!!!!
uh, yeah. there's prize money involved. it'll have to be split among the players and unless r04r sponsors us then all that money could be lost trying to license the team name
squeegee (OP) triple-posted this 10 years ago, 21 seconds later, 1 week after the original post[^] [v] #693,331
squeegee (OP) quadruple-posted this 10 years ago, 57 seconds later, 1 week after the original post[^] [v] #693,333
we're talking about e-sports here, guys. do you think this is a game?squeegee (OP) quintuple-posted this 10 years ago, 13 minutes later, 1 week after the original post[^] [v] #693,335
http://www.gosugamers.net/overwatch/events/416-gosugamers-overwatch-weekly-na
we could be entered into Gosu Gaming's Weekly Open as early as this sunday. registration is still open! now, we're not ready for tournament play since we don't have a 6th, but the prize pool is 500 bucks and registration is free. games are broadcast on twitch and cast by Gusu Gamin Casters and if we get our shit together we can have some fun here in the early days.
i used to play in SC2 King of the Hill tournaments when the game was still new and it was a bunch of fun playing in cast tournaments and stuff. then it all skyrocket and went big time and little tournaments fell off. Right now it seems like a fair amount of money is just being slung around at the entry level and it's all very accessible and free.
i never won any money at SC2 streamed tournaments but there wasn't anything but community funded money there. these days it's big business, so the infrastructure is there. we may not win money, but there's money to be had and that funds a fun thing we can take part in. i dunno how long grass roots tournaments will be going on, but right now there's at least 500 bucks on the table up for grabs.
edit: oh yeah, but i do know that WoW PvP has seasons and there's prize money involved at the highest level. same with SC2. they have a tier of ranked player higher than grandmaster that is the "progamer" that qualifies for tournament play. eventually low tier ranked players may win low tier prize money as they do in WoW, but the highest level those dudes will earn a ton if the whole thing goes real e-sport.
anyway, yeah, prize money would get split evenly
we could be entered into Gosu Gaming's Weekly Open as early as this sunday. registration is still open! now, we're not ready for tournament play since we don't have a 6th, but the prize pool is 500 bucks and registration is free. games are broadcast on twitch and cast by Gusu Gamin Casters and if we get our shit together we can have some fun here in the early days.
i used to play in SC2 King of the Hill tournaments when the game was still new and it was a bunch of fun playing in cast tournaments and stuff. then it all skyrocket and went big time and little tournaments fell off. Right now it seems like a fair amount of money is just being slung around at the entry level and it's all very accessible and free.
i never won any money at SC2 streamed tournaments but there wasn't anything but community funded money there. these days it's big business, so the infrastructure is there. we may not win money, but there's money to be had and that funds a fun thing we can take part in. i dunno how long grass roots tournaments will be going on, but right now there's at least 500 bucks on the table up for grabs.
edit: oh yeah, but i do know that WoW PvP has seasons and there's prize money involved at the highest level. same with SC2. they have a tier of ranked player higher than grandmaster that is the "progamer" that qualifies for tournament play. eventually low tier ranked players may win low tier prize money as they do in WoW, but the highest level those dudes will earn a ton if the whole thing goes real e-sport.
anyway, yeah, prize money would get split evenly
(Edited 4 minutes later.)
Anonymous J joined in and replied with this 10 years ago, 8 hours later, 1 week after the original post[^] [v] #693,391
@693,324 (squeegee)
My stats might be different on the American server, I'm usually on Europe. I like 76, Phara, Tracer, Bastion, Mei, DVA and Lucio.
My stats might be different on the American server, I'm usually on Europe. I like 76, Phara, Tracer, Bastion, Mei, DVA and Lucio.
squeegee (OP) replied with this 10 years ago, 3 hours later, 1 week after the original post[^] [v] #693,416
@previous (J)
oh, i bet you're right. tbh stat tracking is useless for anything except looking at trends. there'll eventually be 3rd party websites with stats tracked and all the same kinda shit they do for SC2 and wow and whatnot. we used to track our own data at World-of-Logs.com or something like that for like really in depth info. like down to the key press. pretty useless for anyone but super try-hard gonna go pro players. know what i mean? so we'll be using those.
but right now i'm more interested in seeing where people can slot into groups and have fun. it's important to consider tanking and support roles in team comps, and we've at least got plenty of flexibility in support.
I think we're ready to start skrimming! we just need the team manager to organize some play time. we've got people from all over, so let FulkAlms know what your schedule looks like. i think mostly there will be around an 8 hour difference. right? do you EU players prefer playing late at night or early in the day?
what i'd like to do is find a window of time, not like hard schedule a play time, but, more like find out if there's a time we can say, "oh, hey, yeah, this is the time when minichan is playing overwatch, i'm going to go play cause they might be on right now," kind of a thing. i don't want to be like, "why'd you miss video game practice time," you know? we had scheduled raids and pvp in wow and it was kinda lame...
so like i usually play sometime in the evening US central time, which is like anywhere from round about 2Am-10AM euro time. (not the whole time, those are just the hours i usually log in.) i'd be cool with logging in some mornings if that would work better for our EU heroes.
oh, i bet you're right. tbh stat tracking is useless for anything except looking at trends. there'll eventually be 3rd party websites with stats tracked and all the same kinda shit they do for SC2 and wow and whatnot. we used to track our own data at World-of-Logs.com or something like that for like really in depth info. like down to the key press. pretty useless for anyone but super try-hard gonna go pro players. know what i mean? so we'll be using those.
but right now i'm more interested in seeing where people can slot into groups and have fun. it's important to consider tanking and support roles in team comps, and we've at least got plenty of flexibility in support.
I think we're ready to start skrimming! we just need the team manager to organize some play time. we've got people from all over, so let FulkAlms know what your schedule looks like. i think mostly there will be around an 8 hour difference. right? do you EU players prefer playing late at night or early in the day?
what i'd like to do is find a window of time, not like hard schedule a play time, but, more like find out if there's a time we can say, "oh, hey, yeah, this is the time when minichan is playing overwatch, i'm going to go play cause they might be on right now," kind of a thing. i don't want to be like, "why'd you miss video game practice time," you know? we had scheduled raids and pvp in wow and it was kinda lame...
so like i usually play sometime in the evening US central time, which is like anywhere from round about 2Am-10AM euro time. (not the whole time, those are just the hours i usually log in.) i'd be cool with logging in some mornings if that would work better for our EU heroes.
(Edited 55 seconds later.)
squeegee (OP) double-posted this 10 years ago, 2 days later, 1 week after the original post[^] [v] #693,919
http://masteroverwatch.com/leaderboards/pc/us/winrate
ah, there we go. 3rd party stat tracker. you can see your raw rating. i'm ranked 84,908 overall it would appear. but it gets very specific so you can see where you rank with specific heroes. my mei is ranked 10,000.
not sure what all that means anyway or how they determine ranking or if the stats are all even correct. for a clearer picture we'll have to wait for blizzard to work out things like leagues or whatever. in starcraft they had Gold, Silver, Bronze, Masters, etc. they'll probably do something similar here. it's not helpful to know you're a 363,435th ranked player based on thousands of different metrics. but in Star Craft 2 it WAS helpful to know that i was a silver player and not be confused and thinking i'm diamond tier. that big bronze emblem let you know you weren't carrying anyone, and maybe needed some practice. and it felt nice climbing from bronze to platinum (which was as good as i got.) going from some arbitrarily huge number to some slightly smaller huge number without context kinda sucks.
but anyway, just enter your battle tag and it'll pull up your stats. you can also pull up pro players and compare. want to play a better reinhardt? check the pro stats and see what categories they do much, much better in. 138% more objective time as reinhardt? maybe play the objective longer. 40% less average healing with mercy? focus on healing boost more than damage.
idk.
it's just a bunch of stats and stuff. interesting if you care, not so much if you don't. but it's there.
ah, there we go. 3rd party stat tracker. you can see your raw rating. i'm ranked 84,908 overall it would appear. but it gets very specific so you can see where you rank with specific heroes. my mei is ranked 10,000.
not sure what all that means anyway or how they determine ranking or if the stats are all even correct. for a clearer picture we'll have to wait for blizzard to work out things like leagues or whatever. in starcraft they had Gold, Silver, Bronze, Masters, etc. they'll probably do something similar here. it's not helpful to know you're a 363,435th ranked player based on thousands of different metrics. but in Star Craft 2 it WAS helpful to know that i was a silver player and not be confused and thinking i'm diamond tier. that big bronze emblem let you know you weren't carrying anyone, and maybe needed some practice. and it felt nice climbing from bronze to platinum (which was as good as i got.) going from some arbitrarily huge number to some slightly smaller huge number without context kinda sucks.
but anyway, just enter your battle tag and it'll pull up your stats. you can also pull up pro players and compare. want to play a better reinhardt? check the pro stats and see what categories they do much, much better in. 138% more objective time as reinhardt? maybe play the objective longer. 40% less average healing with mercy? focus on healing boost more than damage.
idk.
it's just a bunch of stats and stuff. interesting if you care, not so much if you don't. but it's there.
Anonymous J replied with this 10 years ago, 1 day later, 2 weeks after the original post[^] [v] #694,270
@693,416 (squeegee)
I'm at work every day except Sundays and Tuesdays up until 17.30 GMT, which is like 12.30 noon for you. Obviously then I have to take care of my shit and make myself something to eat and smoke a little weed, so it's usually around 7PM for me if I go on, which is to say 2pm for you. I go to bed between 11PM (6PM) and 1AM (8PM) because I have to be refreshed and able to open the shop the morning after.
Of course like I said I'm off on Sunday and Tuesday so I can play at any arranged time those days and/or the nights before those days. If there's ever a tournament or anything of the like I can just book holiday time, I have loads accrued because I never take them.
Also /r/ better team name plz, it has to be both intimidating to our enemies and hilarious to the audience, like "Hard Cocks" and the logo is a rooster with popeye arms and our slogan is "You just got fucked" idk
I'm at work every day except Sundays and Tuesdays up until 17.30 GMT, which is like 12.30 noon for you. Obviously then I have to take care of my shit and make myself something to eat and smoke a little weed, so it's usually around 7PM for me if I go on, which is to say 2pm for you. I go to bed between 11PM (6PM) and 1AM (8PM) because I have to be refreshed and able to open the shop the morning after.
Of course like I said I'm off on Sunday and Tuesday so I can play at any arranged time those days and/or the nights before those days. If there's ever a tournament or anything of the like I can just book holiday time, I have loads accrued because I never take them.
Also /r/ better team name plz, it has to be both intimidating to our enemies and hilarious to the audience, like "Hard Cocks" and the logo is a rooster with popeye arms and our slogan is "You just got fucked" idk
Anonymous J double-posted this 10 years ago, 3 hours later, 2 weeks after the original post[^] [v] #694,330
FuckAlms !vX8K53rFBI replied with this 10 years ago, 9 minutes later, 2 weeks after the original post[^] [v] #694,334
squeegee (OP) replied with this 10 years ago, 9 minutes later, 2 weeks after the original post[^] [v] #694,338
blizzard is opening up a PTR (public test realm) for testing of upcoming patches. i think they do this for all their games, i know WoW has one but i never bothered to participate. they'll lock out anything spoilerey, in one WoW PTR i remember they used a really old asset as an art placeholder for Bosses. something like that, or they used a sprite or something. anyway, it's there for anyone interested. i'm not.
https://playoverwatch.com/en-us/blog/20157263
https://playoverwatch.com/en-us/blog/20157263
squeegee (OP) double-posted this 10 years ago, 3 minutes later, 2 weeks after the original post[^] [v] #694,340
jeff kaplan, blizzard dev, talks about matchmaking. this is very long, but it's pretty interesting. a lot of people have been complaining about matchmaking, and kaplan discusses why you either win, lose, stomp or get stomped. his analogy to professional sports is spot on, too. i doubt the community will be entirely sated by his response, since it's basically "git gud," but i think he articulates very well how being a good sport is a part of enjoying competitive gaming.
http://us.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/20745504371
"Great post, ExcaliburZ. Allow me to share some of my personal thoughts on matchmaking...
We’ve been following all of the discussion around matchmaking. When topics get discussed in the community (and often among game developers) we tend to talk about things in very black/white or right/wrong terms. But most important decisions you make as a game developer are difficult trade-off decisions with no perfect answer.
