I also just think that in general, DPS feels the most impactful moment to moment. As someone who bounces between all the roles a lot (and has a similar SR for them) DPS just feels like you're more in control of a match (even if it's not always necessarily true). Like just now, I had one game on tank where our DPS were lacking, and felt like there wasn't much I could do to pick up the slack (there definitely is, it just doesn't feel as obvious/immediate). Next game I went DPS on Gibralter, our tank line went D.Va/Hammond and refused to switch off, we got held halfway through the middle section (I was doing okay, not great).
Next round, I switched up my pick/approach and that's about all it took. Everyone else played about the same, I played just a little bit better and we held them on first point. Which isn't to say I carried, far from it (although I did get a whopping 34 SR for it), but the DPS role just feels like all it takes is me playing a little better to have a significant impact, while tank and healer it can feel like you're doing everything right but still not having a huge impact. And that's always been the case for the game.
That's on top of Dragkonias's good points about it just being less fun to play the tank role if you don't inherently enjoy taking aggro and managing cooldowns more than just clicking heads.
Just to add...I really do think the biggest thing Blizzard could do rn outside of announce OW2 is simply have a release with multiple heroes at once.
If they dropped like 3 or 4 characters that'd be pretty big.
It would be hilarious, and slightly awful, if the next hero was a DPS, causing queue times to go even more nuts, and yet, it's exactly what I see most likely happening.
I'm guessing that they badly misestimated how many people would change their queueing/picking habits when role queue hit and the DPS queue times are much worse than anticipated, and this is WITH a very powerful new tank being the hot new thing that everyone wanted to play, so is only going to get worse in coming months as that wears off. It all comes back to how ridiculously strong DPS are to begin with, and how low the time-to-kill is in Overwatch. When a DPS counters a tank, they kill them dead, often in an instant. When a tank counters a DPS, they reduce their effectiveness or force them to back away so that the rest of the team can capitalize. The inherent asymmetry makes for a bad feedback loop for tank players.
They might be able to band-aid the problem a little bit with some reworks to make certain characters more tank-like. Doomfist is in desperate need of a rework and might make a passable CC-based tank, like a more single-target focused Hammond, but I don't think there's much overlap between Doom players and tank players, so that could just cause problems with both sides. Mei's thrown around as a possible tank a lot too, but the way she stunlocks people, especially tanks, is problematic and awful to play against as it is, so whatever you'd do to make her tankier would have to drastically change other parts of her kit. I could see Bastion as a tank, especially if they brought back his barrier in sentry. His damage would obviously need to be lowered massively, but it's not like there's a shortage of alternate tank-crushers in the DPS pool. Give him rubber/energy bullets that do miniscule damage to people, extra damage to barriers, and provide slight knockback like a ranged Whole Hog. That would also help some of the pirate ship/bunker shenanigans by removing one of the barriers from the equation while giving tanks a decent anti-tank tank.
It's also worth remembering that there are even fewer supports than there are tanks, and the queues are close to as fast as tank, so there's no great supply of support players either, it's just that tanks have things even worse with a more clear need for a front line while also being forced to absorb all the punishment. Moving Sombra in there and letting her hack allies to provide some buff like damage reduction, CC resistance, and/or heal over time while also giving supports a better response to divers running amok than the hugely nerfed Brig (at least as far as countering dive goes).
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.
i disagree the toxicity has gone down. maybe some of the players that were most toxic moved on but just this last weekend i had two people that complained about my moira healing. I'm not the best but in my qp i had over 15k healing. Now i mostly try to focus heal the tanks and so the doomfist probably felt a little resentful but telling someone to uninstall gets an automatic report from me. I had three games in a row where someone was ranting about someone on the team. Garbage players going to garbage. My favorite was the widow on the other team that was getting pocketed by the mercy talking about how trash our team was when we didn't kill her (i was playing hammond and tried a few times then found better use of my time). Our team still one so /shrug.
Anyhow, hammond and orisa are the only two tanks i like to play because shooty shooty is fun for me (also barreling through a team is hilarious). I find myself playing the arcade much less because of QP role play but i don't think it's really changed toxic player behavior at all.
