Overwatch

[Not-so-Radiant Arin]

f***ing love Mei.

I'm not sure which is worse...liking Bastion or liking Mei...

 

Mei is fairly self-sustaining, the same as Bastion. However, Mei's ice block negates Ana's piss bottle, so she literally has no hard counter. If she had 50 less health, she wouldn't be as much of a problem as she is now.

 

Bastion is fine, I guess, if you really hate life that much, and just wanna sit on LMB.

[Shradow]

As someone who's constantly hating my Quick Play teammates for not caring about objectives, Mei is wonderful. Her ice walls and ult are so useful for cutting off objectives, and her icicles wreck shop.

 

She's also super fun, freezing people is great. Her panic button is also the perfect panic button.

[Not-so-Radiant Arin]

If you can play Mei fairly well, wonderful. But she's too easy to use, too annoying to play against simply because of her 50 extra health, healing too much in a short period of time, and she gets her ultimate way too fast. (Though, that's going to change with the next patch.) And the fact she can annoyingly block teammates in, preventing them from getting out into the frontlines and doing what they're supposed to be doing.....kind of a dick move. The fact that you go 28 eliminations after only having played her twice means that she's a pretty unbalanced character. Or your enemies were scrubs.

 

I've never seen Mei as good character design. Same with Reaper and Genji. There's a reason we all call Mei Satan.

[Shradow]

And the fact she can annoyingly block teammates in, preventing them from getting out into the frontlines and doing what they're supposed to be doing.....kind of a dick move.

 

Well anyone will be bad for the team if you troll with them.

 

What have you got against Reaper and Genji?

[Not-so-Radiant Arin]

Reaper's healing ability makes him able to deal with high-damage situations if he manages to play well enough. The fact that he can go from 12 HP back up to 250 by trapping the enemy in a Zarya Graviton Surge, for example, and then Death Blossoming, puts him immediately back up to 250 HP after he's collected all his Souls. With 200 HP, he'd have to be a lot less aggressive. I couldn't begin to tell you how many times I've gone Reaper, gotten down to literally a margin of HP, and gotten it all back because of his Soul Collecting. It's really tacky, to be honest.

 

Genji I think is bad because he's...too mobile. The fact that you get your dash back every time you kill someone makes him a tad bit too mobile, making it hard to hit him. Which is the whole point, obviously, but he still outclasses other backline harassers like Tracer.

[Shradow]

I'll give it to you that Genji is annoyingly mobile (though I think Tracer has it even better than he does), but I don't think Reaper's passive is bad game design.

 

Reaper doesn't really have a lot going for him, he's just very good at what he is given which makes him useful. He has his invincibility thing to help get out of sticky situations (thought more often than not it only delays the inevitable), and his mobility ability is for flanking, it's not instant or anything. His ult is powerful, yeah, but kind of easily played around and you specifically had to mention it in conjunction with another powerful setup ult. He's a close combat character with no form of attack outside of his main guns, if you take away his passive he becomes much worse with such low survivability. It'd be like taking away Pyro's airblast in TF2.

 

Taking away the ability to be aggressive with a close range offense class is just a bad idea.

[Not-so-Radiant Arin]

A skilled Reaper is pretty much unkillable if said Reaper knows how to play Reaper, because of his passive to pick up the souls after everything he kills. That's pretty much what the point I was trying to make.

[Shradow]

It's not like a Reaper can do that on his own, though. He's almost required to flank while his team is attacking from another direction, or he's not going to get much of anywhere. He has severe damage falloff so he won't even get any kills if anyone stays any reasonable distance away from him, and 250 health is barely above average in this game, especially for someone who has to get as close as he does. In order to be useful you literally have to run right at people with only your guns, he needs his passive to allow himself to do that in any reasonable capacity.
 
And if everyone dies, you win a team fight or you simply win a 1v1 away from anyone else, it doesn't matter if you're at 50 health or 500 health. So a Reaper can heal back from the brink of death to full, that's only going to happen if there's no one left still shooting at you. It lets him sustain and continue fighting while he's actively staring his enemies' weapons in the face.
 

The fact that you go 28 eliminations after only having played her twice means that she's a pretty unbalanced character.

Also, this is incorrect. I said I'd played her twice before today, I only got that elimination card after a lot of practice today. And it's not like those are solo eliminations, it counts eliminations even if teammates get the final blow and you only helped damage them no matter how little. And being an adult, I've been playing shooters for quite some time. It's not like her skills are hard to grasp, I'm just used to shooting lots of people. I was doing super well as Reaper and Reinhardt only a day or two into me picking up Overwatch.

[Not-so-Radiant Arin]

I guess I'm just tilted at the fact that Reaper has an exceptionally higher HP pool than most other heroes. The only real problem I have with him is that passive. I like Reaper as a character and he can support many different roles (back line harasser and tank killer come to mind) but it feels like his Soul Reaping ability just does too much sometimes.

