On a different note, it feels like nearly all my comp games are decided by the enemy Pharah and whether or not my team shoots at her. At my level (low 40s), good snipers are rare, so Pharah is usually free to pelt me with rockets without a care in the world. Anyone else feel this, or am I imagining things?
Given how much of a living hell it can be as Pharah with a sharp McCree or 76 on the enemy team, I think your feelings have some merit.
It's definitely a Pharah-centric meta. I did just win a game where we basically ignored the other team's Pharah because she was terrible, but usually, you gotta have at least your own combo and a S76/McCree to deal with her.
Just a bit about WAR and Baseball versus Overwatch - Reading a Baseball stat line tells you exactly how a game went. It's like reading a Chess log, in both of those cases you can completely rebuild the experience of the game without anything else other than the stat line. This simply isn't possible in Overwatch (nor the majority of games / sports / etc). As mentioned, medals in an Overwatch game can be incredibly good or completely inconsequential (and/or both) over the course of a game, with no way of telling how important that action was at the time of it's happening. It's straight up why the PotG system is completely pointless, as mathing out a live action variable needs more than just a stat line.
Trivial nuance to a statement I generally agree with but this is not actually true. A homerun to left field in Houston is often only a fly out to left in most other stadiums, for example. Real baseball stat people look at a lot more than the stat line. Judging an error is notoriously subjective, as well.
I do agree that Overwatch medals can be misleading, just like baseball stats. They are a measure, sometimes useful, sometimes not.
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Olivawgood name, isn't it?the foot of mt fujiRegistered Userregular
On a different note, it feels like nearly all my comp games are decided by the enemy Pharah and whether or not my team shoots at her. At my level (low 40s), good snipers are rare, so Pharah is usually free to pelt me with rockets without a care in the world. Anyone else feel this, or am I imagining things?
Given how much of a living hell it can be as Pharah with a sharp McCree or 76 on the enemy team, I think your feelings have some merit.
It's definitely a Pharah-centric meta. I did just win a game where we basically ignored the other team's Pharah because she was terrible, but usually, you gotta have at least your own combo and a S76/McCree to deal with her.
Pharah or Reaper seem to be the heroes who decide the most games in my experience
And usually it's because they sneak up and ult on the point, though in Reaper's case he doesn't even have to aim his
On a different note, it feels like nearly all my comp games are decided by the enemy Pharah and whether or not my team shoots at her. At my level (low 40s), good snipers are rare, so Pharah is usually free to pelt me with rockets without a care in the world. Anyone else feel this, or am I imagining things?
Given how much of a living hell it can be as Pharah with a sharp McCree or 76 on the enemy team, I think your feelings have some merit.
It's definitely a Pharah-centric meta. I did just win a game where we basically ignored the other team's Pharah because she was terrible, but usually, you gotta have at least your own combo and a S76/McCree to deal with her.
Pharah or Reaper seem to be the heroes who decide the most games in my experience
And usually it's because they sneak up and ult on the point, though in Reaper's case he doesn't even have to aim his
He has to aim himself. Picking the right place and time is the difference between a team wipe and a "Die-urrrgh!"
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
I've never seen a Symmetra be worth anything on KotH because KotH usually means Winston.
I haven't found him to be a showstopper for her or anything. Not sure the Winstons I've played against have been any good. Theoretically he's good against her turrets and obviously crushes her in a 1v1. Again, she really needs your team to not be getting crushed, because she's going to lose almost any fight where she's the main target and there's no distractions.
Might be that at higher skill levels she's trash, too.
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Orphanerivers of redthat run to seaRegistered Userregular
Symmetra is a character who in theory would be good for koth if your team can hold the point because she gives a heavy snowball advantage to her team
You can guess how well that holds up in most games though.
On a different note, it feels like nearly all my comp games are decided by the enemy Pharah and whether or not my team shoots at her. At my level (low 40s), good snipers are rare, so Pharah is usually free to pelt me with rockets without a care in the world. Anyone else feel this, or am I imagining things?
Given how much of a living hell it can be as Pharah with a sharp McCree or 76 on the enemy team, I think your feelings have some merit.
