Feedback from long-time TF2 player

[Sorissa]

wot mate
cant tell which character is which? cant tell which projectile is.... jesus mate, play more than 5 minutes

i could tell which character was which just by the red outline they have. they all have pretty different poses and are nothing alike. after a few hours in it was super easy, the only exception being this one skin that fooled me once. that one could use some work but overall? really easy.

projectiles are pretty different too, and have quite different sound effects. a mcgee's pistols, a 76's rifle, a widow snipe, the clink clink of genji's shurikens or just the swoosh of hanzo's arrows or the pewpepwepwepwepwpewpew of that annoying ass tracer. really, try more than 5 minutes. just cause you played another game a lot it doesnt mean you're automatically pro at every game of the same genre.

and yes, bastion is a noob stomper. get a good offense hero in your team and farm him for free kills.

its funny cause in this post ppl are saying ultimates are op and make the game easier, while in another one everyone was just "ultimates are super easy to dodge you gotta be a noob to not dodge them" which is quite true. there are even ults you can use to counter ult, like lucio and mercy's ults.

junkrat ult? why dont you have someone with a fast gun in your team to kill the tire?
pharah ult? where's your sniper to shut her off?
reaper ult? why are you all grouped up? where's your disable/insta burst when he gets in? cookie points if you use lucio's speed up to just leave him there ulting nothing.
hell there are even easier stuff to counter. d.va ult takes forever to explode, just hide behind a wall. when the dwarf, mcgree or roadhog ult you can just hide and let them waste them. mei's ult has a laughable radius, just dont stay together and it should just hit one person.

ohhh but the snipers are soooooo op widow has two kinds of shooting shes 2 stronk.
her pea shooter is still gonna lose a close quarters fight against any diver. d.va, reaper, genji, tracer, get up close and stop trying to counter snipers with more goddamn snipers.

I really like how Overwatch works with its characters. The skillcap in the game is about finding ways to survive or counter specific characters and to find the weakness in most classes. If they put in customizable weapen loadouts, i think the game would change for the worse and it would lose its identity.

bless your soul friend.

[Tziva]

I actually agree on the silhouettes somewhat. Most are fairly distinctive, but there are some that are harder, especially at a long range (some of the slender female ones in particular are hard to distinguish from each other if they're not close) if they're not currently firing. I agree that there is actually a lot of diversity in the visual appearance of Overwatch's characters in a general level, but it's not perfect. I'm sure with time we'll all get better at identifying minute distinctions faster, but there are also a lot of characters and skins to memorise.

I think there is a little bit of merit to that critique right now and it shouldn't be totally dismissed outright.

[Real2016]

OP, why did u even post it? U will be accused and blamed because the PR of the game is too strong here...

What about the netcode 60hz on release? The most important question to date...

[Marmot]

Thank goodness Overwatch isn't TF2 then! It's almost like two games have different design choices and therefore are aimed at different types of players! Overwatch seeks to bring in FPS fans naturally, but also seems to want to bring in people who don't typically play them. I don't play FPS games, but Overwatch really got me interested.

At the end of the day, TF2 is still there. Why should Overwatch be the same as it? (Genuine question, I'm curious to see why anything should change to be more like TF2.)

[Endus]

I actually agree on the silhouettes somewhat. Most are fairly distinctive, but there are some that are harder, especially at a long range (some of the slender female ones in particular are hard to distinguish from each other if they're not close) if they're not currently firing. I agree that there is actually a lot of diversity in the visual appearance of Overwatch's characters in a general level, but it's not perfect. I'm sure with time we'll all get better at identifying minute distinctions faster, but there are also a lot of characters and skins to memorise.

I think there is a little bit of merit to that critique right now and it shouldn't be totally dismissed outright.

I think it's less that there aren't differences, but more that with 20+ characters, there's just less room to make them visually distinct, as there was with 9 characters for TF2. Sure, there's more slender characters in Overwatch, but they all have pretty different silhouettes, particularly when moving. At long range, the small ones can be tough to make out, but that's more because they're so small that the silhouette is hard to distinguish, than that it lacks distinguishing features.

At a long enough range, it's hard to tell the difference between a Medic and a Sniper in TF2, too. Because they're both slender, upright-standing dudes.