The goal of the matchmaking is to make it so that you as a player do not have to find 11 other people to play with. You can click a Play button, and the system finds other players for you. That’s the basics. The reality is, the matchmaker is extremely complex in what it is trying to do. It does way more than I am going to mention in this post so while I am going to offer some information here, I am leaving some things out (not all intentionally – it’s just a really complex system).
At a most basic level, the matchmaker is trying to put you with 11 other people. But it doesn’t just randomly select 11 people. It takes into account a number of factors (more than I am going to list and not necessarily prioritized).
The first factor is time. The matchmaker will try to find you match quickly and not force you to wait too long. A very common thing that happens is that a player will become dissatisfied with a match and say “I don’t care how long you make me wait. I’d rather wait 20 minutes and have a good match than get matchmade into a match like you just put me into.” What we’ve seen is that when the time crosses a certain threshold, players begin to complain about it taking too long to find a match. It sounds good… waiting for that perfect match. But when the reality of waiting too long comes down on most people, they end up vocalizing their discontent on the forums. Also, there is an unrealistic expectation that if a player waits longer for a match, the “better” the match will be. The concept of “better” when it comes to matchmaking is a really hard one to define.
If I were to summarize match results into 5 broad buckets it would be these:
My team won. We beat the other team by a long shot.
My team barely won.
My team barely lost.
My team lost. We lost by a long shot. It wasn’t even close
It was a broken match somehow. Maybe someone disconnected, was screwing around or we played with fewer than 12 people.
(of course there are more cases than this – I am overly simplifying here)
Most players will say that they want a match to be either type 2 or type 3 as I described above. Those sound even. Barely win or barely lose. But I believe when psychology comes into play, most players actually expect type 1 or type 2 to be the result. Even an amazingly close type 3 match can turn into a highly negative experience for a lot of players. And if you keep “barely losing” it’s not a very fun night. Winning is fun and good. Losing is less fun than winning.
So waiting a really long time to lose by a long shot is obviously not good. But waiting a really long time to barely lose is also a negative experience. And if we assume that your chances of winning are 50%, that means that even waiting a really long time for a “better” match means that you’re going to wait a really long time to probably lose half the time… If your expectation was that you were going to wait a really long time for an awesome match where you either 1) Won by a long shot or 2) Barely won… but still won nonetheless, your expectations for what the system can or should do are in the wrong place. We do not generate bots to take losses so you can win more than 50% of the time. Those are real people losing on the other end of every loss you take.
A second factor we take into account is ping. We’re matchmaking people all over the world and we want to match people to the closest servers for the best play experience. In our second stress test, we had other things prioritized over ping-based matchmaking such as skill and time. For those of you who participated in that stress test, you’ll remember how terrible the game performance was on the first day as well as how “lit up” the forums were demanding that players be given an option of server choice. So now we prioritize ping for players. Some players live in challenging parts of the world when it comes to high speed data connections (I’m looking at you, Andes mountain range…) so it’s not perfect for everyone. But largely, most people get a really decent connection to our game servers. Matching players with wildly disparate pings also results in a higher frequency of undesirable side effects such as “getting shot behind walls”. Of course if you live in Houston, Texas and group with your buddy in Geneva, Switzerland, you’re now introducing uncertainty to our system that’s harder for us to deal with… but we allow it.
Which brings us to the next factor that we match on: grouping. The majority of our matches are comprised of either all solo players or solo players and players grouped with one other person. However, the system does try to match groups of equal sizes together first and foremost. As the time people wait grows, we expand the search to try to find others for them to play with. This means that occasionally we will match groups with players who are not grouped or in a group size that is smaller than their own. Like I mentioned, this is exceedingly rare but can happen. And that match is only made when players have crossed a waiting threshold that we deem too long. For most group matches a group of 6 is placed against another group of 6.
Groups are a big challenge in our matchmaking system. You can group with people of wildly varying skill and ping and we allow you to. It’s pretty unlikely that there is another group in the queue that exactly mirrors the unique circumstances that you have set up (pings, skills etc.). We want you to group. We feel that it’s the best way to play the game. So we try to avoid things that discourage grouping and we want to continually improve the social systems so that you’ll find it easier and easier to group with people you have chosen to play with. Playing with people you choose to play with is going to be more reliably fun than playing with people we choose for you. I once used the analogy of hanging out with people on a Saturday night. If you were to go out with five of your friends it would probably be a better time than if we tried to find 5 random people for you to go out with, no matter how smart we were in our selection process…
Anyway, this leads me to matchmaking rating. This rating is the most important thing that we try to match on. Basically this rating means “how good are you?” Commonly, you’ll hear this referred to as Matchmaking Rating or MMR. MMR is derived differently in different games. Overwatch borrows a lot of knowledge from other games but also does a lot of things unique to Overwatch. As each player plays games, their matchmaking rating goes up or down depending on if they win or lose. The system is extremely complicated and there is a lot more going on here than I am going to spell out. So please don’t take this as the comprehensive guide to how MMR is calculated in Overwatch. There is definitely a lot more going on under the hood.
In Overwatch, whether your MMR goes up or down is contingent on winning or losing. But there are a number of factors that determine how much that rating goes up or down. For example, what map you’re playing on and whether you were attacking or defending is factored in. We know the win rates on attack/defend on all of the maps and we normalize accordingly. Not all wins and losses are equal. We also look at your individual performance on each of the heroes you played during the match. Everyone has better and worse heroes and we have tons of data showing us what performance levels should be like on those heroes. We also look at your opponents and whether or not their matchmaking rating is higher or lower than yours. These are just a few of the things that are considered when determining how your skill should go up or down. At no point in MMR calculations do we look at your win/loss ratio and win/loss ratio is never used to determine who to match you with or against. We are not trying to drive your win/loss percentage toward a certain number (although the fact that so many people are at 50% win rates makes us extremely happy). All the system does when it comes to matching on skill is attempt to match you with people of a similar number.
The system is of course deeper than this. There are penalties and handicaps added for things like not playing for a while or playing in groups of varying sizes. We also do special things for brand new players to (hopefully) keep them away from the general population. Players will often mistakenly look at player level and accuse the matchmaker of making unfair matches. One thing that I have mentioned before is that we were evaluating your skill during closed beta, open beta and the second stress test weekend. If you played in any of these (over 10 million players did), we had already determined a skill rating for you (most likely). This means that it’s not uncommon to see a level 1 matchmade against much higher level players. In most of these cases, the Level 1 is a skilled player who played during the phases I mentioned but did not immediately play at launch.
There are many factors that are beyond our control that add noise to the matchmaking system.
• Leavers are extremely disruptive
• Players vary wildly in their skill with different heroes. We have no clue which of the 21 heroes you are going to play during a match
• Groups form with wild variance in skill levels and ping. Contrary to popular belief there is not a “perfect match” for your unique snowflake group
• Sometimes your little brother plays on your account
• Sometimes the cat walks in front of the screen
• Sometimes your wireless mouse runs out of batteries. (Why do you use a wireless mouse btw?)
• Sometimes a highly skilled player buys a new copy of OW to “start fresh” on a new account
• Sometimes you have internet problems
• Sometimes you play drunk or tired… or both
• That first game of the night…
• …that last game of the night
• “Life”
So this brings me to some thoughts I’ve been having about Overwatch. While this whole post has been mostly my personal thoughts – this next part is “especially” my thoughts and not reflective of the team or the company’s POV.
For better or for worse, we focused the design of the game on winning or losing as a team. OW is not a game where you ignore the map objectives and then look at your K/D ratio to determine how good you are. We want you to focus on winning or losing and as a result you do focus on winning or losing. We tried to make it so that losing isn’t the end of the world, but to a lot of people they expect to win far much more than they lose. I sometimes wonder if we were able to clone you 11 times and then put you in a match with and against yourself, would you be happy with the outcome? Even if you lost? Out of the 5 types of matches I described above, it is my belief that you would still experience types 1-4. Are those “stomps” still not acceptable? Because they will happen…
And I believe OW is strange game in that regard. I spend a lot of time studying the matches that I am in because I am very focused on matchmaking. I’ve been in so many Control Point maps where my team got destroyed on the first point, the enemy team got destroyed on the second point and then we play the third point to a 99%/99% overtime. If you judged any of those single points on their own merits you could say you have two stomps (one in your favor, one against you) and one close match. Same players...no change in matchmaking. Or take a match that I was just in on Route 66, for example. My team was on attack and could barely push out past the train cars. Two members of our team swapped heroes and we proceeded to march the payload all the way to the end of the map practically uncontested. The match went from a stomp in one direction to a stomp in the other direction.
So while it is possible for a mismatch to result in a stomp, not every stomp is a mismatch. If every time a team dominates another team it is viewed as “the matchmaker is broken”, the problem we have is with perception and expectations. Look across all pro sports. Even matches happen every night. Stomps happen every night. It’s a reality of any competitive game. Does that make being on the receiving end sting any less – probably not.
We are constantly improving the matchmaker. We learn more each day. We have one of our best engineers and best designers full time dedicated to the system. Many of those “silent” patches that go out during the week are adjustments to the system. For example, we recently realized that “Avoid this player” was wreaking havoc on matchmaking. One of the best Widowmaker players in the world complained to us about long queue times. We looked into it and found that hundreds of other players had avoided him (he’s a nice guy – they avoided him because they did not want to play against him, not because of misbehavior). The end result was that it took him an extremely long time to find a match. The worst part was, by the time he finally got a match, he had been waiting so long that the system had “opened up” to lower skill players. Now one of the best Widowmaker players was facing off against players at a lower skill level. As a result, we’ve disabled the Avoid system (the UI will go away in an upcoming patch). The system was designed with the best intent. But the results were pretty disastrous.
We will always be working on our matchmaking system. We’re listening to feedback, we’re playing the game a ton ourselves and we’re looking at hard data to inform our decisions. This post wasn’t my way of saying everything is fine. I just wanted to share some of my thoughts as someone who has been evaluating the system itself very closely as well as monitoring the feedback. I want to put it out there that there is a lot of room for improvement but also suggest that there are forces in play that cause some fair matches to sway lopsided due to forces out of our control. The game is as much (if not more) art than it is science. We’ll keep working to make it better!"
"Great post, ExcaliburZ. Allow me to share some of my personal thoughts on matchmaking...
We’ve been following all of the discussion around matchmaking. When topics get discussed in the community (and often among game developers) we tend to talk about things in very black/white or right/wrong terms. But most important decisions you make as a game developer are difficult trade-off decisions with no perfect answer.
The goal of the matchmaking is to make it so that you as a player do not have to find 11 other people to play with. You can click a Play button, and the system finds other players for you. That’s the basics. The reality is, the matchmaker is extremely complex in what it is trying to do. It does way more than I am going to mention in this post so while I am going to offer some information here, I am leaving some things out (not all intentionally – it’s just a really complex system).
At a most basic level, the matchmaker is trying to put you with 11 other people. But it doesn’t just randomly select 11 people. It takes into account a number of factors (more than I am going to list and not necessarily prioritized).
The first factor is time. The matchmaker will try to find you match quickly and not force you to wait too long. A very common thing that happens is that a player will become dissatisfied with a match and say “I don’t care how long you make me wait. I’d rather wait 20 minutes and have a good match than get matchmade into a match like you just put me into.” What we’ve seen is that when the time crosses a certain threshold, players begin to complain about it taking too long to find a match. It sounds good… waiting for that perfect match. But when the reality of waiting too long comes down on most people, they end up vocalizing their discontent on the forums. Also, there is an unrealistic expectation that if a player waits longer for a match, the “better” the match will be. The concept of “better” when it comes to matchmaking is a really hard one to define.
If I were to summarize match results into 5 broad buckets it would be these:
My team won. We beat the other team by a long shot.
My team barely won.
My team barely lost.
My team lost. We lost by a long shot. It wasn’t even close
It was a broken match somehow. Maybe someone disconnected, was screwing around or we played with fewer than 12 people.
(of course there are more cases than this – I am overly simplifying here)
Most players will say that they want a match to be either type 2 or type 3 as I described above. Those sound even. Barely win or barely lose. But I believe when psychology comes into play, most players actually expect type 1 or type 2 to be the result. Even an amazingly close type 3 match can turn into a highly negative experience for a lot of players. And if you keep “barely losing” it’s not a very fun night. Winning is fun and good. Losing is less fun than winning.
So waiting a really long time to lose by a long shot is obviously not good. But waiting a really long time to barely lose is also a negative experience. And if we assume that your chances of winning are 50%, that means that even waiting a really long time for a “better” match means that you’re going to wait a really long time to probably lose half the time… If your expectation was that you were going to wait a really long time for an awesome match where you either 1) Won by a long shot or 2) Barely won… but still won nonetheless, your expectations for what the system can or should do are in the wrong place. We do not generate bots to take losses so you can win more than 50% of the time. Those are real people losing on the other end of every loss you take.