It's definitely a Pharah-centric meta. I did just win a game where we basically ignored the other team's Pharah because she was terrible, but usually, you gotta have at least your own combo and a S76/McCree to deal with her.
Pharah or Reaper seem to be the heroes who decide the most games in my experience
And usually it's because they sneak up and ult on the point, though in Reaper's case he doesn't even have to aim his
And Mercy
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GoodKingJayIIIThey wanna get mygold on the ceilingRegistered Userregular
I just watched our fucking Reinhardt stand around and do nothing for an entire payload escort mission. Like, he was literally 10 feet away from the moving payload and he was not doing anything. Just standing there.
I was playing Mercy and I could see him the entire game. He just puttered around for absolutely no reason.
Maybe I'm being overly harsh, but all the comics, and in fact all the lore for this game in all of its various forms, has always struck me as at best "kinda bad." I mean, that's par for the course with Blizzard stories, which have basically never been good, but, still...
There are certainly already methods to rank players/teams already that take into account more than just simple wins/losses, and I'm not just talking about relatively terrible "power rankings" that silly sports journalists do. I mean even hockey has a way give "loser points" when playing to overtime. I don't see why Blizzard can't implement one of these methods to make things not so black/white when it comes to giving out points. Even something as simple as regulation win-3, regulation loss-0, overtime win-2, overtime loss-1, would not incentivize playing to overtime, but still feel like you got some reward for playing a close game.
You can rank the whole team differently according to how much they won or lost by. But there's no way to rank individual player performance without introducing perverse incentives.
Sure there is. Statistics like WAR (wins above replacement) in baseball do exactly that. By comparing/weighing across how a particular player's team performs over multiple games, you can estimate the strength of a single player.
By what metric do you judge a player's performance?
I mean, this could probably be a paper/thesis in and of itself, but a naive (but straightforward) way to think about it is that a player i has strength x_i (which can and probably does change over time). When a team is made, the strength of the team is calculated by some function of each individual's strength (a sum or an average for example). This is compared against the opponent team's strength (again the exact function of how they are compared is not particularly important here). If they are close, then the teams are seen as relatively balanced, if not then relatively unbalanced. Then after the game is played, if the game was balanced, and if team A beat team B in a blowout (how a blowout is determined depends on the game type played) then you increase each player's strength on team A by a moderate amount, while similarly decreasing the strength of the players on team B. On the other hand, if the teams were unbalanced (say team A was much stronger than team , then if A crushes B, then the strengths don't change (or don't change much), while if B wins then the individual's on team B get a huge boost while team A would get a huge decrease. Thus you can rank each player by their individual skill.
I mean, usually WAR takes into account the player's position in baseball. And I could certainly see some kind of adaptation for the particular character, so that you could rank a player's Mercy play versus other Mercys.
I don't feel like this is a particularly novel idea. Perhaps I'm misuderstanding Death of Rats or zakkiel?
I'm not clear on how what you're describing differs from what Blizzard does: assign players individual ranks, throw them together in teams balanced by ranks, and adjust individual ranks after based on which team won. Baseball can't do this directly, so they're forced to use statistical models instead.
I'm talking about tracking individual metrics during the game - medals, for example. If you tie medals (or kills, or distance moved, or whatever) to rank, people will start to prioritize getting medals over doing the best thing to win, and it will be hugely detrimental to competitive play. So much so that I think ranked play would fall apart.
Maybe I'm being overly harsh, but all the comics, and in fact all the lore for this game in all of its various forms, has always struck me as at best "kinda bad." I mean, that's par for the course with Blizzard stories, which have basically never been good, but, still...
I kind of enjoyed the McCree and Junkrat/Roadhog comics. The others are bad, though, and this is the worst one yet.
Also, I'm a sucker for super heroes, so the Overwatch lore does it for me.
While the game is complex, there is a Cliff Notes order of operation for playing effectively in a way that won't make your teammates rage:
At all times: is your support being attacked? If no, resume normal order of operations. If yes, peel attacker.
Is point captured/payload moving? If no, capture point or move payload. If yes, assess if current crew is sufficient.
Is current crew on point/payload sufficient? If no, capture point or move payload. If yes, assess if enemy support is dead.
