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Competitive Ranked Mode In Overwatch Feels Like 2010 Matchmaking

Hard to gain easy to lose rank, trolls, and AFK-ers. The ever-present competitive scene.

When Overwatch launched in late May, everyone was in love with it. The ranked or competitive mode from the beta had been disabled, and only Quick Play was available. Quick Play, however, will always be seen as the casual way to play in a game that eventually wants to go competitive and be part of the e-sports scene.

That “New Game” Smell

E-sports are competitive high stake challenges. They are meant to reveal the best of the best and feature amazing team coordination and astounding individual skill. In a competitive game, Quick Play becomes the option players choose when learning what a new hero can do and Training mode proves too easy for them.

It is a beautiful thing to have the luxury of playing a game that will become competitive on its initial casual setting because it is the only setting it has. There is a unique type of joy in the first out-of-beta weeks, while the meta is being slowly developed and patch notes either come every week or hotfixes need to be urgently rolled out because something that eluded millions of beta players is just heavily exploited.

Overwatch was fun because it was amicably competitive. It was fun because when doing a solo Quick Play tryhards did not get upset and did not flame as much as they do in other games. Winning was awesome but losing was still alright. Losing a match did not have a horrible aftermath.

The Competitive Gloom Cloud

Nevertheless, nothing lasts forever. Blizzard introduced their new ranked mode for Overwatch. It is meant to make Overwatch competitive, and it is intended to root out and eventually balance the meta, just like all other e-sports games. And just like every other e-sports game, the first iteration of ranked mode is not that great.

Based on how ranked gaming currently works, it does not make sense for it to be available for solo play. While the ranking numbers are individual and not based on a team, they do go up and down based mostly on the end-result of the team.

Currently ranking depends too much on other people, to the point where trolls or just inexperienced players will easily drag a player’s ranking down, while individual skill will, with great difficulty, raise a player’s ranking up.

There is also no way to stop the aforementioned trolls and inexperienced players to play the ranked mode. There is no strict supervision or any form of level or match-based lock for the game.

Matchmaking also requires some updates for solo competitive players. It feels like it stalls too long and ends up not doing the fairest of teams, more so than in Quick Play. Or perhaps it seems like that because there is also more at stake.

The first age of Overwatch has ended and a darker age of sorrows has begun with the competitive mode rollout. It is certain that Overwatch will soon be making changes to a lot of things based on ranked play but after how long, if ever, will the community toxicity go down to acceptable levels?

Image Courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment.

Overwatch To See Console-Only Changes To Torbjorn’s Turret

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The Overwatch Team wants consoles to be fun and less competitive.

Torbjorn’s annoying auto-targeting turret is getting a damage nerf just for the Overwatch console players.

Jeff Kaplan, game director of Blizzard’s Overwatch, recently made a new announcement on Reddit meant for the console players of the first-person team shooter.

The Overwatch team has decided to lower the damage on Torbjorn’s turrets, only in the case of the console version of Overwatch.

PC gamers can still avidly complain about the unfair disadvantage of being auto-targeted by a turret (which takes little to no skill to just set on top of the payload). For consoles, however, being auto-targeted is seen as a much bigger deal. Even professional tournament controllers with perfectly tuned sensitivity and recoil cannot compare to the precision granted by a PC mouse.

Overwatch is not the first console game that seems to be treated as an entirely different entity versus its PC counterpart, however. Diablo III Ultimate Evil also has significant gameplay differences, to the point where many agree that it feels like a different game with the same end-goal.

This turret damage nerf, as well as all future console-only or PC-only changes, will be reinforcing the fact that Blizzard currently believes that consoles, or better said console shooters, are not e-sports ready.

PC and console gamers are not able to queue together because it is evident that even in optimal console setting, the PC platform does offer several default advantages in a first-person shooter.

Does this make Overwatch for consoles a bad game? No, it does not. It is still a very fun game which can also be played by competitive people. For PC gamers, Overwatch is a competitive game which can also prove to be very fun.