A second factor we take into account is ping. We’re matchmaking people all over the world and we want to match people to the closest servers for the best play experience. In our second stress test, we had other things prioritized over ping-based matchmaking such as skill and time. For those of you who participated in that stress test, you’ll remember how terrible the game performance was on the first day as well as how “lit up” the forums were demanding that players be given an option of server choice. So now we prioritize ping for players. Some players live in challenging parts of the world when it comes to high speed data connections (I’m looking at you, Andes mountain range…) so it’s not perfect for everyone. But largely, most people get a really decent connection to our game servers. Matching players with wildly disparate pings also results in a higher frequency of undesirable side effects such as “getting shot behind walls”. Of course if you live in Houston, Texas and group with your buddy in Geneva, Switzerland, you’re now introducing uncertainty to our system that’s harder for us to deal with… but we allow it.
Which brings us to the next factor that we match on: grouping. The majority of our matches are comprised of either all solo players or solo players and players grouped with one other person. However, the system does try to match groups of equal sizes together first and foremost. As the time people wait grows, we expand the search to try to find others for them to play with. This means that occasionally we will match groups with players who are not grouped or in a group size that is smaller than their own. Like I mentioned, this is exceedingly rare but can happen. And that match is only made when players have crossed a waiting threshold that we deem too long. For most group matches a group of 6 is placed against another group of 6.
Groups are a big challenge in our matchmaking system. You can group with people of wildly varying skill and ping and we allow you to. It’s pretty unlikely that there is another group in the queue that exactly mirrors the unique circumstances that you have set up (pings, skills etc.). We want you to group. We feel that it’s the best way to play the game. So we try to avoid things that discourage grouping and we want to continually improve the social systems so that you’ll find it easier and easier to group with people you have chosen to play with. Playing with people you choose to play with is going to be more reliably fun than playing with people we choose for you. I once used the analogy of hanging out with people on a Saturday night. If you were to go out with five of your friends it would probably be a better time than if we tried to find 5 random people for you to go out with, no matter how smart we were in our selection process…
Anyway, this leads me to matchmaking rating. This rating is the most important thing that we try to match on. Basically this rating means “how good are you?” Commonly, you’ll hear this referred to as Matchmaking Rating or MMR. MMR is derived differently in different games. Overwatch borrows a lot of knowledge from other games but also does a lot of things unique to Overwatch. As each player plays games, their matchmaking rating goes up or down depending on if they win or lose. The system is extremely complicated and there is a lot more going on here than I am going to spell out. So please don’t take this as the comprehensive guide to how MMR is calculated in Overwatch. There is definitely a lot more going on under the hood.
In Overwatch, whether your MMR goes up or down is contingent on winning or losing. But there are a number of factors that determine how much that rating goes up or down. For example, what map you’re playing on and whether you were attacking or defending is factored in. We know the win rates on attack/defend on all of the maps and we normalize accordingly. Not all wins and losses are equal. We also look at your individual performance on each of the heroes you played during the match. Everyone has better and worse heroes and we have tons of data showing us what performance levels should be like on those heroes. We also look at your opponents and whether or not their matchmaking rating is higher or lower than yours. These are just a few of the things that are considered when determining how your skill should go up or down. At no point in MMR calculations do we look at your win/loss ratio and win/loss ratio is never used to determine who to match you with or against. We are not trying to drive your win/loss percentage toward a certain number (although the fact that so many people are at 50% win rates makes us extremely happy). All the system does when it comes to matching on skill is attempt to match you with people of a similar number.
The system is of course deeper than this. There are penalties and handicaps added for things like not playing for a while or playing in groups of varying sizes. We also do special things for brand new players to (hopefully) keep them away from the general population. Players will often mistakenly look at player level and accuse the matchmaker of making unfair matches. One thing that I have mentioned before is that we were evaluating your skill during closed beta, open beta and the second stress test weekend. If you played in any of these (over 10 million players did), we had already determined a skill rating for you (most likely). This means that it’s not uncommon to see a level 1 matchmade against much higher level players. In most of these cases, the Level 1 is a skilled player who played during the phases I mentioned but did not immediately play at launch.
There are many factors that are beyond our control that add noise to the matchmaking system.
• Leavers are extremely disruptive
• Players vary wildly in their skill with different heroes. We have no clue which of the 21 heroes you are going to play during a match
• Groups form with wild variance in skill levels and ping. Contrary to popular belief there is not a “perfect match” for your unique snowflake group
• Sometimes your little brother plays on your account
• Sometimes the cat walks in front of the screen
• Sometimes your wireless mouse runs out of batteries. (Why do you use a wireless mouse btw?)
• Sometimes a highly skilled player buys a new copy of OW to “start fresh” on a new account
• Sometimes you have internet problems
• Sometimes you play drunk or tired… or both
• That first game of the night…
• …that last game of the night
• “Life”
So this brings me to some thoughts I’ve been having about Overwatch. While this whole post has been mostly my personal thoughts – this next part is “especially” my thoughts and not reflective of the team or the company’s POV.
For better or for worse, we focused the design of the game on winning or losing as a team. OW is not a game where you ignore the map objectives and then look at your K/D ratio to determine how good you are. We want you to focus on winning or losing and as a result you do focus on winning or losing. We tried to make it so that losing isn’t the end of the world, but to a lot of people they expect to win far much more than they lose. I sometimes wonder if we were able to clone you 11 times and then put you in a match with and against yourself, would you be happy with the outcome? Even if you lost? Out of the 5 types of matches I described above, it is my belief that you would still experience types 1-4. Are those “stomps” still not acceptable? Because they will happen…
And I believe OW is strange game in that regard. I spend a lot of time studying the matches that I am in because I am very focused on matchmaking. I’ve been in so many Control Point maps where my team got destroyed on the first point, the enemy team got destroyed on the second point and then we play the third point to a 99%/99% overtime. If you judged any of those single points on their own merits you could say you have two stomps (one in your favor, one against you) and one close match. Same players...no change in matchmaking. Or take a match that I was just in on Route 66, for example. My team was on attack and could barely push out past the train cars. Two members of our team swapped heroes and we proceeded to march the payload all the way to the end of the map practically uncontested. The match went from a stomp in one direction to a stomp in the other direction.
So while it is possible for a mismatch to result in a stomp, not every stomp is a mismatch. If every time a team dominates another team it is viewed as “the matchmaker is broken”, the problem we have is with perception and expectations. Look across all pro sports. Even matches happen every night. Stomps happen every night. It’s a reality of any competitive game. Does that make being on the receiving end sting any less – probably not.
We are constantly improving the matchmaker. We learn more each day. We have one of our best engineers and best designers full time dedicated to the system. Many of those “silent” patches that go out during the week are adjustments to the system. For example, we recently realized that “Avoid this player” was wreaking havoc on matchmaking. One of the best Widowmaker players in the world complained to us about long queue times. We looked into it and found that hundreds of other players had avoided him (he’s a nice guy – they avoided him because they did not want to play against him, not because of misbehavior). The end result was that it took him an extremely long time to find a match. The worst part was, by the time he finally got a match, he had been waiting so long that the system had “opened up” to lower skill players. Now one of the best Widowmaker players was facing off against players at a lower skill level. As a result, we’ve disabled the Avoid system (the UI will go away in an upcoming patch). The system was designed with the best intent. But the results were pretty disastrous.
We will always be working on our matchmaking system. We’re listening to feedback, we’re playing the game a ton ourselves and we’re looking at hard data to inform our decisions. This post wasn’t my way of saying everything is fine. I just wanted to share some of my thoughts as someone who has been evaluating the system itself very closely as well as monitoring the feedback. I want to put it out there that there is a lot of room for improvement but also suggest that there are forces in play that cause some fair matches to sway lopsided due to forces out of our control. The game is as much (if not more) art than it is science. We’ll keep working to make it better!"
(Edited 15 seconds later.)
squeegee (OP) triple-posted this 10 years ago, 18 minutes later, 2 weeks after the original post[^] [v] #694,349
@694,270 (J)
okay, i think sundays will probably end up being generally a good time for everyone to be hopping on.
it looks like our play times may occasionally intersect in the evenings as well when you're playing later and i'm home early from work or just online quickly. i think that happened in Minecraft a lot with the EU folks that played, when i'd hop on right after work y'all were on for another hour or so and then trickling off.
i've been finding more little tournaments happening and ranked is getting pretty close. i've got a bunch of folks in social that we can probably rotate in and out of our 6th spot if no one else decides to play. i'm trying to find someone that really likes tanking, there are some awesome wombo combos that can be setup with 2 tanks. zarya + roadhog is a really great offensive pairing.
okay, i think sundays will probably end up being generally a good time for everyone to be hopping on.
it looks like our play times may occasionally intersect in the evenings as well when you're playing later and i'm home early from work or just online quickly. i think that happened in Minecraft a lot with the EU folks that played, when i'd hop on right after work y'all were on for another hour or so and then trickling off.
i've been finding more little tournaments happening and ranked is getting pretty close. i've got a bunch of folks in social that we can probably rotate in and out of our 6th spot if no one else decides to play. i'm trying to find someone that really likes tanking, there are some awesome wombo combos that can be setup with 2 tanks. zarya + roadhog is a really great offensive pairing.
squeegee (OP) quadruple-posted this 10 years ago, 2 days later, 2 weeks after the original post[^] [v] #694,929
bhutan joined in and replied with this 10 years ago, 4 hours later, 2 weeks after the original post[^] [v] #695,025
squeegee (OP) replied with this 10 years ago, 4 days later, 3 weeks after the original post[^] [v] #696,543
Ranked Competitive Mode patch on PC
it's here! finally we'll have a number that means something to wave in each other's faces.to get a rank you'll need to be at least level 25. you'll play 10 placement matches then you'll get a rank 1 - 100 depending on how well you do. after that your score will change with every new game and either go up or down.
i'm not sure about all the details, but it looks like it's a personal ranking and not a team ranking. i do know that they've made a bunch of changes to how they score matches. Payload maps will be played twice and the team who pushes further wins. on Koth maps it's now a best of 5, not 3. the hybrid maps (1/2 assault, 1/2 payload) like Numbani and Hollywood are scored weirdly now and you have to play those twice. it IS all more fair, but we'll have to see how much people bitch about having to play 2 payload matches to win a single W
anyway, the first season is upon us. time to start collecting some Golden Guns to flaunt.
bhutan joined in and replied with this 10 years ago, 5 hours later, 3 weeks after the original post[^] [v] #696,578
vriskalon !0D.SXWIdy6 joined in and replied with this 10 years ago, 7 hours later, 3 weeks after the original post[^] [v] #696,611
whats your guys-es take on reinhardt?
am i the only one annoyed at the fact that he's in every match i play
his hammy personality is fun but constant ham makes me long for turkey. and d.vas mech is vaguely turkey shaped.
that metaphor went nowhere.
anyways.
reinhardt hate club 2k16
am i the only one annoyed at the fact that he's in every match i play
his hammy personality is fun but constant ham makes me long for turkey. and d.vas mech is vaguely turkey shaped.
that metaphor went nowhere.
anyways.
reinhardt hate club 2k16
squeegee (OP) replied with this 10 years ago, 3 hours later, 3 weeks after the original post[^] [v] #696,666
@696,578 (bhutan)evidently you didn't miss out. there was a ddos happening on a bunch of ISPs or something and it cause a lot of folks to drop games. people were forced into 5v6 matches because people kept dropping. apparently it was very hard to get good games yesterday. i still haven't done my placement matches, i usually waited a few days to do placement in SC2 to get all the try-hards out of the queue.
