Overwatch

Not just money either at this point, but also all the time learning the game and what each character can do.

It's why I only play LoL for moba types even though I hate the current gameplay. To much time in learning all the characters, unlocking them, learning item builds.

I like overwatchs character designs, it's just I absolutely can't stand the style of gameplay, having to learn everything, and the time sink involved with being good at the game.

By gameplay I mean team death match stuff. Which I can't stand. For me FPS games were about game modes like retrieval and search and destroy. With hardcore mode to make weapons more deadly and no respawns. It is a lot more intense when you only have one life.

 

You think it won't have hats. That's cute.

 

I've played something like in excess of 300 games of Overwatch at this point, played every hero at least a fair amount, and been on every map. Of all of my play time the entirety of it has been spent in pvp.

Overwatch is a fast-paced arena shooter. I've seen a lot of people liken it to TF2 on steroids, and I think that's a fair conclusion. If you're not a fan of FPS games, or you don't enjoy a game that rewards twitch-based shooting, then you will probably not like this game. The speed of combat is pretty damn fast overall, and time to kill is pretty low. The games themselves really only last around 15 min max, but it's really cool because there is nearly always a sense of intensity as that timer ticks down. I played counter strike source for about seven years, and, while it's a different intensity than that game caused, it's definitely there.

I can't tell you how many games I have played (some of these with fellow Borg members) where we won simply because of a prolonged Overtime push, with people literally sprinting back to the payload to reset the Overtime counter. It's intense when you hear that Pharah Ult right over the capture point and you hope that your Widow has an answer for it before it nukes your three teammates trying to hold. It's pretty nerve-wracking when it's just you and your teammate trying to hold the point against an enemy push just long enough for your teammates to get back into the fray.

There's a really cool sense of victory and accomplishment when you pull the good games out because of clutch execution. You learn pretty quick that, if you're playing against any team worth their salt, you can't just meat-grinder it. With six players on each side, even if one player is incredibly dominant, the other team can still come up with an answer to it. Part of that dynamic comes with being able to switch between characters at any point during a match, and that's a component of play that is very much encouraged. The only penalty to doing so is that you forfeit any ultimate ability charge you had on your previous character when you switch. It's really cool though, because sometimes you'll switch to come up with an answer to enemy composition, and sometimes it's because the portion of the map you're playing in works better for some characters more than others.

For example, in a few payload (objective escorting) maps, you first have to capture payload by seizing and holding a designated area against enemies and contention for a certain period of time. Once the objective is seized, it begins to move along a predetermined path to an end goal as long as it is not being contested by immediate enemy contact and is being accompanied by at least one ally. In the defense of such a map, you may find that your team favors a much more static-style defense in the beginning, but find that you want to become more mobile and reactive in your defense. Maybe it's that you find that the enemy Bastion is really well set up, so you counter pick with someone like Tracer or Genji to keep them in check. I've had games where I play three or 4 heroes for a prolonged period of time as a reactionary measure, and I love that the game encourages that. It's refreshing for me.

I would very much disagree with Moro's conclusion about the players and community. I've played this game a lot, and I can say that I can count on one hand the number of times I've encountered anyone that did anything more toxic than just making a single, bitter, comment at the end of the game. I ran into one individual who berated the team over chat because he thought everyone was playing poorly, but even that was a singular case. I rarely found myself on a team where straight-up nobody would fill a role. Sure, sometimes it happened, but so many of the characters are fun enough to play (even supports and tanks) that people don't mind switching to take care of a vacancy if they have to. Hell, I play a very aggressive offense most of the time, but a couple of my favorite characters are Lucio (a support focused on providing speed and healing to the team) and Mercy (a dedicated healer). Personally, I found myself pretty pleasantly surprised with how everyone was acting. I would often get random people in team voice chat where we would be working together and laughing together, and I almost always see GGs at a match's end. I dunno, maybe I'm just a more-charming individual than Moro.

