Overwatch

[ZMOT]

The lore was extremely lackluster and it was clearly an afterthought. A lot of characters "borrow" lore from existing archtypes/characters in other media as well and it winds up being really hollow.

I'm not sure how you could write a boring story that involves a super squad of mega soldiers (including a hamster, a gigantic gorilla, and a robotic monk) but Blizzard seems to have done exactly that.

and yet people couldn't stop jerking themselves off over OW's "great lore and characters" - nigga it's just your average proto-fortnite not!avengers, half of them being stereotypes and your usual uncreative blizzard slop; I swear that fucking hamster was stolen from battleborn's toby, just like doomfist is fucking attikus where people couldn't stop making fun of the character, but it's suddenly ok when blizzard does it. yes I'm mad

 

[Gravityqueen4life]

this was a good watch. blizzard really fucked up with e-sport and trying to stop "toxic" gamers.

 

[Cactus Concerto]

New Blood #3 of 5 has released.​

I don't give enough of a fuck to be "in-depth" with this. It was my one job and much like OW's development team, I'm not doing it anymore. At least not well. Link for any interested parties.

Spoiler: Thoughts and shit.

Pros​

- Baptise looks good. In fact, this whole chapter feels competently drawn. I didn't find too many glaring art issues outside the artist struggling to make Baptise's abilities look cool in some cases and a panel where McCree comes out of fucking nowhere even though by what we're shown, we should have probably seen his ass.

- Baptise and McCree make for a nice dynamic. Both characters have some semblance of a personality and the writing in general didn't grind the gears too much. It's a repeat of the 'recruitment of the week' formula created by the last two issues but at least our heroes are being chased for semi-different reasons. Talon also feels more important and active in the story thanks to Baptise's association, instead of a bunch of shadows people shoot at.

- The mandatory action sequence is almost the whole issue and honestly? It works. The characters have to chat and run which feels way better than the abrupt scene changes in the prior issues.

Cons​

- They changed McCree's name and suddenly I can't recognize him. I don't know what the fuck is happening with his face but he feels more old and weary than handsome and cocky. Maybe it's on purpose. He just looks different to his model in Overwatch but I'll be fair and say that could very well be a me thing.

- This is literally just "Baptise explains his backstory because McCree doesn't believe he's not a Talon agent sent to kill him" the chapter. I know what his story is and this adds fucking nothing new to it. More than that, the only time I remember Talon deviating from the norm (which seems to be send suited guys out who can't shoot to die in droves) was when they created Widowmaker and killed her husband. Some guy in regular clothes saying hello is not in the Talon M.O. But it had to be this way for everything to happen as it did so eh.

- Would have been a great opportunity to have Buff Maui (Mauga) leading the charge to kill Baptise but we're not here to actually create a story and enhance the world and relationships here, this is just filler made of shit we already know.

- Why in the fuck do they want specifically Baptise for going rogue? What is he gonna do, spill Talon secrets? As far as I'm aware, he was relatively low level. I get that they're an evil entity and we must kill all decenters is a trope but they have bigger fish to fry, like Overwatch reforming. If they started chasing him after he'd met McCree and he was actively helping McCree get away from the agents tailing the cowboy, that would have worked better from my perspective.

- They once again tease Baptise/Mercy and I want more of that so I'm mad about it.

They tease Zarya in the next issue. I can't wait for her to talk about how much she hates robots and wants to find Sombra or something.

She feels like she's in a completely different plot thread but it works because it's tied to Talon, and Talon is the big bad with many secrets affecting everyone on the map. She's got her spy shit with Sombra and governmental ties. Why do we need to draw her into Overwatch?

Whatever, we barely have one steady and engaging plot thread, they wouldn't be able to handle two.

Zarya does look very cute in the preview, however. I can dig it.

 

[Leaf Wage Slave]

this was a good watch. blizzard really fucked up with e-sport and trying to stop "toxic" gamers.

The first 2 years of Overwatch were arguably some of the most fun I had in a multiplayer game - unfortunately, Blizzard can't balance games for shit, and trying to balance around the 0.01% of hyper autists in the OWL didn't help.

Also, toxicity always makes me laugh, cause modern gamers wouldn't survive old MW2 lobbies - I'm pretty sure I got called every racial slur under the sun by some 12 year old...

 

[Maratus volans]

Early Overwatch could be fun, but I think it has the same problem a lot of other small team based games have: six people is juuuuust enough that individual skill can't carry a rotten team but also too small for one rotten player to not drag down the experience. If you were queuing with your friends it didn't matter, but if you were solo queuing it got miserable very quickly, especially if you played support. Seeing two of your six slots be a Widow / Hanzo standing a million miles away from point and missing every shot, or a Tracer / Genji just running in and dying ineffectually every time, gets so old so quickly.

