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/Overwatch is a top 10 subreddit
holdenhamlet
Member EpicPosts: 3,772
in Overwatch
Seems like the game is only getting more popular. New gifs of funny/cool moments get 10k+ upvotes in 6 hours. The front page of reddit includes Overwatch posts. /Overwatch is currently on the hotbar of reddit, in between /TodayILearned and /ShowerThoughts.
btw, just checked the Paladins subreddit, and the top post has 35 upvotes...
btw, just checked the Paladins subreddit, and the top post has 35 upvotes...
Comments
Yeah sucks all these people are having fun with a new great multiplayer game that's fairly monetized. Sad days.
There's just this indefinable quality for me that keeps dragging me back. When I'm playing a single player game and I get a quest that has me walk from one side of the map to the other to click on a glowy object and then walk back, I suddenly think to myself, "Self, if I was playing Overwatch right now, then every single movement I made would actually mean something."
Actually, I say "indefinable", but I think that what it really is is the fact that both teamwork and individual contributions matter in Overwatch. A lot of characters abilities and ultimates combo off of each other, so a well synchronized team can pull off really fun team plays. Additionally, individual characters have roles, so when you keep the enemy Pharah running for her life on McCree, or use Sombra/Tracer to harass the enemy healers so much that they can't heal, you're creating opportunities for your team by using your individual skill.
This is something that has been missing from MMO's for a long time. There's a lot of individual accomplishment in the modern MMO, but not so much teamwork and group oriented focus. Raiding in, say SWTOR, is a pathetic joke compared to finally beating Abyss of Kun Whu or Kang Pagoda in Age of Conan. The AoC six-person dungeons require both individual and group skill to pull off successfully, while a SWTOR raid requires almost entirely individual skill and can be done on autopilot.
EDIT: To actually explain...
The unfortunate part is that it took a lot of players so long to even figure out the value in the hero shooter genre, and that it took a game that simplified all the core game functions (movement, map layout, hitboxes) to focus on ability meta along with being released by as big of a name as possible for it to garner that attention.
It's not like power synergy or variance between individual and team play wasn't of importance in the grandfather of hero shooters, TF2. What Hourglass said about Overwatch for example is all there for one to experience in that game as well, and has been built on for years now.
It's unfortunate to me because what it took to get people to pay more attention to the genre, was for it to swing on the more casual side of things again. I'm not knocking the high-end meta of the power usage in Overwatch, but when hitboxes are twice the size of a player's head and servers are intentionally biased for the shooters, the game is designed for a much more easy core play while all the technical skill is shunted into thinking out how individual character powers can be used to shift the game. It's actually a perfectly good approach and because of the simpler base allows them to play with the meta more, and that allows Overwatch to remain a very strategic game.
But again, it simply bothers me that it took one of the biggest names in gaming making a game that knocks the entry skill down and relies on meta so heavily to finally be the thing people latch onto as "the hero shooter".
Besides which, "fairly monetized" is kind of a nonsensical thing to bring up considering the standard for the genre was relatively cheap buy to play in the first place. Again with TF2 being the example of it originally being a B2P title with regular free updates, and then converted over to F2P with all playable content and equipment that affects play earnable though free play.
Basically it's unfortunate it took what it did to get attention to the genre, and unfortunate that the attention is so wound around one game when this style of play has existed for at least a decade now, but it's not unexpected that such is the case given the nature of the average gamer.
It's fine that you are yet another person that likes to jump the gun with assumptions and passive taunts, though perhaps next time you can give pause and simply ask in a more impartial context.
Interesting. So lets see if we can find any other baseless comments in this thread. Oh yes:
Well hello there irony, we meet again. You provided no foundation or facts, you simply spouted that the popularity of Overwatch was unfortunate and then squealed away from the scene after popping off derisive, drive-by comments.
Please stop acting like a child and then people won't "chide" your baseless accusations to begin with.
Whereas you, on the other hand, made assumptions that remain baseless. Childish would be to insult something because it's made you unhappy, or as you have done by attacking an individual because you feel slighted. Saying something is unfortunate because it highlights issues with an unawareness of games and genres without it being delivered by a major developer as the next big thing (in spite of the actual age of the genre in question) is rather quite mundane.
If you'd read my post like I had requested then you should have understood my problem is not with the game itself and that I was not bashing the game, but stating disappointment with the mindset the general consumer base has adopted (which this game happens to highlight).
Also, instead of getting into a semantic pissing match attacking other posters while failing to even recognize the point of the dialogue made in the first place just because you hope to save face, please try to keep on the actual topic of the thread.
If you really feel like trying to make a useless argument out of this, please PM me instead.
Obviously tf2 is not all that or it would've gotten the attention it apparently so richly deserved. It was the only game in town for 10 freaking years.
If these millions playing Overwatch wanted to play it, they would've played it.
First off there's simply the fact that TF2 is a 10 year old game. A lot of people out there are not inclined to give such a game a try based solely on that fact.
And then you also have the community concerns, and questions of how accessible such a game is for new players as compared to the people that have played it regularly over the last decade.
On top of that you then have the case that the gamer market has grown dramatically over the last decade, so the potential userbase has grown considerably in that interim. People entirely unfamiliar with the title and it's playstyle increases as a result, and none of them really even stumble into the genre until current-gen titles are produced within the same vein.
When you have a glut of old games to look at, it's easy to miss some rather good ones. It's not unreasonable by any measure to assume that there's a lot of players that simply never gave games like TF2 the college try before Overwatch came out, and now that they have that game, there's no interest in looking elsewhere even if there are other really good games in the same genre.