I really hope that you don't go into this game expecting a moba, or some kind of slow and methodical gameplay. If you do, you will be disappointed. This is a hectic, fast-paced, arena shooter. It rewards twitch play. It doesn't try to be anything else. What it does do is bring some refreshing elements to the table like the heroes, their abilities, and the ability to switch them at any time. If that sounds like it's up your alley though, I would encourage you to give it a go. I will agree that it is definitely more fun with even one other person you know and communicate with, but I've also done a lot of solo play and had a blast with that.

 

So more or less twitchy than something like Dirty Bomb?

 

The game hasn't been out long enough yet for you to see how toxic the community will become. A few things can actually tell you though.

Do you get grouped with random people so there's zero accountability for your actions with people you will never see again?

Is the game competitive?

Is the learning curve steep?

Is there a time sink to unlock content so you can better fill roles in the team?

These are some of the main reasons for a toxic community and overwatch has them all from what I can see. With the main offender being the first one because of the whole..

You are never going to see them again so fuck that person for screwing my game mentality.

 

I really don't understand your thinking. On the one hand you say it hasn't been long enough to make a judgement, and then you immediately proceed to outline all of the reasons it will be incredibly toxic. As far as I am aware, you still haven't even touched the game.

Why do you believe your bullshit questionaire is a more accurate future-state indicator than the personal experiences of someone who has played hundreds of games at this point?

Up until this point I have been trying to convince myself that your comments were motivated by a desire (albeit nearly-incomprehensibly abstract) to have a productive discussion. Yet now I am finding it more and more difficult to not just write everything you say off as the ramblings of a contrarian.

 

You need only look at history of games and how the community interacts with each other.

The less people are accountable for their actions with people they will never see again, the more toxic it will become.

With the game being very competitive and higher learning curve it just makes it worse.

 

How toxic the community becomes totally depends on how blizzard tries to mitigate it.

League of legends is known for having a very toxic community, I know first hand because I play the game.


Everything is okay until one little mistake and then people start telling you to uninstall, kill your self and so on

 

The game has an extremely low learning curve, and the scoring and the way the games play out push you towards having a less toxic community.

 

far more, guns are totally accurate on the move, movement is fast, and TTK is low. not saying twitch FPS or fast gameplay is a bad thing, i was just really surprised by how fast the gameplay was. it reminded me of old school arena shooters like UT or quake in it's speed and TTK. the time i spent playing it i had fun, but didn't strike me as anything new or refreshing, which, based on their hero-focused trailers, i thought it might be. it's very polished though and plays really smooth since graphically it's comparable to TF2. if it doesn't die out after a few months like a lot of new shooters do as folks migrate back to CS and TF2 i'll probably pick it up

 

I agree.

You can only see your own score. You have no idea how the other players are performing until the game ends and when the game ends it only shows some specific highlights. Like who did the most damage, healing or whatever it is now that gets chosen. You have no idea who is in second place or who came last.

 

ignorance is bliss I guess.

 

You're right, Hollister.

 

If you don't know how good or bad anyone is doing you can't scream and bitch at them the entire game.

But that also means you will never see how good or bad you are compared to other people so improving at the game will seem meaningless until you are on the end reel high scores.

 

Exactly! Spot on analysis, Hollister.

 

Can't you see that we're busy agreeing here, Haki?

 

I played the open beta for a bit, and basically my thoughts are this, it's a fun game, lots of interesting characters ideas concepts and whatnot, it's very repetitive besides that, I'd play the hell out of this game, with a group of friends, but really, I can't see much reason to play otherwise (gee, you think? you should play a multiplayer game with friends?) seriously though, unless I see a bunch of people in the borg playing this game all the time, I'm not going to put my money here.

That said, I would watch the shit out of an Overwatch movie/cartoon series, I love the story I've seen thus far, I love the characters, blizzard has never really failed to deliver an interesting world/story so the thing I'm most upset about with this game is that they've developed this rich world with interesting characters and lots of fun stuff and... no pve content with which to explore this richly developed story, learn the history of the characters etc... so, yeah. Fuck you Blizzard. Make Overwatch the movie