Is enemy support dead? If no, seek and destroy enemy support. If yes, assess if enemy tanks are dead.
Are enemy tanks dead? If no, seek and destroy or peel enemy tanks. If yes, assess most dangerous squishy status.
Is most dangerous squishy dead? If no, seek and destroy or peel enemy squishy.
Beyond that, which hero you should be playing, what angles you should be using, whether you should cluster or scatter is all going to depend on enemy team composition. There's plenty of good breakdowns of the game's meta out there.
Welp im done tanking for idiots. I will now join the rank of dps lock forever. By which I mean I am now learning dps characters , I mean if I already do more then them on tanks might as well get a guy thats good at it. Learning Mcree since I dont want to have to fight with the 76/reaper/pharrah mains.
Had a fun moment on Hollywood today. Two torbs set turrets up on the payload while I shielded them with Rhein. On replays the payload looked like a WW2 battleship, was pretty neat.
Yeah, I'm not sure the logic of
"Losses might be rough but you can be assured you'll have better games ahead when your rating stabilizes"
is totally true.
I've been trying out off-heroes in quick play and losing a bunch, and rather than finding myself in games of generally lower skill level I've been finding myself in games of Genji Instalocks, players who are <lvl20 and don't seem to fully grasp the mechanics yet, and players who are obviously better than the rest of the match and are just stopping by on their way upwards. There are many different ways to be bad in this game and at low MM you'll probably see all of them.
Yeah. Level 25 or no, I think I will never play comp.
I couldn't figure out where the mute button was. Just ended up taking off my headset instead of listening to adults tell each other to suck one anothers dick with various other insults to their mothers and ethnicities involved.
then before the game ended one of them said something that I won't repeat here about France.
just. . .really kind of ruined my day to see that kind of behavior.
Just had a team in competitive actually stop playing to start yelling at each other.
Just like 3 or 4 people throwing out the worst insults to one another while sitting in spawn. It was amazing.
Meanwhile i'm just watching the enemy payload move uncontested.
I had the most unsatisfying win of my life on Monday.
Some guy who sounds about 15 years old is immediately yelling into his mic, "HEY MY FRIEND [name] MAINS LUCIO STOP PLAYING LUCIO SO [friend] CAN PLAY LUCIO"
So for one thing it's like, jesus christ kid, stop shouting into the mic.
And then after our Lucio switches out, this shouting kid's friend wordlessly switches to Reinhardt, and never plays Lucio. w-why?
Then throughout the match, like, we're playing well together and winning, but also this shouting kid will periodically shit on teammates—like, say, "you're fucking GARBAGE pharah you can't aim rockets for shit"—who are actually playing just fine, in this game that we are winning.
And eventually his endless shit-talk gets so distracting that people are stopping just to argue back at him, and then we fall behind.
It goes to overtime, which we barely win while this kid shouts about our "awful comp" and how "none of you are doing anything to help I'm the only damage".
Just, the worst win, ever.
I made a game! Hotline Maui. Requires mouse and keyboard.
I don't really have a desire to play comp anymore for the time being, going to wait for it to get some more development for Season 2.
Dont feel bad about it man . A lot of people did their placement matches then never played again for that same reason. Among them my entire friends list. Im just here bashing my head against this wall out of stubbornness.
Ranked ruined League of Legends for me, so I won't be making that mistake again unless I have a full team of people to play with that aren't Rageface McAssface and Co. I find Overwatch to be too fun to pollute with the "Gotta tryhard to be good" mentality.
Yeah. Level 25 or no, I think I will never play comp.
I couldn't figure out where the mute button was. Just ended up taking off my headset instead of listening to adults tell each other to suck one anothers dick with various other insults to their mothers and ethnicities involved.
then before the game ended one of them said something that I won't repeat here about France.
just. . .really kind of ruined my day to see that kind of behavior.
For future reference, press P to bring up the voice comms screen. I don't know why it isn't in the options menu. Of course, this is assuming you're on PC. I have no idea how to do it on consoles.
Yeah. Level 25 or no, I think I will never play comp.
