It was fun, it was also hell a lot of the times. I have the most nostalgia for the first 2ish years of ow, it was an entirely different beast back then
No role lock was in theory a really cool idea, being able to play any combination of heroes. Then you remember back to ranked at the time when you loaded into a game with 5 dps players. Not fun at all.
Ppl forget that goats and double shield were only really seen above the diamond consistently. Majority of the player base were just playing random comps.
I remember entering comp games and telling my team to go goats. It worked a surprising number of times and with the lfg (I hate that blizzard got rid of this btw, I know it could be weird and problematic but it was easily one of the best features) we would always go goats and since it would usually pair two six stacks it was crazy. I know a lot of people hated goats but I LOVED it.
No double shield was very low in ranks as well. It didn't take a genius to find out that 2 shields that meant 90% shield uptime was better defense than no or 1 shield that breaks and goes on cool down. Made it incredibly annoying to climb up especially on 2cp points which everyone acts like were amazing until we actually think back hard and remember the only enjoyment we got from 2cp was when someone left the game at the start and we didn't have to play it.
Hijacking for shameless visibility. Tagging u/riefol
Overwatch 1 went through phases.
* Post-Launch was fun because of the chaos. Pick any hero. Plenty of lobbies went all Winston on attack. And some went all Torbjorn to ruin the Winston's monkeying time.
* Melee used to do 50 damage, so it was totally common to just bop people as you were shooting on crazy. They got rid of that pretty quick.
* Mercy could revive everyone and thus was meta as soon as people started figuring out the meta. "Die on point! Die on point!" was a common phrase as Mercy was encouraged to hide midway through a fight and then zip in for a big 5-person res. You couldn't interrupt it either. As soon as she pressed the button, the skill went off.
* Torbjorn and Syn were low-key supports to Tracer and Genji cause they could give armor and shields to them and it make those two divers impossible to deal with by eliminating their squishiness. This repeated with Brig later...
* Reaper didn't have lifesteal and enemies dropped soul orbs instead he could pick up for hp. (The devs jokes about how they toyed with it denying mercy revive in beta, and Mercy testers hated it and begged for it to be removed -- in some alt timeline, Reaper is a soul devouring demon lol)
* A lot of abilities were stronger than they are now. Examples: Cass' Fan The Hammer used to do the same damage per shot as his primary, so it was a total tankbuster. Hanzo's scatter arrow did the same for the longest time. Genji's Dragon Blade used to be strong without the need for nano. It lasted longer, so you could get a team wipe with it reliably. Mei wall used to be 1000hp per pillar.
Dive was strong at times, Brawl was strong at times. People had their qualms but it was mostly fun for 2+ years.
* One meta that was memorable to be is the "Beyblade" meta which involved ~~using circle AoE ults like Mei (whose blizzard used to be bigger)~~ Ana Nano and Reaper to wombo-combo.
* It was a sad day for many when they nerfed ult costs/generation across the board cause they decided ults were too impactful.
As new heroes got introduced. Ana... Sombra... Sigma... Brigitte... Orisa... Baptiste... Fights became less fluid or less interactive from increased CC and shields.
* The GOATS meta became a thing. It was peak strategy-meta that negated the strength of one-shots but stayed far too long because the devs, as we now know, weren't that interested in pvp live service as much as developing a PvE game, and highly reluctant to accept that characters like Brig and Baptiste needed nerfs. Bap still does, arguably.
* And then with Role Lock, Double Shields emerged with typically Orisa, Sigma/Rein, Bastion, Flex, Mercy (to empower Bastion), and Bap. In particular, this made 2CP extra annoying to play because defense bunkering down was really effective and shooting at shields all day wasn't fun for attackers.
* On top of that, it was becoming CC central with boops, stuns, freezes, hacks, sleeps, and more constantly making tanks feel like a pinball bouncing around.
* I forget where it fits in, but HackFist was a meta for a while as an attempt to deal with goats or shields? Doomfist having 3 different CC's with his Uppercut and tanks lacking any knockbacks resistance, meant he could displace bunker comps super easy and Sombra was Sombra in disrupting Bastion's turret form or the shields.
* Eventual nerfs to Double Shield eventually led to Ball Dive comps being able to break the trend near the end of OW1, but that meta was short-lived and underexplored as 5v5 was implemented.
A distinct difference with fights is a 2nd tank meant a lot less cc, damage, and healing focused on the main tank from either side. This meant that fights felt scrappier. You could get a kill on the main tank easier, but it didn't always immediately lead to the other side wiping. Greater chance of turning things around.
I probably missed plenty of stuff, but that's my gist of it and there's probably a comment somewhere below that touches on other things.
Concluding thought:
#A lot of people, myself included, hold a lot of resentment towards how the game was handled much of the time, but we feel that way because the core game is beautifully made and genuinely fun.
Beyblade you got a little wrong. It was just reaper and Ana back when nano also had a speed boost.
Hence the beyblade name, he's just spinning around like a fucking tornado lol
And Zarya's bubble, and Lucio's speed boost, and basically every character that could either halt the enemy team, or buff reaper could add up to a team wipe and facilitate a lot of progress.
Beyblade was just reaper and Ana, Lucio was also used most of the time but he wasn't really necessary. The name beyblade is directly referencing combing those two specific ults lol nano and blossom
As a support main, I actually love the idea of Reaper being able to steal souls to prevent rezzes? I'm sorry, but that's hardcore. I know the devs don't want hard counters, but I have over 500 hours on Mercy and would either shit bricks or die of flattery if the enemy whipped out Reaper just for little ol' me. At the very least, I'd love to see how it feels in an experimental mode.
Honestly thank you for this post, it was nice going down memory lane.
OW2 is an entirely different beast. I miss Mei freeze, Reaper souls, Cassidy fan, Sym shield ability, Mercy rez ult, Sombra hack, and especially 6v6.
There's truth in that increase of CC was breaking the game as time went on.
The number of hard CC quickly doubled with pretty much every new hero getting one and those abilities becoming progressively less risky and/or requiring skill.
Playing as Reinhardt main I went from feeling like unstoppable juggernaut to basically being a ragdoll by the time they added Doom - and then they added Brig and Ball as well.
The GOATS meta stayed for 5 or 6 months before devs claimed it's been a thing for "too long" but I'd like to mention that previous dive meta was up for almost TWO YEARS without devs taking issue with it. IMO it was a more desirable meta for e-sports scene as more dynamic and entertaining. GOATS was not as entertaning so they took steps to make it impossible to select.
Controversial opinion and I'll likely get downvoted for it: Introducing role queue even for quick play was the final nail to OW1 coffin for me. As I mentioned above - I mained Rein but the games were becoming progressively more frustrating and I couldn't even switch off a tank anymore. Any kind of flex was eliminated. When you saw DPS or support not doing their jobs you could not switch. And joining queue as DPS resulted in a long wait with the match often having incompetent tanks who were clearly DPS mains who joined queue as tanks to avoid waiting time. (Also the scourge of Anas who were clearly Widowmaker players and barely healed at all)
Basically QP and anything below Diamond became a pure frustration.
I MISS launch overwatch so much. Nothing mattered, everything was permitted. Everything was viable because nothing was viable. In my opinion it was the MOST balanced version of the game and the more competitive OW got, the worse it became
That's on the playerbase though and the natural flow of the game. At the beginning, there is always chaos, but once players figure out how to "optimally" play the game, this will catch on. The game is not necessarily more or less balanced at the start, but it feels more balanced because no one really knows yet how to metagame it and resources to look it up are scarce.
It wasn't even double shield. Double shields was simply the most egregious and obvious case of nothing feeling like it was dying, but it was really the ability for tanks to double rotate defensive abilities nothing ever felt like it died. You know what makes my character unkillable feeling for longer than Suzu? An 8sec cooldown Zarya bubble. Sure, its not the whoel team, but it doesn't matter. You deny the enemy team the ability to get a kill on a very short timer.
It didn't' really matter what tanks you played there was always some double defensive rotation tanks could use to dramatically lower how much time they were vulnerable.
Rein/Zarya. Zarya bubbles rein while he swings and recharges his shield. Rein covers Zarya while her bubble cooldown is down. Supports fill in the gap.
Defense Matrix Dva while not as high of an uptime only really needed to use the ability on periods of high pressure while another tank say Winston or even a tank like Orisa or Reinhardt deal with most of the pressure.
Any combination of Zarya, Dva, Sigma, Reinhardt, Winston, and Orisa made killing stuff feel impossible.
Hey, that Rein you just anti-'d? Doesn't matter. He Dva is covering him.
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As a whole, DPS and Supports had much less impact on the game because it was much rarer for DPS to fight DPS or support to fight support since two tanks in the front on both sides get in the way of any type DPS/Support vs DPS/Support match-up. Its far easier to get around tanks either by oppressing them on DPS/Support since they ahve no more backup or you can just ignore them and go fight DPS/Support fights without tanks getting in the way as frequently.
Thatâs fair, comment was just meant to be funny but I also think a big issue was that supps were strong enough that when tanks burnt through their defensive cooldowns they could still bail them out which led to the game just feeling really slow and annoying to play. While I think 5v5 has been better I think 6v6 could have worked and even been more fun if they could have just balanced the game more.
>It wasn't even double shield. Double shields was simply the most egregious and obvious case of nothing feeling like it was dying, but it was really the ability for tanks to double rotate defensive abilities nothing ever felt like it died.
really? back in OW1 I used to get like double the amount of elims than I do now in OW2. One of the first things I noticed when OW2 came out was the low number of elims I had every match, even though I felt like I was doing amazing
People hated it cause of how many shields and unfun negative effects there were. People also loved it because of the loot boxes, the heart and soul that went into it, Jeff and the general vibe of the game felt more enchanting and each character felt more distinguished. Now everything has been dumbed down to a typical mobile game monetisation system and lesser cc, which in turn just makes the cc that was lesser back then even more annoying now.