@previous (vriskalon !0D.SXWIdy6)
reinhardt is in pretty much every match because he's the easiest tank. he's also probably just the best tank. there are a lot of very useful strategies that rely on his shield and come very naturally to noobs. "Protect the President" being probably the easiest. That's pretty much when you setup a Bastion and guard him with Reinhardt and pocket Mercy. it can be very difficult to break, and can be used on all game modes excpet KoTH with great success. Reinhardt is also very strong, his wombo-combo can kill pretty much anything. he's just a good pick almost 100% of the time. Winston, Zarya and D.VA don't really perform the role of hard-tanking quite as well. Roadhog can be pretty good at straight up soaking damage with his self-heal, but Roadhog is more about "tanking by forcing a 6v5" and DPSing enemies down.
pretty much all the other tanks are much harder to do well with. D.VA is more like a skirmisher. she's great at disrupting enemy lines and getting behind them, and she can do a significant amount of continuous DPS which makes her strong against a few defensive heroes. she can't soak a great amount of damage, but it's all shields which makes her strong against offensive flankers. D.VA is very much like Winston, who is also strong against squishy and mobile units. to do well with them you need to be using them in response to enemy team comp. If they're going all flankers and snipers, lol, go winston and d.va and stomp them. there are certainly maps where each of the tanks can excel, but Reinhardt is the only one that feels like you can take him to any fight and have a plan, "get behind the shield and push around corners with a huge amount of DPS."
personally i pick Winston on any KotH maps, or i'll go Zarya/Roadhog if i have a partner tank.
but, i'll always choose D.Va on assault on Volskaya Industries. there is a "secret" flank that she can make (as well as genji, tracer, widowmaker, lucio and winston) to get behind the A objective. let half the team distract the enemy holding the choke, then the other half flanks and does a pincer move. it's lovely how often that works.
D.Va can also take a neat flank on Dorado to get past the first choke. hanzo and widowmaker can make it, so send in a sniper or two and a skirmisher and fuck up their hold. and if the others are pushing with a reinhardt and some heavy infantry or artillery the enemy can't stop it.
anyway, no, i don't hate reinhardt. i fucking love the hero. his kit has really good synergy with every hero and his utility is such that entire strats are based around him. but, he's kinda weak on Illios and Lijang Tower.
And, i'll add this about his damage mitigation. it is really high. i routinely see 20k damage soaked. i never see any other tank even come close. i see a lot of sub 5k everything else, and rarely see any other tanks break 10k. the only other hero that even comes close to reinhardt at soaking damage is Mei with her wall. i've personally soaked 12k+ with her wall (i'm wanting to say my best ever was 18k, i'll have to check). but the problem with Mei's wall, of course, is that is stops damage in both directions. it's not possible to replace reinhardt's role as premier damage soak without disrupting everything.
the "meta" right now still really isn't even entirely established. there are still balance issues that need to be tweaked before the meta settles down, and until then people are going to gravitate to what is generally effective and easy. that's reinhardt.
tl;dr he's easy to play, he's strong, and easy to work with as a team.
vriskalon !0D.SXWIdy6 replied with this 10 years ago, 6 hours later, 3 weeks after the original post[^] [v] #696,772
@previous (squeegee)
dva is best for pushing through chokepoints, imho. her dps actually isn't that great, but her barrier has an unlimited amount of damage it can soak up, which makes it a better alternative to reinhardt for blocking focused fire from turrets, explosive-slingers like pharah and junkrat, and bastions, all of which grow organically out of chokepoints like eyes on a potato. her ult is also pretty good area denial which again, thrives in chokes.
i've found dva isn't that great at handling squishies though, since squishies are often mobile and her DPS is hardest to apply to mobile characters
zarya could be a great tank choice too, if either her main weapons were better, her bubbles lasted longer, or her bubbles had lower cooldown, but right now playing zarya is like playing shadow of the colossus with a toothpick and water balloons
dva is best for pushing through chokepoints, imho. her dps actually isn't that great, but her barrier has an unlimited amount of damage it can soak up, which makes it a better alternative to reinhardt for blocking focused fire from turrets, explosive-slingers like pharah and junkrat, and bastions, all of which grow organically out of chokepoints like eyes on a potato. her ult is also pretty good area denial which again, thrives in chokes.
i've found dva isn't that great at handling squishies though, since squishies are often mobile and her DPS is hardest to apply to mobile characters
zarya could be a great tank choice too, if either her main weapons were better, her bubbles lasted longer, or her bubbles had lower cooldown, but right now playing zarya is like playing shadow of the colossus with a toothpick and water balloons
squeegee (OP) replied with this 10 years ago, 54 minutes later, 3 weeks after the original post[^] [v] #696,783
@previous (vriskalon !0D.SXWIdy6)
yeah, that's true about her defense matrix since it's timed and can't be broken. with a group that will actually advance with you i can see D.Va being a good choice for soaking turrets and explosives. usually i find myself pushing alone with D.Va and not enough DPS from behind to do much good in a big push. i have more success with her skirmishing the back lines with other allied flankers. i'm probably too dismissive of her utility at chokes because of teamwork issues in PUGs. her Ult is great area denial and she can break chokes and knock people off of points, you're right about that.
to handle squishies i usually boost and knock them back and then try and plug them in the head. i think you're right though, most squishies DO get away, but often they'll retreat. and retreat is almost as good as killing them. anything you can do to disrupt their ability to advance their position is a good thing. but like i said, i only pick D.Va to Assault the A objective on Volskaya. i might pick her on Dorado for a one-life-strat to hop over a wall to flank, but i haven't messed with that and probably a sniper would be stronger. tbh usually i'm not super happy when people pick D.Va., especially on defense. they'll have to prove themselves.
zarya is actually an excellent tank and one of the top picks by pros in competitive. she's really, really strong, but she's also really, really hard. pros say she has utility on any map, in any mode, and on any side. in fact her alt-fire (right click) is bugged and doesn't suffer from damage fall-off as her charge drops. her beam weapon works fine, secondary fire is actually very much OP. trouble is she has a low rate of fire and a slow projectile velocity. she's hard to aim, which means to play well with her you need to be very good with her. you should also pretty much have both her shields on cool-down at all times, which means you should be in the middle of the fight tanking damage and throwing good shields at all times to maximize her weapon charge. her health (mostly shields) recharges, too, so quickly ducking in and out of fire is very important. if you play very close to the objective on payload maps it's actually hard to die. use it to block shots when your shield is down and your health recharges. her Ult also Wombo's with everyone else's Ult for team killing combos.
watching the pros play zarya was pretty eye opening for me. same with genji. same with pharrah. same with lucio. when a pro uses Genji's Ult, they double-jump and look down to find targets to use their dragon blade on or dash to. that's how they're getting team kills, i was trying to turn around to find targets and i'd get killed mid-ult. a good genji flies evidently. same with pharrah. i was watching a dude play the other day and he was able to stay aloft twice as long as i've even been able to. they use rocketjumps and her knockback to stay airborne long enough for cooldowns to pop. a good pharrah hardly ever touches the ground. same with lucio, a good lucio knows the walls better than the ground. Zarya though, there's this 17 year old korean girl that was being accused of hacking because she was destroying everyone in the world. she streamed live at a PC Bang and proved that she was just an excellent Gamer and people have been studying her Zarya for weeks now. she changed the meta, no one played zarya, now she's a top pick and you even see her in a lot of Pugs now.
tbh i think (well hope) that something similar will happen with Mei. Mei is a bottom pick for pros, they never use her. supposedly it's because her role can be performed better by other heroes, but i believe that is only true if you aren't using her wall-off extensively. i think that mei, bastion and torb don't get picked by pros because they've got a bad reputation. bastion and torb are considered "noob-tubes" and Mei is considered "un-fun" to play against and frustrating. i think as things mature she'll be picked more. i do not believe she needs a buff of any kind, which is kinda what it looks like she needs if she's among the least picked heroes. but, i personally feel it's teams not wanting to use her kit because the wall stops friendly damage too and people don't like having their "big play" disrupted by an unexpected wall-off. i think once people see how strong she can be with a comp and strat that take advantage of her wall then she'll be a better pick. just like zarya.
we do know that D.va is getting a buff. don't know what, but they are looking at her.
same with Zenyatta. he's getting a change of somekind too.
yeah, that's true about her defense matrix since it's timed and can't be broken. with a group that will actually advance with you i can see D.Va being a good choice for soaking turrets and explosives. usually i find myself pushing alone with D.Va and not enough DPS from behind to do much good in a big push. i have more success with her skirmishing the back lines with other allied flankers. i'm probably too dismissive of her utility at chokes because of teamwork issues in PUGs. her Ult is great area denial and she can break chokes and knock people off of points, you're right about that.
to handle squishies i usually boost and knock them back and then try and plug them in the head. i think you're right though, most squishies DO get away, but often they'll retreat. and retreat is almost as good as killing them. anything you can do to disrupt their ability to advance their position is a good thing. but like i said, i only pick D.Va to Assault the A objective on Volskaya. i might pick her on Dorado for a one-life-strat to hop over a wall to flank, but i haven't messed with that and probably a sniper would be stronger. tbh usually i'm not super happy when people pick D.Va., especially on defense. they'll have to prove themselves.
zarya is actually an excellent tank and one of the top picks by pros in competitive. she's really, really strong, but she's also really, really hard. pros say she has utility on any map, in any mode, and on any side. in fact her alt-fire (right click) is bugged and doesn't suffer from damage fall-off as her charge drops. her beam weapon works fine, secondary fire is actually very much OP. trouble is she has a low rate of fire and a slow projectile velocity. she's hard to aim, which means to play well with her you need to be very good with her. you should also pretty much have both her shields on cool-down at all times, which means you should be in the middle of the fight tanking damage and throwing good shields at all times to maximize her weapon charge. her health (mostly shields) recharges, too, so quickly ducking in and out of fire is very important. if you play very close to the objective on payload maps it's actually hard to die. use it to block shots when your shield is down and your health recharges. her Ult also Wombo's with everyone else's Ult for team killing combos.
watching the pros play zarya was pretty eye opening for me. same with genji. same with pharrah. same with lucio. when a pro uses Genji's Ult, they double-jump and look down to find targets to use their dragon blade on or dash to. that's how they're getting team kills, i was trying to turn around to find targets and i'd get killed mid-ult. a good genji flies evidently. same with pharrah. i was watching a dude play the other day and he was able to stay aloft twice as long as i've even been able to. they use rocketjumps and her knockback to stay airborne long enough for cooldowns to pop. a good pharrah hardly ever touches the ground. same with lucio, a good lucio knows the walls better than the ground. Zarya though, there's this 17 year old korean girl that was being accused of hacking because she was destroying everyone in the world. she streamed live at a PC Bang and proved that she was just an excellent Gamer and people have been studying her Zarya for weeks now. she changed the meta, no one played zarya, now she's a top pick and you even see her in a lot of Pugs now.
tbh i think (well hope) that something similar will happen with Mei. Mei is a bottom pick for pros, they never use her. supposedly it's because her role can be performed better by other heroes, but i believe that is only true if you aren't using her wall-off extensively. i think that mei, bastion and torb don't get picked by pros because they've got a bad reputation. bastion and torb are considered "noob-tubes" and Mei is considered "un-fun" to play against and frustrating. i think as things mature she'll be picked more. i do not believe she needs a buff of any kind, which is kinda what it looks like she needs if she's among the least picked heroes. but, i personally feel it's teams not wanting to use her kit because the wall stops friendly damage too and people don't like having their "big play" disrupted by an unexpected wall-off. i think once people see how strong she can be with a comp and strat that take advantage of her wall then she'll be a better pick. just like zarya.
we do know that D.va is getting a buff. don't know what, but they are looking at her.
same with Zenyatta. he's getting a change of somekind too.
hamfist !0Ynig1RSDc replied with this 10 years ago, 18 hours later, 3 weeks after the original post[^] [v] #696,978
found out the reason my connection has been so bad is because i've had soulseek on. doi. turned it off and i get 0 lag now
vriskalon !0D.SXWIdy6 replied with this 10 years ago, 1 hour later, 3 weeks after the original post[^] [v] #697,013
imho certain cooldowns would benefit from adjusting cooldowns. like if you cancel d.va's thrusters early, the full 5 second wait is too much. or mei's ice wall being cancelled after less than a second (for mobility or individual move blocks) could have less of a cooldown than one used for the full duration. it'd be interesting and i'd at least like to see it playtested
@696,783 (squeegee)
it seems like OW is already developing the same mobility meta that tf2 did?
mei's in a weird spot. she's infuriating, but she's squishy enough that an aware team can handle her easily. the thing I see missing in most mei players is creativity. creativity is important with all building classes, and the wall makes mei a building class. but mei in particular needs creativity and map knowledge, since she doesn't have advanced mobility OR decent range with her core mechanic, and getting in-range to be dangerous is well, difficult, especially on maps likecp_dustbowl Temple of Anubis, where the gameplay is just chokepoint to chokepoint full time. using walls to get up high is something i haven't seen a lot of mei players do, and i've gotten the most success out of mei by playing her like a flanking pick class? like the spy in tf2, with ice instead of knives. her ult is also best popped from behind a team, since the important targets like medics won't be on the front lines and it doesn't really have the range to get to the back from the front.
bastion is a bit of a noob-tube, honestly. i could see him being dangerous with more advanced movement, but neither torb nor bastion have that, which i don't mind, tbh. right now, the hardest counter to bastion is that people will see you playing bastion. the second is bullets, of course.
