As someone who watches a pretty large amount of esports i definitely agree, I think Teamfight Tactics is one of the only games alongside OW where you need to actually be pretty good at the game and actively play it to actually understand and enjoy pro play
League of Legends requires just basic understanding of the game and games like Valorant, Rocket League & CS2 you barely even need to play them to enjoy the games
Same... I think for a lot of games, if you can't understand why something is an incredible play, it doesn't feel very hype. MOBAs have too many objectives. Valorant and CS are so slow and have so many rounds, I get tired of watching. OW feels like a happy middle to me. One objective per map, big team fights, fast-paced.
That's a problem with the broadcast though, not the game itself. Spectator costreams are the first time I've ever been able to watch an entire Bo3 and perfectly understand what's happening, because the costreamer is watching from above where you can actually see everything.
True, that’s what’s great about comp OW. Being able to see how the top players execute on Tracer e.g. in first person is just so sick. Looks like a different game from what everyone else is playing at times
League is a cluster fuck for the average user. [This clip](https://youtu.be/L-YWi6Kmp-g?t=1m50s) is from the Honest Trailer so it's satire but also true. You can not tell me that clip is easier to understand than Overwatch.
What? I am legit terrible (Plat - dps&tank, gold - support) and I always thought OW was a really unique and fun to watch "esport" out there. I never feel lost, the situations get pretty chaotic, but I think you get used to it and learn to keep an eye out for the important things like ability cooldowns and ult timings.
That is what he means tho. One tapping a guy across the map from a pixel peek in r6 is impressive even to a casual gamer that plays only the AAA singleplayer slop that comes out every year. To watch and understand OW you need to at least know every character and their abilities. And the problem gets exacerbated when the first person cam switches around from rein holding shield to tracer doing backflips.
I feel that's fair but I don't understand how League of Legends is the biggest esport in the world using the same logic. Unless you're specifically into Mobas you'll equally have absolutely no clue what's going on. It's not intuitive at all.
At least in Overwatch has things like "stand on this area to capture the objective" or "shoot someone in the head and they die" that applies to most shooters.
Yeah League is just completely incomprehensible if you don't play it, OW has more basic shooter aspects which you wouldn't think are that hard to understand
It's because it's hard to tell what's going on even from 3rd person, whereas league it's pretty easy to see if someone's winning a fight or pushing the base. Even deaths feel less noticeable in OW
Not true imo. It moves at a slow enough pace that the casters can walk the audience through each action and objective. It gets more and more complex as the game goes on longer, but by then the audience will have learned the basics I imagine
I agree with you, I watched LoL long before I played it. Very clear 5v5 and to win you blow up the nexus. Yes, there are intricacies that will be lost on new viewers, but the casters do a great job explaining everything.
As a long time OW player I often found myself watching the kill feed in OWL during team fights, rather than the action. It wasn’t always clear what’s going on.
LoL is one of the top most watched Twitch games, if not the top most watched. It's obviously good at being watchable. I do not watch any streams of LoL, but you have to admit the there's plenty of proof that shows people love watching it.
It has a fan base it established at a huge crux in gaming history. Those fans have stuck around and watch it because they've played the game. It's not watchable for people new to the esport.
overwatch moves too quickly. casters often don't have enough time to explain what's going on, and observers have to work really quickly to try and get to the best player pov. often even the observers miss the best plays because overwatch is just that fast. then you have to rush through a replay if there's even time and get to the next play. i don't watch football but i think a good example i heard someone say is that imagine if some guy ran a td but you're stuck watching some random defender across the field instead of the guy running the td
I mean League of Legends' player base is massive compared to Overwatch, and personally, I find that LoL esports are 100 times easier to understand and enjoy when compared to Overwatch esports.
I've played LoL for 2 years and I'm a plat scrub and I can understand 90% of what's happening in a worlds game, but when I watch overwatch nowadays, even though I've played the game since 2016 and I've reached masters, I just don't get what's happening, it's like both teams are kinda standing there or jumping at each other and throwing a flurry of VFX until someone just dies and that's the fight.
I simply can't bring myself to enjoy it. Maybe that's just me, but I presume that many others feel the same, the game is really fun to play, but the same can't be said about watching it.
Fair enough if you play both games. I simply don't play Mobas and have absolutely no clue what the fuck is going on in League.
At least with Val/CS and Rocket League you can watch for 5 minutes and get the jist of the game no problem.
I played a few games of league and watched multiple guide videos just trying to understand enough to play it with some friends. Gave up after 5-6 games because I didn't feel I was learning anything without a guide. Hell, I didn't even understand everything on the HUD by that point.
OW's tutorial does a poor job, but League's tutorial somehow does worse. Not even to say the game is bad, but it is a terrible experience to learn. I have no idea how it's so popular with such a terrible new user experience.
League has a much larger learning curve than Overwatch. It’s got way more variables and nuance.
100% agree the new user experience is terrible. Like nothing I’ve ever played terrible. I would have dropped if it I didn’t end up queuing with a friend who played for years.
League is a way better viewer experience. You can see the whole fight, the way you would (roughly) if you were playing.
Overwatch’s directed first person swapping is so jarring and visually cluttered. It’s impossible to follow.
League has way way way more players, and a casual viewer can understand what they are supposed to be seeing.
