Overwatch Promotes Bad Game Design

[Epyc Wynn]

Overwatch Promotes Bad Game Design

Overwatch is pretty and sounds nice, and from those perspectives it's a decent piece of art. But as a game, Overwatch is a poor example of game design. In advance, I will be for obvious reasons if you are familiar with the game, be comparing what Overwatch is doing to what Team Fortress 2 did and why it is not okay to give Overwatch the same treatment Team Fortress 2 received.

Issue 1: No Story Line

Overwatch has no story line. And when I say Overwatch I mean the game itself not the online lore with the videos and the drawings and the Jeff Kappy's tidbits in the Blizzard forums. They have all the necessary assets to make a proper storyline for the game. Online they have plenty of high quality animations and thorough lore, and in the game they have functional events built upon bots with their own bosses. So even though Overwatch COULD very easily have its own storyline, they choose not to. Why does everyone, and I mean EVERYONE in the gaming community, give them a free pass for that? TF2 was a puzzle piece to the Orange Box so you didn't lose money by not having a story in that game and later TF2 was made free, so it's fine they didn't have a story and the videos were a nice later touch. Overwatch on the other hand unabashedly uses content online you have to go out of your way to find and considering the difference in video views to game purchases, it is a concrete bet the vast majority of Overwatch players have not viewed most of the online related content. That content should have been included inside the game and been worked into a storymode. They could have even updated that storymode in chapters like how they are adding events with waves of bots; but they don't. Speaking of the events:

Issue 2: Giving but then Taking away Content

Team Fortress 2 has a Halloween and a Christmas event that come and go (mainly the Halloween one is what most people pay attention to). But otherwise, they rarely have a big event you can't access again once it is gone. A main example of this was the Mann vs Machine update in which players got permanent access to a you v waves of bots game. Now besides the obvious fact Overwatch ripped these concepts from TF2 which is acceptable given their broadness, what isn't acceptable is how they handled it. Overwatch had Lucio ball, Mei's Snowball game (admittedly not that great), the amazing Halloween robot waves, the even better bot waves from the anniversary. Now, why does nobody complain about the fact they then take away this content? Why is it okay for a game to regularly give you large doses of content in the form of game modes and skins, only to later take it away? That is a middle finger to me and makes me angry I have to wait for content in a game I paid for only for in many cases, it to never appear again. I bought the game assuming the developers would regularly update the game with content, but what I did not expect was they'd take it away and lock the content forever. And the only, way to get skins after that, is if you have an unreal amount of spare coins due to spending a lot or playing the game for an excessive amount of time. Now with Year of the Rooster it is shown that developers are aware of this as they kept the capture-the-flag mode in the arcade permanently afterwards. Why would they not do the same with all the other events? I bought a game expecting content to be added, and what I got was content added only to later be taken away.

Issue 3: Convoluted Character Abilities

Overwatch, is a game everyone and their mother's uncle seems to own. Yet, for some reason, when it comes to the core mechanics of the game being way too complicated, people don't complain about this either. Every single character comes with at least 2 unique alternate abilities and an ULT. Why not have at least one or two characters with no alternate abilities or just one? Why does every character HAVE to have an ULT? Why does every character NEED to have some unique ability rather than just be slightly-different? You could easily create many great new characters by just simplifying already existing characters to go from 4 alternate actions to just 2, 1, or none. Why does every single fucking character HAVE to have these extra complicated pieces that make the game that much more difficult for the typical person to enjoy because it's too hard to follow how every single piece is interacting with all the other enemy characters and abilities. There is a saying that less is more. I like variety, but too much makes the game hard to enjoy because it progressively becomes a convoluted mess. And to those of you who may have some doubts about this being a problem, I believe this next issue might make this issue a bit harder to ignore:

