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[BeesEight]

i understand the sentiment, but a bad tank still soaks up some damage before dying. a bad soldier still puts some bullets in people. a bad sniper who whiffs attempted headshots doesn't really offer any silver lining. people get frustrated with them because the skill floor can be so much worse.

of course, unless you have a dedicated practice group, people in overwatch have no choice but to try to get good in public, so we should all really just chill on quickplay unless someone does some serious trollish nonsense.

This is kind of understating the impact of a bad Rein.

A bad Rein can make it impossible getting through the gate of Hanamura. If they're constantly charging in, getting ice walled off from the team or losing teammates due to bad firestrikes then he isn't accomplishing anything more than the Widow whiffing her shots.

In fact, he's more of a detriment since he's feeding ult to the enemy team. That extra health for "soaking bullets" is actually tipping the ult economy against your team. And since Rein is essential for breaking chokes, it also means your team is sitting back doing nothing while waiting for him to respawn, trudge back and fail at breaking the choke again and again. And, of course, he's locking up the Rein pick so you can't have someone to switch over and take his place because there's literally no other tank that does what he does.

The problem with Overwatch is that it's a team based game so anyone failing to do their role is going to have a large impact on your success. You're right that the ideal situation is that everyone has a squad of six to practice and improve with but it's not really possible. I play quickplay precisely to cut down on the number of frustrated teammates unhappy because they're not winning.

I mean, I'm equally annoyed by instant pick Hanzo/Widow/Genji in every game especially since nine times out of ten they're not very good but there's really nothing that I can do about it. I can't make them switch to a necessary hero (always tanks and healers too hm...) and play better at it. What I can do is just let it slide. It's only a game. We can't win every time. Besides, there's always mistakes that I'll be making regardless of who they play or how they play them. I find the better approach is to focus on your own play and enjoyment.

Complaining about someone's pick is almost never going to get you a win, get them to switch or get them to play better so all you're doing is annoying your teammates and possibly tilting them in the process.

 

[Mman235]

This is kind of understating the impact of a bad Rein.

A bad Rein can make it impossible getting through the gate of Hanamura. If they're constantly charging in, getting ice walled off from the team or losing teammates due to bad firestrikes then he isn't accomplishing anything more than the Widow whiffing her shots.

In fact, he's more of a detriment since he's feeding ult to the enemy team. That extra health for "soaking bullets" is actually tipping the ult economy against your team. And since Rein is essential for breaking chokes, it also means your team is sitting back doing nothing while waiting for him to respawn, trudge back and fail at breaking the choke again and again. And, of course, he's locking up the Rein pick so you can't have someone to switch over and take his place because there's literally no other tank that does what he does.

Yeah, as someone on the verge of being a Grandmaster Rein main, the more I play him the more I understand how devasting the impact of a bad Rein can be (including my own worst plays). At least that shitty Hanzo/Widow isn't feeding too much ult or having a negative impact on the overall team flow, and might even get a few meaningful kills. A bad Rein will feed massive amounts of ult and essentially just funnel a team to their deaths, and that's on top of basically getting no kills or good ults, the latter being a big deal when it's one of the main reasons Rein is so good.

 

[abercrombie]

In the early days of the game I might agree this was true (for me at least). Most players should know if they are sucking with either hero they need to switch part way through the match and usually do. Hanzo mains ARE the worst tho, this is known.

 

[N7.Angel]

Of course they're hated, 99% of people that are playing with them are garbage and anchor to other people that try to do something to win the game, you can play whatever you want in QP but if you're playing competitive and you don't have the mindset to be competitive then just don't play it, you have an incredible numbers of playlist where you can play whatever you like and don't bother anyone.

 

[DOWN]

? I only play Quick so I guess I don't have this attitude? I rarely care if someone wants to play them so maybe you and your friends just have that culture or tribe mentality in your group? Sure, two on one team during attack is not smart, but I don't find it common. They're fine characters so I don't think this is an issue any more than too many bad tank players or something is an issue.

 

[manfestival]

I just hate playing against them cause I usually end up killing them less because of the inherent nature of sniper characters

 

[Captain Pants]

I don't worry about those picks if we've got healers and tanks. If I'm on a team that instalocks DPS and snipers, I get frustrated. I pretty much give every player the benefit of the doubt. Last night I played with a guy who picked Torbjorn on Lijiang Tower and left him alone until we lost the first two rounds and it became clear he wasn't doing any good.(I'm 99% sure he was trolling.)

 

[Dreavus]

This was fixed ages ago:

Do you see anybody else's K/D ratio? Nope. Only points are added to the scoreboard, and points are earned for a variety of tasks beyond killing dudes (Medics and Engineers are usually at the top for a reason).

Not having a scoreboard has made Overwatch so much more toxic. Insane meta worship to a level I've literally never seen before. No way of identifying if that guy screaming at everyone isn't contributing himself. No way of actually judging your performance, or actually identifying the weakness in your team.

Very interesting. Sometimes you see people trying to defend themselves by citing medals they have, but that's not something you can really verify.

I think there is a hidden score mechanic already in play because of the "on fire" mechanic, maybe they could do something with that to make a scoreboard like TF2.

 

[FatCatAttack]

The Overwatch toxicity problem with regards to hero picks has multiple causes. These are the main ones in my opinion.

Overwatch became a huge tentpole game that attracted players from different backgrounds

Arcadey shooter games descended from Quake had been a rarity for a long time. TF2 has basically been the biggest game holding the torch for years and has been lurching along despite a heavy amount of neglect and mistreatment. The genre looked like it had been forgotten with real military shooters and Mobas taking over. Overwatch coming out and being a big success showed that people are still hungry for these types of games. The problem here is that Overwatch has an identity crisis on what it wants to be and the gamers have different ideas on what it should it be.