[Black Phillip]

The game feels sooo free to play. Its AT MOST a 15 dollar title youd pick up on steam to just have some fun fragging other players in a arena once ina while. But 60 dollars OH MY FUCKING GOD LOL.

there isnt enough variation on gameplay. Nothing to work towards other than skins. Game is full of cheap kills and weird deaths just so that everyone can "feel good". Soldier 76 can get a triple kill with his eyes closed. Bastian gets the mvp replay 8 out of 10 games. "Tanks" arent tanks and can die just as fast as anyone else. Everyone is a glass cannon. Game "looks good" because its blizzard but thats it. no one i have talked to is actually putting up there money for this would be free to play game.

Also OP you are wasting your time here. This is basically a blizzard fan forum.

[IxilaFA]

I'll be approaching this response from a general FPS noob point of view, and I've never played TF2 so I can't comment on that end. But I do enjoy Overwatch and spent many hours over the open beta playing it and feel I have a decent grasp of how the game works. Most of your claims have nothing to do with the Overwatch vs. TF2 debate and are decidedly false and just speak to your lack of experience playing the game. People may say "l2p isn't an argument" but in this situation it is. Projectiles, hits, audio cues, silhouettes, counters and strategies are all learned through time spent in game.

Not needing "ammo packs" I'm on the fence about. On one hand, chasing around the map for ammo in TF2 can be frustrating at times, OTOH it gives way to indiscriminate spam. Especially when some also have an unlimited clip.

Ammo packs are pointless from my point of view. I don't want to spend the entire round chasing around for ammo. If I go against a guy 1v1 I don't want it to be a battle of who has the most ammo and who knows where the ammo is located. Let's make it about aiming and skill. This game is designed around "indiscriminate" spam and is one of the reasons a lot of characters are either useful or in the same vein, restricted. A Widowmaker could lock down a control point if she didn't have to worry about people taking pot shots at her constantly. The easiest way to knock a Widowmaker or Hanzo off their nest? Send a couple of warning shots at them. They can't stand still without risking getting pinned down, and while they duck behind cover for a little while they are not shooting. That gives your team time to move in position.

I also don't want to play a game of resource manager on top of having to hone my first person skills. Also from a realism standpoint it doesn't make any sense. I'm an elite trooper in part of a strike team that knew they were coming into combat and is prepared to battle an opposing strike team. Why would I be scrapped for ammo?

-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.

This is completely false. Most of the silhouettes are very distinctive, you just need to spend the time recognizing them. Trust me, Tuesday night I went into the Open Beta without any way of being able to tell the difference between a Widowmaker and a Mercy. Now I can tell exactly what is coming by the shadow, and their movement traits, and their footsteps. As for dark maps, maybe your settings are off? Except for King's Row and Lianjiang Tower I can't really think of any overly dark maps.

-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.

Again, false. You can tell by the amount of damage you're taking from a hit and the speed with which you're being hit almost exactly what it is attacking you. Not only that, but the ammunition sound is very distinctive. Widowmaker sniping at you? Huge ass boom in the sky. Tracer hitting you? Tiny HP hits that have a distinctive laser pew pew effect. Also I don't find I need to look at the ammunition side of my screen very much.

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

Instant reload speeds? Go ahead and walk around and never reload your weapons and see how often it becomes inconvenient.

-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.

This is where your arguments start to fall apart, when you call Bastion MVP of every map. He is a newbie trap, nothing more. A good Bastion player can be formidable, but he's never going to be able to take out a smart player from full to 0 unless the player just doesn't know you're there. With that said, a bad Bastion is worthless, and a decent Bastion against a decent team isn't going to be able to do anything except having to constantly reposition the entire match.

-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)

I don't see how this is a negative. The game isn't designed for you to play one hero the whole time. You choose a hero to fit the comp when you start out. You find out the opposing team's comp and see how they're countering. If you're being hard countered, you switch to a different hero.

-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.

Again, this is just a "play more" issue. Pharrah rocket barrages, Junkrat grenades, Genji Shurikens, Bastion shots and turret auto fires are all easy to pinpoint without even seeing the projectile itself. Widowmaker can be harder but there's a distinctive red streak through the air where her bullet passed through recently. Hear the boom, see the streak, follow it to the end point, now you know where Widowmaker is. Hanzo might be the only one whose projectiles I have a hard time spotting.

