TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
RagTagg is a OW youtuber I like who has posted rough thoughts on the PTR patch with his gameplay below, which is basically "the forums always freak out but holy hell Reaper is a straight line bully," especially if you can get a Mercy to pocket him.
I can see a Lucio/Mercy/Reaper combo existing for a good while now, and he's also an Orisa main who said the armor nerf means she needs her health changed or she's screwed. And most importantly he points out that while all this is done for the OWL, it won't mean shit if you piss off us normies with these drastic changes and we just quit the game and a lot of people will just stop watching if they aren't also playing.
Armor is good, there should be more passive differences between heroes.
I see it as a difference for differences' sake, it's never really consciously affected my gameplay before because it's not that dramatic a difference (especially now). Reaper is still a tank buster even against armor heroes, just slightly less good at it. If a tank is going to have special defense properties that beat Reaper, I'd rather they do it with an active ability that has counterplay like Orisa's fortify, or else they use their range/CC to keep him away, both of which are more intuitive when they prevent you from getting the kill.
I really wish people understood the idea of staggering, when to die, and when to contest. It's fucking useless arguing with them about it, because they don't actually pay attention to anything other than themselves.
Again, I'd love this game if other people understood even a little bit of it beyond shoot thingie in front of me.
I really wish people understood the idea of staggering, when to die, and when to contest.
I sympathize, but I've been playing this game since it came out and I'm only just now starting to consider respawn timing, ways to attempt to proactivly collapse a stagger, and the seemingly absurd and counterintuitive concept of letting yourself die / purposefully suiciding when the situation calls for it. And I'm nowhere even closing to actually understanding it, must less being able to instinctively know what to do and when.
And almost none of this stuff would have even crossed my mind if it were not for this thread.
Depending on where you are in the MMR spectrum, you may be expecting a bit too much from folks. Most folks just wanna shoot things until they stop moving. Especially outside competitive queue.
Monkey Ball Warrior on
"I resent the entire notion of a body as an ante and then raise you a generalized dissatisfaction with physicality itself" -- Tycho
I really wish people understood the idea of staggering, when to die, and when to contest.
I sympathize, but I've been playing this game since it came out and I'm only just now starting to consider respawn timing, ways to attempt to proactivly collapse a stagger, and the seemingly absurd and counterintuitive concept of letting yourself die / purposefully suiciding when the situation calls for it. And I'm nowhere even closing to actually understanding it, must less being able to instinctively know what to do and when.
And almost none of this stuff would have even crossed my mind if it were not for this thread.
Depending on where you are in the MMR spectrum, you may be expecting a bit too much from folks. Most folks just wanna shoot things until they stop moving. Especially outside competitive queue.
Maybe it's because I'm from the competitive UT scene, but suiciding to respawn is a very common FPS strategy. Hell, when I played competitive UT2k3/2k4, everyone bound suicide to a hotkey to get back on defense faster if play passed you by (it was bombing run). Telling people "yo, just die, the fight's over" should be enough, especially if it happens multiple times a game.
It's really not that complicated. I cut my teeth (and paid for my first car) playing Starcraft. OW is significantly simpler in terms of strategy. None of these concepts are hard, and should be, imho, intuitive to the majority of the player base considering their long history in shooters, particularly team based shooters, for like two decades now.
I love nerding out about all the ramifications of respawns and stuff. Just last night on a 99/99 KotH game I just said by gut to my friend "we lose this if Pharah ult kills you because-" and then JUSTICE rained on my buddy's Reaper. And he was like "Well damn."
And with the time and space in our respawn screens I coud take the time to fully air out my thinking:
"Because even though we were winning that teamfight we got the first three picks and without the damage from your Reaper their Rein can hold out for their three respawns and then they'll shove us off point to win the OT before our own respawns return."
Like how cool is that? The flow-on consequences of a single decision can be so intricate. I love this game.
OW is a lot of people’s first shooter, or at least first multiplayer competitive team shooter.
Then maybe they should listen rather than freak out when someone gives them a piece of advice in a friendly fashion. Like, "Please wait for the team, we'll be there in 5 seconds". And then going in alone and dying, then screaming about no one is around.
OW is a lot of people’s first shooter, or at least first multiplayer competitive team shooter.
Then maybe they should listen rather than freak out when someone gives them a piece of advice in a friendly fashion. Like, "Please wait for the team, we'll be there in 5 seconds". And then going in alone and dying, then screaming about no one is around.
Maybe if you start each match by regaling the assembled players with your impressive gaming credentials they will fall in line with your commands.
Some players are bad. Some players don’t listen. Some can be coaxed. Some really want to work with you. Figure out which is which, do what you can, and pick what hills you want to die on.
OW is a lot of people’s first shooter, or at least first multiplayer competitive team shooter.
Then maybe they should listen rather than freak out when someone gives them a piece of advice in a friendly fashion. Like, "Please wait for the team, we'll be there in 5 seconds". And then going in alone and dying, then screaming about no one is around.
Maybe if you start each match by regaling the assembled players with your impressive gaming credentials they will fall in line with your commands.
Some players are bad. Some players don’t listen. Some can be coaxed. Some really want to work with you. Figure out which is which, do what you can, and pick what hills you want to die on.
