benicillin
Banned
If only. You lose much more SR/gain less if you are switching heroes. So in competitive it doesn't encourage this at all.
Basically competitive is one of the worst things about Overwatch.
If only. You lose much more SR/gain less if you are switching heroes. So in competitive it doesn't encourage this at all.
This is a great post. +1A lot of this has been said already, but I've got something stupid like 40 hours on Mercy this season and theres two real reasons people who play mercy get shit on, and neither of them have anything to do with the gender of the character or the gender of the person playing the character.
The first is the SR manipulation. Overwatch calculates how much SR you win or lose in a comp match by looking at your individual stats relative to the average stats of other players. Mercy's res weighs pretty heavily in that calculation. If you hide in a broom closet every time res is up, wait for 3-5 people on your team to die, fly in and res you're going to be favored heavily by the SR system, losing next to none if your team loses and gaining a shit ton if your team wins. This is how you see Mercy players in higher ranks with sub-50% winrates. This SR exploitation is also possible to a lesser degree on the characters that are lesser played. If you hop into a game on Badtion, Sombra, or Torbjorn, for example, you can often climb higher faster if you do well because those characters don't have overall average stats that are particularly high.
The second reason is that, thanks to this SR exploitation, you have a bunch of mercy mains in all ranked tiers now that don't know how to play anything else. I always check a comp team before a match starts to get an idea of what to expect, and more often than not there's at least one other person who's got mercy as their top played character. Now I don't think Mercy takes no skill to play, but the important thing to know is that she takes very, very different kinds of skills to play than most other characters, and her toolset doesn't really translate to anyone else. I've played this game enough that I'm confident in many roles and competent in most so I can hop on Soldier or Winston or something and let the team fill out, but a lot of "mercy mains" aren't in that boat, and I've seen three in a game before. While it's presumptuous to call that game a loss from the start, you wouldn't necessarily be wrong for thinking that. Push comes to shove, most people who exclusively play mercy aren't capable of playing another role at their current SR, especially if it's Diamond or higher.
I think that the real issue, though, is that people aren't playing overwatch correctly. There are so many people that insist on "maining" a character and that's not really the game. Especially if you're gonna be in solo queue comp it makes a lot more sense to have a pool of characters you're good at, preferably one of each role of you can swing it. At bare minimum I think you should be able to swing between support and tank.
Basically competitive is one of the worst things about Overwatch.
I don't care if some twitch streamer showed you this or you looked at some leaderboards and also decided these guys are just shit for some reason. I have played hundreds of hours of competitive, and mostly Mercy this season. I have stayed around the rank as the past seasons, in and out of master. Maybe for the elite few that know how to manipulate SR by battle-mercying just right, I don't know and I don't care. It doesn't affect me and it's not as big of a deal that people make it out to be.
Bizzare is the perfect word for this. Maining characters makes you such a liability in ranked, especially so if someone else picked that character and you can't play up to your current level with anyone else. Which is ironic because as pointed out, the SR gains actually discourage the ability to play multiple heroes so it ends up being SR vs likelihood of winning.Actually every part of the game's design encourages you to main characters over switching in a number of ways. Kaplan even said in a recent PR spiel that he wants people to main heroes if they really want to. Shit's bizarre.
So Mercy can subvert the competitive ranking system by hitting big revives, win or lose? Seems crazy. I would've thought the only metric for raising/lowering rank would be "Did you win or lose?" full stop. Sure sometimes you have shitty teammates, but that balances out in the end. Trying to measure contributions is largely guesswork, and any benefit is usually ruined by people responding to the incentives in such a way that does not benefit the team.
Keep it simple stupid, as the saying goes.
I'm in GM. There's a lot of Mercy mains that don't belong in GM. Not all Mercy mains who are in GM don't belong there, but a lot of them don't because the SR system isn't rewarding the right behavior right now.1. People are obsessing about SR and how supposedly Mercy gets a free pass to grandmaster.
It always confuses me when I see someone with 100+ hours in Widow, then the next hero is some random DPS with 30 minutes.
Overwatch has so many different styles of play, is it really so fun to sit back and "get picks" without focusing on the objectives? There are fun characters in every category, and it doesn't hurt to jump around (especially if the comp depends on it).
It rarely ever feels more satisfying to play Mercy than any other character.
The thing is, good Widows do focus on the objective, and there's more to playing the objective than standing on the point.
A Widow who takes out the enemy healers and gives your team a decisive advantage in a team fight is playing the objective more effectively than someone who is just running to the point and feeding.
expecting a competent dive in gold LULIn my experience, people who say Mercy is easy to play do horribly when they pick her. It's like, if she's such a free ride to GM then why aren't you there right now? Oh right, because you're bad at her and don't know how to stay alive against a Winston/Genji/Tracer dive comp when you're a 200hp hero who's constantly being hunted by the entire enemy team. Forget even trying to play her at higher than gold level if you don't have a mic. You'll spend the whole game dying to Winston if you can't call this stuff out.
In my experience, people who say Mercy is easy to play do horribly when they pick her. It's like, if she's such a free ride to GM then why aren't you there right now? Oh right, because you're bad at her and don't know how to stay alive against a Winston/Genji/Tracer dive comp when you're a 200hp hero who's constantly being hunted by the entire enemy team. Forget even trying to play her at higher than gold level if you don't have a mic. You'll spend the whole game dying to Winston if you can't call this stuff out.
I think that the real issue, though, is that people aren't playing overwatch correctly. There are so many people that insist on "maining" a character and that's not really the game. Especially if you're gonna be in solo queue comp it makes a lot more sense to have a pool of characters you're good at, preferably one of each role of you can swing it. At bare minimum I think you should be able to swing between support and tank.