I couldn't figure out where the mute button was. Just ended up taking off my headset instead of listening to adults tell each other to suck one anothers dick with various other insults to their mothers and ethnicities involved.
then before the game ended one of them said something that I won't repeat here about France.
just. . .really kind of ruined my day to see that kind of behavior.
For future reference, press P to bring up the voice comms screen. I don't know why it isn't in the options menu. Of course, this is assuming you're on PC. I have no idea how to do it on consoles.
Playing with my brother, me as Mercy, him as Reinhardt, defending Numbani.
Him: "Reaper's above us, watch for ult."
Full team fight occurs, Reaper doesn't show. Our team wipes the enemy, seconds left on the clock.
Me: "He still up there?"
Him: "Yup, he's probably saving his ult for the perfect time for a Play of the Game. I'm gonna wait on him to drop down and charge him."
Me: "K."
We literally stand there for the last five seconds staring at the back left upper catwalk as Reaper, right on cue, drops down, hits his Q, and promptly gets smashed into the wall by a Rein charge.
Is there anything more disheartening, as a healer, than to take the looong walk from spawn to your team, see them all but one die on your rader before you get there, and then get hit by 3 ultimates just as you reach your last, critical-health teammate, who dies half a second before you do?
I hope that the Ana/competitive play is only limited to one character each patch drops before the end of season 2.
That way competitve is the place not to get 2 Tracers and 3 Genjis on your team when attacking anymore, or meeting 3 Torbjorns and 2 Bastions when trying to capture point A...
I also hope that the end of season rewards take into account the matches you've played, because if people who only did their placement matches and ended up around 50 and then never touched competitve get more rewards than someone who has struggled through 100 matches only to drop to rank 37 and get 50 wins, I'll be very cross...
I had a game today where we got stomped hard. Like, Points A and B capped in what felt like sub 3 minutes.
So much fucking salt and Bad Manners in chat. Sorry, "The truth cannot be Bad Manners" as one person put it.
Anytime that happens I get on mic and say, "we worked poorly together as a team, myself included." No one says anything after that usually.
"Pigfuckers. All of you!" has always been my go-to, but I might try that.
No, but I actually have something serious to say, which is that it's interesting how often it feels like your team sucks instead of..."OMG the other team is awesome." I try to think myself out of that trap, and sometimes I do notice, "Oh yeah, wow, the other team is really good and coordinated and skillful." And usually I can pinpoint 1 or 2 people on the other team who are particularly troublesome for me, and rage at/compliment them at the end of the match by saying "You were ridiculous, Genji." or whatever. Kind of a win/win except for the whole losing thing.
Is there anything more disheartening, as a healer, than to take the looong walk from spawn to your team, see them all but one die on your rader before you get there, and then get hit by 3 ultimates just as you reach your last, critical-health teammate, who dies half a second before you do?
Well there is one thing more disheartening. Finsihing off the enemy team poping all your ults then seeing their Mercy fly in and score a five man rez.
Is there anything more disheartening, as a healer, than to take the looong walk from spawn to your team, see them all but one die on your rader before you get there, and then get hit by 3 ultimates just as you reach your last, critical-health teammate, who dies half a second before you do?
Well there is one thing more disheartening. Finsihing off the enemy team poping all your ults then seeing their Mercy fly in and score a five man rez.
My reaction would be "that's an awesome Mercy." I'm weirdly un-salty when I get my ass beat by great players. On Tuesday we were gettin' served on Volskaya and I couldn't stop sayin' "this Winston is fucking amazing! He's always behind us the moment the fight starts!"
That guy/girl seriously taught me how dangerous Winston can be.
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
If you haven't tried it, Ana + Winston is a great combo. You can keep the heals up on the Winston without having to suicide up to the front lines like Mercy. Winston is a huge target and easy to hit with heals. He has his bubble for emergencies, or can just jump out. He is one of the best non-ultimate targets for Nano Boost, not only because he hits multiple targets, but his gun can't be blocked.
Ratsult2 on
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Play a round of KotH, we went whole hog. By that, I mean six Roadhogs. Which actually worked amazingly well, because it's actually pretty dang hard for a couple of Reaper to do anything when they stay alive briefly only because the Roadhogs keeping hooking him from each other. And then the ults started rolling in, at which time it became pretty much "fuck off, our point, you no touch".
