Competitive ruining Overwatch for me

Zhukov

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IceForce said:
Try going up against a team of 6 Winstons...
Use 6 DVa. (Or 4 Dva and 2 Ana if you really want to stomp them.)

Her armour laughs at Winstons damage, her scatterguns do massive damage due to his large size, he has to get within her effective range to fight her and she can chase him down when he jumps away or fly to safety if he tries to ult her off a ledge.

(Ana combos well with her since DVa moves slowly when fighting, making her an easy heal target and her armour means you get the most effective health for your heal.)

... or 6 Torbs
Use 2-3 Reinhardts with a couple of accurate ranged damage heroes (Soldier, McCree, Pharah, Hanzo... hell, even a Mei, it's not like those turrets can dodge) and standard healers.
 
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IceForce said:
I really wish they'd put a 1-hero limit into quickplay. Because the game is now balanced around having that 1-hero limit, so any game mode that doesn't have it automatically has severe balance issues.
Try going up against a team of 6 Winstons or 6 Torbs, and see how well you do, regardless of the hero you pick.

And yes, I know it's going to cause saltiness, when you have multiple insta-locking Hanzos or Genjis on the same team, who can't all play the hero they've spent 95% of their Overwatch game time playing. But perhaps that's exactly what's needed in quickplay, - it might force people to expand their hero 'repertoire', so to speak.
no thank you, to the highest extreme, that's what competitive is for.

as zhukov mentioned, there are plenty of ways around that...maybe people need to expand their repertoire more to counter those heroes if they're tired of seeing them.

if you are playing against only genji's and hanzo's, please give me, I'm stuck with waves upon waves of zenyatta's and ana+reinhart combos and I'd gladly trade.
 

DudeistBelieve

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SlumlordThanatos said:
The whole point of this game isn't to play whatever you want. The point is to work with your team and swap to whatever would be most effective at countering the other team's composition. That's why Blizzard lets you swap heroes on the fly, unlike other MOBAs when you are locked into the hero you chose until the match is over.
The point of this game is the same as another game, video game, whatever.

It's to distract you from the fact that one day you and everyone you love is gonna die screaming.

To care passionately about the outcome to the point that it affects ones mood is like... a pure exercise in pointlessness.
 

IceForce

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You might laugh at the whole "6 Torbs" thing, but bear in mind that it effectively doubles the size of the enemy team; Instead of being shot at by six enemies at once, you're instead being shot at by twelve, and half of them are aimbots. Not a fun experience.

Anyways...
Zhukov said:
IceForce said:
Try going up against a team of 6 Winstons...
Use 6 DVa. (Or 4 Dva and 2 Ana if you really want to stomp them.)

Her armour laughs at Winstons damage, her scatterguns do massive damage due to his large size, he has to get within her effective range to fight her and she can chase him down when he jumps away or fly to safety if he tries to ult her off a ledge.

(Ana combos well with her since DVa moves slowly when fighting, making her an easy heal target and her armour means you get the most effective health for your heal.)

... or 6 Torbs
Use 2-3 Reinhardts with a couple of accurate ranged damage heroes (Soldier, McCree, Pharah, Hanzo... hell, even a Mei, it's not like those turrets can dodge) and standard healers.
You've kinda touched on the problem, - the fact that the only way of countering hero stacking is to use hero stacking of your own. And unfortunately, oftentimes that requires a level of cohesion and cooperation that often doesn't exist in quickplay.

Compare it to competitive, where if there's an enemy Pharah wrecking your shit (and there will only ever be one), then you can just switch to one of her counters and go deal with the problem. But in quickplay, you might be getting wrecked by SEVERAL Pharahs, in which case switching to a hitscan dps hero isn't going to help much unless all the Hanzos and Junkrats on your team also follow suit (and good luck with that).

I dunno. Maybe there's a flaw in my logic somewhere, but to me it seems like (at times) quickplay requires MORE teamwork than competitive does. And that, to me, seems a bit broken.
 

SlumlordThanatos

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Zhukov said:
SlumlordThanatos said:
And I'm just over here, wondering when Blizzard is going to fix support ratings.
That was fixed weeks ago.
It's not as bad, but ever since they tightened the ranked requirements for grouping, it's still a severe issue.

Speaking of which, the ranked divisions aren't separated by very much. Most players are in Gold and Platinum, and the difference between 2000 and 2500 is huge.