I mean in the end that kind of thing is just going to come down to comparing anecdotes. I mainly play comp and not at very high SR, and in that context role queue has led to much more chill and supportive games for me personally. I absolutely do still run into total turds on the regular, because like you said there's always gonna be garbage people. But on the whole, my experience has been much improved (of course, healer is the role I definitely get the most shit on, and almost exclusively from DPS players).
0
Options
Monkey Ball WarriorA collection of mediocre hatsSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
I.... sometimes almost want people to complain, because at least they are recognizing that something went wrong. I'd prefer, you know, actual theories on exactly what went wrong and recommendations on how to fix it, but games where we get complete curbstomped, where it doesn't feel like the other team was getting carried, it can be frustrating to just see a handful of "gg"s followed by everyone bailing on the server, long before they can even look at medals/stats and do any kind of retrospective.
I just feel like you should attempt to learn something from each loss, and so many people seem content to blame "The Meta" or "Bad DPS" without really digging into it any further.
"I resent the entire notion of a body as an ante and then raise you a generalized dissatisfaction with physicality itself" -- Tycho
0
Options
The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
Medals aren't going to tell you anything constructive if that's what you're trying to do.
0
Options
Monkey Ball WarriorA collection of mediocre hatsSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
Medals aren't going to tell you anything constructive if that's what you're trying to do.
By that I mean more the medal UI, where the stats they deign to actually show us live. I get the data is ... less than complete, but it is all we have to work with.
"I resent the entire notion of a body as an ante and then raise you a generalized dissatisfaction with physicality itself" -- Tycho
Going back to when I played Starcraft, actual introspection should involve reviewing replays of your games when you're in a neutral (not tilted) state of mind either the next day or several hours later. That's a level of dedication that most people aren't going to want to put in. I certainly don't care enough about my Overwatch rank to go that much effort.
I've decided that the solution is to add a fourth Bruiser role, and make the team comp rules a little more flexible. So a team must have one main tank and one ranged DPS, but bruisers can fill the remaining slot in either role. That category would include both offtanks like Roadhog and beefy DPS characters like Mei/Reaper/Doomfist.
0
Options
Monkey Ball WarriorA collection of mediocre hatsSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
I do kind of get what you are trying to say... people can draw all kinds of weird inferences from the same data. I'm really more interested in a short constructive conversation, informed by the data, on what went wrong. Granted, this is super wishful thinking, especially in QP. But I can dream.
I just hate the feeling of being completely unmoored from any objective assessment of my performance. I could be doing it entirely wrong, but just feel like i'm awesome, and without some kind of negative feedback I'd never know, because there are 5 other people on the team and their performances make it harder to guage my own.
I don't know how anyone could quit the game before looking at the stats. Especially since it is known quitting "early" has no positive effect on queuing times in any mode.
"I resent the entire notion of a body as an ante and then raise you a generalized dissatisfaction with physicality itself" -- Tycho
0
Options
The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
edited October 2019
If you want to have some conversations over what went wrong, I'd suggest asking "how did we lose that ultimate teamfight?" Did the healers get cut off and instagibbed? Did the tanks chase too far forwards? Did everyone just shoot someone different while the other team focused a bit better? Did the Pharah/Reaper/Mei go uncontested? Those decision points will illuminate a lot more about how the game went down and what you can do better next time than a stats screen could ever do.
But also to Yilias' point, especially if you're playing with pubs and randos, right after the game isn't the best time to talk about that because at least a few of the players are probably tilted. That makes having proper constructive conversations difficult. And I say that as someone who, when trying to do that right after a game, even with people I know, tends to focus on the wrong things because I'm tilted.
By and large the people you meet in pub games just aren't interested in having that conversation at all. It's just the way it is. If you try to offer constructive criticism people are going to assume you're being a dick, since that's usually what people are doing when they talk about their teammates' performance. If you really want to invest effort into stepping up your game getting better as a team, you need to find a premade group.
