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Overwatch - That time Blizzard made a non-Diablocraft game.

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I know it's a pipe dream but I wish they would add custom game/server support. I had loads of fun with wacky TF2 servers and game modes. And then the game wouldn't be subject to blizzard supporting it, thought I have no doubt they'll keep patching it at the very least.

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Overwatch already has a custom game mode where you can change parameters like game mode/map all the way to weird things like change the HP of characters or respawn time. http://overwatch.wikia.com/wiki/Custom_Game

 

I guess you're thinking more along the lines of servers with specific rules that private server owners can manage, but yeah I guess that isn't happening.

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The thing I most enjoy about private servers and the server browser in general is that it allowed the same group of people to all meet up and play without having a formalised friending and invitation process. I made a few friends in TF2 quite by accident just because we would all frequent the same server every night and chat over voice comm. It was a really comfortable way to play the game that I look back on fondly. It disappoints me a little that I won't be able to have that same experience in Overwatch. Not disappointed in the sense that I expected it to be a certain way and then was disappointed; I'm aware that I'm not owed anything here. Perhaps that's the wrong word... Anyway, it's a shame we won't be able to have an Idle Thumbs Overwatch server is all I'm saying.

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i wonder if that would be possible with the general size of a Blizzard game's playerbase.

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I'm looking for youtubers (who have a similar sense of humor to my own) who have guide-videos on the various heroes. Any suggestions.?

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The thing I most enjoy about private servers and the server browser in general is that it allowed the same group of people to all meet up and play without having a formalised friending and invitation process. I made a few friends in TF2 quite by accident just because we would all frequent the same server every night and chat over voice comm. It was a really comfortable way to play the game that I look back on fondly. It disappoints me a little that I won't be able to have that same experience in Overwatch. Not disappointed in the sense that I expected it to be a certain way and then was disappointed; I'm aware that I'm not owed anything here. Perhaps that's the wrong word... Anyway, it's a shame we won't be able to have an Idle Thumbs Overwatch server is all I'm saying.

Exactly this. Not signing e-petitions about lack of server support but it was a cool thing about those games. I was able to find a consistent group of people who played on a server with rules about conduct so I was guaranteed to not have to deal with people raging out, or they'd just get kicked.

It's a good way to moderate a community, by allowing smaller communities to have their own space with their own rules as they are fit.

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I redownloaded Team Fortress 2 thinking that my new appreciation of Overwatch might have unlocked my ability to enjoy TF2. The modes are pretty much the same, but the two games feel very different. I think the choke-points are much more constrictive in TF2 due to the lack of verticality and ultimates. I still don't enjoy TF2.

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I thoroughly enjoyed the beta on PS4, it was unfortunately cut short with the release of Uncharted 4 (which I managed to get four days early). 

 

I think i'll grab it eventually on PS4 maybe in a month or two.

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I'm late to the thread but I LOVED the PS4 beta. I'm wondering if I enjoyed Overwatch so much as a reaction to my letdown with the Battleborn beta (imprecise, sloppy look, choppy graphics, too much Lords Management for me).

 

Overwatch feels so polished - something as simple as the automatic highlight saves that you can flip through between matches, or the "likes" system at the end. I haven't done much multiplayer gaming for a while, so these things might be present in a lot of other games, but I'm definitely excited that there's a good cartoon team-based shooter coming to console. That being said, did anyone ever get into PVZGW 1 or 2? I liked those as well, but couldn't convince my adult friends to pick copies up :(

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So, apparently Genji can deflect Hanzo's ultimate. I think that is so cool.

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So, apparently Genji can deflect Hanzo's ultimate. I think that is so cool.

you have to reflect the arrow before it explodes into dragon time, but yes, genji can reflect pretty much every projectile.  I remember being very shocked when I reflected tracer's sticky bomb on to her face and killing myself because I didn't comprehend what just happened.

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If you're looking for people to play with, drop by the Slack channel and ask around! A buuuunch of us played together during the last open beta weekend thingy and I'm sure once it's out that will continue.

 

Also, to Clydes point about TF2: during the Overwatch beta weekend I got curious and played both some TF2 and some Quake Live to do a comparison for myself and it ended up being a really interesting design exercise to compare them.

 

For example, comparing Pharah and the TF2 soldier, you can see that they have a lot of the same capabilities, but are accessible in different ways. Pharah's rockets have no physics impulse; instead she has the conc grenade, and her jump always goes straight up, but you can reach different areas by combining that with her jetpack. The TF2 soldier basically combines all those abilities into one weapon, rather than one weapon + 2 abilities. The soldier rocket can push players out of (or into) position, and using well placed rocket jumps and air curving, you can maneuver to any point on the map very quickly.

