Topic: Overwatch: new IP from Blizzard

[Pugnate]

I decided to play comp randomly with randoms after a long time. Big fucking mistake. The first game we had no healers. So I picked one. The guy who was playing a tank decided to be AFK for the first half. During the second half we had three healers. It was horrid. One guy was Hanjo on both attack and defense. I looked at his profile and he played Hanzo 80% of the time.

I lost the next random game also because the same trolls were on my team.

Third game was new team mates but lost a close game. Anyway... that's it. I have uninstalled the game. I don't think I want to play something that makes me so angry and ruins a few hours of mine.

My only advice is to never play comp with randoms. Play with friends or don't play. Losing and winning is part of the game but the randoms are too unpredictable.

I may come back at some point but so many of games in my backlog to waste over a few hours of frustration a night.

That was the last time I played comp alone. I've got a nice little group of about 8 really good comp players. They aren't amazing but they aren't stupid. After falling to 1500 I just got everyone together and we played for 5 hours and lost maybe one game. It was the most amazing night I had with comp. I climbed back to 1800. They are all in their mid 2000s now. We plan a game on the weekend. I want to get to platinum damnit!

[idolminds]

Awesome!

[Cools!]

[idolminds]

The brawl where you can only pick Pharah and Mercy is the best. BEST!

[Quemaqua]

Oh, I dunno ...

[Pugnate]

I am so cheesy.

http://pk.ign.com/ign-pakistan/10401/news/if-you-are-into-overwatch-and-cats-then-you-will-love-katsuw

[K-man]

I love this game.  Even when I'm mad at it, I love it.  So glad we have a group to play.

Pug, where ya been?

[idolminds]

Stick with it, it's worth it.

[PyroMenace]

Haha, so is the game just broken right now?

[Quemaqua]

Nah. Just every moron with an opinion gets his knickers in a twist, usually because somebody balanced his favorite character. But that dude's video was hilarious. I shudder to think how long it must have taken him to do that.

I don't always agree with all the balance changes, but I don't really qualify anything as truly broken. Symmetra's boost was too much and she's now probably the closest character to actually broken, but still has hard counters. D.Va's upcoming nerf is dumb because she doesn't need it, Hog's hook balance is a long time coming, and I feel like nerfing Ana, even slightly, is not the right move. But most changes end up being reasonably small and don't make that much difference. It just means one has to adjust tactics a bit to compensate for whatever.

[Pugnate]

Game is far far from broken. Imagine it is 98% there already and more polished than any other game of the sort out there but Blizzard will continue to tweak and spit shine it, which is fine. The video is funny but the guy seems really anal to have put it together.

Regarding D.Va, as someone who used to play her a lot, I don't think a slight nerf is a bad idea. I felt they buffed her a bit too much. Right now she's always picked over other tanks so a slight nerf isn't a bad idea. Not sure if nerfing Anna makes as much sense as I don't see her dominating. I've started to play her more and she is fun.

I do think Sym might need a nerf though. She is pretty much an Offense and Support character rolled into one.

[K-man]

I'm sure the deficiencies are much more obvious in *serious* competitive.  None of us even sniff that, though.  I mean I've never felt like my losses were unfair.  Usually either because the team's much better, we failed to execute, or the team didn't adequately deal with a particular character or strategy.  There's generally a counter for everything, someone just has to swallow their pride to switch characters to deal with it.

I'm always tempted to switch but I've gone heals lately for the most part. 

[Pugnate]

This event I've had terrible luck with boxes. I'd estimate I've gotten between 15-20... (7 tonight) and only one skin (Mercy).

[K-man]

I had some luck in the very beginning.  I've purchased 4 boxes so far.  the first two had a couple of skins.  the last two had nothing.  I'll probably drop another five on boxes before the event ends if i haven't gotten the things I want.

I'm not finding this iteration of CTF all that fun.  I am sure once the event is over Blizzard will take a good look at the metadata to see what improvements need to be made.  Just seems to either be a steamroll or a defensive struggle.  And certainly not an effective game type to earn the arcade loot boxes quickly.

[Quemaqua]

There's potential there, but it just hasn't been realized yet. Needs some more work before it's viable as a game type. It's not un-fun, but it's only fun in the right circumstances, which is a problem.

