Flying D.Va’s and Face Changing Sombra’s in the January Overwatch patch

OVERWATCH RETAIL PATCH NOTES – JANUARY 16, 2020

You can also find the official patch notes at this link here
https://playoverwatch.com/en-us/news/patch-notes/pc

A new patch is now live on Windows PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. Read below to learn more about the latest changes.

LUNAR NEW YEAR 2020

Get ready to celebrate the Year of the Rat!

This year, we’re celebrating Lunar New Year with new seasonal items including legendary skins like Face Changer Sombra, Mask Dancer Moira, Samul Nori Lúcio, and Opera Brigitte. Experience the third competitive season of our Capture the Flag mode, in addition to a brand new game mode called Blitz CTF.

To learn more about the new mode, click here.

GENERAL UPDATES

Feature Update: Party Flex for Role Queue

Unsure of which role you want to play? Now, party members who queue for any game mode with Role Queue enabled can select multiple roles, indicating what they’re willing to play in the next game.

Your other party members’ role choices and Competitive Play skill ratings may affect which roles you are eligible to choose, or which role you can play. For example, if you selected all three roles (Tank, Damage, Healing) to indicate your willingness to play any of them, and then two other party members choose Support, you will not get to play Support in the next game.

Custom Game Options

The Lobby section of Custom Game Settings has a new option “Data Center Preference”. This option provides the game creator with more control over where the game will be hosted. The default “Best Available” choice automatically provides the creator with the best quality connection available to them. We only suggest choosing a specific datacenter if no single datacenter can simultaneously provide the best connection to all players. This is usually only the case when the players participating in the custom game are located in different geographic regions of the world.

Spectate and Replay Updates

  • Added a new hotkey, “Spectate toggle 3P camera side”, which changes the shoulder you’re looking over for the player you’re spectating while using the simple third-person spectator camera option
  • Added a new hotkey, “Toggle normal / simple 3P spectator camera”, which toggles between the two third-person camera modes while spectating
  • Updated the death camera to quickly shift from where you were looking to where your killer is, to make it easier to see if you were killed by someone behind you or to your side
  • Updated the simple third-person spectator camera position for several heroes to have them cover less of the screen
  • Fixed an issue that caused zooming in and out while in the simple third-person camera to appear choppy
  • Transitioning into or out of first person no longer causes the camera to clip inside the hero’s head
  • Fixed several camera smoothness and popping issues

HERO UPDATES

Baptiste

Immortality Field

  • Maximum duration reduced from 8 to 5 seconds
  • Cooldown increased from 20 to 25 seconds

Amplification Matrix

  • Ultimate cost increased by 20%

Developer Comment: Immortality Field ended up being too powerful when placed in locations that were safe from enemy fire, such as around corners. Reducing its uptime will help address this case while remaining strong at saving teammates out in the open.

Mei

Endothermic Blaster (Primary Fire)

  • Slowing effect now reduces enemy movement speed from 20-70%, down from 30-90%
  • Slowing effect duration reduced from 1.5 to 1.0 second

Developer Comment: The slowing effect of Mei’s primary fire can sometimes feel too difficult to escape. Lowering the amount it slows by and the duration it lasts for will make it easier to react to. The time required to completely freeze a target remains the same.

D.Va

Boosters

  • Cooldown decreased from 5 to 3 seconds

Developer Comment: The lower cooldown on her mobility will enable D.Va to more readily swap between playing offensively and defensively.

Orisa

Fortify

  • Damage reduction reduced from 50% to 40%

Developer Comment: Orisa has been a little too difficult to deal with while Fortify is active, so we’re reducing the amount of damage reduction to give enemies more effective damage during this time.

Hanzo

Storm Bow (Primary Fire)

  • Maximum projectile speed reduced from 125 to 110

Developer Comment: The increased projectile speed Hanzo received in his rework ended up making his arrows too good at longer ranges. Decreasing the speed will reduce his sniping capability while still keeping him strong at mid-range.

Doomfist

Rising Uppercut

  • Recovery time increased from 0.2 to 0.35 seconds

Developer Comment: Rising Uppercut followed immediately by his primary fire is a little too effective of a combo on its own, so we’re increasing the time enemies have to react to it.