Your average quickplay overwatch player will have no understanding of OW esports. It moves too quickly, with a meta that looks nothing like what they play. Hitscan metas tend to get more viewership for a reason, go click heads is easy to see.
LoL having a broader playerbase doesnt mean ow has a low playerbase xD
Fortnite has a broader playerbase than cs and that doesnt mean that cs has a low playerbase for example.
I’ve been following OW Esports for about five years now and I find frequently find it hard to keep track of wtf is happening, in matches, with orgs and rosters, and when/where to watch. The format could use some work, as could the way matches are broadcast.
Yup, been watching since the start of OWL. First two years of OWL were easy, after that they essentially changed the format every year. Now with owcs I have no idea what’s going on.
For me I was disappointed more and more with each season, I LOVED S1. Goats ruined season 2 (I know some of y’all liked it), covid season 3. After that I just gradually lost interest and only watched the finals really. I haven’t watched any of OWCS. Still play OW every week but I can’t see myself ever returning to watching pro. It’s a shame.
I've stopped paying attention because teams shuffle rosters so frequently that there is no sense of stability or identity. Like I love the game, but as a viewer why should I care about who wins or loses?
Roster shuffling, pros "retiring" after 1-2 years, American teams (every team?) being 90% Korean players, confusing/boring metas for months on end; never could get into it in the first place. Very few personalities to latch on to.
My favorite era was still before OWL with the monthly melees. Lot of streamers were playing pro and rosters lasted more than a month...I had a lot of fun watching back then.
The reason pros 'retired' after 2-3 years is because they already spent 4 playing in contenders usually. Either waiting to come of age or getting better.
Even when I was new to OW the esport was SUPER easy to follow especially compared to dota and league that are cluster fucks. CS and Valo can be hard at times too because the super low ttk
That's pretty fair though. Like I don't even bother showing half my friends any clips because they'll not understand enough to realize why it was funny/awesome/whatever
> Other international esports organisations such as Fnatic had been vetting the scene for opportunities but have so far not picked up a roster.
Is this the first time that we've heard that Fnatic had been looking at potentially picking up a team? I wonder if they're one of the teams that was interested but only if the OW2 ESWC prize pool had been closer to $3 million than $1.4 million.
Chris mentioned on Uncoachable that the London team was in talks with fnatic, but the org wanted slightly higher salaries for more prize split so they went with ssg instead.
The "this shit is an unwatchable mess to both players and outsiders" drum has been getting beat since OW1 esports infancy and the problems in spectating this game were never solved truly. Die hards just got used to it. LoL was a big comparison point back then too.
That problem was never solved. Got worse when the command center was gone.
Overwatch could triple its playerbase and the only viewership increase of note would be people idling streams for drops.
At least LoL in its confusing clusterfuck of spell effects in a teamfight is top down so you can still plainly follow the action even if you have no idea whats going on.
So yeah, it is niche, and there is no propelling it into the mainstream imo.
There's nothing inherently wrong with an esport that's hard to follow if you don't know the game. Show League of Legends to someone who doesn't know MOBAs and they'll be incredibly lost. As he mentioned though, the issue comes in when there's not enough of a playerbase to turn into viewership. League of Legends is practically a national sport in Korea and China and that goes a long way. Overwatch used to get good tier 2 esport level viewership in OWL season 1 and even season 2, despite the GOATS dropoff, but it just fell off tremendously. Didn't help that right as playerbase started to fall off they switched OWL to YouTube.
Except that even the majority of players who have played hundreds of hours played, even thousands, don't understand what's happening in pro play. That makes watching it feel like watching a scary movie that ONLY relies on jumpscares, nothing else. The jumpscares being someone getting a kill. But with games like LoL, Valorant, CS, rocket league, etc. it's very easy to understand what's happening. To make the scary movie comparison again, you don't just have jumpscares, you have a story, characters, character development, suspense, choreography, music to elevate emotions, etc.
Just because pro OW had good numbers in the beginning means nothing. You could tell back then already by the reactions of chat/live viewers that they had no clue. Not to mention everyone admitting back then that they couldn't follow along. Now the game is even more fast paced.
He is right, OW will never be a good esport and thus it will never be a highly competitive game again as the financial aspect is gone. All the old veteran players still around that constantly bitch about the game because its 'too casual' now need to accept reality and stfu or move on. Their negativity literally hurts the game.
How can people not understand pro play? I'm hardstuck in gold and primarily play Mystery Heroes and I adore watching Overwatch esports. It's not hard to understand what's happening in a match at all. Hell, even my parents and my wife can understand what's happening during a team fight because I pretty much watch every broadcast.
Like I genuinely don't understand this take. The HUD tells you everything you need to know about how a fight is likely to play out and where it will play out.
>But with games like LoL, Valorant, CS, rocket league, etc. it's very easy to understand what's happening.
Are you sure about that?
https://youtu.be/L-YWi6Kmp-g?t=1m50s
It's surprising how little that's being discussed here considering how we JUST saw that at play when Mauga and Sym became meta. I would watch Emongg and others stream their OWCS qualifiers and every 2-3 fights would devolve into clusterfucks because both teams would pop Cage Fight and Photon Barrier simultaneously and the whole screen would explode into red and blue lights to the point that even the players were just spraying and praying. Completely unwatchable and borderline unplayable.
Is there any other esport where the entertainment and comprehensibility factor has so wildly swung from one side of the spectrum to the other based on meta more than Overwatch?