Wow, thanks, that was insightful /s
Obviously that's what I do. I'm venting a bit here so I don't do it in game. I think it's ok to be frustrated when people play a team game with certain mechanics no intention of playing with the team or understanding those mechanics.
OW is a lot of people’s first shooter, or at least first multiplayer competitive team shooter.
I played exactly one online FPS before OW, and that was TF2.
And it appears that you spend time here to learn mechanics and understand the game. Which is exactly the sort of thing people do when they're learning a new skill set. I'm annoyed by the people who not only fail to search out such information, but openly resist it even when shown.
I have similar annoyance with climate change deniers or anti-vaxxers. Ignorance I can deal with because, hey, everyone has to learn stuff somehow. Willful ignorance is entirely different (like the stereotypical but oh so real silver genji with 400 hours and zero idea of how to pay the character).
OW is a lot of people’s first shooter, or at least first multiplayer competitive team shooter.
Then maybe they should listen rather than freak out when someone gives them a piece of advice in a friendly fashion. Like, "Please wait for the team, we'll be there in 5 seconds". And then going in alone and dying, then screaming about no one is around.
Maybe if you start each match by regaling the assembled players with your impressive gaming credentials they will fall in line with your commands.
Some players are bad. Some players don’t listen. Some can be coaxed. Some really want to work with you. Figure out which is which, do what you can, and pick what hills you want to die on.
Wow, thanks, that was insightful /s
Obviously that's what I do. I'm venting a bit here so I don't do it in game. I think it's ok to be frustrated when people play a team game with certain mechanics no intention of playing with the team or understanding those mechanics.
I’m mostly just pointing out how faulty it is to assume that your personal lived experiences are true to anyone else in the game. You’ve played FPS for decades? Great, me too. But Overwatch is plenty of people’s first shooter and plenty of people that play OW are kids and it may be one of their first competitive games.
You played games that encourage suiciding? Great, I’ve played games like that too like Trives but I’ve also played plenty of games like Counterstrike or Siege where suicide makes no sense and trying to clutch out no matter the odds are almost always the right call.
You can make suggestions to other players, you can provide your reasoning. I think the best thing would be for Blizzard to actually make a tutorial that isn’t garbage and give player better information to work with, but that sadly won’t happen any time soon if ever.
OW is a lot of people’s first shooter, or at least first multiplayer competitive team shooter.
I played exactly one online FPS before OW, and that was TF2.
And it appears that you spend time here to learn mechanics and understand the game. Which is exactly the sort of thing people do when they're learning a new skill set. I'm annoyed by the people who not only fail to search out such information, but openly resist it even when shown.
I have similar annoyance with climate change deniers or anti-vaxxers. Ignorance I can deal with because, hey, everyone has to learn stuff somehow. Willful ignorance is entirely different (like the stereotypical but oh so real silver genji with 400 hours and zero idea of how to pay the character).
Plenty of people play games just to have fun and not learn. Different strokes for different folks man. Plenty of folks don’t view OW as a thing to learn.
+1
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Monkey Ball WarriorA collection of mediocre hatsSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
This is why I love the fact that OW has distinct casual and competitive queues. TF2 did not have this for a very long time. If I want to go full try-hard, I can queue for comp and hopefully find like-minded silvers to play with and improve. If I just want to freeze people and plant icicles in their foreheads without a care in the world, well, that's what QP is for.
"I resent the entire notion of a body as an ante and then raise you a generalized dissatisfaction with physicality itself" -- Tycho
OW is a lot of people’s first shooter, or at least first multiplayer competitive team shooter.
Then maybe they should listen rather than freak out when someone gives them a piece of advice in a friendly fashion. Like, "Please wait for the team, we'll be there in 5 seconds". And then going in alone and dying, then screaming about no one is around.
Maybe if you start each match by regaling the assembled players with your impressive gaming credentials they will fall in line with your commands.
Some players are bad. Some players don’t listen. Some can be coaxed. Some really want to work with you. Figure out which is which, do what you can, and pick what hills you want to die on.
Wow, thanks, that was insightful /s
Obviously that's what I do. I'm venting a bit here so I don't do it in game. I think it's ok to be frustrated when people play a team game with certain mechanics no intention of playing with the team or understanding those mechanics.
I’m mostly just pointing out how faulty it is to assume that your personal lived experiences are true to anyone else in the game. You’ve played FPS for decades? Great, me too. But Overwatch is plenty of people’s first shooter and plenty of people that play OW are kids and it may be one of their first competitive games.
You played games that encourage suiciding? Great, I’ve played games like that too like Trives but I’ve also played plenty of games like Counterstrike or Siege where suicide makes no sense and trying to clutch out no matter the odds are almost always the right call.
You can make suggestions to other players, you can provide your reasoning. I think the best thing would be for Blizzard to actually make a tutorial that isn’t garbage and give player better information to work with, but that sadly won’t happen any time soon if ever.
Oh yeah, that would be really nice. Watching even a few matches of OWL would help too, because you can see the cost of DVa staggers and wasted ults.
Again, not knowing is one thing. Actively resisting and freaking out when someone points out a relatively basic mechanic or strategy is another.
For example, I noticed a Winston who kept getting headshot by Widow, and also didn't melee just before landing. I noted it in voice chat and said, "You can do it, just turn when you jump and hit melee just before landing. I'll keep you healed." And he started screaming about how I sucked, left voice, and swapped to torb.
