First impressions from the early access

[Morae]

I think this game has potential!

What I first noticed that I couldn't do shit! I had skipped the training (Which is pointless), but against AI I could try heroes and see how they work. So far I have found 1 tank (D.va? Or whatever the name was) and 1 dps(McCree or something) and possibly a healer. Therefore I got heroes for required roles.

At first, like, right after I first started the game that my team wasn't able to progress any objective at all. We were basically stuck at our door. After that I went the to do the said testing and after that things went noticeably better. People quickly started to pick healers and tanks and not just dps. Stuff suddenly started working. Of course I found a few games where someone suddenly decided that they wanted to be their favorite tank and not be a healer and stuff started to go wrong with 2 tanks and no healer or tank/healer suddenly going dps, but generally it was fine. One problem I couldn't at this short time find answer to... Can you see the "what your team needs" list during the match, if you need to change around? I would like to fill in needed roles if able, if someone decides to switch for no reason? It shows at the start of the match, but not during match.

Stuff that comes to mind right now:
Maps still don't make sense to me, but I suppose this takes time so no complaints there.
Overwatch seems more quick paced than other fps I have played. It is very long time since I have played any fps seriously recently, though.
I don't know what stuff means. Like that giving points at the end of match. What do they do?
Unlockable skins? I assume these are cosmetic stuff bought from blizz with $. What I looked at quickly, they are not worth the money.
Loot boxes? How do you get these? When your account levels up? I assume these must be eventually bought too. I wonder if there is list of stuff you can get like in hots.

I will make more notes later.

This is my first impressions from open beta early access!

[S7orm]

To change hero press H but you can only do that when you die.
Unlockable skins can be bought with coins (you get them on leveling loot caches directly as a reward or for discovering an item you already had), you can see their price/rarity on the hero gallery.
Loot boxes are rewarded for leveling, 1 box per level.
The account levels with experience (you can see the XPbar filling at the end of every match).

100 was the highest level on the closed beta. I assume you'll be able to get boxes on ranked games

[Morae]

To change hero press H but you can only do that when you die.

Oh that I know, but you know that "your team has no support", "Your team needs tank" or something right at the start. I was wondering, if I could see during match what is needed and I would like to fill the needed roles. Yet I could no longer see any indication what could be needed. Perhaps it isn't neccessary since over time I'll learn what heroes do what and how good they are for the current team, but I would like a quick list of what team is lacking and not having to think trough every team mate.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

What I first noticed that I couldn't do shit!

Hm? Please elaborate!

At first, like, right after I first started the game that my team wasn't able to progress any objective at all. We were basically stuck at our door. After that I went the to do the said testing and after that things went noticeably better. People quickly started to pick healers and tanks and not just dps. Stuff suddenly started working.

I'm not sure what your talking about.

Of course I found a few games where someone suddenly decided that they wanted to be their favorite tank and not be a healer and stuff started to go wrong with 2 tanks and no healer or tank/healer suddenly going dps, but generally it was fine. One problem I couldn't at this short time find answer to... Can you see the "what your team needs" list during the match, if you need to change around? I would like to fill in needed roles if able, if someone decides to switch for no reason? It shows at the start of the match, but not during match.

Press 'H' while inside the spawn point to return to the character select screen, suggestions and all.

Stuff that comes to mind right now:
Maps still don't make sense to me, but I suppose this takes time so no complaints there.

You can tour them easily in vs AI mode without penalty and little harassment as Pharah.

Overwatch seems more quick paced than other fps I have played. It is very long time since I have played any fps seriously recently, though.

Overwatch is a Quake-styled shooter, which was all about fast movement.

I don't know what stuff means. Like that giving points at the end of match. What do they do?

You have an EXP bar at the bottom of the screen that fills up at the end of each match, depending on what you do (more points for winning, more points for healing alot, more points for kill streaks, more points for shielding your team as a tank, etc). When the bar fills up, you get a loot box you can open for skins and such.

Unlockable skins? I assume these are cosmetic stuff bought from blizz with $. What I looked at quickly, they are not worth the money.

You get on average a skin every two-three boxes, and a legendary skin every 15 levels. A level after '23 takes about 6-8 matches (and your average match is 5-10 minutes), so we're talking a level an hour, ie a free legendary skin ever 15 hours of play, and at least 5 regular skins (+ gold to buy specific skins you want) during that time.