BUG FIXES

General

  • Fixed a bug that caused toggle crouch to work inconsistently when high precision mouse input is enabled
  • Fixed a bug that caused a small number of games containing very high-skill players to have greatly reduced SR gains and losses
  • Workshop
    • Fixed an issue preventing Go To Assemble Heroes from working in Assault and Hybrid
    • Fixed an issue preventing Sombra Dummy Bots from being able to hack health packs

Maps

Temple of Anubis

  • Fixed a bug where some heroes could get stuck behind one of the rocks outside of point B

Eichenwalde

  • Fixed a bug that could cause Wrecking Ball to become temporarily stuck when using his Piledriver in a specific location
  • Fixed a location where Doomfist could get stuck

Junkertown

  • Fixed a bug that allowed some players to stand on a wall near the final checkpoint
  • Fixed a bug that allowed Sombra’s Translocator and Baptiste’s Immortality Field to land in an unintended place between the stairs and wall near point A

Dorado

  • Fixed a bug that caused the ivy growing on the wall between points A and B to block projectiles

Rialto

  • Fixed a bug that could cause Winston and Sigma to become stuck between the wall, bridge, and gondola outside of Point A

Watchpoint: Gibraltar

  • Fixed a bug that caused Baptiste’s Immortality Field to disappear when thrown in a specific spot outside of the first Attacker’s spawn

Heroes

Baptiste

  • Fixed a bug that could cause Immortality Field to not deploy or get destroyed while deploying in some situations

Mercy

  • Fixed a bug that caused Mercy’s gold staff and pistol to disappear while using Valkyrie when viewing in 3rd person

Tracer

  • Fixed a bug allowing players to swap heroes while using Recall

Sigma

  • Fixed a bug that could cause Sigma’s shield to fail to deploy

Symmetra

  • Fixed a bug where destroying Symmetra’s teleporter during construction briefly allowed her to make another without going on cooldown

BREAKING NEWS: JEFF KAPLAN DROPS MAJOR DEV PLAY-TESTING WORK, DPS MAINS HAVE COLLECTIVE HEART ATTACK.

Jeff Kaplan father of Overwatch

Just when you thought it was safe to play 2-2-2 Jeff Kaplan drops a bomb on the fourms about internal play testing a new competitive format on everyone.

You can read his whole post below or click the blue link.

JeffreyKaplan commented onBlizzard save your game! go 1/3/214 hours ago

Wow, it was super weird to stumble on this thread.

In early December, we were brainstorming ways to shorten DPS queue times and the idea was proposed to try changing the role queue team composition to be 1 Tank, 3 Damage, and 2 Support. Our matchmaking engineers did some modeling around queue times, expected behaviors etc. and all indications pointed to an overall positive improvement to all queue times under a scenario like that.

From a design perspective we were reluctant for a number of reasons. Before implementing 2/2/2 role queue, we had done experiments with the team compositions being 1 Tank, 1 Support and 4 damage. The playtests under a 4-1-1 comp were terrible. The problem was the solo support. As a solo support, you felt unable to keep the rest of the team alive. Added to that, at all times, you had 5 very aggressive players prioritizing you as the target every time. As soon as the support player on one side died, the entire team would fall like a house of cards.

So when the idea of trying 3-2-1 came up, we were hesitant because of our poor playtests with 4-1-1. But we did something interesting in December and I am really proud of the team for sticking with it.

Internally, for the past two months, we changed the game to be based on 3-2-1 composition. When we queue for our playtests, we only get 1 Tank per team for each match. We decided to “live with it” for December and January because we felt like the easy and natural thing for us all to do, is just say, “hey this is different and here are all the problems with it” and dismiss the system. But by forcing the team to try it out and live with it for so long, it’s challenged us to try to solve some of the problems that have surfaced.

And there are a number of challenges.

