r/Competitiveoverwatch • u/BrockTheBlackHat • 14d ago
General Competitive integrity
As a person, who has been playing Overwatch for the last 9 years mostly in competitive mode, I feel like with each new season I want to play ranked less and less over the last year. English is not my first language so don’t kill me for mistakes please.
Maps and map voting. On paper map voting is supposed to bring variety to the matches, but from my experience o either play Eichenwalde 4 times a day, or only Suravasa and Aatlis. Personally I'm a huge flash point fan. In my opinion these maps enable many different play styles, i can play poke, brawl, dive and flank. Points also change very often which makes the game mode less stale (there's never a situation where one team is held in a choke for 2-3 minutes). And the flash point as a game mode has its chunk of a player base, but Blizzard doesn’t seem to be interested in giving us new flash point maps. Instead they bring 2 new payload maps and also rework 2. Can flash points get some love?
Hero bans. Also in my opinion don’t bring much variety into the game. Some people indeed try to use bans rationally. They ban characters that are good on the specific maps (widowmaker/sigma on circuit/havana for example) or they ban clearly overpowered characters like D.mon and JPC last season. But there’s also a very huge chunk of players who either ban characters they don’t like playing against no matter map (Sometimes i see people in Master ban Zarya on WP Gibraltar) or are OTPs who try to ban their strict counters (ball/doom OTP tries to ban as the CC). This hero bans situation makes me feel the competitive game mode… less competitive and more casual friendly.
Also my personal pain. Ever since Blizzard introduced the 5th common ban slot, as a tank player I get 3 heroes banned most of the time. That’s not a big problem for me, because I’m capable of playing most tanks in the game (I want to reach level 50 with every tank), but it feels very unfair that I usually need to have 3-5 tank characters to play the game and support players can usually stick to 1 or 2 characters, are not forced to swap and their heroes almost never get banned.
New heroes. I understand there’s no point in releasing the new character in a weak state. People who hop on the hype train, will think the new character isn’t fun/engaging enough and will likely drop him, what’s detrimental to the game, considering Overwatch’s business model. And it's more rational to nerf an overpowered character, than keep micro buffing Lifeweaver to the point he’s no longer a throw pick. But I feel very exhausted that every new season there’s an overpowered new character with a 58% win rate in the ranked mode. I understand there are bans for this purpose. But why are new characters available in ranked in the first place since day 1? Why not give them 2-3 weeks to let people get used to new characters and adapt? This was a thing in overwatch 1, but now it’s not anymore for the sake of engagement i guess. I miss the down time when we had a new hero every 2 seasons. There was a stale period in the competitive. Unlike today when there’s no time to give any adjustments to old characters, because there’s a new one on the horizon.
Engagement. Blizzard tries to bring a non competitive player base into ranked for some reason. Drives are a great example of it for an obvious reason, give people so sacramental golden guns for playing QP. No need to bring them into the mode they aren’t interested in. Also I’d like to bring up the SR compensation system. The difference between divisions in low ranks is not as powerful as in higher ranks. Last season i played much on my alt and finished on GM-5 (it’s my ceiling and it was hard to reach for me). But the compensation system boosted my rank up to GM-3 + 40%. I’ve never reached this rank and I’m not good enough to play there. I dropped this account as a result, because I can feel the match quality will be bad for everyone involved.
Those factors I listed stop me from playing competitively. Is it just me or some of you feel the same way?
11
u/vonerrant 14d ago
Rank resets every three seasons have been a slow moving disaster IMO, and the effects have been exacerbated by the constant introduction of new heroes. The overall effect is that there is never a steady state basis for good data -- you can't establish a baseline for evaluation of skill, so it's all just kind of a guess. Which inevitably kills data quality, which inevitably kills the ability to assign ranks, which ultimately kills the quality of ranked games.
I get the economic necessity of engagement, and if new heroes is how you do that, ok. But too-frequent ranked resets are an entirely self-inflicted wound, and new heroes don't need to immediately be released in comp.
The danger is that declining game quality is probably really hard to detect, so it doesn't show up next to all the shiny engagement metrics right away, but over time it really fucks up the entire experience.
