Skeptical about Overwatch

Okay so Ive been pretty skeptical about this whole race to make the next big FPS-Moba thing. I mean up until a couple days ago I couldn't tell the difference between Overwatch and Battleborn. I didn't try the beta for Overwatch because I just didn't care. This all seemed like it was just gonna be another Evolve situation so I had decided to just wait for everything to blow over.

Then only a couple days before Overwatch released my friend, who is the type of gamer who doesn't follow gaming news or go to any game sites and who basically only plays Madden/COD/Battlefield, starts asking me about it and I tell him what I know which is team based competitive shooter. Anyway he gets the game and sells it to my other IRL gamer friend who also mostly just plays COD/BF based on comparisons to Timesplitters which I still don't get. And now I'm getting the game because they've gotten it. But I'm still very skeptical about it.

Is anyone else still skeptical about Overwatch like I am? I mean all the hype for it just seemed like bought hype manufactured by Blizzard and Gearbox. I guess at this point I don't really have any course of action other than to see where it all goes. And I suppose I have a better than average chance of having a good time since I will be playing it with people who I have been playing competitive shooters with since GoldenEye. I cant help but wonder if people will still be talking about this game after the dust has settled.

I'm pretty sure most of us have already forgotten that Battleborn even happened

I've played a lot of Overwatch in the past few days and am willing to bet that people will be sticking with it

Overwatch isn't a MOBA. Anyway, it's too bad you didn't play the open beta. It was free and showed off the entire game.

Before playing the Beta I barely cared about the game at all. It had a nice artstyle, but I don't play competitive shooters and I did not like Team Fortress 2. I don't even really give a crap about Blizzard's pedigree, they've made hardly anything I care about.

After playing the Beta I picked up the game day 1 and have not regretted it. It's hard to explain exactly why this is different (without rambling on about specific things I enjoy), but it definitely has nothing to do with the hype for me. It's just a well made and fun game.

Blizzard has a good history of supporting their competitive games in the esports scene. As long as the game has a place in esports that gets supported like hearthstone, hots, and starcraft it won't die completely like evolve. Plus speaking as someone who played a little bit of evolve and a lot of overwatch, overwatch is actually fun for more than a couple rounds.

It's good you have friends who are playing it. Best experience with the game so far has been Skype grouped games with friends.

nothing MOBA about it, it's just a well made team based shooter. If that's not your thing then yeah your interest will wane a bit, but there's more than enough people out there who are into it already.

nothing to it has anything to do with MOBA its way more like team fortress 2.

Also i just want to say MOBA is the most stupid acronym (since it can be applied to 90 percent of video games)

@kronixi: You can say the same thing about RPGs. The acronym doesn't actually matter because it's a label to show what the game plays like without more context.

I bought it and I'm STILL skeptical, but mostly of it's future.

I'm having fun now because it's fresh and I didn't participate in the two dozen beta's that came before the game launched. Finding new strategies for various heroes and getting better at them is pretty fun. Today at the beginning of a match someone spontaneously announced "all soldier!" and in an unbelievable show of online harmony somehow we all switched to Soldier 76 on my team and proceeded to win the next round while spamming his one liners. A bunch of soldiers sitting on a cap point, swimming in medpacks and spamming the tactical visor is a sight to behold and even a wall of Bastions couldn't stop us.

We're all soldiers now..

All that fun aside.. I don't know how long this will last unless Blizzard is going to stay on top of adding content, and not charging an arm and a leg for it each and every time. Within 10 levels I've unlocked exactly 2 skins through the loot boxes and as the time elongates between one rank to the next getting another spray or voiceline becomes increasingly disappointing. Obviously this is a clever strategy to secure revenue after someone has purchased the game, but I really would have appreciated at least SOME skins tied behind a progression system of sorts. Get 100 High Noon kills, nail 50 arrow kills, revive 100 teammates etc. Leaving everything up to the loot box is bringing on painful Destiny memories that I've tried to repress.

The maps are fine but nothing special and there don't appear to be that many of them or maybe they all kind of blend together for me. Honestly it's the weakest part of the game in my opinion. With such an imaginative cast of characters I continue to be perplexed as to why the levels are so boring and weirdly out of place - especially since they went through all this trouble of making a story that I'm certain most people will be completely oblivious to. I know that personally I haven't seen a smidge of plot within the game itself in any shape or form. They really should have saved those animated shorts as tiny cinematics in between key progression levels, tying together one long narrative through character backstories over the course of your online career.