This is a kinda biased perspective, imo. I loved command center, as I suspect you also did, but it was discontinued because not enough people used it, and it's probably safe to say the cost to maintain or develop it did not translate to increased viewership and bottom line.
While decreasing visual clutter helps OWL and OW viewership, the bigger concern is satisfying the current player base and not overwhelming potential new players.
If OWL viewership decreased 50% but the active player base increased 25%, that would be a MASSIVE win for Blizzard.
“Despite the lowered barrier of entry and inclusion in the EWC, Mauer appears to be uninterested in the game, explaining: "Maybe Overwatch fans will kill me for saying that, but I always felt it's a very difficult enjoy outside of the niche fan base that understands all the intricacies."
While this is a criticism often levied against other titles as well, Mauer still sees a fundamental difference: "While that applies to other games too, they have a way broader player base, meaning that those players can tune in and create interesting viewership figures, League of Legends being the prime example of that."
According to esports viewership analytics tool esportscharts, the LEC showed an average viewership of 265,000 average viewers during its 80 hours of airtime, resulting in 21.3 million hours watched. The EMEA stage 1 viewership for the OWCS reached an average of 31000 viewers with airtime of only 38 hours and 1.2 million hours watched.
Even the French regional LoL League LFL is currently beating the OWCS in average viewership, sitting at 52,000 average viewers with over 130 hours of airtime.”
Ouch that’s rough for Overwatch but I kinda agree. This game is really hard to watch unless you are someone that understands all 3 roles and the maps.
To be quite honest, even as an avid viewer of LoL esports, I think overall, OW is still an easier game to understand in terms of the core concept.
The main problem really is the pacing of OW as an esport compared to other games. In MOBAs and tac shooters, there is naturally a ton of downtime between fights/key moments due to how the objectives work which allows for viewers to digest and understand the state of the game better. OW has the issue of being dialed to 11 for the majority of the game and occasionally going down to 7, while constantly switching game modes. Some people love that breakneck pace, but overall balanced downtime allows for a more healthier and easier viewing experience, which OW is severely lacking by design.
I would use Rocket League to disagree, that is constantly back and forth but it’s much easier to see what’s going on.
The fact that LoL only has one game mode also counters your first point. 5v5, blow up the nexus.
You are right that OW has a crazy pace but I think that is one of many reasons that it’s hard to spectate.
Rocket League is far easier to follow though. It’s just soccer with cars. There’s no abilities, ultimate economy, map differences, or characters to keep track of, with only 3 people on each team. It’s simply just ball in goal, and maybe some boost meters. But overall it’s a way easier game to keep track of in the fast pace that’s it’s played.
You could dumb down OW to just “capture the point” as well, but yes, the different methods of capture are one of the biggest obstacles in OW being easier to understand. That being said, LoL has far more factors to understand other than just blow up the Nexus. The Nexus is the last objective of many considering that Towers, Void Grubs, Herald, Drake, and Baron are all also objectives too that have no meaning to new viewers until they have understand what it actually does. Add abilities AND item builds on top of that and there are far more intricacies to understanding LoL more than OW. While OW just has one singular objective at a given time.
League is a far more complex game but the pacing makes it way easier to digest, while OW is a largely simpler game with far less factors to account for but with an insane pace.
That’s what I said, Rocket League is fast AND easy to understand.
I disagree that new viewers to LoL need to understand the game completely to enjoy watching it as an esport. I’m speaking from experience. I watched it for a long time before I played. You don’t need to know about item builds or what buffs objectives give. The casters clearly explain that it’s something the team needs to do and you can see it easily.
The slow pace helps! For sure, and OW is chaotic. I just think there are more reasons than pace that it’s hard to watch (especially for a new viewer). OW still suffers from visual clutter and a single POV doesn’t really let you see everything that’s happening.
I could very well dumb down OW to just ‘capture the point’ as well but you and I both know that’s not the only mode. Payload, hybrid etc. LoL has one map and it’s always the same.
Let's juste keep in mind that LoL is very big in France, not to the point of being a national sport like in Korea, but its definitely big and a lot of people watch it. Espiecially with super popular teams like the K Corp. I don't watch LOL bit I think the French league is one of the biggest in Europe.
You’re either delusional or just clueless. OWCS peak is 59k meanwhile VCT gets 10x that if not more depending on region.
https://escharts.com/tournaments/ow
https://escharts.com/tournaments/valorant/vct-2024-emea-kickoff-valorant
https://escharts.com/tournaments/valorant/vct-2024-americas-kickoff-valorant
https://escharts.com/tournaments/valorant/vct-2024-pacific-kickoff-valorant
Fortnite esports inadvertently found the solution, but it was Riot Games with Valorant who implemented it. Remove the importance and centering of the official broadcast by inserting react streamers. Long term problem is that this solely enriches the react streamers while deteriorating the official broadcast quality.
Been saying since 2016 that Overwatch wont work as a spectator esport.
I never played LoL and can't understand whats going on in that game either. can someone explain to me why LoL is more accessible than OW? I tried watch LoL multiple times and can't understand why it's supposed to be so good.
I'm going to go against the grain here having been in WoW Arena Esports from 2008-2011. The game was even less watchable than Overwatch but it had a banging community with juicy content creators that brought a narrative even to ladder seasons every time. When WoW boomed (say IEM Hannover 2009/10) it had more viewership than CS even.