[Shradow]

I don't see how 250 is exceptionally higher. Counting total health/armor/shields, Tracer is the lowest at 150 and a majority of the characters have 200. Reaper's only slightly above that at 250, only 50 health more than even the healing support classes, who don't have to be right in the enemy's face to do their job.

 

I'm gonna keep making TF2 comparisons because that's a team shooter I'm most used to, especially because of similarities between characers, but that's like Pyro having 175 compared to Medic's 150. That's not exceptionally higher at all.

 

I'd also like to point out the edit in my previous post regarding Mei, if you haven't seen it already.

 

Which reminds me, why does Overwatch count assists in with kills for eliminations? Healers get specifically assists if they heal who killed someone without dealing damage themselves, I'm wondering why it's different for damage assists. I'd easily have something like 28 kills in any given multiplayer game if assists were included, at least.

[Not-so-Radiant Arin]

Regarding Mei, the entire thing with team eliminations giving you credit and whatnot...it's honestly more broken than Roadhog's hook. There's too many variables in deciding if 28 eliminations is really good or not. Maybe they just purposely walk into every Mei ult. It has happened before every now and again. Maybe the enemy actually put up a halfway decent fight and they just didn't know how to deal with Mei. Which is totally fine. Maybe it's the first chokepoint on Eichenwalde (which is horrible design, by the way; if your defense team has even a modicum of teamwork, the first point is nearly impossible on Attack because of the chokepoint of Eichenwalde. But that's another thing altogether.) and they just couldn't get past the bridge because of ice walls and sniping over the archway. But when I typically see 28 kills on a character that capitalizes on freezing people, getting headshots, maybe possibly Ni-Hao'ing in the process, I begin to question whether it's actually because of skill or because the enemy team was dumb enough to get frozen constantly.

 

Not saying I'm judging you or how long you've played shooter games, but I feel Mei is a bit too easy to just do too well with.

[Shradow]

I do hit my fair share of headshots but it's not like I even have to when assists count as kills. I mostly play Reinhardt, so I obviously don't do the most assists or kills, but I wouldn't consider 28 an unreasonable amount or anything. I find it odd that you do, considering feezing people and getting headshots are the exact things needed to rack up assists/kills. I could get a single particle of freeze damage on someone before he got shot down by someone else and that is 1 of 28.

 

I just don't agree with you saying she's too easy. Lucio's boosts are passive and his weapon is mostly about knocking people around and suppressive fire, not even caring about accuracy as much as others, and he's got great mobility options. Mercy, you heal/boost people and stick to them, relying on others. McCree has a powerful, hitscan weapon with long falloff that you only need good aim for. Those are only a few examples but I'd say they're just as easy if not easier.

 

EDIT: So I went and asked on the Overwatch subreddit to get a second opinion because I haven't played Overwatch that long and don't know too much and don't actually know whose points are valid, and the possible discussion partners here aren't that numerous. I'll say most responses weren't kind ("your friend's a moron" kind of thing), but one person gave a very helpful response, much better than anything I could've put together.

 

Okay so, at face value, this is my feedback as a designer myself: Your friend is thinking about Overwatch from a micro standpoint. What I mean by this is that he judges his experience solely on the things he can do and that are done to him, specifically, and on an individual level. In some genres this is all that he'd need, a lot of people hate games like World of Warcraft because they value their time with videogames based on what's happening on the screen instead of how much crap is in their inventories. And that's fine. In Overwatch though, matches are lightning fast and macro actions matter more in the long term.

 

Regarding Mei:

Mei's alright. Her ultimate charged a bit too fast but seems to be okay now on the PTR. Your friend may get a few easy kills and that's okay. That's what Mei was designed around. I'd suggest that he play Competitive as Mei and pick fights against two DPS at once and he'll see that it isn't as easy as he's making it out to be. He's just judging it from a perspective of what an individual Mei has done to him, individually. And that's hardly gonna win or lose him the game.

 

Regarding Genji:

Genji and Tracer are two of the characters I have the most trouble with dealing because they're designed explicitly to make Support life a living hell. If we're going to be talking about core game design at all, then that's the one thing I'm going to agree with, but not for the same reasons your friend listed.

Overwatch already has a severe Support / Tank draught and that's to be expected. It's a first-person shooter, nobody wants to get stuck as a "healbot". Against a good Tracer / Genji, playing as a Support basically boils down to having to rely on other players to save you or otherwise spend 60% of the match walking from spawn and that's just not fun for anyone. At a macro scale, this is okay. If the rest of your team is doing well enough, they'll untip the scales. At a micro level, it's understandable why Support players can feel frustrated about not being protected and all that jazz. With the addition of Sombra this is only going to be more prevalent so stay tuned for another Season of people just not wanting to play Support.