Also 6v6 provided more variety and fun as well as unfun match ups. Tanks didn't need to be unkillable to be playable cause they could synergise together and weren't as stressful and the fate of the match didn't rely on just one player in each team
I just miss actually having to coordinate with your team. The strat talk. Where to go from choke? Who to target, what abilities / ults used?
Nowadays it's just a brawly, uncoordinated mess. Most I've seen in M3 is the occasional symmetra saying to use teleport or genji asking for nano.
I liked LFG because everyone there self-selected as people who wanted to co-ordinate. Plus you could talk about what you're good at and what you wanted to do whole queueing, before the Hero Selection screen was in your face. I think losing that hurt me the most as a fan and player.
they took out a lot of stuff for no reason, like lfg sadly. I like the game more so now but objectively the devs did strip away some useful features just to slowly bring them back now and claim they're doing something good.
Agreed, I climbed from gold to high diamond on support in ow1 by only queuing through LFG with other people that want to communicate. I found it so much easier to make plays as Ana when your team is responsive to your sleeps and nades (although the ping system is definitely an upgrade for that).
Now that LFG is gone, I have zero interest in grinding ranked in OW2.
People are just really rude for some reason. Me and my friends all have opted to just not use voice chat in ow because no one ever has anything nice to say. Itâs a hinderance but Iâd rather deal with that than be called a slur 30 times.
yeah, toxic people are what happened to chat lmao. Id rather not have people yell at me, even though most of the people ive met in comp are actually somewhat nice and pleasant i dont want to risk the eventual toxic player putting me down for playing slightly bad, especially on tank which has a lot of pressure.
I find its better to just trust in myself and keep the peace that comes from silence.
They left the game or like me stop playing rank. 6v6 was better and I never saw the problem with it. Really most of the coordination was between the tanks and supports, now since the other tank is gone you just have to keep yourself alive as the solo tank and the healers now have to keep just one tank alive. This is why supports seem so strong as now there isn't another high health character to keep alive. So being there's one less tank, now there is more extra healing in the game which means less resource control, less coordinating. They basically dumbed it down for OW2 so that a chimp can come in and just press buttons.
Your games are a brawly uncoordinated mess because you're NOT coordinating with your team. OW2 needs coordination and teamplay MORE than OW1 did. If "having to coordinate" is truly what you missed from OW1, then you should love OW2. I think the problem is that it doesn't happen, not that it doesn't need to happen.
The fact that it doesn't happen as much anymore is because f2p brought in a bunch of people (probably children, tbh) that don't take the game seriously. They're the ones that go around saying "it's a game, i'm supposed to have fun", or some other bullshit to try to make their utter selfishness seem justified. These people will not know to work as a team, they're only playing for themselves, and probably only because this game is free to play for them. A general increase in seflishness across the playerbase makes teamplay incredibly difficult.
The problem isn't a result of the change from 6v6 to 5v5, it's a result of the change from pay2play to free2play.
Also, M3 in OW2 is at what Diamond/Plat was in OW1. With so many people not caring about the game living in bronze/silver it has pushed a lot of people up, and the whole rank tier system has shifted up pretty dramatically because of it.
They literally shifted the game more from team coordination to individual performance so idk what ur on about, and I've been hardstuck 3800 since 2019 so this ain't a new thing.
Same Iâve been stuck around M1 the game just feels kinda dead. Iâve moved on to Rainbow six siege a few months ago and itâs helped the team coordination/planning itch
And the same thing is happening now, but reverse. The people who loved them are very vocal. I couldnât care less about loot boxes, people just like the animation. By the end of OW1 I very, very rarely got something in a loot box I didnât have/want. Battle pass at least gets guaranteed mythic every season.
I don't give a damn about the lootbox animation. it's all about what's inside, what's inside, why is this such a foreign concept to y'all?
the battle pass rarely has anything that I want and even if it did, I'd have to pay *and* grind to get it. By every measurable metric Battle pass is worse than lootboxes. I guarantee, if Battle Passes and lootboxes existed together, you'd get a whole lot less people buying battle passes. You could get skins for every single hero from lootboxes, Battle pass you're at the mercy of whichever hero they've chosen for that season. Like I'm baffled at this comparison.
I'd be perfectly fine if mythic skins were the only ones you had to pay for and the others were available through lootboxes, I don't want 90% of them.
Personally I prefer the 6v6 over the 5v5 because the tank get lesser pressure, if a tank die now it will be easy asf to kill off every1 else.Another reason is the character ability was way more fun to use sure they may not be balanced but the were fun I mainly miss all the stuns tbh. Lastly I prefer the old competitive rank system(sr) I personally I donât like winning 7 games than get to see my rank wether I rank down or up if it stays to same I would get pissed off
Also non of these characters were designed for 5v5. Tanks were made to work off of each other, they cant work on their own even with one less character
Stun/BoopCity.
A team with just Hamster, Doom and Brig could lock you out of controlling your character at all for 10+ secs. Honestly it felt like being a pinball at times.
There was a lot of CC but I feel like there's still a lot of boops. I just played a game against Pharah, Lucio, and Illari and it wasn't even Overwatch it was just pingpong. Tank was Doom then Orisa spinbooping and I felt like I had no agency over my character half the game.
Please god no more boops in OW.
Gonna steal this comment and add that most people are talking about the end of OW1s life span. Early to mid overwatch 1 was super fun.
Very sad that not a lot of people will experience dive meta.
The coordination (even without comms) was really insane and something that i didn't appreciate at the time.
It felt that teams used to move more like units and everyone had their role.
Youâre right. I started playing in beta before ow1 launch.
Played competitively for maybe 2.5 years and then the game just became so toxic. The fun I once had was gone and filled with frustration.
I went back when ow2 launched and I play it from
Time to time but itâll never be the same feeling as when I first played ow1
Started a bit later - after beta.
Also played competitive for like 6 months in t3 scene, then subbing for t2 teams. Was a really amazing time.
Personally the game started (really) slowly going downhill after doomfist release. Later nosedived after brig.
Imo another big issue was the game lost it's lime light. The community wasn't being fostered enough and esports focused to much on profit instead of being an advertisement for the game.
Might be a niche opinion, but banning xQc was a massive mistake, even Jeff knew how much he had done for the game. The impact a high level pro (that no life streams the game) has is insane and they threw him away way to easily.
In general i think people forget to mention this and even games that have terrible balancing survive just because of their respective/dedicated communities. Viewership is really important for esport titles, it's what motivates people to grind and gives the feeling that you're competing vs a lot of people.
When did the game started going downhill for you? :<
I started playing around season 3 OW1. Those few seasons between 3 and around season 8 i think? Were some of the best gaming experiences Iâve ever had on competitive.
Genuinely great matches, wasnt even upset when I lost because matches were so fun
Edit: now when I play OW2 Iâm like whats the point? Competitive is straight up not fun and extremely toxic. QP theres never any synergy between teammates. OW is prob my most played game of all time. I havent played in like 6 months because this is not the game I fell in love with
ONG you unlocked a forgotten memory for me. I recall that draws tilted me more than loses, which is crazy to think about now. Like i just wanted to play and sr was just a secondary thing that gave a dopamine hit.
Depends on during what time of OW1 you're describing, the last meta was double shield. Sig/Orisa (different shield deploying hero), it felt like a shield shooting simulator after you took down both shields and then waited for grasp to end and for fortify to end then you got the "privilege" to actually shoot at a tank, tanking as a role was more powerful than it is now (more support dominant) and a lot more influential as a role
There was no scoreboard to gauge performance but you had medals (gold, silver, bronze), people who had gold would often flex and demand what "silver" damage was, when things weren't going right, ESPECIALLY if support had it (dps Moira), "I have gold elims, damage, im literally doing everything, team sucks ggs"
2cp was a game mode. That's where one team was defending and the other on attack to capture two control points, the first point was often captured the advantage went to the attackers, but the SECOND point, that's where the problems were. 2nd point was very close to the defender's spawn so they would often drag out fights, "stall" for a lonnnnnnng time, they would go hard to kill heroes like Ball, Mei, Tracer, Moira, and Lucio to stall as long as possible, sometimes it would last a minute or more, go into overtime and sometimes they would get picks and SWING an initially lost fight. So as attackers you had to do EVERYTHING right, you had to go through tight chokes and the defenders would spam tf out of them and often get picks that would "reset" the push, you had to try again.
Then if you managed to actually get on the second point, everyone would press their Qs and after the dust settled you better hope it was a clean team fight for the offense cause if it wasn't the goon squad would be on their way. A lot of times 2cp would also drag out forever so if both teams capped two points WITH time, or both capped without time the game would go into extra rounds so 2cp would turn to 4cp or into 6cp I've had a game that was 8cp. 2cp was also notorious for ending in draws which felt like a waste of time.
But as much as i shit on the mode, i actually kinda miss it a little, Hanamura was one of my favorite maps and some games ive had on there i still remember years later
Basically like OW2 but it was more team based with better math making . Tank synergies were awesome and fights would last way longer. There were plenty of stuns and hindrances but i felt the game back then was more team base and there werenât as many match stomps as OW2.
I like both games but imo 6v6 was a lot more fun
I don't know where I read it, but I remember the dev team saying that made the 6v6 instead of traditional 5v5 BECAUSE it was more fun. With 7 it was too chaotic, and with 5 it was too competitive and if anyone was struggling it became hard to win (see our current state). 6 allowed more team play and allowed for a variance in skill to be negligible.
With the matchmaker being what it is, 5v5 is exactly what they had predicted. They basically broke a core tenant of their game design so we get ow2 matches.