If you want to have some conversations over what went wrong, I'd suggest asking "how did we lose that ultimate teamfight?" Did the healers get cut off and instagibbed? Did the tanks chase too far forwards? Did everyone just shoot someone different while the other team focused a bit better? Did the Pharah/Reaper/Mei go uncontested? Those decision points will illuminate a lot more about how the game went down and what you can do better next time than a stats screen could ever do.
But also to Yilias' point, especially if you're playing with pubs and randos, right after the game isn't the best time to talk about that because at least a few of the players are probably tilted. That makes having proper constructive conversations difficult. And I say that as someone who, when trying to do that right after a game, even with people I know, tends to focus on the wrong things because I'm tilted.
Identifying the problem isn't the same as being able to solve it though, which is where at least a large chunk of frustration with playing tank/support comes from. That Pharah/Reaper/Mei WAS uncontested, but I have virtually no options for contesting them in a significant way, those options may already be taken by the other person, changing off my current hero, especially of the anchor tank types, is likely to create a bigger problem in addition to risking teammates tilting, and even my best option is unlikely to be a great one. Same for supports. I can be healing the shit out of my team, always the last one to die, etc etc, but my best options for dealing with the especially problematic DPS are frequently not good and generally require making a major trade in healing strength that's already being taxed (but yes, the best healing is killing the thing that's taxing it in the first place).
+1
Options
Monkey Ball WarriorA collection of mediocre hatsSeattle, WARegistered Userregular
Yeh, if I knew basically anyone in real life that still played this game I'd probably be dramatically better at it. Everything I know about the game, that I didn't figure out just by playing it, I learned here, in this thread. I really have no way to form a pre-made or have any of those kind of conversations IRL. It is frustrating.
"I resent the entire notion of a body as an ante and then raise you a generalized dissatisfaction with physicality itself" -- Tycho
Honestly other than playing, all of the most useful stuff I've learned about how to play my preferred characters has come from watching high-level streamers. Especially when it comes to good map positioning and the best way to use cooldowns, just observing someone who knows exactly what they're doing, seeing what their tendencies and habits are, what works and what doesn't in any given situation, has improved my play immensely. For me, this mainly came in the form of watching Harbleu and improving my Roadhog and Zarya play based on him. It's gotten to the point where I can watch him and predict exactly what he's about to do in almost any given situation, which includes those times I can tell he's gonna go for a big risky play and totally whiffs it. Although it hasn't gotten me to GM or anything, it's made me much more aware of what I can or should be doing (and also when not to go for those big hero moments, based on him consistently trying and failing), or moments where things go wrong and I can quickly reflect and realize, oh yeah obviously I died there because of xyz, thanks to what I saw on stream.
Not everyone has the time or lifestyle to leave streams on for good chunks of time (I'm lucky that I work from home and set my own schedule) but if you're able to find good streamers and check for VOD reviews or good youtube games, that's a great source of knowledge.
The uproar is entirely that Blizzard doesn't seem to think democracy itself is a concept worth taking a potential financial / market share hit in order to defend. Many of us find that... very disheartening.
I think that`s precisely it, and it still throws me because why do people give a colossal shit that Blizz isn`t endorsing democracy in China but aren`t rioting in the streets over gerrymandering and voter suppression. Your own government is destroying your democracy and no one cares, but the company that makes World of Warcraft sucks China`s communist peener a bit and people are scandalized lol
I mean, how long have we been ignoring when unarmed French people occasionally getting their arms blown off and other varieties of maiming by Parisian riot police? Emmanuel Macron smiles once on the cameras while talking about the Maastricht Treaty and we're all, "There are unhappy people in Paris? They must be Nazis in traffic vests. Meanwhile, my loins are positively en feu for that French heartthrob."
Hong Kong is the exception rather than the rule. I'm Taiwanese, and I still think it's a little surprising. Five years ago, when the ruling party was out of power, they were telling the Hong Kongese to STFU with the comparisons because they didn't like being called Chinese on principle. Fast forward to today, and Blizzard giving it's usually Blizzard (i.e. clumsy) response to controversy and hoping it would blow over before the next convention.