Essentially the game can't decide if it's want to be Team Fortress 3 with waifus or Smite 2 with less memes. Is it a shooter or a moba? Personally as a long time player of shooters starting from the original tribes almost 2 decades ago I'm biased to the shooter side of things. The last fps I played significantly was Team Fortress 2. TF2 pubs were chaos filled cluster fucks filled with strange class combinations and loadouts and just tons of inefficiency in general. You had some people that might rage at a Pyro for using the backburner or phlog because it made it less likely or impossible to put out a teammate on fire with the airblast ability, but these guys were rare and generally laughed at. Everyone pretty much just minded their own business. I think once in the nine years I on and off played TF2 I ran into a battle commander who wanted everyone to go heavy and medic cuz it was "easy and unbeatable." When people complained about having too many snipers and spies it had to do with their squishy bodies making it hard to frontline to take objectives. Not because they were "hard to play."

I also did a substantial stint of Dota 2, so I see the moba side of things as well albeit I don't care for these elements in my shooter games at all. Overwatch has a low player count so each person matters more, like in a typical 5 v 5 moba. The standard shooter game player count use to be 12 v 12 or 16 v 16 or even much more in the case of the Battlefield series. Games with more players soften individual impact. A peaceful Sandvich heavy or a spycrab on your team is no big deal in a full TF2 server assuming you even realized you had one. Some guy going rage afk Torb at the spawn is a much larger cause for alarm and much more noticeable. Overwatch teamfights are heavily based around ultimate usage. This dampens the impact of personal fps skill in favor organizing teamfights. This in turn is exacerbated by the hero design of the game which favors interdependence rather than independence. TF2 characters for instance have independent strengths and drawbacks. And while these strengths and drawbacks complement one another they don't necessarily NEED one another. You can pluck the demoman from TF2, despite the fact he has no hitscan, and plop him into Call of duty and he would still be capable of dominating. Reinhardt on the other hand can't do jack shit without someone taking advantage of his shield and the space it provides. Rein in CoD would just get swarmed and destroyed as well by mass fire or kill streak bombs. Overwatch tops it all off with the Ult economy. While the game has no "gold" mechanic like in a typical moba both farming and feeding exist since the ult charge mechanic is gained by doing damage or healing it away. This makes the pace of the game extremely finicky and counter intuitive. For instance, doing damage to a character but not completing the kill can be worse than not doing any damage at all. Since that character then get's healed will boost the ult charge of the supports; and the support ults dictate the pace of the game.

The end result to both of this is that you have different players from all sorts of genres coming in. As an old school fps-er I've seen all kinds of weird shit and carried more trashcans than a garbageman. I don't really care what people pick. Other people however have never played an fps like this before and come from more...controlled experiences like Call of Duty and so the idea of a projectile based character may seem odd to them. Others are from mass migrations from League of Legends. These Leek of Legume players often expose themselves by calling the various character classes "champs." For some of these guys and gals, it's normal for some characters to be considered bad and unplayable since this is a "natural" part of how the League meta works. They tend to be very anti experimental. Personally as someone who loved the hipster loadouts in TF2 and respected the flexible nature of Dota line ups as "Anything can work" I favor weird teams more and respect people who experiment. Others, don't feel that way. Both kinds of people and more are all playing Overwatch and they DO NOT get along.


Overwatch doesn't let players control their own experiences

Overwatch is heavily built into the walled garden style of game design that Blizzard favors. They want players to play their way. Even in quickplay you can't just leave without any consequences since you'll get dinged with an xp penalty. Recently, they released the custom server feature which IMO turned out to be a big flop. There are some cute games in there and very few good deathmatch practice type of setups but a lot of it is just random junk or weird sex roleplay servers. The big push for Ovewatch is matchmaking where you are "trapped" with strangers. The primary catalyst for toxicity is rooted in being stuck with other people and dependent on them. In other words, as strange as it might sound, it is entirely possible for a team based game to be TOO team oriented. In TF2 for instance, before the meet your match update which put team fortress in the matchmaking shit show, if you ran into jerks on a server you could just leave. If the jerks were on TF2 Gaf they would get the boot or flat out banhammered. Games with matchmaking are enforced by abandon penalties. A cornered animal is dangerous, and everyone can turn into a beast in game matchmaking.


Overwatch feedback on what the team is actually doing sucks.

As already pointed in earlier posts the Medal system which is intended to curb toxicity just encourages it. The anemic kill feed doesn't help things either. No one really knows what the hell the other people are doing or how well they are doing it unless they get a nice card at the end of the match where it doesn't even matter any more since the game is over. You can have gold medals doing inconsequential damage that doesn't go to any kills and thus be "feeding" ult charge. You can have gold medals but doing damage to barriers which can carry the team in the long run but not showing up in the kill feed. You can have little to no medals but killed the right people at the right time and led to a snowball for your team. This ambiguity lets people fill in the gaps on what they ASSUME who did what which naturally leads to a shit show. 'Off-meta' picks will often get blamed first regardless since they are easy targets and take any potential heat off the flamer.

 

[NewGame]

That video was some Texas Sharpshooter shit and everyone knows it.

I'm guessing most people who play Overwatch are garbage at FPS

 

[Snkfanatic]

Keep that attitude in Quickplay, keep it out of Comp.

Or you know...don't dictate how others play the games they spent their money on. That's a nice attitude to have too.

 

[LordofPwn]

Widow works on a few maps. Defense Gibraltar for instance.
Hanzo works when the team comp works around it. hanzo ult into graviton surge works well. It's more that especially in the lower ranks someone picking Hanzo or Widow are not great at the game. most of the times I'm angry at a Hanzo is because they're way out of position and it might as well be playing down a person except being down a person means it's one less body to fuel ults.

The only time I'll play either is in arcade or quick play and in instances where it can work well or as a counter pick.

 

[finalflame]

Or you know...don't dictate how others play the games they spent their money on. That's a nice attitude to have too.

Nah, how about if you want to treat a team game as a game where you're the only person that matters, then don't play a game mode that tangibly affects others when you decide to have your crap attitude. Feel free to "play the game you paid for however you want". but don't expect it to be free of consequences when you're ruining the game for others.

 

[Slamtastic]

Every time I read a topic on Overwatch online, I feel more vindicated in my decision to only play mystery heroes since the mode came out.

Maximum fun party time, minimum tryhard.

