Anyone else worried about the skillcap for Overwatch?

[Mormolyce]

It would be, if abilities/ults would not exist. You can have the best aim and movement in the world - you are still going to die to McCree's ult . It's about balance between aim/movement requirement AND abilities/spells. If they get it right = we have endless skillcap. If they make abilities too powerful = we will end up with "wait for my IWINBUTTON cooldown" spam.

Well, let's wait until we get to play it to see how much that'll be the case.

[Wildmoon]

You mean removing item builds and put int cookie cutter talents yaah exactly that. And comes backs in HoTS almost never happen. Most of the games are one sided snowball. So yeah i would call HoTS simplified moba and Oerwatch will end up same.

That's the opposite of the truth. Having played both Dota and HotS, it's much much more easy to hold on to your advantage in Dota than in HotS. A lot of times in Dota, your gold and item advantage let you faceroll your opponents especially when your carries are so fat that you can even go 1v3 against opponents. In HotS it's pretty easy to comeback even in lower level games. Mostly 1 fuck up from your opponents and you can get back into the game.

[Mormolyce]

That's the opposite of the truth. Having played both Dota and HotS, it's much much more easy to hold on to your advantage in Dota than in HotS. A lot of times in Dota, your gold and item advantage let you faceroll your opponents especially when your carries are so fat that you can even go 1v3 against opponents. In HotS it's pretty easy to comeback even in lower level games. Mostly 1 fuck up from your opponents and you can get back into the game.

On top of the team XP system, and the fact each level (apart from talent levels) doesn't add that much power, I think HoTS has an "underdog" system where a team that's behind can catch up super fast if they start playing well and get some good kills/etc.

[Tidezen]

Go is one of the simplest games on the entire planet, and yet one of the hardest to master. A low skill floor /= a low skill ceiling. Low complexity of game mechanics /= a low skill ceiling either.

Overwatch's skillcap, like most FPSes, will be infinite. Period. Even if there were no classes, even if there was only one map, even if everyone only had the one same gun. Boring, yeah, maybe, but skillcap is inconsequential to that.

Unless they will follow the road of abilities > aim (just like McCree's ult https://youtu.be/8Wmw5CXp3bw?t=54s ) and there goes your "infinite" skillcap.

I'm honestly worried that aim in this game will be secondary and LMBs attacks will just be there to fill the time waiting for that "OMFGULT".

No, see, having specials or ultimates doesn't lower the skillcap--it moves some of the required skill into strategic instead of mechanical skill. Take the Street Fighter series for example. SF4 has ultimates, but they are definitely not "no-brainers" to use--they're very difficult to land on a skilled player, and highly punishable if mis-timed.

Even if ALL of your damage came from non-aiming, targeted abilities, you'd still have infinite skillcap from determining when and where to use those abilities. In that case it would play much more like a classic tab-target MMO. Which, PvP-wise, still has infinite skillcap, just not the type of skill you personally seem to enjoy in an FPS.

Fighting games are an excellent thing to think about when it comes to Overwatch, because fighting games have (almost) always been class-based, with specials and later ultimates/supers. FPS have not always been class-based, but we are seeing more of them these days than before. One of the enduring problems with class-based competitive games, be they FPS, MOBA, Fighter, RTS, is class balance.

Simply put, some characters are going to be easier to play than others.

Some are going to be more difficult to play, but perhaps have a higher skillcap, making them more powerful for those who master them. Or possibly just more difficult.

Some just flat-out suck--no matter how skilled you are with them, they will always be at a disadvantage against an equally-skilled player with a better character.

And then of course there is always the rock/paper/scissors aspect--some classes dominate a particular class, while being dominated by another.

I personally enjoy class-based games because there are so many more complexities to them. To go back to Street Fighter, I know that having different characters means that some will be higher-tier than others...but if they just removed all the other classes, and made the entire game Ryu versus Ryu...yeah, I wouldn't enjoy that game nearly as much, and I don't think many other people would either. Would get boring quickly, even though there is still an unlimited skillcap to only playing Ryu/Ryu matches the rest of my life.