The McCree and Widowmaker changes will be coming to console soon as well. The later scheduling of the changes is only proving that Jeff Kaplan and his team value and respect their console player-base just as much as the PC player-base but that balance changes on console need to be more “aired out”.

The console medium is less competitive, so there is more room for fun, instead of just perfect meta-balance.

Also in regards to the meta, once the first big Overwatch e-sports events start coming, Torbjorn players can expect either effective counterplay from pro players who figured out how to effectively kill turrets or long term minor tweaking.

Image Courtesy of Blizzard.

Overwatch Matchmaking, Explained By Game Director Jeff Kaplan

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Overwatch Matchmaking looks at overall skill before allowing players to pick heroes.

Overwatch matchmaking takes queue time, ping, and skill into account before grouping players.

Blizzard’s intricacies of multiplayer matchmaking have definitely increased since the days of the Battle.net dial-up deathmatch system. Jeff Kaplan surprised Overwatch players with another lengthy but welcome forum post. He talked about the Overwatch matchmaking system.

Jeff Kaplan, the Game Director of Overwatch, is showing the world that he is trying to keep the promise he has made earlier this month. Last week, Kaplan stated that he wants to maintain a transparent attitude with the Overwatch community.

The Overwatch matchmaking system is, as one would assume, a quite complex process. Available players are not just instantly grouped up and put together to be sent on their way. Time in queue is however very important. The matchmaking algorithm does broaden its scope proportionally with how much time passes.

Player latency, or ping, is also a crucial factor when it comes to Overwatch matchmaking. Kaplan said that the game tries really hard to make sure that people in a match have similar ping values.

Being part of a premade group is also a vital factor in matchmaking. Overwatch was designed to be a game that is most rewarding when played with a full premade team, Kaplan added. The Overwatch designers want players to play with their friends and have a fun experience when doing so.

Group matchmaking, however, has a very different algorithm entirely. The time spent in queue could be longer, and latency is less important of a factor. Group matchmaking in Overwatch will first try to find another group of similar size and skill to match.

“Playing with people you choose to play with is going to be more reliably fun than playing with people we choose for you.” – Jeff Kaplan, on Overwatch Matchmaking

Nevertheless, the core of the Overwatch matchmaking system is based on MMR or Matchmaking Rating. MMR is handled differently in every multiplayer online game. Each gaming company has their own in-house sorting algorithm. The type of game is also important. Overwatch MMR is entirely different from Heroes of the Storm MMR even though they are both Blizzard games with heavy multiplayer elements.

It is very complicated to elaborate on all the factors taken into consideration in a secret MMR algorithm. Revealing too much information could then lead to exploiting the algorithm. Exploiting MMR would result in player bans but also to having to design a new MMR algorithm.

Overwatch MMR, Kaplan said, is affected by wins and losses, the map played, assignment as attacker or defender, as well as what the player actually does during the match. One thing that is currently not factored into MMR for Overwatch is the win/loss ratio.

While MMR does increase with wins and decrease with losses, it is not affected by the ratio between them. On the topic of win/loss ratio, Jeff Kaplan also said that the individual’s average in each region is currently very close to 50%.

Overwatch matchmaking is an elaborate affair, but Jeff Kaplan wanted to ensure the fact that even though it looks like the gods seem to have a grudge against a player, it is nothing more than an algorithm and conjuncture. Kaplan also stated that the MMR system will be receiving upgrades very soon.

Image Courtesy of Blizzard’s Overwatch.

Overwatch Director Openly Talks About The Future

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The Overwatch Hero Genji activates his ultimate ability.

New content will come in the future but Overwatch players can expect balance changes when they will be needed.

Jeff Kaplan, the game director of Blizzard’s Overwatch, answered a fan question on the official forum of the game and revealed what Overwatch players could be seeing further down the line.