 

The difference is that to use Pharah's skills takes a single button press, whereas rocket jumping is a skill that takes some time to master, that can also be pushed further to allow for jumping off walls, jumping off players, etc. I don't say this to mean that TF2 is strictly better than OW, but it does mean that on a per-character basis, TF2 has a higher skill ceiling, for better or worse. Obviously I can't say for certain, but it seems to me that it means a game like TFC or TF2 will have a much longer tail as players push the classes to their limits and discover new ways to reach areas quickly, at the cost of accessibility and in many cases game balance, two areas that OW seems extremely competent.

 

edit: I don't wanna be that asshole, so to reiterate, I don't think complexity is strictly good, and Overwatch is an incredibly well made game that I will play many hours of.

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If you're looking for people to play with, drop by the Slack channel and ask around! A buuuunch of us played together during the last open beta weekend thingy and I'm sure once it's out that will continue.

 

Also, to Clydes point about TF2: during the Overwatch beta weekend I got curious and played both some TF2 and some Quake Live to do a comparison for myself and it ended up being a really interesting design exercise to compare them.

 

For example, comparing Pharah and the TF2 soldier, you can see that they have a lot of the same capabilities, but are accessible in different ways. Pharah's rockets have no physics impulse; instead she has the conc grenade, and her jump always goes straight up, but you can reach different areas by combining that with her jetpack. The TF2 soldier basically combines all those abilities into one weapon, rather than one weapon + 2 abilities. The soldier rocket can push players out of (or into) position, and using well placed rocket jumps and air curving, you can maneuver to any point on the map very quickly.

 

The difference is that to use Pharah's skills takes a single button press, whereas rocket jumping is a skill that takes some time to master, that can also be pushed further to allow for jumping off walls, jumping off players, etc. I don't say this to mean that TF2 is strictly better than OW, but it does mean that on a per-character basis, TF2 has a higher skill ceiling, for better or worse. Obviously I can't say for certain, but it seems to me that it means a game like TFC or TF2 will have a much longer tail as players push the classes to their limits and discover new ways to reach areas quickly, at the cost of accessibility and in many cases game balance, two areas that OW seems extremely competent.

 

edit: I don't wanna be that asshole, so to reiterate, I don't think complexity is strictly good, and Overwatch is an incredibly well made game that I will play many hours of.

 

This is a really good comment and it led me to the thought that what I love about TF2's classes having such a broad (if somewhat obscured) moveset is that they allow players to express themselves in different and interesting ways. Although the classes were explicitly concrete, it felt as though the roles and playstyles for them were a lot more fluid. It was not uncommon to encounter somebody in-game who played in a way that ran counter to the prescribed playstyle of the class and managed to pull it off. There were rocket-jumping engineers; ubersaw medic pairs; shotgun heavies; trickstabbing spies and demomen who could sticky jump so well they could reach the middle-point of a 5CP map faster than a scout. These playstyles weren't necessarily the "best" way to play those classes; they were just different and uncommon. Seeing an uncommon playstyle in a game gave the impression that that player was injecting their own personality into the class they were playing. It was that player's calling card; and would set them apart in a way similar to the hats and cosmetics that arrived later on in the game's life-cycle.

 

I loved the 10 or so hours I played of Overwatch. The interesting class matchups are hitting the same buttons as TF2 did nine years ago and that's a really good sign for me. One concern I have though (which I should add is just a concern; I haven't played nearly enough to determine whether this is true, false, or even matters at all), is that the classes in Overwatch will have less depth to them in the specific way I was just talking about. It's totally understandable, given the fact that there are more than triple the amount of playable classes. And part of the game's accessibility is owed to the fact that each hero seems to have its own playstyle and strategy associated with it that's somewhat easily understandable. But what I would love is to watch a highlight or a replay of another player and think "Wow, that's a totally different way of playing Pharah that I've never seen or thought of!" as opposed to "Cool, that person plays the Pharah playstyle really well."

 

As I say, time will tell if this is the case or not, or whether it even matters in the long run. I'm still hugely excited to play more of this game.

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Two big things that TF2 had that aren't in Overwatch are capture the flag and custom maps. It doesn't look like there's going to be any sort of custom servers or maps which sucks, especially because in Counter Strike and TF2 a lot of the good maps were community made.

