I generally hate reviewing multiplayer games. While reviews offer static windows into what content is at a point in time, multiplayer games, especially competitive shooters, are fluid experiences that continue to evolve. While single player games may be patched post-release, the core game remains the same. Multiplayer games continue to change and evolve. How a developer curates their game over time is at least as important as how the game plays at launch. Team Fortress 2 is so different today from what it was when it was first released almost ten years ago that those original reviews for the game barely apply. In fact, Team Fortress 2 no longer occupies the space it once did of the king of casual shooters, n
The original Quake and its mod capabilities are still responsible for what feels like about every modern multiplayer FPS mode and convention still popular today. Two of these mods in particular stand out the most: Capture the Flag (CTF) and Team Fortress. Team Fortress, created in 1996 by the trio of Robin Walker, John Cook, and Ian Caughley, was the more casual experience of the two. Whereas CTF was more of a pure test of your shooting skills, Team Fortress introduced the concept of classes and the different playstyles and strategies they brought to the gaming experience. Players who were less skilled at aiming headshots could play a Medic or Engineer. It was more difficult for singular players to dominate a game as every class had a counter to it. And the variety of team compositions every game featured created a fresh experience most every game.
Over the years, Team Fortress evolved into Team Fortress Classic, and eventually Team Fortress 2. I have personally played the three of these games more than any other FPS game series. Team Fortress and later Team Fortress Classic basically got me through college (along with the lesser-known classic Starsiege: Tribes). The intense combination of addictive, simple to understand gameplay, casual feel, and match variety has always been my jam. But at some point, Team Fortress 2 changed into something that was no longer what it originally was or what I wanted from it.
Valve eventually had the idea to add inventory to Team Fortress 2. It all started with the Gold Rush Update in April of 2008, which added three new weapons to the Medic’s arsenal. Over the next year, the Pyro, Heavy, and Scout received similar additions. Then in May of 2009, the world was introduced to the most infamous of all online gaming inventory items: hats. From that point forward, inventory options grew at an incredible rate. The popularity of inventory items among the core audience and the financial success of its related microtransactions eventually resulted in the June 23, 2011 announcement that Team Fortress 2 would be going free to play.
Inventory became both a blessing and a curse to Team Fortress 2. While it added more variety to gameplay and allowed it to go free to play, it also added an extra level of complexity to a previously simple game. Part of the charm of vanilla TF 2 was how you knew exactly what each class did. If you saw the big meaty dude with the chaingun, you knew he was a walking wall and you couldn’t face him up close. You knew his weapon, how to counter him, etc. With different loadouts for each class, players had to worry about unlocking inventory items. It became a much more complex game for newcomers to process. I personally haven’t played Team Fortress 2 in so long I can’t even attempt to convey what the modern game is like. Mind you, for a game now almost a decade old, Team Fortress 2 still maintains a pretty impressive player-base of 50,000 to 80,000 players at any time.
That brings us to 2016 and Blizzard’s new MOBA/TF-inspired FPS, Overwatch. The game openly wears its Team Fortress influence. On a basic level, one can point to characters such as Mercy and her healing beam, Junkrat and his grenades and remote-triggered concussion mines, and Widowmaker, the game’s most prototypical sniper, to see classes inspired by Team Fortress. With that said, Overwatch is smartly designed to appeal to what Team Fortress once was as opposed to what it is today. And this is where Blizzard in 2016 has managed to out-Team Fortress TF 2. Turning to their MOBA experience, they use more diverse characters that cover the range of the game’s four roles to achieve the effect of inventory without the complexity. Instead of having one Medic with multiple loadouts, you have three different medic choices.
Even though Scout, Heavy, and the rest are cartoonish representations of what their classes are, the visual flair and memorable voicework of each character was one of the best additions to TF 2. Overwatch takes this to its next logical conclusion with its colorful and expressive cast of characters. From the bright and cheerful Tracer, the over-the-top grimdark known as Reaper, to fan favorite pro gamer D.VA, each character has a level of care (save a few perhaps less thought-out outfits) put into their design that attracts you to them. And much like what Team Fortress once was, you immediately know what each character you see is and how you should attempt to fight them. And to add to that, Blizzard's long history of character and art design is on full display here. While they're only cosmetic items, new skins actually feel like a reward. This especially holds true to the game's legendary skins which are the most unique and well-designed. Players earn loot boxes every ten to twelve matches, and although it suffers from the duplicate item issue that plagues most loot boxes, it isn't too bad.
By spreading a variety of playstyles into different characters, Blizzard has also made a game that is casual friendly. Between simple controls, the ability at any time to bring said controls up on screen at the push of a button, and multiple tutorial and practice modes, it doesn’t take long to grasp the basics of a particular character. And this element is vital, as Overwatch is a much tougher game to overcome character deficiencies than many of its counterparts. Anyone who has played a Genji and tried to take on a Winston knows that you need to execute flawlessly to come out ahead.