 

[Sianos]

Nobody liked people who only played sniper in TF2 too

Amusingly, starting to pocket the sniper and run him with the combo pretty much Ruined Highlander Forever. Granted this was years ago, so who knows if the balance of the world has since recovered. Unban the Beggar's Bazooka!!

I'd like to take some credit for being a pioneer of this meta, but really it came down to "our sniper is really good, so let's give him consistent overheal".

Everyone read Fatcat's megapost - he knows his digital sports!

 

[finalflame]

Every time I read a topic on Overwatch online, I feel more vindicated in my decision to only play mystery heroes since the mode came out.

Maximum fun party time, minimum tryhard.

And...that's fine? Different people like to play the game in different ways. Competitive mode is literally the exact same as "try hard", because you're playing to win and to improve your skills/be competitive. Different modes attract different people with different ways in which they want to play the game, "tryharding" isn't a bad thing in and of itself unless you're doing it somewhere where it's not really appropriate (casual game modes like Mystery Heroes, for example).

 

[TheRedSnifit]

Amusingly, starting to pocket the sniper and run him with the combo pretty much Ruined Highlander Forever. Granted this was years ago, so who knows if the balance of the world has since recovered. Unban the Beggar's Bazooka!!

I'd like to take some credit for being a pioneer of this meta, but really it came down to "our sniper is really good, so let's give him consistent overheal".

Everyone read Fatcat's megapost - he knows his digital sports!

To be fair, Highlander was ruined the moment someone envisioned a game mode where you have to run defense classes full-time . I played Heavy on a Highlander team one season. Zzzzzz.

But no, it hasn't really been fixed. I've known Platinum Snipers who turned the gamesound off and blasted dubstep during finals and won. And threw fits when they got backstabbed because it's rare enough that it's worth getting upset over. They've finally banned the Razerback, at least.

Although Snipers have been getting more and more prevalent in 6v6, so . . .

 

[Lelcar]

Whenever I'm mad at my team because they're horrible at being a team, I'll just switch to Widowmaker and chill out

 

[Hispanic! At the Disco]

I'll be honest I see people pick either player on certain maps and I roll my eyes. If im playing with my wife we'll be like omg not hanzo!!! But i'd never tell someone not to play them. Thats rude and they often surprise me.

 

[finalflame]

I'll be honest I see people pick either player on certain maps and I roll my eyes. If im playing with my wife we'll be like omg not hanzo!!! But i'd never tell someone not to play them. Thats rude and they often surprise me.

I think this is even worse. Whenever I see someone pick a hero in comp that usually is suboptimal, I let them roll with it. I don't say a thing, as long as our major roles are filled (healers, dps, tanks). By immediately doubting them before they even get a chance to prove themselves you're already starting to tilt or might be tilting them/other team members, which is worse for the team all around.

Once they are being useless with the hero (which is what usually happens), I politely suggest we change stuff around without singling them out. This usually works and if people are communicating we can agree to make swaps and the person playing torb on attack or whatever will generally change, unless they're one of the "I PLAY HOWEVER I WANT EVEN IN COMP WHERE I'M RUINING THE GAME FOR 5 OTHER PEOPLE!11!!" types, then I just suck it up and try to be positive until the match is over and we (probably) lose.

 

[FieryBalrog]

Part of the problem with the idea of a scoreboard is that with the way Overwatch is designed, it's basically impossible to have a meaningful scoreboard. Anyone who's watched Flame's in-depth videos should have an idea of this.

Individual elims that don't lead to a team wipe are way less impactful. So K/D ratio is actually pretty meaningless. A guy who got three critical picks and got focused down by the enemy team for much of the match can accomplish way more than a guy who has an inflated elimination score from team frags and dies at critical points. Changing elims to final blows doesn't solve this problem. Even changing elims to % of each elim doesn't really change the problem because of the fundamental issue which is that this isn't a deathmatch game. Competitive TF2 (I mean 6s) has a similar issue despite having a scoreboard but the problem is worse in this game.

Damage done? Well, high damage might have been spamming at shields, but then again, sometime spamming at shields is actually great, and sometimes it was completely meaningless. Actually some spam damage can be actively harmful, which is why people knock Junkrat for feeding Zarya energy and enemy supports ult charge.

Objective time? Totally depends on the hero, and also the situation.

Healing done? Lucio, for example, should probably have lower healing than the 2nd support if there is one, because he spends most of his time on speed boost. It's nearly impossible to measure the performance a good Lucio by any score board I can think of, only Objective time has some correlation. "Was great at shotcalling? Used sound barriers at exact right times? taxied teammates expertly?"

I'm open to ideas though. To drag in a sports analogy, it's more like soccer than baseball.

 

[TheRedSnifit]

Part of the problem with the idea of a scoreboard is that with the way Overwatch is designed, it's basically impossible to have a meaningful scoreboard of any sort. Anyone who's watched Flame's in-depth videos should have an idea of this.

Individual elims that don't lead to a team wipe are way less impactful. So K/D ratio is actually pretty meaningless. A guy who got three critical picks and got focused down by the enemy team for much of the match can accomplish way more than a guy who has an inflated elimination score from team frags and dies at critical points. Changing elims to final blows doesn't solve this problem. Even changing elims to % of each elim doesn't really change the problem because of the fundamental issue which is that this isn't a deathmatch game. Competitive TF2 (which is played by a tiny portion of the player base) has a similar issue despite having a scoreboard.

Damage done? Well, high damage might have been spamming at shields, but then again, sometime spamming at shields is actually great, and sometimes it was completely meaningless. Actually some spam damage can be actively harmful, which is why people knock Junkrat for feeding Zarya energy and enemy supports ult charge.

Objective time? Totally depends on the hero, and also the situation.

Healing done? Lucio, for example, should probably have lower healing than the 2nd support if there is one, because he spends most of his time on speed boost. It's nearly impossible to measure the performance a good Lucio by any score board I can think of, only Objective time has some correlation. "Was great at shotcalling? Used sound barriers at exact right times? taxied teammates expertly?"

I'm open to ideas though.

Why are we assuming we can only have one metric?

