No, it’s not Game of Thrones related.
Despite not intending to buy Overwatch at launch…or…probably…ever…I decided to jump in to the recent Open Beta weekend and check it out. At least I could get a feel for whether I might end up buying it or not.
Yeah. About that.
Turns out my misgivings about Overwatch were all justified. Now, I am emphatically NOT saying that Overwatch is a bad game. It is, as are all Blizzard products, highly polished, quite attractive artistically, and smoother than a politician contradicting themselves in the same sentence. But for me, that’s it. It’s all superficial. It has no depth.
The Good
The characters are great, there is a nice mix of playstyles, and I had great fun with Tracer and Mei. The different abilities between characters is amazing, and it really does bring the TF2-era team shooter genre forward in showing that it is possible to allow for both defensive and offensive synergies within groups. Granting abilities to allies, like infrared vision, speed boosts, and shields, makes an already hectic experience even more skill-intensive, and while it is simply chaotic to someone like me who is not experienced, I can see how high-echelon play will showcase mind-blowing awareness, timing and judgement.
I liked the MOBA-style abilities that go beyond the fire/alternate fire modes of many shooters. It makes things way more interesting. I’m not sure that Blizzard has nailed the balance issue yet, but I guess they will improve that as time goes on. The abilities go a long way to giving each hero a personality and distinct playstyle, rather than simply being “the healer” or “the tank”.
Overwatch looks amazing, in that trademark Blizzard cartoony aesthetic. The visuals are colourful and easily distinguishable, and the levels are nice and crowded for maximum cat-and-mouse gameplay. The level design also allows for ample creative use of many hero abilities, particularly the movement ones. Widowmaker’s grapple, Pharah’s jetpack, Tracer’s blink, Hanzo’s wall-climbing, there is plenty of opportunity to use these in interesting ways.
Finally, I loved the way that you can earn commendations for your play, through a voting process at the end. Taking a leaf from the FFXIV playbook, Blizzard may hopefully be having a positive effect on community behaviour with this system. I say “hopefully”, because, well, it IS a Blizzard community…combined with an FPS community…yeah, I know, that’s a lot of hope.
The Bad
There are objective problems I have with Overwatch, and subjective ones. Let’s start with the objective ones. First, the tutorial absolutely sucks. You are forced to go through it as Soldier 76, who has a specific suite of abilities. The tutorial does a decent job of going through those with you, but there are many ways it could be improved. The main problem with it, however, is the fact that you are not told about the fact that heroes may have different uses for each of the buttons introduced. For example, Soldier 76 has a left-click fire, right-click alternate fire, an area heal on E, ultimate on Q, and left-shift is sprint. But as far as I can tell, only Q and left-click are standard across heroes. Tracer’s right-click is her blink ability, which is also keyed to left-shift (i.e. she has no sprint). My friend played a hero with NO right-click ability (Reaper, I think?). This is all cool, but the tutorial does not do anything to make you aware that the controls do different things depending on which hero you are playing. It makes for a more frustrating learning experience in the beginning.
Second, the commendations thing at the end of games is not intuitive at all. I didn’t even realise what was happening when three or four names and stats would come up and eventually one of them would be selected. I thought it was the game awarding bonuses. It took me half a dozen games to figure out what was going on. There needs to be some explanation of the system – even just a popup reminder to cast your vote would be sufficient.
Thirdly, I am incredibly pissed off that you are automatically placed in the in-game voice chat channel, and not only is there no option to leave with a single button, there is no immediately obvious option to leave at all. Now, fortunately for me, I had no bad experiences through voice chat, but holy brainfarts, Blizzard! Are you unfamiliar with the multiplayer FPS community?! You NEED to be able to opt out of in-game voice chat, quickly and easily.
Subjectively, the problems I have with Overwatch are less due to the game itself and more about the genre. I hate hate HATE the fact that you can change heroes mid-game. It is enough to turn me off the genre by itself. I want your hero choice at the start to matter. I want people to be forced to cobble together synergies with their teammates based on the team composition, not just switch to the obviously-more-compatible heroes after one untimely death. This issue is the single most defining feature of my decision to avoid Overwatch. Blizzard simply can’t lure me in without scrapping this mechanic, or at least introducing a permanent mode that is hero-locked.
I am extremely irritated to end a match, go through commendations, and then be automatically queued up with the same people for the next match. I hate feeling rushed into the next game. I want time to relax after my last game, maybe look at my stats, open loot boxes, or just step away for a minute. Yes, I know that you can leave the queue at any time, but again, it is not immediately obvious where that option is, and I would much rather have to press buttons to enter a queue rather than leave one.
