Blizzard Entertainment’s Overwatch has been out for more than a month and is only getting more popular. Fans are having a blast with creating art and comics for the game, Competitive Play is in full swing, the matches are still fun, a new hero is being revealed on July 21st and there’s even more to come in the future. However, there are still plenty of things to hate in Overwatch. By “hate”, we don’t necessarily mean “quitting the game and uninstalling it forever”. But there are certain things that nag Overwatch players to no end. Let’s take a look at five of them below.
Hero Balances
Overwatch‘s launch was pretty damn fun. Everyone was trying different heroes, forming different comps, ignoring suggestions from the game about having no tanks or healers (which they still do but that’s beside the point). It was great! Unfortunately, players started noticing that some heroes were a little too good. McCree and Widowmaker are good examples and they’ve been rightfully nerfed as a result.
However, some hero balances continue to bother players. Why is Zenyatta’s survivability so low when his utility doesn’t quite make up for it, especially compared to other healers like Mercy or Lucio? Why is D.Va classified as a tank when she can be taken down so easily thanks to her oversized hit box? Granted, the hero balance in the game is in a much better place now than before but you’ll still see the odd random complaint about Mei or Junkrat, especially Mei because curse you, Mei.
Tick Rate, Lag
The issue of tick rate is pretty interesting – it’s something you never really hear about but it’s pretty essential in competitive multiplayer games. Essentially a higher tick rate means less chances of being shot around a corner or actually activating abilities when you hit the button as opposed to dying. Take Counter-Strike for example which runs at 60 Hz and thus doesn’t have many of the above issues. Overwatch‘s matches outside of Custom Games only run at 20 Hz, thus leading to complaints from fans.
To be fair, Blizzard has noted that it will look into 60 Hz for Quick Play games if there’s enough feedback from Custom Games. However, game director Jeff Kaplan also noted that some of the issues players are facing could be due to lag. At this point, it’s a toss-up as to what players complain about more but regardless of which one you feel like blaming, it’s still an issue that gets a fair few folks annoyed.
Competitive Play Hiccups
Competitive Play has been underway for a while now and though it’s better than the closed beta, there are still some hiccups. For instance, if you leave a match by disconnecting but join back in within a minute, the match will continue and everything will be right as rain. Unfortunately, there was a bug that caused said player to actually receive a loss and lowered Skill Rating.
Some players have reported winning numerous matches and not seeing their Skill Rating go up by much. Then there’s weightage of Skill Rating being biased against support characters. Don’t even get us started on an issue that was affecting King of the Hill matches where players simply didn’t receive Skill Rating increases with wins. Then again, all these complaints pale in comparison to…
Sudden Death
When two teams go to a draw in a Competitive Play match, they go into Sudden Death. The first team to push the payload to the first checkpoint on an Escort map (or simply capturing the first point in a Hybrid or Assault map). To balance things out for the team defending – because sometimes attacking is much easier than defending on some maps – there’s a reduced time limit given to the round as a whole. If the attackers can capture the point within that time limit, it’s their win. Makes sense?
Well here’s the problem – how does the game decide who attacks and who defends? Why, through a coin flip. No seriously. You can actually see a coin flipping in-game and deciding who attacks. While you might say it’s 50:50 odds and them’s the breaks, it’s competitive gaming. In competitive gaming, you kind of want everyone to be on the same level playing field and not lose out because someone won a coin toss over you. Thankfully it seems Blizzard will be removing Sudden Death in Season 2 of Competitive Play and simply declaring draws between teams as draws so there’s that to look forward to.
Loot Box RNG
Ah, Loot Boxes. They’ve been a source of generally small controversy since Overwatch launched. Many are happy with being able to learn Loot Boxes by simply playing the game. Others are furious that Blizzard would release a retail game and throw micro-transactions in it despite the items in Loot Boxes being completely cosmetic and having no effect on the gameplay whatsoever (we’ll ignore Hanzo’s Wolf skin Ultimate callout for now).
However, everyone can agree on one singular point – the Loot Box RNG can really suck sometimes. You may unearth a Legendary or higher skin. Other times you may get some currency to buy stuff or a neat voice line or highlight intro. Or you may just get emblems, voice lines and sprays. Or just duplicates of stuff you have. Yes, duplicates give you currency but not all that much and it’s possible to go through several Loot Boxes and get nothing of note. Suffice to say, it’s not exactly Blizzard’s best example of RNG in a game till date.
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