Overwatch has entered a perpetual limbo. From now on, Overwatch will always just be the same competitive team-based shooter with a couple of new heroes and new battle passes. And so, after 8 years of playing, I think I am done.
QOL
The revamped competitive changes fix the obnoxious system the game shipped with, but while it's more transparent about your progress, it in no way adds an incentive to keep grinding.
The actual incentive was supposed to be the new reward system, which would allow you to earn points you could spend on JADE weapons. The issue is that the weapons look like a downgrade from the gold weapons we were able to earn for the last 8 years.
Blizzard removed the ability to buy golden weapons, meaning you either have to settle for a net downgrade of a reward or wait a year before you will be able to earn golden weapons again.
Balance
The new hitbox changes make the game feel more responsive and also counteract enemy ADAD spamming.
On the other hand, the increased health, which was supposed to diminish healer power, just increased time to kill and didn’t address any of the balance issues.
Ever since the release of Overwatch 2, the game has been facing an issue where the healers have become too powerful, with damage that rivals many of the DPS characters while having insanely high sustainability and also high healing output. And while this has diminished the fun aspect for me as a DPS main, the tanks have had it the worst.
There are so many different debuffs that prevent you from actually engaging the enemy team, and with this season's new DPS debuff that will make it so you heal less, you can either play the OP character of the season (Right now it's Mauga), or get absolutely destroyed.
I think we are back in late Overwatch 1, where two teams stare at each other on a choke for 3 minutes until someone screws up, dies, and only then does the game move.
Cowboy bepop
The highlight of this season is the Cowboy Bebop collab. I am a big fan of the series, and after the announcement done through a great animated intro short, I was really excited. But that excitement felt short-lived after I logged in and saw that the actual event is just 4 skins that look genuinely terrible.
I remember when the One Punch Man collab happened and a bunch of people were praising the aesthetic choice to make the characters wear the outfits as if they were wearing a cosplay.
I guess Blizzard took that to heart and produced genuinely cheap-looking skins. If you remove all of the branding, these wouldn't even pass as 'Legendary'.
Genually really dissapointed as they cant even do the monizetion right.
Last thoughts
The game is stuck in a perpetual limbo. I trust the developers that they will continually update the game, add new good balance changes, and fun characters. At this point, that doesn't really matter though.
I have been playing this game since 2016. I have seen the game in its worst state, abandoned (2018ish-2022), and even then I have always came back.
Not only because I loved the game and enjoyed playing it, meeting so many awesome people and hitting new ranks in competitive, but also because there was always a promise of something greater. There was so much potential.
It's not only about the cancellation of PVP, but rather the cancellation of the game Overwatch could have been. I don't want to spend another thousands of hours in a game which will always just be the same old Overwatch with a new battle pass and expensive new skins. So I am finally out. The only regret I have is as a Master player, I will never reach GM.
QOL
The revamped competitive changes fix the obnoxious system the game shipped with, but while it's more transparent about your progress, it in no way adds an incentive to keep grinding.
The actual incentive was supposed to be the new reward system, which would allow you to earn points you could spend on JADE weapons. The issue is that the weapons look like a downgrade from the gold weapons we were able to earn for the last 8 years.
Blizzard removed the ability to buy golden weapons, meaning you either have to settle for a net downgrade of a reward or wait a year before you will be able to earn golden weapons again.
Balance
The new hitbox changes make the game feel more responsive and also counteract enemy ADAD spamming.
On the other hand, the increased health, which was supposed to diminish healer power, just increased time to kill and didn’t address any of the balance issues.
Ever since the release of Overwatch 2, the game has been facing an issue where the healers have become too powerful, with damage that rivals many of the DPS characters while having insanely high sustainability and also high healing output. And while this has diminished the fun aspect for me as a DPS main, the tanks have had it the worst.
There are so many different debuffs that prevent you from actually engaging the enemy team, and with this season's new DPS debuff that will make it so you heal less, you can either play the OP character of the season (Right now it's Mauga), or get absolutely destroyed.
I think we are back in late Overwatch 1, where two teams stare at each other on a choke for 3 minutes until someone screws up, dies, and only then does the game move.
Cowboy bepop
The highlight of this season is the Cowboy Bebop collab. I am a big fan of the series, and after the announcement done through a great animated intro short, I was really excited. But that excitement felt short-lived after I logged in and saw that the actual event is just 4 skins that look genuinely terrible.
I remember when the One Punch Man collab happened and a bunch of people were praising the aesthetic choice to make the characters wear the outfits as if they were wearing a cosplay.
I guess Blizzard took that to heart and produced genuinely cheap-looking skins. If you remove all of the branding, these wouldn't even pass as 'Legendary'.
Genually really dissapointed as they cant even do the monizetion right.
Last thoughts
The game is stuck in a perpetual limbo. I trust the developers that they will continually update the game, add new good balance changes, and fun characters. At this point, that doesn't really matter though.
I have been playing this game since 2016. I have seen the game in its worst state, abandoned (2018ish-2022), and even then I have always came back.
Not only because I loved the game and enjoyed playing it, meeting so many awesome people and hitting new ranks in competitive, but also because there was always a promise of something greater. There was so much potential.
It's not only about the cancellation of PVP, but rather the cancellation of the game Overwatch could have been. I don't want to spend another thousands of hours in a game which will always just be the same old Overwatch with a new battle pass and expensive new skins. So I am finally out. The only regret I have is as a Master player, I will never reach GM.