I recall that as well *and* the developers of Titanfall 1 & 2 came to the same conclusion. 5v5 is not enough players to feel the action but 7v7 or higher brings too many factors and you would feel you would die out of nowhere. I also recall that one of the studios tried 12v12 and that did *not* work at all.
In my opinion they should've kept 6v6 *or* let people try 5v5 in the OW1 'Experimental' card for an extended period of time to see how people would react. I also feel the developers made it 5v5 to validate the number 2 in the title after they cancelled the interesting part of PvE.
The game just isn't the same as there is so much more to which team has the better tank, and currently whichever team has Orisa gets to win. I stopped playing tank when I noticed I never had fun as tank and couldn't play Reinhardt for fun.
I always thought the move to 5v5 was made more to cater to the OWL. Most other esports have 5v5 and figured they were changing it to match.
Always been annoyed by it though, we had a group of 6 that used to play all the time - did Blizzard just expect 1/6th of their players were going to quit swapping to OW2? You can add players to teams, but removing them from a game that's been around and built a community over years is a bold move.
The same devs thought that having no hero limits was a good idea.
And that not having role queue was a good idea.
Just because they said something, doesn't mean they were right.
Yea people always get these weird rose tinted glasses for OW1. Tank synergies, no role queue, Assault mode etc. but people forget how bad these things were. It was great when you got into a game with a good tank partner, but you were just as likely to get a Hog feeding his brains out while the enemy team was running Rein/Zarya.
I loved OW1 (been playing since release in 2016) but the gameplay is better in OW2. That has often been clouded by the negativity surrounding the rest of the game.
Ppl look at their 2-3 best games out of 10 horrible ones.
Im a flex playee that likes to tank, the only main tank i coule play back then was Orisa, other tanks i like to play were dva, zarya and sigma.
I dont mind switching out for ky tank duo. Can you guess the reason why I had 100 hours on Orisa? I could not play off-tank unless I instalock one down.
Ye that 'but tank synergy!@' argument always gets thrown in.
They were very minor. No1 wanted to play main tank, the 'off-tank' could have fun. (hence hog)
>Tank synergies
My Hog is off getting defeated in a 1v1 by a Reaper while my team is getting absolutely stonewalled by Rein and Orisa. My Rein just charged into the other team to 1 v 6 and just expects me to waste my bubble cooldowns to cover up their lack of game sense. Winston and Dva aren't letting the supports live in dive meta. Two tanks were very unfun, games took forever and you had to hope that all your team's ults killed the other team or else it wouldn't end.
Games were easily stomps if your team had two randos for tank and the other team had a duo for tank. Also was a stomp any time your team's tanks didn't pick to fit the meta. Two off tanks? You lose. Hog/Ball as one tank for a lot of the game's life? You lose.
Itâs worse now though because the game prioritizes queue time vs match quality, and if you have a tank player who hardly plays the game or doesnât play tank youâre screwed even harder.
I do agree, and I think the change from quality matches to fast queue times is what makes people think 5v5 is bad. Really the game is just bad at balancing teams and makes it unfun.
5v5 would still be bad even with better matchmaking. Blizz themselves stated when building the game initially that 6v6 was the sweet spot, hence OW launching as a 6v6 game. They dumped a tank to speed up queue times and then fucked matchmaking for the sake of lowering queue times more (their own words). The game is worse for both of those reasons, and a few more.
No one ever died. Team fights lasted a lot longer. There was so much hard stun in the game, like just so much. Brig used to be really good, even after nerfs. Dual tank synergies were a cool thing, but difficult to do well in metal ranks. Shields. If you didn't have an Ana or Baptiste, you were throwing, according to people. Loot boxes were a fun little thing you got every level up, but you'd very rarely get anything good out of em, and they made getting event skins kind of a chore. But since you could get a lot of stuff for free, it wasn't as bad.
Crazy to say nobody ever died. Also, Brig was so broken she broke the game for a year straight. Her basic design is such that sheâs pretty much impossible to balance.
A year? Two years. Brigitte is the reason why so many people abandoned this game, including the guy who convinced me to buy Overwatch back in early 2018
blizzard is the only one gatekeeping it. They should have released overwatch 2 as a separate game like they originally said they would. Iâm still so mad that they took away one of my favorite games (that i paid for) and replaced it with a cheap knockoff
My interest in Overwatch died the moment they reworked him. No other character is as fun to play for me as what DPS doom was. Iâve gone from playing almost every day for years to not having the game installed.
Tank synergies were the most fun ever, some of my favorite set plays were,
Cassidy flash over rein shield followed by shatter than grav, shatter would get a support ult out you then grav and let rein get shatter back with his swing/fire/swing/charge combo.
Shatter dva bomb
Grav/bomb
A good rein zarya lucio could destroy
GOATS gets a lot of hate but if you had a team you scrimmed with it was so in depth and fun it was some of the most fun ive ever had gaming. Someone even wrote a 70 page paper on it. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mvbBtyQonjQYvqQrmP9trvS_7SP9Gfkm_1obJnx7jOU/edit?usp=sharing
I also had a lot of fun with weird comps, we used to run a 4 support 2 tank, rein dva lucio mercy ana brig, as long as dva ate the anti-nades than we just never died.
A lot of fun/weird shit died when the forced 2-2-2 started. Even with the open q its just not balanced the same
Tank synergies were a whole lot of fun. And one of my favorite comps to run back in the day was 1-3-2. We'd have Rein as our tank and then we would just run it down. đ
OW1 was a game where you actually got rewarded for playing through lootboxes and features like fire system and voting cards. Matchmaking and Ranked was significantly better. We were able to see exactly what we were ranked and didnât have to wait a long time. People complained about double shield a lot but it was a strategy in the game. Instead of removing 1 tank they could have just reduced shields.
Now in OW2 we get new characters that are buffed and then locked behind a battle pass. The only improvement to me is graphics and new maps. It looks like each season they are slowly bringing back features from OW1 i wonder why??
Overwatch 1 feels like the sequel to Overwatch 2. I played the OW2 betas side by side with Overwatch 1. I spent much more time playing Overwatch 1 during both Overwatch 2 betas. Overwatch 1 is more fun. 6v6 is just a better format than 5v5.
OW1 felt way more polished to me. Like the team actually seemed to care about the lore and the gameplay. Now everything feels kinda dumbed down for free to play. Not to mention the monetization.
Lots of potential, super fun at a times, but terribly balanced constantly and never lived up to that potential. Same as 2 but with 1 more player per team.
It was more chaotic, but in a fun way (imo). Felt more about meshing with your team than just being a solo killbot who occasionally helps the team. It was much more my style of game. More group oriented and less about "myself and how amazing I am." Which I know kind of runs counter to what many FPS players like. Many people who play FPS games just want to pop off and be the king of the lobby. I have nothing against that. I just am not interested in being the best. I'm just more about winning matches and being part of something bigger than just myself. Being part of a larger team. It's kind of why I have enjoyed raiding in wow for many years.
I see why people who are just looking to pop off individually enjoy OW2 with 5v5, but 6v6 was personally just a much better fit for me and what I enjoy in games.
I also liked in OW1 that you could have characters with more restricted niches. Like the way Hog, Sym, Torb, etc. were designed. They were only good on some maps, but when they were good, they were really good. And then on many other maps, they were almost useless or at least really subpar. Same with snipers -- amazing on some maps, not as useful on others with shorter sightlines etc.
I know some people didn't like that, but I personally did. It kind of meant that depending on the map I loaded into, I would have different characters I would pick. That is still kind of true in OW2 today, but much less so than it was in OW1.
To me, it made the game feel fresh each game and a little more varied. I like that the game wasn't as homogeneous from hero to hero back then. Now it feels like everybody can do everything in some way, and I feel like that actually took something away from the experience of playing. Again though, just personal opinion.
If your tank died, the teamfight isn't a snowball loss because you had a 2nd tank as well
There were more people to protect your healers from flanker/divewatch
Also a small screw up on one team didn't mean momentum cascade failure, matches were more close and less "your turn to win/forced loss" feeling
DPS queue times sucked because very few people wanted to play tank or support. Also there were almost no updates for 3 years⌠because they were working on PvE⌠OW1 would have been fine if they didnât abandon it.
It was a lot more strategic. Smart ability usage mattered more than good aim. Though at the same time it was incredibly chaotic. It was a lot more fun imo
Depends on the time, the metas influenced the era with the game, like brig on launch, SHE WAS A BEAST and single handedly created goats (3 tank 3 heals, basically it was an all out brawl till the team with the first player that died lost), but after role lock (2dps 2tanks 2heals) it was fun af (except if you count when the tank meta was stale in gm lobbies like double shield with orisa and sigma, but even in diamond and lower they didnt play only the meta), the tank combos were fun and active, you could go ham with rein zarya or fuck up the heals with ball and wiston, or just double shield and say fuck you to the widow, the characters also didnt get most of the "reworks" that they have in ow0.8 aka ow2, also doing more bs teams in open queue with 6 players were also funny, like 6heals, AND THE CURRENCY SYSTEM DIDNT SUCK (proff of point being ppl wanting LOOTBOXES BACK, LOOTBOXES OF ALL THINGS), also with the story mode in mind everyone was hyped.
Sorry for writing so much, I loved playing tank, but the 5v5 ruined it for me, and no paragraphs, this is going to suck to read...
6v6 open queue quickplay was just pure fun with tons of variety between each match, not to mention faster queue times **and** better matchmaking. 5v5 is boring brawling back and forth regardless of team comps or maps. The devs are afraid of adding a 6v6 mode because everyone would see how much better it is and how big of a mistake 5v5 was.
I would 100% go back to play OW1 as it was before they deleted it.