TF2's scoreboard gives points for healing, a small amount of points for damage, points for dispensing ammo, points for teleporting people, points for capping the objective, etc. Spy and Sniper get more points for getting kills than other classes because it's assumed that they'll get less kills total, and that the kills they will get will be against priority targets. The end result is that players are more or less fairly represented on the scoreboard regardless of class. It wouldn't be at all difficult to carry a similar system over.

Whether or not a scoreboard is useful at a competitive level is meaningless, because at that level you have six guys playing together several times a week (hopefully) and reviewing gameplay footage (hopefully), so they can figure things out that way. Where you need a scoreboard is on pubs and matchmaking ("competitive" mode), where you're comparing yourself and your teammates against people you aren't playing with on a regular basis. Not having that means the vast majority of players aren't getting any meaningful feedback (or, rather, are getting positive feedback regardless of performance), leading to meta worship and the assumption that their performance is at least adequate and they lost because of their teammates.

 

[nachum00]

You have a Hanzo or Widowmaker on your team..that's fine

You have both...Look motherfuckers, one of you should have the decency to change characters.

 

[Uraizen]

They paid $60 (or whatever) for the game like I did. They can play whoever they damn well want to.

*points* What this person said.

 

[shintoki]

I'll be honest I see people pick either player on certain maps and I roll my eyes. If im playing with my wife we'll be like omg not hanzo!!! But i'd never tell someone not to play them. Thats rude and they often surprise me.

I try to phrase it like this. We get a Widow and Hanzo.

"Hey, can we have someone switch, two snipers isn't going to give us enough power to break through Rein, Choke, etc."

Similar to things like Junk and Trob

"Hey guys, we have nothing to do with Pharah if they have one"

Etc, etc. I basically think of the outcome that would be worst for our comp and ask if one can switch to remove that weakness.

Similar to having both Mercy and Genji, where they fill mostly the same role or flanking and harassing.

 

[FatCatAttack]

I try to phrase it like this. We get a Widow and Hanzo.

"Hey, can we have someone switch, two snipers isn't going to give us enough power to break through Rein, Choke, etc."

Similar to things like Junk and Trob

"Hey guys, we have nothing to do with Pharah if they have one"

Etc, etc. I basically think of the outcome that would be worst for our comp and ask if one can switch to remove that weakness.

Similar to having both Mercy and Genji, where they fill mostly the same role or flanking and harassing.

Even this isn't clear cut. In high level pubs and tournaments, the times when you see a Hanzo and Widow are often in fact together. Double Sniper is a strong opening on King's Row for instance since the Attacker spawn is a very short distance away from the first point compared to the defenders spawn. Pickoffs are very strong in this situation and both Hanzo and Widow's ability to take the high ground and weird angles let them take apart a defense by going all in and committing to burst damage.

Similarly, stacking multiple flankers like Genji, Tracer, and Winston are how "dive" compositions work. By going on all in one type of strength you can overwhelm the weakness that a first glance gimmicky lineup appears to be.

And of course you just have personal preference on what people play and how people play. Infamous Junkrat only player, Chro for instance revealed on stream his computer setup. He plays using the numkeys for movement and extremely high mouse sensitivity that gives him a full 360 turn if he moves his mouse three quarters of an inch. Watching his hand cam is hilarious since his left hand is crawling spiderlike over the numpad while his mouse hand is almost completely still. It was as if he was controlling his aim with his mind alone. In truth he uses the tendons of his fingers to slowly stroke his mouse like a lover in order to look left and right. The whole of twitch chat was filled with WutFaces and NotLikeThis and other emoticons expressing a mix of disbelief and horror. Chro has hit top 500 every season playing like this and once you see his janky control scheme you realize that Junkrat is literally...LITERALLY the only character that is open to him. Like how are you gonna play a hitscan class with 5000 dpi? He also plays with everything completely muted including all forms of text chat. So it's not like you could even ask him to switch even if it did any good.

It may seem strange to people but that's life as well as videogames. You can't be addled by what other people do. If someone crosses in front of you on the road when they aren't suppose to, what are you gonna do about it? Get mad and run their ass over? Just let it go for the greater good and move on. If you are good at the silly videogame you'll get your e-penis rank points eventually no matter what.

 

[Xero]

I just hate the mindset some assheels have in quickplay that you dont need a healer or tank because lol quickplay.

I still want to win on quickplay.

 

[UpDownLeftRight]

I don't even play OW anymore but when I did I used to make heavy use of either Pharah or Widow. Pharah was just great for pushing people around but Widow was my deadly machine. By far my best K/D ratio and I never strayed from the battle either, usually taking a good position to cover as many of the enemies funnel points to the objective. It's very possible to do a shit ton of damage as Widow at least and play a major part for your team.

That said, when I last played I really preferred the medic sniper since I could roll at the back of the pack and heal whilst picking off whatever comes charging in. Snipers are only as good as the user, and honestly I kinda suck at them but OW creates an easy environment to use them in. I'll never understand the hate.

 

[HiiiLife]

Assume that the team is no longer a 6 man team but now a 5 man team because he's usually shit. Not a dickhead to tell him to switch, just judge him silently lol

 

[Exploratory]

The Overwatch toxicity problem with regards to hero picks has multiple causes. These are the main ones in my opinion.

Overwatch became a huge tentpole game that attracted players from different backgrounds

Arcadey shooter games descended from Quake had been a rarity for a long time. TF2 has basically been the biggest game holding the torch for years and has been lurching along despite a heavy amount of neglect and mistreatment. The genre looked like it had been forgotten with real military shooters and Mobas taking over. Overwatch coming out and being a big success showed that people are still hungry for these types of games. The problem here is that Overwatch has an identity crisis on what it wants to be and the gamers have different ideas on what it should it be.

