Blizzard's Overwatch Catch-All

Rubb Ed wrote:

I really enjoyed the random character brawl when that came out. I'd actually love to see that as a regular mode, just because you have to adapt to whatever character you've been assigned and figure out how to put him/her/it into a position to be effective.

All the other ones have been le suck, though.

Also agree, it was so much fun, I've barely been as interested in the other brawls.

Well after giving it a bit of a go I think I'm done with competitive. Last night I played 4 matches and 3 of them had a quitter. Not sure what the solution is but from my perspective it's entirely unpleasant playing competitive. Quick play on the other hand is treating me well, serving up a number of close games. Maybe it's my region or the time I play but comp play is just really poor experience for me.

I really dig Ana, if I'm picking last and we need a support, I'm usually picking her (in quick play) and I'm having plenty of success with her too, we win most matches I play with her. Being able to heal players in the air and on the frontline without putting myself at much risk is super effective, and she is great for Pharrah. Also the knockout shot is awesome for any overextended enemy players or anyone unexpectedly getting in your face.

EvilDolphin wrote:

Well after giving it a bit of a go I think I'm done with competitive. Last night I played 4 matches and 3 of them had a quitter. Not sure what the solution is but from my perspective it's entirely unpleasant playing competitive. Quick play on the other hand is treating me well, serving up a number of close games. Maybe it's my region or the time I play but comp play is just really poor experience for me.

Right there with you, though in addition to the quitters, competitive is just so full of whiners. If someone doesn't take the absolute "best" set of heroes, many others in the team seem to spend the entire game yelling at them over voice or chat. Had one game where it was essentially 6 on 4, as 2 of my teammates were in our own base yelling about each others character choices rather than actually playing.

I just realized my neighbors probably think I'm a crazy person who talks to himself constantly.

Most days I play a few rounds in the evenings and almost exclusively on Curse with you guys.

It's been pretty hot in Vancouver and in my building the individual condo unit's don't have A/C but the interior hallway does, so I've been keeping the door to my condo open to steal a bit of the cooler air.

The neighbors know I live by myself and sound carries throughout he hall more than i thought, they probably think I'm just talking to the voices inside my head every day

Crimeny wrote:

Oh and I was ranked at 38 after my qualifiers, I dropped down to 34 for a bit, but worked my way up to 46 right now. :D

I qualified at 48 then promptly dropped to 38. My 11 year old is currently ranked 54... and he's pulled me back up to 40.

I miss this game I've considered just buying the Xbox one version since I can't use my keyboard and mouse on my pc at the moment.

@SKraut

I can see both sides of this. Now that hero stacking has been excised from Competitive Play, character selection (and 'correctly' playing a character) is even more critical to success. There is no way to 'cover' for poor choices and poor execution. Not that that excuses raging on one's own team-mates, of course.

EDIT: Also, I suspect that many players are looking at the Heroes left on the board and are picking the ones they're most comfortable with rather than those that best suit the Map or the complement the rest of the team. I know that's what I do.

@EvilDolphin

I agree with you that the quitting problem is getting worse. I think that someone quit in at least 70% of the matches I played over the weekend... I'm probably going to return to Star Wars: Battlefront next weekend, as I'm becoming increasingly frustrated with Overwatch Competitive Play. Playing for twenty minutes, knowing that - a player down - a loss is pretty much guaranteed is far from enjoyable.

Speaking of quitters, Team Fortress 2 is clamping down on it in their latest update.

Would be good to see Blizzard apply something similar. They're not going to stamp it out completely, but they can probably massively reduce it if there is a deterrent.

Yes, I saw that too and thought exactly the same thing.

I fear that Blizzard are beginning to flail about with this game at the moment. They've removed something that no one was complaining about (hero stacking in competitive play) and left untouched something that everyone is complaining about (players quitting in competitive play).

According to Kotaku they're also quietly buffing and nerfing in the background. Symmetra has had her turret damage reduced, while - again according to Kotaku - Lucio has had his skating ability improved.

Player stacking is very much something that people didn't like and I'm glad it's gone. The players quitting issue I think is more to do with something on their(to a degree). This weekend my wife was dropped from her games a few times and everytime she would rejoin and select a hero it would kick her back out to main menu. One player quits and then everyone else shrugs at lost xp and also quits...even if the initial person was just dropped by the game and didn't leave voluntarily.

Quick Q for this thread as I'm a filthy skimmer (or last page checker). I play this on ps4. Is there a separate filthy-console peasant version of the Overwatch thread, or are we all just posting in the same place and sorting out the class warfare as we go?

Unrelatedly, I got my Venom X controller system working for Overwatch last night (mouse aim), so if anybody on ps4 wants to add me, feel free. I've played with Nickson once or twice, but that's about it for GWJ'ers.

I played a handful of competitive matches over the weekend and didn't have a single player leave early. I think it's a lot better than before the patch personally.

