vamcpu
1 review liked by vamcpu
Overwatch
2016
I figure with Overwatch as we know it coming to an end soon, it might be a good time to finally sit down and write out my thoughts on it. After all, this was a game I dedicated five years of my life to, with almost 5000 hours of playtime, so naturally, I'm going to have some things to say. That said, it's an incredibly difficult game to "review" in the present day as what it means to me now is very different from what it meant to me years ago. I don't know if I could even score it accurately at this point, but for the sake of consistency in my desire to score everything I've played, I'm giving it a 3 - somewhere halfway between the two extremes I felt for Overwatch.
Now, if I'm going to document thoughts on my time with Overwatch, it's probably best to do it by year, as my feelings changed a lot over time. Let's start from the very beginning.
2016
My first exposure to Overwatch came from a friend asking "So are we all buying Overwatch?" Despite all the prerelease hype it had, I was completely oblivious to it, as I'm not a PC gamer and thus have no history with Blizzard's games. But this one was coming to console, and it was just about to enter open beta right before release, so I thought why not give it a try? I chose Mei because I liked her design, played a few games, and quite frankly didn't get it. I can't say it stirred me to want to play more, but once the game launched and friends were playing it, the FOMO kicked in and I made the leap of faith to buy it.
Despite my inability to grasp the game during beta, suddenly now I was having lots of fun playing it. Grouping up with friends certainly helped, and I soon latched onto what made Overwatch so special: the sheer depth and skill required to learn each character. Though I would ultimately gravitate to playing the Tank role, I felt a strong desire to add one character after another to the list of ones I could play, giving myself what I thought was an added edge in being able to flex to whatever my team needed. This part of the game was what became so engrossing to me: learning a new hero was basically like picking up and playing a unique game in itself, so no matter how many hours I played, I always strove to better myself with as many of the cast as I could manage.
Overwatch became an almost nightly ritual with my friends during that first year. There weren't many days in 2016 where at least some of us didn't group up to play, and that feeling of being able to coordinate together and execute complicated plays to successfully win a map was such a thrilling feeling that I'm not sure if anything I've played before or since can come close to how that felt. It's really how the game was meant to be played, so as time went on and more and more of my friends dipped from playing Overwatch, my personal experience suffered as a result. You can't just achieve the same level of consistency with randoms, as anyone who's played this game will tell you.
A lot of people look back at that first year as the best one, but rarely for the right reasons. It wasn't because there were no hero limits the first couple of months, or because the game was somehow well-balanced (having six of the same heroes, while good for a laugh, quickly got old and tiresome, and there were plenty of busted heroes while Blizzard slowly reacted to how players would come to play the game over time). No, it was because that feeling of discovery of a new game like this was just unmatched, and we were all in the same boat. No one really knew how to play, even though plenty thought they did, so there wasn't a lot to get mad at. With any competitive game, eventually, you start to see the code in the Matrix, and how it needs to be properly played to optimize success, but no one needed to worry about that back then. We just gamed, and it was glorious.
2017
The second year of Overwatch is when I found my footing with the game and started to genuinely get good at it. I realized my calling in playing Tank, particularly D.Va, and as a result of dedicating myself to a specific role with a small pool of heroes (at least in ranked), I found myself quickly climbing. This year, however, was when the cracks started to show, as Blizzard gave a huge rework to the character of Mercy which drastically changed the game from Bronze rank all the way up to Top 500. Mercy was never particularly strong at high ranks before this, and that was by design. It was part of what made Overwatch so accessible to so many people - you had heroes like Mercy that anyone could pick up and play easily, but that came with a trade-off: they became less effective the higher you rose in rank. Getting to the top typically required mastering more skill-intensive characters, but many in the Overwatch community didn't want to learn someone new. They wanted to play their favorite, and only their favorite - especially the large community of Mercy players, who were never shy about letting their voices be heard.