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Armchairing here, but I feel as though there may have been a good reason as to why CTF didn't feature in Overwatch. As an objective, "Push that cart" is a far simpler concept to rally a team around than "Steal and then capture their flag while protecting your own". A payload or capture point setup generally has one big point of friction on the map at any one time, whereas in CTF there's more going on so perhaps that's harder to co-ordinate. Plus there's the degenerate strategies that would probably arise and force the game into a stalemate.

 

I dunno, just speculating.

 

Custom servers/maps is a thing that I will miss however. It feels as though Overwatch in general has a lot of its edges rounded off in the name of accessibility, but maybe it's at the point where the edges are so soft, it's caused the game's possibility space to shrink down in ways that are a little disappointing?

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When I think of sanding-the-edges-off, I think of removing potentials. For me, Black Ops III is a good example of sanding-the-edges-off because there are a lot of places on the maps that the ability-set would conceptually allow for, but the map-designers blocked a lot of those areas off with invisible walls (assumably in order to avoid exploits). I didn't play a ton of Overwatch during the beta, but I got the opposite impression from it; everything I thought I should be able to do, I could. I was genuinely surprised by the places Widowmaker, Pharah, Diva, and the death-guy could go. Finding out that Genji's deflect can deflect pretty much anything is another example of what I percieve as a sharp-edge. Sanding the edges off would be like maxing out McCree's ultimate at two enemies, or not allowing Mei to contribute to capture when frozen in her ice-shell.

I can see how TF2's dependency on a world-physics system could allow for a exploits that turn into accepted tactics after reading Dinosaursssssss's description, but I speculate that there is a lot of potential (especially in team-coordination of abilities) in Overwatch. For instance, Mei can lift teammates up to otherwise inaccessible places with her ice-wall.

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When I was talking about sanding off the edges, I was specifically referring to the features surrounding the core game, not the game itself. Overwatch is a game that has removed potentials by limiting the maps you can play on to official-only maps; and has limited the play rules to the official rules by not having support and infrastructure for custom servers. It's a decision that makes the game a more controlled experience, which is good in the sense that players will get the developer-intended experience throughout their play session; but it does also reduce the potentials. 

 

The "Overwatch experience" and the "Team Fortress 2 experience" are different not only in the sense that the game content is different; but also in the sense that one is a tightly-controlled experience and one is a more loose and customisable community-driven experience.

 

Again, this isn't a value judgement on either game. I'm just pointing out the different approaches.

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I loved the 10 or so hours I played of Overwatch. The interesting class matchups are hitting the same buttons as TF2 did nine years ago and that's a really good sign for me. One concern I have though (which I should add is just a concern; I haven't played nearly enough to determine whether this is true, false, or even matters at all), is that the classes in Overwatch will have less depth to them in the specific way I was just talking about. It's totally understandable, given the fact that there are more than triple the amount of playable classes. And part of the game's accessibility is owed to the fact that each hero seems to have its own playstyle and strategy associated with it that's somewhat easily understandable. But what I would love is to watch a highlight or a replay of another player and think "Wow, that's a totally different way of playing Pharah that I've never seen or thought of!" as opposed to "Cool, that person plays the Pharah playstyle really well."

 

For what it's worth, I definitely had this experience playing and watching. There's a Pharah video I need to track down of her propelling herself to a previously unreachable position and getting a team kill that made my jaw drop. I just hadn't even considered it.

 

I also think it's worth the reminder that although TF2 and Overwatch are basically the same game, they are products of very different times. We have the collective and personal knowledge of basically a decade of TF2 at this point that makes it feel like rocket jumping mechanics were always just known. While I believe that the game was designed and intended for players to push the creative space of how to play, the institutionalized things we take for granted weren't set in stone and have been built up over literally millions of collective hours. We can see how things are "supposed" to combo in Overwatch, but I've never been the person that finds a little crack in a game and wedges it open to learn that you can combo Roadhog's ult with Pharah's displacement rocket to shoot him and a teammate 2/3 of the way across the map and take an objective before it's available. It's coming from a different angle, but we'll find out.

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Yeah. I think it's actually called Payload.

 

I think it's officially "Escort" but everyone calls it Payload anyway because it's more familiar. I prefer the term Escort because it's more informative to a person who never played TF2.

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Escort to me sounds like it'd be the VIP game mode in Team Fortress or Counter Strike. Which I'd be fine with but more than CTF I don't see it making a comeback.

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