 

Regarding Reaper:

Honestly, I think Reaper is probably the most balanced character in the entire game, hahaha. His weapons are very powerful but very noisy and have very overt drawbacks; his counters and counterplay against him are both very clear; his ultimate is as devastating as it can be stupidly telegraphed; since he needs to be very up close, his passive makes perfect sense. Sure, he may handle a one-on-one very easily against most heroes but the point is that is very reliant on regrouping. Even if he kills you, there's a good chance you got a good chunk of his health off and the little soul you leave behind is not all that amazing. After a while, he won't be able to sustain himself on healthpacks anymore and his cooldowns will disalign so he'll become excruciatingly useless.

A lone Reaper is not that useful in the long term, unless he is far more skilled than the enemy team, at which point any character would really upset the scales, really.

[Arctic55]

So, last time I played, I got 3 POTGs.  First with Phara, then Bastion, then Hanzo.  Phara and Bastion POTG were my first time as them.

[Shradow]

I had the most ridiculous game the other day.

 

EDIT: Finished my qualifiers, 6/3/1. Got Platinum with a score of 2664, can't complain.

[Arctic55]

I've never seen Mei as good character design. Same with Reaper and Genji. There's a reason we all call Mei Satan.

Objection!  Mei is bae.  Under that thick coat is a cutie, not satan.

 

On a serious note though, I got no objections with any characters except maybe bastion... cuz he a prick.

[goddamnit names are a pain]

Oh we're talking character design

Tracer, Mei and Junkrat are all terribly designed

that is all

 

just kidding (about that being all, I gots more to say)

ptr changes are looking amazing, and I called them from a mile away

DVA buffs

Widow buffs

Soldier buffs

PHARAH AND MERCY BUFFS THE SHIP IS LIVE BOYS

and

f***ing

Zarya nerfs

f***

yes

 

Basically all the characters I love to play will actually be useful!
Pharah's thrusters are getting a speed boost of 35%! So now the chick with the jetpack won't be one of the slowest mobile characters!

 

Reaper isn't bad design, Genji is too balanced to have issues. Unlike Tracer, he's ONLY good at killing the 200s, whereas Tracer's mobility has way more use and more damage. Less health is literally irrelevant. 

Reaper's health pool has to be large because we have people that outrange him by simply too much. Or, somehow, outdamage him. Looking at you, McCree. 

 

Oh, and also on the note of Mei

Sure, she can't kill 2 DPS super easy and like anything is funked by McCree BUT for literally anything else in the game she's nuts.

I have a 70% winrate on her as my second most played character in the game.

That's not right.

Though, not to brag, I think I actually know how to play her right and a person who KNOWS how to play a Mei is scary.

Discovered huge tricks with her wall (crossing the Hanamura gap has gotten me a point when the enemy was too pushed out), when to freeze yourself, etc. Her health is certainly high, but honestly, she's the only Defense hero in the game that can do her job.

Bastion is a joke to anyone with brain cells and Torb...well, Torb will be viable with his PTR buffs, so I look forward to that.

[Shradow]

PTR Pharah can fly indefinitely. We Quake now boys.

 

Also, I'm never going to unsee this.

[VCR_CAT]

Pharah jet buff was so sorely needed like wow. You can actually jump onto stuff without going shift now!! That's pretty big! Indefinite flight is also SUPER nice. It's great; I always felt her air abilities were crap and that D.Va could out-fly her, but not so much anymore!

 

Sombra's hack pulling Bastion out of turret is infuriating, though. I was afraid this is how it would work, and I was unfortunately right. Bastion has enough hard counters as-is; he doesn't need MORE. Frickin' please Bluzzard, buff him already!!

[Shradow]

I find it funnier how she can hack abilities like McCree's roll or 76's sprint.

[DereResonating]

I'm not a fan of Overwatch. To me, it's just a fps you can search up alone if your regular sites are not 'interesting' enough.

[Atypical-Abbie]

I'm not a fan of Overwatch. To me, it's just a fps you can search up alone if your regular sites are not 'interesting' enough.

The funk does that even mean?

[Shradow]

Ok so I wasn't the only one who couldn't make any sense of it.

 

EDIT: Saw a thread on the subreddit of a guy playing Symmetra with a microwave. There's also a comment that compiles all the other stuff he (and other people) have done. I love him playing Winston with bananas fitted out with wiring

[The Amazing Avian]

I'm not a fan of Overwatch. To me, it's just a fps you can search up alone if your regular sites are not 'interesting' enough.

[DereResonating]

The f*** does that even mean?

A 12 year old's favorite website his mommy can't find out about

[Atypical-Abbie]

A 12 year old's favorite website his mommy can't find out about

Overwatch isn't a website, it's a game. I'm not sure you even know what it is at this point.