That sort of shit happens way more in OW than in any game I have ever played before (and I've played a lot). It's honestly exhausting at times trying to deal with the fragile male egos in this game. I feel like I'm playing therapist and social worker just as much as I'm playing OW. Maybe it's because OW is less hardcore than the community I normal deal with, but I sometimes wonder if it's a generational thing too.
No, no, no, a thousand times no. Watching OW at a high level for anything other than pure entertainment is actively detrimental to almost everyone. Virtually nothing that occurs up there is of any relevance at all down where normal people play. Please don't encourage that kind of thing. This is how you get people coming into QP or silver comp matches expecting that everyone must always play The Current Meta, even though that crap doesn't even work without things like communication and deep hero knowledge and basic positioning strategy that just don't exist down here.
"We lost because Mei is throwing because she picked Mei and that's not meta"
No, we lost because nobody said a single word in voip the entire game, our tanks spent more time chasing kills than playing the objective, and our healers spent more time dead than alive because most folks have the situational awareness of a houseplant. It almost never has anything to do with hero choice, but people watch OWL and think that composition is the only thing that matters.
<rant/>
"I resent the entire notion of a body as an ante and then raise you a generalized dissatisfaction with physicality itself" -- Tycho
This is why I love the fact that OW has distinct casual and competitive queues. TF2 did not have this for a very long time. If I want to go full try-hard, I can queue for comp and hopefully find like-minded silvers to play with and improve. If I just want to freeze people and plant icicles in their foreheads without a care in the world, well, that's what QP is for.
No, no, no, a thousand times no. Watching OW at a high level for anything other than pure entertainment is actively detrimental to almost everyone. Virtually nothing that occurs up there is of any relevance at all down where normal people play. Please don't encourage that kind of thing. This is how you get people coming into QP or silver comp matches expecting that everyone must always play The Current Meta, even though that crap doesn't even work without things like communication and deep hero knowledge and basic positioning strategy that just don't exist down here.
"We lost because Mei is throwing because she picked Mei and that's not meta"
No, we lost because nobody said a single word in voip the entire game, our tanks spent more time chasing kills than playing the objective, and our healers spent more time dead than alive because most folks have the situational awareness of a houseplant. It almost never has anything to do with hero choice, but people watch OWL and think that composition is the only thing that matters.
<rant/>
I became a faaaaaaaaaaaar better D.Va thanks to watching streamers and OWL. I was a terrible D.Va, stopped playing for about a year (but continued watching streams), came back, and was suddenly a great D.Va.
You can absolutely improve by watching high level players.
No, no, no, a thousand times no. Watching OW at a high level for anything other than pure entertainment is actively detrimental to almost everyone. Virtually nothing that occurs up there is of any relevance at all down where normal people play. Please don't encourage that kind of thing. This is how you get people coming into QP or silver comp matches expecting that everyone must always play The Current Meta, even though that crap doesn't even work without things like communication and deep hero knowledge and basic positioning strategy that just don't exist down here.
"We lost because Mei is throwing because she picked Mei and that's not meta"
No, we lost because nobody said a single word in voip the entire game, our tanks spent more time chasing kills than playing the objective, and our healers spent more time dead than alive because most folks have the situational awareness of a houseplant. It almost never has anything to do with hero choice, but people watch OWL and think that composition is the only thing that matters.
<rant/>
I became a faaaaaaaaaaaar better D.Va thanks to watching streamers and OWL. I was a terrible D.Va, stopped playing for about a year (but continued watching streams), came back, and was suddenly a great D.Va.
You can absolutely improve by watching high level players.
I tried watching it a few times maybe earlier last year and I remember it was just weird. It didn't seem to bear much resemblance to the game I was playing. People were continuously doing things that made no sense, and the announcers kept using terms I'd never heard ("dive", "reset", "pick"). While it was amusing to watch people play their heroes at that level, I can't say I was any position to learn anything from it.
Now that I've been in the thread a while, I've learned enough terminology and the rough outlines of higher-level strategies it might make a bit more sense of it than I did. But I've got a long way to go.
What I'm getting at is this is like any other skill, you need to learn the basics before you confuse yourself with the advanced stuff. You don't start learning physics by talking a graduate class in quantum field theory. You start with f=m*a, and slowly work your way up from there.
"I resent the entire notion of a body as an ante and then raise you a generalized dissatisfaction with physicality itself" -- Tycho
+1
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Monkey Ball WarriorA collection of mediocre hatsSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
Hero selection can absolutely be throwing, even in Silver.
Relative to the rest of your team, absolutely. If you see a red warning and you let it be, you are kind of screwing your team over, regardless of how good you are at your main. This is why I've made a concerted effort to specialize in at least one, ideally two, distinct heroes per role (hint: it's mei/pharah - moira/brig - orisa).
But if it's a clean slate, if nobody has picked yet, then there is no "wrong" answer. No hero is so bad right now that you can't win with them at all.
"I resent the entire notion of a body as an ante and then raise you a generalized dissatisfaction with physicality itself" -- Tycho
You can't try to make the rest of your team play like pro players, but you can absolutely improve a ton by watching pro and high-tier competitive streamers.