Competitive is still a disaster, and I'm staying away until Blizz gets it right.
DudeistBelieve said:
SlumlordThanatos said:
The whole point of this game isn't to play whatever you want. The point is to work with your team and swap to whatever would be most effective at countering the other team's composition. That's why Blizzard lets you swap heroes on the fly, unlike other MOBAs when you are locked into the hero you chose until the match is over.
The point of this game is the same as another game, video game, whatever.

It's to distract you from the fact that one day you and everyone you love is gonna die screaming.

To care passionately about the outcome to the point that it affects ones mood is like... a pure exercise in pointlessness.
I can't help being competitive. If it were a switch I could turn on or off, I would have mashed it off and broke it.

It may be pointless to you, but it certainly isn't to me.

Also, speak for yourself. I fully intend to die peacefully in my sleep at 90, surrounded by grandchildren.
 

Zhukov

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IceForce said:
Zhukov said:
You've kinda touched on the problem, - the fact that the only way of countering hero stacking is to use hero stacking of your own.
Uh... yes?

And unfortunately, oftentimes that requires a level of cohesion and cooperation that often doesn't exist in quickplay.

Compare it to competitive, where if there's an enemy Pharah wrecking your shit (and there will only ever be one), then you can just switch to one of her counters and go deal with the problem. But in quickplay, you might be getting wrecked by SEVERAL Pharahs, in which case switching to a hitscan dps hero isn't going to help much unless all the Hanzos and Junkrats on your team also follow suit (and good luck with that).
You're effectively saying that a team that has better coordination and cooperation than the opposing team will win.

Isn't that how it should be?

If your team sucks at counter-picking then... yeah, you're likely to lose. Not sure what to say.

SlumlordThanatos said:
It's not as bad, but ever since they tightened the ranked requirements for grouping, it's still a severe issue.
I do not see how those two things are related.

Speaking of which, the ranked divisions aren't separated by very much. Most players are in Gold and Platinum, and the difference between 2000 and 2500 is huge.
Once again, not seeing the relevance here. Am I missing something?

I can't help being competitive. If it were a switch I could turn on or off, I would have mashed it off and broke it.

It may be pointless to you, but it certainly isn't to me.
There are two modes, one for tryhard victory hounds like you and me, one for the filthy casuals to roll about in the mud.

You have chosen to eschew the tryhard mode. I don't pretend to understand your reasons, but apparently you have them.

To then go to the casual mode and expect tryhard behaviour is not entirely reasonable. That's why the division exists to begin with.

I understand your frustration. I had to bite my tongue a lot during the inter-season break when competitive was unavailable. But in your case your frustration seems largely self-inflicted.
 

SlumlordThanatos

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Zhukov said:
SlumlordThanatos said:
It's not as bad, but ever since they tightened the ranked requirements for grouping, it's still a severe issue.
I do not see how those two things are related.
Let's say you're playing with a group of your friends. One of your friends is your support player, and that's pretty much all he does. You guys go into your placements and finish with a 7-3 record. All things being equal, this should mean that everyone should have around the same rank, right?

Not quite. Remember how your personal performance affects how many points you win or lose for a match? Supports don't have as many metrics as damage dealers, so it's harder for the game to measure your performance. What's more, your support's stats will suffer when your team is doing well, since they're already taking less damage.

As a result, your support player will rank lower than the rest of their group, and if they continue to play with them and they continue to climb, eventually the healer will fall out of group range and can't play with their friends without solo-queueing to catch up.

I might play mostly solo queue, but since I play mostly support, I still rank up slower than my peers, and that's not right. They took steps to fix the issue, but it didn't quite work as well as they wanted.

Speaking of which, the ranked divisions aren't separated by very much. Most players are in Gold and Platinum, and the difference between 2000 and 2500 is huge.
Once again, not seeing the relevance here. Am I missing something?
You're not, just me pointing out something else that's wrong with Competitive. Something like 80% of players are in Gold and Platinum, and I was expecting those ranks to be in the above-average range, like in League of Legends. I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking this, either.

I can't help being competitive. If it were a switch I could turn on or off, I would have mashed it off and broke it.

It may be pointless to you, but it certainly isn't to me.
There are two modes, one for tryhard victory hounds like you and me, one for the filthy casuals to roll about in the mud.

You have chosen to eschew the tryhard mode. I don't pretend to understand your reasons, but apparently you have them.

To then go to the casual mode and expect tryhard behaviour is not entirely reasonable. That's why the division exists to begin with.
Like I said earlier, I don't mind so much when people want to practice a hero they're not great at.

