Overwatch

[Melbosa]

Overwatch "Movie": http://ca.ign.com/videos/2016/06/02/overwatch-the-movie-every-story-cinematic, basically all the trailer/character videos in order and in one video.

[Mr. Analog]

Awesome

[Melbosa]

Instalok has some kewl parodies:

https://youtu.be/Snt9QlL4ZCo
https://youtu.be/ANI5RxRRlGk

[Mr. Analog]

Instalok has some kewl parodies:

https://youtu.be/Snt9QlL4ZCo
https://youtu.be/ANI5RxRRlGk

Those are great yeah

Spoiler

Nobody appreciates Symmetra shields!

[close]

[Mr. Analog]

Man! I am still loving Overwatch, I haven't had a lot of time to play during the week and with No Man's Sky coming out today not sure how much I will get in on the weekend.

I looked up my stats, I'm in the top 7 percentile of Symmetra players for eliminations (never follow me into a room), granted I haven't played THAT much yet but still @%&# YEAH!

[Melbosa]

Man! I am still loving Overwatch, I haven't had a lot of time to play during the week and with No Man's Sky coming out today not sure how much I will get in on the weekend.

I looked up my stats, I'm in the top 7 percentile of Symmetra players for eliminations (never follow me into a room), granted I haven't played THAT much yet but still @%&# YEAH!

nice!

[Melbosa]

LOL I'm going to check this game out to see if it really is very much like Overwatch: https://youtu.be/J2gBkqP4V9Y

[Melbosa]

So I am looking very forward to Sombra character.  Sounds like the ARG members might be hinting at the next one as well (Liao, Doomfist, Athena, Brigitte).

[Mr. Analog]

So I am looking very forward to Sombra character.  Sounds like the ARG members might be hinting at the next one as well (Liao, Doomfist, Athena, Brigitte).

She looks good but a little unbalancing, her ult shuts down other ults and her hack ability can break a lot of things like health packs and other character abilities (including McCree's roll somehow) I mean this will be fun in casual but in competitive it's going to be ugly as hell

TBH she seems like a better hassler than Tracer, which means we'll see fewer Tracer's around

One of my fears when they announced OW and how they would phase in heroes over time was balance... and we're already seeing this. During the OW World Cup none of the power teams were using characters like Mercy/Torb/Sym (in fact there were running jokes about some of these characters) we saw a lot of Lucio / Genji / Ana. I think only South Korea fielded lower tier characters because their team was a wrecking crew and didn't face any challenges from the other teams

Blizzard wants OW to become an eSport, to the point where they've created a League, the trouble I see is character balance. I mean we had this problem with TF2 with different weapons, and Valve spent a lot of time and effort tweaking the balances of each item until it was statistically "fair" but even still when you were running a tournament server you disabled non-default weapons / abilities (and random crits)

With OW I see that there is a very definitive tier system forming (which means that nerfs are incoming) this means that the meta is going to be more centered around team comp than player skill.

With TF2 you could pick a class and really focus on it, learn it, master it. With OW focusing too much on one character is detrimental to competitive play because of the nerf threat. So now as a competitive player you have to put more time into learning multiple characters and learning the team comp meta for competitive play.

I think people wanting to get into that scene are going to realize what a commitment that kind of training really is and focus on something else.

For me, a casual, I don't really mind. I mean the people I play against still don't know that Rein's shield does not block Symmetra's charged photon shot or that you flank and annoy a Bastion to force them out of a strategic location or that you can wall skate some maps all the way to enemy spawn with Lucio and back-camp the other team

ANYway I haven't played much lately... I'd like to change that... but watching the World Cup at Blizzcon last week was a little saddening because of the lack of depth

tl;dr I don't feel OW is League ready, it is very casual friendly. I predict that in 2017 it will go FTP

[Melbosa]

Wow quite the intellectual look at the game, impressive.

I'm on the casual side as well so for me its just about the fun of new abilities and characters.  I think your right, competitive play will bring nerfs and balancing over time.  But if it is to succeed as a true eSport that will be unavoidable.  And just like most sports, over time strategies and play style will evolve and change for competitive teams. 

[Mr. Analog]

TBH I don't think it will last competitively unless they can really get good at creating competitive maps that allow for a variety of team comps to thrive

As it stands most maps cater to mobile offense / mobile counters which is why we see a lot of Lucio / Rein / Genji in higher level ranks, any map with a punishing or time-sensitive choke point will have Zarya on both teams (1. to maximize ult damage, 2. boost offensive push defenses).

According to Blizz there's no character balancing coming anytime soon, we're just going to start seeing some characters fall to the side in competitive (which is a shame because the potential OW has is more variety which could have lead to some really interesting matches at high levels)

If anybody is curious here's the currently accepted hero tier list
http://overwatch.metabomb.net/gameplay-guides/overwatch-best-heroes-tier-list-rankings-31-10-2016

Tier 1: Lucio / Reinhardt
Tier 2: Zarya

Guaranteed you will see these 3 heroes on almost all high rank teams. Reinhardt may slip with Sombra's ability to kill his shield and charge, but she has to replace a backline harassment character like Tracer or D.Va and so far I'm not sure how punishing she is yet (she's high mobility / annoying, how effective that is I just don't know yet)

She's in the PTR now, people are documenting her abilities, we just haven't seen much play with her yet

[Melbosa]

Well this is a "Holy @%&#" moment for OW: https://youtu.be/Q_FJwx_iYDk

Custom Games will give you XP (which most games do not - but then again most games give you bonuses as you level, not just eye candy changes).

And then to say any setting can be changed in a Custom game from Game mechanics down to Character ability and attribute tweeks... well that just made this game that more fun to play with Friends and strangers!

[Mr. Analog]

I'll get excited if they let us run our own dedicated servers.

Also the way he talks about server browsers seems to be intentionally ignorant, I would be shocked if most people who play OW aren't familiar with the concept.

[Melbosa]

So not sure if anyone has been keeping up with this game, but they are just releasing their second PvE Event today: http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/04/11/overwatch-uprising-seasonal-event-now-live

And I know we discussed things like Dedicated Servers, but isn't custom games that can be password protected and count towards XP, so that pretty much is a dedicated server right there without having to run your own hardware?

Anyway, new character as well to play, Orisa, and lots of new types of play on maps (Capture the Flag on all maps now).

Is anyone else playing OW other than me?

[Mr. Analog]

I want to get back innit, particularly since they've made Symmetra even better

anxiety is a big factor for PvP for me

I LOVE THE GAME so much though