Issue 4: Buffing and Nerfing the Game Too Strongly Too Often

... I don't know where to begin with how ridiculous BAD, this problem is, but let me try and explain it concisely. Altering a weapon's power by 5-10% in damage or speed, that's a run-of-the-mill nerf or buff. Now, should they have play-tested more effectively and not had to buff/nerf it in the first place? Yeah, but it's an understandable mild error that is within the healthy realm of human nature when it comes to game design. Having to up a character's health by 25% (Zenyatta), destroying a character's ability to hook-and-kill in one go as was a key aspect of their character for more than a year (Roadhog), decreasing a character's heal rate from 100% to 50% (Ana), decreasing armor by 200 points and damage by 33% (D.Va), and this is just a handful from many other game-changing buffs and nerfs. These aren't subtle and they aren't balanced. This feels less like a Triple-A game and more like the beta for a game that isn't finished being tweaked. When your game is still being nerfed and buffed to such ridiculous degrees, a year after having been released, you know you fucked up balancing the numbers. Some characters are a joke while others are over-powered and this problem still isn't solved. When your fucking consumer, has to actively worry you will somehow break the character they main, you have failed as a game creator to treat your playerbase well. TF2 did mild nerfs and buffs on specific weapons and kept things subtle yet noticeable without making people paranoid. Hell, there are entire YouTube channels DEVOTED to reporting these nerfs and buffs not as something that is part of a poorly balanced game, but instead as AMAZING NEWS (like cumment and subscrub). It's a joke and it shows how poorly coded Overwatch fundamentally is and how much people have let the game trick them into thinking it is great when it is in fact incredibly flawed and poorly handled to an unacceptable degree. And speaking, of breaking the game regularly:

Issue 5: Developers Breaking Overwatch if you don't use it how they want you to

What I am about to get into is a more nuanced issue but when you deal with it, it will absolutely piss you off. I play Competitive often when I go on Overwatch. But once in a while a problem happens during a competitive match. My Internet has gone out. My PS4 encountered an error that automatically ejected the disk due to my eject button overheating. I have been called away by someone needing my immediate help. These are reasonable things and if we were dealing with a normal online game or even just a normal game, you would not be punished for these things. But OH NO NOT IN JEFF KAPLAN'S WORLD ************ YOU GOTTA PAY THE PRICE. If you leave too often for whatever reason whether purposeful or not, you can receive a great variety of punishments. Some of these include, temporary bans, giant experience point deducations (I got -75% for a console glitch), extended competitive bans, and permanent competitive bans. How dare the developers punish me for wanting to get up and not play their god damn game. How dare the developers threaten to break part of my game that I paid for, if my Internet sucks too often or if I have to go do something too often. I don't owe a damned thing to them yet the developers appear to stand by this mentality that it is a privilege, to play the game I bought. I bought the game, I should be able play it as I see fit WHEN I see fit. If the developers cannot understand this, then that is both unethical and a poor way of designing your game to handle leaving.

Conclusion

So, in short you have a game with no story line inside it, content that is given only to be later permanently taken away, characters with convoluted mechanics and designs, routine over-the-top buffing and nerfing of key elements of characters, and developers willing to break part of your game if you don't use it how they want you to even if it's not your fault. This, is bad game design. And by us unanimously praising this game, we allow Overwatch to promote bad game design.

 

[Epyc Wynn]

Issue 1: Not bad game design - Now not including accessibility to the official comics/lore stuff in-game is a bad choice as you are not recognizing the validity of it in-game - With this stance you could argue that everything labeled "official lore" is total crock
Tracer is heterosexual
Issue 2: I'd actually argue this is good continuing game development with additional content and all but bad practice making that same content potentially permanently inaccessible
See issue 5 for more on this
Issue 3: If children can get a grasp of the varying character abilities I'd call that some good game design
As for competitive you adapt
Issue 4: Not bad game design - Questionable tweaking at best
Issue 5: I'd argue you bought the right to access the ever changing online-only game titled "Overwatch" and with that you at the mercy of those changes - entitlement or other
As for the automated punishment system - that shit is brutal

And by us unanimously praising this game, we allow Overwatch to promote bad game design.

Speak for yourself and not others or at least specify financial supporters/patrons
Don't own it - never praised/endorsed it

 

[Choppaduel]

I would like to propose an addendum in 2 points that I feel you missed out on when criticizing Overwatch.

1. Monetization. As Jim Sterling has coined, Fee2Pay is the system which overwatch uses. The paid lootbox system insidiously exploits human nature, taking advantage of our propensity for gambling.

2. Narrow minded design, soley focused on getting as much of that e-Sports money as possible. Regardless of how fun mechanics might be, if they don't mimic the existing successful e-sports games, they dont get added.

In short, Overgreed sacrifices innovation and squanders its potential to make some extra dollars. Obviously, I don't expect Blizzard to try and make less money than is possible, but if they want my dollars, they need to do things like dedicated servers, support increased team sizes, and get rid of the Fee2Pay.