[Pugnate]

http://www.pcgamer.com/a-more-aggressive-overwatch-meta-is-emerging-from-the-latest-update/

Lots of interesting changes. I find it more fun to play Hog now.

D.Va has been nerfed a lot. Lost both armor and damage. I played with her a bit today and had fun and did well but the difference is clear. Her mech is getting destroyed quite easily now. I thought a slight nerf was a good idea but I thought it would be damage rather than armor.

This comment makes sense:

"Blizzard don't seem to know how to balance their heroes at all lately, and they alter far too many factors with big sweeping changes where tweaks and careful observation are needed. Half their changes don't even make any logical sense, such as giving D.Va a buff three months ago because she wasn't surviving, then debuffing her again when she's considered too strong to a point where she's worse off than she was back when she needed the buff in the first place."

This is true. Why buff her and then debuff her to such a degree both times? What does that say? You can tweak her up and down. But if you strengthen her and then weaken her to this degree then players may think you don't know what you are doing.

Also this comment is interesting:

Symmetra is insane right now. Her lock on range, lack of need to do any real aiming, building up the damage and transfering between players... all of this creates a scenario most other FPS games previously would scoff at, a low skill easy way to shred through many players. When I play her (shield gen and shield were great improvements and combined with the portal option is very useful) I feel dirty. It's so easy to burst kill people with little effort with her now.

I kinda feel embarrassed when I playing Sym and doing so much damage. I don't know if anyone likes how her gun works at the moment. One on one, she can destroy D.Va and most Offense players and that doesn't sound right. All you do is lock and run circles.

[Pugnate]

So Bastion is getting reworked. This should be interesting.

http://www.polygon.com/2017/1/30/14443914/overwatch-bastion-buff-ptr-blizzard-entertainment

Contrary to what Que thinks, I actually don't play Bastion so often. Maybe because I get POTG so often with him it seems like I use him a lot but I only use him situationally when defense is direly needed. But I was looking at my quick play stats today and Bastion is down at no.8 below Sombra at 3 hours of total play time along side Widow and Sym. I've played D.Va, Rein, etc. twice as much. Again, it's because Bastion is deadly in certain situations so it probably seemed like a lot more.

I don't mind a few tweaks to him but I hope they don't overdo it like Symmetra. It would be annoying to see Bastion running wild and overpowered.

I also don't know what's so wrong with a couple of classes like Symmetra and Bastion being situational anyway. Does every character have to be perfectly well rounded? Can't a few just be specialized? If players are using them incorrectly and frustrating others then there should be another way around it.

This change seems cool to me:

Sentry Mode - We're looking at focusing this mode into more of a tank-buster and barrier-buster mode, while also making it feel less suicidal to be transformed. To that end we're testing stuff like increased spread and removing headshots, but taking less damage while transformed.

[idolminds]

Yeah I'm having to relearn dva since my old tactics are getting me killed. Can't zoom into the middle of a fray and expect to be there very long.

[Quemaqua]

Yeah, I don't feel like Blizzard entirely has a handle on their changes. Ana didn't really need a nerf, Symmetra did, and even if they actually thought Ana needed to be tweaked, it couldn't possibly be as high a priority as fixing what they did to Symmetra. I have fun with her, because it's fun to just go around making people hate you, but that weapon damage and range is just a little too high. Good players can easily own the field if they aren't properly countered. And I mean I guess that goes for a lot of characters, but it just seems like cheating with her because of how her weapon works. If they really feel she needs to be this much better than she was, they should focus on her being a support character. Nerf the damage or range a bit, and maybe buff her new shield ability slightly, since that never seems quite as useful to me as it should be.

And I agree with you, Pug. I don't know why characters can't be situational. Bastion has his place for sure, and I don't think he needs to be someone people always play. You don't choose Widow all the time either, or Hanzo, or even Junk, because sometimes either the map or the enemy team comp calls for something else. I feel like Blizzard thinks every character needs to be viable at all times, and that's just never going to happen.

[Pugnate]

Yeah I forgot about that. I don't think Ana needed a nerf. I believe it is because she was healing the tanks. It is almost as if they are trying to lower the impact of tanks to make the game less frustrating for people because a lot of people don't choose the right balance. But I just find that a bad way to think.

I agree with the rest of what you say.

