Hi Overwatch devs and fans. I used to play Overwatch, almost exclusively, and played it very religiously in the first 3 seasons of the game. However, my feelings for the game died down after reaching diamond from gold (which isn’t a huge
milestone but it was big enough to make me rethink this game). And ever since I’ve been trying to get back into the game with little to no success. The new maps look amazing, the new events look stunning, and the new characters are… sometimes great, but despite all this new content added to the game, I struggled to enjoy this game. Every match that I play felt a bit repetitive, and I think I know why I feel this way. Tell me if these problems are exclusive to me.
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Shallow (this is the longest part by far don’t worry the others are like half of this)
This game is an action packed TF2 styled FPS, but with deeper characters that have touching stories, so I’m not critiquing the writing of these characters, I’m critiquing the lack of depth of the game mechanics. To me, every game feels like stalling for ultimates and then jumping into the objective hoping that the enemies have fewer and/or weaker ultimates than you do. And though every new character has a series of unique abilities, old characters do not. So here’s what I propose. First, each character needs an extra firearm, something like a pistol or a shotgun like in other FPSes. They might not be as strong or generate as much ult charge for the character, but they act as an emergency or niche swap-in. It makes the characters themselves more versatile and you won’t feel like having to switch characters over and over again like some sort of rock paper scissors game; second, ult charge needs a secondary use. Stalling for the almighty ultimate doesn’t really feel that amazing especially on something like Soldier or Ana where much of the action is in the main kit and not the ultimate. So, perhaps a new ability could be added that costs some ult charge, or, all abilities cost ult charge and are tuned to cost ult charge. The maps itself also feel slightly empty. There are fencing, health packs, and that’s about it. Nothing to interact with, nothing that changes the way you play the game. Something like armor laying on the floor or damage boosts in place of health packs might change the pace of the game and require “turtle” characters like Reinhardt and Orisa
to actually care about positioning and movement. -
Rock, paper, scissors
Like I mentioned above, constantly swapping doesn’t feel very fun. Sure, you can stay on your favourite hero and try but it won’t be optimal and you might get told. I’ll take a bold guess to say that this is highly inspired from TF2, and there are huge difference between the games - this should be one of them. Building a team comp is hard and it should be hard, and there should be a noticeable difference between 6 DPS and a properly built comp - there shouldn’t be a scenario where 6 DPS isn’t immediately punished for building the comp poorly, so to speak. I know that “switching in and out of characters” is an important part of the game, but it’s an important part of the game that feels sloppy. -
The Alternatives
One of the main reasons why I can’t get into playing Overwatch is because every time I play this game, I think to myself, “I could be playing xxx right now instead”. And perhaps this is because I’ve been playing those other games for longer or that those other games appeal to me more personally, but that’s kinda my point. There’s no progression system that makes you feel like you’ve invested well in this game. When golden weapons were first introduced I thought “Cool, they finally have a system to show off your dedication to the game”, but now when I log in, every one has a golden weapon and they’re not even that noticeable. Golden weapons are good, don’t get me wrong, but this competitive points system can be developed so much more - how about competitive point exclusive skins? or alternate voices? or special animations? -
Satisfaction
Part of what makes an FPS or any PvP game enjoyable for that matter is how the kills are rewarding. In Overwatch, games can regularly ramp up to 40, 50, 60 kills on each team, and when kills are that easy to get, it’s not very rewarding to get a
kill. It doesn’t really help that these kills are often insignificant either. Instead what feels good in this game is getting a huge Mercy rez, or, obliterating the enemy team with Death Blossom or Self-Destruct, and there’s nothing
intrinsically wrong with that. In fact, when I was most invested in this game I despised heroes that stalled the game forever. However, there are other ways that player, or at least, me as a player could feel more satisfied getting a kill. Such as death animations, or a smug playerbase, but I think a good fix for this is a death maximum. Say that, after a team gets 50 deaths combined, they automatically lose the game. This will make it feel like your kills can amount to something. Sure, it can be griefed and trolls are going to jump off ramps and die, but this can also make for a decent system to determine who deserves the most SR change. And it’s not like trolls couldn’t have just locked a bad hero and messed around with it anyway. There are systems in place to punish those who don’t take competitive games competitively and they can be punished through that system instead.
In conclusion, I’m merely giving my suggestions to change this game for the better and pointing out problems that I personally face. Most of my friends who used to play this game also quit, and I asked and discussed this with them, to
which all of them agreed to my points. Overwatch is a game that I’ve invested quite a bit of time in and hopefully this post will be at least as effective as people ranting about a victory pose on Tracer (Yes, I still remember that, Blizzard).
Your experience in this game is probably different from mine hence why you frequent the Overwatch forums but hopefully you’d have found this insightful and maybe even agreeable. Until then, I’ll be playing games that won’t make me fall asleep.