Overwatch League – J. Glover

Following up from my post a couple of weeks ago, I thought I’d make another expressing my thoughts and opinions on the new changes in Overwatch, specifically the new Role Queue feature. It’s currently in beta, however, it seems to have changed the game fundamentally in many ways, and it’s not always for the better in my opinion.

I briefly touched upon a few of these points (or fears) in the previously mentioned post, talking about how it stops any interesting team compositions to be formed and may lead every match to play out similarly – causing the overall experience to be quite repetitive. In my opinion, it appears all of these points turned out to be true. There’s no tactical switching to throw off the enemy team, or any “crazy” composition that “sounds so crazy it might work” kind of deals any more. It also seems to have caused an increase in toxicity (in my experience) from teammates; with a role tag slapped on everyone it becomes very easy to point fingers at teammates who you may not feel are doing what you would do – and even If that were true, there’s no way to swap roles, so it just creates frustration.

A counter-argument that I can see being made is the fact that due to this limitation, it’s now easier for Blizzard to balance the game since there’s a lesser chance of a broken setup. While true, I do not believe and have never believed that Overwatch has been a balanced game, which is why I see the whole “Overwatch League” that I’ve mentioned in a previous article to be completely forced and ludicrous. There are too many glaring issues with the game at the foundation where it can never be a truly balanced and competitive game in my opinion. A very small numbers of games are, saying that. However, Overwatch, even less so. Especially with characters like Mei in the game, who seems to go untouched by Blizzard despite being suitable in almost any situation. Just my opinion.

To wrap up, as much as I hated the flaws of the old system of having random teammates refusing to switch roles, or work with the team, this Role Queue change makes the game even worse: Boring.

Image result for overwatch league — Overwatch League

Every game nowadays seems to be released with the potential for eSports in mind, to the point where it’s become increasingly saturated – even killing off all hype surrounding it before the game is even released. Today we’re going to delve slightly deeper into the successes and (mainly) failures of forced eSports.

At the top of the list of failed forced eSports titles, is a classic game by Cliff Bleszinski, Lawbreakers. A tragic tale of a creator trying to dip his toes in an already saturated market, similar to Battleborn – which suffered an identical fate. The “Hero Shooter” genre is packed with many titles already, and adding to this list with one intention in mind, eSports, is almost a recipe or disaster. It shows you don’t care about the game, you’re only in it to get a piece of the pie. Don’t get me wrong, they are not bad games; they just failed it what they wanted to achieve. Cliff released the game in a joke of a state – trying to push it as the “Dark Souls” of FPS’s, and the game quickly died as a result.

Overwatch is a game that comes to many peoples minds when “forced eSports” is mentioned. They’re similar to the previously mentioned titles, except it succeeded since it had so much money for advertising thrown at it. Overwatch wasn’t as subtle when it came to forcing its esports scene, making an in-house league named the “Overwatch League”, where players who they picked would compete – named after cities & countries they did not come from (for some reason). With less impressive updates and additions to the game, and more and more Overwatch League shoved down peoples throat, it’s pretty clear where Activision Blizzard’s priorities lie. Would I call it a failure? Kind of. I don’t know anyone who plays Overwatch and a genuine interest in the Overwatch League. It’s too forced, and everyone knows it – It makes WWE look real.

On the “lukewarm” side of things, we’ve got titles such as Rocket League. An incredible release with an amazing amount of hype – It sold a substantial number of copies and a lot of people loved the concept and execution of the game. The developers soon decided to invest in ESL, which in my opinion, was a bit too soon and a bit unnecessary. The more people watched it in an “eSports environment” the more people realised it’s just not that fun to watch; only play themselves. So while unlikely the devs intended to invest in it so early, and may have got a bit carried away, the game didn’t suffer much as an end result… well, not until Epic bought them.

We’ve got plenty of other genres that could be covered, such as fighting games – but that’s a whole other can of worms that I might cover in the future. A bunch of ultimately pointless observations, but I felt like it’d be nice to write about and cover.

The moral of the story is – Make the game fun first, whatever happens after, happens.

Tag: Overwatch League

Overwatch Role Queue: My Thoughts

Forced eSports in Videogames