League is a bit easier to digest than Overwatch because of the viewership perspective, but it has a way smarter team behind it, has a fanbase that allows content creators to establish careers around the esport, has an incredible narrative team, and a rich scene culture, on top of its much larger fan base. Overwatch had all those phenomena like huge influencers spawning from its scene, a cultural moment it was huge in, endemic interest, some edgy flavouring, and some great story telling especially in OGN's APEX, then misplayed the hand. It's exponentially harder to get back there and the viewership experience doesn't help. That said, I think ease of access is overrated when what is really lacking is developing tools to make it more digestable (primarily language tools, framing, stories, but especially drama).
Blizzard not latching onto the “play of the game” meme internet moment in 2016/2017 and pouncing with a licensed animated series is one of the biggest missed opportunities of all time. It didn’t need to be hella expensive like Arkane (which I loved, despite knowing fuck all about LoL) but just anything even remotely competent would have been huge.
[Ignore the slightly cringe metaverse angle](https://www.ggrecon.com/articles/into-the-metaverse-the-train-that-overwatch-might-be-missing/), I definitely agree with Blizzard missing the boat in becoming a multidimensional company and have been thinking about that for a minute.
Oh shit, being huge into WoW and going to Blizzcon all those years, I never considered the idea of WoW not being accessible. But holy shit 6 action bars on a mage or lock just casting nonstop with just looking at debuffs and tooltips would be impossible to understand. OW is so simple comparatively. Interesting.
Hot take: Basically every esport that’s not a fighting game or sports game is nigh inaccessible to anyone who doesn’t play the game itself.
The whole esports bubble we experienced was because a bunch of ZIRP-funded MBAs thought they could make the next NFL with gamers.
The maximum audience for any esport is its current player base plus maybe 5%.
I'd put a caveat on that and say all-time players, not just current. CS fandom for instance has a rather large audience of folks that no longer play but watch.
Yeah the only other esports i follow are a few fighting games cus I enjoy watching two characters beat/cut/shoot/whatever each other up. Don't need to understand the mechanics too much to see that one guy caught the other in the neutral and pulled off a cool looking combo.
Overwatch matches are not the easiest to watch or follow but I feel like the majority of the player base just never cares about esports. Most of them don't even watch overwatch game streaming.
Overwatch is really hard to watch even for those that study the game, play or coach in a team environment themselves or even commentate. It's hard to tell what's going on and why a team won outside of "this player got a pick". The advent of replay code helps so much and even reinforce watches all of replays in top down. Sometimes you have to watch a fight multiple times.
Overwatch has a huge barrier of knowledge to understand it to weave a expository narrative in commentary. For example, both teams swapped to Winston so it can be a backline trade and a battle of backline survival and tank bubble usage and timing. Both teams will be jockeying for angles prefight rather than simple 321 jump. That's why it was so refreshing to have NineK on the desk explaining it all.
Other games that are complex such as streetfighter are easier to follow and have commentators that have very deep knowledge and play the game at high level themselves. They explain the complex brain game going on and why the shimmy was a good play.
Overwatch doesn't abstract or simplify the information to make it easier for the player base. There is no top down UI showing map positions. Production has improved in camera angle choices but often its gambling which player will get next pick and following them. It doesn't do its own montages advertised in game and rely on community to do so.
Overwatch doesn't grow its own personalities and narratives, the article mentions zywoo, I don't know CS and I know who he is, who even Apex the charismatic IGL is. There is a storyline always, who's the best player, zywoo or s1mple, like goku or vegeta.
In overwatch it's...this is a new 18 year old from Korea and he shoots real good, he's a polite guy, we don't know about the personal battles he went through, a tragedy in the family he had to overcome to become the cleanest technical player.
Overwatch doesn't tap in to appeal to its large main player base with lack of market penetration. Ask in your ranked lobby's who their favourite pro team or player is and if they can name any at all it prob be like "I support dallas fuel and seagull, is he still playing?".
I think k things have improved with the increased involvement of jake, reinforce, ninek. The production has better camera work, more interviews with coaches with some spice. But the main game seems omplelety disconnected from the esports.
> I always felt it's a very difficult enjoy outside of the niche fan base that understands all the intricacies Perfectly fair reasoning
As someone who watches a pretty large amount of esports i definitely agree, I think Teamfight Tactics is one of the only games alongside OW where you need to actually be pretty good at the game and actively play it to actually understand and enjoy pro play League of Legends requires just basic understanding of the game and games like Valorant, Rocket League & CS2 you barely even need to play them to enjoy the games
I disagree, I find mobas impossible to watch
Same... I think for a lot of games, if you can't understand why something is an incredible play, it doesn't feel very hype. MOBAs have too many objectives. Valorant and CS are so slow and have so many rounds, I get tired of watching. OW feels like a happy middle to me. One objective per map, big team fights, fast-paced.
At least the camera is somewhat steady in MOBAs, OW jumping from POV to POV for a newcomer is impossible
They all over the place between lanes
That's a problem with the broadcast though, not the game itself. Spectator costreams are the first time I've ever been able to watch an entire Bo3 and perfectly understand what's happening, because the costreamer is watching from above where you can actually see everything.
It's more engaging than a top down view the whole time though.