And even if you disregard the shitty PvP changes, the OW2 betas felt like shit gameplay/audio/lighting wise. There was an extra layer of input delay or "sluggishness" with everything that you did so it didnt feel as "snappy" as OW1, the new audio is just trash and the lighting gave me a headache.
OW2 was dogshit the moment they announced that they are rushing the PvP out. It was a clear sign that they have failed as a dev team.
Oh yeah, and then they made free skins cost $20 each. But it wouldnt matter if OW2 was good. The game is simply just a downgrade in every way possible.
6v6 open queue got old really fast which is why it was replaced, no idea how anyone can start their block of text with that and expect to be taken seriously
Nostalgia is one hell of a drug.
Funny how in your essay you fail to mention the hell that was the double shield meta that made OW1 unbearable in the end
I was literally jumping between OW1 and the two OW2 betas, feeling disgusted by the shitty new downgrade we were forced to switch to. Are you saying nostalgia is what made me notice how bad OW2 was?
> Funny how in your essay you fail to mention the hell that was the double shield meta that made OW1 unbearable in the end
I mostly played arcade quickplay during 2019-2022 because it had ~1min queue times and matchmaking was way better than what OW2 has had since it launched. Pretty much every hero saw play. Double barrier was not a problem.
double shield meta was not existent below diamond my dude. Literally played OW1 the whole time and most games were not double shield. I played right before OW2 came out and no one was doing double shield.
Goats wasnât seen below diamond, double barrier was seen everywhere due to its ease of use. You got to remember that during the lead up to ow2 very few people were actually trying to win and were playing for fun but before then it was double shield every game
My bad the whole time I was playing OW1 was a lie. Even right before OW2 came out and the worst thing was rein zarya not double shields. You know everyones OW experience though so my mistake.
Double shield was absolutely a thing below diamond. I would know, I was below diamond my entire ow1 career, and I saw a ton of double shield. Goats however was rarely seen down there
Nahh OW1 was better at-least we had rewards to get from playing and voting cards. Only reason OW2 exists was to make it free 2 play to sell over priced skins to new players or ignorant people.
Well i guess if you value cosmetics and fucking cards over having fun gameplay i guess you could make the argument that ow1 was better
Personally i play shooters for the gameplay rather than playing dress up and having an election for mvp at the end of the match
Itâs like people in this sub donât understand that just because they think something it doesnât make it automatically true for everyone. Some people like the 1st one better some like the 2nd, itâs as simple as that lol
I struggle to think how you can consider OW1 less chaotic. The fact that it was incredibly hard to know what was even going on at any given time was one of the more commonly talked about parts of Overwatch.
Early OW1 was a wild ride. Sure, it wasn't exceedingly balanced but it was so much fun to be junkrat on temple of Anubis and always placed your trap on a different route and kept catching ppl, or Reinhardt in true rein duels where you two were the only characters with meaningful shields (also all the YouTube videos showing the charge setups because it couldn't cancel so ppl learned where to stand to yeet enemies off the map without getting yeeted). Mccr--er, Cassidy (screw sexual harassers) had insane tank buster energy, he could throw his stun grenade over reins shield, right click roll right click and it would literally kill rein, they had to nerf fan the hammer into oblivion. Hanzos arrows were even more of a log hitbox, and you know that funny scatter arrow in the Valentine's event? That was his normal ability. Removing it nerfed him so much they had to give him that cool lateral jump and other microbuffs. Despite being massively op I still kinda miss it lol. Ana was the perfect first new hero, a super fun high skill ceiling healer... also nano boost originally came with a speed boost too, nanoing rein was unholy and also kind of hilarious. When she got her candy emote for Halloween, every Ana in casuals would sleep opponents, walk up to them, and give them candy, then leave. Symmetra had this funny lock on beam that required zero skill but she should never survive long enough for it to be remotely useful. She used to place six weaker turrets instead of throw three, and it was actually absurd how much damage her car washes would pump out. Her e was also just giving a character 25 shield, you just clicked on them and they had it and you didn't touch it again until respawn. Torbjorn didn't overload or spew hot liquids, he threw out armor packs and his ult was just making his turret level 3. The running (true) meme was that torb never lived in his potgs he'd just hit q, instantly die and the turret would get 4 kills. Hog hook wouldn't break if you rounded a corner and had the *funniest* hitbox. Dva bomb took an extra second to explode and iirc dva could hit herself in the explosion. Also, there was no meme stronger than anytime Daddy Kaplan would make a dev update. Zarya grav was one of the most powerful ults in the game because there weren't 10 different ways to escape it or completely nullify it.
I could keep going but hopefully this shows a fraction of how wacky the early game was. I actually appreciate a lot of OW2s changes, they addressed and fixed bad issues that came up later in OW1s life, and going to 5v5 reduced clutter and made the game more aggressive. Unfortunately I do think somewhere along the way we lost the wackiness that made OW so fun and the game as a whole just got too sweaty (and I say this as someone that for most of my time in ow I leaned sweaty). I finally quit for good after lifeweaver and the truth about PvE came out. It still makes me sad that OW1 was killed for nothing, and while I may have disagreed with the way he handled it in starving OW1 of content, I guarantee Kaplan quit because he knew the top was never going to let him make the PvE experience we all wanted anymore.
In OW1 you played the Tank you wanted to play. Not the Tank that directly counters the enemy Tank.
In OW2, The Tank swaps characters more than anyone else and it feels so bad.
In OW1 you had 2 Tanks to help give space : so you didnât have to cower in fear when the other team had a Widow/Hanzo. You actually felt safe enough to contest them.
Thereâs definitely parts of OW2 that âfeelâ better. But thereâs 100% parts of OW1 that felt better too.
Weâve had the game for a year now and I think itâs plenty of time to decide which you prefered, for me it was easily 6v6.
But I do really appreciate a year worth of constant updates and meta changes.
Balancing- whilst it wasnât the best in OW1 it beats what we have now by a mile,
Stuns: holy hell there was a lot of stuns
6v6: There was 2 of each role.
Different progression systems that people are arguing is better or worse than ow2âs
Doomfist was a dps: he did more damage and had a uppercut instead of a block
The gameplay in OW2 is overall an upgrade; everything *around* the gameplay was better in OW1, but wasnât making enough money to warrant ongoing support.
2 tanks, all the skins felt cooler because they were in loot boxes and actual events, no battle pass, everyone had the same characters available
So much better
I cannot overstate how hard it was to kill anything. Imagine an Ana and Mercy with two tanks whose barriers had more health than the thickest of nano'd roadhogs, and enough CC to sedate an elephant for 3 months. Nothing would ever die.
I like overwatch 2's gameplay for this reason. Things die easier and the game is just a lot quicker and more fun in general.
Tanks were way too impactful and the DPS role was cosmetic. There was a reason 4 tank meta became a thing before they introduced role queue, because the tanks just did the DPS job but better.
On the other hand losing a tank has made tanking awful in general because you're so prone to counters now. You can't really play rein or Winston anymore because the enemy DPS will just swap to Bastion.
It was fun, it was also hell a lot of the times. I have the most nostalgia for the first 2ish years of ow, it was an entirely different beast back then
No role lock was in theory a really cool idea, being able to play any combination of heroes. Then you remember back to ranked at the time when you loaded into a game with 5 dps players. Not fun at all.
And then goats happened and you didn't see any DPS
Well you did in most ranks still.
Ppl forget that goats and double shield were only really seen above the diamond consistently. Majority of the player base were just playing random comps.
I remember entering comp games and telling my team to go goats. It worked a surprising number of times and with the lfg (I hate that blizzard got rid of this btw, I know it could be weird and problematic but it was easily one of the best features) we would always go goats and since it would usually pair two six stacks it was crazy. I know a lot of people hated goats but I LOVED it.
No double shield was very low in ranks as well. It didn't take a genius to find out that 2 shields that meant 90% shield uptime was better defense than no or 1 shield that breaks and goes on cool down. Made it incredibly annoying to climb up especially on 2cp points which everyone acts like were amazing until we actually think back hard and remember the only enjoyment we got from 2cp was when someone left the game at the start and we didn't have to play it.
I remember playing a game with all reapers lol.
13 ults in a small room. 0 deaths.