(I'm going to exclude Baghdad because there was already a phenomenal national project in the United States that years ago with the objective "For the sake of national healing, we are going to pretend Iraq no longer exists.")
Synthesis on
0
Options
The Escape Goatincorrigible ruminantthey/themRegistered Userregular
Eh? Meh. I'd say those skins are a pretty weak crop. Meducio is a cool idea, but... doesn't feel super well executed. Same with Scorpionmaker, the colors clash in a very odd way.
One - that Ana skin is goddamned gorgeous. Easily the best of the crop, I'd say.
Two - we finally get Demon Hunter Sombra and she's not even tied to the randomness of a loot box! Nice!
Three - that Orisa skin is fucking awesome.
Four - that Lucio skin is fucking awesome.
Five - that Ashe skin is fucking awesome.
Six - the "patch" is the entire goddamn game client again - 20 gigs on PS4
Seven - anyone else notice that Bap's vampire skin gives him Blade's haircut? ^.^
Eight - Widow's scorpion skin is a bit much. Like a G.I. Joe cartoon.
So let's see, here. That's actually six new legendary skins for this event - wasn't it only 4 for the summer games? Plus the long-awaited Demon Hunter Sombra, for a total of 7, and the Junk and Bap skins are actually pretty nice. Coinage is correct - this is a lot more than I was expecting.
And yeah, it's a Halloween skin for Tracer. When her highlight intro started in the vid I was like "wait, seriously?" and then, Wisp.
And I've been praying in vain since last Halloween when the event referred to her as The Wisp that she would not get a second skin (after her All-Stars skin) that lit her head up like a Christmas light. I've been holding out hope for a Werewolf of London skin, but here we are. Coldhardt and Wisp: The Halloween Skins you'll equip when you really want to highlight your head hitbox for the other team.
That said, beggars can't be choosers and I'm glad she finally got something (it blows my mind that Junk and Ana are getting yet more Halloween skins while some heroes still have none.) Wisp will be purchased instantly, once that twenty goddamn gigs is done downloaded.
'Chance, you are the best kind of whore.' -Henroid
TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
Ana looks great, Ashe looks good, at least it's not a sausagefest this event.
Shenanigans declared: Widowmaker's skin doesn't even make sense spiders aren't scorpions if she's gonna dress up for Halloween wouldn't it be Mileena or Jade instead of Scorpion?
I could have swore Jeff said in an update to not expect much from the Halloween event.
Fucking Liar.
Maybe he meant the event itself? It seems like just the same event live again
Yeah unfortunately we don't even get any new heroes for the event. I was really hoping they'd at least add Ashe to it.
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.
I will say Tracer has the best-looking guns of the event. Ashe's is nice but apparently the scope creates problems while ADSing, Ana's isn't very different, Orisa's has the cool blinking evil eyes, but this? This is Goth Smexy.
Ana looks great, Ashe looks good, at least it's not a sausagefest this event.
Shenanigans declared: Widowmaker's skin doesn't even make sense spiders aren't scorpions if she's gonna dress up for Halloween wouldn't it be Mileena or Jade instead of Scorpion?
Somehow in this like 10 reply thread we haven't mentioned for halloween people typically dress up in costume as something OTHER than what they are. Symmetra's not really a dragon either. Not even in the dragon family!
Posts
Next round, I switched up my pick/approach and that's about all it took. Everyone else played about the same, I played just a little bit better and we held them on first point. Which isn't to say I carried, far from it (although I did get a whopping 34 SR for it), but the DPS role just feels like all it takes is me playing a little better to have a significant impact, while tank and healer it can feel like you're doing everything right but still not having a huge impact. And that's always been the case for the game.
That's on top of Dragkonias's good points about it just being less fun to play the tank role if you don't inherently enjoy taking aggro and managing cooldowns more than just clicking heads.
It would be hilarious, and slightly awful, if the next hero was a DPS, causing queue times to go even more nuts, and yet, it's exactly what I see most likely happening.