This is where Overwatch is most influenced by MOBAs. Every character has at least one hard counter. The aforementioned Winston struggles to best a Bastion or a Reaper. The jetpack-propelled Pharah is in turn a perfect counter to Reaper as well as the likes of Mei and most of the game’s tanks. But then in turn, Soldier 76 and any of the game’s snipers counter her. And so on. This dynamic encourages players not to settle on singular characters. It also adds a strategic layer of if and when you should switch characters during the match. The penalty for switching is the loss of any stored ultimate meter, so liberal switching is ill-advised.
But while this design philosophy might be the game’s greatest strength, it also represents its greatest vulnerability. Overbuff publishes a weekly report on the state of the game’s Meta. In spite of their best efforts, Blizzard has struggled to make more than half the cast viable at this level of play at any given point in time. In fact, statistics have shown only eight or nine characters on a weekly basis comprise the vast majority of picks at this level of play. And this has started to trickle into casual play as well.
Why are we seeing these trends? It starts like this: teams have six slots to work with. Teams can’t win at high level play without at least one support unit. During the first two months of play, Lucio and Mercy dominated this role due to Zenyatta’s slow speed and health. So in mid-July, Zenyatta was re-balanced. However, this re-balancing made him too good, he ended up taking Mercy’s spot as the most-played character and Mercy disappeared from the Meta. In addition, since he combos well with Genji, there has been a significant rise in Genji play the past two weeks at all levels.
Thus far, it can be said Blizzard’s success rate with their balance changes has been mixed at best. The best character change was to D.VA. By altering how her Defense Matrix functioned and making several changes to her ultimate ability, she has been brought in line with other tanks in the game. The almost comical antithesis to D.VA’s re-balance success though is McCree. Since launch, there have been three separate attempts to buff, nerf, or otherwise change the way he plays. Early on, his Fan the Hammer turned what was meant to be a flanker defender into a tank buster. So Blizzard nerfed this ability only to find they had made him too weak. Instead of fixing this ability, they increased his effective fire range as a misguided attempt to deal with the rise in Pharah play. However, the rise in Zenyatta picks combined with McCree’s newfound range abilities resulted in Pharah disappearing from the Meta rather than becoming balanced. And since McCree now countered Pharah, Soldier 76 likewise saw a significant drop in play as Pharah is one of the key characters he was meant to counter.
So let’s go back to team composition. So you’ve committed one slot, possibly two to Lucio and/or Zenyatta. Now you need at least one tank to soak up damage. Right now, all five tank characters are perfectly viable. That leaves two to three picks. For various reasons, Symmetra, Bastion, Tobjorn, and Hanzo have never seen much action in high level play. In a game of counterpicks, you’re going to pick characters countering the heavily played characters. So if I can counter Pharah with Widowmaker, McCree, or 76, but McCree also gains me counters to Tracer, Reaper, Winston, and Lucio, I’m going to take him over the characters that counter the Bastion or Torbjorn nobody is playing.
Right now, high-level Overwatch encourages teams to clash in six vs. six skirmishes rather than a series of individual battles. Characters that can get to the action (or bring it to them in Roadhog’s case) are going to win out in this type of play. So if you go back to the rise of Genji play, his best counter is Mei. However, Mei is one of the game’s slowest characters. Instead of concentrating on DPS, she freezes characters that come within range of her so teammates can eliminate them. This isn’t really of much help when there’s a Reinhardt blocking your ice gun with four damage dealers behind him. In fact, with the exception of Junkrat, the entire defensive lineup in the game is seeing almost no play at a high-level right now because the tanks take more damage, the attackers deal more damage and have similar HP, and save Widowmaker, they take too long to get around the map.
So that’s the issue with the game at the high level. That brings us to the casual gamer’s bane: the matchmaking. Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan has an in-depth post you can read if you’re interested in the nuances of how it functions. / Early on, I can attest that the matchmaking experience was mostly pleasant. Over time though, players have found that quick play matchmaking is obsessed with achieving win-loss parity over setting up matches based on skill. Instead of consistently offering fun, competitive matches, the game has been known to stick you in a set of five, possibly ten or more matches where you will be on a team that gets stomped to bring get your win-loss record back in line. That might sate the algorithm, but it’s hardly an enjoyable experience for the player.
Of course, the best way at the moment to get around this is to play in a group, but this, combined with the game’s balance issues are where even just under three months into the game you can see early potential for it to get away from Blizzard. For the game to enjoy the type of long-term success Blizzard wants from it, it has to remain fun for not just high-level players, but also casual gamers. For all the reasons it has attracted players with its variety of characters and playstyles, balancing high-level and casual play and making both experiences fun requires Blizzard to walk a tight rope at all times.
In spite of any listed issues, the game is still easy to recommend for the moment. Having spent over eighty hours and over six hundred and fifty matches with the game now, I have spent at least an hour as all but five characters. Despite some nights which are so frustrating I want to stop playing, the game remains addictive and engaging. Overwatch has the blessing of what Team Fortress once was in it. Now the question is can Blizzard avoid the curse.
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