 

[DeliveryGodNoah_v1legacy]

1. So what. Why does every game need a story in game? Overwatch is a competitive online shooter. Story is a distracting, useless element in a game like this, as regardless how amazing the in game story could be, it would be eventually completely forgotten about while everyone is simply playing online matches anyway.

2. The content isn't being taken away. It's being cycled out. The game has only just been out a year, and they have already confirmed that the content from previous events will return (Lucio Ball is coming up again soon), and while we haven't reached the point yet, they have said that the game will likely have all the gamemodes available to play whenever at some point in the game's lifespan. I personally love the way they are handling this, as it not only keeps events special, but it's easily increasing the lifespan of the game.

3. It seems like no one is complaining about this because no one is having the issues you're proposing. I can't think of a single character that has an ability that is too hard to understand after five or ten minutes of practicing with it. It's a game of skill and knowledge, you're not meant to have infinite insight and proficiency with every character in the game right away. You start the game, go through the tutorial, and then join a few matches with similarly skilled players. Or bots for that matter if you're finding the pressure of live combat too distracting. You build up your familiarity with the characters over time.
As for why must every character have their own special abilites, it's so they are all unique from each other. If you can't make the character feel unique to play, then why fucking bother adding a new character?

4. Yes, it's a difficult balancing act trying to make every character effective at what they do while having so many unique charaters. At least they're fucking trying. Even games with only 6 classes have issues balancing their game, and Blizzard is juggling 24! I'd be impressed that the game is functional at all. But it's more than functional. Even characters at their most imbalanced are still beatable by a competent player.

5. I do feel like with proper effort, Blizzard can find a way for the game to recognize a hardware or network fault, and a player who got salty that they weren't being healed every 2 seconds and just left the match. This issue does need to be better addressed, as even with literally exhausting every effort possible to prevent it, I still lose connection to the game. Not the internet, JUST Overwatch. (And other Blizzard titles specifically)

 

[Gizen]

I feel like every single point you raised could be responded to with the exact same answer: Have you heard of this game called League of Legends? Seriously, League takes every single thing you're complaining about, and ramps it up to a thousand, and as a consequence of its 'bad game design' it has obviously languished in obscurity, as evidenced by you having never heard of it... Oh wait, no, it's actually become the most popular competitive multiplayer game in the entire world, a title which it has held for years. You don't get to obtain a position like that and maintain it for so long with 'bad game design'.

In truth, there's absolutely no actual bad game design in any of the things you're complaining about. Every point you raise is purely opinion, and not an opinion that's widely shared considering Overwatch and LoL's high popularity. Hell, points #2-5 all could all be argued to actually be good game design, while #1 has nothing to do with game design at all.

The sad thing is that Overwatch has ACTUAL bad design issues in it, like the lootbox system which is so shit that even Blizzard is admitting it and finally fixing it (and even then, it's a poor fix) as an example, but you're not bringing up any of them.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

I dunno, guys. I don't like 2. at all either. I think it's pretty bullshit. But then, I'm not exactly one to be told what to do in the first place.

 

[lionsprey]

Issue 1. that's only your opinion
Issue 2. that's also only your opinion
Issue 3. the game is rated T for teen. the average teen should be able to grasp how to use the different characters at a basic level.(soldier you point and shoot right click to fire a missile. press he to throw down a healing thing. sprint with shift and use your ult to auto aim. it's not hard)
Issue 4. i kinda agree with. i agree that they do too big nerfs but i would prefer they did smaller balance changes more often.
Issue 5. is more of a grey area. something you have to take into account is that if you play comp and something happens that makes you DC the game is not only ruined for you it's ruined for 11 other people as well.

I would like to propose an addendum in 2 points that I feel you missed out on when criticizing Overwatch.

1. Monetization. As Jim Sterling has coined, Fee2Pay is the system which overwatch uses. The paid lootbox system insidiously exploits human nature, taking advantage of our propensity for gambling.

2. Narrow minded design, soley focused on getting as much of that e-Sports money as possible. Regardless of how fun mechanics might be, if they don't mimic the existing successful e-sports games, they dont get added.

In short, Overgreed sacrifices innovation and squanders its potential to make some extra dollars. Obviously, I don't expect Blizzard to try and make less money than is possible, but if they want my dollars, they need to do things like dedicated servers, support increased team sizes, and get rid of the Fee2Pay.

both of these i agree on completely the loot box system is utter trash and blizzard balancing and testing is only for high skill and competitive players with awesome coordination making some characters ridiculous at low rank (im training up my widowmaker just to counter phara.)