@696,783 (squeegee)
it seems like OW is already developing the same mobility meta that tf2 did?
mei's in a weird spot. she's infuriating, but she's squishy enough that an aware team can handle her easily. the thing I see missing in most mei players is creativity. creativity is important with all building classes, and the wall makes mei a building class. but mei in particular needs creativity and map knowledge, since she doesn't have advanced mobility OR decent range with her core mechanic, and getting in-range to be dangerous is well, difficult, especially on maps like
bastion is a bit of a noob-tube, honestly. i could see him being dangerous with more advanced movement, but neither torb nor bastion have that, which i don't mind, tbh. right now, the hardest counter to bastion is that people will see you playing bastion. the second is bullets, of course.
squeegee (OP) replied with this 10 years ago, 3 hours later, 3 weeks after the original post[^] [v] #697,158
@previous (vriskalon !0D.SXWIdy6)
> imho certain cooldowns would benefit from adjusting cooldowns. like if you cancel d.va's thrusters early, the full 5 second wait is too much. or mei's ice wall being cancelled after less than a second (for mobility or individual move blocks) could have less of a cooldown than one used for the full duration. it'd be interesting and i'd at least like to see it playtested
so kinda like Ult charges then. you can definitely get back some Ult charge if the Ult is blocked or interrupted. like McCree can cancel his deadeye and get back 50% of his charge. i wouldn't have a problem with the same thing applied to core abilities, but blizzard probably does. at least in WoW they want cooldowns to be meaningful, and by that i mean they want to make sure they can be wasted or misused. it leaves a lot of skill ceiling when there's a penalty for misclicks and improper use, and the reward for using a cooldown well is pretty big. i doubt they'll get too far from that design philosophy, that you can certainly play poorly and wastefully, and that patience and good play is rewarded highly.
but also cooldown timers are a huge area for balancing. i would be surprised if none of them change going forward.
> it seems like OW is already developing the same mobility meta that tf2 did?
i didn't play much TF2 so i don't know the meta from that game, but it does seem like high mobility classes are picked a lot by pro players. widowmaker over hanzo, for example, when you need a sniper (even though Hanzo has a "baby-widowmaker-ult" on a short cooldown, widowmaker has much more mobility and is usually picked because of her "jumpshot" that hanzo can't perform.)
> mei's in a weird spot. she's infuriating, but she's squishy enough that an aware team can handle her easily. the thing I see missing in most mei players is creativity. creativity is important with all building classes, and the wall makes mei a building class. but mei in particular needs creativity and map knowledge, since she doesn't have advanced mobility OR decent range with her core mechanic, and getting in-range to be dangerous is well, difficult, especially on maps likecp_dustbowl Temple of Anubis, where the gameplay is just chokepoint to chokepoint full time. using walls to get up high is something i haven't seen a lot of mei players do, and i've gotten the most success out of mei by playing her like a flanking pick class? like the spy in tf2, with ice instead of knives. her ult is also best popped from behind a team, since the important targets like medics won't be on the front lines and it doesn't really have the range to get to the back from the front.
i love mei for temple of anubis on defense of A. it usually ends up being a fight between me and their whole team as they try to push past the wall off. i usually choke the arch with the doorway leading to the platform (right side on defense) with ice which forces them to go left. everyone else pretty much covers the left side and mows them down as they try to push. the left side becomes a murder zone very quickly and so they ultimately end up getting behind the arch and that leaves them safe - and facing me with a temporary wall. when my wall drops i have to make sure to #1 not die, #2 not let them flank. both can be hard once they've made the decision to rush my wall when it drops. that's when i drop my ult on my feet. lol. if i can't keep it shut with my wall then i'll waste an ult just to keep it locked down. tbh i don't care if i kill them to stop them or just stop them to stop them.
> bastion is a bit of a noob-tube, honestly. i could see him being dangerous with more advanced movement, but neither torb nor bastion have that, which i don't mind, tbh. right now, the hardest counter to bastion is that people will see you playing bastion. the second is bullets, of course.
yeah, he really is. the devs have admitted as much, actually. which is fine, games need accessible stuff people can do well with as much as they need complex and hard to master stuff.
but as far as the meta goes, i'm always reminded of how SC2 meta developed. in season 1 everyone was talking about the meta and the pro scene had many well fleshed out builds and strats and very, very practiced play. at the time the meta said that Terran must go Marine, Marauder against zerg or risk being killed by an aggressive early push. it was difficult because it required spending Gas to defend against a "possible" Mineral Only based attack. there was a tightly timed build for early game terran Vs. zerg, and it was just standard. it's what you did, because everything else was bad.
then Morrow came along and started playing in tournaments. he did a weird terran build where he'd go double barracks, double tech lab and make reapers. he'd make two reaper units, then start attacking. a tech lab upgraded reaper could jump up cliffs and a pair of them could one-shot any early game zerg unit :|
he'd keep making reapers and sending them to meet up with the group, but by the time he'd have three or four of them the zerg would just be dead.
there was literally no defense. after he won the tournament all the pros copied his build and tried to counter it. they couldn't. the reapers were legit OP and zerg had no response. blizzard had to then nerf reapers into the ground. but it exposed something about progaming that i thought was interesting, what is considered "standard" can actually be completely wrong. i saw it happen over and over again, like with Destiny's Infestor Build that was unstoppable and ended up being zerfed because of it. it was wacky and off the wall and absolutely not standard. but it was better.
i still see a lot of people (pros even) talking about the overwatch meta and it really seems to focus very narrowly on a select few heroes that are considered "indispensable," but i think what they are finding is just all of the common sense stuff that seems standard. a tank, a couple of support and offensive heroes are just easy to be strong with, but there some nuance that's being overlooked with the defensive heroes and how they can best be utilized. about the only standard defense pick is widowmaker, and of course as a sniper she key's right into that tank, support, offense kinda playstyle.
it's still pretty early at any rate, and there's still at least 3 more heroes coming to help balance out the classes. i expect that in a few months the meta will include a lot more versatility, and i bet new play styles will emerge that will make some currently unpicked heroes top picks instead.
> imho certain cooldowns would benefit from adjusting cooldowns. like if you cancel d.va's thrusters early, the full 5 second wait is too much. or mei's ice wall being cancelled after less than a second (for mobility or individual move blocks) could have less of a cooldown than one used for the full duration. it'd be interesting and i'd at least like to see it playtested
so kinda like Ult charges then. you can definitely get back some Ult charge if the Ult is blocked or interrupted. like McCree can cancel his deadeye and get back 50% of his charge. i wouldn't have a problem with the same thing applied to core abilities, but blizzard probably does. at least in WoW they want cooldowns to be meaningful, and by that i mean they want to make sure they can be wasted or misused. it leaves a lot of skill ceiling when there's a penalty for misclicks and improper use, and the reward for using a cooldown well is pretty big. i doubt they'll get too far from that design philosophy, that you can certainly play poorly and wastefully, and that patience and good play is rewarded highly.
but also cooldown timers are a huge area for balancing. i would be surprised if none of them change going forward.
> it seems like OW is already developing the same mobility meta that tf2 did?
i didn't play much TF2 so i don't know the meta from that game, but it does seem like high mobility classes are picked a lot by pro players. widowmaker over hanzo, for example, when you need a sniper (even though Hanzo has a "baby-widowmaker-ult" on a short cooldown, widowmaker has much more mobility and is usually picked because of her "jumpshot" that hanzo can't perform.)
> mei's in a weird spot. she's infuriating, but she's squishy enough that an aware team can handle her easily. the thing I see missing in most mei players is creativity. creativity is important with all building classes, and the wall makes mei a building class. but mei in particular needs creativity and map knowledge, since she doesn't have advanced mobility OR decent range with her core mechanic, and getting in-range to be dangerous is well, difficult, especially on maps like
i love mei for temple of anubis on defense of A. it usually ends up being a fight between me and their whole team as they try to push past the wall off. i usually choke the arch with the doorway leading to the platform (right side on defense) with ice which forces them to go left. everyone else pretty much covers the left side and mows them down as they try to push. the left side becomes a murder zone very quickly and so they ultimately end up getting behind the arch and that leaves them safe - and facing me with a temporary wall. when my wall drops i have to make sure to #1 not die, #2 not let them flank. both can be hard once they've made the decision to rush my wall when it drops. that's when i drop my ult on my feet. lol. if i can't keep it shut with my wall then i'll waste an ult just to keep it locked down. tbh i don't care if i kill them to stop them or just stop them to stop them.
> bastion is a bit of a noob-tube, honestly. i could see him being dangerous with more advanced movement, but neither torb nor bastion have that, which i don't mind, tbh. right now, the hardest counter to bastion is that people will see you playing bastion. the second is bullets, of course.
yeah, he really is. the devs have admitted as much, actually. which is fine, games need accessible stuff people can do well with as much as they need complex and hard to master stuff.
but as far as the meta goes, i'm always reminded of how SC2 meta developed. in season 1 everyone was talking about the meta and the pro scene had many well fleshed out builds and strats and very, very practiced play. at the time the meta said that Terran must go Marine, Marauder against zerg or risk being killed by an aggressive early push. it was difficult because it required spending Gas to defend against a "possible" Mineral Only based attack. there was a tightly timed build for early game terran Vs. zerg, and it was just standard. it's what you did, because everything else was bad.
then Morrow came along and started playing in tournaments. he did a weird terran build where he'd go double barracks, double tech lab and make reapers. he'd make two reaper units, then start attacking. a tech lab upgraded reaper could jump up cliffs and a pair of them could one-shot any early game zerg unit :|
he'd keep making reapers and sending them to meet up with the group, but by the time he'd have three or four of them the zerg would just be dead.
there was literally no defense. after he won the tournament all the pros copied his build and tried to counter it. they couldn't. the reapers were legit OP and zerg had no response. blizzard had to then nerf reapers into the ground. but it exposed something about progaming that i thought was interesting, what is considered "standard" can actually be completely wrong. i saw it happen over and over again, like with Destiny's Infestor Build that was unstoppable and ended up being zerfed because of it. it was wacky and off the wall and absolutely not standard. but it was better.
i still see a lot of people (pros even) talking about the overwatch meta and it really seems to focus very narrowly on a select few heroes that are considered "indispensable," but i think what they are finding is just all of the common sense stuff that seems standard. a tank, a couple of support and offensive heroes are just easy to be strong with, but there some nuance that's being overlooked with the defensive heroes and how they can best be utilized. about the only standard defense pick is widowmaker, and of course as a sniper she key's right into that tank, support, offense kinda playstyle.
it's still pretty early at any rate, and there's still at least 3 more heroes coming to help balance out the classes. i expect that in a few months the meta will include a lot more versatility, and i bet new play styles will emerge that will make some currently unpicked heroes top picks instead.
hamfist !0Ynig1RSDc replied with this 10 years ago, 3 hours later, 3 weeks after the original post[^] [v] #697,206
hell yeahvriskalon !0D.SXWIdy6 replied with this 10 years ago, 1 week later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #700,617
RWBY Rhubarb? !!iNo3FkiZx replied with this 10 years ago, 1 hour later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #700,621
@previous (vriskalon !0D.SXWIdy6)
And, given how Overwatch works, she will be killing her own daughter.
And, given how Overwatch works, she will be killing her own daughter.
squeegee replied with this 10 years ago, 20 minutes later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #700,633
@700,617 (vriskalon !0D.SXWIdy6)
yeah! just saw that a bit ago. she looks fun. fucking glad she's got knockout darts, tbh. now mei won't get bullied so much about being "the only hero that takes away player control." can't wait to see how salty people get over sniper CC. lol.
@previous (RWBY Rhubarb? !!iNo3FkiZx)
for sure
yeah! just saw that a bit ago. she looks fun. fucking glad she's got knockout darts, tbh. now mei won't get bullied so much about being "the only hero that takes away player control." can't wait to see how salty people get over sniper CC. lol.
@previous (RWBY Rhubarb? !!iNo3FkiZx)
for sure
(Edited 33 seconds later.)
squeegee (OP) replied with this 10 years ago, 1 hour later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #700,660
a new balance pass is being worked on right now. some pretty big changes are being made.