*support characters
Saw this shared and just started reading through it.
more stuff at the link
I don't play Overwatch, but I do watch someone play it a lot and found it a shame support characters of all characters get crap like this. Overwatch characters requiring diverse skill sets is a huge positive imo and there's such thing as impressive, skillful play for every character.
Switching can make a world of difference, but there's also data that actually suggests that one-trick players have a higher winrate. So I don't think it's really that they're playing the game the wrong way. It's just crappy when you have teammates that won't switch when they should switch.
Can confirm. Anyone at that level can pick up and casually play mercy and do well. She's just a very easy to play character that excels at support.I'm a peak 4200 DPS/Flex player with only a few hours on Mercy. I've played her in high elo scrims and in queue before and get wins without even thinking about it. I'm pretty sure every GM player here will tell you the same thing.
If only. You lose much more SR/gain less if you are switching heroes. So in competitive it doesn't encourage this at all.
Actually every part of the game's design encourages you to main characters over switching in a number of ways. Kaplan even said in a recent PR spiel that he wants people to main heroes if they really want to. Shit's bizarre.
Can confirm. Anyone at that level can pick up and casually play mercy and do well. She's just a very easy to play character that excels at support.
That doesn't even make sense how silly this is at this point then. Comp should just make you not be able to switch at this point if that's case.
Theres people in masters and gm ive played with who think Dive is just pick winston and press shift into enemies by yourself i have no idea what Dive in gold would be
expecting a competent dive in gold LUL
I'm a peak 4200 DPS/Flex player with only a few hours on Mercy. I've played her in high elo scrims and in queue before and get wins without even thinking about it. I'm pretty sure every GM player here will tell you the same thing.
Do you honestly think that there's some skill ceiling where all mercies are the same and it doesn't matter any more?
I will say this is not a bad thing in and of itself. Having a hero with low mechanics that can be rewarded on generally knowing the game flow and maps is good for the game. What's not good is how what mechanics are there are not very punishing which makes her a prime target for boosting. What's worse is she's a low tier character that people think is OP because her rez is one of the easiest mechanics in the game to misinterpret.
It's not just the comp system. It's the character designs, the way they are presented, and actually a good chunk of the marketing that push players that way.
Is that what you got from the article? I really didn't get that impression from it, and I actually took from it what you said: it's often what sexist people latch onto.I mean, the notion that it starts at gender is (generally) wrong. It starts at gameplay, then people latch onto the easiest way to shit on people. You know as well as anybody that going after sexist stuff is the first thing people go to when they wanna flame a girl. I've seen more dudes get flamed in non sexist ways for picking that character than the other way around.
I think this. I've heard pros say this. This is a thing that has happened before in other games. When you have a character this linear that only relies on such a basic skillset, it's kind of expected. You can take any top level player and let them play Mercy for like a day and there will be no significant difference between them and a 1000 hour Mercy. There have been some, um, interesting streams where T500 DPS/Tank players just randomly pick Mercy and get wins while meming around lol
Like I don't want to hurt Mercy player's feelings too much, but it's the truth. She exists for this purpose too, Blizz wants an option where literally anybody can pick support and be effective at their relative skill level.
I'm in GM. There's a lot of Mercy mains that don't belong in GM. Not all Mercy mains who are in GM don't belong there, but a lot of them don't because the SR system isn't rewarding the right behavior right now.
Is that what you got from the article? I really didn't get that impression from it, and I actually took from it what you said: it's often what sexist people latch onto.
The intersection of the game meta and sexism occurs and when that misogynist hostility happens, it can't be separated from gameplay reasons for hating those players. Trying to discern what comes first seems akin to a "chicken or the egg" scenario—we can't know whether someone who's harassing women playing Overwatch with gendered insults is prompted by hem being women, or for gameplay reasons, but the sexism is irrefutably present.
If don't have as much faith in gaming communities as you to think this has nothing to do with misogyny. And "have to do with" doesn't mean "is the core cause of," if that's where the disconnect is coming from.
People keep saying this.. but it just seems like there's more to it. What I think is interesting is if you look at the leaderboards by time played, you'll see people who have played Mercy competitively for hundreds of hours, and the top ones for time played are gold rank, gold rank, platinum, platinum, etc. All these players have around 50% winrate, so why aren't they all masters since it's supposedly a free pass to grandmaster? Why are they different than those twitch screencaps of the masters with 20% winrate?
For reference, https://masteroverwatch.com/leaderboards/pc/global/hero/17/mode/ranked/category/time
Because they aren't abusing the rank system by letting their team die so they can get a bunch of 3+ rezes.
The fact that with Mercy win rate and ladder rank are inversely proportional should make it clear what the issue is. Played straight, Mercy mains are doomed to the lower ranks because of her low skill cap. The only ones that make it to the higher leagues are more or less cheating their way up.
You've got it slightly twisted here. Its easy as getting your ultimate then hiding and doing literally nothing until everyone dies, essentially making it a 5v6, then flying in for the res. Rinse, repeat. If you win you get crazy high SR. If you lose you don't lose as much. It's very easy to do, and is far less effective than being in the fight and ressing 2-3 people during a fight or even ressing one person because you know they have ultimate and can swing the fight back in your advantage.
I just can't fathom why Blizzard don't just use win/losses to calculate SR, like every other sane ranking system. The moment you introduce arbitrary performance metrics besides if you won or lost the match people will find patterns and abuse the system.
Overwatch currently has a few problems, and both of these are among them.Maybe Mercy isn't problem. Maybe the SR system is the problem.