Competitive Play was the first feature addressed by Kaplan. Since its initial release as part of the Overwatch beta, Competitive Play has seen a lot of negative feedback, most of which was well deserved.

With enough perseverance, through the beta version of Competitive Play any player could reach a high enough rank. Individual skill did not prove to be as much of a deciding factor as the time each person was willing to put into the game was.

Kaplan believes that after testing it thoroughly, the improved feature will be ready to be released into the world. Nevertheless, he does not think it will be arriving to the live versions of Overwatch anytime soon.

The director of Overwatch also stated that he would rather re-launch Competitive Play after it has been playtested on a Public Test Realm, which is also in the works. Overwatch would be Blizzard’s third game with a Public Test Realm, the other two being World of WarCraft and Diablo III. The feature has proven satisfactory for both games.

Apart from Competitive Play and a hopefully soon-to-come Public Test Realm, the Overwatch team is currently working on new Heroes. While there are currently several Heroes in different stages of development, Kaplan said, they are still prototypes.

“We do a lot of prototyping … I don’t think we’re at a point where I can really talk openly about the release schedule for the new heroes because I don’t want to set expectations and then have something come up and suddenly we’re backing out on a “promise” we never really made.” – Jeff Kaplan

Overwatch players who want to try out new Heroes may have to wait some time until they will be able to do so. Overwatch seeks to be a competitive e-sport game and, as such, the metagame and balance need to be carefully tweaked.

Kaplan has additionally stated that the Overwatch team is working hard on a new map. While he chose not to give any other details about the map, he did mention that one obstacle the team ran across has to do with the importance of sight lines. The map in question is currently offering too high of an advantage to long range Heroes.

He does hope that the map, with its current vision, will see release one day, as he firmly believes the concept and gameplay will appeal to the majority of Overwatch’s player-base.

Kaplan finalized by stating that game developers do not usually share information about features in development because they are highly likely to change. In regards to many other game titles, players have not taken the canceling of features in development too well.

Jeff Kaplan sincerely hopes that if the Overwatch team offers transparency, the player base will understand when or if such cancellations do happen.

Image Courtesy of Blizzard.

Overwatch Stats Website Reveals Everyone’s Top Picks

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Master Overwatch Stats Website Shows Who Wins The Most And Who Wins the Least.

Currently The Most Iconic Hero, Overwatch Stats Show That Tracer Is Not The Most Picked.

Blizzard’s Overwatch came out of Beta in late May and was received with as much acclaim as any other Blizzard game. It’s been a few good weeks now where the general public was able to try the game out and the meta is starting to form. As such, there’s no time like the present to start perusing through Overwatch stats trying to find out who are the winning heroes and who are the less fortunate.

Master Overwatch is a fan-site that allows anyone who checks in to look at a lot more statistics than those the game shows by itself. Mainly because it doesn’t just show one user’s statistics but the statistics of every user who checked in. This mechanic has two advantages – the fansite doesn’t risk angering Blizzard too much by poking its nose too much, and if a user doesn’t want their stats known for any reason, they can just not use the website.

In regards to the website’s popularity, Master Overwatch currently has more than 0.8 million different users checked in out of a total of a little more than 7 million Overwatch players. It would seem that news got out and more than 10% of the whole player-base had curiosities.

So who is currently the most popular, the most picked, the most overpowered? Well, as always a certain high degree of skill sets decide that answer but for the bulk of the population, it’s Symmetra. Matches featuring Symmetra have a 61.8 percent winrate. She’s also the least popular hero to pick.

Least winning pick so far at least statistically seems to be Mercy with a 47.9 percent winrate who is the most popular pick. The contrast, of course, is logical since a popular support hero is still difficult to master. 0.8 million Overwatch stats are reconfirming what Blizzard initially stated about the game, that each class will have a different skill curve with support and specials being the most difficult to master.

However, the fact that that lowest statistical winrate of 47.9 percent means that even the worst players will still win 47 or 48 out of 100 matches if they just stick to one hero and try to get better. Overpowered Utility also does not guarantee an ultra-high winrate either.