 

[EbonBehelit]

1: The story of Overwatch isn't particularly important, and is only fleshed out enough to provide context to the setting. Overwatch is a team-based multiplayer shooter, so this is fine.

2: Holding time-limited events isn't exclusive to Overwatch: It's actually a fairly effective strategy for spiking interest and the playerbase of a game - if only temporarily. Many games like this tend to chain holidays/events in relatively quick succession to try and keep interest up.
Besides, many events - and the content that came with them - tend to reappear every year.

3: Each character in Overwatch has a primary fire, secondary fire, two tertiary actions (Shift and Q), and an ULT (E) - 5 actions total.

This is not complicated.

The vast majority of abilities and firing modes can be sussed out upon using them once. Furthermore, the tooltips for each character's abilities are only a few words long. This is excellent design, and provides a nice contrast to another popular team-based multiplayer game: League of Legends.

Seriously, go and read the tooltips on LoL's newest released/reworked champions and tell me Overwatch is convoluted. Or even better, go play an MMO. Any MMO.

4: I sorta agree on this point. It's Blizzard though. Over nerfing/buffing with impunity is kinda what they do.

5: Sounds to me like the system is working as intended and you're making excuses for raging out of games. Overheating eject button? At least make them believable, mate.

 

[sXeth]

Issue 1: No Story Line

Well yeah. Its pretty lazy to not flesh out your IP in the IP's debut title itself. This is the big launch point, the defining title in a potential franchise. And its made worse because they do have their lore and so on, its just so completely inevident in the game. To make a comparison, even your fighting games usually have an intro and outro of their ladder mode for each character (even before the full on story modes of some of the newer ones)

Issue 2: Giving but then Taking away Content

It'd be nice if content was simply made available, but then again, there's some validity to having unique or individual "loot" in the game. As long as its not actual gameplay alterations, I wouldn't say completely its a bad idea.

Issue 3: Convoluted Character Abilities

This is kind of symptomatic of something I've observed in general. Overwatch (despite being a full priced officially releasedgame), usues an early access model. Anemic initial game content. Updates over time. Where this plays into the ability system is that they're still filling out an early blueprint of the roster, and the heroes who have passives, or stance switches, or other variant plays tend to show up later. Following that sort of early access pattern, and with some examples from MOBA experience, it'd be over the next year or so when heroes start rolling out that break the basic molds.

Issue 4: Buffing and Nerfing the Game Too Strongly Too Often

As I noted above, its following an Early Access/Beta strategy (despite being a full priced launched game). Rapid fire rollercoaster balance switches are par for the course there.

Issue 5: Developers Breaking Overwatch if you don't use it how they want you to

Yeah, online games that have issues with quits should probably go for a reward system for staying rather then a punishment system. There are too many legitimate reasons that can result in an AFK or disconnection that false flag someone. Though there's a broader trend across gaming in the last 4 or 5 years of having this toxic idea of no pausing or accommodation for the fact that its a game, and it is ultimately superseded by most other things in life.

Conclusion

Is Overwatch not well designed? Probably. Its initial state is a remnant mode of a failed project that happened to resemble a hugely successful (but somewhat dated) game. So they shined that up slightly and dumped it out as a "full game", as an immediate cash grab (particularly with the console copies being double priced and the whole nonsense on PC where they buried the link to the basic version and promoted only the Origins edition.). Then threw in their little RNG gamble box system for microtransactions on top (which is an Activision staple at this point).

Will it continue to be succesful anyways? Likely. If they keep updating it, they might even have something resembling a full game by holiday season, and can put out Overwatch : For Reals This Time Edition that might turn some negative opinions around. Which has become a trend of its own (Final Fantasy 14, Evolve, and Destiny have all done the same. Evolve got its plug pulled soon after the Evolve 2.0 thing, but the other two basically reset themselves.).

Is this a bad concept for gaming? I would say yes. Released but "Free Updates over Time" is just renaming Early Access in a way that sounds like you're getting benefits for buying an unfinished game, and its creeping in a lot on the AAA side now. Overwatch, GTA 5, and No Mans Sky are all high profile examples of games launching then making up their deficit of content with updates. OVerwatch is unique to the other two in that they never really promised other content, of course (other then the videos possibly misleading to some sort of story depth). The "Buy the game, then wait a year (No Mans Sky) or 2 (GTA 5)" for a game to actually deliver their basic content is going to jade the base out quickly, beyond absurd fan boys.