Bastion: Ultimate cost increased by 10%
Lúcio: Ultimate cost increased by 10%
Roadhog: Ultimate cost increased by 45%
Soldier 76: Ultimate cost increased by 10%
Cooldown decreased from 10 seconds to 1 second
A new resource meter has been added. This meter will deplete while Defense Matrix is active and then recharge when it’s not in use.
Defense Matrix takes 10 seconds to reach full charge from empty
At a full charge, Defense Matrix will last for 4 seconds
Defense Matrix will now remain active as long as its assigned hotkey is held
Defense Matrix has been reclassified as an alternate fire and is now bound to RMB (by default)
An option to “Toggle Defense Matrix” has been added under Options > Controls > D.Va
Self-Destruct
Ultimate cost decreased by 15%
Explosion delay reduced from 4 seconds to 3 seconds
Explosion no longer damages D.Va (the player who activates it)
Developer Notes:
D.Va isn't being selected as often as our other tanks, and we feel a lot of that stems from the underperformance of her damage absorption abilities. So, we've reconfigured her Defensive Matrix, making it more flexible and giving players the ability to use it more often. We’ve also given Self-Destruct a little more oomph, because it felt slightly underwhelming when compared to many of Overwatch's other ultimate abilities.
Bonus damage increased from 30% to 50%
Effect will no longer stacks with bonus damage provided by another Mercy
Resurrect
Ultimate charge cost increased by 30%
Movement is no longer prevented during activation
Guardian Angel instantly resets upon use
Developer Notes:
Mercy's ultimate is one of the most powerful abilities in the game; however, players would often fly into the fray and die while using it. With this update, Resurrect will now take a bit longer to charge, but Mercy will be a lot safer when activating the ability in the middle of combat. In addition, we always intended Mercy’s Damage Boost beam to be her primary method for dealing damage, but it often felt so weak that you were better off pulling out your blaster. To help address this, we've slightly increased its potency.
Orb of Discord and Orb of Harmony
Projectile speed has been increased from 30 to 120
Transcendence
Movement speed is now doubled upon activation
Healing amount increased from 200 to 300 health per second
Developer Notes:
While Zenyatta has never had the healing abilities of Lúcio or Mercy, he made up for it by dealing more damage. However, his lack of mobility and low health has meant he’s struggled to find a place in many games. To increase his effectiveness, we've made several changes, the biggest of which is an increased shield pool. This will allow him to go head-to-head with more enemies. The Orb of Harmony and Discord changes are also a quality of life change, helping Zenyatta move his orbs around and apply their effects more quickly. And lastly, we’ve increased Transcendence’s healing throughput. This ultimate was designed to be the most effective against sustained, high-damage fire and least effective against short, high-damage bursts (like D.Va’s or Junkrat's ultimates). But, due to the amount of healing it provided, there were times when it was possible for even sustained fire to overcome Transcendence’s output. We’ve made the heal powerful and also allowed Zenyatta to move around more quickly while it’s active.
Now maintains full damage at longer distances, but will deal less damage at extreme ranges
Developer Notes:
While the game does feel better following the nerf to McCree’s close-range damage in a previous patch, it left him a little too weak. So, we're increasing his effective distance, making his range similar to Soldier: 76’s. This should hopefully give players another option for dealing with pesky long-range damage dealing heroes like Pharah and Hanzo.
Developer Notes:
We’ve been discussing the idea of hero limits for almost as long as Overwatch has been in development. It’s been somewhat of a controversial topic, but we’ve always liked giving players the freedom to select any hero, regardless of the team’s composition, because it opened up the possibility for tons of crazy strategies and match-ups.
In Quick Play, where things are intended to be more relaxed, this is fine. But in Competitive Play, we feel that hero stacking is becoming detrimental and leading to some not-so-great player experiences. For example, we’ve seen organized teams on Assault and Hybrid maps use hero stacking to overtake the first point before the defense has a chance to counter. We’ve also seen players use specific stacked compositions just to frustrate their opponents or cause indefinite delays in overtime (among other strategies). While this kind of thing is certainly possible in any mode, the higher stakes of Competitive Play means these kinds of tactics were popping up more often than anyone would like.
Ultimately, we found that we agreed with a lot of the community’s feedback and believe that hero stacking is making the game less fun for competitive players.
Players now respawn more slowly during Overtime (increased spawn time by 2 seconds)
General
Self-healing abilities now charge ultimate abilities. As a result, some heroes’ ultimate costs have been adjustedBastion: Ultimate cost increased by 10%
Lúcio: Ultimate cost increased by 10%
Roadhog: Ultimate cost increased by 45%
Soldier 76: Ultimate cost increased by 10%
D.Va
Defense MatrixCooldown decreased from 10 seconds to 1 second
A new resource meter has been added. This meter will deplete while Defense Matrix is active and then recharge when it’s not in use.
Defense Matrix takes 10 seconds to reach full charge from empty
At a full charge, Defense Matrix will last for 4 seconds
Defense Matrix will now remain active as long as its assigned hotkey is held
Defense Matrix has been reclassified as an alternate fire and is now bound to RMB (by default)
An option to “Toggle Defense Matrix” has been added under Options > Controls > D.Va
Self-Destruct
Ultimate cost decreased by 15%
Explosion delay reduced from 4 seconds to 3 seconds
Explosion no longer damages D.Va (the player who activates it)
Developer Notes:
D.Va isn't being selected as often as our other tanks, and we feel a lot of that stems from the underperformance of her damage absorption abilities. So, we've reconfigured her Defensive Matrix, making it more flexible and giving players the ability to use it more often. We’ve also given Self-Destruct a little more oomph, because it felt slightly underwhelming when compared to many of Overwatch's other ultimate abilities.
Mercy
Caduceus Staff Damage BoostBonus damage increased from 30% to 50%
Effect will no longer stacks with bonus damage provided by another Mercy
Resurrect
Ultimate charge cost increased by 30%
Movement is no longer prevented during activation
Guardian Angel instantly resets upon use
Developer Notes:
Mercy's ultimate is one of the most powerful abilities in the game; however, players would often fly into the fray and die while using it. With this update, Resurrect will now take a bit longer to charge, but Mercy will be a lot safer when activating the ability in the middle of combat. In addition, we always intended Mercy’s Damage Boost beam to be her primary method for dealing damage, but it often felt so weak that you were better off pulling out your blaster. To help address this, we've slightly increased its potency.
Zenyatta
Base shields increased by 50 (now 50 Health/150 Shield)Orb of Discord and Orb of Harmony
Projectile speed has been increased from 30 to 120
Transcendence
Movement speed is now doubled upon activation
Healing amount increased from 200 to 300 health per second
Developer Notes:
While Zenyatta has never had the healing abilities of Lúcio or Mercy, he made up for it by dealing more damage. However, his lack of mobility and low health has meant he’s struggled to find a place in many games. To increase his effectiveness, we've made several changes, the biggest of which is an increased shield pool. This will allow him to go head-to-head with more enemies. The Orb of Harmony and Discord changes are also a quality of life change, helping Zenyatta move his orbs around and apply their effects more quickly. And lastly, we’ve increased Transcendence’s healing throughput. This ultimate was designed to be the most effective against sustained, high-damage fire and least effective against short, high-damage bursts (like D.Va’s or Junkrat's ultimates). But, due to the amount of healing it provided, there were times when it was possible for even sustained fire to overcome Transcendence’s output. We’ve made the heal powerful and also allowed Zenyatta to move around more quickly while it’s active.
McCree
PeacekeeperNow maintains full damage at longer distances, but will deal less damage at extreme ranges
Developer Notes:
While the game does feel better following the nerf to McCree’s close-range damage in a previous patch, it left him a little too weak. So, we're increasing his effective distance, making his range similar to Soldier: 76’s. This should hopefully give players another option for dealing with pesky long-range damage dealing heroes like Pharah and Hanzo.
Competitive Play
Competitive Play matches can now only have one of each hero per team.Developer Notes:
We’ve been discussing the idea of hero limits for almost as long as Overwatch has been in development. It’s been somewhat of a controversial topic, but we’ve always liked giving players the freedom to select any hero, regardless of the team’s composition, because it opened up the possibility for tons of crazy strategies and match-ups.
In Quick Play, where things are intended to be more relaxed, this is fine. But in Competitive Play, we feel that hero stacking is becoming detrimental and leading to some not-so-great player experiences. For example, we’ve seen organized teams on Assault and Hybrid maps use hero stacking to overtake the first point before the defense has a chance to counter. We’ve also seen players use specific stacked compositions just to frustrate their opponents or cause indefinite delays in overtime (among other strategies). While this kind of thing is certainly possible in any mode, the higher stakes of Competitive Play means these kinds of tactics were popping up more often than anyone would like.
Ultimately, we found that we agreed with a lot of the community’s feedback and believe that hero stacking is making the game less fun for competitive players.
Gameplay
If a match goes into Overtime for more than 20 seconds, the fuse will now start to "burn down" more quicklyPlayers now respawn more slowly during Overtime (increased spawn time by 2 seconds)
squeegee (OP) double-posted this 10 years ago, 22 minutes later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #700,671
one thing i noticed is that self healing abilities recharge ults now, but mei did not have her charge rate reduced at all even though her ice-block regens some health. so, like, that's a buff for her :3
mei is one of the least picked heroes in competitive and has zero representation at the pro level. i suspect that it's not because she's weak, though. i think it's because teams don't like what her abilities functionally do to a game. all the other heroes kit's are designed to "throw damage down range," but Mei's kit is designed around stalling a fight, stopping a fight, or blocking a fight. teammates have to work around that and it just leads to far fewer straight up engagements. and that means, probably, less exciting games.
blizzard doesn't want useless heroes, which is why zenyatta and d.va got buffed directly. they were underpicked because they were weak, so blizzard buffed them. since blizzard didn't buff mei directly and instead left her alone to catch an indirect buff i believe that blizzard believes that Mei is not underpowered, but underpicked for other reasons. they may be banking on this small indirect buff to make Mei a more desirable pick through slightly better ult generation. we'll see i guess, i'm not hearing anyone even talk about Mei except to complain about her freeze gun.
mei is one of the least picked heroes in competitive and has zero representation at the pro level. i suspect that it's not because she's weak, though. i think it's because teams don't like what her abilities functionally do to a game. all the other heroes kit's are designed to "throw damage down range," but Mei's kit is designed around stalling a fight, stopping a fight, or blocking a fight. teammates have to work around that and it just leads to far fewer straight up engagements. and that means, probably, less exciting games.
blizzard doesn't want useless heroes, which is why zenyatta and d.va got buffed directly. they were underpicked because they were weak, so blizzard buffed them. since blizzard didn't buff mei directly and instead left her alone to catch an indirect buff i believe that blizzard believes that Mei is not underpowered, but underpicked for other reasons. they may be banking on this small indirect buff to make Mei a more desirable pick through slightly better ult generation. we'll see i guess, i'm not hearing anyone even talk about Mei except to complain about her freeze gun.
squeegee (OP) triple-posted this 10 years ago, 8 minutes later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #700,673
PTU shenannigans
Zenyatta Ult + Ana Ult + Lucio speed boost
https://gfycat.com/GrimyMenacingAfricanaugurbuzzard
Zenyatta Ult + Ana Ult + Lucio speed boost
https://gfycat.com/GrimyMenacingAfricanaugurbuzzard
squeegee (OP) quadruple-posted this 10 years ago, 19 minutes later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #700,681
PTU shenannigans
Nano boosted Symmetra. jesus christ...
https://gfycat.com/ThriftyAfraidIndianpangolin
Nano boosted Symmetra. jesus christ...
https://gfycat.com/ThriftyAfraidIndianpangolin
vriskalon !0D.SXWIdy6 replied with this 10 years ago, 2 hours later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #700,781
@700,660 (squeegee)
i'm digging these dva changes
not too sure about ana though, i love her lore, but a lot of ppl have compared ana's ult to the tf2 uber and that's never a good sign.
i'm digging these dva changes
not too sure about ana though, i love her lore, but a lot of ppl have compared ana's ult to the tf2 uber and that's never a good sign.
squeegee replied with this 10 years ago, 3 hours later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #700,804
@previous (vriskalon !0D.SXWIdy6)
i like the dva changes. she'll be tankier.
and i think ana is going to change the "meta" quite a lot. her ult is going to stack so perfectly with other ults. several defensive strats are going to be easily broken now.
i like the dva changes. she'll be tankier.