In TF2, meanwhile, the bigger lobbies for most casual modes means one random Engineer setting up on last doesn't automatically gimp your team. Plus, I think Valve being generally supportive of community content gave that game a lot more longevity than it otherwise would have had.

 

[Batsy]

I wish the dev team would give pharah a personality.

 

[Gravityqueen4life]

oh, another thing that killed the game was the unbalance of the new characters. Brigitte being the biggest offender and blizz not doing anything about her for months.

did they ever balance the point system in competitive? you ended up losing more points if you lost than gaining points if you won. all it took was one guy not carrying his weight or a disconnect and you would be fucked. no shit people got "toxic" for creating and not fixing such a system.

 

[Stab You in the Back]

Yeah, Blizzard's strategy has always been to punish good players to stop bad players from exploiting the system. For example, I've had competitive runs where there has been an early leaver in over 80% of matches. If Blizzard were smart, they'd make it so you wouldn't lose as many points when someone left the game early because its pretty much an automatic loss that's out of your control as a teammate. Nope. You lose MORE points when someone leaves early because your match stats are lower when your team is getting constantly run over in 5v6 fights. Absolute braindead game design.

 

[The Fair Lady]

I wish the dev team would give pharah a personality.

Her and Zarya are probably the two most bland characters who really don't have much more than "I protect my country for justice." New Blood hasn't really done anything to add to her and I doubt it will for Zarya either.

 

[Gender: Xenomorph]

Early Overwatch could be fun, but I think it has the same problem a lot of other small team based games have: six people is juuuuust enough that individual skill can't carry a rotten team but also too small for one rotten player to not drag down the experience. If you were queuing with your friends it didn't matter, but if you were solo queuing it got miserable very quickly, especially if you played support. Seeing two of your six slots be a Widow / Hanzo standing a million miles away from point and missing every shot, or a Tracer / Genji just running in and dying ineffectually every time, gets so old so quickly.

I think this is the biggest reason why it wore down quick. It's way too easy for a bad player to carry down the team, than a good player to have any impact on the game.

The balance was really fucked up too. I think Blizzard was seriously afraid of having a game where one good player dominates the entire game. Keep in mind that there's no scaling in Overwatch like there is in DotA; you can't just gank a enemy and regain the advantage.

They also made low skill heroes as strong and effective as high skill heroes. Really missed the chance to make low elo games about abilities and high elo games about aiming/shooting skills.

 

[Tanner Glass]

Early Overwatch could be fun, but I think it has the same problem a lot of other small team based games have: six people is juuuuust enough that individual skill can't carry a rotten team but also too small for one rotten player to not drag down the experience. If you were queuing with your friends it didn't matter, but if you were solo queuing it got miserable very quickly, especially if you played support. Seeing two of your six slots be a Widow / Hanzo standing a million miles away from point and missing every shot, or a Tracer / Genji just running in and dying ineffectually every time, gets so old so quickly.

In TF2, meanwhile, the bigger lobbies for most casual modes means one random Engineer setting up on last doesn't automatically gimp your team. Plus, I think Valve being generally supportive of community content gave that game a lot more longevity than it otherwise would have had.

There's also the issue of Support being hot garbage in OW where as it's incredibly vital in TF2. A TF2 Engineer could not fire a single shot from his gun or setup a sentry - as long as there's a teleporter cooking and a dispenser humming, he's likely the real MVP of the team. A Torb turret is almost always 100% garbage and in most maps (inculding defense) a Torb pick is a huge waste.

This may be an unpopular opinion, but the OW skill ceiling is a lot lower than TF2 for Support, Healing, and Tanking. I'd argue the skill ceiling is a lot lower for DPS also (Soldier vs Pharrah comes to mind, or Demo vs Junkrat) but I'm no expert there. The skill ceiling for "Teamwork" is also a lot lower as well (less to call out, less that matters, lower risk it if doesn't get called, etc). I think the reason OW didn't "succeed" wasn't strictly because of e-sports, I think a lot of players figured out that all of the "extremely sick plays" were just two players loosely co-ordinating ultimates and there aren't many clever displays of skill besides "player throws explosive ultimate (Junkrat/DVA) into a narrow hallway the entire enemy team is forced to walk though".