First, there is the issue of what players have come to call “off tanks”. The biggest issues center around D.Va, Zarya and Roadhog. The current playstyle of those tanks (if you’re adhering to various metas that have existed) is to pair them with other “main tanks”. Obviously, if we were to change the distribution of roles from 2-2-2 to 3-2-1 it would require some balance changes. But possibly more than that. Roadhog is a great example. Is the correct thing to do for Roadhog under that design to try to make him more “main tanky” or is the correct thing to do to simply move him to the Damage role and balance him as a damage character? We’ve tried both in our months of testing. If you were to come and play Roadhog today with us in our 3-2-1 experiment, he’s moved from the Tank to the Damage category, he only has 400 health, Take a Breather only heals and does not do damage reduction and there were a bunch of DPS changes to his scrap gun. Now, don’t freak out. We’re not doing this for 2-2-2… I am only sharing the design experiment that’s going on here. Maybe a better direction for Roadhog under 3-2-1 is some sort of team damage reduction ability? How do you take what is essentially an “off tank” and make him a “main tank”? That is what we would have to explore with any of these tank characters. Since the Tank roster is already one of the more limited character selections, we’re obviously not crazy about removing choice from Tank players. And if our stated goal is to improve queue times, did going to 1 tank actually remove a bunch of otherwise tank players from the queue? Or were some of these “tank” players actually damage players who wanted a faster queue time so they picked Roadhog? Obviously, complicated questions and it is even more complicated to be confident in an answer.

The other fear around a 3-2-1 comp is the importance it places on the Tank player. In our playtesting, this has manifested itself in two notable ways. 1) Some players feel a lot of pressure to choose the “correct” tank. If there is only one tank, the team has a very strong opinion about who that tank should be. Another fear around this issue is that metas will be even more limited as players tend to take the “path of least resistance” towards their hero choices. If Reinhardt is deemed meta, do we only see Rein from now on? Are we all mad at our tank player if they play the hamster? 2) Some tank players felt a tremendous anxiety about their performance in the match. They felt like being the lone tank put a lot of pressure on them and if they died, it was a really big deal. Some of our tank/support players who would occasionally play tank stopped playing tank during 3-2-1 and only gravitated toward support because they felt intimidated to be “the main tank” and have so much focus on their play. Conversely, there are a number of main tank players on the team who actually enjoy the added spotlight. Traditionally in video games there are different personas that are attracted to roles in games: Tank, Support, Damage etc. We saw this in WoW and we see it in OW. While these are stereotypes (and you have to be really careful assuming too much here), there are many Tank players who love being the “lone tank” and carrying the team to glory. Watching this play out in our weird, internal experiment has been fascinating.

Our support players have given mixed feedback on the experiment as well. On the negative side, people feel bad when the lone tank dies. On the positive side, many support mains have commented that they feel like they have more freedom to focus on other players and not just “try to keep the big bags of hitpoints alive all match”. In general, these matches are more chaotic and (I’ll touch on this later) feel “more FPS-y”. The result is good or bad, depending on the type of player you are. For some of our support players, this makes matches more exciting. EVERYONE is taking a lot more damage under 3-2-1. for some support players, the chaos causes negative anxiety and they prefer just healing tanks.

The damage experience has been overall positive. For one, for those of us (like me) who usually queue for all 3 roles, we’re often pleasantly surprised to actually get to play Damage. Also, many on the team have cited that with 3 damage dealers they feel far less pressure than they do in the current live game with only 2 damage. The compositions have been very interesting. For example, you can have a 2 sniper comp (maybe Widow and Hanzo) AND have a flanker (Genji/Tracer). It’s really opened up the game. If you’re evaluating plusses and minuses, it adds to the chaos, makes the game play more like a traditional FPS (less barriers/damage mitigation going on) but also detracts a bit from teamplay.

Speaking of Teamplay, one of our testers who did not like the experiment made a comment that he felt like 3-2-1 detracted from teamplay too much. I found this fascinating because in 2013/2014 every decision we made was to embrace/encourage/force teamplay at all costs. We put so much effort into putting the focus on team victory/defeat rather than individual performance. But in 2020, I feel like the over-emphasis on teamplay (while great for hyper competitive players and situations such as OWL), causes a lot of psychological pressure for your average player just looking to blow off steam in a video game. I guess what I am saying is, that in 2020, feeling like you can deviate from teamplay a little bit in OW and have some success feels like a good thing, not a bad thing to me. The other analogy I’ve used (and I know you all hate my sports analogies) is that OW – in it’s current evolved form – feels like a football game (American) to me where every match is 4th down on the goal line. The amount of team synergy and execution required to pull off a victory is exciting… but also a little intense. There is something nice about a more loose/skirmishy version of the game – but again, it’s all opinion and perspective. Not everyone on my team agrees with me and that’s a good thing.