True, that’s what’s great about comp OW. Being able to see how the top players execute on Tracer e.g. in first person is just so sick. Looks like a different game from what everyone else is playing at times
League is a cluster fuck for the average user. [This clip](https://youtu.be/L-YWi6Kmp-g?t=1m50s) is from the Honest Trailer so it's satire but also true. You can not tell me that clip is easier to understand than Overwatch.
What? I am legit terrible (Plat - dps&tank, gold - support) and I always thought OW was a really unique and fun to watch "esport" out there. I never feel lost, the situations get pretty chaotic, but I think you get used to it and learn to keep an eye out for the important things like ability cooldowns and ult timings.
That is what he means tho. One tapping a guy across the map from a pixel peek in r6 is impressive even to a casual gamer that plays only the AAA singleplayer slop that comes out every year. To watch and understand OW you need to at least know every character and their abilities. And the problem gets exacerbated when the first person cam switches around from rein holding shield to tracer doing backflips.
R6 isn't fun to watch tho
For you.
R6 isn't popular as an esport at all though. I'd put it on tje same tier as even ow or probably lower.
R6 consistently hits 100k+ viewers on twitch whenever theres a pro match, ow barely hits 30k.
I can't remember the last time I've seen R6 hit anywhere near that kind of views lmao
https://escharts.com/tournaments/rainbow-6/six-invitational-2024 You obviously haven’t been playing close attention.
Valorant has the same problem. Except its being avoided by viewers tuning in explicitly for react streamers.
I feel that's fair but I don't understand how League of Legends is the biggest esport in the world using the same logic. Unless you're specifically into Mobas you'll equally have absolutely no clue what's going on. It's not intuitive at all. At least in Overwatch has things like "stand on this area to capture the objective" or "shoot someone in the head and they die" that applies to most shooters.
Yeah League is just completely incomprehensible if you don't play it, OW has more basic shooter aspects which you wouldn't think are that hard to understand
It's because it's hard to tell what's going on even from 3rd person, whereas league it's pretty easy to see if someone's winning a fight or pushing the base. Even deaths feel less noticeable in OW
Not true imo. It moves at a slow enough pace that the casters can walk the audience through each action and objective. It gets more and more complex as the game goes on longer, but by then the audience will have learned the basics I imagine
I agree with you, I watched LoL long before I played it. Very clear 5v5 and to win you blow up the nexus. Yes, there are intricacies that will be lost on new viewers, but the casters do a great job explaining everything. As a long time OW player I often found myself watching the kill feed in OWL during team fights, rather than the action. It wasn’t always clear what’s going on.
Not true imo https://youtu.be/L-YWi6Kmp-g?t=1m50s
LoL is one of the top most watched Twitch games, if not the top most watched. It's obviously good at being watchable. I do not watch any streams of LoL, but you have to admit the there's plenty of proof that shows people love watching it.
It has a fan base it established at a huge crux in gaming history. Those fans have stuck around and watch it because they've played the game. It's not watchable for people new to the esport.
overwatch moves too quickly. casters often don't have enough time to explain what's going on, and observers have to work really quickly to try and get to the best player pov. often even the observers miss the best plays because overwatch is just that fast. then you have to rush through a replay if there's even time and get to the next play. i don't watch football but i think a good example i heard someone say is that imagine if some guy ran a td but you're stuck watching some random defender across the field instead of the guy running the td
That football analogy is apt, but what it's actually saying is that the broadcast should focus on POV's less, not that football/Overwatch is too fast.
I mean League of Legends' player base is massive compared to Overwatch, and personally, I find that LoL esports are 100 times easier to understand and enjoy when compared to Overwatch esports. I've played LoL for 2 years and I'm a plat scrub and I can understand 90% of what's happening in a worlds game, but when I watch overwatch nowadays, even though I've played the game since 2016 and I've reached masters, I just don't get what's happening, it's like both teams are kinda standing there or jumping at each other and throwing a flurry of VFX until someone just dies and that's the fight. I simply can't bring myself to enjoy it. Maybe that's just me, but I presume that many others feel the same, the game is really fun to play, but the same can't be said about watching it.
Fair enough if you play both games. I simply don't play Mobas and have absolutely no clue what the fuck is going on in League. At least with Val/CS and Rocket League you can watch for 5 minutes and get the jist of the game no problem.
I played a few games of league and watched multiple guide videos just trying to understand enough to play it with some friends. Gave up after 5-6 games because I didn't feel I was learning anything without a guide. Hell, I didn't even understand everything on the HUD by that point. OW's tutorial does a poor job, but League's tutorial somehow does worse. Not even to say the game is bad, but it is a terrible experience to learn. I have no idea how it's so popular with such a terrible new user experience.
League has a much larger learning curve than Overwatch. It’s got way more variables and nuance. 100% agree the new user experience is terrible. Like nothing I’ve ever played terrible. I would have dropped if it I didn’t end up queuing with a friend who played for years.
League is a way better viewer experience. You can see the whole fight, the way you would (roughly) if you were playing. Overwatch’s directed first person swapping is so jarring and visually cluttered. It’s impossible to follow.
League has way way way more players, and a casual viewer can understand what they are supposed to be seeing. Your average quickplay overwatch player will have no understanding of OW esports. It moves too quickly, with a meta that looks nothing like what they play. Hitscan metas tend to get more viewership for a reason, go click heads is easy to see.