and i think ana is going to change the "meta" quite a lot. her ult is going to stack so perfectly with other ults. several defensive strats are going to be easily broken now.
vriskalon !0D.SXWIdy6 replied with this 10 years ago, 4 hours later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #700,828
@previous (squeegee)
d.va's matrix change is basically what i suggested for the legends earlier in the thread lmfao
re: ana, her existence really justifies having a sniper or... winston. ugh on the team - both for healing as ana, and for countersniping (probably with widow?) just to keep things under control
snipers in general tend to slow the game down quite a bit without counter snipers but idk, maybe winston can keep em down.
either way, it'll be interesting watching ana grow into the meta
d.va's matrix change is basically what i suggested for the legends earlier in the thread lmfao
re: ana, her existence really justifies having a sniper or... winston. ugh on the team - both for healing as ana, and for countersniping (probably with widow?) just to keep things under control
snipers in general tend to slow the game down quite a bit without counter snipers but idk, maybe winston can keep em down.
either way, it'll be interesting watching ana grow into the meta
squeegee (OP) replied with this 10 years ago, 11 hours later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #701,047
@previous (vriskalon !0D.SXWIdy6)
yeah, winston is frequently my pick for dealing with either hanzo or widow. i don't like mirror matches, and countersniping is hard to do when there's a short timer on the match, so i'd never want to pick a sniper to counter a sniper. we'll see what happens with Ana. her sleep dart might make it very hard to get close enough to kill her with winston. my next favorite sniper killer is junkrat since he can lob grenades from behind cover. i don't play many of the flankers like tracer or genji, but they may be solid choices for countering Ana simply because she lacks mobility and they are so hard to hit with slow firing weapons.
but, again, i see mei as a decent enough counter. mei can shut down a widow by denying her clear shots, and i'm feeling like her Ult is something that's going to be very hard to deal with. i've been watching videos from the PTR and a nano-boosted hero is almost invulnerable and does massive dps. watched a Zarya get a solo team kill by using graviton surge and alt-firing into it a few times. they were all shooting her and her shields barely dropped. so maybe, maybe mei will find a place in the meta as way to block that. she can just put up a wall and deny it all together. maybe.
yeah, winston is frequently my pick for dealing with either hanzo or widow. i don't like mirror matches, and countersniping is hard to do when there's a short timer on the match, so i'd never want to pick a sniper to counter a sniper. we'll see what happens with Ana. her sleep dart might make it very hard to get close enough to kill her with winston. my next favorite sniper killer is junkrat since he can lob grenades from behind cover. i don't play many of the flankers like tracer or genji, but they may be solid choices for countering Ana simply because she lacks mobility and they are so hard to hit with slow firing weapons.
but, again, i see mei as a decent enough counter. mei can shut down a widow by denying her clear shots, and i'm feeling like her Ult is something that's going to be very hard to deal with. i've been watching videos from the PTR and a nano-boosted hero is almost invulnerable and does massive dps. watched a Zarya get a solo team kill by using graviton surge and alt-firing into it a few times. they were all shooting her and her shields barely dropped. so maybe, maybe mei will find a place in the meta as way to block that. she can just put up a wall and deny it all together. maybe.
squeegee (OP) double-posted this 10 years ago, 1 day later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #701,326
@700,621 (RWBY Rhubarb? !!iNo3FkiZx)
hey, i got a question about tracer's accent. i've heard both that it's fake as hell and no one talks like that, and also that it's genuine and an accent you might hear somewhere in the UK. people on both sides insist they are correct, and it's true that the voice actress is english. but people are saying she embellished it so much it sounds like an american trying to fake cockney.
what's your opinion?
examples:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePtOIZWGXkM
https://youtu.be/o6Gu0PSgq6s
hey, i got a question about tracer's accent. i've heard both that it's fake as hell and no one talks like that, and also that it's genuine and an accent you might hear somewhere in the UK. people on both sides insist they are correct, and it's true that the voice actress is english. but people are saying she embellished it so much it sounds like an american trying to fake cockney.
what's your opinion?
examples:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePtOIZWGXkM
https://youtu.be/o6Gu0PSgq6s
RWBY Rhubarb? !!iNo3FkiZx replied with this 10 years ago, 25 minutes later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #701,335
@previous (squeegee)
Yeah, overall it sounds passable to me. She is very cockney, but I don't think she goes too far.
Not that I'm an expert or anything, though.
Yeah, overall it sounds passable to me. She is very cockney, but I don't think she goes too far.
Not that I'm an expert or anything, though.
squeegee (OP) replied with this 10 years ago, 19 hours later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #701,547
i dinged level 80 last night. 67 hours. 250 wins. probably near 500 games, my win rate in Quick Play is around 50% like most folks.most played hero is mei, with a 60% win rate. 10% better than any other defensive hero. she also beats out my support heroes. Mercy has a win rate of 49% with lucio sitting right at 50%. very probably that's because i almost always play Lucio on KotH maps which often end in a coin flip. so a 50% win rate is kind of expected. my next most winningest heroes are Torb, bastion and reaper. but, i have very little time with any of them. an 1 - 3 hours or so. also i only bust out bastion when he can strongly counter a team that's pushing the payload into the last objective. i will sometimes replace Mei with Bastion and i think that helps with both their win percentages and it's a strong swap. bastion can melt a lot of the Mei counters. and i win a lot with Torb because i play him very cheesily when i'm with a group doing cheesy stuff. cheesy stuff needs to be directly countered and so it wins against teams that refuse to adapt. happens often. torb wins for me 73% of the time i play him. but, again, i play him in few games, have little time with him, and play him with abusive groups.
little disappointed my Junkrat isn't better. mid 40s. but i'll play him on almost any map. i think that when you "main" a hero then that heroes win rate will be equivalent to your overall winrate (which should be close to 50% because of how matchmaking works.) so, playing a hero on any map or any mode will probably end up settling your win rate in around that same number once you've played a significant number of games. i can probably improve his win rate simply by discriminating a little more when i pick him and try to only pick him on a few specific maps where he works really well. kinda like how i pick Mei.
for the role i fill when i play junkrat i think Pharrah may be the best alternative.
anyway. 20 more levels until prestige. maybe a week.
Anonymous J replied with this 10 years ago, 20 minutes later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #701,556
@701,326 (squeegee)
She's really squeaky and peppy which is a stereotype about Cockneys and is played for laughs like with Del Boy but yeah people really do talk like that
She's really squeaky and peppy which is a stereotype about Cockneys and is played for laughs like with Del Boy but yeah people really do talk like that
squeegee (OP) replied with this 10 years ago, 12 minutes later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #701,562
@701,335 (RWBY Rhubarb? !!iNo3FkiZx)
@previous (J)
i think hers is the only accent people complain about, the rest no one seems to have a problem with. usually the complainers are like, "i'm a british and i've traveled all over from Southern Suffix to the Northern Highlands of Worcestershire and even to the Isles of Welsh - and never in my life have i ever heard anyone speak like that ever!"
tbh they all sound campy except for mccree. he's the only hero without an accent at all, which is weird.
@previous (J)
i think hers is the only accent people complain about, the rest no one seems to have a problem with. usually the complainers are like, "i'm a british and i've traveled all over from Southern Suffix to the Northern Highlands of Worcestershire and even to the Isles of Welsh - and never in my life have i ever heard anyone speak like that ever!"
tbh they all sound campy except for mccree. he's the only hero without an accent at all, which is weird.
bhutto joined in and replied with this 10 years ago, 1 minute later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #701,565
squeegee (OP) replied with this 10 years ago, 2 hours later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #701,602
squeegee (OP) double-posted this 10 years ago, 16 minutes later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #701,606
squeegee (OP) triple-posted this 10 years ago, 2 days later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #702,225
level 90 and fuck ranked games. just wow. i've played 6 placement matches and lost 5 because we had people on our team leave in every single game. they either would leave, or DC and not come back. that forces you to play a man down. the only game i won we won an utterly destroyed the other team. they couldn't even leave their spawn room we had them camped so hard. so, 5 defeats largely due to people leaving game. but also in two matches i had people stop playing and just start arguing with people in chat. one game a dude tried to make callouts by text chat and then spent round two bitching at us that we wouldn't listen to him. we told him to use a mic and he said, "I'm FUCKING deaf retards!"
...
so, in one game one player spent most of his time chatting instead of moving, one game where someone just gave up after a few minutes and decided to troll us instead of playing. then had 3 games where we lost a player and lost 5v6, and my one win was basically against the worst bunch of noobs i've ever seen.
competitive is a waste of time right now.
...
so, in one game one player spent most of his time chatting instead of moving, one game where someone just gave up after a few minutes and decided to troll us instead of playing. then had 3 games where we lost a player and lost 5v6, and my one win was basically against the worst bunch of noobs i've ever seen.
competitive is a waste of time right now.
squeegee (OP) quadruple-posted this 10 years ago, 4 days later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #703,645
Ana players can be pretty annoying. they're shit tier healers, and ana is a weak sniper if that's all you're doing. i see a lot of players with shitty situational awareness, but snipers can be pretty bad with their tunnel vision and camping. they often play a zone defense which leaves teams to fight 6v5 when not in "sniper alley." it's even worse when it's your healer doing it.
last game i was critical health and spamming for heals, perfectly within LOS and range of our ana. got nothing. got pushed off of my point which left a torb unguarded and he set up a forward turret and shutdown the lowground. i limped back behind our lines, got right beside ana and spammed for heals. she never even looked for me. i was waiving at her, doing my voice lines, begging for heals. i tried to stand in front of her so i'd get healed by accident, but bitch moved and shot around me. i stood in front of her, waved at her, spammed for heals, and then got shot by their sniper.
i was pretty salty about it tbh. by the time i ran back they'd pushed the car onto the first objective and everyone was dead. our Soldier got gold in healing for his biotic field he kept dropping... that's how shit our ana healed. don't believe i ever got healed once. it'll be a few weeks before people are actually good with her and once the novelty wears off there won't be so many oblivious retards playing her. till then though when i see someone pick her i'm going to roll my eyes and assume they're going to be shit
last game i was critical health and spamming for heals, perfectly within LOS and range of our ana. got nothing. got pushed off of my point which left a torb unguarded and he set up a forward turret and shutdown the lowground. i limped back behind our lines, got right beside ana and spammed for heals. she never even looked for me. i was waiving at her, doing my voice lines, begging for heals. i tried to stand in front of her so i'd get healed by accident, but bitch moved and shot around me. i stood in front of her, waved at her, spammed for heals, and then got shot by their sniper.
i was pretty salty about it tbh. by the time i ran back they'd pushed the car onto the first objective and everyone was dead. our Soldier got gold in healing for his biotic field he kept dropping... that's how shit our ana healed. don't believe i ever got healed once. it'll be a few weeks before people are actually good with her and once the novelty wears off there won't be so many oblivious retards playing her. till then though when i see someone pick her i'm going to roll my eyes and assume they're going to be shit
(Edited 35 seconds later.)
bhutto replied with this 10 years ago, 54 minutes later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #703,658
@previous (squeegee)
i really like playing as ana but i feel the same way when other people do
i get a lot of 'thank yous' when i do tho its like a surprise if an ana actually fills role
i really like playing as ana but i feel the same way when other people do
i get a lot of 'thank yous' when i do tho its like a surprise if an ana actually fills role
squeegee (OP) replied with this 10 years ago, 38 minutes later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #703,685
@previous (bhutto)
i think she's going to be pretty good, her ult is pretty interesting. i'm hearing that D.Va + Mercy (boost) + Ana Heals/ult is a really strong and aggressive combo. Also a Nano-boosted Whole Hog (roadhog ult) is one of the strongest things in the game.
but yeah, kinda like Mercy you have to be deliberate with your heals. a bad ana is kinda like having a player go "battle mercy" which is just bad. i can totally see ana being super useful on assault. maybe even in every game mode and on almost every map. you don't even need her scope, tbh, since headshots aren't a thing with her. i'd probably still not pick her over lucio on KotH maps, but probably ana + lucio would be okay, i just don't see a lot of room for 2 support on KotH and lucio is just required. i think she'll end up very strong when assaulting capture, payload and hybrid maps.
i think she's going to be pretty good, her ult is pretty interesting. i'm hearing that D.Va + Mercy (boost) + Ana Heals/ult is a really strong and aggressive combo. Also a Nano-boosted Whole Hog (roadhog ult) is one of the strongest things in the game.
but yeah, kinda like Mercy you have to be deliberate with your heals. a bad ana is kinda like having a player go "battle mercy" which is just bad. i can totally see ana being super useful on assault. maybe even in every game mode and on almost every map. you don't even need her scope, tbh, since headshots aren't a thing with her. i'd probably still not pick her over lucio on KotH maps, but probably ana + lucio would be okay, i just don't see a lot of room for 2 support on KotH and lucio is just required. i think she'll end up very strong when assaulting capture, payload and hybrid maps.
squeegee (OP) double-posted this 10 years ago, 1 day later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #704,332
ding
level 100
now to prestige and get 20 fast loot boxes (leveling 1-20 is very fast)
level 100
now to prestige and get 20 fast loot boxes (leveling 1-20 is very fast)
squeegee (OP) triple-posted this 10 years ago, 6 days later, 1 month after the original post[^] [v] #706,502
gotta say, playing after prestige has been great. everyone on teams ends up being prestige+ which leads to some really great games.
prior to prestige, even in the 90s, i'd regularly end up on teams with players who have significantly less experience.
games would often swing wildly and it could be frustrating when teammates make obvious errors especially if it costs the game. but after prestige it seems to pair me with other players that have 90 hours or so. games are no longer lost because of basic errors (not standing on the point, getting over extended, ignoring the payload, playing heroes "wrong") and are instead lost because the other team solidly outplayed you. i've had some fantastic games lately.