[Deleted]

Some good stuff.

Yeah, I guess I'm too focused on your "typical" FPS skills (movement and aim). I totally agree that adding classes/skill etc may add to game's depth. Also fighting games are a good example - that reminds me the hours upon hours I've spent on Soul Calibur series.. Christ . God I loved Taki's skills set.

Then again that doesn't take away all my worries about Overwatch. I'm just sitting here crossing my fingers they'll get design right this time.

[Endus]

It would be, if abilities/ults would not exist. You can have the best aim and movement in the world - you are still going to die to McCree's ult . It's about balance between aim/movement requirement AND abilities/spells. If they get it right = we have endless skillcap. If they make abilities too powerful = we will end up with "wait for my IWINBUTTON cooldown" spam.

If you're waiting 60-90 seconds for your Ult between kills, you're pretty much useless in Overwatch. Plus, for most of them, it appears their ideal use isn't about getting a kill, it's about strategically breaking the opponent's line. Either targeting instakills, Tracer's bomb that's best used to force the clumped team to scatter, etc. They affect the flow, but both teams also have them. So you won't win because you used an ult; they're using THEIR ults, right back at you. What will "win" is better strategic use of those ults, for maximum team advantage, rather than grabbing easy instagibs every time it cools down.

The closest equivalent is in TF2, with a medic's Uber. Popping that at the wrong moment basically wastes it to no good effect. Ubering the Heavy to break a chokepoint? Great strategic use. Those kinds of timing and strategic awareness are what will create the skillcap.

[Tidezen]

Yeah, I guess I'm too focused on your "typical" FPS skills (movement and aim). I totally agree that adding classes/skill etc may add to game's depth. Also fighting games are a good example - that reminds me the hours upon hours I've spent on Soul Calibur series.. Christ . God I loved Taki's skills set.

Then again that doesn't take away all my worries about Overwatch. I'm just sitting here crossing my fingers they'll get design right this time.

Soul Calibur is my favorite fighting game series of all time. Never really mastered Taki, mained Voldo and Mitsurugi. But yeah, classes do add to the game, once you learn everybody's skillset, you learn how to beat them.

In Overwatch I'll main Zenyatta and whoever that cyborg ninja guy is. That's one of the nice things about character classes, is that they support a playstyle that works with you.

[Aproxx]

i dont think that this really matters. but yes, i also think the skillcap is relativly low

[Tidezen]

i dont think that this really matters. but yes, i also think the skillcap is relativly low

Think you might be talking about skill floors, not skill ceilings. If a relative novice can get into it and still wreck some pros, that's a high skill floor. There's nothing innately wrong with that, in fact it's probably better for the long-term health of the game, because for any game that's dependent on other players being there, you absolutely need new people coming into the game and not being immediately overwhelmed and losing interest. CS is a good example of how not to do it--if you're not a pro at CS, you might as well not play at all. TF2 is a good example of how to do it right--a novice can walk into a public game and still contribute, even if they don't know exactly what to do.

Unquestionably, Blizzard is taking the high-skill-floor approach--they want it to be as easy to get into as possible. They already did this trick with WoW, making it so, so easy to be an average player, that they totally changed the landscape of MMOs. With WoW, people who had never even heard of MMO's became addicted players. And that is money in the bank, that no other MMO has ever had.

Blizzard got into the CCG business a couple years ago, with Hearthstone. Magic: The Gathering has been around for ~20 years, but Hearthstone quickly eclipsed that. Why? Not because it's better, but because it's easier to get into. It takes far less time to go from just picking up the game to being at least average at it. That has nothing to do with skillcap--when you know all the ins and outs of the game on muscle memory. It's skill floor--the game is recognizable and understandable to people who have never even played the genre before.