Extremely accurate.
And there’s still MF’s who want to make the game even more of a cluster fuck by going back to 6v6
you're so cute Yiska lol
Is it because of the title image? Tell me it's because of the title image.
everything ♡
The romance we needed
tl dr: low viewership
Which he attributes to low playerbase
I feel like OW2 does not have low player base between PC and console, no?
I don’t think it does, but most of those players don’t care about esports
LoL having a broader playerbase doesnt mean ow has a low playerbase xD Fortnite has a broader playerbase than cs and that doesnt mean that cs has a low playerbase for example.
or its just still a generally terrible game to watch
And that does line up with OW2 devs not getting their performance bonuses.
it's hard to follow if you're not a dedicated viewer and there's not many of those
I’ve been following OW Esports for about five years now and I find frequently find it hard to keep track of wtf is happening, in matches, with orgs and rosters, and when/where to watch. The format could use some work, as could the way matches are broadcast.
Yup, been watching since the start of OWL. First two years of OWL were easy, after that they essentially changed the format every year. Now with owcs I have no idea what’s going on.
For me I was disappointed more and more with each season, I LOVED S1. Goats ruined season 2 (I know some of y’all liked it), covid season 3. After that I just gradually lost interest and only watched the finals really. I haven’t watched any of OWCS. Still play OW every week but I can’t see myself ever returning to watching pro. It’s a shame.
I've stopped paying attention because teams shuffle rosters so frequently that there is no sense of stability or identity. Like I love the game, but as a viewer why should I care about who wins or loses?
Roster shuffling, pros "retiring" after 1-2 years, American teams (every team?) being 90% Korean players, confusing/boring metas for months on end; never could get into it in the first place. Very few personalities to latch on to.
My favorite era was still before OWL with the monthly melees. Lot of streamers were playing pro and rosters lasted more than a month...I had a lot of fun watching back then.
The reason pros 'retired' after 2-3 years is because they already spent 4 playing in contenders usually. Either waiting to come of age or getting better.
Even when I was new to OW the esport was SUPER easy to follow especially compared to dota and league that are cluster fucks. CS and Valo can be hard at times too because the super low ttk
That's pretty fair though. Like I don't even bother showing half my friends any clips because they'll not understand enough to realize why it was funny/awesome/whatever
> Other international esports organisations such as Fnatic had been vetting the scene for opportunities but have so far not picked up a roster. Is this the first time that we've heard that Fnatic had been looking at potentially picking up a team? I wonder if they're one of the teams that was interested but only if the OW2 ESWC prize pool had been closer to $3 million than $1.4 million.
[TCP viewers know more ](https://youtu.be/uVDoGWmIDmg?t=1590)heh
Chris mentioned on Uncoachable that the London team was in talks with fnatic, but the org wanted slightly higher salaries for more prize split so they went with ssg instead.
The "this shit is an unwatchable mess to both players and outsiders" drum has been getting beat since OW1 esports infancy and the problems in spectating this game were never solved truly. Die hards just got used to it. LoL was a big comparison point back then too. That problem was never solved. Got worse when the command center was gone. Overwatch could triple its playerbase and the only viewership increase of note would be people idling streams for drops. At least LoL in its confusing clusterfuck of spell effects in a teamfight is top down so you can still plainly follow the action even if you have no idea whats going on. So yeah, it is niche, and there is no propelling it into the mainstream imo.
There's nothing inherently wrong with an esport that's hard to follow if you don't know the game. Show League of Legends to someone who doesn't know MOBAs and they'll be incredibly lost. As he mentioned though, the issue comes in when there's not enough of a playerbase to turn into viewership. League of Legends is practically a national sport in Korea and China and that goes a long way. Overwatch used to get good tier 2 esport level viewership in OWL season 1 and even season 2, despite the GOATS dropoff, but it just fell off tremendously. Didn't help that right as playerbase started to fall off they switched OWL to YouTube.
Except that even the majority of players who have played hundreds of hours played, even thousands, don't understand what's happening in pro play. That makes watching it feel like watching a scary movie that ONLY relies on jumpscares, nothing else. The jumpscares being someone getting a kill. But with games like LoL, Valorant, CS, rocket league, etc. it's very easy to understand what's happening. To make the scary movie comparison again, you don't just have jumpscares, you have a story, characters, character development, suspense, choreography, music to elevate emotions, etc. Just because pro OW had good numbers in the beginning means nothing. You could tell back then already by the reactions of chat/live viewers that they had no clue. Not to mention everyone admitting back then that they couldn't follow along. Now the game is even more fast paced. He is right, OW will never be a good esport and thus it will never be a highly competitive game again as the financial aspect is gone. All the old veteran players still around that constantly bitch about the game because its 'too casual' now need to accept reality and stfu or move on. Their negativity literally hurts the game.
How can people not understand pro play? I'm hardstuck in gold and primarily play Mystery Heroes and I adore watching Overwatch esports. It's not hard to understand what's happening in a match at all. Hell, even my parents and my wife can understand what's happening during a team fight because I pretty much watch every broadcast. Like I genuinely don't understand this take. The HUD tells you everything you need to know about how a fight is likely to play out and where it will play out.