If you don't think it's worth the money, vote without your wallet. It's that simple!

Loot boxes? How do you get these? When your account levels up? I assume these must be eventually bought too. I wonder if there is list of stuff you can get like in hots.

As said before, you get them when you level up, which is about once an hour of continuous play (you get an XP buff for playing multiple matches in a row). The current plan is that you will also be able to buy loot boxes with IRL money, like Hearthstone packs.

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Oh that I know, but you know that "your team has no support", "Your team needs tank" or something right at the start. I was wondering, if I could see during match what is needed and I would like to fill the needed roles. Yet I could no longer see any indication what could be needed. Perhaps it isn't neccessary since over time I'll learn what heroes do what and how good they are for the current team, but I would like a quick list of what team is lacking and not having to think trough every team mate.

If your team has everything suggested, there will be no notification.

In general: A team has at least 1 tank on attack, 1 sniper on defense, and at least 1 healer on either attack or defense. The rest you either fill up with more tanks, more snipers, or attack heroes on attack or defense heroes on defense (though you can play either on either map; defense heroes do great with escorting payloads, and attack heroes can do very nicely defending certain positions).

[GGA1759]

First impressions?
It sucks balls because the game won't launch properly. Blizz has known about this issue since November and still has not fixed the issue. Many people cannot play this game and it's sad that Blizz cannot figure out the reason.

[MattsOnlyHope]

Hm? Please elaborate!

You get on average a skin every two-three boxes, and a legendary skin every 15 levels. A level after '23 takes about 6-8 matches (and your average match is 5-10 minutes), so we're talking a level an hour, ie a free legendary skin ever 15 hours of play, and at least 5 regular skins (+ gold to buy specific skins you want) during that time.

This is completely false, loot is COMPLETELY random.

[Parker1231]

The game clearly has potential, but as it is, it seems impossible to get into a game without getting completely shit on by 1 or more people in the game who clearly had access to beta. A significant group of the people playing right now know everything about all of the maps and heros. In a game where the developers straight up said they want the game to be about team composition and knowing the maps, that leads to really shitty gameplay at the moment. They've had access to this stuff for half a year, and it is blatant when you get one of them in your game.

[Mormolyce]

Oh that I know, but you know that "your team has no support", "Your team needs tank" or something right at the start. I was wondering, if I could see during match what is needed and I would like to fill the needed roles. Yet I could no longer see any indication what could be needed. Perhaps it isn't neccessary since over time I'll learn what heroes do what and how good they are for the current team, but I would like a quick list of what team is lacking and not having to think trough every team mate.

Yeah the suggestions are only on the start screen, which they should really change.

But you can take a quick look at your comp vs. theirs using the tab key, and eventually you'll learn what's good and what's not.

[Icoblablubb]

first impression is Licence not found

[Mormolyce]

The game clearly has potential, but as it is, it seems impossible to get into a game without getting completely shit on by 1 or more people in the game who clearly had access to beta. A significant group of the people playing right now know everything about all of the maps and heros. In a game where the developers straight up said they want the game to be about team composition and knowing the maps, that leads to really shitty gameplay at the moment. They've had access to this stuff for half a year, and it is blatant when you get one of them in your game.

That happened during beta as well.

Honestly, it's bound to happen in any FPS.

[DeadmanWalking]

The game clearly has potential, but as it is, it seems impossible to get into a game without getting completely shit on by 1 or more people in the game who clearly had access to beta. A significant group of the people playing right now know everything about all of the maps and heros. In a game where the developers straight up said they want the game to be about team composition and knowing the maps, that leads to really shitty gameplay at the moment. They've had access to this stuff for half a year, and it is blatant when you get one of them in your game.

Did you expect them to not let experienced beta testers to play the preordered beta? You are just as likely to get experienced players on your own team as you are to face them on the opposing team. You are just going to have to deal with playing with experienced players, if it was me I'd rather face a team of pros. If you want to play with all noobs just play vs ai, no vets will play that.

[Very Tired]

The game clearly has potential, but as it is, it seems impossible to get into a game without getting completely shit on by 1 or more people in the game who clearly had access to beta. A significant group of the people playing right now know everything about all of the maps and heros. In a game where the developers straight up said they want the game to be about team composition and knowing the maps, that leads to really shitty gameplay at the moment. They've had access to this stuff for half a year, and it is blatant when you get one of them in your game.

