Overwatch

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JaySevenZero
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Overwatch

Post by JaySevenZero »

Here's where you can contribute your thoughts and opinions for Overwatch for potential inclusion in the forthcoming podcast.

A friendly reminder that where the feedback for the podcast is concerned, we love it - but keeping it brief is appreciated. We do want to include a breadth of opinions where appropriate, but no-one wants a discussion podcast that’s mostly reading out essays. Better to save yourself time and cut to the chase if you can.
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KarlDaFrog
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Re: 469 - Overwatch

Post by KarlDaFrog »

Overwatch is my junk food gaming. It's a game I have a fondness for but am quite embarrassed to be playing. I am very aware that the "dink" of a headshot or the "shink" of knocking opponents off the map is just a well executed, purposefully tailored injection of dopamine. 

I stopped playing Overwatch around the time of Blizzard's terrible handling of Hearthstone player Blitzchung's " Free Hong Kong, revolution of our times" statement. It is far more important to be able to criticize oppressive governments than to play a silly game. Activision-Blizzard's actions against freedom for a continued presence in the valuable Chinese market is a glaring reminder that capitalism and fascist communism go hand in hand. With a triumphant "Liberate Hong Kong" posted in general chat, I left the game...

...Until the pandemic happened. Having tried and failed to get into Fortnite and Apex Legends as replacement online social shooters, I crept back into the Overwatch queues. I missed the social interaction, and having already conquered the steep learning curve (kind of, I'm low gold/high silver) it was just the kind of game I needed to play at the time.

Nowadays, I absentmindedly jump into Quickplay and roll around as Hammond ruining support player's days.
Overwatch has a pretty terrible reputation for its community. But I would like to shout out the streamer Evil Toaster for having a great community. With him and the Twitch chat as kind of a model citizen, I now tend to handle the slurs and abusive chat behaviors with a calm "Would you like to rephrase that?" and gently explaining that women, gay people, and people of color are all people who deserve to have the same play space and by using certain words or actions you are denying people a right to be themselves. Surprisingly, it's about  50/50 whether I get an apology or not. I have no doubt that my deep, traditionally masculine sounding "dad-like" voice influences that, but it's something to note. If you have the ability to speak up for people, you should.... Ahem... Blizzard.

Overwatch isn't a game I'd recommend anyone get into now, not just because Overwatch 2 is likely to release soon (and I desperately hope most of their efforts have been on creating better infrastructure to address the social issues that plague this highly social game), but because the community just isn't conducive to new players. It's genuinely difficult to learn new characters without getting yelled at by your teammates, even in Quickplay where theoretically it should all just be for fun. It's a hard game where your mistakes affect other players greatly, and their mistakes affect yours. 

But, if you can find a group of like minded individuals to group up with and play your own organized games with, it can be a wonderfully chaotic social e-sport.
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raisinbman
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Re: 469 - Overwatch

Post by raisinbman »

Not sure I'll have much additional feedback whenever they get around to this podcast, as I haven't touched it(and touching blizzard games seems much and much less likely nowadays), but Karl has summed it up well in addition to my own thoughts which I got around to in the other thread: https://caneandrinse.com/forum/viewtopi ... 431#p88431 .

Actually, even in that other thread, what I'd wanted to say had already been said by time I got there. A bit sad to hear about the community, though, blizzard had prided themselves on their reporting system, and I never encountered anything over the top. Nothing akin to my teenage DOTA years, that's for sure. But much like the weird absence of anything substantial regarding Overwatch II, maybe the degradation of the OW community is connected.

There's also big news in that blizzard's 'team 1' has been dissolved, combined with Vicarious Visions being folded into Blizzard - there's shakeups afoot...
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Gadget8Bit
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Re: 469 - Overwatch

Post by Gadget8Bit »

Overwatch is one of those games that I have fond and foul memories of.

When it first dropped in 2016 I was new to PC gaming and it was my first big PC game. I adored it. I was neck deep in the community, making videos of it for my tiny little YouTube channel, getting fully immersed into this new Blizzard universe.

Mechanically the game has always been polished to a high sheen. Every hero was visibly unique enough to stand out in a fire fight, every weapon was pretty balanced (except OG Hanzo. Everybody hates a Hanzo main) and the gunplay was joyful.

But my attention for the game eventually began to wane. I played it solidly for a couple of years but around the time Ashe was released it started to lose its sheen. The characters began to lose their inventiveness and utility. The constant rebalancing made it hard to be unique, forcing people to play to the meta if they wanted to be victorious. I’ve lost count of the amount of times where someone (usually a Genji) shouted at me for not conforming to a 2-2-2 when I wanted to try a unique team comp.

Eventually the toxicity in the community pushed me away. The fun gameplay stopped making up for the wantonly abusive players raging in quick play because I picked a Moira when they demanded a Mercy.

It’s a shame, because it’s an excellent shooter and can be superb dumb fun when you’re in a good team.
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RinseWashRepeat
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Re: 469 - Overwatch

Post by RinseWashRepeat »

I cannot imagine playing this game with random players. The odd couple of times that I have, this is a miserable game full of people that think they're still playing CoD and it's nothing more than frustrating.

