Overwatch

Video Games
837

Here’s a specific example. We wrecked another team in comp a couple seasons back. We did so primarily because one member of their team wasn’t pulling their weight.

They were freaking out complaining about me specifically for “hard countering” them with Mei.

The reality? They insisted on playing Reaper. They kept trying to flank us or come around from behind. But they weren’t sneaky at all, and our team was really good about calling out where they were skulking around. So whenever they were behind our lines, I’d just be there and freeze them to death.

If they were better at Reaper, they could have either actually snuck past us or they could easily have killed me. Or, they could have switched to a different flanker or even a different role.

It’s not a “hard counter” if you’re just bad at the game.

1 Like
838

No different than dying of a headshot from a sniper.

839

No different than dying of a headshot from a sniper.

840

I know and that’s true. Good Widow (or any sniper in other games) can create similar frustrations. Didn’t try to deny it.

841

Yeah, I think stuns are being blamed because it sticks in your mind when you die to them. Same thing happens with a good sniper, but that’s pretty standard in shooters, a hamster landing on you and spewing out bombs is not.

842

That’s why I think Mei was made so cute. Imagine the same powers, but with Reaper standing there. You’d put your keyboard through your monitor.

1 Like
843

But almost none of these complainers are mad about Widow. CS never banned the AWP.

844

There’s a bad analogy coming. I can feel it in my waters, smell it on the horizon.

2 Likes
845

I think it’s partially that sniping feels that it takes lots of skill, meanwhile McCree presses E somewhere around you and kills you, or Mei holds mouse button down and points somewhere kinda your direction.

Not that many good snipers among low skill players, and that’s the viewpoint I’m most familiar with.

846

I’m waiting for Scott to say “every time I hit a button a thing should happen”.

847

This goes back to what I was saying originally about the general designs of asymmetric games. How much should your choice of race, class, character, deck, have on victory? Too much, and it becomes rock, paper, scissors. Too little and that choice no longer matters, and only what you do in game matters.

Game designers keep aiming for some kind of middle. But even if you land right in the middle, the more skilled the players, the closer it leans towards the rock/paper/scissors end of the spectrum. As their decisions during play become nearly optimal, victory is determined by the margins of the original asymmetry.

Competitive players are going to choose whatever wins, and not care. You play rock? They play paper. Paper gets nerfed, they switch to rock. Whatever wins. These players only complain if there aren’t enough top-tier choices and the game becomes boring. As long as several options are competitively strong the game remains interesting enough for competitive players.

Non-competitive players identify with a particular choice. It’s the same way I always play green in board games. Imagine how bullshit it would be if in a particular game the green player started with less money. That’s how it is if you play a fighting game and your favorite character is low tier. You feel as if the game designers are insulting you and passing judgement on you. Why is the character and play style you personally like not strong enough to win? If it’s not strong enough to win, why is it even in the game to begin with?

I really want to see a competitive asymmetric game where your pre-game choices matter as little as possible. Choosing your character, class, deck, race, whatever should simply be a matter of self expression. You are choosing how you like to play both aesthetically but also mechanically. Yet, all the options are balanced as much as is humanly possible such that winning and losing is almost entirely determined by the choices made during actual play and not based on how a player likes to express themselves in game. This is extremely difficult, and perhaps impossible to do perfectly, but worth aiming for.

Wait no more. Every time I hit a button, something should happen. Fuck your unresponsive controls.

848

So every time I click a bullet should come out of my gun? A rocket? As fast as I click?

Old NES games have controls like that. The shittiest of NES games.

1 Like
849

I disagree that character selection in Overwatch is a pre-game choice. It’s not like you’re stuck with it for the rest of the match. It’s not Street Fighter.

850

I like to express myself by not doing anything and just standing in spawn.

Accommodate me.

851

What if I pull the trigger on a real gun as fast as I can? On some guns the bullets might come out as fast as my finger, but not all. Some might jam. Some might just do nothing. What the fuck do I know about guns? Not much! The point is that no matter what actually happens, I still feel that trigger moving back and forth. I get some kind of feedback and response to my actions.

When you get frozen in a video game and buttons do nothing, that is upsetting. You don’t have to let me shoot and have a bullet come out. You just have to give me some kind of feedback so I feel like I am still in control. I have to feel like I’m still playing, have agency, and have some degree of meaningful input at all times. If I feel I have no control, even for a fraction of a second my hand subconsciously becomes a fist and travels through space and time to punch the game developer in the larynx.

It is true in Overwatch and other TF games you can change at any time, and that is a bit different. Yet, it could devolve into a situation where I throw paper, you switch to scissor, I switch to rock, you switch to paper, and so on. Then the choice of character will still matter more than the actual aiming, running, jumping, and shooting. It would be best if the aiming, running, jumping, and shooting mattered a lot more than the character choice.

Also, even though players have the ability to switch, they still want to play their favorite character. They don’t want to be forced to switch to a character they don’t identify with to win. I like green. If I’m forced to switch to orange to win, that doesn’t make me happy unless I only care about winning.

Yes, I agree that bad play should not win. Someone who say, doesn’t like jumping, well, too bad. This is a jumping game.

What I’m talking about is when an asymmetric game includes a specific thing, but that specific thing is not competitively viable in any way shape or form. A character is in a fighting game, but has a huge disadvantage against other characters when players have equivalent skill.

For example in Netrunner there were a bunch of cards all based around the concept of advancing ICE. They had ICE that could be advanced. ICE that got more powerful with more advancements. ICE that could be advanced face down to surprise people. Cards to help get free advancements on ICE. There was this huge suite of cards based around this concept.I like this concept. It was fun to think about and play. Other people I knew liked it way way more.

At the end of the day, nobody ever came up with an advancing ICE deck that was competitively viable. It was super super weak. No matter what, you were spending your resources advancing ICE, instead of spending them on scoring. None of the options gave you an efficient path towards an actual victory condition. Even a player with optimal play, and luck, with a finely tuned advancing ICE deck would probably lose to a player with an average strength deck as long as they didn’t make too many big mistakes.

Why did they print all those advancing ICE cards? Why did they design them? Why are they in the game if you can’t win with them? I like the idea and want to play with it, but can’t win with it. I like to be green, but I can’t win with it.

That’s how someone feels if their favorite Overwatch character isn’t top tier. If the character isn’t competitively viable, why are they in the game? They made this character, it should be possible to win the world championship with any character I choose if I’m good enough at aiming and jumping and shooting and all the other things that matter.

852

Every character in Overwatch is competitively viable at most levels of play. Some of them are just very difficult to be viable with.

More importantly, because it’s a team game, the primary reason a character is nonviable in a given game is the composition of the rest of that team. Not the enemy team. That team.

If I like shotguns in CS, fine. But if I refuse to use anything but a shotgun while the rest of the team is playing a different strat, I’ve made myself nonviable for that team and that match.

1 Like
853

Well, that’s another problem entirely. If I only want to play healer, and I keep getting put on other teams with 4 other players who want to heal…

Maybe they should let you choose your character first, and then match you up afterwards if it’s non-competitive.

854

They do. It’s recent and it works great. People just don’t like to use that feature.

855

Why the fuck not?

856

Probably the same reason team builder failed in LoL: everyone wants to play the same two or three high-glory possitions, and it’s easier to make a rando team of five and bully everyone else into being the other roles than to say “I wanna do this” and wait.