Mei is a little bit broken after this last patch, though. they reduced the hit boxes for everyone, which had an impact on Mei's alt-fire which is now much harder to land. there are a bunch of examples of projectiles passing through player geometry, but miss the hitbox. so, her freeze/head shot combo is borked. also, her ice wall is unreliable and can have unintended effects. she's still outstanding at providing a zone defense at a choke, but her utility as an anti-flanker is compromised without a reliable freeze/headshot combo. you'll get far fewer eliminations with her now, and it's more difficult to solo multiple attackers because of it.
incidentally, heroes that produce splash are doing much better. junkrat, pharah, zarya, they're doing pretty great. you're harder to hit now, especially from hit-scan weapons or from range, and your splash damage doesn't really need huge hitboxes to be successful. spam the area with explosives and you're bound to hit something.
prior to prestige, even in the 90s, i'd regularly end up on teams with players who have significantly less experience.
games would often swing wildly and it could be frustrating when teammates make obvious errors especially if it costs the game. but after prestige it seems to pair me with other players that have 90 hours or so. games are no longer lost because of basic errors (not standing on the point, getting over extended, ignoring the payload, playing heroes "wrong") and are instead lost because the other team solidly outplayed you. i've had some fantastic games lately.
Mei is a little bit broken after this last patch, though. they reduced the hit boxes for everyone, which had an impact on Mei's alt-fire which is now much harder to land. there are a bunch of examples of projectiles passing through player geometry, but miss the hitbox. so, her freeze/head shot combo is borked. also, her ice wall is unreliable and can have unintended effects. she's still outstanding at providing a zone defense at a choke, but her utility as an anti-flanker is compromised without a reliable freeze/headshot combo. you'll get far fewer eliminations with her now, and it's more difficult to solo multiple attackers because of it.
incidentally, heroes that produce splash are doing much better. junkrat, pharah, zarya, they're doing pretty great. you're harder to hit now, especially from hit-scan weapons or from range, and your splash damage doesn't really need huge hitboxes to be successful. spam the area with explosives and you're bound to hit something.
squeegee (OP) quadruple-posted this 10 years ago, 4 weeks later, 2 months after the original post[^] [v] #714,075
FuckAlms !vX8K53rFBI replied with this 10 years ago, 1 minute later, 2 months after the original post[^] [v] #714,076
squeegee (OP) replied with this 10 years ago, 9 minutes later, 2 months after the original post[^] [v] #714,079
@previous (FuckAlms !vX8K53rFBI)
we were in overtime, unfortunately we lost. the D.va ended up landing shots and i died. it was a last ditch dive on the point kinda thing, if i could've killed that D.va we might've taken it
we were in overtime, unfortunately we lost. the D.va ended up landing shots and i died. it was a last ditch dive on the point kinda thing, if i could've killed that D.va we might've taken it
Catherine !TGirlYJKXM joined in and replied with this 10 years ago, 3 hours later, 2 months after the original post[^] [v] #714,100
I'd rather play Team Fortress 2.
ぶたん replied with this 10 years ago, 10 hours later, 2 months after the original post[^] [v] #714,170
Catherine✡ !TGirlYJKXM replied with this 10 years ago, 18 hours later, 2 months after the original post[^] [v] #714,521
ぶたん replied with this 10 years ago, 2 hours later, 2 months after the original post[^] [v] #714,542
buto joined in and replied with this 10 years ago, 2 weeks later, 3 months after the original post[^] [v] #719,030
theres a new map
competitive season 2 is slightly better
sombra looming
competitive season 2 is slightly better
sombra looming
squeegee (OP) replied with this 10 years ago, 8 hours later, 3 months after the original post[^] [v] #719,075
@previous (buto)
the new map is awesome. still having problems with competitive though. placements were plagued with disconnects. quick play is fine, i think it has to do with community outcry over "tick rate." i dunno what that even really IS, but blizzard insisted players were making too big a deal out of "high tick rate servers" and that it would lead to unforeseen issues. but players cried over what is actually nothing more than lag and blizzard increased the tick rate on competitive modes. Now comp drops players like flies and quick-play is still just fine... and there's still lag in comp... tick rate has done nothing noticeable except maybe make games far more unstable.
anyway, i don't really know, but the new map is awesome.
the new map is awesome. still having problems with competitive though. placements were plagued with disconnects. quick play is fine, i think it has to do with community outcry over "tick rate." i dunno what that even really IS, but blizzard insisted players were making too big a deal out of "high tick rate servers" and that it would lead to unforeseen issues. but players cried over what is actually nothing more than lag and blizzard increased the tick rate on competitive modes. Now comp drops players like flies and quick-play is still just fine... and there's still lag in comp... tick rate has done nothing noticeable except maybe make games far more unstable.
anyway, i don't really know, but the new map is awesome.
FuckAlms !vX8K53rFBI replied with this 9 years ago, 4 months later, 7 months after the original post[^] [v] #750,670
So what's new?
Anonymous Q joined in and replied with this 9 years ago, 8 minutes later, 7 months after the original post[^] [v] #750,677
squeegee joined in and replied with this 9 years ago, 37 minutes later, 7 months after the original post[^] [v] #750,690
@750,670 (FuckAlms !vX8K53rFBI)
couple of new maps, seasonal game modes, a couple of new heroes, bunches of cosmetic items, and a few ban waves for cheaters. we hear terry crews is likely doing voice lines for DOOMHAMMER an upcoming new hero, so everyone is excited about that.
couple of new maps, seasonal game modes, a couple of new heroes, bunches of cosmetic items, and a few ban waves for cheaters. we hear terry crews is likely doing voice lines for DOOMHAMMER an upcoming new hero, so everyone is excited about that.
Anonymous S joined in and replied with this 9 years ago, 1 hour later, 7 months after the original post[^] [v] #750,713
The "tick rate" issue is the major reason why this game will never succeed ( unless some one wants to throw money at it, but God knows how long that will last).
You are playing a game where human reaction is faster than the tick held serverside. Have you ever played csgo 128 tick or lan? It makes a world of difference. It's why Dota is played for tens of millions now. The game is faster than the way you can react to it. It allows for a way higher skill cap. Over watch is a 30fps console game for casuals. There is no learning incentive. It is as aim based as modern CoD games yet those are played for a couple thousand $.
Blizzard's last competitive game was Diablo 2. They have never tried to make an esports game and that is what they are cashing in on. So many moba/fps ripoff f2ps last year the only thing that makes over watch nice is that it is highly polished (graphically wise, still as bad as tf2 when it comes to in game balance).
It's successful by the way it was able to brand its heroes as almost superheroes and feels like a comic book a lot of the time.
You are playing a game where human reaction is faster than the tick held serverside. Have you ever played csgo 128 tick or lan? It makes a world of difference. It's why Dota is played for tens of millions now. The game is faster than the way you can react to it. It allows for a way higher skill cap. Over watch is a 30fps console game for casuals. There is no learning incentive. It is as aim based as modern CoD games yet those are played for a couple thousand $.
Blizzard's last competitive game was Diablo 2. They have never tried to make an esports game and that is what they are cashing in on. So many moba/fps ripoff f2ps last year the only thing that makes over watch nice is that it is highly polished (graphically wise, still as bad as tf2 when it comes to in game balance).
It's successful by the way it was able to brand its heroes as almost superheroes and feels like a comic book a lot of the time.
ken griffey sr replied with this 9 years ago, 3 hours later, 7 months after the original post[^] [v] #750,759
? joined in and replied with this 9 years ago, 8 minutes later, 7 months after the original post[^] [v] #750,761
I main mei.
Edit: esp. on offense.
Edit: esp. on offense.
(Edited 24 seconds later.)
ken griffey sr replied with this 9 years ago, 2 minutes later, 7 months after the original post[^] [v] #750,763
? replied with this 9 years ago, 2 minutes later, 7 months after the original post[^] [v] #750,764
? double-posted this 9 years ago, 1 minute later, 7 months after the original post[^] [v] #750,766
Does everyone hate sombra?
ken griffey sr replied with this 9 years ago, 2 minutes later, 7 months after the original post[^] [v] #750,767
ken griffey sr double-posted this 9 years ago, 21 seconds later, 7 months after the original post[^] [v] #750,768
FuckAlms !vX8K53rFBI replied with this 9 years ago, 45 minutes later, 7 months after the original post[^] [v] #750,778
FuckAlms !vX8K53rFBI double-posted this 9 years ago, 6 days later, 7 months after the original post[^] [v] #752,918
> Mercy??? ?? replied with this 9 years ago, 24 minutes later, 7 months after the original post[^] [v] #752,919
sammy davis sr replied with this 9 years ago, 3 hours later, 7 months after the original post[^] [v] #752,933
@689,989 (Fake anon !ZkUt8arUCU)
> There is a LOT of overwatch porn fyi. Since you like dumb animu shit you probably knew that already though.
lmao mark. what's there a lot of porn of today??
> There is a LOT of overwatch porn fyi. Since you like dumb animu shit you probably knew that already though.
lmao mark. what's there a lot of porn of today??
Fake anon !ZkUt8arUCU replied with this 9 years ago, 10 hours later, 7 months after the original post[^] [v] #753,021
FuckAlms !vX8K53rFBI replied with this 9 years ago, 3 hours later, 7 months after the original post[^] [v] #753,142
@752,919 (??? ??)
I feel like Mercy has a bit of a bell curve to her effectiveness.
> Start out new to the game, play healer because they have the least chance of being blamed when everything goes wrong.
> Not doing too well, but everyone can see you're at a low level
> Starting to get better, now you're trying to break your previous healing records and thinking more strategically and less "just-fucking-survive".
> You had one really good game and now it's been 20 rounds since and you haven't come close to your record.
> Oh yeah, I have a gun too!
> Start getting sloppier about healing because LOOK AN ENEMY PEWPEWPEW!
> Now your kills are going up but one of your teammates switched to Lucio or Zenyatta to pick up the slack. Not getting gold medals for healing anymore.
> Get into a pistol duel with a D.Va and realize your teammates probably hate you because you aren't playing your character's role.
> Get back on point and get back to what you were meant to do, only pull out your gun when you're cornered or your team is pretty fragmented.
> Your healing goes back up a bit and then levels off, you might get one or two kills per round. More focus on the objective now, and it's paying off.
I feel like Mercy has a bit of a bell curve to her effectiveness.
> Start out new to the game, play healer because they have the least chance of being blamed when everything goes wrong.
> Not doing too well, but everyone can see you're at a low level
> Starting to get better, now you're trying to break your previous healing records and thinking more strategically and less "just-fucking-survive".
> You had one really good game and now it's been 20 rounds since and you haven't come close to your record.
> Oh yeah, I have a gun too!
> Start getting sloppier about healing because LOOK AN ENEMY PEWPEWPEW!
> Now your kills are going up but one of your teammates switched to Lucio or Zenyatta to pick up the slack. Not getting gold medals for healing anymore.
> Get into a pistol duel with a D.Va and realize your teammates probably hate you because you aren't playing your character's role.
> Get back on point and get back to what you were meant to do, only pull out your gun when you're cornered or your team is pretty fragmented.
> Your healing goes back up a bit and then levels off, you might get one or two kills per round. More focus on the objective now, and it's paying off.