Like if nothing else, just watch a seagull stream and watch where he positions himself. Don't worry about his aim being better than yours, don't worry about what his team is doing or the meta or any of that. Just find some clips of him playing DPS and where he moves.
By FAR the biggest, most obvious difference I see between like silver and diamond players is not aim, it's just their understanding of how to protect themselves with map geometry and understanding angles.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
No, no, no, a thousand times no. Watching OW at a high level for anything other than pure entertainment is actively detrimental to almost everyone. Virtually nothing that occurs up there is of any relevance at all down where normal people play. Please don't encourage that kind of thing. This is how you get people coming into QP or silver comp matches expecting that everyone must always play The Current Meta, even though that crap doesn't even work without things like communication and deep hero knowledge and basic positioning strategy that just don't exist down here.
"We lost because Mei is throwing because she picked Mei and that's not meta"
No, we lost because nobody said a single word in voip the entire game, our tanks spent more time chasing kills than playing the objective, and our healers spent more time dead than alive because most folks have the situational awareness of a houseplant. It almost never has anything to do with hero choice, but people watch OWL and think that composition is the only thing that matters.
<rant/>
I became a faaaaaaaaaaaar better D.Va thanks to watching streamers and OWL. I was a terrible D.Va, stopped playing for about a year (but continued watching streams), came back, and was suddenly a great D.Va.
You can absolutely improve by watching high level players.
This. Even learning "hey, if I'm the last person on my team alive and I'm baby DVa, I should throw myself off the map or find a way to die" is all you get, that's great! Or how to peel (oh god how to peel). Or where to position safely as a support. Or how to protect to a teammate who has been slept or stunned. Or the importance of using bio-nade to deny heal. The list goes on.
I learned all this stuff from watching high level OW. If you watch it and don't understand it, google is your friend. Again, watching OWL for mechanics, rather than comps, is the best way to go. I wish the casters would say that a bit more, though.
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Monkey Ball WarriorA collection of mediocre hatsSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
edited January 2019
Not sure what "peel" is supposed to mean...
I'm going to stream/record one of my competive sessions sometime soon and post it here so you all can tell me all the various ways I'm doing it wrong. I have developed this sudden interest in attaining gold tier again, if even just briefly. But folks are on average much better than they were a year ago, and if I want to get out of silver I've got to bump it up a notch.
Monkey Ball Warrior on
"I resent the entire notion of a body as an ante and then raise you a generalized dissatisfaction with physicality itself" -- Tycho
And there's some educational streamers that straight up teach you stuff.
Like what are most useful Doomfist combos to both eliminate 200hp characters AND leaving you an ability to escape with.
Or how to shield-hop with Rein and do proper firestrike combos to threaten squishies.
I'm going to stream/record one of my competive sessions sometime soon and post it here so you all can tell me all the various ways I'm doing it wrong. I have developed this sudden interest in attaining gold tier again, if even just briefly. But folks are on average much better than they were a year ago, and if I want to get out of silver I've got to bump it up a notch.
Peeling is basically when someone vulnerable - usually your backline like the healers or a sniper - is all like, "AAAAGH, THIS ENEMY IS ALL OVER ME!!!!" So you peel them off, like a sticker off a piece of fruit.
So that can mean like just shooting at the baddie until they have to back off, booping the enemy away so they no longer have a good position to do what they want, just putting your big fat roadhog body in the way, putting a zarya bubble on the ally who needs help, pumping a bunch of heals into your ally so it's no longer a disadvantageous matchup for them... Whatever. It's about consciously protecting your teammates from getting picked off, rather than just trying to kill the enemy team faster than they kill you.
Kana on
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
OW is a lot of people’s first shooter, or at least first multiplayer competitive team shooter.
Then maybe they should listen rather than freak out when someone gives them a piece of advice in a friendly fashion. Like, "Please wait for the team, we'll be there in 5 seconds". And then going in alone and dying, then screaming about no one is around.
Maybe if you start each match by regaling the assembled players with your impressive gaming credentials they will fall in line with your commands.
Some players are bad. Some players don’t listen. Some can be coaxed. Some really want to work with you. Figure out which is which, do what you can, and pick what hills you want to die on.
Wow, thanks, that was insightful /s
Obviously that's what I do. I'm venting a bit here so I don't do it in game. I think it's ok to be frustrated when people play a team game with certain mechanics no intention of playing with the team or understanding those mechanics.
I’m mostly just pointing out how faulty it is to assume that your personal lived experiences are true to anyone else in the game. You’ve played FPS for decades? Great, me too. But Overwatch is plenty of people’s first shooter and plenty of people that play OW are kids and it may be one of their first competitive games.
You played games that encourage suiciding? Great, I’ve played games like that too like Trives but I’ve also played plenty of games like Counterstrike or Siege where suicide makes no sense and trying to clutch out no matter the odds are almost always the right call.
You can make suggestions to other players, you can provide your reasoning. I think the best thing would be for Blizzard to actually make a tutorial that isn’t garbage and give player better information to work with, but that sadly won’t happen any time soon if ever.
Oh yeah, that would be really nice. Watching even a few matches of OWL would help too, because you can see the cost of DVa staggers and wasted ults.
Again, not knowing is one thing. Actively resisting and freaking out when someone points out a relatively basic mechanic or strategy is another.