The problem arises when people fail to recognize that their hero has become a liability, and continue trying to play Widowmaker into a three-tank composition long after it's obvious that Widowmaker isn't gonna be one-shotting any priority targets.

I guess my problem is that I don't suffer fools gladly. I don't understand why someone would persist in playing a hero that is clearly not suited to the current situation, no matter how badly someone wants to practice.
 

the_dramatica

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At low ranks, nobody has any idea how the game works, so against actually competent teams they get stomped. In unranked everybody is just extremely bad and they don't push leads. All the fun you are having in unranked is probably stomping 12 year olds that are learning how to play video games.

That being said, I didn't enjoy overwatch because it's a geniunly bad game. The skill cieling is miles lower than other fps that have been on the market for years. Blizzards intentions being exclusively for profit actually do hurt their games, since they had to make the game play like a little tykes shooter so that console players could play the game at all. It also hasn't really benefited them, since overwatch tooks aions to release and has slower update speeds than many indie games.

By making the game have a low skill cieling like they did, they actually require that you need to play in 5 stacks that know what they are doing to have coherent, reliable wins. For instance on kings row there are 50 foot stretches of the map at a time that have no cover. You CANNOT play that and get picks, not even if you are chaining headshots on mcree, since to be in damage range you have to expose yourself to being a w + mouse 1 pickoff for the enemies.
 

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the_dramatica said:
By making the game have a low skill cieling like they did, they actually require that you need to play in 5 stacks that know what they are doing to have coherent, reliable wins. For instance on kings row there are 50 foot stretches of the map at a time that have no cover. You CANNOT play that and get picks, not even if you are chaining headshots on mcree, since to be in damage range you have to expose yourself to being a w + mouse 1 pickoff for the enemies.
It's a class based game and the level design reinforces that.

In the areas that lack cover you're supposed to push forward with your tank and use them as mobile cover, or use someone like Mei to create cover for you, or use one of the area denial ultimates to force the enemy out of their own cover and into a direct confrontation.

I agree that the skill ceiling with certain characters is quite low, but I don't think that the skill ceiling for the game as a whole is low. The difference between this game and other shooters is that high accuracy isn't the only thing that's rewarded. You can't lone wolf the game, and you can't clutch games by yourself, but that doesn't mean that there's a low skill ceiling.
 

RedDeadFred

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altnameJag said:
Played maybe 8 matches last night. All but one were losses. Which is fine, streaks happen. I just wish they wouldn't happen with quite so many Attack Symmetras, Insta-lock Hanzos, and enemy teams with 3-5 times as many prestige stars as mine.

Also, I need to learn to play/counter Zarya. She was in every match.
Just learn to play her. She's a ton of fun and you can actually kind of carry. Everyone talks about not feeding Zarya's energy, but honestly, if you have any game sense, you can charge it pretty easily since it's easy to see when and where a lot of damage is going to come from. It's especially easy to charge it on your Rein since people will keep pounding at his shield anyway because they want it to crack. You can save teammates who over extend, you can save yourself from certain death, and if you keep yourself alive long enough, you'll be wielding your very own Death Star laser.

Also, I don't think she's all that difficult to play. I consider myself a bellow average player, but I always seem to do well with her. She probably just stomps in the bronze to gold range.
 

Elijin

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SlumlordThanatos said:
Glongpre said:
Yeah it can be frustrating, but when are they suppose to practice? Like I said, when this happens you just have to adapt and see how well you can do. These kind of situations will help you too, if you go in with a better mindset.

Quickplay is for shitting around, not for hardcore competition. If you want competition you can go to this cool mode called competitive where mostly like-minded folks play.
See above. Competitive is broken, and I'm going to stay away until it is fixed. I'm also not saying that they're not allowed to practice, they just need to recognize when they've become a liability and swap to something more effective. They can always try again next match.

Do you go play recreational sports like hockey and complain about the one guy who never plays defence? No sense in getting worked up over it.
I played baseball for most of my life, and it has certainly colored my personality. Baseball is the type of sport where it is nigh-impossible for one good player to carry a team. In basketball or football (I never played/watched hockey, so I couldn't tell you how that worked), the right player in the right position can carry a team easily. Just look at the likes of LeBron James, or better yet, Cam Newton, who basically single-handedly won Auburn a national title. In baseball, no matter how good your best players are, your team is only as good as your weakest link, and if he's making mistakes constantly, he's going to cost you games. I should know, I've done it myself several times.