For example, I think its on Volskaya? that has the darkened complex in the center with the mechanical motif, of which the similarly styled sentry turrets blend into the background. Combined with a lack of any audible indicator you're approaching one, means its often too late by the time you locate it.

I've never had a problem locating a sentry turret in Volskaya. The red outline stands out against every background.

-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.

As others have pointed out, attackers actually have the advantage. Shorter run backs from their respawns makes it so that capturing the first point, unless you're against a really good team, is almost a guarantee. Defenders have strong advantages at the final capture points, but a strong push by attackers (who have multiple avenues to strike from versus only having one point to defend) can easily overwhelm defenders and cause their res to be staggered so you can pick them off one at a time. As for the attackers being split up, that's a team issue. If you respawn and notice a couple of your other teammates died, try to rally together. Make potshots to build up your ult powers, save your ults and then run together for a combined push. I've seen a ton of maps where attackers won in the last 10 seconds because they just hung back, built up their ults, and then made a big push at the end.

As for each round being 3 minutes, that's impossible. Most maps give you at least 3 minutes just to capture the first objective, and if you capture the first objective quickly you can sometimes have 7 or 8 minutes to push the rest of the way. The only matches that I felt were ever too short were the ones where the defending team was just hands down better than us and better prepared and they stomped us.

-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.

There are no ultimates in this game that are I WIN buttons. Reaper's comes the closest. The others all have their drawbacks, they all have verbal cues you can hear from halfway across the map, and only unexperienced players will drop them to kill a person or two. You should be saving your Ult for a big push from either the enemy or your own team. Coordinating and using your Ults smartly is a key part of the gameplay and strategy.

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

Bastion not fragile? Chase him off his turret mode and run him down and see how long he lasts. He has zero mobility and if he can't get away to heal, he won't be able to do anything against you. I fail to see how making every hero take twice as long to kill would solve anything. You complain about defenders having the advantage and then propose a solution to give the defense the ultimate advantage.

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.

For what it's worth, Hearthstone is one of the most popular games in the market right now and has a huge professional community. I think the best Blizz could hope for from Overwatch is that it resembles Hearthstone from a standpoint of competitiveness and community.

- - - Updated - - -

Also OP you are wasting your time here. This is basically a blizzard fan forum.

Gee, imagine that. A website built for World of Warcraft and the MMO community (ie, which was entirely WOW at one point) has a huge Blizzard fan following.

[Vurdah]

-I really never had an issue with IDing my enemy via visual. But I do see some issues with weapon and ultimate sound design. Reaper and McCree's gunshots sound too similar. Also Genji's reflect and his throwing stars sound similar making it hard to tell if he just hit block or is throwing stars. And Genji and Hanzo's ult have the same sound if I remember correctly.

-I agree with the poor feedback on damage. It feels like there is a slight delay between when you get damaged and when the ui reflects that. As far as needing to see your ammo, it's a bit of a non issue. Once you get the feel for that character you can pretty much tell how much ammo you have left in that mag. That and you should be reloading in your down time anyway.

-Not sure who has an unlimited clip other than Hanzo and DVA and her damage is kind of weak and the damage falloff and spread make it meh at best. Bastion has 200 rounds in turret mode, 20 with AR. Soldier 76 only has 25 rounds in a mag. Pharah has 8. Genji has 15 or 20. Tracer has 20. McCree has six. Reaper has 8. Junkrat has 5. Widowmaker I'm not sure about but I think is 10 for sniper and 20 or 30 for smg. Mei has 200 but drains really fast and does very little damage with the icicle attack consuming 5 per shot. Torbjorn is 20 but his turret has 300 and can refill it. Roadhog has a whopping 4 shots. Reinhardt has a hammer. Zenyatta has 10. And Mercy has 20 in her pistol. Not sure about Zarya, Winston, Symmetra or Lucio.

Reload speeds for some weapons could be increased, I do agree with that.

-There's not much recoil but there is a decent amount of spread and damage falloff. (Bastion turret mode needs more spread) Reapers guns and Roadhogs gun are pretty much useless unless you are right on someone due to spread and damage falloff. And as I said above DVA's gun is pretty much garbage at anything other than close range and even then the damage is meh. A Mercy can heal through a DVA's damage no problem even at close range.

-The single weapon thing is a bit annoying.