Yeah exactly: "I feel like Blizzard thinks every character needs to be viable at all times, and that's just never going to happen."

You know... your post could be the start of an interesting article.

[K-man]

You don't choose Widow all the time either, or Hanzo, or even Junk, because sometimes either the map or the enemy team comp calls for something else.

[Quemaqua]

Did I say Junk? I meant every other character, sorry.

[idolminds]

Dev Update

Stuff on the PTR, like a Bastion rework and some other hero tweaks. The big news is the addition of a server browser. So up till now the main modes of play have been Quick Play, Competitive, and Arcade which all use matchmaking. There is a Custom mode where you can tweak things however you like but that was friends and invite only. The server browser will now let you create a custom game with custom settings and then people can find it with the browser and join.

This is pretty exciting because the community might come up with some fun play modes, give it a name, and a bunch of servers could populate with those settings. They've also announced that CTF is sticking around after the holiday event and will be available in custom games, so players can tweak it all they want and make it better.

It's not quite modding, but its a nice addition to the game.

[Quemaqua]

It sounds cool. I have my reservations about what it might do to the player base and stuff, and how well it will ultimately work, but it's a nice idea and I love how much they're supporting the game and being willing to change things up. I think that's fantastic. Looking forward to playing around with it all.

[K-man]

I love and hate this game so much.

In better news I finally broke down and spent some of my credit.  Bought junkrat's toasted skin.  I think he's the only hero I have no alternate skin for, which is absurd since I've played him the most (much to the dismay of some of you, I'm sure)

[Quemaqua]

I bought some loot boxes last night. Got most of the skins I wanted, but sadly not all. I will be unlikely to spend more than a few bucks on future events, but this one was meaningful to me being of my particular academic bent. I really still wanted Junk, Tracer, Ana, and Winston, but had to do without. I did get Rein, Mercy, Hog, Zen, and the white version of Mei, but also got Bastion and Symmetra who I didn't care about. In the end I got the ones I most wanted, so I'm happy, but I did have to spend to get them. Did not have good luck with drops during the event at all, and this is likely to greatly impinge on my ability and desire to work at getting stuff for future events.

[K-man]

This is probably the best PotG video I've seen so far

https://www.youtube.com/shared?ci=LQ83otnULOc

[Quemaqua]

Haha, that's fucking great.

[Pugnate]

[Pugnate]

10 Reasons Why GPW11 Sucks At Overwatch

http://pk.ign.com/ign-pakistan/12655/feature/first-impressions-orisa-a-worthy-tank-or-poor-mans-reinhardt

[gpw11]

YOU MOTHERFUCKERS!

[MysterD]

I liked this in the Open Beta, but has there been any major additions of MP maps and mission types?
When I played it, seemed severely lacking in that stuff to me.

Combat was a blast, though.

[idolminds]

They recently added Capture the Flag as a mode, and now allow custom games where you can tweak basically any setting you can think off to make something new. They also added the Oasis map, which is 3 new king of the hill maps.

[Quemaqua]

Also Eichenwald map. Plus 3 new characters.

[Pugnate]

MysterD, you should buy Overwatch. Why just the other day Gpw11 was telling us how he'd love to play with you and teach you the game.

[Quemaqua]

Don't buy Overwatch. It's a terrible game. The worst. Also, he's lying, gpw does nothing but mock people mercilessly.

[Pugnate]

Which is why it was such a surprise when GPW insisted he'd be the one to take over your tutelage. I believe the exact words were, "I will play every game with MysterD till he gets to level 100 and he'll be my comp. partner too, because I look like Sean Penn."

[gpw11]

Who cares about Overwatch? Doesn't even have fucking spaceships in it.

TO ANDROMEDA!

[K-man]

Who cares about Overwatch? Doesn't even have fucking spaceships in it.

TO ANDROMEDA!

[Pugnate]

I've been queued unable to log into Battle.net for about 40 minutes now because it says "It's a busy day for Blizzard services!"

When I started it told me I had to wait for 45 minutes. I come back 40 minutes later and it says the estimated wait is 70 minutes.

This is really frustrating. I finally find the time to video game in weeks and this is what's happening. We've paid for our games so isn't the onus on them to make sure it all works OK? (To be fair, this is the first time this has happened).

edit: OK it's a DDOS attack.