For example, I noticed a Winston who kept getting headshot by Widow, and also didn't melee just before landing. I noted it in voice chat and said, "You can do it, just turn when you jump and hit melee just before landing. I'll keep you healed." And he started screaming about how I sucked, left voice, and swapped to torb.
That sort of shit happens way more in OW than in any game I have ever played before (and I've played a lot). It's honestly exhausting at times trying to deal with the fragile male egos in this game. I feel like I'm playing therapist and social worker just as much as I'm playing OW. Maybe it's because OW is less hardcore than the community I normal deal with, but I sometimes wonder if it's a generational thing too.
You might be on to something with the generational thing. When I was your age - sorry, I snooped at your post history a bit - I was leading a raid guild in Everquest (72 players! no voice chat! All for shiny pieces of loot I haven't thought about in forever!) and I would constantly rage about people who couldn't play their classes / played the wrong classes / didn't understand mechanics and didn't care to learn.
I'm (much) older now and I play Overwatch because it distracts me while I'm on an exercise bike and my doctor says nice things at checkups and there are cool looking characters that I can play dress-up with and it makes me giggle when I boost up to a Widowmaker who thought they were just sooooooo safe up on that ledge. I played the 10 competitive matches last season out of curiosity and was absolutely tickled that I actually ranked into Silver, meaning that I was in some way NOT at the absolute skill floor. Made my day. I'm going to have to do that again this season just to see.
People that are older or younger than you are going to have very different goals on what to get out of a game. Maybe they're kids, or maybe they're old enough to have grandkids. Maybe they're playing competitive because that's where the cool golden guns are and you'd never see them if they could get those through quick play.
One thing I do remember from the days of being just incredibly passionate about Everquest; people don't usually learn in the heat of the moment. If you legitimately want someone to get better, maybe send them a friend request and a message of "Hey, here's something I noticed that could help you survive better as Winston if you want to know" and then follow up with your advice only if they want to hear it.
Hero selection can absolutely be throwing, even in Silver.
Eh, not as much as people think. No healers and you're *probably* boned but most other bullshit can be worked around. You just have to be that much better. I've lost games because the opposition went "fuck it we're losing anyway, 6 DPS comedy show" and it turned out they were all really goodDPS.
I played the 10 competitive matches last season out of curiosity and was absolutely tickled that I actually ranked into Silver, meaning that I was in some way NOT at the absolute skill floor. Made my day.
I feel ya' on this one so much.
And also the learning-through-actual-advice thing. I've absolutely gotten better watching streamers, checking out tutorial vids - these forums. For example...
OW is a lot of people’s first shooter, or at least first multiplayer competitive team shooter.
Then maybe they should listen rather than freak out when someone gives them a piece of advice in a friendly fashion. Like, "Please wait for the team, we'll be there in 5 seconds". And then going in alone and dying, then screaming about no one is around.
Maybe if you start each match by regaling the assembled players with your impressive gaming credentials they will fall in line with your commands.
Some players are bad. Some players don’t listen. Some can be coaxed. Some really want to work with you. Figure out which is which, do what you can, and pick what hills you want to die on.
Wow, thanks, that was insightful /s
Obviously that's what I do. I'm venting a bit here so I don't do it in game. I think it's ok to be frustrated when people play a team game with certain mechanics no intention of playing with the team or understanding those mechanics.
I’m mostly just pointing out how faulty it is to assume that your personal lived experiences are true to anyone else in the game. You’ve played FPS for decades? Great, me too. But Overwatch is plenty of people’s first shooter and plenty of people that play OW are kids and it may be one of their first competitive games.
You played games that encourage suiciding? Great, I’ve played games like that too like Trives but I’ve also played plenty of games like Counterstrike or Siege where suicide makes no sense and trying to clutch out no matter the odds are almost always the right call.
You can make suggestions to other players, you can provide your reasoning. I think the best thing would be for Blizzard to actually make a tutorial that isn’t garbage and give player better information to work with, but that sadly won’t happen any time soon if ever.
Oh yeah, that would be really nice. Watching even a few matches of OWL would help too, because you can see the cost of DVa staggers and wasted ults.
Again, not knowing is one thing. Actively resisting and freaking out when someone points out a relatively basic mechanic or strategy is another.
For example, I noticed a Winston who kept getting headshot by Widow, and also didn't melee just before landing. I noted it in voice chat and said, "You can do it, just turn when you jump and hit melee just before landing. I'll keep you healed." And he started screaming about how I sucked, left voice, and swapped to torb.
That sort of shit happens way more in OW than in any game I have ever played before (and I've played a lot). It's honestly exhausting at times trying to deal with the fragile male egos in this game. I feel like I'm playing therapist and social worker just as much as I'm playing OW. Maybe it's because OW is less hardcore than the community I normal deal with, but I sometimes wonder if it's a generational thing too.
You might be on to something with the generational thing. When I was your age - sorry, I snooped at your post history a bit - I was leading a raid guild in Everquest (72 players! no voice chat! All for shiny pieces of loot I haven't thought about in forever!) and I would constantly rage about people who couldn't play their classes / played the wrong classes / didn't understand mechanics and didn't care to learn.