The other odd thing about testing this, is that when we started, everyone treated it like this was “one of Jeff’s crazy experiments” and was a super different, challenging (and possibly stupid) idea. I tried to calm people down by reminding them that MOST of the matches in OW history since launch up until the release of role queue, were actually played with one tank… or less. After a few of the early playtests in December, I remember one developer giving feedback that “the game felt like old school Overwatch… like when we first launched.” I tried to point out that the reason they felt that way is because we used to play the game this way all the time… it’s shouldn’t be that surprising or different. Let’s all remember, the surprising thing back then was actually having two tanks…

So it’s been a really interesting and fun experiment. We’re not really confident that it’s the correct thing for the game. It solves a lot of problems but it also introduces a lot of problems (like most things in the world of game design). I am really proud of the OW team for experimenting with it for the past two months. We’re really conflicted on it so it was cool to see you bring up the idea. We’d love to hear your thoughts on and opinions on it. We’ve also been brainstorming if there is a way to bring this experiment to the community somehow (either through the PTR or the live game somehow). We don’t want to freak people out though. Usually when stuff hits the PTR, we intend for it to go live (or some version of it). But this is much more of an early experiment more than anything else.

Anyway, thanks for proposing ideas like this.

Jeff followed up to an comment with this.

JeffreyKaplan commented onBlizzard save your game! go 1/3/214 hours agoDysvalence: 

I’m curious if that ever extended to testing 2/3/2?

exceeding 12 players per match would cause significant technical challenges (we’re highly optimized towards 12 right now). experimenting with less than 12 is more realistic. it’s not that we cannot do it… it’s that the cost would be extremely high.

That’s it. What do you think will this “save the game” or just cause more grief and confusion?

~big_fisch

Bigfisch@gamewatchtoday.com

Overwatch heroes all nerfs and buffs

Since release, Overwatch heroes have received 351 buffs and 199 nerfs.

Methodology

I went through every single Overwatch patch note since launch and documented every change made to a hero, categorising it as either a buff or a nerf. Each bullet point change listed was copied into a spreadsheet under a heading of Buff or Nerf.

For example, this recent change to Orisa:

  • Base armor increased from 200 to 250
  • Protective Barrier health reduced from 900 to 600
  • Fortify cooldown decreased from 10 seconds to 8 seconds

This would be counted as 2 buffs and 1 nerf by my metric.

I used my judgement to exclude minor visual changes and changes which did not apply to competitive Overwatch (e.g. Lucio Capture the Flag nerfs). Bug fixes were excluded, only deliberate rebalancing under the “Hero Updates” section was considered.

Using this method I found that in total there have been 351 buffs given to heroes, and 199 nerfs.

Issues and Caveats

Obviously, this is a deeply imperfect measure of considering a history of buffs/nerfs to the game. Due to both their subjective nature, and the way a single change can have a large ripple through the rest of the hero pool, it is very difficult to weight the effect of a change to more fully understand the way Blizzard changes their game. My metric fails to account, for example, 1 large nerf being applied alongside 2 or 3 small buffs to compensate which might overall leave a hero weaker.

The patch notes provided by Blizzard were also not intended to be used this way, and their formatting and specificity has varied somewhat over the years.

Personal conclusions

Despite the flaws of this data collection, I think it does add weight to the current perception of power creep. I began this project because I was not personally convinced about the extent to which heroes have been powered up, but I have changed my opinion.

When I scroll through my data I see a great deal of damage increase, healing increase, added utility and cooldown reduction which contribute to a sense of frenzy found in the game which was not present at launch. Due to this increased healing, damage and utility (power) the game has now become more about overwhelming a target as quickly as possible, leaving a player less time to make decisions or counterplay.


I am not a statistician, nor a particularly talented player and I don’t seek to position myself as an authority, merely share something i found interesting.

My sheet (Very unorganised, as I didn’t originally intend to share this. Hero names aren’t included per change.)