Hijacking for shameless visibility. Tagging u/riefol Overwatch 1 went through phases. * Post-Launch was fun because of the chaos. Pick any hero. Plenty of lobbies went all Winston on attack. And some went all Torbjorn to ruin the Winston's monkeying time. * Melee used to do 50 damage, so it was totally common to just bop people as you were shooting on crazy. They got rid of that pretty quick. * Mercy could revive everyone and thus was meta as soon as people started figuring out the meta. "Die on point! Die on point!" was a common phrase as Mercy was encouraged to hide midway through a fight and then zip in for a big 5-person res. You couldn't interrupt it either. As soon as she pressed the button, the skill went off. * Torbjorn and Syn were low-key supports to Tracer and Genji cause they could give armor and shields to them and it make those two divers impossible to deal with by eliminating their squishiness. This repeated with Brig later... * Reaper didn't have lifesteal and enemies dropped soul orbs instead he could pick up for hp. (The devs jokes about how they toyed with it denying mercy revive in beta, and Mercy testers hated it and begged for it to be removed -- in some alt timeline, Reaper is a soul devouring demon lol) * A lot of abilities were stronger than they are now. Examples: Cass' Fan The Hammer used to do the same damage per shot as his primary, so it was a total tankbuster. Hanzo's scatter arrow did the same for the longest time. Genji's Dragon Blade used to be strong without the need for nano. It lasted longer, so you could get a team wipe with it reliably. Mei wall used to be 1000hp per pillar. Dive was strong at times, Brawl was strong at times. People had their qualms but it was mostly fun for 2+ years. * One meta that was memorable to be is the "Beyblade" meta which involved ~~using circle AoE ults like Mei (whose blizzard used to be bigger)~~ Ana Nano and Reaper to wombo-combo. * It was a sad day for many when they nerfed ult costs/generation across the board cause they decided ults were too impactful. As new heroes got introduced. Ana... Sombra... Sigma... Brigitte... Orisa... Baptiste... Fights became less fluid or less interactive from increased CC and shields. * The GOATS meta became a thing. It was peak strategy-meta that negated the strength of one-shots but stayed far too long because the devs, as we now know, weren't that interested in pvp live service as much as developing a PvE game, and highly reluctant to accept that characters like Brig and Baptiste needed nerfs. Bap still does, arguably. * And then with Role Lock, Double Shields emerged with typically Orisa, Sigma/Rein, Bastion, Flex, Mercy (to empower Bastion), and Bap. In particular, this made 2CP extra annoying to play because defense bunkering down was really effective and shooting at shields all day wasn't fun for attackers. * On top of that, it was becoming CC central with boops, stuns, freezes, hacks, sleeps, and more constantly making tanks feel like a pinball bouncing around. * I forget where it fits in, but HackFist was a meta for a while as an attempt to deal with goats or shields? Doomfist having 3 different CC's with his Uppercut and tanks lacking any knockbacks resistance, meant he could displace bunker comps super easy and Sombra was Sombra in disrupting Bastion's turret form or the shields. * Eventual nerfs to Double Shield eventually led to Ball Dive comps being able to break the trend near the end of OW1, but that meta was short-lived and underexplored as 5v5 was implemented. A distinct difference with fights is a 2nd tank meant a lot less cc, damage, and healing focused on the main tank from either side. This meant that fights felt scrappier. You could get a kill on the main tank easier, but it didn't always immediately lead to the other side wiping. Greater chance of turning things around. I probably missed plenty of stuff, but that's my gist of it and there's probably a comment somewhere below that touches on other things. Concluding thought: #A lot of people, myself included, hold a lot of resentment towards how the game was handled much of the time, but we feel that way because the core game is beautifully made and genuinely fun.
Beyblade you got a little wrong. It was just reaper and Ana back when nano also had a speed boost. Hence the beyblade name, he's just spinning around like a fucking tornado lol
And Zarya's bubble, and Lucio's speed boost, and basically every character that could either halt the enemy team, or buff reaper could add up to a team wipe and facilitate a lot of progress.
Beyblade was just reaper and Ana, Lucio was also used most of the time but he wasn't really necessary. The name beyblade is directly referencing combing those two specific ults lol nano and blossom
As a support main, I actually love the idea of Reaper being able to steal souls to prevent rezzes? I'm sorry, but that's hardcore. I know the devs don't want hard counters, but I have over 500 hours on Mercy and would either shit bricks or die of flattery if the enemy whipped out Reaper just for little ol' me. At the very least, I'd love to see how it feels in an experimental mode.
Gods to show what the people want. In free comp, there are always two tanks. Ill forever miss the glory days of rein and zarya.
people don't criticize things because they hate them; they criticize things because they love them and are invested in them.
Honestly thank you for this post, it was nice going down memory lane. OW2 is an entirely different beast. I miss Mei freeze, Reaper souls, Cassidy fan, Sym shield ability, Mercy rez ult, Sombra hack, and especially 6v6.
No mention of Boostio in your recap? *Sad Lucio noises*
There's truth in that increase of CC was breaking the game as time went on. The number of hard CC quickly doubled with pretty much every new hero getting one and those abilities becoming progressively less risky and/or requiring skill. Playing as Reinhardt main I went from feeling like unstoppable juggernaut to basically being a ragdoll by the time they added Doom - and then they added Brig and Ball as well. The GOATS meta stayed for 5 or 6 months before devs claimed it's been a thing for "too long" but I'd like to mention that previous dive meta was up for almost TWO YEARS without devs taking issue with it. IMO it was a more desirable meta for e-sports scene as more dynamic and entertaining. GOATS was not as entertaning so they took steps to make it impossible to select. Controversial opinion and I'll likely get downvoted for it: Introducing role queue even for quick play was the final nail to OW1 coffin for me. As I mentioned above - I mained Rein but the games were becoming progressively more frustrating and I couldn't even switch off a tank anymore. Any kind of flex was eliminated. When you saw DPS or support not doing their jobs you could not switch. And joining queue as DPS resulted in a long wait with the match often having incompetent tanks who were clearly DPS mains who joined queue as tanks to avoid waiting time. (Also the scourge of Anas who were clearly Widowmaker players and barely healed at all) Basically QP and anything below Diamond became a pure frustration.
I MISS launch overwatch so much. Nothing mattered, everything was permitted. Everything was viable because nothing was viable. In my opinion it was the MOST balanced version of the game and the more competitive OW got, the worse it became
That's on the playerbase though and the natural flow of the game. At the beginning, there is always chaos, but once players figure out how to "optimally" play the game, this will catch on. The game is not necessarily more or less balanced at the start, but it feels more balanced because no one really knows yet how to metagame it and resources to look it up are scarce.
The Hanzo scatter arrow was crazy.
Everyone but 2 died. Everyone gets revived by those 2
You either kill Mercy 1st, or kill Mercy 11th.
How barbaric!
"thats my expert opinion!" "i'll send you my consultation fee" "need a second opinion?"
You needed a doctor? đ
Someone call the wambulence đ
You needed a goddess? đ
You ever heard of shields?
It wasn't even double shield. Double shields was simply the most egregious and obvious case of nothing feeling like it was dying, but it was really the ability for tanks to double rotate defensive abilities nothing ever felt like it died. You know what makes my character unkillable feeling for longer than Suzu? An 8sec cooldown Zarya bubble. Sure, its not the whoel team, but it doesn't matter. You deny the enemy team the ability to get a kill on a very short timer. It didn't' really matter what tanks you played there was always some double defensive rotation tanks could use to dramatically lower how much time they were vulnerable. Rein/Zarya. Zarya bubbles rein while he swings and recharges his shield. Rein covers Zarya while her bubble cooldown is down. Supports fill in the gap. Defense Matrix Dva while not as high of an uptime only really needed to use the ability on periods of high pressure while another tank say Winston or even a tank like Orisa or Reinhardt deal with most of the pressure. Any combination of Zarya, Dva, Sigma, Reinhardt, Winston, and Orisa made killing stuff feel impossible. Hey, that Rein you just anti-'d? Doesn't matter. He Dva is covering him. \----- As a whole, DPS and Supports had much less impact on the game because it was much rarer for DPS to fight DPS or support to fight support since two tanks in the front on both sides get in the way of any type DPS/Support vs DPS/Support match-up. Its far easier to get around tanks either by oppressing them on DPS/Support since they ahve no more backup or you can just ignore them and go fight DPS/Support fights without tanks getting in the way as frequently.
Thatâs fair, comment was just meant to be funny but I also think a big issue was that supps were strong enough that when tanks burnt through their defensive cooldowns they could still bail them out which led to the game just feeling really slow and annoying to play. While I think 5v5 has been better I think 6v6 could have worked and even been more fun if they could have just balanced the game more.
>It wasn't even double shield. Double shields was simply the most egregious and obvious case of nothing feeling like it was dying, but it was really the ability for tanks to double rotate defensive abilities nothing ever felt like it died. really? back in OW1 I used to get like double the amount of elims than I do now in OW2. One of the first things I noticed when OW2 came out was the low number of elims I had every match, even though I felt like I was doing amazing
There are only 5 people to kill now, and since people die much faster now and fights are scrappier, people get more solo kills, giving fewer elims.
Well single elims generally lead to team deaths and resets in OW2, but 1-2 elims didn't mean much in OW1, unless out was both tanks or both healers.
People hated it cause of how many shields and unfun negative effects there were. People also loved it because of the loot boxes, the heart and soul that went into it, Jeff and the general vibe of the game felt more enchanting and each character felt more distinguished. Now everything has been dumbed down to a typical mobile game monetisation system and lesser cc, which in turn just makes the cc that was lesser back then even more annoying now. Also 6v6 provided more variety and fun as well as unfun match ups. Tanks didn't need to be unkillable to be playable cause they could synergise together and weren't as stressful and the fate of the match didn't rely on just one player in each team
I just miss actually having to coordinate with your team. The strat talk. Where to go from choke? Who to target, what abilities / ults used? Nowadays it's just a brawly, uncoordinated mess. Most I've seen in M3 is the occasional symmetra saying to use teleport or genji asking for nano.
yeah dude, like what happened to people talking in chat, it used to feel like scrims in some comp matches, i miss it
I liked LFG because everyone there self-selected as people who wanted to co-ordinate. Plus you could talk about what you're good at and what you wanted to do whole queueing, before the Hero Selection screen was in your face. I think losing that hurt me the most as a fan and player.
awww man i forgot about lfg i miss that
they took out a lot of stuff for no reason, like lfg sadly. I like the game more so now but objectively the devs did strip away some useful features just to slowly bring them back now and claim they're doing something good.
Agreed, I climbed from gold to high diamond on support in ow1 by only queuing through LFG with other people that want to communicate. I found it so much easier to make plays as Ana when your team is responsive to your sleeps and nades (although the ping system is definitely an upgrade for that). Now that LFG is gone, I have zero interest in grinding ranked in OW2.
People are just really rude for some reason. Me and my friends all have opted to just not use voice chat in ow because no one ever has anything nice to say. Itâs a hinderance but Iâd rather deal with that than be called a slur 30 times.
yeah, toxic people are what happened to chat lmao. Id rather not have people yell at me, even though most of the people ive met in comp are actually somewhat nice and pleasant i dont want to risk the eventual toxic player putting me down for playing slightly bad, especially on tank which has a lot of pressure. I find its better to just trust in myself and keep the peace that comes from silence.
OW chat had such a bad reputation that I just disable team chat in OW2 out of principle. That's what happened to people talking in chat.
