Thread by @Keladinus1

I guess what I would say the big problem with Overwatch is that it's fundamentally incomplete from a design aspect.

Now, I'm no expert on game design - really, I'm mostly an armchair analyst.

But Overwatch pretends to be a team based objective shooter, when really it's just a playground where blizzard shows off all their new toys.

There's a couple of reasons I hold this opinion. First, I have to draw the obvious comparison to TF2.

Team Fortress 2 was meticulously designed at its core to be a balanced team shooter. The classes roster is well rounded, between offense and defense, between damage and support. And everything has defined counters.

The game modes in TF2 are just simple PC FPS staples, like control points or CTF. But they work because at its core, TF2 is nothing more than that - a simple shooter game.

Overwatch, meanwhile, has never been a balanced or carefully crafted experience. Overwatch simply presents the players with a toy box full of shiny stuff, with only the most cursory glance thrown toward considerations like team composition.

On top of the basic mechanics, you have these absurdly impactful abilities called Ultimates, which can easily turn a fight in your team's favor. When the skill level of both teams is even, the game stops being about mechanics and becomes entirely about ult management.

The maps are smaller, the teams are smaller. This is because the game risks becoming too chaotic if this precaution isn't taken. But this approach to design, while maximizing excitement, also puts pressure on the individual players to perform. It's stressful.

Overwatch also draws inspiration from WoW, with tanks, healers and DPS. For a while they experimented with the "defense" category, but this eventually just got redesignated into "damage".

Over half the cast is damage dealers. To enforce the team balance, Blizzard made what few tanks and healers there are ABSURDLY powerful. For a long time, Roadhog was widely regarded to be just a fat DPS because his damage was that reliable.

Taking inspiration from MMOs muddied the perceived purpose of the class roles. Simply taking these archetypes and dropping them into an entirely different type of game just sort of created a disconnect between mechanics and objective design.

There's no such thing as a "tank" in TF2. The closest thing resembling one is the Heavy, and his job isn't to take aggro or protect teammates - he literally just exists to be a fat fuck who controls space around the objective by being there.

Tanks in overwatch have to do this as well. However, their duties are split between zoning and the classic duties of an MMO tank.

So the roles aren't balanced, nor are they really designed for the objectives of the game modes. There's counter picking in Overwatch, for sure - in fact, counter picking is so critical and so impactful that often, your only response to being counterpicked is to swap your pick.

TF2's classes are designed to both complement and counteract each other, but there's very few cases where being counterpicked means you just lose. For example, Demo or Spy can make an Engie useless - but a pyro can help him out in both cases.

Aside from a few cases, subtle synergies like that just don't exist in Overwatch. If you're a pharah and the enemy picks widow, sure, a Winston can try and distract her, but 9 times out of 10 you're forced to swap off Pharah.

What synergies do exist in Overwatch exist purely on the micro level, as "wombo combos". So instead of making up for your team's weaknesses, like my previous Pyro/Engie example, you instead capitalize on their strengths and put all your eggs in one basket.

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I wouldn't normally do it, but I'm really hungry.

Because the maps are so small, and the objectives so large, playing the objective isn't something that's even generally considered a priority until all of the enemy is gone.

The 2CP mode has drawn a lot of criticism in Overwatch. Compared to the compact little rooms in TF2, objective zones are massive areas which mainly serve as stages for all the chaos to unfold.

Unfortunately, because they're so big, the maps are so small, and mobility is rampant in Overwatch, whichever team has the spawn advantage will nearly always win the point. Every 2CP match plays out the same: first point roll, second point stallfest.

Disclaimer: This thread may make it sound like I hate overwatch or that I think it's a bad game. Neither is true. I simply feel like the gameplay is more focused around individual gratification than around fostering healthy teamwork and communication.