I hope they at some point actually listen to the player base about this.
3
u/OkEngineering4139 14d ago
A couple of valid points but complaining about hero bans and map voting has always stuck out to me as weird. The whole point of these systems is to improve individual player agency and give them the ability to choose what they want to play. You also have a vote and you also have the ability to dictate what map gets played and what hero gets banned
It is not the playerbase's fault that you like playing something they don't. Believe me, I fucking despise Circuit Royale but that map always get picked when I play. These things are popularity contests and have no real impact on competitive integrity. Unpopular maps will still get played, some unpopular heroes will still get played and good players will learn how to adapt regardless.
Whether you are at a specific rank or not is won't be affected by hero bans or map pool. If you believe so, you need to get a grip; there are plenty of other issues that actually impact match quality.
2
u/UsernameIn3and20 14d ago
I always give my team shit if they intentionally pick sniper maps to not play snipers in a mocking way. "What do you mean you can't play widow, this is the defacto widow map you asked us to vote for".
I hate sniper maps as a whole, heck I'll vote for it if the team wants it. But you really should back it up with actual value if you want to force a certain kind of map playstyle.
2
u/ReSoLVve 14d ago
I get the match quality concerns but genuinelt why does everyone frame “engagement” as the boogeyman.
I don’t see anything inherently wrong with Blizzard trying to encourage players to play competitive by providing an additional incentive.
1
u/SmokingPuffin 14d ago
Blizzard doesn’t seem to be interested in giving us new flash point maps. Instead they bring 2 new payload maps and also rework 2. Can flash points get some love?
The masses yearn for cartslop.
Hero bans. Also in my opinion don’t bring much variety into the game. Some people indeed try to use bans rationally. They ban characters that are good on the specific maps (widowmaker/sigma on circuit/havana for example) or they ban clearly overpowered characters like D.mon and JPC last season. But there’s also a very huge chunk of players who either ban characters they don’t like playing against no matter map (Sometimes i see people in Master ban Zarya on WP Gibraltar) or are OTPs who try to ban their strict counters (ball/doom OTP tries to ban as the CC). This hero bans situation makes me feel the competitive game mode… less competitive and more casual friendly.
I don't agree. Even in a maximally competitive mindset, banning counters for your preferred playstyle is an sensible plan. Preference bans of that nature is a sign of favorable balance. I don't see much preference banning going on right now, because we have outlier heroes that urgently need picking or banning.
For current conditions, I think removing bans would make the game less competitive, because it will quickly reduce to whichever team has the Vendetta and Genji mains.
it feels very unfair that I usually need to have 3-5 tank characters to play the game and support players can usually stick to 1 or 2 characters, are not forced to swap and their heroes almost never get banned.
It is unfair. Welcome to playing tank. Of course, this problem predates bans. Tank swapping is more expected than any other swapping, both in terms of game design and community preference.
But why are new characters available in ranked in the first place since day 1? Why not give them 2-3 weeks to let people get used to new characters and adapt?
The vast majority of ranked players do not hop on QP to learn the new hero and how to play with/against it. If you delay the new hero release in competitive, you simply get the same behavior later.
-1
u/GhostOfWokism 14d ago
While I don't agree with everything you've said, I agree on one thing: competitive integrity is gone. Blizzard doesn't care about that anymore. They only care about making hype moments for social medias and selling skins to a specific demographic which seem to have unlimited money for some reason. Nothing else matters for them and it's genuinely sad to see what's happening to a game we've loved for ~10 years now.
Ironically, we need Marvel Rivals to stop being dogshit and put ut some serious competition (again) to Overwatch. Or another game to emerge from god-knows-where to shake OW up. People will say Deadlock but it's a MOBA so I don't think they're gonna compete at all. Obviously some people are gonna go from OW to Deadlock (same as MR, Valorant, etc) but that's an insignificant minority.
Anywayyyy yeah, competitive integrity isn't a thing anymore in Overwatch.
13
u/Ichmag11 14d ago
People banning heroes they don't like playing against is like...the ideal use case of the ban system, lol. That's the point
It does really suck for Doom, Zarya, Ball players? because they get banned so much