However, with a group of mates? It's pretty much the best multiplayer game I've played. Each character is so unique to play as and there's so much depth to be found with different combinations of characters.

Whilst Blizzard has struggled with balancing thanks to the ever bloating number of characters, I'd say they walk the fine line of 'keeping things fair' fairly well. You'll always get some teething problems with each new patch, and the meta is always going to throw up some weird combinations.

That's really all I've got to say. The bottom line is - you must have a group of buddies to play this with or you'll have nothing short of a miserable time!
HaloFandango
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Re: 469 - Overwatch

Post by HaloFandango »

This is a really fun game. It has such a diverse set of characters and the matches are always quick and frantic. A personal favourite character of mine is Sigma, since his character theme of gravity is very appealing and his ultimate 'Gravitic Flux' is endlessly satisfying (placing people helplessly in the air is so much fun). I'm certainly looking forward to what they cook-up in Overwatch 2!

Obviously the culture and news coming out of Activision-Blizzard hasn't been necessarily positive as of late, but I do hope they can make some changes internally and turn the company around.
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Eterno
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Re: 469 - Overwatch

Post by Eterno »

I always approached Overwatch as an arcade game, not a competitive one, and it’s probably why I have been able to enjoy it for so many hours through the years. What I’m always amazed by is the amount of variety each match brings. When you don’t play with a team or rank matches, you hardly ever play the same match and it’s what keeps me coming back for each regular event or my weekly 9 victories for 3 loot boxes. The adrenaline and excitement this game brings me is hardly matched by any other, and I’ll go from anger and frustration from one game to pure joy and pride, jumping up and down at the victory screen screaming YES! when the match was tight and we somehow made it. When I’m bored and I want to “feel” something, I just boot Overwatch and I know I’ll be going through a full range of emotions.

As a RPG player, I greatly enjoy the hero class and skills aspect of the game. Each hero personality and backstory is well crafted and plays differently not only from one another but also within the team. While team composition can be chaotic, adapting to your fellow players and the opposite team is fully part of the game and is one of the most enjoyable aspect to me. Each new hero is a great reason to go back to the game and while I would have liked to see more of them, the quality of each one has been worth the wait. Unfortunately Blizzard seems absolutely unable to balance these heroes and the buff/nerf cycle can be truly upsetting when you main a specific hero.

I’ve spent hundred of hours on this game and I know I will still weekly get back to it for the coming years. There’s simply nothing truly like it right now.
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The_reviewist
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Re: Our next podcast recording (15.5.21): 469 - Overwatch

Post by The_reviewist »

Overwatch is, IMHO, a game where the only way to get a truly great experience, is to have a solid and dependable team of allies.

I was lucky enough to get a free copy of Overwatch for participating in a pre-release event for a website. Immortalising my terrible performance at it for all time on a youtube video I have no wish to revisit. But if not for this, I likely would never have played what was briefly, a brilliant shared experience for me and a few of my friends.

I played almost nightly for the first few weeks of release, and regularly up until around the time Sombra was released. By which time, it had lost some of its appeal. Don't mistake me, the occasionally changing roster of characters, and new maps that now and then dropped did spike my enjoyment and engagement a little, but nothing quite could get over the fundamentally broken issue of the community. It's not toxic, but I noticed that if I wanted a quick game, I'd find the matches littered with people "mucking about". Mei's screwing over their own teams with ice walls, and people charging straight in, instead of using anything even resembling tactics.

The counter-side being that if you didn't have a regular squad to play, lumping in with others could be hit or miss, and more often than not, I'd find myself and a pal teaming up with parties of strangers who would dictate strategy and make sweeping decisions on who everyone should play as. Ultimately, that's a problem of all "looking for group" experiences, but in the end it's what killed Overwatch for me.
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Rhaegyr
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Re: Our next podcast recording (15.5.21): 469 - Overwatch

Post by Rhaegyr »

I'm quite a casual player - me and a group of friends loved it for the first year or so but we just couldn't keep up with all the extra characters and new match-ups as time went on.
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raisinbman
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Re: Our next podcast recording (15.5.21): 469 - Overwatch

Post by raisinbman »

Probably worth pointing out Jeff Kaplan has left blizzard and blizzard playerbase is down 30%. https://www.gameinformer.com/2021/04/20 ... evelopment
https://win.gg/news/8051/why-did-blizza ... stion-mark

Seems very relevant to this show
Marlew
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Re: Our next podcast recording (15.5.21): 469 - Overwatch

Post by Marlew »

I don't really play FPS besides Battlefield but as a polished, flashy burst of fun, I quite enjoyed Overwatch. The sound effects and visual indicators make every kill feel very satisfying, and I totally see how people become hooked on its feedback loops. Unfortunately, it's a game where tactics and teamwork are absolutely paramount and I don't find the rewards or the community appealing enough to invest the time. While I'm not at all bothered by the psychosexual projection of my furious teammates - and nor is my whore mother - I don't want to spend one second of my downtime with angry little boys.
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raisinbman
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Re: Overwatch

Post by raisinbman »

Excellent podcast(well, they all are, but this is actually a game I really caned and rinsed). I only wish there was more on the newer chars since I stopped playing, and was interesting hearing how one of the members thought Brigette was a truimph when the community sort of saw her as a black mark and downward point for the game.
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