I'm guessing that they badly misestimated how many people would change their queueing/picking habits when role queue hit and the DPS queue times are much worse than anticipated, and this is WITH a very powerful new tank being the hot new thing that everyone wanted to play, so is only going to get worse in coming months as that wears off. It all comes back to how ridiculously strong DPS are to begin with, and how low the time-to-kill is in Overwatch. When a DPS counters a tank, they kill them dead, often in an instant. When a tank counters a DPS, they reduce their effectiveness or force them to back away so that the rest of the team can capitalize. The inherent asymmetry makes for a bad feedback loop for tank players.
They might be able to band-aid the problem a little bit with some reworks to make certain characters more tank-like. Doomfist is in desperate need of a rework and might make a passable CC-based tank, like a more single-target focused Hammond, but I don't think there's much overlap between Doom players and tank players, so that could just cause problems with both sides. Mei's thrown around as a possible tank a lot too, but the way she stunlocks people, especially tanks, is problematic and awful to play against as it is, so whatever you'd do to make her tankier would have to drastically change other parts of her kit. I could see Bastion as a tank, especially if they brought back his barrier in sentry. His damage would obviously need to be lowered massively, but it's not like there's a shortage of alternate tank-crushers in the DPS pool. Give him rubber/energy bullets that do miniscule damage to people, extra damage to barriers, and provide slight knockback like a ranged Whole Hog. That would also help some of the pirate ship/bunker shenanigans by removing one of the barriers from the equation while giving tanks a decent anti-tank tank.
It's also worth remembering that there are even fewer supports than there are tanks, and the queues are close to as fast as tank, so there's no great supply of support players either, it's just that tanks have things even worse with a more clear need for a front line while also being forced to absorb all the punishment. Moving Sombra in there and letting her hack allies to provide some buff like damage reduction, CC resistance, and/or heal over time while also giving supports a better response to divers running amok than the hugely nerfed Brig (at least as far as countering dive goes).
It's more terrifying than you are anticipating
Anyhow, hammond and orisa are the only two tanks i like to play because shooty shooty is fun for me (also barreling through a team is hilarious). I find myself playing the arcade much less because of QP role play but i don't think it's really changed toxic player behavior at all.
Blizzard: Pailryder#1101
GoG: https://www.gog.com/u/pailryder
I just feel like you should attempt to learn something from each loss, and so many people seem content to blame "The Meta" or "Bad DPS" without really digging into it any further.
By that I mean more the medal UI, where the stats they deign to actually show us live. I get the data is ... less than complete, but it is all we have to work with.
I just hate the feeling of being completely unmoored from any objective assessment of my performance. I could be doing it entirely wrong, but just feel like i'm awesome, and without some kind of negative feedback I'd never know, because there are 5 other people on the team and their performances make it harder to guage my own.
I don't know how anyone could quit the game before looking at the stats. Especially since it is known quitting "early" has no positive effect on queuing times in any mode.
But also to Yilias' point, especially if you're playing with pubs and randos, right after the game isn't the best time to talk about that because at least a few of the players are probably tilted. That makes having proper constructive conversations difficult. And I say that as someone who, when trying to do that right after a game, even with people I know, tends to focus on the wrong things because I'm tilted.
Blizzard: Pailryder#1101
GoG: https://www.gog.com/u/pailryder
Identifying the problem isn't the same as being able to solve it though, which is where at least a large chunk of frustration with playing tank/support comes from. That Pharah/Reaper/Mei WAS uncontested, but I have virtually no options for contesting them in a significant way, those options may already be taken by the other person, changing off my current hero, especially of the anchor tank types, is likely to create a bigger problem in addition to risking teammates tilting, and even my best option is unlikely to be a great one. Same for supports. I can be healing the shit out of my team, always the last one to die, etc etc, but my best options for dealing with the especially problematic DPS are frequently not good and generally require making a major trade in healing strength that's already being taxed (but yes, the best healing is killing the thing that's taxing it in the first place).
