I think people who dislike CC are generally people from the solo carry mentality.
I enjoyed Overwatch whenever I had people of similar capacity to play with regularly. We met in S1 & had a pretty decent comp, but as meta shifted, some people worked to expand their hero pool and tactical approach, and others didn’t (they were often the ones who would get quickly tilted and quit). We were significantly held back by indecision – without a designated shot caller and zero-hesitation execution – those extra few seconds would cost us whole fights. I was invited to start playing with another group with much better mechanics, but they were bros. So there’s that. It became a lot harder to find new friends after S1.
If I had a guild with a player pool large and close enough, or a little league team, with personal & political philosophies that matched mine, I would probably play regularly again. I think Blizzard is absolutely on the hook for not encouraging a team mentality, i.e. collective ownership of outcomes. Streamer-discords are knock-off guild LFGs, but imo don’t quite hit the mark. And it’s hard to find a group with commitment to being both friendly to queer woc AND mechanical improvement.
It’s a flaw in the game design if some positions on the team have more glory than others. All players should have equal opportunity for glory regardless of role.
I guess here are some examples of how it feels right now: (apologies in advance for the XQC clip!)
I know these probably feel cherry-picked, and they are somewhat extreme examples, but I watch a lot of OW players on Twitch and see this type of gameplay a fair amount - what made me think of sharing these was a player clip from earlier, I just didn’t figure out how to catch it in time.
Similar experience. The only difference is that I’ve been very willing to play random competitive these days and just be the shot caller unless someone else steps up. Sometimes it’s INSANELY FRUSTRATING, but I’ve also had some truly glorious games.
Granted, a male-sounding voice gets me further along here with less resistance thanks to the shitty state of the world.
It’s also teaching me how to play as a carry, which I haven’t done since the Quake 2 days. It’s a very different and strange game when you’re honestly better than everyone on your team thanks to the solo-queue rank hit.
But even I don’t have the energy for this every time I play. So ~60% of the time I just play mystery heroes or CTF. The former silently. The latter as the got-tier shot caller (thanks again Quake 2).
I always liked what they tried to do in old Quake 2 CTF games.
You got 1 point per frag for yourself and your team… every member of your team got 10 points if anyone captured the flag.
If your team put even a token effort into working together to actually capture the flag (insane in a 12v12 or 16v16 game), that was literally all that mattered. Frags were literally just the tiebreaker.
Yeah, as a tank-support main, I really ought to learn shot calling. But I legit can’t make words when A-D-A-D shoot jump shoot hide… as a Zen I would always Emongg & call heroes by made up names like “Fist dude”, “Cowboy”, “Air air rockets” etc. Don’t even START with places
In basketball you would think that only scoring and dunks gets you glory. But even in USA NBA culture Dikembe Mutombo made blocking shots glorious with his finger wag.
This totally happens sometimes at high level play and it’s funny because if you’re a caster you know it’s gonna happen at around minute 1. You know that both players aren’t gonna do anything but build for the next like 12 minutes. You can just see the casters groan as now they have to fill dead air time. Start talking about their day and such.
(also your point is valid and such I just wanted to go on this tangent)
I played with some pro shot callers and am trying hard to emulate their style. It’s very sparse, and they seem to split the role between information callouts vs directional ones.
The good games I’ve been in now, everyone is doing simple informational calls.
Reaper behind
Bastion ahead, top left
Torb left of wall
Genji flanking somewhere
Monkey ulting
Got a pick
1-2 people are giving simple directional calls
Push it
Fall back
Don’t save it
Wait for ults
1 person is giving the big calls (and no one else)
Group up top left, we’ll rush through D.Va ult from the right. Start in 10… 9…
I’ve seen this pattern more and more, and it’s CRAZY FUN if you have a team doing it.
On the topic of casters, I am really disappointed in Blizzard’s decision not to renew Reinforce’s contract. The fact that your analysts and casters are plat at best shows when they focus on entirely the wrong things, and fail to recognize important and yet less flashy play from the non-dps roles.
Does this work for you? It’s what happens in DotA when you try to do something and you cant. Like attack your own stuff or attack while stunned or use abilities while silenced
Earth Shatter is about two seconds, and charge is usually instant death and only lasts more than a second or two if you happen to be in a spot with a lot of empty space behind you. Sleep dart you have a point. In any case the time is quite short and I don’t understand why people get worked up about them.