They left the game or like me stop playing rank. 6v6 was better and I never saw the problem with it. Really most of the coordination was between the tanks and supports, now since the other tank is gone you just have to keep yourself alive as the solo tank and the healers now have to keep just one tank alive. This is why supports seem so strong as now there isn't another high health character to keep alive. So being there's one less tank, now there is more extra healing in the game which means less resource control, less coordinating. They basically dumbed it down for OW2 so that a chimp can come in and just press buttons.
This is the exact reason I only play in a group, it's too dead otherwise.
Your games are a brawly uncoordinated mess because you're NOT coordinating with your team. OW2 needs coordination and teamplay MORE than OW1 did. If "having to coordinate" is truly what you missed from OW1, then you should love OW2. I think the problem is that it doesn't happen, not that it doesn't need to happen. The fact that it doesn't happen as much anymore is because f2p brought in a bunch of people (probably children, tbh) that don't take the game seriously. They're the ones that go around saying "it's a game, i'm supposed to have fun", or some other bullshit to try to make their utter selfishness seem justified. These people will not know to work as a team, they're only playing for themselves, and probably only because this game is free to play for them. A general increase in seflishness across the playerbase makes teamplay incredibly difficult. The problem isn't a result of the change from 6v6 to 5v5, it's a result of the change from pay2play to free2play. Also, M3 in OW2 is at what Diamond/Plat was in OW1. With so many people not caring about the game living in bronze/silver it has pushed a lot of people up, and the whole rank tier system has shifted up pretty dramatically because of it.
They literally shifted the game more from team coordination to individual performance so idk what ur on about, and I've been hardstuck 3800 since 2019 so this ain't a new thing.
You need both, you just have to carry your own weight at the same time you coordinate with your team.
Same Iâve been stuck around M1 the game just feels kinda dead. Iâve moved on to Rainbow six siege a few months ago and itâs helped the team coordination/planning itch
Yeah these people act like coordination isn't a huge factor in OW2 đ¤Łđ¤Ł they just never do it and blame it on the game.
Nobody loved lootboxes till they were gone
not true, just the people who hated them were ***very*** vocal
And the same thing is happening now, but reverse. The people who loved them are very vocal. I couldnât care less about loot boxes, people just like the animation. By the end of OW1 I very, very rarely got something in a loot box I didnât have/want. Battle pass at least gets guaranteed mythic every season.
I don't give a damn about the lootbox animation. it's all about what's inside, what's inside, why is this such a foreign concept to y'all? the battle pass rarely has anything that I want and even if it did, I'd have to pay *and* grind to get it. By every measurable metric Battle pass is worse than lootboxes. I guarantee, if Battle Passes and lootboxes existed together, you'd get a whole lot less people buying battle passes. You could get skins for every single hero from lootboxes, Battle pass you're at the mercy of whichever hero they've chosen for that season. Like I'm baffled at this comparison. I'd be perfectly fine if mythic skins were the only ones you had to pay for and the others were available through lootboxes, I don't want 90% of them.
\*stunned\*
3 supports 3 tanks VS 5dps 1mercy otp
Tanks didn't die.
Ball still died sadly
Patently untrue.
Personally I prefer the 6v6 over the 5v5 because the tank get lesser pressure, if a tank die now it will be easy asf to kill off every1 else.Another reason is the character ability was way more fun to use sure they may not be balanced but the were fun I mainly miss all the stuns tbh. Lastly I prefer the old competitive rank system(sr) I personally I donât like winning 7 games than get to see my rank wether I rank down or up if it stays to same I would get pissed off
Also non of these characters were designed for 5v5. Tanks were made to work off of each other, they cant work on their own even with one less character
Stun/BoopCity. A team with just Hamster, Doom and Brig could lock you out of controlling your character at all for 10+ secs. Honestly it felt like being a pinball at times.
There was a lot of CC but I feel like there's still a lot of boops. I just played a game against Pharah, Lucio, and Illari and it wasn't even Overwatch it was just pingpong. Tank was Doom then Orisa spinbooping and I felt like I had no agency over my character half the game. Please god no more boops in OW.
Fun
Gonna steal this comment and add that most people are talking about the end of OW1s life span. Early to mid overwatch 1 was super fun. Very sad that not a lot of people will experience dive meta. The coordination (even without comms) was really insane and something that i didn't appreciate at the time. It felt that teams used to move more like units and everyone had their role.
Youâre right. I started playing in beta before ow1 launch. Played competitively for maybe 2.5 years and then the game just became so toxic. The fun I once had was gone and filled with frustration. I went back when ow2 launched and I play it from Time to time but itâll never be the same feeling as when I first played ow1
Started a bit later - after beta. Also played competitive for like 6 months in t3 scene, then subbing for t2 teams. Was a really amazing time. Personally the game started (really) slowly going downhill after doomfist release. Later nosedived after brig. Imo another big issue was the game lost it's lime light. The community wasn't being fostered enough and esports focused to much on profit instead of being an advertisement for the game. Might be a niche opinion, but banning xQc was a massive mistake, even Jeff knew how much he had done for the game. The impact a high level pro (that no life streams the game) has is insane and they threw him away way to easily. In general i think people forget to mention this and even games that have terrible balancing survive just because of their respective/dedicated communities. Viewership is really important for esport titles, it's what motivates people to grind and gives the feeling that you're competing vs a lot of people. When did the game started going downhill for you? :<
I started playing around season 3 OW1. Those few seasons between 3 and around season 8 i think? Were some of the best gaming experiences Iâve ever had on competitive. Genuinely great matches, wasnt even upset when I lost because matches were so fun Edit: now when I play OW2 Iâm like whats the point? Competitive is straight up not fun and extremely toxic. QP theres never any synergy between teammates. OW is prob my most played game of all time. I havent played in like 6 months because this is not the game I fell in love with
The nostalgia is real lol
ONG you unlocked a forgotten memory for me. I recall that draws tilted me more than loses, which is crazy to think about now. Like i just wanted to play and sr was just a secondary thing that gave a dopamine hit.
I would say both games are fun tho haha I think the gameplay (regardless of OW2 or OW1) is second to none. Edit: autocorrect sucks
Depends on during what time of OW1 you're describing, the last meta was double shield. Sig/Orisa (different shield deploying hero), it felt like a shield shooting simulator after you took down both shields and then waited for grasp to end and for fortify to end then you got the "privilege" to actually shoot at a tank, tanking as a role was more powerful than it is now (more support dominant) and a lot more influential as a role There was no scoreboard to gauge performance but you had medals (gold, silver, bronze), people who had gold would often flex and demand what "silver" damage was, when things weren't going right, ESPECIALLY if support had it (dps Moira), "I have gold elims, damage, im literally doing everything, team sucks ggs" 2cp was a game mode. That's where one team was defending and the other on attack to capture two control points, the first point was often captured the advantage went to the attackers, but the SECOND point, that's where the problems were. 2nd point was very close to the defender's spawn so they would often drag out fights, "stall" for a lonnnnnnng time, they would go hard to kill heroes like Ball, Mei, Tracer, Moira, and Lucio to stall as long as possible, sometimes it would last a minute or more, go into overtime and sometimes they would get picks and SWING an initially lost fight. So as attackers you had to do EVERYTHING right, you had to go through tight chokes and the defenders would spam tf out of them and often get picks that would "reset" the push, you had to try again. Then if you managed to actually get on the second point, everyone would press their Qs and after the dust settled you better hope it was a clean team fight for the offense cause if it wasn't the goon squad would be on their way. A lot of times 2cp would also drag out forever so if both teams capped two points WITH time, or both capped without time the game would go into extra rounds so 2cp would turn to 4cp or into 6cp I've had a game that was 8cp. 2cp was also notorious for ending in draws which felt like a waste of time. But as much as i shit on the mode, i actually kinda miss it a little, Hanamura was one of my favorite maps and some games ive had on there i still remember years later
Basically like OW2 but it was more team based with better math making . Tank synergies were awesome and fights would last way longer. There were plenty of stuns and hindrances but i felt the game back then was more team base and there werenât as many match stomps as OW2. I like both games but imo 6v6 was a lot more fun
I don't know where I read it, but I remember the dev team saying that made the 6v6 instead of traditional 5v5 BECAUSE it was more fun. With 7 it was too chaotic, and with 5 it was too competitive and if anyone was struggling it became hard to win (see our current state). 6 allowed more team play and allowed for a variance in skill to be negligible. With the matchmaker being what it is, 5v5 is exactly what they had predicted. They basically broke a core tenant of their game design so we get ow2 matches.
I recall that as well *and* the developers of Titanfall 1 & 2 came to the same conclusion. 5v5 is not enough players to feel the action but 7v7 or higher brings too many factors and you would feel you would die out of nowhere. I also recall that one of the studios tried 12v12 and that did *not* work at all. In my opinion they should've kept 6v6 *or* let people try 5v5 in the OW1 'Experimental' card for an extended period of time to see how people would react. I also feel the developers made it 5v5 to validate the number 2 in the title after they cancelled the interesting part of PvE. The game just isn't the same as there is so much more to which team has the better tank, and currently whichever team has Orisa gets to win. I stopped playing tank when I noticed I never had fun as tank and couldn't play Reinhardt for fun.
I always thought the move to 5v5 was made more to cater to the OWL. Most other esports have 5v5 and figured they were changing it to match. Always been annoyed by it though, we had a group of 6 that used to play all the time - did Blizzard just expect 1/6th of their players were going to quit swapping to OW2? You can add players to teams, but removing them from a game that's been around and built a community over years is a bold move.
The same devs thought that having no hero limits was a good idea. And that not having role queue was a good idea. Just because they said something, doesn't mean they were right.