So yah it's fun, but how long will it continue being fun time will tell. I read someone on these forums describe Overwatch as the Fisher Price "My First Team Shooter" and in a way that is a very apt description. It's surprising how anemic your actual choice of game modes is, but I suppose that the strength of the game shines through in that it's not really a huge deal.

@humanity: They've stated all new characters and maps will be free and I don't see any reason to believe they'll go back on that. The frequency of updates is still up in the air. We'll see.

Also don't forget you can just buy specific customization items with the in-game currency. It's not all left up to random loot.

@zeik: I haven't followed along with any Overwatch news so hearing that there will actually be new characters is really exciting and is already a good sign for keeping the game interesting. Good to know!

It's the best multiplayer shooter since TF2. And it came out the same month as the best singleplayer shoter in years! I ain't skeptical, I'm aaaaaall in.

A lot of people (me included) only got interested in Overwatch after they got their hands on it with the beta. It is hard to manufacture hype when I had zero context on the game before the beta was up. Blizzard has always been a company that doesn't release a game until they are satisfied with them, and it shows.

My point is that it is hard to notice why people like this game other than trying it. Since you are skeptic about it but have two friends who already bought it, I would advice you to play it in their house for a couple of matches and then decide for yourself.

My friends are strictly PS4 so I only really play single player games on PC.

Anyway after reading through responses, I feel better about some aspects and grow more concerned about others. The lack of character progression is troubling. In this day and age FPS games are overflowing with progress bars and unlocks. The last shooter I played that didn't have unlocks was socom, which also happens to be my favorite online shooter series of all time, so maybe it wont be so bad if the gameplay and teamwork aspects are solid.

I'm always so skeptical of things that are both new and popular because they're usually mutually exclusive. Or hype masquerading as quality especially when I'm observing the hype and not participating in it.

Who knows maybe this will be the first Brad game that I actually like.

What if I don't like TF2 at all? But its not totally TF2s fault cause I also hate online games on PC, always a horrible experience.

Well, I'm not one for competitive multiplayer-only games, even if this one does look very pretty, so I'm out.

Also, micro-transactions in a full retail priced game?

@devil240z: Then you probably won't like Overwatch. Yes it's a very VERY good one of those, but it's still one of those.

I'm skeptical because it just seems like a new TF2 style game. And I lost my enthusiasm for competitive shooters a long time ago. I understand the idea that Blizzard pretty much takes whatever they do to pretty much it's ultimate form.

..but it still just seems like TF2 with a new coat of paint? Which is all good and fine for people that like that stuff. This all makes it sound like I'm mad or hate it or something but I'm more just like.. eh whatever?

So then you have every game podcast ranting and raving about how amazing it is and now I have two friends who are playing it and saying its amazing (but they sorta don't play many games) and they are playing with a bunch of other friends we made in FF14. Its all just so amazing!

And I'm like.. eh yea.. But I know the cycle of those games for me.. I play it, I get murdered endlessly by super good players, I feel great when one in every ten sessions I actually do pretty well, then it's back to being murdered okay I'm done.. And I just feel like I can just skip it..I have this same feeling for Doom right now as well. I watched the Quick Look, I saw what it was, been there kinda done that..

I could continue Uncharted 4 if I wasn't bored of that already.. I could pick up Total War: Warhammer which looks cool and I really got into Total War: Empire back in the day but not since then.. and I could also see it being too deep/complicated/brutal AI for me to enjoy.. Really enjoying Project Cars in VR..

My point is I feel like there is plenty of other stuff out there right now. People just keep nagging to play Overwatch and if anything it's pushing me farther away. I expect all the hype to die down and people to move on after 2-3 months.

I'm with you. I dabbled with TF2 for a little while, but had very little fun, largely because I don't have any fun playing against skilled players on PC. I like Overwatch though. Part of that is because I can play on a console, but not the whole reason. If it was just TF2 on a console I still don't think I would like it.

@devil240z said:

I enjoyed my time with the beta but I wonder the same notion. I just got bored with the current offerings.

It's a great multiplayer game. If you want a great multiplayer game, then get this great multiplayer game. If you don't want this great multiplayer game, then don't get this great multiplayer game.

Dust settles around everything, and then people eventually talk about it less and less. This literally happens with everything. I never understand why this is a concern with people.

@boozak: I have no idea, I suggest contacting Blizzard Support and asking them about it.

I think he meant whether people will still be playing it as much or is this the honeymoon phase where everyone is head over heels in love with a game for the first week or two and then everyone suddenly drops off. GameSpot made Evolve seem like it will be a huge thing and they genuinely loved it over at that office - then a week after release no one was talking about it.

It's a pretty realistic concern for an online shooters that only has two game modes.