Essentially the game can't decide if it's want to be Team Fortress 3 with waifus or Smite 2 with less memes. Is it a shooter or a moba? Personally as a long time player of shooters starting from the original tribes almost 2 decades ago I'm biased to the shooter side of things. The last fps I played significantly was Team Fortress 2. TF2 pubs were chaos filled cluster fucks filled with strange class combinations and loadouts and just tons of inefficiency in general. You had some people that might rage at a Pyro for using the backburner or phlog because it made it less likely or impossible to put out a teammate on fire with the airblast ability, but these guys were rare and generally laughed at. Everyone pretty much just minded their own business. I think once in the nine years I on and off played TF2 I ran into a battle commander who wanted everyone to go heavy and medic cuz it was "easy and unbeatable." When people complained about having too many snipers and spies it had to do with their squishy bodies making it hard to frontline to take objectives. Not because they were "hard to play."

I also did a substantial stint of Dota 2, so I see the moba side of things as well albeit I don't care for these elements in my shooter games at all. Overwatch has a low player count so each person matters more, like in a typical 5 v 5 moba. The standard shooter game player count use to be 12 v 12 or 16 v 16 or even much more in the case of the Battlefield series. Games with more players soften individual impact. A peaceful Sandvich heavy or a spycrab on your team is no big deal in a full TF2 server assuming you even realized you had one. Some guy going rage afk Torb at the spawn is a much larger cause for alarm and much more noticeable. Overwatch teamfights are heavily based around ultimate usage. This dampens the impact of personal fps skill in favor organizing teamfights. This in turn is exacerbated by the hero design of the game which favors interdependence rather than independence. TF2 characters for instance have independent strengths and drawbacks. And while these strengths and drawbacks complement one another they don't necessarily NEED one another. You can pluck the demoman from TF2, despite the fact he has no hitscan, and plop him into Call of duty and he would still be capable of dominating. Reinhardt on the other hand can't do jack shit without someone taking advantage of his shield and the space it provides. Rein in CoD would just get swarmed and destroyed as well by mass fire or kill streak bombs. Overwatch tops it all off with the Ult economy. While the game has no "gold" mechanic like in a typical moba both farming and feeding exist since the ult charge mechanic is gained by doing damage or healing it away. This makes the pace of the game extremely finicky and counter intuitive. For instance, doing damage to a character but not completing the kill can be worse than not doing any damage at all. Since that character then get's healed will boost the ult charge of the supports; and the support ults dictate the pace of the game.

The end result to both of this is that you have different players from all sorts of genres coming in. As an old school fps-er I've seen all kinds of weird shit and carried more trashcans than a garbageman. I don't really care what people pick. Other people however have never played an fps like this before and come from more...controlled experiences like Call of Duty and so the idea of a projectile based character may seem odd to them. Others are from mass migrations from League of Legends. These Leek of Legume players often expose themselves by calling the various character classes "champs." For some of these guys and gals, it's normal for some characters to be considered bad and unplayable since this is a "natural" part of how the League meta works. They tend to be very anti experimental. Personally as someone who loved the hipster loadouts in TF2 and respected the flexible nature of Dota line ups as "Anything can work" I favor weird teams more and respect people who experiment. Others, don't feel that way. Both kinds of people and more are all playing Overwatch and they DO NOT get along.


Overwatch doesn't let players control their own experiences

Overwatch is heavily built into the walled garden style of game design that Blizzard favors. They want players to play their way. Even in quickplay you can't just leave without any consequences since you'll get dinged with an xp penalty. Recently, they released the custom server feature which IMO turned out to be a big flop. There are some cute games in there and very few good deathmatch practice type of setups but a lot of it is just random junk or weird sex roleplay servers. The big push for Ovewatch is matchmaking where you are "trapped" with strangers. The primary catalyst for toxicity is rooted in being stuck with other people and dependent on them. In other words, as strange as it might sound, it is entirely possible for a team based game to be TOO team oriented. In TF2 for instance, before the meet your match update which put team fortress in the matchmaking shit show, if you ran into jerks on a server you could just leave. If the jerks were on TF2 Gaf they would get the boot or flat out banhammered. Games with matchmaking are enforced by abandon penalties. A cornered animal is dangerous, and everyone can turn into a beast in game matchmaking.


Overwatch feedback on what the team is actually doing sucks.

As already pointed in earlier posts the Medal system which is intended to curb toxicity just encourages it. The anemic kill feed doesn't help things either. No one really knows what the hell the other people are doing or how well they are doing it unless they get a nice card at the end of the match where it doesn't even matter any more since the game is over. You can have gold medals doing inconsequential damage that doesn't go to any kills and thus be "feeding" ult charge. You can have gold medals but doing damage to barriers which can carry the team in the long run but not showing up in the kill feed. You can have little to no medals but killed the right people at the right time and led to a snowball for your team. This ambiguity lets people fill in the gaps on what they ASSUME who did what which naturally leads to a shit show. 'Off-meta' picks will often get blamed first regardless since they are easy targets and take any potential heat off the flamer.

I disagree with literally everything you said and some of it is just flat out wrong. Rein can't do anything without help? Chip damage is a bad idea? Leaver penalties are bad?

Sometimes I doubt game developers because they explain the most basic stuff but then I see posts like these and I'm like ohhhh...I get it.

 

[TheRedSnifit]

Very interesting. Sometimes you see people trying to defend themselves by citing medals they have, but that's not something you can really verify.

I think there is a hidden score mechanic already in play because of the "on fire" mechanic, maybe they could do something with that to make a scoreboard like TF2.

They definitely could.

The actual reason they don't, that nobody really wants to acknowledge, is that they're afraid their more casual players will stop playing if the game points out their weaknesses (which is the most important thing to highlight if you want players to actually get better at the game). So they created some completely meaningless medal system to pat everyone on the back and tell them they contributed in some form or another so they feel good and keep playing.

 

[Dreams-Visions]

This was fixed ages ago:

Do you see anybody else's K/D ratio? Nope. Only points are added to the scoreboard, and points are earned for a variety of tasks beyond killing dudes (Medics and Engineers are usually at the top for a reason).

Not having a scoreboard has made Overwatch so much more toxic. Insane meta worship to a level I've literally never seen before. No way of identifying if that guy screaming at everyone isn't contributing himself. No way of actually judging your performance, or actually identifying the weakness in your team.