And thus, Mercy was reworked and buffed to hell and back, and the Moth Meta came into existence. Mercy was so stupidly strong that for the first time in the game's history, your team composition ostensibly required having a specific hero, or you would just lose. Games devolved into shouting matches when you didn't queue in with a Mercy main, because no one else really enjoyed playing the hero, and so many games automatically became lost at the hero select screen. This was a miserable time in the game's history for me, and that meta lasted nine excruciatingly long months. What came next was maybe just as worse.
2018
Early 2018 saw the release of Brigitte, the most controversial hero in the game's entire existence. Between her introduction, the removal of the Defense class, and the reworkings of Torbjorn and Symmetra, Blizzard signaled a new direction for the game. Heroes would no longer exist for niche or circumstantial situations where they might be good, but instead, become more generalized and allow them to be used whenever that hero's main wanted to play them. On paper, this sounds good, but I do think it robbed the game of a lot of its initial vision. Being able to swap heroes on the fly to adjust to situations was such a key part of the formula, but too many one-tricks dictated otherwise. And the cherry on top was Brig, a combo healer/tank that could basically do everything and never die, and brought with her the GOATS meta of three tanks and three support. This didn't affect all ranks, but I was high enough that if you didn't run it and your opponent did, it was an instant loss.
Blizzard tried for over a year to patch this out of the game, and some heroes like Brigitte were getting nerfs almost every single patch, to little effect. I would say this was the turning point in my enjoyment of Overwatch, as it became readily apparent that Blizzard simply did not know how to properly balance their game. They were never willing to be drastic enough until it was too late, but the next-ending barrage of new, overpowered heroes that kept getting added to the game was what sealed its fate. In an attempt to make every new hero release exciting and wanting to get the playerbase on board with them, new heroes would typically be released in an OP state, coming with more and more abilities and passives when compared to the launch heroes. Overwatch was becoming a game succumbing to power creep, and truthfully it's never recovered.
2019
Finally, in 2019 there was some hope, at least what felt like it. Blizzard was finally putting role queue into the game, mandating a 2/2/2 team composition of two tanks, two DPS, and two supports. This is how the game usually was played, but the triple tank/support comp of GOATS really threw a wrench into the works, and being unable to truly patch it out, they simply restricted the number of heroes for each role. This was something I had long called for because even putting aside the issue of GOATS, it was always a massive frustration when you queued into a game where five of your teammates only play DPS, no one wants to switch or be selfless, and games would quickly become a chaotic mess that usually resulted in a loss. It sucked every time it happened, but now it was finally going away. Unless you were a DPS main now faced with long queue times (to which you never had my sympathy, learn a different role like the rest of us), the game should have been on its way to a better place.
Enter Sigma. Alongside the role queue update came a new hero, who had a shield that synergized extremely well with the character Orisa, and thus the double barrier meta exploded into popularity. Even when doing something right, Blizzard couldn't help themselves, and now the entire game's population (or what was left of it) found an endless barrage of games where you just shot shields forever. Somehow the game was less fun than ever, and it would take them almost another year to get the balance back under control. There was a brief period, maybe a month or so, in 2020 where I felt they had finally gotten the balance of Overwatch into a really good state, but it didn't last long, as once again, they couldn't help themselves, and went right back to buffing and nerfing random heroes. Why? Because at this point, with content drying up in the face of Overwatch 2's development, this was their only method of shaking the game up. What a farce it became, and not long after the fifth anniversary I hung up my Overwatch boots for good, and haven't played since.
It sucks. It really does. This game was an everyday part of my life for years, and it was the first competitive game I ever played where I truly felt the desire to improve and want to better myself. I was only ever a console scrub but I was proud of how far I made it in rank. Even putting all that aside, I fucking loved the universe and the heroes Blizzard created. I watched those animated shorts so many times. I thought this was going to be something I cared about for many years to come, and yet one day I walked away like it was nothing. I even gave the beta for Overwatch 2 a shot, just to be absolutely sure my love for this series was gone. I wasn't happy with some of the proposed changes, especially dropping the game to 5v5 (completely eliminating my role of off-tank), but I went in with an open mind and came out more certain than ever. This just isn't the game I fell in love with and I hardly even recognize it anymore.