Next round was all Winston, but we were quickly countered by all Reaper. Who we then countered with all Pharah. Who was then countered with all Soldier. Who then melted suuuuper fast with Return of Kong, in overtime for the win.
Good times.
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KoopahTroopahThe koopas, the troopas.Philadelphia, PARegistered Userregular
Finished my placements at 55. Just want to toss my hat in that Sudden Death is dumb.
Posts
It's definitely a Pharah-centric meta. I did just win a game where we basically ignored the other team's Pharah because she was terrible, but usually, you gotta have at least your own combo and a S76/McCree to deal with her.
Trivial nuance to a statement I generally agree with but this is not actually true. A homerun to left field in Houston is often only a fly out to left in most other stadiums, for example. Real baseball stat people look at a lot more than the stat line. Judging an error is notoriously subjective, as well.
I do agree that Overwatch medals can be misleading, just like baseball stats. They are a measure, sometimes useful, sometimes not.
Pharah or Reaper seem to be the heroes who decide the most games in my experience
And usually it's because they sneak up and ult on the point, though in Reaper's case he doesn't even have to aim his
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
He has to aim himself. Picking the right place and time is the difference between a team wipe and a "Die-urrrgh!"
I haven't found him to be a showstopper for her or anything. Not sure the Winstons I've played against have been any good. Theoretically he's good against her turrets and obviously crushes her in a 1v1. Again, she really needs your team to not be getting crushed, because she's going to lose almost any fight where she's the main target and there's no distractions.
Might be that at higher skill levels she's trash, too.
You can guess how well that holds up in most games though.
And Mercy
I was playing Mercy and I could see him the entire game. He just puttered around for absolutely no reason.
Why... why?!
Ana's comic.
Edit: It's...kinda bad...
Steam: MightyPotatoKing
I'm not clear on how what you're describing differs from what Blizzard does: assign players individual ranks, throw them together in teams balanced by ranks, and adjust individual ranks after based on which team won. Baseball can't do this directly, so they're forced to use statistical models instead.
I'm talking about tracking individual metrics during the game - medals, for example. If you tie medals (or kills, or distance moved, or whatever) to rank, people will start to prioritize getting medals over doing the best thing to win, and it will be hugely detrimental to competitive play. So much so that I think ranked play would fall apart.
I kind of enjoyed the McCree and Junkrat/Roadhog comics. The others are bad, though, and this is the worst one yet.
Also, I'm a sucker for super heroes, so the Overwatch lore does it for me.
Steam: MightyPotatoKing
At all times: is your support being attacked? If no, resume normal order of operations. If yes, peel attacker.
Is point captured/payload moving? If no, capture point or move payload. If yes, assess if current crew is sufficient.
Is current crew on point/payload sufficient? If no, capture point or move payload. If yes, assess if enemy support is dead.
Is enemy support dead? If no, seek and destroy enemy support. If yes, assess if enemy tanks are dead.
Are enemy tanks dead? If no, seek and destroy or peel enemy tanks. If yes, assess most dangerous squishy status.
Is most dangerous squishy dead? If no, seek and destroy or peel enemy squishy.
Beyond that, which hero you should be playing, what angles you should be using, whether you should cluster or scatter is all going to depend on enemy team composition. There's plenty of good breakdowns of the game's meta out there.
Bnet tag: Nermals#11601
Just had a team in competitive actually stop playing to start yelling at each other.
Just like 3 or 4 people throwing out the worst insults to one another while sitting in spawn. It was amazing.
Meanwhile i'm just watching the enemy payload move uncontested.
"Losses might be rough but you can be assured you'll have better games ahead when your rating stabilizes"
is totally true.
I've been trying out off-heroes in quick play and losing a bunch, and rather than finding myself in games of generally lower skill level I've been finding myself in games of Genji Instalocks, players who are <lvl20 and don't seem to fully grasp the mechanics yet, and players who are obviously better than the rest of the match and are just stopping by on their way upwards. There are many different ways to be bad in this game and at low MM you'll probably see all of them.