 

[Thiletonomics]

With how badly the game has fallen off, has it got to the point that it could compete with the likes of COD Vanguard and Battlefield 2042, in terms of how bad the game has become? Combined with the sexual harassment/assault allegations at Blizzard, OW's current state makes even fucking BF2042 seem like a more enticing game to play.

 

[Fields Of Rye]

Early Overwatch could be fun, but I think it has the same problem a lot of other small team based games have: six people is juuuuust enough that individual skill can't carry a rotten team but also too small for one rotten player to not drag down the experience. If you were queuing with your friends it didn't matter, but if you were solo queuing it got miserable very quickly, especially if you played support. Seeing two of your six slots be a Widow / Hanzo standing a million miles away from point and missing every shot, or a Tracer / Genji just running in and dying ineffectually every time, gets so old so quickly.

In TF2, meanwhile, the bigger lobbies for most casual modes means one random Engineer setting up on last doesn't automatically gimp your team. Plus, I think Valve being generally supportive of community content gave that game a lot more longevity than it otherwise would have had.

Its the terrible way balance was handled with basically 0 lessons being learned from Team Fortress 2. I havent played overwatch in years, but it was a very common situation in those days to be completely gimped because the retard on your team couldnt kill the bastion and since you were fucking Pharah you were gonna have to change.

I remember seeing pharah and mercy and immediately thinking my years of quick fix pocket medic were going to come in handy, only to get pasted against a wall by a 9 year old holding down left click as bastion from 200 yards away who saw our bright outlines. There was only one way to play the game and it involves being clumped up with your team hiding behind a shield.

There's no escape from a shitty teammate. They have a bastion. Your Reinhardt charges. You all die because Bestion. You have a Roadhog. He misses hook. You all die because Beastion. DVA doesn't achieve perfect DPS. You die because Betastion. Repeat each meta for (enter hero here).

In team fortress 2 I routinely take down snipers as a medic with bolts. Its rare, and its stupid to try, but I can do it. I routinely take out power classes who are being careless. There's no class I see and think "i need more than one person to deal with this" compared to bastion's "pile in retards" psycological effect.

I don't think I ever managed to kill a full health power class as Mercy unless they were literally braindead. Because Mercy isn't allowed to.

 

[Smug Chuckler]

And then somebody changes to Genji, kills Bastion with "E" and he gets killed 5 seconds later.

 

[Fields Of Rye]

And then somebody changes to Genji, kills Bastion with "E" and he gets killed 5 seconds later.

Shame Bastion players learned how to not hold down the fire button after the first time they died.

 

[I don't swear]

Yeah, balance is one of the reasons (plus that one inting teammate in comp) that I could never stand Overwatch. That, and how the prison inmates had a skill gap over me. I could never play the game long enough with some (more like all) character blasting me to the point where I have no fun.

This is a niche comparison, but it's like the SSBBrawl mod where they made everyone OP. That was their balance.

 

[Stab You in the Back]

A Torb turret is almost always 100% garbage and in most maps (inculding defense) a Torb pick is a huge waste.

Torb can be a good counter depending on the enemy comp and his ultimate is really effective in chaotic battles. Overwatch places strong emphasis on team comp. Being willing and able to switch toons to hard counter enemy DPS almost guarantees you a win. See for example: that idiot who posted below you who was too stupid to switch off Pharah when the enemy had a Bastion. Farm his retarded ass and then laugh when he rage quits after round 1.

 

[topsikrets]

I only ever really played lucio, but god there were games where it felt like I was carrying my team because I'd be the only one holding the point for minutes at a time while the enemy team is all trying to chase me down, specifically that map Oasis with the thing in the middle of the point, if the enemy team weren't communicating I could hold that fucking thing forever. Oh and fuck Symmetra and her fucking glue lasers taking all my hard earned SPEED.

 

[DuranceVile]

Being willing and able to switch toons to hard counter enemy DPS almost guarantees you a win.

Speaking as somebody who played at low Diamond since the beta until around the Brigitte cancer meta, that was a big part of the cognitive dissonance. The messages of "play your favorite hero!" and "switch to win" are contradictory. Also flavor of the month balancing style led to some heroes getting deleted from the game. Do you like Roadhog? Well unfortunately Zenyatta's in vogue right now and orb of discord fits nicely on his giant hitbox.

If you had players who were willing to switch, you had a good shot at winning. If you had people who stubbornly refused to get off their favorite heroes, you were likely in for a bad time.

Seagull laid all this out pretty well in his video on Overwatch.

 

[FatalTater]

Lunar New Year has been a thing for a few days now.

Couple of the new things are nifty, but I dunno. There's a lack of overall excitement that can't just be chalked up to my own apathy.