Which makes one wonder how half the posters in this thread are so confident that it's the Widow/Hanzo on the team not contributing? You can't see anyone's medals, never mind their actual KDA. All you have to go on is your "gut". It could very well be the Rein diving more than shielding or the McCree that can't hit the broad side of a barn, or poor coordination in general...but you've tunnel visioned so hard on Widow/Hanzo that you never figured out where the *actual* problem lies.

Confirmation bias is a helluva drug. I'll say it again: the sooner some of you stop trying to find someone to blame for your inability to advance, the sooner you start actually getting better.

 

[Mman235]

Rein can't do anything without help?

Rein on his own is pretty useless, so yeah (setting aside that this applies to almost everyone once you face teams with a basic degree of coordination).

Chip damage is a bad idea?

Kind of? It's situational and character-dependant (it's less of an issue for characters with great ultimates), but since healing feeds support ultimates, and they are among the best in the game, doing pointless damage without closing out a kill can work against you in the long run, especially at higher levels where people exploit that (like tanks intentionally not using health kits between engagements even if their supports are dead because giving their supports ultimate when they get back is better).

Funny thing in the context of this thread is that one of the major advantages of characters like Widow/Hanzo is that most of their landed shots immediately close out kills, which can be a big deal if it minimises what the enemy supports can do.

 

[karasu]

I play my game and let everyone else play theirs. Not everyone is out here trying to be Joe Mountain Dew and polish their e-peen.

 

[Shambala]

I play my game and let everyone else play theirs. Not everyone is out here trying to be Joe Mountain Dew and polish their e-peen.

Lmao exactly. Like people can play the game however they choose man. They paid their money for it

 

[FatCatAttack]

I disagree with literally everything you said and some of it is just flat out wrong. Rein can't do anything without help? Chip damage is a bad idea? Leaver penalties are bad?

Sometimes I doubt game developers because they explain the most basic stuff but then I see posts like these and I'm like ohhhh...I get it.

Rein is designed to facilitate his team through control of space. He holds up a big rectangle that people shoot through. While holding up the goofy rectangle he can't do anything other than move very slowly. This whole ability which defines the character is dependent on other people to take advantage of the barrier. Without it, he's a fat melee class in shooter game that will get kited and demolished. Even the game's map design reinforces his dependence since so many natural chokes are specifically Rein shield sized. For instance the first choke under the bridge at Eichenwald is designed for Rein. The first choke at Volskaya Industries has that truck in the middle to make two Rein shield sized mini chokes. There's a similar car in place for the first point at Hollywood. Various openings, hallways, and other spaces are designed around the size and shape of that goofy rectangle. The character is purely rooted in his circumstances.

Chip damage being poor in Overwatch is how the game works due to a variety of missteps (IMO) in it's design.
Healing is overly strong and purely additive. In TF2 for instance healing had hard limits to it. The Tf2 medic's health beam was weaker comparatively and had a severe healing malus applied to it when healing someone who recently took damage or was being healed by another medic. This means that if a nooby pyro yolo ran into some people and set them all on fire and then died it would create some amount of pressure and space for a least a little bit. However, in Overwatch running in and doing some damage and then dying is a mega feed. Because not only did you fed your ass in terms of ult charge but the damage is restored very quickly from a variety of ways which ALSO feeds ult charge.
Chip damage is also problematic because of how strong ults are in the first place. At best you are exchanging the damage dealer's ult for a support ult. Depending upon the damage dealer, the support, and other circumstances this either very bad or neutral. For example, riptire is considered a weak ultimate due to how frail the tire is when focused down. Zenyatta's trance is very strong because of how limited the counter play is (ana healing grenade) and how much it does in terms of regen. The same is true of Lucio's sound barrier. It's pure counter is rooted in Sombra's ult...which incidentally is one of those "problematic" picks that people will rage at. So if you have Junkrat dinging some nades off of some people but not completing kills (not necessarily his fault since other people can follow up on him as well. It is a team game after all) he gets his tire and in exchange the supports get both trance and soundbarrier every fight. That is not "worth" as the kids today would say.
And finally you have the whole ult system. Not only are ults strong overall (there are some bum ults out there that struggle to do anything like riptire that I mentioned), but also they are an advantage that's accrued without any way to deny it. You only lose ult charge when swapping characters or when you use the ult. This is a marked difference from TF2 where a suicide mission against an enemy medic was worth it because it made him drop his uber. In Overwatch if you did the same against an enemy mercy and she died TOO EARLY in the teamfight, she can have enough time to respawn and walk back and rez everyone. This is most noticeable on the last points of 2CP maps. On some of them like Anubis she can even rez them while being in the spawn room itself. This means the only counterplay to this upward gain on ult charge is to avoid dealing damage that can be farmed by going for picks. The faster and more efficient you get these picks the better.

That leaver penalties encourage toxicity is just straight forward common sense. You are "stuck" with people you don't like for whatever reason. This is a strong recipe for getting the case of the mads, the booty bothered, saltiness, and other diseases contracted through the internet. In games where you can just leave, there is less toxicity. If I can just leave and go to another server why do I care about some jerk on there spamming a bunch of nasty shit in chat? Like if some nasty dudes are invading you in Dark Souls you can just go offline. Who's gonna know or care if you do? But imagine if you couldn't complete the game without it or maybe Miyazaki would delete all your items if you dodged offline. You think that wouldn't elevate salt levels in that game if people felt trapped in playing in online mode?

 

[MulderYuffie]

I am generally angry when people play as who they want to play as it ruins the whole experience!

 

[freeofgreed]

I play my game and let everyone else play theirs. Not everyone is out here trying to be Joe Mountain Dew and polish their e-peen.

But isn't that the entire point of competitive mode? I mean play who you want in literally any other mode, but I imagine people who play comp do so because they actually want to win. You're not wrong in the sense that they paid money for it and can do what they want, but just like people who grief in MMO's you can still call them out for it even if it is within their rights, since it then impacts your own enjoyment of the game.

 

[Mr Fahrenheit]

Preferable to Junkrat mains tbh.

 

[The_Endgamer]

People need to realise if a player is a Hanzo main, they're a Hanzo main. Stop telling them to pick something else.