Overall, it would seem that, for the time being, Blizzard has done a good job with Overwatch, at least according to the Master Overwatch stats website. In conclusion, I would just like to state that from the stats, Lúcio’s low skill curve-high reward style is more than obvious. Also, everybody hates Bastion but it still wins.

Image Courtesy of Blizzard.

Elon Musk Plays Overwatch

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In Overwatch humankind is fighting against murderous robot sentinels.

The SpaceX and Tesla CEO has been in the spotlight lately, and not because he invented a new groundbreaking gadget. It seems that the genius billionaire philanthropist is preaching the idea that we are all living in a simulation controlled by an AI. When he is not trying to prove that the Matrix is real, Elon Musk plays Overwatch, and he even tweets about it.

According to his official Twitter account, the Pay Pal inventor “highly recommends” the latest game that was released “by the good people of Blizzard.” That is, “if you like ultrafast team FPS action.” The tweet was accompanied by the game’s honest trailer that you can check out at the end of the article.

Blizzard managed to achieve the impossible with Overwatch. The multiplayer FPS managed to attract the attention of the fans at an unusual rate. People were queuing online in order to be able to buy the game. Now, a few weeks after its release, Overwatch has reached record sells and users.

One can even dare to compare the success it had with that of the company’s other outstanding multiplayer, World of Warcraft. Of course, as opposed to Overwatch’s new characters and plot, WoW had years of backstory in other Warcraft games and novels.

Judging by his recent statements, it makes sense that Elon Musk plays Overwatch. The action of the game is set in a distant future where the sentinel robots created by humans are threatening humankind. The story coincides with the scenario that the Tesla and SpaceX CEO has been talking about at different conferences.

He used to be called the real-life Iron Man. The Tony Stark of our generation, but now, he is seen as more of a Lex Luthor, even a Neo.

Due to his fear of artificial intelligence, Musk even created the non-profit organization OpenAI. The association is meant to protect our race in the case in which the ever-developing AI network will someday try and take over the world, enslaving humankind.

Even more, the scientist even invented a new device called the neural lace. The new piece of technology is meant to create a connection between humans and technology, thus avoiding the need for artificial intelligence.

Image source: YouTube

Prepare For The Battle.net Voice Chat

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Prepare For The Battle.net Voice Chat

Overwatch players assemble: prepare for the Battle.net Voice Chat coming your way. Blizzard are trying to sort out their priorities with online competitive games, especially since they seem to want to make a solid stand in eSports. This is why, way ahead of the game’s release, the company is implementing a chat system for its infamous shooter. Bear in mind that it is beta, however, so flaws will soon follow.

The announcement was given via a post in the Overwatch blog, stating that Blizzard wants to make the Voice Chat as an integrated part of the Overwatch beta. Players were also advised not to get too excited about the feature because it is “still in its early development and testing stages”. Blizzard is a heavy name with good gaming notoriety, so players tend to get super excited but lose faith quickly once they hit the first bump.

There are a few twists and turns that are not exactly accurate about the Voice Chat, but the good news is that they are hinting at a greater experience. You will notice that Battle.net Voice Chat is used several times, not Overwatch Voice Chat, so does this mean that we might be getting a new system for all the other Blizzard games as well?

If we are, this is exceptional news. World of Warcraft and Starcraft 2 are both notoriously known for the poor quality of their voice system. People do not even use is anymore because it simply does not help. But if Blizzard decide that it is time to add a new voice system that actually works, they are going to make a huge step forward.

It could also help Heroes of the Storm, which also focuses on cooperation and a proper voice system could save the day. Imagine that a team formed of 3 or 4 people who are playing along can lead to some pesky solo actions that throw games. But with the aid of a proper Voice Chat, many of these mistakes could be avoided and better decisions could be mate.