3DS: 0447-9966-6178
I couldn't figure out where the mute button was. Just ended up taking off my headset instead of listening to adults tell each other to suck one anothers dick with various other insults to their mothers and ethnicities involved.
then before the game ended one of them said something that I won't repeat here about France.
just. . .really kind of ruined my day to see that kind of behavior.
I had the most unsatisfying win of my life on Monday.
Some guy who sounds about 15 years old is immediately yelling into his mic, "HEY MY FRIEND [name] MAINS LUCIO STOP PLAYING LUCIO SO [friend] CAN PLAY LUCIO"
So for one thing it's like, jesus christ kid, stop shouting into the mic.
And then after our Lucio switches out, this shouting kid's friend wordlessly switches to Reinhardt, and never plays Lucio. w-why?
Then throughout the match, like, we're playing well together and winning, but also this shouting kid will periodically shit on teammates—like, say, "you're fucking GARBAGE pharah you can't aim rockets for shit"—who are actually playing just fine, in this game that we are winning.
And eventually his endless shit-talk gets so distracting that people are stopping just to argue back at him, and then we fall behind.
It goes to overtime, which we barely win while this kid shouts about our "awful comp" and how "none of you are doing anything to help I'm the only damage".
Just, the worst win, ever.
Dont feel bad about it man . A lot of people did their placement matches then never played again for that same reason. Among them my entire friends list. Im just here bashing my head against this wall out of stubbornness.
For future reference, press P to bring up the voice comms screen. I don't know why it isn't in the options menu. Of course, this is assuming you're on PC. I have no idea how to do it on consoles.
Steam: MightyPotatoKing
Yeah I found out after the game.
Him: "Reaper's above us, watch for ult."
Full team fight occurs, Reaper doesn't show. Our team wipes the enemy, seconds left on the clock.
Me: "He still up there?"
Him: "Yup, he's probably saving his ult for the perfect time for a Play of the Game. I'm gonna wait on him to drop down and charge him."
Me: "K."
We literally stand there for the last five seconds staring at the back left upper catwalk as Reaper, right on cue, drops down, hits his Q, and promptly gets smashed into the wall by a Rein charge.
Can you imagine that kill cam?
So much fucking salt and Bad Manners in chat. Sorry, "The truth cannot be Bad Manners" as one person put it.
3DS Friend Code: 2165-6448-8348 www.Twitch.TV/cooljammer00
Battle.Net: JohnDarc#1203 Origin/UPlay: CoolJammer00
Anytime that happens I get on mic and say, "we worked poorly together as a team, myself included." No one says anything after that usually.
That way competitve is the place not to get 2 Tracers and 3 Genjis on your team when attacking anymore, or meeting 3 Torbjorns and 2 Bastions when trying to capture point A...
I also hope that the end of season rewards take into account the matches you've played, because if people who only did their placement matches and ended up around 50 and then never touched competitve get more rewards than someone who has struggled through 100 matches only to drop to rank 37 and get 50 wins, I'll be very cross...
"Pigfuckers. All of you!" has always been my go-to, but I might try that.
No, but I actually have something serious to say, which is that it's interesting how often it feels like your team sucks instead of..."OMG the other team is awesome." I try to think myself out of that trap, and sometimes I do notice, "Oh yeah, wow, the other team is really good and coordinated and skillful." And usually I can pinpoint 1 or 2 people on the other team who are particularly troublesome for me, and rage at/compliment them at the end of the match by saying "You were ridiculous, Genji." or whatever. Kind of a win/win except for the whole losing thing.
Well there is one thing more disheartening. Finsihing off the enemy team poping all your ults then seeing their Mercy fly in and score a five man rez.
My reaction would be "that's an awesome Mercy." I'm weirdly un-salty when I get my ass beat by great players. On Tuesday we were gettin' served on Volskaya and I couldn't stop sayin' "this Winston is fucking amazing! He's always behind us the moment the fight starts!"
That guy/girl seriously taught me how dangerous Winston can be.
Accidental double-tap has fucked my ice wall more than once.
Next round was all Winston, but we were quickly countered by all Reaper. Who we then countered with all Pharah. Who was then countered with all Soldier. Who then melted suuuuper fast with Return of Kong, in overtime for the win.
Good times.
Twitch: KoopahTroopah - Steam: Koopah