I'm (much) older now and I play Overwatch because it distracts me while I'm on an exercise bike and my doctor says nice things at checkups and there are cool looking characters that I can play dress-up with and it makes me giggle when I boost up to a Widowmaker who thought they were just sooooooo safe up on that ledge. I played the 10 competitive matches last season out of curiosity and was absolutely tickled that I actually ranked into Silver, meaning that I was in some way NOT at the absolute skill floor. Made my day. I'm going to have to do that again this season just to see.
People that are older or younger than you are going to have very different goals on what to get out of a game. Maybe they're kids, or maybe they're old enough to have grandkids. Maybe they're playing competitive because that's where the cool golden guns are and you'd never see them if they could get those through quick play.
One thing I do remember from the days of being just incredibly passionate about Everquest; people don't usually learn in the heat of the moment. If you legitimately want someone to get better, maybe send them a friend request and a message of "Hey, here's something I noticed that could help you survive better as Winston if you want to know" and then follow up with your advice only if they want to hear it.
Anyway, my two cents. Hope it wasn't too preachy.
Nah that makes sense. It’s mostly younger gamers I have a problem with. This is going to come across as old man grumpy, but it may be too easy to play multiplayer.
My first multiplayer experience came after my friends and I learned how to write our own net code to play Doom. Later, custom servers would outright ban you from Tribes or UT99 if you threw or acted like a dick.
When I played competitively, I had to court sponsors, organize matches through forums (like this one), and figure out how to code a spectator camera with playback functionality for broadcast.
Younger players seem to take multiplayer as a god given right rather than a privilege. They treat other people like bots or NPCs, rather than human beings whose time is valuable (yes, entertainment time is valuable).
I don’t waste my tesmmates’s time because they deserve that respect. All I ask and expect is the same courtesy.
Honestly, allowing larger avoid lists would be nice (not for opponents, just teammates, to avoid people dodging skilled players). It would push selfish players into games with each other, and let team oriented players play in a better environment. That’s essentially what my favorite communities did by banning repeat offenders. Hell, it’s what this forum does.
I also don’t send friend requests to people anymore after getting harassment and death threats through it. Of course, that happens sometimes in game too but at least I can report that.
Also you all are saints for not responding to “what does peel mean?” With “nobody really knows. It’s something healers say sometimes, but then they die so it’s never been explained”
Also you all are saints for not responding to “what does peel mean?” With “nobody really knows. It’s something healers say sometimes, but then they die so it’s never been explained”
Lol so true. Peel can be for anyone. It’s often for tanks now, particularly when they get hard focused. DPS with displacement abilities (like concussion mine) can also peel (like blasting away a mei or reaper on your teammate).
I've been thinking about getting back into OW on Xbox since I'm kinda bored with Destiny 2 at the moment and want something more team-oriented than PUBG. I had bad luck using LFG to find a group in the past, since I prefer Comp to QP. Anyone still play on console or is that mostly dead these days?
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I can see a Lucio/Mercy/Reaper combo existing for a good while now, and he's also an Orisa main who said the armor nerf means she needs her health changed or she's screwed. And most importantly he points out that while all this is done for the OWL, it won't mean shit if you piss off us normies with these drastic changes and we just quit the game and a lot of people will just stop watching if they aren't also playing.
I see it as a difference for differences' sake, it's never really consciously affected my gameplay before because it's not that dramatic a difference (especially now). Reaper is still a tank buster even against armor heroes, just slightly less good at it. If a tank is going to have special defense properties that beat Reaper, I'd rather they do it with an active ability that has counterplay like Orisa's fortify, or else they use their range/CC to keep him away, both of which are more intuitive when they prevent you from getting the kill.
Again, I'd love this game if other people understood even a little bit of it beyond shoot thingie in front of me.
I sympathize, but I've been playing this game since it came out and I'm only just now starting to consider respawn timing, ways to attempt to proactivly collapse a stagger, and the seemingly absurd and counterintuitive concept of letting yourself die / purposefully suiciding when the situation calls for it. And I'm nowhere even closing to actually understanding it, must less being able to instinctively know what to do and when.
And almost none of this stuff would have even crossed my mind if it were not for this thread.
Depending on where you are in the MMR spectrum, you may be expecting a bit too much from folks. Most folks just wanna shoot things until they stop moving. Especially outside competitive queue.
Maybe it's because I'm from the competitive UT scene, but suiciding to respawn is a very common FPS strategy. Hell, when I played competitive UT2k3/2k4, everyone bound suicide to a hotkey to get back on defense faster if play passed you by (it was bombing run). Telling people "yo, just die, the fight's over" should be enough, especially if it happens multiple times a game.
It's really not that complicated. I cut my teeth (and paid for my first car) playing Starcraft. OW is significantly simpler in terms of strategy. None of these concepts are hard, and should be, imho, intuitive to the majority of the player base considering their long history in shooters, particularly team based shooters, for like two decades now.
And with the time and space in our respawn screens I coud take the time to fully air out my thinking:
"Because even though we were winning that teamfight we got the first three picks and without the damage from your Reaper their Rein can hold out for their three respawns and then they'll shove us off point to win the OT before our own respawns return."
Like how cool is that? The flow-on consequences of a single decision can be so intricate. I love this game.
hAmmONd IsnT A mAin TAnk
I played exactly one online FPS before OW, and that was TF2.