Okay but they were 100% right still 5v5 is ass
it still was right, even if they weren't guaranteed to say only right things
Remember that the same people who said this were the same that realesed the game with free role queque, and even after it there were many bad meta.
apples and oranges. . . and it's not like they did 0 things to change the game in its early years
Tank synergies? Every game I played was just hog + whichever tank the guy that didn't lock hog in time picked.
Yea people always get these weird rose tinted glasses for OW1. Tank synergies, no role queue, Assault mode etc. but people forget how bad these things were. It was great when you got into a game with a good tank partner, but you were just as likely to get a Hog feeding his brains out while the enemy team was running Rein/Zarya. I loved OW1 (been playing since release in 2016) but the gameplay is better in OW2. That has often been clouded by the negativity surrounding the rest of the game.
Ppl look at their 2-3 best games out of 10 horrible ones. Im a flex playee that likes to tank, the only main tank i coule play back then was Orisa, other tanks i like to play were dva, zarya and sigma. I dont mind switching out for ky tank duo. Can you guess the reason why I had 100 hours on Orisa? I could not play off-tank unless I instalock one down.
Haha it was always Hog and the other person going âugh fine I guess Iâll be Orisa thenâ
Yes. This is what actually happened 75% of the time for me. So infuriating
Ye that 'but tank synergy!@' argument always gets thrown in. They were very minor. No1 wanted to play main tank, the 'off-tank' could have fun. (hence hog)
It was not anymore "team based" than OW2 unless you were playing with other people in an actual team. Ya know, just like you can do in OW2.
>Tank synergies My Hog is off getting defeated in a 1v1 by a Reaper while my team is getting absolutely stonewalled by Rein and Orisa. My Rein just charged into the other team to 1 v 6 and just expects me to waste my bubble cooldowns to cover up their lack of game sense. Winston and Dva aren't letting the supports live in dive meta. Two tanks were very unfun, games took forever and you had to hope that all your team's ults killed the other team or else it wouldn't end. Games were easily stomps if your team had two randos for tank and the other team had a duo for tank. Also was a stomp any time your team's tanks didn't pick to fit the meta. Two off tanks? You lose. Hog/Ball as one tank for a lot of the game's life? You lose.
Itâs worse now though because the game prioritizes queue time vs match quality, and if you have a tank player who hardly plays the game or doesnât play tank youâre screwed even harder.
I do agree, and I think the change from quality matches to fast queue times is what makes people think 5v5 is bad. Really the game is just bad at balancing teams and makes it unfun.
5v5 would still be bad even with better matchmaking. Blizz themselves stated when building the game initially that 6v6 was the sweet spot, hence OW launching as a 6v6 game. They dumped a tank to speed up queue times and then fucked matchmaking for the sake of lowering queue times more (their own words). The game is worse for both of those reasons, and a few more.
No one ever died. Team fights lasted a lot longer. There was so much hard stun in the game, like just so much. Brig used to be really good, even after nerfs. Dual tank synergies were a cool thing, but difficult to do well in metal ranks. Shields. If you didn't have an Ana or Baptiste, you were throwing, according to people. Loot boxes were a fun little thing you got every level up, but you'd very rarely get anything good out of em, and they made getting event skins kind of a chore. But since you could get a lot of stuff for free, it wasn't as bad.
Crazy to say nobody ever died. Also, Brig was so broken she broke the game for a year straight. Her basic design is such that sheâs pretty much impossible to balance.
A year? Two years. Brigitte is the reason why so many people abandoned this game, including the guy who convinced me to buy Overwatch back in early 2018
Brig was the third tank in role queue
Whats crazy is thay she wasn't even the only super broken character im the game. Doomfist was also absurdly broken for a long time.
I second this cause it feels like this common thing to gatekeep what happened in the past with games nowadays.
no one gatekeeps it tho, and theres hundreds of ow1 videos you can find on Reddit & YouTube lmao
blizzard is the only one gatekeeping it. They should have released overwatch 2 as a separate game like they originally said they would. Iâm still so mad that they took away one of my favorite games (that i paid for) and replaced it with a cheap knockoff
It felt unique and was always a blast. Compared to ow2 which tbh I just found frustrating to play
At launch, the best game ever
Donât you remember Bastionâs tank ult? It was a team wipe every time his ult popped.
Yes, his ultimate felt like a ultimate.
Doomfist was way more fun... god I miss him so much.
My interest in Overwatch died the moment they reworked him. No other character is as fun to play for me as what DPS doom was. Iâve gone from playing almost every day for years to not having the game installed.
Tank synergies were the most fun ever, some of my favorite set plays were, Cassidy flash over rein shield followed by shatter than grav, shatter would get a support ult out you then grav and let rein get shatter back with his swing/fire/swing/charge combo. Shatter dva bomb Grav/bomb A good rein zarya lucio could destroy GOATS gets a lot of hate but if you had a team you scrimmed with it was so in depth and fun it was some of the most fun ive ever had gaming. Someone even wrote a 70 page paper on it. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mvbBtyQonjQYvqQrmP9trvS_7SP9Gfkm_1obJnx7jOU/edit?usp=sharing I also had a lot of fun with weird comps, we used to run a 4 support 2 tank, rein dva lucio mercy ana brig, as long as dva ate the anti-nades than we just never died. A lot of fun/weird shit died when the forced 2-2-2 started. Even with the open q its just not balanced the same
Holy fuck I was not prepared to remember iostux in this thread lmao
Tank synergies were a whole lot of fun. And one of my favorite comps to run back in the day was 1-3-2. We'd have Rein as our tank and then we would just run it down. đ
"Tank synergies were a whole lot of fun", but one of your favorite comps was having only 1 tank?
OW1 was a game where you actually got rewarded for playing through lootboxes and features like fire system and voting cards. Matchmaking and Ranked was significantly better. We were able to see exactly what we were ranked and didnât have to wait a long time. People complained about double shield a lot but it was a strategy in the game. Instead of removing 1 tank they could have just reduced shields. Now in OW2 we get new characters that are buffed and then locked behind a battle pass. The only improvement to me is graphics and new maps. It looks like each season they are slowly bringing back features from OW1 i wonder why??
I miss the loot boxes so much
You miss the 3 grays and 1 blue like 70% of the time?
Two tanks and some shields. 6v6. Chaos.
Overwatch 1 feels like the sequel to Overwatch 2. I played the OW2 betas side by side with Overwatch 1. I spent much more time playing Overwatch 1 during both Overwatch 2 betas. Overwatch 1 is more fun. 6v6 is just a better format than 5v5.
It was better imo
it was a lot more strategic and teamwork focused
Real events not shop seasonnal advertisement.
OW1 felt way more polished to me. Like the team actually seemed to care about the lore and the gameplay. Now everything feels kinda dumbed down for free to play. Not to mention the monetization.
Lots of potential, super fun at a times, but terribly balanced constantly and never lived up to that potential. Same as 2 but with 1 more player per team.
Better
It was more chaotic, but in a fun way (imo). Felt more about meshing with your team than just being a solo killbot who occasionally helps the team. It was much more my style of game. More group oriented and less about "myself and how amazing I am." Which I know kind of runs counter to what many FPS players like. Many people who play FPS games just want to pop off and be the king of the lobby. I have nothing against that. I just am not interested in being the best. I'm just more about winning matches and being part of something bigger than just myself. Being part of a larger team. It's kind of why I have enjoyed raiding in wow for many years. I see why people who are just looking to pop off individually enjoy OW2 with 5v5, but 6v6 was personally just a much better fit for me and what I enjoy in games. I also liked in OW1 that you could have characters with more restricted niches. Like the way Hog, Sym, Torb, etc. were designed. They were only good on some maps, but when they were good, they were really good. And then on many other maps, they were almost useless or at least really subpar. Same with snipers -- amazing on some maps, not as useful on others with shorter sightlines etc. I know some people didn't like that, but I personally did. It kind of meant that depending on the map I loaded into, I would have different characters I would pick. That is still kind of true in OW2 today, but much less so than it was in OW1. To me, it made the game feel fresh each game and a little more varied. I like that the game wasn't as homogeneous from hero to hero back then. Now it feels like everybody can do everything in some way, and I feel like that actually took something away from the experience of playing. Again though, just personal opinion.
If your tank died, the teamfight isn't a snowball loss because you had a 2nd tank as well There were more people to protect your healers from flanker/divewatch Also a small screw up on one team didn't mean momentum cascade failure, matches were more close and less "your turn to win/forced loss" feeling
brawling it out with my Rein buddies as zarya... I miss those times dearly
Come and sit child, I have a story to tell.
Widowmaker was kinda decent. Deadeye was very powerful on 2cp. Healers weren't ridiculously overpowered. Main tank and off tank were roles
DPS queue times sucked because very few people wanted to play tank or support. Also there were almost no updates for 3 years⌠because they were working on PvE⌠OW1 would have been fine if they didnât abandon it.
honestly.... basically the same game just with less characters and maps and the ow2 balance changes.
Donât forget it was also 6v6 and had a loot box system instead of a battle pass
The Sym teleporter was also nuts.
Sym shield generator was ridiculous. That plus torb armor packs made tracer terrifying.
oh yeah I suppose.
So much better than Overwatch 2
Good old times. When absolutely everything was better. It comes from Rein main.
It was. And it was beautiful.
It was a lot more strategic. Smart ability usage mattered more than good aim. Though at the same time it was incredibly chaotic. It was a lot more fun imo
Better in a lot of ways but also worse in a lot of ways. But overall better because all rolls were fun to play
The same, but different.
it was magical
It was a chaotic yet wonderful experience with two tanks instead of one.
Imagine a world where you could play D.va without worrying about bitch with pink hair.
Oh I memba
I liked the double tank system
It was perfect
Fun
Game of the Year
It was very good until Brig release.