To take a real-life example, in baseball, the very highest team's average almost never is more than .600, while the worst team's average is almost never below .400. That means that on any particular day, pretty much any team can win a game. There is a lot of randomness in baseball, but that doesn't detract from its popularity.

[Very Tired]

Think you might be talking about skill floors, not skill ceilings. If a relative novice can get into it and still wreck some pros, that's a high skill floor. There's nothing innately wrong with that, in fact it's probably better for the long-term health of the game, because for any game that's dependent on other players being there, you absolutely need new people coming into the game and not being immediately overwhelmed and losing interest. CS is a good example of how not to do it--if you're not a pro at CS, you might as well not play at all. TF2 is a good example of how to do it right--a novice can walk into a public game and still contribute, even if they don't know exactly what to do.

Unquestionably, Blizzard is taking the high-skill-floor approach--they want it to be as easy to get into as possible. They already did this trick with WoW, making it so, so easy to be an average player, that they totally changed the landscape of MMOs. With WoW, people who had never even heard of MMO's became addicted players. And that is money in the bank, that no other MMO has ever had.

Blizzard got into the CCG business a couple years ago, with Hearthstone. Magic: The Gathering has been around for ~20 years, but Hearthstone quickly eclipsed that. Why? Not because it's better, but because it's easier to get into. It takes far less time to go from just picking up the game to being at least average at it. That has nothing to do with skillcap--when you know all the ins and outs of the game on muscle memory. It's skill floor--the game is recognizable and understandable to people who have never even played the genre before.

To take a real-life example, in baseball, the very highest team's average almost never is more than .600, while the worst team's average is almost never below .400. That means that on any particular day, pretty much any team can win a game. There is a lot of randomness in baseball, but that doesn't detract from its popularity.

Quite an insightful post. I'll admit I didn't research into the different meanings the word skill, but people should still be able to distinguish what I meant from my post.

Sure having some simple game design can help attract new players, TF2's W+M1 pyros for example, but it doesn't bode well for keeping veteran players. We see that with WoW, Blizzard has made it increasingly simple and easy to play for all players, and WoW's sub count continues to drop, but that's probably due to a few more reasons.

Looking at the current gameplay videos for Overwatch it does look fun and entertaining, easily something I will buy when it comes out. But if that's pretty much the entire ogame right there, minus a few maps or classes, I don't see the game being long term like WoW is.

[Neri25]

WoW's sub count is dropping ultimately because it is an older game and no game lasts forever. When's the last time you booted up TF2? I played the everloving shit out of that game several years ago, now it isn't even installed on my PC and most of the servers I played on probably no longer exist. It's not any fault of the game itself, it's the fact that years passed and my interests changed.

People want to blame a specific event, a specific patch, a specific developer, but the overall trend is really just due to age.

[Very Tired]

I played TF2 just yesterday, played on a server where they glitched the train on pl_frontier to never stop moving. Won while standing at the spawn doing the conga.

It's not as easy to track TF2 popularity because they don't have any sub count, however Valve has announced a big update they are (slowly) working on that includes matchmaking. So obviously they don't consider the game to be dead just yet.

[Neri25]

I played TF2 just yesterday, played on a server where they glitched the train on pl_frontier to never stop moving. Won while standing at the spawn doing the conga.

It's not as easy to track TF2 popularity because they don't have any sub count, however Valve has announced a big update they are (slowly) working on that includes matchmaking. So obviously they don't consider the game to be dead just yet.

It's not necessarily dead, but it's something of a franchise zombie at this point.

[Mormolyce]

People still play Diablo 2, and that game is from 2000. But not many.

No game truly "dies" in this sense unless it's online and they take the servers down. Shit, I played Dragon's Lair a few months ago and that's from 1983. But I wouldn't call Dragon's Lair an active game. Most games tend to go in the "old" bucket after a couple of years, online games may go on for longer, but WoW is kind of an outlier any way you look at it. Drawing in millions of paying players after a decade is astonishing.