Whenever I've played recreational sports, it was as part of an organization. I expect my teammates to perform to the best of their ability, just as I will perform to the best of my ability, even if it's a non-conference matchup. Those games might be time to experiment, but once it becomes obvious that the experiment isn't working, you make the adjustments you need to pull out the win. You can always try again with the next cupcake.

The whole point of this game isn't to play whatever you want. The point is to work with your team and swap to whatever would be most effective at countering the other team's composition. That's why Blizzard lets you swap heroes on the fly, unlike other MOBAs when you are locked into the hero you chose until the match is over.
Great sports analogy! Only you, know, against you. Do you know why you 'take every game seriously' in your sports leagues? Because the games are the rarity, and practice is the investment of your time. Quick play is practice. You can tell people in QP to 'stop practicing and get serious' when you're losing QP at the exact same moment it becomes okay for me to tell you to chill out and just stop trying to win so hard. OH! Right! Neither of us have the right or authority to dictate how another person plays! Guess that settles that.

If you want to play competitive, do so. Don't go to QP and tell your teammates to play it like comp. And if you want to win more often than not in QP but aren't? Pre-made groups.

Btw, in your mind, where are people supposed to practice? The VS AI modes are no substitute for humans, and if everyone played by your rules, only the core meta would be picked....
 

SlumlordThanatos

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Elijin said:
I think you're misunderstanding me. Lemme quote:

SlumlordThanatos said:
I'm also not saying that they're not allowed to practice, they just need to recognize when they've become a liability and swap to something more effective. They can always try again next match.
Practice is when you go to the firing range and when you play against bots. You can work on mechanics and fundamentals there, but you can't actually put them to use, just like in real life. Hitting in the batting cage isn't the same as taking pitches from another player, but that's how it works.

Quick Play matches are the nonconference matchups against "cupcakes". You play games against smaller schools with weaker teams in order to figure out what works in an actual game setting, and to put those things you learned against target dummies and bots into practice. You use this time to experiment with new lineups and positions, and to gain experience you're going to need for when things get tough. But, when it becomes clear that it isn't working, you make the changes you need in order to win. Because, you know, it's a competition, and losing sucks. You don't stick with the same thing and expect things to get better, because that's the definition of "insanity".

Competitive are the conference games. These games matter, because they determine your tournament seeding when District rolls around. You don't screw around here, you don't experiment. You go with what works, all the time, every time.

I'm not going into QP and expecting everyone to play it like Comp. I just hate it when people insist on playing Widowmaker despite getting murdered by Winston or D.Va every time they show their face, or refusing to stand on the point in favor of target practice. I do like to win, even in Quick Play.
 

Elijin

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SlumlordThanatos said:
I like things and thus feel entitled to dictate to strangers how they should spend their leisure time based on my preferences.
Get some friends to play with. If you don't like that answer, grin and bare it or stop playing.
 

SlumlordThanatos

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Elijin said:
SlumlordThanatos said:
I like things and thus feel entitled to dictate to strangers how they should spend their leisure time based on my preferences.
Get some friends to play with. If you don't like that answer, grin and bare it or stop playing.
Who's the entitled one? The guy who wants to work with his team in order to win, or the guy who is selfish, doesn't work with his team, and throws the game because he wanted to play Widowmaker into a 3x3 comp?

Also, resorting to petty insults? I'm trying to be civil here.
 

Elijin

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SlumlordThanatos said:
Elijin said:
SlumlordThanatos said:
I like things and thus feel entitled to dictate to strangers how they should spend their leisure time based on my preferences.
Get some friends to play with. If you don't like that answer, grin and bare it or stop playing.
Who's the entitled one? The guy who wants to work with his team in order to win, or the guy who is selfish, doesn't work with his team, and throws the game because he wanted to play Widowmaker into a 3x3 comp?

Also, resorting to petty insults? I'm trying to be civil here.
I am unclear on the petty insult. Was it get some friends? I'm not trying to imply you don't have friends. I'm saying gather up friends and play with them if you are finding public games with randoms aren't going the way you'd like.

I readily encourage everyone to try whatever suits them in QP. Its not ranked, nothing is on the line, and its a game played for fun. Switching off the moment something becomes hard or suboptimum sounds like a huge snoozefest. Maybe they'll even learn a few ways to increase their survivability and effectiveness when they're on the end of a bad matchup.