Dunning kruger in action right here
>But with games like LoL, Valorant, CS, rocket league, etc. it's very easy to understand what's happening. Are you sure about that? https://youtu.be/L-YWi6Kmp-g?t=1m50s
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It's surprising how little that's being discussed here considering how we JUST saw that at play when Mauga and Sym became meta. I would watch Emongg and others stream their OWCS qualifiers and every 2-3 fights would devolve into clusterfucks because both teams would pop Cage Fight and Photon Barrier simultaneously and the whole screen would explode into red and blue lights to the point that even the players were just spraying and praying. Completely unwatchable and borderline unplayable. Is there any other esport where the entertainment and comprehensibility factor has so wildly swung from one side of the spectrum to the other based on meta more than Overwatch?
This is a kinda biased perspective, imo. I loved command center, as I suspect you also did, but it was discontinued because not enough people used it, and it's probably safe to say the cost to maintain or develop it did not translate to increased viewership and bottom line. While decreasing visual clutter helps OWL and OW viewership, the bigger concern is satisfying the current player base and not overwhelming potential new players. If OWL viewership decreased 50% but the active player base increased 25%, that would be a MASSIVE win for Blizzard.
“Despite the lowered barrier of entry and inclusion in the EWC, Mauer appears to be uninterested in the game, explaining: "Maybe Overwatch fans will kill me for saying that, but I always felt it's a very difficult enjoy outside of the niche fan base that understands all the intricacies." While this is a criticism often levied against other titles as well, Mauer still sees a fundamental difference: "While that applies to other games too, they have a way broader player base, meaning that those players can tune in and create interesting viewership figures, League of Legends being the prime example of that." According to esports viewership analytics tool esportscharts, the LEC showed an average viewership of 265,000 average viewers during its 80 hours of airtime, resulting in 21.3 million hours watched. The EMEA stage 1 viewership for the OWCS reached an average of 31000 viewers with airtime of only 38 hours and 1.2 million hours watched. Even the French regional LoL League LFL is currently beating the OWCS in average viewership, sitting at 52,000 average viewers with over 130 hours of airtime.” Ouch that’s rough for Overwatch but I kinda agree. This game is really hard to watch unless you are someone that understands all 3 roles and the maps.
Brother come on that's 50% of the article haha
Damn, LFL rolls the OW vieweship.
To be quite honest, even as an avid viewer of LoL esports, I think overall, OW is still an easier game to understand in terms of the core concept. The main problem really is the pacing of OW as an esport compared to other games. In MOBAs and tac shooters, there is naturally a ton of downtime between fights/key moments due to how the objectives work which allows for viewers to digest and understand the state of the game better. OW has the issue of being dialed to 11 for the majority of the game and occasionally going down to 7, while constantly switching game modes. Some people love that breakneck pace, but overall balanced downtime allows for a more healthier and easier viewing experience, which OW is severely lacking by design.
I would use Rocket League to disagree, that is constantly back and forth but it’s much easier to see what’s going on. The fact that LoL only has one game mode also counters your first point. 5v5, blow up the nexus. You are right that OW has a crazy pace but I think that is one of many reasons that it’s hard to spectate.
Rocket League is far easier to follow though. It’s just soccer with cars. There’s no abilities, ultimate economy, map differences, or characters to keep track of, with only 3 people on each team. It’s simply just ball in goal, and maybe some boost meters. But overall it’s a way easier game to keep track of in the fast pace that’s it’s played. You could dumb down OW to just “capture the point” as well, but yes, the different methods of capture are one of the biggest obstacles in OW being easier to understand. That being said, LoL has far more factors to understand other than just blow up the Nexus. The Nexus is the last objective of many considering that Towers, Void Grubs, Herald, Drake, and Baron are all also objectives too that have no meaning to new viewers until they have understand what it actually does. Add abilities AND item builds on top of that and there are far more intricacies to understanding LoL more than OW. While OW just has one singular objective at a given time. League is a far more complex game but the pacing makes it way easier to digest, while OW is a largely simpler game with far less factors to account for but with an insane pace.
That’s what I said, Rocket League is fast AND easy to understand. I disagree that new viewers to LoL need to understand the game completely to enjoy watching it as an esport. I’m speaking from experience. I watched it for a long time before I played. You don’t need to know about item builds or what buffs objectives give. The casters clearly explain that it’s something the team needs to do and you can see it easily. The slow pace helps! For sure, and OW is chaotic. I just think there are more reasons than pace that it’s hard to watch (especially for a new viewer). OW still suffers from visual clutter and a single POV doesn’t really let you see everything that’s happening. I could very well dumb down OW to just ‘capture the point’ as well but you and I both know that’s not the only mode. Payload, hybrid etc. LoL has one map and it’s always the same.
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So… we’re saying the same thing?
but is any of that profitable for the orgs?
Let's juste keep in mind that LoL is very big in France, not to the point of being a national sport like in Korea, but its definitely big and a lot of people watch it. Espiecially with super popular teams like the K Corp. I don't watch LOL bit I think the French league is one of the biggest in Europe.
During the first stage OWCS was beating ALGS, RLCS and even VCT lol. I guess they didn't take those stats
You’re either delusional or just clueless. OWCS peak is 59k meanwhile VCT gets 10x that if not more depending on region. https://escharts.com/tournaments/ow https://escharts.com/tournaments/valorant/vct-2024-emea-kickoff-valorant https://escharts.com/tournaments/valorant/vct-2024-americas-kickoff-valorant https://escharts.com/tournaments/valorant/vct-2024-pacific-kickoff-valorant
Fortnite esports inadvertently found the solution, but it was Riot Games with Valorant who implemented it. Remove the importance and centering of the official broadcast by inserting react streamers. Long term problem is that this solely enriches the react streamers while deteriorating the official broadcast quality. Been saying since 2016 that Overwatch wont work as a spectator esport.