Footnote : Hitman and presumably FF7 with their "episodic" releases would be a similar case. Although with Hitman the gameplay was all their in episode 1, just the levels were held back. A more distressing case is perhaps Titanfall 2, where the updates have been rather sparse, possibly because of lackluster sales. Which shows the potential negative of the approach, where the game never gets its completed state because the initial sales of the protoversion don't fit the publishers whim.

 

[Lufia Erim]

1) Destiny did this first. And it still has a pretty solid player base. Blame activision/Bungie for making this acceptable practice.

2)This is done to prevent spliting the player base too thin. Too many modes means less peoplr playing each mode.

3) Balance. If you have characters with less skills then they need to have advantages someonr else. It could be done, but it's hard. I personally would like to see a stance switch character.

4) balance is hard. Sometimes they overcompensate it happens.

5) if you have bad internet, dont play online games.

 

[Epyc Wynn]

Issue 6: Diversity for Diversity's Sake

This is a bit more of a subjective and political point so it isn't in the OP, but I never liked this encyclopedic approach to diversity that Overwatch took. Psychological disorders, sexualities, sexes, ages, cultures, fandoms, these are the ingredients to create the perfect little girls these are being treated less as unique aspects of the characters carefully used with a real meaning behind them, and more like customization features. There is nothing wrong with a character having a disorder or a sexuality or a culture tied to them. But, if the character has a disorder or sexuality or any other core feature added to them not because it enhances their character's meaning, but instead because it enhances the overall diversity of the cast, that is not improving the character roster, it's just diversity for diversity's sake. I mean, this point is pretty self-explanatory if you take 5 minutes to look through this roster and contemplate the lore and backgrounds tied to each of these characters. In a good story whether written, drawn, or in a video game, I expect for each character to exist for a reason and have corresponding quirks and traits that add necessary related depth. But if each character's depth is just, one extra new trait, quirk, mental disorder, sexuality, sex, culture, fandom, or physical quirk like being a robot or a monkey... for the sake of diversity rather than making a truly great character, doesn't that take away from the overall unique meaning of each character? Overwatch treats entire countries and ways of life as only worth using as customization options rather than as important places and ways of living that deserve their own unique appreciation outside of being there for the sake of being there. On the other hand this game doesn't have an in-game storyline so maybe I shouldn't even care about the meaning behind the characters in the first place.



Final note: This is a problem you can observe Tumblr often promulgating for instance:

 

[Gizen]

Issue 6: Diversity for Diversity's Sake

This is a bit more of a subjective and political point so it isn't in the OP, but I never liked this encyclopedic approach to diversity that Overwatch took. Psychological disorders, sexualities, sexes, ages, cultures, fandoms, these are the ingredients to create the perfect little girls these are being treated less as unique aspects of the characters carefully used with a real meaning behind them, and more like customization features. There is nothing wrong with a character having a disorder or a sexuality or a culture tied to them. But, if the character has a disorder or sexuality or any other core feature added to them not because it enhances their character's meaning, but instead because it enhances the overall diversity of the cast, that is not improving the character roster, it's just diversity for diversity's sake. I mean, this point is pretty self-explanatory if you take 5 minutes to look through this roster and contemplate the lore and backgrounds tied to each of these characters. In a good story whether written, drawn, or in a video game, I expect for each character to exist for a reason and have corresponding quirks and traits that add necessary related depth. But if each character's depth is just, one extra new trait, quirk, mental disorder, sexuality, sex, culture, fandom, or physical quirk like being a robot or a monkey... for the sake of diversity rather than making a truly great character, doesn't that take away from the overall unique meaning of each character? Overwatch treats entire countries and ways of life as only worth using as customization options rather than as important places and ways of living that deserve their own unique appreciation outside of being there for the sake of being there. On the other hand this game doesn't have an in-game storyline so maybe I shouldn't even care about the meaning behind the characters in the first place.

The entire notion of 'diversity for the sake of diversity' being a bad thing is a bullshit complaint with no substance behind it, but then the rest of your complaints have been nothing but whiny bitching so it shouldn't be a surprise. If a character is black, or gay, or female, or 'different' in some way, it's 'bad' unless it's used to add 'depth', but it's totally okay for a character to be a straight white 'normal' male even if that adds nothing to their character. You wouldn't bat an eye despite the same lack of 'depth', and don't even try to pretend like you would, because if that was the case then you'd be talking about a lack of depth to begin with instead of focusing on diversity.

