I love Overwatch and have been playing since 2016. I love that the game is getting new updates and new things for the players to try out but one of the nice things about Overwatch (before the perks) is that the player understood what every character did and their cool down timers, movement abilities, etc.
With the new perks, the game is now more or less unpredictable and it can be a turn off for veteran players.
I realize the perks are part of the PVE system that Blizzard promised and then ripped away and its great that they are finally getting to put something they wanted (and everyone wanted) into the game, but I don’t think this is the way to do it.
Some perks are done extremely well like the Sombra health hack or the Kiriko healing while shooting kunai but others are very lack luster like Mercy guardian angel distance is upped by 30% or Hanzo wall climbing reduces lunge cooldown. And Mei’s cryo-freeze dealing 70 damage per second kills a 250 health character in 3-4 seconds. Some perks just seem drastically better than others and it forces the player base to only pick the more over-powered heroes.
The perks also do not encourage hero swapping as it can be a disadvantage to not have the perks versus having both perks. This can be good because people complain about counter swapping a lot but the reason Overwatch works is because you can tilt the team fight if you swap when you are getting heavily countered.
Perks should not have been added to competitive immediately especially when EVERYONE does not understand each perk right away. The same for when new heroes are added. I liked when comp waited a week before new heroes were available because people who have never played that character choose them in comp and basically throw the game because they don’t know how to play them yet.
I think Perks should be a separate game mode and the unranked quickplay version should not include these.
It would encourage people who want to goof around or try new heroes to do so without the penalty of people who treat quickplay as competitive steam rolling them or being a toxic teammate.
I know that some streamers got to play test the perks before they were live, but I think an open weekend play test would have helped immensely. The Overwatch community would have been able to give great feedback and helped tweak the abilities to keep them equal.
I’ve played a hand full of the unranked perk matches but switched to arcade since there are no perks. The games aren’t as fun, however, and other games are looking more appealing to play now.
I hope something changes with the perks but it seems the community are split on loving and hating them.
2 Likes
I would be happy if they would introduce this mode for me:
- Unranked (Quickplay)
- No perks
- 6v6
And then, instead of 2-2-2 or no rollqueue, I would suggest this:
- Maximum 2 tanks
- Maximum 3 healers
- Maximum 4 dps
Yes that would be lovely 
2 Likes