If there's a story to be told about Overwatch, it's one of a developer who ultimately wasted one of the most fun experiences ever created in video games. They'll teach about Overwatch in the future as an example of how to completely mismanage a game and brand. And given what's come out about Blizzard in recent years, I can't say I'll feel sorry for them. Way to fuck up something so many people loved.
Now, if I'm going to document thoughts on my time with Overwatch, it's probably best to do it by year, as my feelings changed a lot over time. Let's start from the very beginning.
2016
My first exposure to Overwatch came from a friend asking "So are we all buying Overwatch?" Despite all the prerelease hype it had, I was completely oblivious to it, as I'm not a PC gamer and thus have no history with Blizzard's games. But this one was coming to console, and it was just about to enter open beta right before release, so I thought why not give it a try? I chose Mei because I liked her design, played a few games, and quite frankly didn't get it. I can't say it stirred me to want to play more, but once the game launched and friends were playing it, the FOMO kicked in and I made the leap of faith to buy it.
Despite my inability to grasp the game during beta, suddenly now I was having lots of fun playing it. Grouping up with friends certainly helped, and I soon latched onto what made Overwatch so special: the sheer depth and skill required to learn each character. Though I would ultimately gravitate to playing the Tank role, I felt a strong desire to add one character after another to the list of ones I could play, giving myself what I thought was an added edge in being able to flex to whatever my team needed. This part of the game was what became so engrossing to me: learning a new hero was basically like picking up and playing a unique game in itself, so no matter how many hours I played, I always strove to better myself with as many of the cast as I could manage.
Overwatch became an almost nightly ritual with my friends during that first year. There weren't many days in 2016 where at least some of us didn't group up to play, and that feeling of being able to coordinate together and execute complicated plays to successfully win a map was such a thrilling feeling that I'm not sure if anything I've played before or since can come close to how that felt. It's really how the game was meant to be played, so as time went on and more and more of my friends dipped from playing Overwatch, my personal experience suffered as a result. You can't just achieve the same level of consistency with randoms, as anyone who's played this game will tell you.
A lot of people look back at that first year as the best one, but rarely for the right reasons. It wasn't because there were no hero limits the first couple of months, or because the game was somehow well-balanced (having six of the same heroes, while good for a laugh, quickly got old and tiresome, and there were plenty of busted heroes while Blizzard slowly reacted to how players would come to play the game over time). No, it was because that feeling of discovery of a new game like this was just unmatched, and we were all in the same boat. No one really knew how to play, even though plenty thought they did, so there wasn't a lot to get mad at. With any competitive game, eventually, you start to see the code in the Matrix, and how it needs to be properly played to optimize success, but no one needed to worry about that back then. We just gamed, and it was glorious.
2017
The second year of Overwatch is when I found my footing with the game and started to genuinely get good at it. I realized my calling in playing Tank, particularly D.Va, and as a result of dedicating myself to a specific role with a small pool of heroes (at least in ranked), I found myself quickly climbing. This year, however, was when the cracks started to show, as Blizzard gave a huge rework to the character of Mercy which drastically changed the game from Bronze rank all the way up to Top 500. Mercy was never particularly strong at high ranks before this, and that was by design. It was part of what made Overwatch so accessible to so many people - you had heroes like Mercy that anyone could pick up and play easily, but that came with a trade-off: they became less effective the higher you rose in rank. Getting to the top typically required mastering more skill-intensive characters, but many in the Overwatch community didn't want to learn someone new. They wanted to play their favorite, and only their favorite - especially the large community of Mercy players, who were never shy about letting their voices be heard.
And thus, Mercy was reworked and buffed to hell and back, and the Moth Meta came into existence. Mercy was so stupidly strong that for the first time in the game's history, your team composition ostensibly required having a specific hero, or you would just lose. Games devolved into shouting matches when you didn't queue in with a Mercy main, because no one else really enjoyed playing the hero, and so many games automatically became lost at the hero select screen. This was a miserable time in the game's history for me, and that meta lasted nine excruciatingly long months. What came next was maybe just as worse.
