Feedback from long-time TF2 player

[Zoldor]

If you are loosing attacking your team isn't diversified and you have too many solo players. Attacking is won by sticking together sans maybe a player or two. Solid tank + Healer can walk most payloads in. Most check points you can capture if you clear the entire defense. They won't ever reach the point after respawn, usually setting them up to be disjointed on the second point and needing to turtle hard on third point.

Bastion could use a little more spread drop off, but that is about it for him, having problems with him otherwise is you needing to know the map and someone countering him. If he's getting play of the game repeatedly or being the best your team is walking into overt death traps or the Bastion is actually a good player.

Widow's secondary could probably use some knock off to be a little more inline with Hanzo as his arrows don't carry the same punch as her sniper rifle/full auto weapon. But I wouldn't be bothered if they didn't change as they can be countered.

The game is far from perfect, but very fun. The game relies on solid team strategy to be dominate and I'm hope ranked play livens it up a little bit. Sometimes in character select screen alone I can tell if we are going to win or loose based on character choice + Map + objective.

[Tojara]

Give your feedback on the official forum

What? Wasn't aware that I couldn't critique somebodies opinion of a game, especially after they even stated they tried it for a night. I'd assume that the brief intro about dabbling in system design and game design is suppose to give the OP more credibility in his opinions, which it totally doesn't.

You're allowed to pick opinions a part. Else why even make a thread about your opinion? Should it just be a single post in the Overwatch forum with zero discourse?

Problems with the game? Yeah, but there are some pretty blatant 'opinions' that are just flat out wrong. Other issues with the OP just come with lack of play time, and trying to outline a post like you have vast experience with a product with what seems like a casual few hours in one evening isn't really giving something a fair shake at all. It's like going to a movie to watch half of it, and then giving a review of it.

Telling us that Bastion feels like one of the tankiest characters is pretty wrong, as is the statement that it feels like defense has an advantage over offense. If you care to look at any threads throughout the entire alpha/beta you would know that statement is completely reverse. Why people feel like this is because semi organized attackers don't happen often in groups with mixes of solo and duo groups. All that's required is great group push, and a lot of people from my early experience with the game just like to play roamers, therefore there is a distinct lack of actually pushing the objective. It's why people don't like snipers like Widowmakers, because unless you're getting kills you aren't actually contributing to capturing points at all, and the difference between getting another third or delaying the objective another 10 seconds sometimes comes down to that lone sniper actually touching that point.

Bastion getting PoTG rarely happened when I played the game, why? Because outside of the first couple days of playing the game, I rarely see him anymore because he's not as good in higher quality matches. He's not mobile, and aside from an opening, he's very easily countered and not 'tanky' at all. He can still work, but it's certainly not as frequent as the first couple days of play.

The rest of it's fine, but some of it comes down to actually playing the game more than an evening. Personally I find the silhouettes fine and it particularly easy to distinguish heroes from one another, even when sniping things from across the map. Whether the game needs to be slowed down, needs ammo, more damage drop off, or battles taking longer are interesting talking points though.

[Eapoe]

Just some observation from a newb player (no TF experience and mostly CoD, but I suck):
The unlimited ammo is fine. It would add an element to the game, but not sure it needs it. The ammo situation is good in that it lets you keep pressure up whether defending or attacking, but clips are limited enough that it's not imbalanced.
Bastion is a pain in the ass, but easily countered by good players and people who know what to do against him.
Most characters are a blast to play, and most that I don't like really comes down to not enough time with them to be that good at them. Except Soldier, he's boring as hell to me as he's one of the most basic types in the game and nothing you do with him ever feels cool or fun.
Adjusting to the situation by switching your characters is a must to get used to and get in the habit of doing. Playing most escort matches as defense I'd usually start as Hanzo and stay that way the first 1/2 of the map. When the team changed and went 2 tanks 2 heals and I had a hard time killing anyone, I switched up to Pharah and just hovered over Rein's and Mei's walls and killed healers, which let my team take out the tanks easily.
Communication is huge. Played around 10 games with the same team, after the 3rd we started talking to each other and playing as a team and won every match after. You can win without it, but damn does it make a difference when you hear Bastion's tank mode sound and everyone hides, just to have a teammate call out they got him for us to immediately get back on point.
Get to know your heroes. When I started playing Hanzo I got maybe 4-6 kills a game, and that was luck. Now I average about 13+ easily after getting the hang of his arrow drop off and scatter arrow. Not great by any means a lot of high up people will tell you, but just learning simple things will up your game so much, and knowing multiple helps you switch on the fly. Don't need to learn them all, but 2 of each type and your set for almost any game.
Overall, with no comparisons to other games, it's very fun and enjoyable and may lead you to break your mouse in frustration. Not surely the staying power in the long run, but I'm sure most players beginning this genre will get a huge kick out of it and offer veterans a lot of hours of fun as well.