Furthermore, the argument that these traits are being used as 'customization' is flat out stupid, because A. It's not a form of customization in any way, shape or form because that implies you can change it when you can't. Tracer will always want to have sex with other ladies whether you want it or not, and no other character plays the same way she does. If you want to use her playstyle, you're going to be playing a non-straight lady whether you want to or not, with no way to change either her sexual preferences or her playstyle. There's no customization involved in that. And even more importantly, B. If it WAS customization, you're implying that it would be bad. Oh god forbid that people who aren't straight white men are allowed to create characters that represent them.

 

[Neverhoodian]

Speaking as a former TF2 player who became disillusioned with its direction and jumped ship to Overwatch...

1. Both games have a story, albeit told mostly via other mediums like comics and animated shorts. Overwatch has only been out for a year, yet they've already constructed a narrative that, while somewhat predictable and cliche, is still thematically cohesive with the game. The same cannot be said of TF2, which ditched its sinister undertones of a world owned by two faceless mega-corporations hiring mentally unstable mercenaries to fight proxy wars with one another to "LEL RANDUMB SCOUT'S MOM SAXTON HALE POOPY JOE BABOON UTERUS!!!" As for the cost issue, I bought TF2 when it was part of The Orange Box and Overwatch when it was on sale. I basically paid the same amount for each game, so it's a moot point for me (though I can see where you're coming from if you bought OW at full price).

I will agree with you on the whole "locking event items/modes away," though. That's bullshit.

2. I'm mostly in agreement with this. I hate it when multiplayer games lock content away. To be fair though, TF2 had its own share of frustrations. While I despise Blizzard's item unlock system via their exploitative loot crates, at least said unlocks are cosmetic only. TF2 on the other hand has the gall to keep gameplay-changing weapon unlocks behind a timewall/paywall, requiring large amounts of play time and/or money spent for a new player to get their hands on them. Yes, they can try trading with someone, but that opens up a whole new can of worms (risk of scammers, pestering players trying to just play the game, the whole cancerous TF2 trading subcommunity, etc.). And hey, at least you can open OW's crates without having to cough up extra money for a key.

3. While I'm not a particular fan of the ult mechanic as I feel it's unbalanced between heroes and plays too large of a role in determining the outcome of a match, it's not that different from TF2's bullshit critical hit system. Also, TF2 has a MASSIVE learning curve that can be absolutely byzantine for someone unfamiliar with older FPS mechanics.

4. Yes, Blizzard is rather ham-fisted when it comes to balance changes (RIP Roadhog), but TF2 has the same problem with regards to weapon unlocks. Remember when the Righteous Bison was a viable sidegrade that nobody complained about until Valve inexplicably nerfed it into the ground? Remember when the Sandman could do this (took them over a year to rebalance it, too)?

Some unlocks like the Sandvich and Ubersaw are so vital that you pretty much need them in order to be viable at higher levels of play. Hell, entire classes are shunned in comp play because they're underpowered or too situational. That is not balanced.

5. I don't play competitive mode for Overwatch, so its leaver penalties don't affect me. Still, the system sounds too heavy-handed. As others have pointed out, it would have been better for Blizzard to provide extra incentives for sticking around instead of increased punishments for leaving.

6. Hoo boy, you just HAD to open that can of worms, didn't you?

I don't really understand the whole outcry regarding Overwatch's diversity, as it has always been a core tenet of their character design. Isn't it a good thing that the sexuality or mental condition of the characters isn't seen as a big deal by others in-universe? It indicates that the game world has moved beyond such arbitrary judgements and sees them as people instead of walking labels. Besides, it's easy enough to ignore in the actual game if it really bothers you. None of the characters call out Tracer for being gay during a match, nor does she ever bring it up herself.

See, there's a fundamental difference between your attempted comparison of OW's cast and that Undertale fan art. The latter is taking clearly defined characters and twisting them into something they're not, giving them traits they clearly don't have for the sake of pushing an agenda. Overwatch never confirmed or even hinted that Tracer was heterosexual or that Symmetra was not autistic prior to revealing such biographical tidbits.