Then maybe they should listen rather than freak out when someone gives them a piece of advice in a friendly fashion. Like, "Please wait for the team, we'll be there in 5 seconds". And then going in alone and dying, then screaming about no one is around.
Maybe if you start each match by regaling the assembled players with your impressive gaming credentials they will fall in line with your commands.
Some players are bad. Some players don’t listen. Some can be coaxed. Some really want to work with you. Figure out which is which, do what you can, and pick what hills you want to die on.
Wow, thanks, that was insightful /s
Obviously that's what I do. I'm venting a bit here so I don't do it in game. I think it's ok to be frustrated when people play a team game with certain mechanics no intention of playing with the team or understanding those mechanics.
And it appears that you spend time here to learn mechanics and understand the game. Which is exactly the sort of thing people do when they're learning a new skill set. I'm annoyed by the people who not only fail to search out such information, but openly resist it even when shown.
I have similar annoyance with climate change deniers or anti-vaxxers. Ignorance I can deal with because, hey, everyone has to learn stuff somehow. Willful ignorance is entirely different (like the stereotypical but oh so real silver genji with 400 hours and zero idea of how to pay the character).
I’m mostly just pointing out how faulty it is to assume that your personal lived experiences are true to anyone else in the game. You’ve played FPS for decades? Great, me too. But Overwatch is plenty of people’s first shooter and plenty of people that play OW are kids and it may be one of their first competitive games.
You played games that encourage suiciding? Great, I’ve played games like that too like Trives but I’ve also played plenty of games like Counterstrike or Siege where suicide makes no sense and trying to clutch out no matter the odds are almost always the right call.
You can make suggestions to other players, you can provide your reasoning. I think the best thing would be for Blizzard to actually make a tutorial that isn’t garbage and give player better information to work with, but that sadly won’t happen any time soon if ever.
Plenty of people play games just to have fun and not learn. Different strokes for different folks man. Plenty of folks don’t view OW as a thing to learn.
Oh yeah, that would be really nice. Watching even a few matches of OWL would help too, because you can see the cost of DVa staggers and wasted ults.
Again, not knowing is one thing. Actively resisting and freaking out when someone points out a relatively basic mechanic or strategy is another.
For example, I noticed a Winston who kept getting headshot by Widow, and also didn't melee just before landing. I noted it in voice chat and said, "You can do it, just turn when you jump and hit melee just before landing. I'll keep you healed." And he started screaming about how I sucked, left voice, and swapped to torb.
That sort of shit happens way more in OW than in any game I have ever played before (and I've played a lot). It's honestly exhausting at times trying to deal with the fragile male egos in this game. I feel like I'm playing therapist and social worker just as much as I'm playing OW. Maybe it's because OW is less hardcore than the community I normal deal with, but I sometimes wonder if it's a generational thing too.
That's not dive:
https://clips.twitch.tv/SmoothWonderfulGarlicKeyboardCat
Jeff on "the meta":
https://clips.twitch.tv/BlushingStrangeStinkbugPeteZarollTie
No, no, no, a thousand times no. Watching OW at a high level for anything other than pure entertainment is actively detrimental to almost everyone. Virtually nothing that occurs up there is of any relevance at all down where normal people play. Please don't encourage that kind of thing. This is how you get people coming into QP or silver comp matches expecting that everyone must always play The Current Meta, even though that crap doesn't even work without things like communication and deep hero knowledge and basic positioning strategy that just don't exist down here.
"We lost because Mei is throwing because she picked Mei and that's not meta"
No, we lost because nobody said a single word in voip the entire game, our tanks spent more time chasing kills than playing the objective, and our healers spent more time dead than alive because most folks have the situational awareness of a houseplant. It almost never has anything to do with hero choice, but people watch OWL and think that composition is the only thing that matters.
<rant/>
Except for all the people treating comp like QP
I became a faaaaaaaaaaaar better D.Va thanks to watching streamers and OWL. I was a terrible D.Va, stopped playing for about a year (but continued watching streams), came back, and was suddenly a great D.Va.
You can absolutely improve by watching high level players.
Steam: MightyPotatoKing
I tried watching it a few times maybe earlier last year and I remember it was just weird. It didn't seem to bear much resemblance to the game I was playing. People were continuously doing things that made no sense, and the announcers kept using terms I'd never heard ("dive", "reset", "pick"). While it was amusing to watch people play their heroes at that level, I can't say I was any position to learn anything from it.
Now that I've been in the thread a while, I've learned enough terminology and the rough outlines of higher-level strategies it might make a bit more sense of it than I did. But I've got a long way to go.
What I'm getting at is this is like any other skill, you need to learn the basics before you confuse yourself with the advanced stuff. You don't start learning physics by talking a graduate class in quantum field theory. You start with f=m*a, and slowly work your way up from there.
Relative to the rest of your team, absolutely. If you see a red warning and you let it be, you are kind of screwing your team over, regardless of how good you are at your main. This is why I've made a concerted effort to specialize in at least one, ideally two, distinct heroes per role (hint: it's mei/pharah - moira/brig - orisa).
But if it's a clean slate, if nobody has picked yet, then there is no "wrong" answer. No hero is so bad right now that you can't win with them at all.
Like if nothing else, just watch a seagull stream and watch where he positions himself. Don't worry about his aim being better than yours, don't worry about what his team is doing or the meta or any of that. Just find some clips of him playing DPS and where he moves.
