Overwatch: Or How I Stopped Worrying And Gave Blizz More Money

[WhiteTiger]

Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda

The matchmaking in this game is just terrible. You queue solo, end up with no one on your team going for the objective and you get rolled. You queue up with some friends, you're placed against groups with hardcore players 50 levels higher than you and you get rolled. It's turning into the same crap as Heroes of the Storm, which I stopped playing for the same reason. You get punished for playing with friends if you're just casual players because you only get matched against high level groups, it's far more frustrating than fun at this point

I've been finding a bit of luck solo queuing lately, which is a shock to me. Some really good, decent teams (though my win% has dropped to 45% or so, so I think I've hit the 'put him in 'easy' matches' area) and some great matches.

Queuing with my friends has been a joke. A team of 6 of us queued up...and there was a guy on the other team who's lvl was almost equal to all of ours combined (his was 182). We got steamrolled.

Kinda hoping for competitive play to come quickly, so the sry bizniz players can get their srs bizniz, and us not so srs or good players can tone quick play down a bit.

[burn_this_city]

Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda

The matchmaking in this game is just terrible. You queue solo, end up with no one on your team going for the objective and you get rolled. You queue up with some friends, you're placed against groups with hardcore players 50 levels higher than you and you get rolled. It's turning into the same crap as Heroes of the Storm, which I stopped playing for the same reason. You get punished for playing with friends if you're just casual players because you only get matched against high level groups, it's far more frustrating than fun at this point

Heroes matches you based on your average MMR. Its tough if you are pretty new and your friends are really good. The disparity in MMR on your team makes it a crap shoot.

[Rhyme]

What I want more than anything for matchmaking is the equivalent of an adult beer league.

I'm not good at first-person shooters, so I end up playing support and tanks. I honestly don't have time to sink into dialling in my accuracy and reflexes, so I expect my MMR will remain quite low forever. I'm on PS4 and about 70% of the time, my team is a bunch lone wolves who won't talk or coordinate. I get hung out to dry as tank or support, and we usually get rolled.

But I love the team play in this game, and I can snatch a few moments to research strategy around the rest of my adult live. And that 30% of the time when I do get on a good team is magic. Dashing around keeping the squad alive as Mercy, marching the payload home as Reinhardt, or dropping the shield as Lucio just as the other team is about to swarm us -- so good!

Like a beer league, I want to play with casuals who know the game but can't necessarily skate as hard as they used to. If I could find a server filled with casuals who are mature enough to work out a plan with strangers, this game would be perfect for me.

I kind of hope low-level competitive play will be like that, but I suspect I'll get steamrolled even there.

[Hemi-Cuda]

Well I jumped on the competitive bandwagon, played 10 placement matches and had a real rough go. Won the first, then 5 straight absolute steamroll losses. I got gold for eliminations and damage in every one, one of them with a whole 3 kills. So frustrating when you're team is useless match after match. Thankfully it balanced out a bit after that and I ended up 4-6 and rank 39. I'm hoping now that the placement stuff is over the matchmaking can be a bit more balanced if it goes by competitive rank

[WhiteTiger]

Yep, gonna give this Competitive mode a go, and see how I do. I like tanks/healing, so that should be welcome. Guess we'll see.

[WhiteTiger]

Finished my placement matches. I ended up going 5-5, though it looked for a while like I was going to go heavily into the loss category. I went 4-1 to start off.

I really like the match changes here. I like the longer ones (best of 3/5, for instance) and I like the changes to the escort missions. I think that those changes will keep me playing.

Had two people take off twice. Playing on the wrong side of a 6v4 is Not Fun.

Don't like how much more boorish people were to teammates and opponents.

[cDnStealth]

Qualifiers were a mixed bag. I also went 5-5 but I haven't had anyone leave yet. The first match after qualifiers was one of the most intense matches I've played.

[Coys1882]

Also went 5-5 and was given a rating of 44. I've played two games since - won both, new rating of 46.

Lots more chatter - lots more discussion about team makeup. I like it.

[Hemi-Cuda]

Played a few real games and jumped from 39 to 44. Much more impressed with this matchmaking than in quick play, the games are so much closer and way more fun. My big gripe though is with the overtime format, it's complete junk. If you attack in OT, it's basically an automatic loss since you only have 2 minutes to capture the first objective, so all OT comes down to is a coinflip

[Blaster86]

Competitive is just as bad as quick.

Edit- In fact it's worse than quick play. Just experienced my first legitimate troll while in placement matches. This experience is pushing me back to LoL very quickly. Atleast in that, when I have a great game I can single handedly win. In this, doesn't matter how good I am personally. I have to rely on pugs to be good too.

