Blizzard Presents:Pixar's Monday Night Fortress [Overwatch]

[sei]

Yeah, sadly it's super suuuuperrrr bland.
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EDIT: I think the issue is really they refused to let them be idiosyncratic at all. I mean, the character designs are OK. Not great, but ok. But the dialogue is like, the most generic pablum imaginable.

Blizzard teaches kids to skip dialog.

The writing in WoW, generally speaking, was sooooooooooooooooooooo bad. Diablo's writing was possibly worse, but thankfully there was less of it.

Their artists and programmers do alright, but their writers specialize in drek. Which...is fine, since we're not playing for the writing.


(That would be like playing a fighting game for the story...)

[Mongrel]

Matchmaking for groups of 3,4, or 5 seems to be fucked to hell right now, especially 4 or 5. On more than one occasion over the past two nights we've waited a half hour for a real game. Sometimes we even waited five or more minutes to even get a damn skirmish waiting for a real game.

I suspect they're trying to ensure balance of groups vs. groups to prevent pubstomping, but if this doesn't improve it's going to make the game pretty unplayable considering how short matches normally are.

One thing I've heard is that switching leaders around or selecting a group leader who wasn't in the closed beta can help find a match quicker.

[Sharkey]

One thing I've heard is that switching leaders around or selecting a group leader who wasn't in the closed beta can help find a match quicker.

That sounds a lot like tap A when throwing a Pokeball. But hell, Blizzard has definitely implemented some fucking arcane shit before, so... I dunno, maybe we should click the chat gem at least 256 times first just to be sure.

[Friday]

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[Mongrel]

Yeah, it's anecdotal, but I've seen groups mention that it worked on multiple forums so far and it's basically no opportunity cost, so it seems worth a try as much as any other witch doctor incantation.

I think "Someone who wasn't in the Closed Beta" is actually a proxy for "A leader with a lower rank" here, since maybe the leader's skill carries more weight in group matchmaking? WHO KNOWS???????

I'm just pissed off because it's bad enough that a group of four guys I know were like "No we don't want another because that's going to make this waiting EVEN WORSE.", and man, I cannot blame them at all. I think it gets a little better if you have a full 6 though.

[Smiler]

Yeah we were stuck in "waiting for players" quite a few times, and when you were messaging me last night we were just playing deathmatch for a good 5 minutes before hopping out of that server. The closed beta thing is probably bs because they've been wiping everyone's stats constantly in each beta.

[Mongrel]

I expect "closed beta" meant the one from just a couple days ago, the one where stats have continued to this open beta. Which is why I figure just having your lowest-XP guy as the leader MAY change the Matchmaking weight.

Also what's really weird is the number of people saying they had 5v6 waiting 20 minutes for Matchmaker to find ONE GUY to fill the slot. Even if you're trying to avoid groups stomping pubbies, uh... there's should be no reason there'd be such a delay in getting ONE GUY to fill a slot like that.

[Smiler]

I'm not sure which closed beta carried stats over because I was in that one and I was back to level 1 yesterday.

[Mongrel]

Huh, weird, I still have mine... I'm at 16 or so.

Also, I am getting the game.

[Lyrai]

Here is my review of Overwatch as a person with 4700 hours in TF2:

I'm home again.

[beatbandito]

After all that finally started actually playing today. It's pretty fun. I have to spend more time finding a main, I'm learning that trying to compensate for my team's ever-rotating lineup is impossible at this low level, as people will switch, die and switch again before I can even catch up.

beatbandito#1172 at some point all my friends got erased so I'm starting from scratch.

[Brantly B.]

22:0 match as D.Va.

No commendations.

Don't blame them.

[Mongrel]

Here is my review of Overwatch as a person with 4700 hours in TF2:

I'm home again.

Frankly I think it's no TF2.

But it's pretty fun in its own way and everyone I know is playing. And that's more than good enough.

[beatbandito]

22:0 match as D.Va.

No commendations.

Don't blame them.

I went full LoL player one game as Reinhardt and kept telling the Mercy to fuck off and play something else if she was going to be that bad at it.

And ended with 10 commendations for shielding. (we lost)

[beatbandito]

One Bastion, One Mercy, Four Reinhardts.

That is all.

[Bal]

The better I get at this game the less I like it. Every character feels like it exists in a little pre-described box and any attempt to escape is met with a gentle "no no no, you belong over here".

[Mongrel]

It's not bad, but yes, there are warts.

Certainly in TF2 any character would have ways of fighting in just about any situation... maybe it wasn't the optimal use of a character, but you always had an out if you could play well.

In Overwatch this is absolutely not the case. You cannot "main" one hero the way you could in TF2. I don't know that that's good or bad, but it does require pubbies to be basically competent in the use of 2-3 characters with different situational uses minimum to not be a drag on their team (and six man teams are far less able to support an underperformer than TF2's typical 10+ person teams). In general it seems like going in with less than a 6-man group of friends puts you at a serious, in some cases brutal disadvantage where you get lumped with random dude who's all HURF DURF IMMA PLAY GENJI ALL GAME.

I guess that isn't really annoying me? So far the two things that piss me off most are uncounterable attacks and maps with single chokepoints. For the former, it's mainly McCree's Flash/Fan combo and Mei just being Mei, though to a lesser extent Roadhog's hook seems to rarely miss, there's really no skillful out to those other than to stay the fuck away and not engage at close range, which can be difficult given how small and cramped the maps are in many places (or to hope they suck and miss). Reinhardt's charge can also be difficult to sidestep, but I wouldn't say it's on the order of the others since you CAN technically dodge it. For the latter, fuck, how does anybody think this is a good idea an FPS in 2016?

[Smiler]

Mei's ultimate is the easiest to dodge. Just make sure you can't see it and you're fine. For everything else, stick with your team and hope they back you up.

[Mongrel]

Mei's ult is really no problem, as you say. It's her regular weapon that's brutal. She's like McCree in that in 1v1 situations a semi-competent player can immobilize their opponent and kill them at their leisure.

I'm not saying I can't deal with those characters, it's just an annoying design decision to have uncounterable freeze effects be a part of the game.

[Mothra]

Mei's definitely my best character, but it occurred to me that fighting against Mei is not at all fun. It's either "ugh, gotta stop forward momentum to break this wall," or "ugh, guess I'm frozen and all I can do is wait to get shot in the head." I feel like that didn't happen in TF2 much. No matter what the situation, you could always do SOMETHING.

Also! Discovered that creating an ice wall in front of Bastion blocks him for literally one tenth of a second before the entire thing is shredded to pieces.