By FAR the biggest, most obvious difference I see between like silver and diamond players is not aim, it's just their understanding of how to protect themselves with map geometry and understanding angles.
This. Even learning "hey, if I'm the last person on my team alive and I'm baby DVa, I should throw myself off the map or find a way to die" is all you get, that's great! Or how to peel (oh god how to peel). Or where to position safely as a support. Or how to protect to a teammate who has been slept or stunned. Or the importance of using bio-nade to deny heal. The list goes on.
I learned all this stuff from watching high level OW. If you watch it and don't understand it, google is your friend. Again, watching OWL for mechanics, rather than comps, is the best way to go. I wish the casters would say that a bit more, though.
I'm going to stream/record one of my competive sessions sometime soon and post it here so you all can tell me all the various ways I'm doing it wrong. I have developed this sudden interest in attaining gold tier again, if even just briefly. But folks are on average much better than they were a year ago, and if I want to get out of silver I've got to bump it up a notch.
Like what are most useful Doomfist combos to both eliminate 200hp characters AND leaving you an ability to escape with.
Or how to shield-hop with Rein and do proper firestrike combos to threaten squishies.
Peeling is basically protecting your healers and other squishy characters from flankers/divers, so they can keep healing you.
Good video on theory of peeling with some examples:
Peeling is basically when someone vulnerable - usually your backline like the healers or a sniper - is all like, "AAAAGH, THIS ENEMY IS ALL OVER ME!!!!" So you peel them off, like a sticker off a piece of fruit.
So that can mean like just shooting at the baddie until they have to back off, booping the enemy away so they no longer have a good position to do what they want, just putting your big fat roadhog body in the way, putting a zarya bubble on the ally who needs help, pumping a bunch of heals into your ally so it's no longer a disadvantageous matchup for them... Whatever. It's about consciously protecting your teammates from getting picked off, rather than just trying to kill the enemy team faster than they kill you.
You might be on to something with the generational thing. When I was your age - sorry, I snooped at your post history a bit - I was leading a raid guild in Everquest (72 players! no voice chat! All for shiny pieces of loot I haven't thought about in forever!) and I would constantly rage about people who couldn't play their classes / played the wrong classes / didn't understand mechanics and didn't care to learn.
I'm (much) older now and I play Overwatch because it distracts me while I'm on an exercise bike and my doctor says nice things at checkups and there are cool looking characters that I can play dress-up with and it makes me giggle when I boost up to a Widowmaker who thought they were just sooooooo safe up on that ledge. I played the 10 competitive matches last season out of curiosity and was absolutely tickled that I actually ranked into Silver, meaning that I was in some way NOT at the absolute skill floor. Made my day. I'm going to have to do that again this season just to see.
People that are older or younger than you are going to have very different goals on what to get out of a game. Maybe they're kids, or maybe they're old enough to have grandkids. Maybe they're playing competitive because that's where the cool golden guns are and you'd never see them if they could get those through quick play.
One thing I do remember from the days of being just incredibly passionate about Everquest; people don't usually learn in the heat of the moment. If you legitimately want someone to get better, maybe send them a friend request and a message of "Hey, here's something I noticed that could help you survive better as Winston if you want to know" and then follow up with your advice only if they want to hear it.
Anyway, my two cents. Hope it wasn't too preachy.
Eh, not as much as people think. No healers and you're *probably* boned but most other bullshit can be worked around. You just have to be that much better. I've lost games because the opposition went "fuck it we're losing anyway, 6 DPS comedy show" and it turned out they were all really goodDPS.
I feel ya' on this one so much.
And also the learning-through-actual-advice thing. I've absolutely gotten better watching streamers, checking out tutorial vids - these forums. For example...
I had to ask the exact same thing lol and I think @Kana explained it perfectly. It's just sayin' "not my teammate, you don't! Git outta' here, you!"
Nah that makes sense. It’s mostly younger gamers I have a problem with. This is going to come across as old man grumpy, but it may be too easy to play multiplayer.
My first multiplayer experience came after my friends and I learned how to write our own net code to play Doom. Later, custom servers would outright ban you from Tribes or UT99 if you threw or acted like a dick.
When I played competitively, I had to court sponsors, organize matches through forums (like this one), and figure out how to code a spectator camera with playback functionality for broadcast.
Younger players seem to take multiplayer as a god given right rather than a privilege. They treat other people like bots or NPCs, rather than human beings whose time is valuable (yes, entertainment time is valuable).
I don’t waste my tesmmates’s time because they deserve that respect. All I ask and expect is the same courtesy.
Honestly, allowing larger avoid lists would be nice (not for opponents, just teammates, to avoid people dodging skilled players). It would push selfish players into games with each other, and let team oriented players play in a better environment. That’s essentially what my favorite communities did by banning repeat offenders. Hell, it’s what this forum does.
I also don’t send friend requests to people anymore after getting harassment and death threats through it. Of course, that happens sometimes in game too but at least I can report that.
Mercy peeled for me and then I peeled for her. And then she tripped.
Lol so true. Peel can be for anyone. It’s often for tanks now, particularly when they get hard focused. DPS with displacement abilities (like concussion mine) can also peel (like blasting away a mei or reaper on your teammate).