[Coys1882]

Originally Posted by Blaster86

Competitive is just as bad as quick.

Edit- In fact it's worse than quick play. Just experienced my first legitimate troll while in placement matches. This experience is pushing me back to LoL very quickly. Atleast in that, when I have a great game I can single handedly win. In this, doesn't matter how good I am personally. I have to rely on pugs to be good too.

Blaster you hate everything.

[PsYcNeT]

There are very few games that you can PubStar your way to a win in competitive (particularly at higher ranks). Generally, in most games you will reach a point where you either stop pugging (and join a clan/guild) or switch games.

Even a game like CS:GO where a high-level AWPer can 1v5 an entire team in Ranked, you'll still lose more than you win past a certain point (usually around MGE) if you aren't playing in pre-made groups that coordinate with mics.

[Blaster86]

Originally Posted by PsYcNeT

There are very few games that you can PubStar your way to a win in competitive (particularly at higher ranks). Generally, in most games you will reach a point where you either stop pugging (and join a clan/guild) or switch games.

You will always do better when you work in a team. That's a fact. But in LoL (or other MOBAs) you can literally "carry" worse players to victory. If you go off, you can be the sole reason your team wins, even against a team working together.

In Overwatch, you cannot do this. No matter how good you are alone, you need those around you to be good, or at least competent, as well. It really makes trying to play this game, unless I have a full group of six, frustrating.

[PsYcNeT]

Yeah but LoL is bad. A team game where one person can carry others to a win is a badly balanced game.

[AcGold]

I disagree, it means the skill ceiling is higher. LoL isn't the best game but it accomplishes the goal of having plenty of room for skill, more than counterstrike or most mobas.

The item builds, runes, mastery points etc. allow one player to strategically defeat 5. LoL is designed as an esport thus why the skill ceiling is so high.

[PsYcNeT]

Originally Posted by AcGold

I disagree, it means the skill ceiling is higher. LoL isn't the best game but it accomplishes the goal of having plenty of room for skill, more than counterstrike or most mobas.

The item builds, runes, mastery points etc. allow one player to strategically defeat 5. LoL is designed as an esport thus why the skill ceiling is so high.

You think those features are unique to LoL?

In fact, because there is a reliance on builds (like literally every other MOBA), I'd say it's less skill based (since most people just follow the most popular min/max build guides anyway) than a game like Counter-Strike, since in CS the only thing you really have is skill and team coordination. The strategy (other than map knowledge) is restricted more to timing buys.

This is kind of OT for the Overwatch thread (a game that won't come close to an Esport til they raise the tickrate).

[AcGold]

Did I say the features are unique to LoL? I don't even enjoy the game but denying the skill ceiling is weird and it seems like you hardly even played it all based on what you said. There's more to it than just the builds; timing, aim, strategy etc.

Anyways, I'm waiting for price drop for Overwatch. Hopefully the competitive servers are perfected by then.

[PsYcNeT]

I'll leave it at this, but generally what I'm saying is LoL has 123 champions, but in top level competition you only see most teams playing 15 or 16 different ones. That means it is poorly balanced.

No one class should be so broken in any MP game that someone can carry their team.

[Blaster86]

Originally Posted by PsYcNeT

A team game where one person can carry others to a win is a badly balanced game.

I mean, you're not wrong but with most people trying to play this like LoL or HotS anyways, at least there I'd feel a sense of accomplishment.

In this, I just get frustrated trying to push enemies off the point while my team is chasing a Tracer around near our spawn like dumb dogs after a laser pointer cause "kills, yo."

This game direly needs a TDM as that seems to be what a majority of players are looking for and a removal of medals for kills and damage done in other game modes. Reward objective based stats.

[PsYcNeT]

Originally Posted by Blaster86

I mean, you're not wrong but with most people trying to play this like LoL or HotS anyways, at least there I'd feel a sense of accomplishment.

In this, I just get frustrated trying to push enemies off the point while my team is chasing a Tracer around near our spawn like dumb dogs after a laser pointer cause "kills, yo."

This game direly needs a TDM as that seems to be what a majority of players are looking for and a removal of medals for kills and damage done in other game modes. Reward objective based stats.

I'm picking up what you're putting down, and I agree. Eventually, competitive mode will become more specific (for the most part) and we'll see that kind of behavior shook out to the lower tiers.

As the game evolves/strategies emerge, the more annoying players you'll see at high-level play are non-team coordinator soloists (likely Super-Hanzos, KDR focused Genjis, etc.) and less of the clueless hurf-durf types.

Will take awhile though before there is a significant disparity in skillplay.