@humanity: Yeah that's why I was curious about the two week thing, I'd like to check in with this game after a month or so and see if there are any new maps and characters and whether people are still playing. Overwatch is a good game I just think it's quite a hard sell at full price on consoles. I'm sure it'll do fine though, it seems to have reached mass appeal.

I'm skeptical that it will have long legs, especially on console where games have a very "flavor of the month" type of appeal then people move on to the next thing. As for right now and it's future on the PC, its fun as hell and I can see myself going back to it for a long while, especially if Blizzard keeps updating it.

Ehh, TF2 isn't even the best shooter Valve has put out in the past few years.

@e30bmw: TF2 is almost ten years old now.

It'll be nine later this year I think. I was using few very generously there haha. My point still stands though.

@e30bmw: valve hasn't released a real game in years. Nevermind a FPS

@pyrodactyl: They don't need to, there are millions still playing Dota 2 and CS:GO. Those games are only a few years old. Today's peak player count between those two games alone was 1.7 million.

@mike: what are dota and cs players doing? They're really just playing the same thing over and over again?

@devil240z: I guess, and collecting hats and skins or something.

@mike: I mean I probably played socom confrontation regularly for 3 years but by the end cheaters made the game unplayable. I guess that valve support is worth something even if I'm not into their games.

@devil240z: I've played DotA for nearly ten years now. I got a regular set of friends I play usually roughly weekly with, kinda like pickup basketball.

It's really more like a sport in the regard, it never really gets old. I could give 2 $hits about the hats etc, I just like the competition.

You're right the Valve support is key these days. Icefrog, since the DotA Allstars days, has done a masterful job continually keeping the Meta fresh.

@slag: that's how I always felt about socom. It's too bad that Sony didn't seem to understand what made it good.

@devil240z: Dota and CS players look to get better at the games understand them fully and devise strategies, not just experience the content and move on. Same deal with fighting games and certain RTS games.

@baronsamedi: yeah I get that. I just wish there were a game like that for me.

I actually liked csgo on ps3 but when I tried to play the PC version it's just seemed like an impenetrable mess full of mean people.

It's a really well made tight shooter. The characters have depth and very different play styles. Contrast Reinhardt (tank with energy shield) with Mercy (healing beam/damage buff beam) and that shows you a good amount of range. It's not a good game for playing several hours straight like the Witcher, but I can see myself playing a few matches a day for a long while. Also, I compare it a lot to Battlefield 4 which I have probably a hundred hours in. It is absolute genius that they don't show you your K/D ratio, because as soon as you focus on that, teamplay, cooperation, and focusing on the objective get thrown out the window. How many rush games have we all played where NO ONE is trying to rush in, and everyone is hanging back and sniping for the personal glory of their K/D ratio.

@mike: They don't need to do anything. With steam they can do whatever they want. They just chose to exclusively do stuff I find boring as fuck. In fact, they are cimenting the gold standard for successfull PC games with Dota and CS:GO and I want no part of this microtransaction riddled wasteland they're building.

Man if only CD Projekt Red had Valve money the games they could build...

I feel like I still see that even if they don't actively show the stat. Lot of teams too skittish to rush a point or too eager to fan out on their own to hunt instead of guarding one.

@devil240z: If you're sensitive to online insults you're not really going to get into a competitive game with a high skill ceiling. Competition breeds expectation and when said expectations aren't met that seeds aggression it's like that in any area of competition.

@baronsamedi: I'm really not.

@devil240z: yeah I remember how entrenched ppl were in SoCom. Now you mention it... You'd think Sony would try to relaunch it somehow maybe with a more microtransaction model. I think part of what killed Socom was the lack of a continual revenue stream unlike LoL or DOTA 2 to pay for . But back then that was kind of unthinkable.

That model is so common today (heck I've been playing Clash of Clans for nearly 2 years for the same reason as I play DOTA 2), seems like a no brainer for Sony to at least try.

@slag: it's really the only online game I've ever liked and actually been good at. Ever since I've just been chasing that high.

Battlefield is really fun but just doesn't offer high level play.

Pretty much. CS has been the same at it's core for 15+ years and I think the original Dota mod came out not too long after that. When you make a fun game with solid mechanics, you don't need as many gimmicks to get people on board. Obviously the hats help, but tons of games have done cosmetic stuff like that and few have had the longevity of those games.

The only thing those two games have in common are their three-syllable generic titles. I'm not skeptical. Overwatch is good.

I'm skeptical, but I can't try it out. Yes, I know the beta was for that.

Well I should have my copy by tomorrow so I will likely have an actual opinion on the game by the end of the weekend.