-I agree with projectile attack being hard to see.

-Capture the point games could definitely be much longer or crank up the respawn rate or something. The escort games I feel are in a good place.

-I agree somewhat but it is a team based game and classes have to have counters. I know when playing Reaper I run away from Tracers as they are a pain in the ass to kill with their blink and recall ability.

-I agree with this completely. Most of the ults are just a don't get discouraged, have a free kill button for bad players. I think the idea of ults are interesting but they should not charge while you are just standing around with your thumb in your anus. And some of them could use some adjustments like Hanzo and his dragon shenanigans that can go through walls.

-Even bastion is a glass cannon. Genji completely destroys Bastion by pressing E to win. Even Soldier 76 rocket and half a clip can kill a bastion. Bastion has a lot of damage but his mobility is ass. Going in and out of turret form takes some time and you are ripe for the picking for snipers.

But yeah the glass cannon game play is kind of shitty to a degree.

-I strongly disagree here. 10v10 on Overwatch with the maps the size they are would be a complete clusterfuck.

Overwatch is a pretty good game but it needs some definite tweeks.

[Black Phillip]

Gee, imagine that. A website built for World of Warcraft and the MMO community (ie, which was entirely WOW at one point) has a huge Blizzard fan following.

The mmo community was entirely wow? The fuck are you even on about? Also why are you responding to me? I was informing op.

[PixelFox]

The mmo community was entirely wow? The fuck are you even on about? Also why are you responding to me? I was informing op.

He means the MMO-Champion community which is a WoW-based forum (still) and OP's 1500 posts suggests he should be familliar with how things work here too

[Deleted]

OP sounds like they know alot more about Fps than me but I do disagree with a couple of their points quite strongly.

Ultimate are not an "I win button." Most are abilities that form an intrinsic part of a hero's game play and if used right can be devastating but can just as easily be countered or just wasted.

I wasn't able to differentiate the different silhouettes either until I'd played more than a couple of hours, and then I could tell all the heroes apart very easily.

More secondary weapons would kind of destroy the whole point of the game. It's a game about changing characters. That's how you change weapons.

[Black Phillip]

He means the MMO-Champion community which is a WoW-based forum (still) and OP's 1500 posts suggests he should be familliar with how things work here too

I dont assume to know what complete strangers are and arent aware of in their head.

[Very Tired]

As a TF2 vet, I'll weigh in on a few points.

Ammo packs were pretty pointless in TF2, everytime someone dies, they drop a weapon that refills half of your max supply. There was just as much spam at choke points.

I think it's generally agreed that the damage indication on yourself is pretty bad in the game,. A lot of reports of people feeling like they've been one shot, when the kill cam clearly shows them being attacked hit for a few seconds before that. Never really a problem in TF2, but Blizz will probably release a fix for that later.

Overwatch has different heroes instead of the same 9 classes using different weapons. At the end of the day, TF2 still currently has more variation in gameplay from said different weapons. But it's just a design choice.

Currently, at higher level play, the attacking team is more likely to win than the defending.

Yes, Overwatch could use something larger than 6v6 only player.

Random crits in TF2 really aren't something you should be complaining about. If you actually have decent aim, random crits will benefits you way more than it does the enemy.

No mini-sentries is enough of a reason to give Overwatch a chance.

I will agree about the silhouette thing, really made the different color uniforms in TF2 seem nice. Never had a problem seeing an enemy in the distance, or telling what class they are.

[Indigenously Abled]

wot mate
cant tell which character is which? cant tell which projectile is.... jesus mate, play more than 5 minutes

i could tell which character was which just by the red outline they have. they all have pretty different poses and are nothing alike. after a few hours in it was super easy, the only exception being this one skin that fooled me once. that one could use some work but overall? really easy.

projectiles are pretty different too, and have quite different sound effects. a mcgee's pistols, a 76's rifle, a widow snipe, the clink clink of genji's shurikens or just the swoosh of hanzo's arrows or the pewpepwepwepwepwpewpew of that annoying ass tracer. really, try more than 5 minutes. just cause you played another game a lot it doesnt mean you're automatically pro at every game of the same genre.

and yes, bastion is a noob stomper. get a good offense hero in your team and farm him for free kills.