I don't think you realize one important aspect of OW's diversity: prime waifu/husbando material. People like to joke about it, but I think it actually has a profound impact on the game's popularity. The avalanche of fan art and animations ranging from SFW to lewd to straight-up porn is an undeniable indicator of this. There's something for all sorts of tastes: male and female (and robot, if you're into that sort of thing), gay and straight, ass and titties, smol and EXTRA THICC, whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, etc. It's a veritable cornucopia of sexiness.

As for the whole "boo national stereotypes" claim...D.Va is extremely popular among Korean gamers, while Zarya has a massive Russian fan base. If they don't have a problem with it, why should you?

 

[DeliveryGodNoah_v1legacy]

Issue 6: Diversity for Diversity's Sake

This is a bit more of a subjective and political point so it isn't in the OP, but I never liked this encyclopedic approach to diversity that Overwatch took. Psychological disorders, sexualities, sexes, ages, cultures, fandoms, these are the ingredients to create the perfect little girls these are being treated less as unique aspects of the characters carefully used with a real meaning behind them, and more like customization features. There is nothing wrong with a character having a disorder or a sexuality or a culture tied to them. But, if the character has a disorder or sexuality or any other core feature added to them not because it enhances their character's meaning, but instead because it enhances the overall diversity of the cast, that is not improving the character roster, it's just diversity for diversity's sake. I mean, this point is pretty self-explanatory if you take 5 minutes to look through this roster and contemplate the lore and backgrounds tied to each of these characters. In a good story whether written, drawn, or in a video game, I expect for each character to exist for a reason and have corresponding quirks and traits that add necessary related depth. But if each character's depth is just, one extra new trait, quirk, mental disorder, sexuality, sex, culture, fandom, or physical quirk like being a robot or a monkey... for the sake of diversity rather than making a truly great character, doesn't that take away from the overall unique meaning of each character? Overwatch treats entire countries and ways of life as only worth using as customization options rather than as important places and ways of living that deserve their own unique appreciation outside of being there for the sake of being there. On the other hand this game doesn't have an in-game storyline so maybe I shouldn't even care about the meaning behind the characters in the first place.



Final note: This is a problem you can observe Tumblr often promulgating for instance:

...when is this ever brought up IN GAME. Ever. Also, what does this have to do with game design? Like, at all? The game is designed as a MULTIPLAYER COMPETITIVE SHOOTER. What you're complaining about, story, character personality explanations (why on earth you think these characters NEED a reason for their race, religion, or sexuality is beyond me), that's all useless distractions from what the game is trying to do. You're originally complaining that the game is "badly designed", but how would a multiplayer competitive game focusing more on story not be badly designed? How would you even start with that? You know a game that tried to mesh story and multiplayer together? Titanfall, and it was a train wreck. Because NO ONE CARED. After the first time, it was just a waste of time. Even if it was better written and flashier, it would have been forgotten.

If you want a story, play a single player game. Why the fuck you think a multiplayer only title needs one, I don't know.

 

[DaCosta]

No need to act surprised when people don't complain about these things, it just means that they don't agree with you. Looks like you don't know what "bad game design" even is.

1. Not every game needs a story mode, and Overwatch, a multiplayer focused game, sure doesn't.

2. They cycle content, there's almost always something new to play, and not everything is available at once because it's not a good thing to thin out the userbase.

3. 3 abilities tops, plus an ult you use every few minutes is not convoluted, and they didn't go with less because the game would turn into just a regular FPS run and gun, and that'd be boring, or at the very least not much different from everything else in the market.

4. Makes me wonder how used you are to games like MOBAs. There is no such thing as perfect balance, so to avoid the meta going stale it's better to do big changes and shake things up. As for the Youtube channels, what? Have you gone all these years without learning what a Youtube channel dedicated to an online game is?

5. So the feature is working as intended. All is right in the world.

6. That's only true if you believe that being an american straight white male is the default state of being for humans, and you need an "excuse" to have your characters be anything other than that.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

*SNIP!*

Issue 1: No Story Line

While I AM really sad that the frankly awesome lore barely gets any exposure in-game, in a game like this can't really have both right out the gate.

Time spent making a full single player game would be time taken away from making sure the multiplayer stuff is as polished and perfect as possible, and vice-versa.

So they went with the option that perpetuates the most gameplay for the least amount of time/money, deciding that they could tell the story bits on the side.