Patch notes

This was taken from https://www.reddit.com/r/Competitiveoverwatch/comments/emxmap/since_release_overwatch_heroes_have_received_351/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

Overwatch is dying (what it actually means)

Haters gonna say Overwatch is already dead. Some say that Overwatch is dying. Your girlfriend/boyfriend/mom/(insert joke here) played Overwatch with me last night so I don’t see what the problem is. No matter how you define a dying or dead video game there has been a lot of words flying around about Overwatch the past few weeks that have kept at least a couple grave diggers busy. So what is actually going on with Overwatch that leave us feeling like there is nothing going on? Is Overwatch dying or is it already dead? It’s time someone answers these questions about Overwatch properly.

NOTE: I make reference to “gaming personalities” in this article as a general feeling that I see from a lot of them. I will not make reference to any one person to discredit any one person.

In this article I will break down:

What defines a dead and dying video game.

What is happening in the Overwatch community itself and gaming.

What factors play in from Blizzard and Overwatch League.

How to fix some of the problems in Overwatch.

OVERWATCH IS DEAD!

Let’s clear up a dead video game is different from a dying video game. Although memes tell us that once a game reaches dying state you say the game is dead (or ded or dapdfgnapnged). I can make references to Urban Dictionary or somewhere on the internet that may or may not be smarter than me but I had to go directly to gamers to find out what makes a dead game. So the gamer’s definition of a dead game is what I would use for a dying video game.

Dying Video Game (phrase): A dying video game is a video game that is no longer the most popular game that everyone wants to play (or play with their friends). Life span of a video game is usually about 1 year. Example: “My friends don’t play Overwatch anymore so I don’t really either, that game is dead.”

The time players start to play other popular video games is when the “X” game is dead memes come out. To the testament of Overwatch there were rumblings of death after a year but it really didn’t start until about two years after it was out to get the “dead” meme status. I would say after two years Overwatch ran its actual expected life cycle. At about two and a half years Overwatch had a small resurgence of players that didn’t want to play Fortnite and Overwatch League started up. Needless to say it wasn’t a big enough draw to raise it from dying status.

A dead video game is an entirely different thing even though it’s the term we use to describe a dying video game.

Dead Video Game (Phrase): A video game that is not supported by the developers (servers may still be open for people to play) but only die hards play it. Phrase used in memes to describe a “Dying Video Game”.

Overwatch is far from a “Dead Video Game”, Blizzard still supports it almost daily working to bring patches and new content for refresh as well as changing characters abilities to make the game “feel different”. Popular Twitch streamers and YouTubers still create content for Overwatch. So the memes are right Overwatch is a “ded game” but, dead game memes only stop casuals from playing the game removing a lot of the “active” player base. It hurts to see people call a game you like dead because it may be your jam but you feel like you have to stop playing it because “the masses” told you differently. Be a real gamer and play what you want not what other people tell you to.

The Overwatch Community and gaming universe factors

The Overwatch Community, once a strong amazing community of content creators, players, developers and just good people is a now changed place 3 years later… I got into video game content creation for Overwatch specifically because I started interacting with some people in the Overwatch community just before the game launched. A month after the game launched I was hooked and I started my podcast and social media network “Overwatch Today”. I experienced mild success with my Instagram page gathering 146,000 followers, which was a lot of fun. I can tell you for me the game started dying in September 2017 this was when I lost my Instagram account. I could see the Overwatch community changing, it was like a lot of people started coming in that really hated Overwatch and they didn’t even play the game they just didn’t like the game and my page got deleted because of some of these people. But more importantly it caused a bunch of toxicity outside of the game that I had not seen before. Then Player Unknown Battleground was released and immediately after Fortnite dropped it’s free to play Battle Royale mode. Fortnite legit caused the gaming world to turn upside down and a lot of Overwatch content creators just decided to flow with it in order to grow their numbers instead of claim loyalty to any game that (some of them Overwatch made them popular).

Now what I have seen happen in the gaming community at least, when content creators don’t want to create content for a specific game anymore they completely trash the game. I get it everyone is entitled to their own opinion and some people have to “look cool” to their “followers” but why you got to verbally assault a video game just because you are bored playing it. I mean this will cause people to not play a game faster than a popular content creator praising a new game.

