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Overwatch design analysis
Before we begin, lets have a background of both the game and myself in this game.
Game background:
Overwatch is a class based First Person Shooter (FPS) game developed by Blizzard entertainment. The game was released on May 2016 (Open Beta) after being under development since 2013.
Overwatch released with 21 different classes but currently features 27 classes with their own unique abilities, and are split into 3 different categories (Damage, Tank, and Support) as of July 2018.
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The world of overwatch also have a detailed background story of each individual characters and maps/environments. They would also often have a short cinematic video of characters origin stories which helps to bring the game alive and allow the game to feel like a whole universe instead of just being a game.
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At it's peak. Overwatch had around 35 million to 40 million players worldwide while that number vary from different websites.
The classes which the player can choose from (From left to right; Tank, Damage, Support)
Personal background:
I started playing overwatch for fun, starting around Oct of 2016. While more comfortable with playing the tank role, I have experience playing other roles as well.
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I have played competitively in Overwatch for a local organization as a tank(D.va,Roadhog,Zarya) player during season 4 - 7. I have an achieved an average Season Ranking of 3700 and have hit peaks of 4100 (counted as top 5% of the players).
I have also played as a support(Lucio,Ana,Mercy) and dps (Mccree) player for team after leaving the team due to school commitments.
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After leaving the team, I still kept in close contact with my team mates and play casually on multiple accounts. Hence am kept more or less up to date on the current competitive scene.
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I also have friends from lower rankings which allows me to have a good sense of idea of the state of Overwatch from the views of players in different skill range at both average level and professional level.
These are my accounts that I played and belongs to me
Current state of Overwatch
From my perspective, Overwatch is not in a good state overall due to various reasons that I will be covering later on.
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This can be seen through the drop in true number of active players* reported from various website, knowing various people in my social circle(including me) leaving the game, and the slow decline of people requesting 'boosting services'** .
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Videos and Clips of high profile Overwatch players leaving the game also further proves the fact that the game is slowly losing it's player base.
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*active players refers to the number of actual people playing the game rather than the number of accounts, this is due to the fact that nearly 50% of the players have an alternate account.
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**boosting services are services done by other players for the client to increase their skill rating on their profile
So why is it in this state?
Here are 2 of the main reason in which I have noticed that contributed to this:
- Unbalanced classes
- Individual Skill rating, Team based game / Unbalanced gameplay
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Unbalanced classes
This is caused by multiple smaller issues. Issues such as:
- non-symmetric gameplay
- skill to reward ratio
- key fundamental design of classes in Overwatch
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Non-symmetric gameplay
This is a common issue in all games that are multiplayer and have non-symmetric gameplay. This is because it is very difficult if not possible to perfectly balance a game that is non-symmetric due to the nature of how there is no direct and easy way to counter an ability. The best a developer can do is to try to balance it as much as possible to reduce the inbalance as much as possible to the point where its almost negligible. However this problem is worsen due to the fact that the developers of Overwatch constantly add in new classes to the pool of playable characters before the game is balanced, causing a more unbalance game as it adds on to the issue. This is, again, made worse by the reasons that follow.
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Skill reward ratio/key fundamental design of classes in Overwatch
One of the key fundamental design pillars of Overwatch is to have every classes to be feel Overpowered. This was fine back then when there were 21 heroes as they were all equally strong in most situations. However classes which have a higher skill cap are rewarded with the ability to create and take advantages of situation and chances which the lower skill cap heroes are incapable or less capable of doing so. For example, the hero(Class) called Genji have an ability which allows him to deflect projectiles back at the enemy, this includes things such as Zarya ult. However in order to do so, a high level of game sense and timing is required to pull it off, and when done correctly can easily turn the tide of the battle. With that in mind, during that period the game was fairly balanced as the players are rewarded for their skills while at the same time maintaining the overall balance of the game by making it so that those situations are rare and difficult to pull off, and when those situation do happen, the enemy team have no choice but to accept that the enemy team is better than them.
Fast forward to the state of Overwatch in the present, where there are 27 heroes altogether, Brigette being the newest addition to the game and the drastic change of Hanzo's ability causes a massive imbalance to the game.
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First being Brigette getting high reward outcome for being a low skill level consistently. Her skillset allows her to prevent most flanking strategies used previously by 2 other classes (Genji and Tracer) due to her low cooldown on her stun ability. Because of that, a high skill level player can be easily handled with and dismissed without much trouble. To make things even worse, when combined with her other skillset, she can immediately eliminate a Tracer player within the duration of the stun, basically shutting her down without allowing her to take any counter actions. While a professional Tracer player can avoid being stunned altogether, it does constrain a lot on what a Tracer can do in a game, which in turn may lower the appeal of using Tracer altogether.