I am sad about it, but I totally get it. That and as much as I enjoy a good story in a videogame, not every game needs a story. Bloody Roar isn't any less of a damn amazing fighting game because it doesn't have a story mode, for example. Same with Smash Bros. It's a great fighting game, and could by all rights have a damn good story mode, but it chose not to, and that's fine.

Issue 2: Giving but then Taking away Content

Yeah, I agree that it's lame. That being said, a lot of the event modes really lose their fun factor after a while, so I'm not that pissed that they take them down. That and they did say in a Dev Update that they plan to bring those modes back the following year, but with more content or improved in some way.

As for the costumes...Ok yeah. The loot box system sucks. I just don't care all that much since I play the game for the game, the skins and stuff are just a "Hey, you played for an hour and got a level, here's some glittery stuff, yay you" thing for me. I can't really bring myself to get all that worked up. The only skin I'm sad I missed out on was With Mercy, and even then I'm not that mad, as I'm head over heels for her Valkyrie skin already.

Issue 3: Convoluted Character Abilities

Wat.

Convoluted HOW? Every character has a small handful of abilities mapped to sensible key presses and they all make plenty of sense with how you use them.

Yes, you might forget an ability exists on a handful of characters if it's not something central to their playstyle (Orisa's Fortify, for example), but having come from League and HOTS, I find Overwatch's character skills are all pretty straightforward.

Also, having each character be massively different makes each one feel more impactful in what they do, and makes it easier to pinpoint the win or lose condition of a match (IE, We're losing because we're not dealing with that Symmetra)

Honestly, I think the game design skills on display here are pretty solid.

It's better than TF2, anyway, with the giant MESS of items that radically alter a character in ways I can't even predict what the hell they're going to do until it's too late and it turns out the spy was using a dead ringer and now the medic is dead and the people who thought they were dealing with a demoman are now cut down by a surprise sword attack that runs counter to his entire class.

Issue 4: Buffing and Nerfing the Game Too Strongly Too Often

Comes with the territory of a multiplayer game. And it's often better to make a bigger change than a smaller one, or at least that's what I hear pros say.

And you can't deny that the game is waaaay more balanced now than it used to be.

Mcree is now a viable (if not stellar) pick instead of being an unstoppable death machine.
Va is now pretty strong without being able to win 2v1s with impunity.
Widowmaker is a good pick without being able to dominate games solo.
Reinhardt remains a great tank without being basically mandatory.
Ana remains a fantastic healer without being able to solo heal an entire team from near death to full.
Even Orisa and Sombra who were both pretty weak at launch have found useful niches that let them shine.

As heavyhanded as some of the nerfs of buffs were, it inevitable led us to a much better game. So I'm not going to make a fuss.

Issue 5: Developers Breaking Overwatch if you don't use it how they want you to

While I definitely sympathize with your problems, here's the reason you got slapped with penalties in competitive:

By leaving the game, for any reason, you've just doomed your 5 teammates to playing a match 5v6, which they will most likely lose, and they will lose rank because of you leaving. You basically ruined the match for 5 people in a way they can't really come back from, and caused harm to their long term enjoyment by shafting their rating with a loss.

So yeah, it sucks that you got penalized when it's not really your fault. But you still wound up ruining several other players' experience.

 

[Arkham]

Why not have at least one or two characters with no alternate abilities or just one? Why does every character HAVE to have an ULT?

This thread is bait, right? Am I missing something?

 

[Epyc Wynn]

Why not have at least one or two characters with no alternate abilities or just one? Why does every character HAVE to have an ULT?

This thread is bait, right? Am I missing something?

To elaborate, I would much prefer if there were one or two characters with straightforward actions that need no ability activation and no ULT tacked on. Like, what if Doomfist was released but only had massive punching damage and armor and in exchange had no other abilities? What if there were characters that relied purely on their core basic attributes? Or better, what if there was a mode added to the game that replaced all the abilities and ULTs with buffs to the damage, health, and armor of the characters? Rather than making the gameplay more complicated than it needs to be with alternate abilities and ULTs I would much prefer having this simplified style of gameplay. As a frame of reference, I am a HUGE fan of how Legend of the Fat Princess ensured there was varied classes of characters without making it overly complicated.

And further, this overly complex design is an issue which has resulted in some characters becoming troll picks or mustpicks aka trash and OP. It is clearly why we have to deal with Blizzard frequently raping the meta with buffs and nerfs that lack any sense of subtlety and result in destroying any previous sense of balance the game might've still had; not that there was ever much of a strong sense of balance in Overwatch.