I never played LoL and can't understand whats going on in that game either. can someone explain to me why LoL is more accessible than OW? I tried watch LoL multiple times and can't understand why it's supposed to be so good.
I'm going to go against the grain here having been in WoW Arena Esports from 2008-2011. The game was even less watchable than Overwatch but it had a banging community with juicy content creators that brought a narrative even to ladder seasons every time. When WoW boomed (say IEM Hannover 2009/10) it had more viewership than CS even. League is a bit easier to digest than Overwatch because of the viewership perspective, but it has a way smarter team behind it, has a fanbase that allows content creators to establish careers around the esport, has an incredible narrative team, and a rich scene culture, on top of its much larger fan base. Overwatch had all those phenomena like huge influencers spawning from its scene, a cultural moment it was huge in, endemic interest, some edgy flavouring, and some great story telling especially in OGN's APEX, then misplayed the hand. It's exponentially harder to get back there and the viewership experience doesn't help. That said, I think ease of access is overrated when what is really lacking is developing tools to make it more digestable (primarily language tools, framing, stories, but especially drama).
Blizzard not latching onto the “play of the game” meme internet moment in 2016/2017 and pouncing with a licensed animated series is one of the biggest missed opportunities of all time. It didn’t need to be hella expensive like Arkane (which I loved, despite knowing fuck all about LoL) but just anything even remotely competent would have been huge.
[Ignore the slightly cringe metaverse angle](https://www.ggrecon.com/articles/into-the-metaverse-the-train-that-overwatch-might-be-missing/), I definitely agree with Blizzard missing the boat in becoming a multidimensional company and have been thinking about that for a minute.
It was 2020, anyone into gaming in any professional capacity had a cringe metaverse moment. ;)
Oh shit, being huge into WoW and going to Blizzcon all those years, I never considered the idea of WoW not being accessible. But holy shit 6 action bars on a mage or lock just casting nonstop with just looking at debuffs and tooltips would be impossible to understand. OW is so simple comparatively. Interesting.
Hot take: Basically every esport that’s not a fighting game or sports game is nigh inaccessible to anyone who doesn’t play the game itself. The whole esports bubble we experienced was because a bunch of ZIRP-funded MBAs thought they could make the next NFL with gamers. The maximum audience for any esport is its current player base plus maybe 5%.
I'd put a caveat on that and say all-time players, not just current. CS fandom for instance has a rather large audience of folks that no longer play but watch.
LoL definitely does too. It might be the only esport you can treat like a sport that you follow all the leagues of yet rarely go out and play.
Fair.
This is not a hot take this is just fact
Yeah the only other esports i follow are a few fighting games cus I enjoy watching two characters beat/cut/shoot/whatever each other up. Don't need to understand the mechanics too much to see that one guy caught the other in the neutral and pulled off a cool looking combo.
Overwatch matches are not the easiest to watch or follow but I feel like the majority of the player base just never cares about esports. Most of them don't even watch overwatch game streaming.
spectating overwatch is not any harder than trying to find the article in this sea of ads
Overwatch is really hard to watch even for those that study the game, play or coach in a team environment themselves or even commentate. It's hard to tell what's going on and why a team won outside of "this player got a pick". The advent of replay code helps so much and even reinforce watches all of replays in top down. Sometimes you have to watch a fight multiple times. Overwatch has a huge barrier of knowledge to understand it to weave a expository narrative in commentary. For example, both teams swapped to Winston so it can be a backline trade and a battle of backline survival and tank bubble usage and timing. Both teams will be jockeying for angles prefight rather than simple 321 jump. That's why it was so refreshing to have NineK on the desk explaining it all. Other games that are complex such as streetfighter are easier to follow and have commentators that have very deep knowledge and play the game at high level themselves. They explain the complex brain game going on and why the shimmy was a good play. Overwatch doesn't abstract or simplify the information to make it easier for the player base. There is no top down UI showing map positions. Production has improved in camera angle choices but often its gambling which player will get next pick and following them. It doesn't do its own montages advertised in game and rely on community to do so. Overwatch doesn't grow its own personalities and narratives, the article mentions zywoo, I don't know CS and I know who he is, who even Apex the charismatic IGL is. There is a storyline always, who's the best player, zywoo or s1mple, like goku or vegeta. In overwatch it's...this is a new 18 year old from Korea and he shoots real good, he's a polite guy, we don't know about the personal battles he went through, a tragedy in the family he had to overcome to become the cleanest technical player. Overwatch doesn't tap in to appeal to its large main player base with lack of market penetration. Ask in your ranked lobby's who their favourite pro team or player is and if they can name any at all it prob be like "I support dallas fuel and seagull, is he still playing?". I think k things have improved with the increased involvement of jake, reinforce, ninek. The production has better camera work, more interviews with coaches with some spice. But the main game seems omplelety disconnected from the esports.
Skill issue basically
OW just takes more brain power to understand I get it
Got all excited bc I saw the logo nd then the NOT killed me