2018
Early 2018 saw the release of Brigitte, the most controversial hero in the game's entire existence. Between her introduction, the removal of the Defense class, and the reworkings of Torbjorn and Symmetra, Blizzard signaled a new direction for the game. Heroes would no longer exist for niche or circumstantial situations where they might be good, but instead, become more generalized and allow them to be used whenever that hero's main wanted to play them. On paper, this sounds good, but I do think it robbed the game of a lot of its initial vision. Being able to swap heroes on the fly to adjust to situations was such a key part of the formula, but too many one-tricks dictated otherwise. And the cherry on top was Brig, a combo healer/tank that could basically do everything and never die, and brought with her the GOATS meta of three tanks and three support. This didn't affect all ranks, but I was high enough that if you didn't run it and your opponent did, it was an instant loss.
Blizzard tried for over a year to patch this out of the game, and some heroes like Brigitte were getting nerfs almost every single patch, to little effect. I would say this was the turning point in my enjoyment of Overwatch, as it became readily apparent that Blizzard simply did not know how to properly balance their game. They were never willing to be drastic enough until it was too late, but the next-ending barrage of new, overpowered heroes that kept getting added to the game was what sealed its fate. In an attempt to make every new hero release exciting and wanting to get the playerbase on board with them, new heroes would typically be released in an OP state, coming with more and more abilities and passives when compared to the launch heroes. Overwatch was becoming a game succumbing to power creep, and truthfully it's never recovered.
2019
Finally, in 2019 there was some hope, at least what felt like it. Blizzard was finally putting role queue into the game, mandating a 2/2/2 team composition of two tanks, two DPS, and two supports. This is how the game usually was played, but the triple tank/support comp of GOATS really threw a wrench into the works, and being unable to truly patch it out, they simply restricted the number of heroes for each role. This was something I had long called for because even putting aside the issue of GOATS, it was always a massive frustration when you queued into a game where five of your teammates only play DPS, no one wants to switch or be selfless, and games would quickly become a chaotic mess that usually resulted in a loss. It sucked every time it happened, but now it was finally going away. Unless you were a DPS main now faced with long queue times (to which you never had my sympathy, learn a different role like the rest of us), the game should have been on its way to a better place.
Enter Sigma. Alongside the role queue update came a new hero, who had a shield that synergized extremely well with the character Orisa, and thus the double barrier meta exploded into popularity. Even when doing something right, Blizzard couldn't help themselves, and now the entire game's population (or what was left of it) found an endless barrage of games where you just shot shields forever. Somehow the game was less fun than ever, and it would take them almost another year to get the balance back under control. There was a brief period, maybe a month or so, in 2020 where I felt they had finally gotten the balance of Overwatch into a really good state, but it didn't last long, as once again, they couldn't help themselves, and went right back to buffing and nerfing random heroes. Why? Because at this point, with content drying up in the face of Overwatch 2's development, this was their only method of shaking the game up. What a farce it became, and not long after the fifth anniversary I hung up my Overwatch boots for good, and haven't played since.
It sucks. It really does. This game was an everyday part of my life for years, and it was the first competitive game I ever played where I truly felt the desire to improve and want to better myself. I was only ever a console scrub but I was proud of how far I made it in rank. Even putting all that aside, I fucking loved the universe and the heroes Blizzard created. I watched those animated shorts so many times. I thought this was going to be something I cared about for many years to come, and yet one day I walked away like it was nothing. I even gave the beta for Overwatch 2 a shot, just to be absolutely sure my love for this series was gone. I wasn't happy with some of the proposed changes, especially dropping the game to 5v5 (completely eliminating my role of off-tank), but I went in with an open mind and came out more certain than ever. This just isn't the game I fell in love with and I hardly even recognize it anymore.
If there's a story to be told about Overwatch, it's one of a developer who ultimately wasted one of the most fun experiences ever created in video games. They'll teach about Overwatch in the future as an example of how to completely mismanage a game and brand. And given what's come out about Blizzard in recent years, I can't say I'll feel sorry for them. Way to fuck up something so many people loved.