It being that old of a game creates many reasons why players now are not that inclined to play it in spite of any possible quality it possesses. It's poor logic to pretend otherwise.
It wasn't always old.
Finding a game is as easy as eating a cake. I don't have to worry if I didn't pick a "PRO ONLY" server or its "NOOB ONLY" server. My MMR would likely match me with people at my level. Granted it doesn't always work like that but when it does it's amazing.
The eSports scene is huge right now for Overwatch (something not even LoL managed to achieve). You actually have NBA teams/superstars buying off eSports teams in preparation for Overwatch eLeague, which is amazing if you are into that kind of stuff, with actual work contracts. (more info about OW league https://overwatchleague.com/en-us/ )
On another note, sometimes I miss joining into public servers. The issue with matchmaker is that I have a good MMR and I play against other good people and sometimes I just want to chill and shoot at braindead people without being punished every time I'm out of position, but I suppose i grow up over time and pay less attention to it. It's nice not having to tryhard all the damn time.
It's a Blizzard game, not exactly a small Indie developer.
The game is solid and the amount of money they throw in advertising make this game hard to fail.
The options thing I'm a little curious about that statement of, since TF2 has had a lot of updates as a older title and consequently has quite a variety of maps (including user made maps), game modes, etc including cooperative and practice modes.
One thing Blizzard definitely got a good handle on over others was the e-sport thing you mentioned though. Blizzard buying out the MLG business was a big move on their part to dominate the e-sport "scene". Being the company that owns one of the largest media franchises for e-sports puts them in a great position to center-stage their own products. So that's not really all that surprising.
Says a lot about the consumer base.
Case-in-point: Diablo 3 is nowhere near this popular, never was, never will be. Starcraft was popular but it has its niche and it's not going to grow past that.
Overwatch is a game made for the people, from people who love shooters. The attention to detail is amazing. I can probably write an essay about it but Sombra ARG should speak for itself.
Accessibility is certainly a big point for Blizzard titles as well. Simpler core gameplay that lets people adopt it quickly (hence things like the server shooter bias and considerably enlarged hitboxes) while shunting deeper gameplay off into the special abilities and building a meta-game around how players can use them. It allows for both a casual friendly experience and an easily adopted title for a broad user base while allowing the more competitively inclined have something to bite into.
It's a very engineered game for this purpose though. Diablo 3 suffered many design problems and mistakes, and even Heroes of the Storm did not get positioned well for taking advantage of major media or have gameplay that catered well to streaming (honestly most MOBA titles really aren't that outstanding to stream). Overwatch on the other hand had a very pixar-esque CG movie approach to it's style to begin with, which has let Blizzard tie the up-close action of the game itself cleanly to the advertisements and secondary media around comics, clips, etc.
In other words. Overwatch meets it's success not by virtue of specifically being a good game, but by being a whole user experience that delves beyond the game. It rests within a very well engineered community that's been built through the use of quite a lot of media sources Activision Blizzard has paid quite a lot to control.
EDIT: Which would again be why I called this unfortunate earlier, because I feel like it shouldn't have taken such a huge company so much money, marketing, control of e-sports media, etc to make the hero shooter genre gain visibility. It's nice that Blizzard has drawn attention by gamers and developers back into a concept that still has a lot of room to explore.
However, it's sad too because it seems the same pattern other game genres have fallen subject to has just been created all the more encompassing. With one title so thoroughly dominating a genre, the ability for other companies to experiment, release competitive titles, and make notable evolutions is going to be stunted. Same kind of cycle people have seen in MMOs, classic shooters, MOBAS, etc is now here, and we are unlikely to see much in the way of other successes in this genre so long as OW remains such a runaway, because no publisher will pay for anything but a copycat to be produced until they realize that won't get them the income they want (and then they'll simply stop trying). Meanwhile indies will remain, well, indie.
Hence what I said in my first post; unfortunate, but not unexpected.
Yeah so why didn't it go huge a decade ago. It was the only hero shooter. I know there's no room for the possibility that TF2 is not the most amazing game ever made, but consider it anyway.
As for your other points, the game is accessible, but some of your assumptions are false. There are big hit boxes for some projectile characters, but most are pretty accurate. Certainly nothing like 2x...
The game is accessible for low skilled people, which is something you'd want in a game if you want it to be huge... But there is also tons of room at the skill cap, both for aim and teamplay mechanics ala MOBAs.
You're basic assumption that the game is a shitty casual version of tf2 is false.
Bottom line: you shouldn't be sad because Overwatch is not TF3. You should be happy hero shooters are going big if you enjoy playing them. If anything, Overwatch makes TF3 or something like it very much a real possibility.
You're apparently just pulling crap out your ass because nowhere did I ever make anything remotely close to a claim nor assumption of Overwatch being "a shitty casual version of TF2".
Please, try and elucidate how me saying "It allows for both a casual friendly experience and an easily adopted title for a broad user base while allowing the more competitively inclined have something to bite into." is calling the game a shitty casual version of anything.
Hell, you even got your dialogue around TF2 being the only hero shooter wrong. It's perhaps the progenitor, but it is far from the only shooter that established itself around arena play utilizing characters with unique abilities. Monday Night Combat for example is another title that popped up in the interim that riffed heavily on the MOBA genre while picking up plenty of queues from TF2 to make it's own take on it all. Then there's been random attempts like Dirty Bomb which were launched under the radar for the most part by small devs.
It honestly would appear you aren't actually reading anything I've written (and you don't know much about the genre itself) and are ad-libbing crap in place of anything true. Try going back and actually reading what I wrote before responding again, because as it presently stands none of what you just said actually applies to anything I've written.
I mean honestly, how can you be that far off?