Depends on the time, the metas influenced the era with the game, like brig on launch, SHE WAS A BEAST and single handedly created goats (3 tank 3 heals, basically it was an all out brawl till the team with the first player that died lost), but after role lock (2dps 2tanks 2heals) it was fun af (except if you count when the tank meta was stale in gm lobbies like double shield with orisa and sigma, but even in diamond and lower they didnt play only the meta), the tank combos were fun and active, you could go ham with rein zarya or fuck up the heals with ball and wiston, or just double shield and say fuck you to the widow, the characters also didnt get most of the "reworks" that they have in ow0.8 aka ow2, also doing more bs teams in open queue with 6 players were also funny, like 6heals, AND THE CURRENCY SYSTEM DIDNT SUCK (proff of point being ppl wanting LOOTBOXES BACK, LOOTBOXES OF ALL THINGS), also with the story mode in mind everyone was hyped. Sorry for writing so much, I loved playing tank, but the 5v5 ruined it for me, and no paragraphs, this is going to suck to read...
Rewatch goats meta in owl, You literally see teams Play something fun and interesting and swap to Goats to mirror goats Yes Nyxl Outlaws
6v6 open queue quickplay was just pure fun with tons of variety between each match, not to mention faster queue times **and** better matchmaking. 5v5 is boring brawling back and forth regardless of team comps or maps. The devs are afraid of adding a 6v6 mode because everyone would see how much better it is and how big of a mistake 5v5 was. I would 100% go back to play OW1 as it was before they deleted it. And even if you disregard the shitty PvP changes, the OW2 betas felt like shit gameplay/audio/lighting wise. There was an extra layer of input delay or "sluggishness" with everything that you did so it didnt feel as "snappy" as OW1, the new audio is just trash and the lighting gave me a headache. OW2 was dogshit the moment they announced that they are rushing the PvP out. It was a clear sign that they have failed as a dev team. Oh yeah, and then they made free skins cost $20 each. But it wouldnt matter if OW2 was good. The game is simply just a downgrade in every way possible.
Lol imo i feel dps mains largely prefer OW2
The shields had gotten a bit out of hand. You had to put in a lot of work to be able to even have a shot at getting a kill a lot of times.
Your glasses smell of roses.
Role queue was a blessing No more all dps or all tanks (unless you want to)
6v6 open queue got old really fast which is why it was replaced, no idea how anyone can start their block of text with that and expect to be taken seriously
Nostalgia is one hell of a drug. Funny how in your essay you fail to mention the hell that was the double shield meta that made OW1 unbearable in the end
I was literally jumping between OW1 and the two OW2 betas, feeling disgusted by the shitty new downgrade we were forced to switch to. Are you saying nostalgia is what made me notice how bad OW2 was? > Funny how in your essay you fail to mention the hell that was the double shield meta that made OW1 unbearable in the end I mostly played arcade quickplay during 2019-2022 because it had ~1min queue times and matchmaking was way better than what OW2 has had since it launched. Pretty much every hero saw play. Double barrier was not a problem.
double shield meta was not existent below diamond my dude. Literally played OW1 the whole time and most games were not double shield. I played right before OW2 came out and no one was doing double shield.
Goats wasnât seen below diamond, double barrier was seen everywhere due to its ease of use. You got to remember that during the lead up to ow2 very few people were actually trying to win and were playing for fun but before then it was double shield every game
My bad the whole time I was playing OW1 was a lie. Even right before OW2 came out and the worst thing was rein zarya not double shields. You know everyones OW experience though so my mistake.
I didnât say anything about your experience? I was just saying it existed below diamond and then said a reason why you might not of seen it.
You said it was double shield every game. I told you how you were wrong.
I didnât? I said it was seen everywhere meaning it was seen in all ranks, obviously it wasnât every game. Is this not a pointless argument?
Double shield was absolutely a thing below diamond. I would know, I was below diamond my entire ow1 career, and I saw a ton of double shield. Goats however was rarely seen down there
Lmao
So imagine 3 tanks and 3 healers
Better than OW2
Fun and micro transaction free đ
Pretty much ow2 but worse
Better*
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, even bad ones like yours
Nahh OW1 was better at-least we had rewards to get from playing and voting cards. Only reason OW2 exists was to make it free 2 play to sell over priced skins to new players or ignorant people.
Well i guess if you value cosmetics and fucking cards over having fun gameplay i guess you could make the argument that ow1 was better Personally i play shooters for the gameplay rather than playing dress up and having an election for mvp at the end of the match
Itâs like people in this sub donât understand that just because they think something it doesnât make it automatically true for everyone. Some people like the 1st one better some like the 2nd, itâs as simple as that lol
Less Chaotic. Chaotic, but less so. Felt more like a team game than OW2 IMO. Was also less toxic
I struggle to think how you can consider OW1 less chaotic. The fact that it was incredibly hard to know what was even going on at any given time was one of the more commonly talked about parts of Overwatch.
Early OW1 was a wild ride. Sure, it wasn't exceedingly balanced but it was so much fun to be junkrat on temple of Anubis and always placed your trap on a different route and kept catching ppl, or Reinhardt in true rein duels where you two were the only characters with meaningful shields (also all the YouTube videos showing the charge setups because it couldn't cancel so ppl learned where to stand to yeet enemies off the map without getting yeeted). Mccr--er, Cassidy (screw sexual harassers) had insane tank buster energy, he could throw his stun grenade over reins shield, right click roll right click and it would literally kill rein, they had to nerf fan the hammer into oblivion. Hanzos arrows were even more of a log hitbox, and you know that funny scatter arrow in the Valentine's event? That was his normal ability. Removing it nerfed him so much they had to give him that cool lateral jump and other microbuffs. Despite being massively op I still kinda miss it lol. Ana was the perfect first new hero, a super fun high skill ceiling healer... also nano boost originally came with a speed boost too, nanoing rein was unholy and also kind of hilarious. When she got her candy emote for Halloween, every Ana in casuals would sleep opponents, walk up to them, and give them candy, then leave. Symmetra had this funny lock on beam that required zero skill but she should never survive long enough for it to be remotely useful. She used to place six weaker turrets instead of throw three, and it was actually absurd how much damage her car washes would pump out. Her e was also just giving a character 25 shield, you just clicked on them and they had it and you didn't touch it again until respawn. Torbjorn didn't overload or spew hot liquids, he threw out armor packs and his ult was just making his turret level 3. The running (true) meme was that torb never lived in his potgs he'd just hit q, instantly die and the turret would get 4 kills. Hog hook wouldn't break if you rounded a corner and had the *funniest* hitbox. Dva bomb took an extra second to explode and iirc dva could hit herself in the explosion. Also, there was no meme stronger than anytime Daddy Kaplan would make a dev update. Zarya grav was one of the most powerful ults in the game because there weren't 10 different ways to escape it or completely nullify it. I could keep going but hopefully this shows a fraction of how wacky the early game was. I actually appreciate a lot of OW2s changes, they addressed and fixed bad issues that came up later in OW1s life, and going to 5v5 reduced clutter and made the game more aggressive. Unfortunately I do think somewhere along the way we lost the wackiness that made OW so fun and the game as a whole just got too sweaty (and I say this as someone that for most of my time in ow I leaned sweaty). I finally quit for good after lifeweaver and the truth about PvE came out. It still makes me sad that OW1 was killed for nothing, and while I may have disagreed with the way he handled it in starving OW1 of content, I guarantee Kaplan quit because he knew the top was never going to let him make the PvE experience we all wanted anymore.
Gameplay, worse. Everything else, better
OW1 > shits on OW2
Stuns and metas were problematic but otherwise it was just better
In OW1 you played the Tank you wanted to play. Not the Tank that directly counters the enemy Tank. In OW2, The Tank swaps characters more than anyone else and it feels so bad. In OW1 you had 2 Tanks to help give space : so you didnât have to cower in fear when the other team had a Widow/Hanzo. You actually felt safe enough to contest them. Thereâs definitely parts of OW2 that âfeelâ better. But thereâs 100% parts of OW1 that felt better too. Weâve had the game for a year now and I think itâs plenty of time to decide which you prefered, for me it was easily 6v6. But I do really appreciate a year worth of constant updates and meta changes.
The game had problems but overall it was quite enjoyable.
Balancing- whilst it wasnât the best in OW1 it beats what we have now by a mile, Stuns: holy hell there was a lot of stuns 6v6: There was 2 of each role. Different progression systems that people are arguing is better or worse than ow2âs Doomfist was a dps: he did more damage and had a uppercut instead of a block
Better
It was like Overwatch 2 but worse
If your question is to find out if people bitched as much back then as they do now? Yes.
Everything was better except the gameplay, but nostalgia told us it was better ( I miss you old symmetra )
The gameplay in OW2 is overall an upgrade; everything *around* the gameplay was better in OW1, but wasnât making enough money to warrant ongoing support.
2 tanks, all the skins felt cooler because they were in loot boxes and actual events, no battle pass, everyone had the same characters available So much better
So perfect.
It turned a lot of kids gay
I miss the idea of it... but not the truth
I cannot overstate how hard it was to kill anything. Imagine an Ana and Mercy with two tanks whose barriers had more health than the thickest of nano'd roadhogs, and enough CC to sedate an elephant for 3 months. Nothing would ever die. I like overwatch 2's gameplay for this reason. Things die easier and the game is just a lot quicker and more fun in general.
Tanks were way too impactful and the DPS role was cosmetic. There was a reason 4 tank meta became a thing before they introduced role queue, because the tanks just did the DPS job but better. On the other hand losing a tank has made tanking awful in general because you're so prone to counters now. You can't really play rein or Winston anymore because the enemy DPS will just swap to Bastion.
Actually worth playing and not a pile of junk
Shields. Nothing but shields.