[Deleted]

Oh and you have 10years of experience in shooters? You had to start 4 years old then...

Or and hear me out here i started at 14 back in '99 with UT
I'm not being a dick, but all the crying and ignorance from TF2 players playing overwatch for a whooping 2 hours before they make a page long post about things that are supposedly "bad" makes my skin crawl. Yeah "l2p doesn't dismiss every point automatically" but you know what? if i learn to drive a car for half an hour and then drive into a wall and go online telling everyone how bad cars are and that they need rubber bumpers all around, because they go too fast and are hard to steer than yeah that is my problem and not the car industries or that of the other X thousand peoples who actually enjoy cars for what they are.
As others have also stated this is pretty much the same point with the OP. Zero experience, then go online and post as if you are a goddamn expert especially with the "I'm a system designer blabla" part, no because you have experience in TF2 doesn't mean you automatically are an expert in other shooters and that is especially true for TF players because that shit is pretty far away from a proper competitive shooter in general.
Other than that Overwatch has it's own problems with the low tickrate in matchmaking and hit detection heavily preferring the shooter or hanzos arrow having a projectile size about 3x the size of the visual, rubberbanding servers etc. but not a single point in OPs post was based on actual experience or had even a tiny bit of validity.

[Kourvith]

And still, it is fun. Incredible, heh ?

[Deleted]

Why do people so often start their Overwatch review by stating how many hours of TF 2 they played? Nobody gives a shit. Your oppinion doesn´t have any more value than a first time FPS player. This game is not supposed to be TF3.

[Tucci]

A lot of these concerns disappear once you're good enough. Just watch some top players play. Bastion is not even remotely a problem nor is being "too squishy" nor is being on attack. In fact, I think the general consensus among high level players is that attackers have the advantage. Here's an example of a great game and what to expect in the near future. And you have to remember, the game is not even out yet so just imagine what we'll see and learn in a couple years.

[stellvia]

I came to the realization while going over this thread and thinking more about how the game systems play out:
The game characterizes itself improperly I think. It is essentially a more simplified version of WoW 5-man Arena. Small maps, short matches, gameplay focused on both teams mostly blobbing together, etc. Those looking for an actual Team/Class-based FPS are better served with something like Battleborn instead I'd imagine.

And to clarify: Subjective enjoyment of a game isn't directly tied to it being objectively good or bad. You can like playing bad games in spite of themselves, but don't misconstrue that to mean subjective enjoyment makes a game objectively good.

[Deleted]

I came to the realization while going over this thread and thinking more about how the game systems play out:
The game characterizes itself improperly I think. It is essentially a more simplified version of WoW 5-man Arena. Small maps, short matches, gameplay focused on both teams mostly blobbing together, etc. Those looking for an actual Team/Class-based FPS are better served with something like Battleborn instead I'd imagine.

No it doesn't not even remotely most pushes are actually split up into frontline/backline and flanking, but again you have 3 hours gametime and assume to know jack shit about the game, pls go troll somewhere else

Btw you came to no realization at all, since about 80% of the posts agreed or said the same thing mine did, which you just completely ignored and continued on with your complete ignorance.

And to clarify: Subjective enjoyment of a game isn't directly tied to it being objectively good or bad. You can like playing bad games in spite of themselves, but don't misconstrue that to mean subjective enjoyment makes a game objectively good.

Or you can play good games and be completely oblivious to it because you have 0 understanding and/or experience with it and have basically no clue what you are doing

[Deleted]

-In actual use, lack of a distinctive silhouette makes IDing who you're facing difficult. Outside of advanced movement, most also have similar walking speeds. A number of the maps are dark which further weakens the visual definition of classes, as you cannot even make out their color palette properly. All of these things overlapping at various times can dramatically affect your decision-making when snap-judgment is required.

Lol wat ? One of the things I found to be the most striking with this game is how easy to read it was, how you'd easily recognise who is who, every silhouette is extremely different and each hero has its own pacing sound

-Poor feedback on when you are getting hit by damage, and health number should be much larger and together with your ammo amount. Looking down at two different sides of your screen for that info is poor UX design.

The game shows you the direction from which you got shot, how could it be better than this ? I don't play a lot of FPS and I was easily able to spot the direction from which I was being shot, awhile in other FPS I tend to get lost whenever I my camera doesn't point towards the shooter from the get-go.

-Unlimited clips and the overall nearly instant reload speeds removes an avenue of tactical consideration from the gameplay.

That's probably true, but from a personal standpoint, I prefer it to be that way.