Still plenty of standard competitive multiplayer shenanigans like an offensive Torb continually yelling at the team to push the cart.

This weekend was horrible for quitters. Worst i've seen. About 60% of my losses were from quitters.

The thing about quitters is that I don't think this is something you can fix. At all. People who have come to the conclusion that a game is a lost cause are either going to quit (if the penalty is weak enough) or simply throw the game (if the penalty for leaving is harsh enough).

Either way, you're fighting against people who have already given up.

The thing is they could allow people to join the game in progress. They just need to give people incentive to join the game. I would be fine joining a game where someone else has dropped if I don't join and lose immediately. You could also give them only the chance of winning. Your team wins you get competitive points. Your team loses you get nothing but don't lose any CP. They could give you even more points for joining a team that's losing.

They also need to mark the point in the game where someone left and give you losing points only for that point in time. It sucks to get a loss/lose CP because someone dropped during a tie game and then you go from tied to complete loss.

Blizzard *is* dealing with the quitting problem. There are severe penalties for quitting (75% XP loss for an amount of time related to how often you quit), and quitting enough matches will get you banned from competitive play for the current season. Not really sure what else they can do. They claim they are being responsive to player reports, too, but that's something it's harder to see.

needs to be more severe in my opinion.

Agreed, Ranalin.

The fact that we are still seeing so many drops outs indicates that the sanctions aren't tough enough. They need to keep turning the screw.

At the same times, they also need to do something about the penalty inflicted by leavers on the erstwhile team-mates. Losing 15% of the a team pretty much guarantees a loss. The simple solution is to turn on the facility to join a competitive match which it is in progress. I don't understand why this has been disabled for competitive play.

At the moment, Blizzard are basically saying, "Because some a@sehole has left your team, you will all be punished with a loss!"

4 games like that a night pretty much kills my desire to play...

What gets me is that it say you get no penalty and yet you lose rank regardless. That's a stiff f*cking penalty.

ranalin wrote:

needs to be more severe in my opinion.

Like I said, the best you can hope for is that people will just throw the game while staying in it if the penalty is too great.

Really the problem is that they leave and you get punished for it. Sure it could be gamed if they made it so you didn't get punished for a loss but who cares?

Maybe the punishment should be more immediate. Banned from matchmaking for the entirety of the match, but allow you to rejoin it?

Unfortunately, I don't see how you can negate the whole match when a person quits. The best solution, imho, is to allow new people to join in-progress competitive (within reason, not sudden death or less than... 2 minutes in a round?). If there was just a penalty for the quitter and no one else got the loss, 6 man teams could rotate who quit the match if they think it's a no-win situation.

Hey everyone, this has probably been asked already but 108 pages is a lot to go over:

Who is playing this game on Xbox One? Just picked it up this past Friday and looking for people to play with.

If you had some players not get a result in a match then the competitive ranks would get inflated (or deflated) over time. Similarly if you had players join in-progress you would have extra player wins or losses which would also skew things over time, albeit not as dramatically. In-progress joining would also be disproportionately unfair to solo players since most drops are one person and it's usually on a losing team.

Every multiplayer team game has problems with leavers. I haven't seen a really good solution for it yet.

If you quit a comp match you get a week timeout. You do it again you get two weeks. You do it again it's for the entire season. The second time you get banned for a season it carries over into Quick Play & Brawl as well.

Also, someone leaving comp resets the match from the beginning of that round with a new player filling the missing slot.

Good idea? Bad idea? I put like 10 seconds of thought into it so I'm sure there's holes to be poked in it.

Well, seeing as how if you bomb out due to connectivity you can rejoin (I've had that happen a couple times lately) I'm game for trying JeremyK's solution.

Allowing players to join is a partial solution but probably the best one. Win/loss stats could be separate for someone who joined an in progress match. I also think you need to incentivize them to join because who wants to join a team that had someone drop because they were losing?

I saw this article on the ranking system over at Reddit. I think it's a decent read and I agree with most of it except for this part:

Here's the real truth about this Elo hell stuff I think. The example Reaper situation above really is good play, it really is something that should help the team win...if you were a higher rank. The higher rank all the players involved, the more easily your teammates can convert advantage you provide into a win. If your teammates are so bad that they can't convert the advantage you gave into a win, then you should do some completely different things. Yeah it sucks that the thing you did SHOULD help, but in truth, it didn't. Work with what you have. Work with your generally uncoordinated or lower-skilled teammates and provide them whatever they actually DO need to win.

The problem with this is it encourages poor play by both the bad people on the team and the better players. Overall, I think individual stats affecting your competitive score is a good idea but poorly executed. Perhaps it's just executed in the best way they can at this time.

Also, I want to make sure because I believe I asked this before but can you do group play in competitive? Can we team up and play against randoms? If so that completely breaks competitive mode. Not just a little but completely.