So this has been the state of Overwatch, content creators bashing the game on the regular, even ones that are solely Overwatch content. This again causes people that maybe weren’t even questioning the game that they are now. We get it your bored playing the game, gtfoh with that mess.  Content creators have been complaining about the Competitive mode since day one is tiresome. Yes we get it the events are recycled and boring but maybe the events weren’t meant to be what people think they should be. All the game modes and maps and events have been planned out since before the game launched. It takes time to develop new game modes, so it may be another year to 2 years before we see new events or event game modes.

Overwatch has survived the great Fortnite migration and the onslaught of Battle Royale games. Apex Legends could be the Overwatch Battle Royale that everyone is looking for and some people have said that it is. So time will tell if the gaming universe continues to support Overwatch. Currently in (Overwatch) game is the same to me as it was year one, the competitive mode is working but broken (because no one wants to win one loose one),  people rage in comp, people pick crazy heroes in quick play and the Arcade is a mess that probably won’t be fixed. Personally what I see, there is no difference between now and when the game released. People are now starting to see what I have always seen because their friends aren’t playing with them anymore or as I said the “new car smell” has worn off and they are just bored with it.

Also Blizzcon was a let down for a lot of people. I won’t go into detail but it didn’t have the same feeling other Blizzcons have had.

(Secondary Soap Box) The gaming world seems obsessed with Battle Royale games but the real thing is people just want to stop paying $60 for a game so some people just hop around from free game to free game because paying for one or two new games every month gets expensive plus micro transactions wtf. Especially the largest gaming market is kids that don’t have a 30-somethings income where they can play whatever free game they want without asking mom and dad for money. Make me pay for the game or hit me for micro transactions (not both). Also don’t give me a free game, tell me it’s free, and then make me pay to play it (that ain’t it chief). I’m not saying Overwatch should go free-to-play just free-to-play social games are the jam right now (not Battle Royale) which everyone thinks is the case. But hey let’s play Tetris 99 (Battle Royale)…

What you talkin’ ‘bout Blizzard?!?

I believe that a big part of the community upheaval in the recent months is because of the lack (or the perceived lack of) contact from Blizzard to the community directly. That’s it that’s my whole point of this section. Big Papa Jeff Kaplan and crew have been acting like they don’t even care what the community has to say right now.  Jeff’s developer updates have been less and less since the launch of Overwatch League and regular players are feeling like the developer’s first priority is pleasing the Overwatch League players.

Now I have been saying it since before Overwatch League started… “The developer’s nerf / buff heroes based on what the “pro players” want.” Legit I have been saying it you can listen to some of my old podcasts where I say it. You can see the changes that they make like oh let’s change Mercy like 100 times and then just change everything because “people” are complaining. Well Mercy players weren’t complaining I can tell you for a fact… But I will give the devs credit some things (although took a long time to fix) like Roadhogs hook and Beyblade Meta were fixed with a lot of community feedback. They still haven’t removed Hanzo from the game, so I’m still mad about that.

So now we are about to enter season 2 of Overwatch League and it seems like the developers time is wrapped up in creating content for that rather than the game. What should have happened, was a whole second team (probably larger than the regular team) should have been added to work on the Overwatch League so the regular team could have been working on creating content to push the actual game forward, instead that didn’t happen… (Or at least that’s the perception that we get). Overwatch League is a mild success and I hope it continues to grow and I hope they can figure out how to connect the League to the actual game because right now the two are very separate things.

“Hey Overwatch is cool let’s start making things to go with our game”, (some marketing executive said after the game was launched). So, now we have statues, Nendroid, Figma, Funko Pop, Hasbro figures (soon), Nerf guns, journals, clothes, a cereal and other irl stuff based on Overwatch. These are all great amazing things that make the game tangible in real life. How do you connect these things to the game, should have been the question they were asking not the other way around.

Recently (Feb. 12, 2019) we learned why Blizzard has been quite about Overwatch. 8% of all the employees were terminated. So although the directive was to continue to move forward with all projects it may have been a “move forward but do it on the dl”. Unfortunately we know that a lot of marketing was the subject of termination and that would hint that there are no “new” Blizzard happenings for the next couple years. But what does this mean for Overwatch, I guess time will have to tell us this one.

