The TL;DR of this post is the fact quite a few characters in this game are providing so much more value than others while being easier to use. It defeats the point of ‘skill’ based matchmaking and has totally ruined the game. If you’re a dev reading this, please just make a choice - either rebalance the entire game around 2-2-2 in the context of a SKILL BASED PROFESSIONAL ESPORT. Or just go back to the arcade game this started out as and give up on OWL. You can’t do both, but you’re trying to do both and every side of the community is pissed off for one reason or the other.
Blizzard as a company has annoyed me recently, but I know this game isn’t a reflection or an endorsement of those actions; having said that, the direction of this game is totally gone and I think major changes are needed to bring it back to something we all enjoy.
When overwatch was launched, a major thing was accessibility - or the fact you don’t need to be a mechanical god to succeed which I totally agree with. Overwatch was seen as a casual shooter and it was fun, but then you said it’s going to be a professional esport and for a while… I believed it.
Let be clear, you can’t have a game designed to be a competitive esport while balancing it like a casual shooter. I understand your need for accessibility, but so many characters offer way more than their counterparts while demanding way less and I’m sorry but that defeats the point of overwatch.
You have a game that’s LITERALLY about counters and strategy, but every damn OWL game is a mirror match. That isn’t ‘the meta’, it’s power creep caused by your ‘buff the counter, don’t nerf the problem’ philosophy.
*Side note - The thing that’s most obvious is the fact this is being designed for a casual audience - three/four years down the line and the overwatch ‘tutorial’ is still just soldier shooting some bots. As much as character design is a problem, the lack of understanding throughout all elo’s is painful. Please, if you want people to take your game seriously, put in a decent tutorial to get everyone on the same page with what’s what. I don’t have time to argue with players mid-comp match about basic things like taking space and stagger kills.
I can choose to waste my time learning Genji, or Ana, or Winston - figuring out positioning, how to dive, resource management etc… Or I could play Orisa, Moira, or bastion and completely disregard the need for gamesense or mechanics because the characters themselves are so strong compared to their counterparts.
This isn’t my only issue. 2-2-2 fundamentally changed the game, and now we have characters like bastion being made stronger, while the most effective counter (quad dps, Hammond, mercy) is literally impossible.
The distribution of CC is also stupid. Why the hell does a main tank have graviton surge on cooldown? While also being the only main tank who has damage AND cc mitigation? How is that balanced compared to Reinhardt or Winston?.. At least Hammond requires mechanics to get value from and even then his cc isn’t THAT powerful.
The Devs of this game clearly haven’t set any prerequisites for what a main or off tank should be, in fact I don’t think you’ve set prerequisites for ANY character type given Brig and Sigma. The devs have no regard for what’s mechanically challenging, and you’ve just created a game that lets certain characters sit at the top getting free value for stupid abilities while anyone who actually wants to learn the game gets s**t on from a great height by these ‘accessible’ heroes.
To top it all off, people actually think your ranking system is accurate. Now I’m not going to say it’s unfair (we all use the same system so by default, it’s fair) - but it definitely doesn’t take into account who sets up on highground, their rotation, ult tracking, space created by tanks or basically anything of value in an actual game. So not only are some of your characters providing way more numerical value while being easier to use, but you’re then ranking everyone based on those stats.
I’m sick of it, and I’m pretty sure everyone else is. At the highest level of play, amazing players are being forced onto easy characters like Orisa because the value she gets off Halt far outweighs anything the best Reinhardt zarya combo could do. At every other level of play, players who play these easy characters get a distinct advantage regardless of any counters because the numerical value they produce is ridiculous.
For example, Ana’s sleep and bio-nades are powerful, but every use of these abilities is a trade off because dps use them as queues to come kill you. Moira on the other hand, pumps out the most healing (which I agree should be part of her character design), she also has the best escape ability (again, agreed it’s part of her playstyle) - but then you ruined it. You gave her a high damage output AND made it super easy to do AND made her self heal while doing it. Literally 0 aim required, while having the highest healing, highest damage output AND the highest sustain; do you really have to wonder why ‘dps Moira’ is such a buzz word? Considering healers get ranked based on healing, deaths and specific ability use - it’s pretty obvious why everyone hates Moira. No ana in the history of overwatch has landed EVERY sleep and EVERY nade - but I can bet most Moira’s at least got something out of a damage orb, even if it was 7 seconds later after it bounced off 168995321 walls.
The problems are so painfully obvious to anyone who follows this game, and it feels like we’re being ignored. Just make a choice - turn this game into the competitive sport it deserves to be, or just stop pretending it’s a competitive sport.