Either way, this inaccuracy might lead to a great demand from players across all Blizzard games. Looks like we do need to prepare for the Battle.net Voice Chat because it is going to make our gaming experience a lot safer faster and more pleasant than we have ever experienced it before.

Photo Credits staticflickr.com

Overwatch Is The Next Generation FPS

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Overwatch Is The Next Generation FPS

It looks like Blizzard is casually attempting to change the face of competitive gaming as we know it. Overwatch is the next generation FPS. It is really hard to believe it or to accept it, but the moves that the gaming giant is making lead us to a future of team play and not individual skill. The reason why this is hard to accept is mostly because of fear or greed and we will get into those right away.

The eSports scene nowadays is very popular because of some exceptional players. There are usually 1 or two people who dominate most of the games they are in and when they pair up, they are unstoppable. Individual skill is a great way of showing off and attracting fans, but the ultimate truth, no matter how much we value ourselves as individuals, is that teamwork makes the dream work.

Overwatch adds one extra player to their matches, making it a 6v6 instead of the MOBA style 5v5. Some complain about the feature, but can you blame developers for wanting to bring 1 more man into a team? A bigger team is always a better one, because more people can make up for one man’s mistake. It enhances cooperation and it adds the extra help feature.

Then there is another interesting addition that doesn’t make a lot of sense at first but, if you think about it, it can actually be super beneficial: you can have the same hero 6 times in your team. Totally unorthodox and counterintuitive, but having 6 healers is also a tactic, 5 tanks are hard to go through, 6 assassins are insane damage per second and piling up the same characters over and over again can just add to the fun factor.

But what it most interesting is the scoring system, which is similar to Heroes of the Storm. The scoring system is trying to move away from the standard Kill/Death/Assist to a Takedown/Death approach. Takedowns are Kills and Assists combined and this adds a great psychological boost to the team. You do not really need to know that one man dished out 99% of the damage and you only dealt 1%. You need to know that you worked together to accomplish something.

And this is why Overwatch is the next generation FPS: it focuses on team play, eliminating personal greed or fear by being taken over by a guy with more damage. A team worked together towards victory. At the end of the day, that is all that matters.

Photo Credits deviantart.net

Blizzard Announces First Game After 17 Years, Overwatch

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Blizzard Entertainment is the studio that brought us the hugely popular strategy game World of Warcraft. After announcing that they will be releasing a documentary film about the game, Blizzard has made it into the tech news again, this time with the announcement of their first game in more than 17 years, called Overwatch.

The upcoming Blizzard game called Overwatch is a first-person shooter game, which makes it Blizzard’s first squad-based multiplayer game. Overwatch takes place in a very stylized sci-fi planet Earth, with all kinds of futuristic maps set in hologram lit cities like London, and landmarks like Egyptian bazaars. There are similar elements from previous Blizzard games like the MMO Titan (which was never released on the market) but Overwatch is a totally different game, in esthetics and story.

The Overwatch players can choose from a selection of characters that cover different genders, nationalities and abilities. For example, one of the characters that can be chosen as a player is an English pilot who can teleport himself in different places, a very big German soldier, a Japanese mercenary or an Indian architect woman. In an official statement, Blizzard said that with the new Overwatch game they wanted their players to be “equally represented” by the games diversity.

Overwatch has 12 different characters so far and the team players can combine the powers and gain an advantage. Players will have to compete in teams made of 6 players, something Blizzard described as “pick-up-and-play first-person shooter”, that will give the players an “emphasis on accessibility and pure fun.” Some compared the new Overwatch game to Team Fortress 2 by Valve, mixed with the talent for creating amazing fantasy visuals of Blizzard.

The CEO and cofounder of Blizzard said in a statement that:

“Overwatch is our take on a vibrant, near-future universe with amped-up characters and action-packed team-based gameplay. With every new Blizzard game, we look at our favorite aspects of a genre and put our own spin on things. Our goal with Overwatch is to create an awesome FPS experience that’s more accessible to a much wider audience while delivering the action and depth that shooter fans love.”