its funny cause in this post ppl are saying ultimates are op and make the game easier, while in another one everyone was just "ultimates are super easy to dodge you gotta be a noob to not dodge them" which is quite true. there are even ults you can use to counter ult, like lucio and mercy's ults.

junkrat ult? why dont you have someone with a fast gun in your team to kill the tire?
pharah ult? where's your sniper to shut her off?
reaper ult? why are you all grouped up? where's your disable/insta burst when he gets in? cookie points if you use lucio's speed up to just leave him there ulting nothing.
hell there are even easier stuff to counter. d.va ult takes forever to explode, just hide behind a wall. when the dwarf, mcgree or roadhog ult you can just hide and let them waste them. mei's ult has a laughable radius, just dont stay together and it should just hit one person.

ohhh but the snipers are soooooo op widow has two kinds of shooting shes 2 stronk.
her pea shooter is still gonna lose a close quarters fight against any diver. d.va, reaper, genji, tracer, get up close and stop trying to counter snipers with more goddamn snipers.



bless your soul friend.

This is the best primer on how to not be awful at this game I've seen yet.

- - - Updated - - -

The game feels sooo free to play. Its AT MOST a 15 dollar title youd pick up on steam to just have some fun fragging other players in a arena once ina while.

While I'd probably play it more often than once in a while, it does feel very f2p.

[Astator]

considering there is a lot of Bastion QQ in your synopsis I can't take a lot of it seriously. It just reeks of "I played for a couple of hours"

Bastion is strong versus new players but he isn't close to be the MVP at higher MMRs.

[PenguinChan]

Ammo packs were pretty pointless in TF2, everytime someone dies, they drop a weapon that refills half of your max supply. There was just as much spam at choke points.

Ammo had a purpose, just because you never got to that purpose doesn't mean it didn't have a fail check in place. The point of limited ammo is to create space or interactivity between classes, and map placement. Without ammo you completely disregard any of this, including going up to pick ammo off a dead enemy. Infinite ammo is not a good thing depending on the weapon but Overwatch is casual enough to forego that. Ammo was never, and has never been pointless -- good players just knew where ammo packs were and knew how to keep themselves not empty. It certainly was apparent in attrition battles though, where some people would run out of ammo quite fast. Most notably would be a team with no dispenser nearby.

Imagine a pyro with infinite airblasts -- not so much fun now is it.

[Sorissa]

Ammo had a purpose, just because you never got to that purpose doesn't mean it didn't have a fail check in place. The point of limited ammo is to create space or interactivity between classes, and map placement. Without ammo you completely disregard any of this, including going up to pick ammo off a dead enemy. Infinite ammo is not a good thing depending on the weapon but Overwatch is casual enough to forego that. Ammo was never, and has never been pointless -- good players just knew where ammo packs were and knew how to keep themselves not empty. It certainly was apparent in attrition battles though, where some people would run out of ammo quite fast. Most notably would be a team with no dispenser nearby.

Imagine a pyro with infinite airblasts -- not so much fun now is it.

they want to keep the matches 10 min short. if you spent a third of that looking for ammo packs itd ruin the fast paced action they want.

which is not to say no ammo is always better, it just fits overwatch's design in a more fitting way.


(personally i thought TF2 was too slow paced for me, and overwatch is just the right pacing. that's doesn't mean one game is better than the other, just that they have different audiences.)

[Joeygiggles]

SNIP

Give your feedback on the official forum

[Dequanacus]

Man, people are acting like babies in this thread. I don't agree with a lot of what OP posted but he was in no way overbearing or condescending in how he got his post across. He said nothing about having trouble with bastion and he did not come off as having difficulty with ultimates, it comes off as the opposite actually with his note of how they only affect bad players.

It's almost hard to read this thread with all the "oh look at you OP, aren't you special" "XD LOL LMAO WTF XD YOU'RE SO WRONG AND I'M NOT LOL XD XD" "Just let me play my game OP god what's your problem". He had critiques and he put them out there. If you have a retort, go ahead and pick apart his qualms, but don't assume that because OP has a different opinion than you, he's acting condescending. Several of the posts calling him out come off far worse than OP did.

[Flaks]

lol at everyone thinking that l2p instantly dismisses any arguments.

It usually doesn't.

But when it comes to the OP it actually does.

I will agree that $30 or less makes more sense for the game considering what it offers.