The medicine Overwatch needs.

Hey Blizzard here’s how you fix your game in two words.

Community involvement

There you go my work here is done.

Well, ok, fine, I’ll explain.

In the beginning, well before the beginning, of Overwatch Jeff Kaplan the appointed Lead Developer of Overwatch made a “developer update” video from his office letting everyone know what was going on with the Overwatch Beta testing. That was so well received he did another one staged and scripted and the community felt at peace every time he would give us an update. Somewhere before or after Overwatch League started we got a update that he talked about toxicity in the game and how they were trying to fix it. Around or after this video the updates didn’t seem genuine anymore and then they got less and less.

A message directly to Jeff.

Jeff we know you are a busy guy but we need you to not only lead your team but also lead the community. You are our beacon, our Gibraltar, our game dad and we need you to want to be that without you the community goes bonkers.

And that’s where we are at people are shouting at Blizzard to “fix Overwatch”. In reality people just need someone to hold their hand out and tell them it’s going to be ok. This is why games come out with “new” versions of itself every year or every other year, one reason is money the other reason is to keep players playing their game.

That brings up a point of Overwatch 2.0. New maps, heroes and repeating seasonal events are cool and all but it gets stale after a while. If you don’t introduce something “new” into the mix you get people leaving your game for some other “free to play” game just to play something different. So is Overwatch 2.0 a thing we will see, probably not like we think it will be… My point for bringing up Overwatch 2.0 or any variation of Overwatch comes back to “community involvement” again, Blizzard, just tell us what is going on in your “hidden agenda” give us something to look forward to.

Oh also (side note) everyone said they wanted a solo story mission (please no). If you are going to make story missions then just make it like World of Warcraft or Destiny (like the archives event games) where we can play through a story but socially with other people.

Toxic people in Overwatch… I haven’t really touched on this a whole lot because I don’t want to give it a lot of power. People are complaining a lot about different levels of toxic people in game. And I am sorry for it but again for me it’s not any different than Season 1 of comp for me. I understand feelings get hurt and people get really mad, but remember it’s just a video game, if you’re not having fun take a break it will still be there when you come back. Really I have talked to a lot of people about this issue and I am sorry if you have been flamed directly it is hurtful and uncalled for. The thing that stops hateful teammates is to talk about it not to cause more hate and flame those people, just let everyone else know what’s up and it needs to stop.

Do away with the PTR. No one wants to use it. There is no incentive to use it. No one understands why it exists (to test new stuff). Blizzard releases hero 30, story full build up and release and then only to sit on the PTR for weeks thus killing all the hype that went into the release. Every new release that gets put on the PTR just kills players excitement about the game just a little bit more.

The story of Overwatch characters is what drew me into the game the “heroes” each have personality and some of them had like full on stories. This is what I love about the game at the same time am the most confused about the game. When the game started we had this promise of this huge overarching story of the heroes and the world and Overwatch but (sadface) the stories we have gotten are so few and far between that it doesn’t fill the promise that was made. There are small in game voice lines added here and there and map changes occasionally with little story we get but that doesn’t really touch the same cord as actual new story (lore) that I want to see. Again at the games first launch we got some new bit of lore like once or every other month. Now the lore is like sit and wait they will release it when they feel like it. This is not really a community involvement point I just really only care about the story developments XD.

There are lots of ways to fix Overwatch and I am sure there are a lot more but Blizzard is tied down by resources and cash flow so we have to manage our expectations and sit back and hope they do something really re-groundbreaking to get back lost interest.

That’s it

I wish there was more I could say or do or my voice mattered more. As it stands Overwatch is dying and we will see people that are interested in the game only when Blizzard releases new content and who knows when that will be. Overwatch League will not spark any new interest in the actual game as they have banked on. Overwatch League is a bigger mess but that’s my own opinion and I’ll leave that for another time (or just listen to any of my podcasts where I talk about it). Hopefully I answered some questions or maybe just pointed out obvious things that are wrong and missed the big picture. Any which way you slice it Overwatch is dying and I’m not calling time of death yet.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk

Mike Fischer
bigfisch#11325