-Lack of meaningful recoil, spread, and damage falloff for most weapons. This is why Bastion is MVP every match: Point-click aiming and no ammo considerations with a weapon that is a steady stream of hitscan damage. D-Va is similar but her ROF is slower, which makes her far less effective.

Playing against Bastion is pretty frustrating the first times you encounter him, but the more you play, the less you see him, and the less of a problem he is, he's quite easy to counter with the right heroes and a little bit of teamplay, even though people tend to exagerate on how weak he is, he's definitely not a strong hero because of how easy it is to counter him, but he's not totally useless either.

-The majority of heroes are limited to a single weapon which greatly cripples their available strategies. The few that have more than one therefore lean towards imbalance. (IE: Widowmaker being able to snipe and have an SMG with considerable close-range power)

Heroes are hardly unbalanced when you can pick them whenever you want, heroes that have only one weapon and no "alternate bullet" benefit from strong abilities such as being able to fly, blink, which makes up for their lack of versatility when it comes to weapon variety.

-Similar to above, projectile attacks aren't visually distinctive enough to determine when and where they are coming from and try to dodge them. It's similar to the problem TF2 has with trying to make out rockets fired from the Airstrike or arrows fired from the Huntsman. Only compounded on darker maps or shadowed rooms... things like shurikens are pretty much completely invisible.

The direction from which you're getting shot is shown right in the middle of the screen, right around your line of sight

-Matches are way too fast-paced, which lends a huge advantage to defenders, as respawning sets you a long way from the action and splits up your forces. Unfortunately when each round is only like 3 minutes or so, it doesn't give you the time to properly regroup. Game plays more like Blackops3-style frag churn than actual team strategy.

I thought the same at the beginning, but you have enough time to take the objective, I have played the game to the point I reached level 70, and it ended up not being much harder to attack than it is to def. If you manage to use your ults properly and if you play better than the ennemy team, you will be able to win as an attacker.

-Due to the extremely limited weapon and strategic choices for each hero, it basically forces one to blob to avoid hard counters. The downside is of course, that each side blobbing each other is incredibly boring and lacks any sort of real strategy.

What do you mean by "blobbing" ?

-Ultimates are a cludge. No multiplayer game with "I WIN" buttons has ever been received well by players in the past. Everyone hated the asshole that grabbed the BFG9000. Similar to the general dislike of random crits people have in TF2. "I WIN" skills were also one of the big downfalls of Dark Age of Camelot in its heyday, speaking towards pvp-centric multiplayer games. They're a cheap morale boost for bad players, but not a good thing from an overall gameplay perspective.

You can counter other ults with yours, also, they made it pretty easy to react to an ultimate since you hear the voice line that is associated with it all throughout the map, apart Zarya and Reaper's ult which are the strongest of the game IMO (Well, Reaper's ult is way easier to counter than that of Zarya), ults are hardly "I WIN" skills

-Pretty much everyone except Bastion are just way too fragile. Glass cannon battles are boring.

All of the tanks are beefiers than Bastion, bastion only gets tanky when he ults, otherwise, he's almost as squishy as any offense hero

- 6v6 is fine for 'competitive' as seen with TF2 Comp, but is too few for general pubbing. Should really allow 10-12 on a side. Although with how limited each hero is, even 6v6 is more like 3v3 in TF2 terms.

I do not agree, in my view, the more players there are simultaneously in a game, the shittier it is, when there are too many player, it gets chaotic, unfun, and frustrating because you can't help a defeat at all since you barely have an impact on the game when there are so many players in your team.

___

I will admit that i'm not used with FPS games and that it's a genre that I despise taken aside Overwatch, which is the first FPS game that I enjoy playing, I have tried TF2 and absolutely hated it after a few hours for instance, awhile I have played Overwatch for 70 levels and long for its release.

[shammypie]

IMHO, the biggest issues they should address are the lack of secondary weaponry options for most classes and the "glass cannon" problems. Both of those tie into the lack of strategy possible in the game and the penchant for constant blob fights. Unless a lot of these issues are addressed, I see this game going the way of Hearthstone and its "tournaments". It's a warm-body exercise currently like the mindless frag-churn of Blackops3.

As someone whose also played TF2 off and on for years I agree with most of your assessments. I don't think the glass cannon is as much of an issue as the fact that we don't have ranges. Tanks are huge and everyone else is a gnat. Supports especially deserve higher health pools, so do defenders slightly. Lack of Ammo on the other hand I think is it's #1 problem. Especially on payload and single capture points. Bastion, junkrat, and Hanzo clean up every time simply by spamming the choke points and their ults are team killers

As far as weapon choices I think some champs are fine and others need work. Since there is no penalty to run and gun auto hit weapons are extremely powerful. The ones who stuggle are mostly those like junkrat and hanzo who can't deal with the short range. Champs like Mercy are the ones who could really use an alternate weapon.