You will continue to respond with 'I find winning fun, so everyone needs to play to win at all times' while I continue to roll my eyes at your total lack of self awareness in dictating how other people should play. All while saying you have your personal preferences (winning, even if it means switching to the meta choices) and shouldn't have to change how you play (having fun and trying things that may or may not work well in the end / accepting your team is less invested than you and doesn't see things your way) to accommodate others.
 

SlumlordThanatos

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Elijin said:
I am unclear on the petty insult.
Here, I'll show you.
Elijin said:
SlumlordThanatos said:
I like things and thus feel entitled to dictate to strangers how they should spend their leisure time based on my preferences.
You don't think what you wrote was a bit...rude?

I readily encourage everyone to try whatever suits them in QP. Its not ranked, nothing is on the line, and its a game played for fun. Switching off the moment something becomes hard or suboptimum sounds like a huge snoozefest. Maybe they'll even learn a few ways to increase their survivability and effectiveness when they're on the end of a bad matchup.

You will continue to respond with 'I find winning fun, so everyone needs to play to win at all times' while I continue to roll my eyes at your total lack of self awareness in dictating how other people should play. All while saying you have your personal preferences (winning, even if it means switching to the meta choices) and shouldn't have to change how you play (having fun and trying things that may or may not work well in the end / accepting your team is less invested than you and doesn't see things your way) to accommodate others.
Are you even reading my posts?

I'm not saying people aren't allowed to practice. I'm saying that they should recognize when their chosen hero isn't working and swap accordingly.

I'm not going to get pissy just because you picked Widowmaker, or Symmetra, or Bastion, or any other weaker-than-average hero. They have the things they are good at, and none of them are useless. If they want to practice, go for it!

A big part of learning to play a hero is knowing when you're being countered, or when the situation is a poor fit for your hero (think Symmetra on point B defense). When that happens, continuing to throw yourself against an enemy is foolish and you're doing yourself and your team a disservice. It's not like you can't choose the same hero next game and see if it works then. Hell, if the enemy changes to counter your new hero, you can change back. That's the whole point of the game.

I don't understand. Do people actually enjoy getting killed repeatedly, being useless, and costing your team the game? If so, and you do nothing to fix it, isn't that placing your enjoyment over that of others?

Are people who enjoy winning, even a little bit, a minority?
 

Elijin

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Youre stuck in a loop. No matter how you want to phrase it, the core is 'People should realise their way isn't working and switch to my way!'.

There's not even a problem with your way. But people are free to choose other ways.

If you think what I've said is rude, its because you cannot budge from the core position of 'My way is the only way, and other ways of thinking are wrong.'

Not to mention you play out this logic in worst possible case scenarios. Constantly dying? Throwing yourself into the meat grinder? No fun dying constantly? None of those need to happen. Last night a friend and I were messing about in QP. He's only just purchased it, so the matchmaking pool is not great with him. The teams were not well balanced, and ours seemed to be a no hoper, so after a few unsatisfying pushes, we switched to Widow's and practiced anticipating their movement. We also got a feel for fighting characters who are counters, because its an interesting way of finding their weak points in the interactions between characters. Both to exploit vs, and defend against.

Then again, being so geared to winning like you are, I imagine you just read up / watch videos and bank all the 'pro' level knowledge without spending effort to understand interactions personally. Because that's time spent on the backfoot exploring the possibilities, rather than winning.
 

the_dramatica

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Dirty Hipsters said:
You can't lone wolf the game, and you can't clutch games by yourself, but that doesn't mean that there's a low skill ceiling.
There's certainly a low individual skill cieling. The team skill cieling is wasted however, forming a reliable team of good players is insanely hard, and there's no soloq in the game, so you don't get credit for playing alone.
 
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the_dramatica said:
Dirty Hipsters said:
You can't lone wolf the game, and you can't clutch games by yourself, but that doesn't mean that there's a low skill ceiling.
There's certainly a low individual skill cieling. The team skill cieling is wasted however, forming a reliable team of good players is insanely hard, and there's no soloq in the game, so you don't get credit for playing alone.
I disagree, while a pro won't be able to carry a team to victory, I've seen insane team kills by individuals, please go watch streams/highlights from pro players and still try to tell me there is a low individual skill ceiling.

The game does revolve around team skill, which is great, and forming a reliable team isn't *that* difficult, especially if people are good/great at lots of different heroes, making different team counters/compositions is more key than individual skill level, which is a breath of fresh air from all the COD/Battlefield games that have run rampant for the past decade in terms of popularity.