It's like If I started telling Reinhardt players to play Roadhog. Totally different play style.

The whole team can't be Medium range DPS character.

Also, Hanzo's mini radar is golden for flushing out rogue players.

 

[hypernima]

Widow gets a lot of flak for valid reason. She is highly dependent on getting good picks. At least with Hanzo one-tricks, scatter can do residual damage and radar is decent every 18 seconds. Other one tricks provide much more value than Widows who can't get picks. Symmetra can atleast provide shields, teleporter, and strong defense for points and chokes. Junkrat can agitate and is really good now with his buff.

But what can a pickless Widow do? Without shots you wait atleast 2 minutes for ult that lasts 30 seconds.

Yeah sure you can play whatever you want, you paid for it yadda yadda. Other people paid for it too, they deserve a decent experience too, because it's a team game. When you bring that shit in comp it gets even more tricky especially if you get queued with the same person game after game.

Also with the carry mentality, there have been many a game where you get 40x elims in a round, but how does that matter when people are feeding, dying and you have to kill and push a payload or hold a point? There's a distinct limit to carrying games when people have that mentality.

All in all, IDGAF what you play in quick play or arcade. But you can't say it isn't BM to play a test hero in comp where it matters more to people, who also paid for the game. I used to care but now a days, I don't care what anyone picks as long as I can lock a character that increases my ability to carry.

 

[Professional Enthusiast]

I don't mind Hanzo and Widow at all.... Unless they're picked on attack. Then I feel a wave of nerd rage wash over me as my eyes glaze over and my hands reach for the keyboard to belt out a 'bruh, sniper on attack cmon'. Then my hate subsides as I realize getting angry over a someone going sniper is dumb as hell.....because no one went healer.

 

[Exploratory]

Rein is designed to facilitate his team through control of space. He holds up a big rectangle that people shoot through. While holding up the goofy rectangle he can't do anything other than move very slowly. This whole ability which defines the character is dependent on other people to take advantage of the barrier. Without it, he's a fat melee class in shooter game that will get kited and demolished. Even the game's map design reinforces his dependence since so many natural chokes are specifically Rein shield sized. For instance the first choke under the bridge at Eichenwald is designed for Rein. The first choke at Volskaya Industries has that truck in the middle to make two Rein shield sized mini chokes. There's a similar car in place for the first point at Hollywood. Various openings, hallways, and other spaces are designed around the size and shape of that goofy rectangle. The character is purely rooted in his circumstances.

Chip damage being poor in Overwatch is how the game works due to a variety of missteps (IMO) in it's design.
Healing is overly strong and purely additive. In TF2 for instance healing had hard limits to it. The Tf2 medic's health beam was weaker comparatively and had a severe healing malus applied to it when healing someone who recently took damage or was being healed by another medic. This means that if a nooby pyro yolo ran into some people and set them all on fire and then died it would create some amount of pressure and space for a least a little bit. However, in Overwatch running in and doing some damage and then dying is a mega feed. Because not only did you fed your ass in terms of ult charge but the damage is restored very quickly from a variety of ways which ALSO feeds ult charge.
Chip damage is also problematic because of how strong ults are in the first place. At best you are exchanging the damage dealer's ult for a support ult. Depending upon the damage dealer, the support, and other circumstances this either very bad or neutral. For example, riptire is considered a weak ultimate due to how frail the tire is when focused down. Zenyatta's trance is very strong because of how limited the counter play is (ana healing grenade) and how much it does in terms of regen. The same is true of Lucio's sound barrier. It's pure counter is rooted in Sombra's ult...which incidentally is one of those "problematic" picks that people will rage at. So if you have Junkrat dinging some nades off of some people but not completing kills (not necessarily his fault since other people can follow up on him as well. It is a team game after all) he gets his tire and in exchange the supports get both trance and soundbarrier every fight. That is not "worth" as the kids today would say.
And finally you have the whole ult system. Not only are ults strong overall (there are some bum ults out there that struggle to do anything like riptire that I mentioned), but also they are an advantage that's accrued without any way to deny it. You only lose ult charge when swapping characters or when you use the ult. This is a marked difference from TF2 where a suicide mission against an enemy medic was worth it because it made him drop his uber. In Overwatch if you did the same against an enemy mercy and she died TOO EARLY in the teamfight, she can have enough time to respawn and walk back and rez everyone. This is most noticeable on the last points of 2CP maps. On some of them like Anubis she can even rez them while being in the spawn room itself. This means the only counterplay to this upward gain on ult charge is to avoid dealing damage that can be farmed by going for picks. The faster and more efficient you get these picks the better.

That leaver penalties encourage toxicity is just straight forward common sense. You are "stuck" with people you don't like for whatever reason. This is a strong recipe for getting the case of the mads, the booty bothered, saltiness, and other diseases contracted through the internet. In games where you can just leave, there is less toxicity. If I can just leave and go to another server why do I care about some jerk on there spamming a bunch of nasty shit in chat? Like if some nasty dudes are invading you in Dark Souls you can just go offline. Who's gonna know or care if you do? But imagine if you couldn't complete the game without it or maybe Miyazaki would delete all your items if you dodged offline. You think that wouldn't elevate salt levels in that game if people felt trapped in playing in online mode?

Since you had the decency to respond with a well thought out position let me say a few things.

First I don't believe a Genji or a Rein should ever choose not to chip away. Genji is built around his ult and Rein gets obscene ult charge from his primary chip damage (Fire Strike).

Second I disagree on Rein getting kited and demolished. I've played at SR 70+ (near top 500 in S1) and at master level in the most recent season. He's always a force to be reckoned with when within range.

Finally the idea of leaving in a competitive game mode is borderline insane. Losing a game? Quit. Someone picked your character? Quit. It completely ruins the game for all other 11 people. For quick play the leaver penalty isn't very punishing so there's no real argument there.

 

[Adam_Roman]

I play my game and let everyone else play theirs. Not everyone is out here trying to be Joe Mountain Dew and polish their e-peen.

