This has kind of always been my problem with shooters in general, not meta per se but the way I want to play a given game is almost always the opposite of what is considered ideal.
Long video but the background is just random gameplay so you can treat it like a podcast.
I generally agree with most of the stuff in the video, but Iâm not high enough ranking to experience all of what heâs talking about. Some of it I think is just an unavoidable consequence of increasing the number of heroes but some of it seems to be by design.
Most of the newer heroes I find frustrating to play against now that I think about it. Ana and Orisa are fine but as someone that plays supports a lot CC / spamy things and flankers that kill me before my team notices are no fun.
Recently I almost exclusively want to play CTF. I think because the unfun games tend to only last a couple minutes and when good games get going the same players will match several games in a row.
What the fuck is CC? The Internet says it means âcrowd controlâ. Isnât that just AoE? Why is this new word needed? Also, why is AoE even effective in a 5v5 game? Doesnât seem smart to bunch all your team together in one spot.
Bunching up is pretty necessary in Overwatch. DPS can hide/shoot behind tank shields, support abilities mostly have short ranges, etc⌠Some characters are designed to go somewhat solo (snipers, some characters can fly) but they need to either have a pocket healer or use their abilities to go back to the main group for healing.
Crowd control and AoE are not the same. AoE just refers to how many people it impacts. CC is specifically for skills that hamper the other teamâs mobility or actions, things like stuns, slows, roots, forcing them to move away or towards you, etc.
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Now Iâm happy I never played this game.
Whatâs wrong with stuns and hampering enemy movement?
in almost any game (especially where Hyperawareness and Adrenaline is a factor), when youâre hit with an ability that removes your ability to interface with the game.
Nobody likes those death scenes when they play out, making them effectively longer is putting salt in the wound.
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With the exception of Mei nothing really takes away mobility for more than a second. A pushback from an explosion or boop doesnât even take away your ability to turn and shoot. I donât see the problem, doesnât bother me.
Iâm ok with losing games. Iâm ok with getting my ass kicked. Iâm ok with being completely dominated by a pro player.
The two things I am most not ok with in any competitive game are games that are over but not over, and games that take away agency.
If Iâm down by 1000 points, thereâs no reason for the game to continue. Games need to end as soon as one player/team has reached 100% chance of victory. Tennis gets it right.
If Iâm playing Quake, I may have no frags. I may have no chance of getting a frag. Despite that, I can still move around. I can jump and shoot. I can get weapons. I can look around. Iâm in no way prevented from playing Quake and having fun playing Quake. I canât win, but I can play.
Stunning, freezing, disabling, âmind controlâ, all of these are bullshit where the player loses agency. The classic example is the Magic: the Gathering Statis deck. Even if a player is going to lose, they should at no time lose the ability to play, even for a second. Otherwise whatâs the point?
And before you bring up any other classic examples, yes I even think that the dizzy mechanic in Street Fighter II is awful.
Yâall are acting like these stuns in Overwatch are a big deal. They last like a second, and theyâre rare.
COUNTERSTRIKE even has this. If youâre getting shot, it slows you down and messes your input up a bit. Itâs neither new nor bad.
It is not new, it is still bad.
You do realize that you lose agency every time you get hit in Street Fighter. Not just when you get dizzy. To be exact, you lose agency every time you attack too, gotta wait until recovery is over to do something else.
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I disagree. Youâre deeply oversimplifying.
A âstasis deckâ in Magic would âstunâ the other player for basically the entire game.
A âstunâ in Overwatch is literally equivalent to taking a bullet in CS or getting hit by a rocket and knocked back a bit in Quake. The people who are complaining about this in Overwatch are exaggerating by an insane degree.
Itâs less than even that in Overwatch. Itâs nothing. Itâs also skill-based on both sides.
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Thatâs how Overwatch works. The match has an objective. The second you achieve it (or the other team does), the game is over.
If itâs tied, it goes into an Overtime that forces a conclusion.
Games canât linger if one team is bad.
Even if youâre attacking, thereâs a timer. If you fail to achieve the goal before the timer runs out, the game just ends. Because of the overtime mechanics, even if you have 1 second left in the timer, you could theoretically still take the point by getting it to overtime, and then win the match. But the second that timer is over, the match is over. Itâs a lot like Footballâs endgame. Just keep running even if the clock runs out (until you no longer have the ball).
Iâve won games where we failed on the attack repeatedly, ran out of time but had someone get on the payload. We rode the payload the entire rest of the map in Overtime. If weâd lost contact with that payload for even a second the game would immediately been over.
For some actual numbers on the longer stuns:
Sleep Dart: 5.5 sec max
Frozen: 1.5 sec slow, 1.5 sec frozen
Earthshatter: 2.5 sec
Flashbang: .7 sec
Itâs worth noting that no one really complains about these, so I donât think duration of stun has much to do with it.
I think that most of the perceived problems are just a consequence of adding more heroes because to be viable they must be useful and behave differently from the existing heroes.
The more I look at these complaints, they seem to boil down to:
âI want to play this character this way, but it isnât that effective and I want the game changed to make me personally better without having to actually get better or learn a different character.â
They could play the character they want if they were better at the game. They could also play a different character that theyâd likely be better with.
Theyâre mad that they have to pay attention to people sneaking up on them from the side. Theyâre like the kids who would make mostly straight maps in Stunts 4D racing because they werenât good a turning. Or the kids who would demand everyone build for 10 minutes before rushing in Starcraft/C&C because they werenât skilled enough to play the real game.
Looking at those numbers alone mean little. If you die because of Flashbang, itâs not just 0.7 seconds, itâs several seconds of respawn time and then walk back into fight. Iâm not saying stuns in Overwatch or any other game are bad, but I do understand the frustration that comes when you die suddenly with little warning of chance to retaliate. Alone it means little, but if you are having bad day and just keep dying again and again and nothing seems to work or make things better, itâs frustrating and annoyihng and at that point 0.7 seconds starts to feel like 70 seconds.