[Deleted]

Most of what you said is correct OP but:

Bastion is a problem, not because he's overpowered but because he his horrible to handle for new players and completely pointless against good players. Should be removed as he adds nothing but frustration and the defending team is at a disadvantage because the ults are just as OP as you say. All you have to do is build up ults, time them well togather and the game is won.

Overwatch is a game for people that really like Blizzard games no matter what but it adds very little new stuff for the average player and what it does add is ok at best.
Except for the visuals and lore.Thoes are really cool.

Still wish they would have made something else of Titan but this is all we were left with.

Bastion is very good against good players aswell, however bastion is all about tactical positioning, where you can easily tunnel people down, but where others like say junkrat/pharah and snipers have difficulty killing you. Same thing with Torbjorn, even though they are rather simple heroes, your knowledge as a player and skill as a player is the difference between a good and bad bastion.

Ulti's being OP is fine, because it's supposed to be a fast paced game where a proper ulti can turn it all around, and that's what makes it fun to a lot of people, because you can get these random LOL moments, and laugh at how funny that ulti was. Of course there are people that will cry about an ulti being OP, but blizzard never really listens to those anymore, and they shouldn't, they should deal with it, or play another game.

- - - Updated - - -

As someone whose also played TF2 off and on for years I agree with most of your assessments. I don't think the glass cannon is as much of an issue as the fact that we don't have ranges. Tanks are huge and everyone else is a gnat. Supports especially deserve higher health pools, so do defenders slightly. Lack of Ammo on the other hand I think is it's #1 problem. Especially on payload and single capture points. Bastion, junkrat, and Hanzo clean up every time simply by spamming the choke points and their ults are team killers

As far as weapon choices I think some champs are fine and others need work. Since there is no penalty to run and gun auto hit weapons are extremely powerful. The ones who stuggle are mostly those like junkrat and hanzo who can't deal with the short range. Champs like Mercy are the ones who could really use an alternate weapon.

Junkrat is easy in close range, you use your mine tactically.. dislocate the player and finish them off in the air.

It's really easy when you get the hang out of it, and you can easily 1v1 any class like that.

[Drakpower]

To be perfectly honest, I think the OP's issue is going into Overwatch and expecting to play Team Fortress 2 and then not liking what he sees because it isn't TF2. That's how it seems to me, at least.

I'm kinda glad it isn't basically just TF2 because TF2 is incredibly stale to me now.

That's what I thought too. OP likes TF2 and expected that in OW and was disappointed when it wasn't. I also disagreed with many of OP's points but I think Endus covered that well enough.

[Endus]

Champs like Mercy are the ones who could really use an alternate weapon.

You realize Mercy has a secondary weapon, right?

Not the secondary fire on her staff. She's got a pistol.

[Raetary]

Champs like Mercy are the ones who could really use an alternate weapon.

have you ever pushed the button 2 when you played with mercy?

OT: sounds a bit like you expected to see TF2 and then got disappointed.

[Zoneseek]

Yeah I refunded my preorder after the open beta. The game modes seemed to be exact carbon copies of tf2 and in that game I know all the classes like the back of my hand, ill be honest im just too lazy to bother learning dozens of new classes in order to be competitive in a game ill likely play very little of. Maybe down the road if the game separates itself a bit with some original game modes ill buy into it on sale, but not for me right now.

[Raetary]

To be perfectly honest, I think the OP's issue is going into Overwatch and expecting to play Team Fortress 2 and then not liking what he sees because it isn't TF2. That's how it seems to me, at least.

I'm kinda glad it isn't basically just TF2 because TF2 is incredibly stale to me now.

pretty much.

[Beazy]

She's got a pistol.

A pistol that needs to be nerfed into the ground. A good Pistol Mercy is a nightmare of epic proportions.

[Raetary]

A pistol that needs to be nerfed into the ground. A good Pistol Mercy is a nightmare of epic proportions.

its the same pistol as d.va's pistol.
most annoying weapons ever. (after torbs damned turret ofc)

[Endus]

Yeah I refunded my preorder after the open beta. The game modes seemed to be exact carbon copies of tf2 and in that game I know all the classes like the back of my hand, ill be honest im just too lazy to bother learning dozens of new classes in order to be competitive in a game ill likely play very little of. Maybe down the road if the game separates itself a bit with some original game modes ill buy into it on sale, but not for me right now.

TF2 didn't invent those game modes. Even Payload had precursors in other games, and that's the closest TF2 got to inventing a new game mode; the others were carbon copied from other, earlier games.

People keep acting like TF2 was the originator of this stuff, when it was just a really decent iteration of the genre.