I feel like this mentality only feeds into the problem. If you play Widow or Hanzo in QP/Arcade, that's totally fine. I would never give someone shit for that because those games don't mean anything. However, there are situations where in competitive, it doesn't make sense to pick a sniper on some maps, and when ranked games focus on teamwork to a point where you can report someone for not functioning alongside the team, that's when snipers can potentially become a problem.

Similarly, if it's clear that a player isn't performing well as a sniper in a comp game, they should be willing to switch. Just like if your team isn't getting healed well by say, Ana and Zenyatta, you shouldn't be chastised for asking one of them to go Lucio or Mercy. Or if their tanks are obliterating your squishy characters, maybe have a DPS switch to Reaper. The reason that this issue/joke gets brought up more with Hanzo and Widow mains is because pretty much everyone has experienced games in competitive where someone locks a sniper, and if they don't perform well they refuse to switch to help the team. It just happens more often with sniper characters, though I see it happen a lot with Genji as well.

The whole "I bought the game so I can play it how I want" mentality goes out the window when you're playing ranked, alongside 5 other people who spent as much as you. It's a mode based on teamwork, and if you're not pulling your weight and refuse to switch, you're working against your team. That's why people say to keep this mentality in QP. If you're good as a sniper and you're getting medals in kills consistently, by all means keep with sniping in competitive. But don't make your team suffer if you're not playing well.

 

[RawNuts]

They paid $60 (or whatever) for the game like I did. They can play whoever they damn well want to.

But what if they bought the game to yell at people who pick Hanzo? Let them play how they want.

 

[LilJoka]

It's only a game so no big deal.
Let every one have fun.

 

[FatCatAttack]

Since you had the decency to respond with a well thought out position let me say a few things.

First I don't believe a Genji or a Rein should ever choose not to chip away. Genji is built around his ult and Rein gets obscene ult charge from his primary chip damage (Fire Strike).

Second I disagree on Rein getting kited and demolished. I've played at SR 70+ (near top 500 in S1) and at master level in the most recent season. He's always a force to be reckoned with when within range.

Finally the idea of leaving in a competitive game mode is borderline insane. Losing a game? Quit. Someone picked your character? Quit. It completely ruins the game for all other 11 people. For quick play the leaver penalty isn't very punishing so there's no real argument there.

Genji and Rein use their projectiles primarily to farm for their ult it's true. However, this doesn't make chip damage a "good" thing. In this case it's a tradeoff they accrue benefits from while feeding the enemy charge. It's also stops being worthwhile once they get their ultimates. It's no longer efficient to throw junk firestrikes when you already have earthshatter for instance. This also brings up another problem vis-a-vis Overwatch's counter intuitiveness issue. That shooting someone in an fps could be anything other than positive is pretty damn confusing. It makes "sense" in how the games play out, but for a game that tries to be straightforward in teaching players how to play, the ult economy is far too arcane for the rest of the game.

The key words here with regards to Rein is "within range." Rein has no way to shoot at people other than his slow firestrike on a cooldown. There's some places on maps where even a Lucio could perch there and VERY slowly pepper a Rein to death without any way for the Rein to respond. Hell, with speed boost this is possible even on the theoretical grassy flat plain, no items, final destination. You're not getting "within range" W+M1-ing out of spawn in a Masters level game.

I feel like there's some sort of misunderstanding on the leaver penalty thing. I know WHY it exists. That doesn't change the fact that it's major cause of toxicity. The reason why toxicity has increased so much in online gaming has been the overall increase of stakes in these games. MMR, the ladder, hats or whatever. These are stakes that game devs add these days. People want these things; they rely on other people in these team based games to get these things. The degree in which they want them and how much they have to rely on others is the nuclear reaction that creates salted booty buns.

There was no "competitive game mode" back in the day. You just had servers. Some servers had a ranking system which led to annoying goobers typing "rank" in all chat to check their stats everytime they got a frag. The one for TF2 gaf had some pretty hilarious nicknames. But if you left a server and went to another one and was like "I'm the best rocket manz on Jimbo's Waffle Hut East Coast!" No one is gonna give a shit. People have forgotten how liberating this is to actually play a game with no consequences. And NO, quickplay and arcade are not free from this. For one some of the most insane salt I've encountered occurred was in Arcade Mode. I got screamed at by this high strung young man for picking Hanzo in CTF. He claimed that he wanted to win his loot boxes and if I wanted loot boxes too I should obey his team drafting wisdom and pick the boring Lucio frog to solo heal his 5 stack of shitlords. I told him I already won my lootboxes for the week purely from playing Hanzo on ctf and I was just playing for fun of the mode. He let out a blood curdling scream. This wasn't just a generic nerd rage scream like the classic "Angry German Kid" tearing up his keyboard. This was some Attack on Titan death rattle shit. If I heard this noise coming from someone's house I would immediately call the police. The stupid loot crate crack turned him into a little monster. Quickplay is not that different. People do all kinds of stupid shit like nose through your profile and judge you by your winrates in there and other nonsense. And yes tons of people also mega rage in quickplay trying to get their xp bonuses for more crates.

 

[GraveRobberX]

They paid for the game just like we did and pick whoever they want

All I ask is please hit the point/payload if team members are dying so we can extend time
That's all
Nothing more annoying than a Widow or Hancock perched on a nest and just watching the team die and be like why do I need to be on there
Not dying, I'll eat the Defeat

Yet there have been times a Hanzo or Widow have extended it enough for us to win
Not Overtime, but like 5-6 seconds prior letting the rest of flush back in

 

[RawNuts]

I don't mind Hanzo and Widow at all.... Unless they're picked on attack. Then I feel a wave of nerd rage wash over me as my eyes glaze over and my hands reach for the keyboard to belt out a 'bruh, sniper on attack cmon'. Then my hate subsides as I realize getting angry over a someone going sniper is dumb as hell.....because no one went healer.

This can actually work out against some teams. Get a pick or two at the door, then switch and push payload. A lot of teams position to avoid that now though.

 

[MCD]

I don't mind snipers. What pisses me off more than anything is idle people or those who just joke around on competitive.

Yesterday there was a goddamn Reinhardt who did nothing. I swear to god he was near the respawn area just watching us getting fucked.