Finally, I did not feel any sense of depth from Overwatch. There is nothing that hooks me. No progression, no story or lore, no reason for me to log back in on a regular basis. One or two matches, and I am ready to log out again. It feels like I have experienced all that Overwatch has to offer already. Again, that is a genre problem, not Overwatch specifically. But it means I will not be throwing any money Blizzard’s way for this game.
I find myself wishing they went further towards an FPS-MOBA hybrid, like Battleborn has. Maybe Battleborn is where the future of the genre is at, not a slightly-more-advanced version of the old giants, COD, TF2, and CS:GO.
Star-Fired Beef 
Wed, 11 May 2016 00:28:24 +1100 at 12:28 AM
I’m not a FPS player, so I have zero interest in Overwatch. However, being thrown into an online voice chat channel without my permission is the fast track for me leaving a game. Especially in a competitive environment. No thank you! Who thought that was a good idea?
Thu, 12 May 2016 00:02:37 +1100 at 12:02 AM
I was in a group with my friend when we first went in, and he tested the channel – we were definitely in a voice chat that we were automatically put into. Was not happy.
Fri, 13 May 2016 22:46:16 +1100 at 10:46 PM
I spent two evenings on the open beta and never noticed the voice chat. So I didn’t see it as a problem.
Then some other random points:
– The tutorial might not be perfect, but I think Blizzard actually knows their audience better than you think.
I mean, I’ve read several posting were people complained that the tutorial was too easy, that the first AI matches were too easy and that they were “best in everything” of course in the AI match. What people usually did not even realize is, that these matches were against AI, but with other humans on your team, so if you were easily best in everything, you just learned something about the competence of your (human) teammates.
While i haven’t played FPS since quite a while, i have done so a lot a decade ago. I might have become slower, but i still know my tactics. In contrast, all the human teammates in “vs AI” clearly had no tactical understanding yet. This makes me conclude that a lot of the playerbase are not “FPS players looking for a new game” but “Blizzard players looking at this new game”, which need to be carefully guided to this new genre. Overloading them with a heap of information all at once won’t help them, but just scare them away, so while the tutorial might still be improved, I think that the “baby steps” approach actually is not a bad idea.
I very much appreciate that I was able to change heroes during a match. You don’t see the enemies team composition before the match starts, so you just build your team and hope for the best. As soon as you first encounter the other team, you know what they play and soon see how they cooperate. Being able to switch heroes then is essential to be able to adapt and apply counter-tactics.
A good enemy team then will of course again adapt to your changes, keeping the rooster in motion on both sides. Also note that this is no news, I am used to that since i played TFC, so almost 17 years ago. There it already was normal to switch class after death, based on the other teams composition and tactics.
Being locked into one hero is a horrible idea. There are several heroes in the lineup which are very good in some roles and situations, but of very little value against other compositions and tactics. Would you be unable to switch within the match, all you could do with such a hero would be to repeatedly run into your death till the match is over. I consider the fun-factor of this to be rather low. So in turn and pretty soon people would learn to use only a handful of “approved” classes with adequate versatility, while all specialists would be discarded from most peoples rooster.
Making a good portion of the hero selection too risky too use and thus effectively worthless would be a very bad idea. Hero switching in the match thus is a necessity.
Fri, 13 May 2016 22:51:40 +1100 at 10:51 PM
One addendum: the only real issue i have with Overwatch is the sales model. While it is fun to play and it’s polish is vastly superior to any similar game out there, most other games of this kind are F2P.
For the “hardcore” player, who plans to spend ages in the game, Overwatchs B2P is the better deal (so he doesn’t need to buy hundreds of hats like in TF2 *grin) but for the casual player who might just want to play a match or two once a week Overwatchs box price is hard to justify.
I wouldn’t be surprised of Overwatch would go F2P in a few months, leaving those who bought the box with a number of goodies which the F2P player would have to spend money for. I am even going so far and dare to say, i would not be surprised if Blizzard already has worked out most of the details for the F2P conversion already and just is waiting for six months after release before making the switch.
Sat, 14 May 2016 19:21:59 +1100 at 7:21 PM
Yeah I don’t buy it. Other genres are hero-locked, and work just fine. In fact, it is arguably less of an impact in something like Overwatch because the rounds only last 5-10 minutes, rather than the 30+ minutes of MOBAs. All they would need to do is have a hero draft interface like MOBAs so that you aren’t going in blind. I could accept being able to redraft when switching from offence to defence in the escort maps, but otherwise I am totally unconvinced that it is a horrible idea to hero-lock players.