The skill ceiling is actually quite low in this game compared to overs, meaning there will actually be a small difference between new comers and beta testers.

[Endus]

The game clearly has potential, but as it is, it seems impossible to get into a game without getting completely shit on by 1 or more people in the game who clearly had access to beta. A significant group of the people playing right now know everything about all of the maps and heros. In a game where the developers straight up said they want the game to be about team composition and knowing the maps, that leads to really shitty gameplay at the moment. They've had access to this stuff for half a year, and it is blatant when you get one of them in your game.

Complaining that the game is "bad" because there are more experienced players is a pretty silly argument.

[Onikaroshi]

100 was the highest level on the closed beta. I assume you'll be able to get boxes on ranked games

everything was right here except 100 was not the highest level, 100 was the highest number you see but you get a star every level past 100, highest we saw was 540, 40 levels and 5 stars

[Berethos08]

Not really first impressions of the game itself, which is great.

But first impression of just how salty people are getting over the "made specifically for fun" brawl modes, lol. Current one puts you up with random heroes, you can't switch on your own, and the game then switches you when you die.

We were doing alright on defend in Temple of Anubis until they got the random line up that was a good comp (and we didn't start with any form of tank - which at the start of the match two numbskulls were "need 1 tank, someone take tank, idiots"...I guess reading the brawl rules was below them), at which point they started to push through.

At which point fate dealt us a cruel hand - 1 Mercy (me), 1 Reaper, 1 something else (that still wasn't a tank)...and 3 Genjis. They still had their decent composition, so obviously the point fell really fast.

And the two numbskulls started raging. Oh, they were so salty.

[EyelessCrow]

Man the disconnects are real, neither me nor my cousin can go two games without being kicked off. I hope this kind of instability doesnt go live...oh who am I kidding it's blizzard, it will be worse.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

This is completely false, loot is COMPLETELY random.

I am stating my closed beta experience; over the course of 60 levels I got one skin for every three boxes and a legendary for every fifteen. Would you like to share your results?

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Man the disconnects are real, neither me nor my cousin can go two games without being kicked off. I hope this kind of instability doesnt go live...oh who am I kidding it's blizzard, it will be worse.

Blizzard has gotten better with their launches as of late, see LotV and HotS; I can't recall any disconnects on launch days and launch weeks from them at all

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The skill ceiling is actually quite low in this game compared to overs, meaning there will actually be a small difference between new comers and beta testers.

Go look at the sheer skill difference between the new Genji players and the pros; it's staggering. Tracer theoretically is a low cap player and yet requires an incredible amount of time to fully master, and so forth.

- - - Updated - - -

The game clearly has potential, but as it is, it seems impossible to get into a game without getting completely shit on by 1 or more people in the game who clearly had access to beta. A significant group of the people playing right now know everything about all of the maps and heros. In a game where the developers straight up said they want the game to be about team composition and knowing the maps, that leads to really shitty gameplay at the moment. They've had access to this stuff for half a year, and it is blatant when you get one of them in your game.

The people who got in the closed beta for the past half year are the minority compared to the sheer amount of players coming in for the open beta, let alone compared to full launch.

[Endus]

Man the disconnects are real, neither me nor my cousin can go two games without being kicked off. I hope this kind of instability doesnt go live...oh who am I kidding it's blizzard, it will be worse.

This isn't universal. I haven't been kicked off all day, and I've played enough to hit character level 8 (so way more than two games). Didn't have any DCs during the stress test weekends, either.

This sounds more like an issue with your ISP or your connection to the servers, not anything to do with Blizzard.

[Parker1231]

The people who got in the closed beta for the past half year are the minority compared to the sheer amount of players coming in for the open beta, let alone compared to full launch.

Yet they still find a way to be in every other game, soloing everyone.

Complaining that the game is "bad" because there are more experienced players is a pretty silly argument.

That's not really my complaint. There's no reason for the experience gap, the game has been debatably finished for months now. Almost all changes have been balancing. If the game was going to be flaunted like it was, it should've been an open beta. Not a platform for streamers to master a game they were probably already going to play professionally up to 6 months ahead of time.

[classic username]

tracer feels so awful weak suddenly