Brigette completely shutting down Tracer shortly after killing Sombra with the same skill. Note the cooldown on the bottom right
Secondly, as Overwatch's fundamental game design being everyone to be equally overpowered, they have decided to change existing classes abilities to make everyone equally strong regardless of their skill level to better satisfy the "Everyone is equally over powered" criteria.
The changes with Hanzo's new ability, it allows Hanzo to farm for his Ultimate ability faster to be combined with Zarya's (another playable class) Ultimate. This creates a combination which is almost impossible to counter.
The fact that the topics mentioned above can be easily carried out consistently and often in a round causes many players to feel frustrated and helpless at the game as they cannot do anything to counteract the play.
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Hence with these reasons, the game feels very imbalance and many players are opting to use low skill level players as they are easier to play and are more consistent to make huge plays. Picking anything else other than the meta might trigger other players as they are seen as classes that are easily killed or are simply not consistent enough.
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Competitive Play
Competitive skill rating are a huge part of Overwatch as it allows you to gage against others about your skill level regardless of what class you play. This also usually push players to learn more about the game and to train in their respective class in order to increase your skill rating(SR) to the next tier.
Firstly, the balance of the game (as mentioned above) affects greatly on how games are played competitively. With the game being imbalanced, players feel less satisfied with their wins and losses due to the amount of effort being put into the match. For example, if the player have given it their all and have performed well in a game, it feels much for satisfying to win as it was a difficult challenge and that you have overcome it. However now as less effort is needed, winning a match might not be satisfying to some people.
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However that is more or less the same with any other game, the more you tried, the more satisfying the reward will feel. Here, I will be covering problems that are more related to Overwatch.
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The problems being:
- A teammate not performing
- Smurfs
- Individual skill rating, Team based game
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Teammates not performing
Note: This is from observations on the higher skill rating (3300 SR and above)
As this is a team based game, it is important to make the gameplay as team oriented as possible, however, if a team mate is not being able to perform or coorperate, it should simply make the game more difficult but it should not cause the game to be near impossible, sadly for Overwatch this is what happens. This makes it really hard for the players to enjoy the game when they know that they're most likely going to lose the match compared to having a opportunity to win even though it might be harder.
This usually cause games with a leaver (Someone who left the match early due to unstable connections or simply not wanting to play anymore) to be 1 sided and causes the others to leave as well (which will impose a penalty or a loss to the leaving players) or force the remaining players to play a very 1 sided game where they are basically getting stomped until the match is over (which isn't really fun).
Screenshot of a game where the opposing team gave up and left due to a leaver
Games where team mates do not perform or cooperate also causes matches that aren't fun due to the fact that Overwatch is a team based game and everyone relies each other to do their part. When a team mate do not cooperate the team usually suffers from a difficult game due to that player not doing his task, making it difficult for others to do theirs. (e.g if a healer is focusing on killing rather than healing, the tanks do not get the healing needed and most of the time would either die or is at too low health to remove the pressure [make space] for the DPS to perform). Occasionally this would also make the game more difficult two folds because not only that team mate is not performing but also because he is getting killed by the opponent team more often, resulting in giving an advantage to the opposing team. This brings me to the next point.
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Smurfs
Smurfs in gaming terms refers to accounts that are being played by a player who have another account which he use more frequently.
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Smurfs are a big issue as usually the person playing it have a different skill rating (usually higher) in his main account compared to the smurf account (I am also guilty of this).
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Essentially this means a higher skilled player is playing in a lower ranking game against lower ranked players causing the game to have a huge gap in terms of skill level. This usually results in a unbalanced games, and an unbalance game is not a fun game.
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This occurs as the people playing smurf account wants to try out new things, however there isn't any environment other then competitive play to try it out. Hence they use another account to test it out as they do not want to affect their main account's skill rating.
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Individual skill rating, Team based game
While this is a team based game, the skill rating is a rating given for each individual players. This poses a problem as even if the individual players belongs to a higher skill rating(SR), they are unable to, or have difficulty achieving that SR due to the fact that SR is based off your wins and losses and not your individual performance in a match.
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This poses problems as a player would have to rely on 5 other players in a match, and as mentioned above is a gamble as having just as little as 1 leaver or non-performing team mate might cost the game.
This problem is further worsened by the fact mentioned above (teammate not performing, smurfs) which causes more imbalance games than there are balanced games.
Conclusion
While I am aware there are also other factors that are in play, I feel that these are the main designs that are shaping the state of Overwatch as of now.
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With the mentioned above, I think it is fair to say that the game is slowly dying due to the fact that it is not fun anymore. From the matches being unbalanced and the hero choices slowly becoming more of knowing what heroes to choose instead of improving in the hero pool that you usually play. The game is slowly becoming less fun for the players who have been playing Overwatch for the past 1-2 years, and it simply do not feel as exciting to play the game as it is becoming more 'dull' as players resort to using the same low skill cap heroes and doing the same thing over and over again.
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