Not everyone has the time or lifestyle to leave streams on for good chunks of time (I'm lucky that I work from home and set my own schedule) but if you're able to find good streamers and check for VOD reviews or good youtube games, that's a great source of knowledge.
Blizzard cancels their launch event for the Nintendo Switch in NYC 2 days before it was due to start.
It hasn't been specified exactly why, though it's not hard to guess what reason the community has latched onto.
ft. Sleepy Jeff
Some damn good skins.
@Chance They finally remembered Tracer!
Steam: MightyPotatoKing
The skins are so good wtf
...Fuck.
Twitch: KoopahTroopah - Steam: Koopah
I mean, how long have we been ignoring when unarmed French people occasionally getting their arms blown off and other varieties of maiming by Parisian riot police? Emmanuel Macron smiles once on the cameras while talking about the Maastricht Treaty and we're all, "There are unhappy people in Paris? They must be Nazis in traffic vests. Meanwhile, my loins are positively en feu for that French heartthrob."
Hong Kong is the exception rather than the rule. I'm Taiwanese, and I still think it's a little surprising. Five years ago, when the ruling party was out of power, they were telling the Hong Kongese to STFU with the comparisons because they didn't like being called Chinese on principle. Fast forward to today, and Blizzard giving it's usually Blizzard (i.e. clumsy) response to controversy and hoping it would blow over before the next convention.
(I'm going to exclude Baghdad because there was already a phenomenal national project in the United States that years ago with the objective "For the sake of national healing, we are going to pretend Iraq no longer exists.")
One - that Ana skin is goddamned gorgeous. Easily the best of the crop, I'd say.
Two - we finally get Demon Hunter Sombra and she's not even tied to the randomness of a loot box! Nice!
Three - that Orisa skin is fucking awesome.
Four - that Lucio skin is fucking awesome.
Five - that Ashe skin is fucking awesome.
Six - the "patch" is the entire goddamn game client again - 20 gigs on PS4
Seven - anyone else notice that Bap's vampire skin gives him Blade's haircut? ^.^
Eight - Widow's scorpion skin is a bit much. Like a G.I. Joe cartoon.
So let's see, here. That's actually six new legendary skins for this event - wasn't it only 4 for the summer games? Plus the long-awaited Demon Hunter Sombra, for a total of 7, and the Junk and Bap skins are actually pretty nice. Coinage is correct - this is a lot more than I was expecting.
And yeah, it's a Halloween skin for Tracer. When her highlight intro started in the vid I was like "wait, seriously?" and then, Wisp.
And I've been praying in vain since last Halloween when the event referred to her as The Wisp that she would not get a second skin (after her All-Stars skin) that lit her head up like a Christmas light. I've been holding out hope for a Werewolf of London skin, but here we are. Coldhardt and Wisp: The Halloween Skins you'll equip when you really want to highlight your head hitbox for the other team.
That said, beggars can't be choosers and I'm glad she finally got something (it blows my mind that Junk and Ana are getting yet more Halloween skins while some heroes still have none.) Wisp will be purchased instantly, once that twenty goddamn gigs is done downloaded.
Fucking Liar.
Maybe he meant the event itself? It seems like just the same event live again
Twitch: KoopahTroopah - Steam: Koopah
Shenanigans declared: Widowmaker's skin doesn't even make sense spiders aren't scorpions if she's gonna dress up for Halloween wouldn't it be Mileena or Jade instead of Scorpion?
Yeah unfortunately we don't even get any new heroes for the event. I was really hoping they'd at least add Ashe to it.
And a Mustang and an F-150 are both Fords but they're not the same!
ahem *adjusts glasses* It'd be much more apropos to say this is like comparing an F-150 to a Tundra.
Perhaps, but without a gif the argument is inherently weaker.
Somehow in this like 10 reply thread we haven't mentioned for halloween people typically dress up in costume as something OTHER than what they are. Symmetra's not really a dragon either. Not even in the dragon family!
At least, to me it does. Maybe the lighting is just nicer.
And I can get Demon Hunter Sombra!