This is How You Kill a Game 

OW2 isn't even a sequel. It's just all the content we should have gotten in the past 2 years in one large package

People always point to a single thing and say "Yeah this is where Overwatch died" but this video showed that it was, well, *everything*

"Blizzard itself is to blame for the game's downfall" that's seems to be how every single game Blizzard is doing now days.

The first year of Overwatch was pure fun, the events were new, the joy of playing with the new characters, but then it became so toxic, if you didn't play what the Overwatch League players were using everyone in your team will let you know in the most "polite" way that you should change your character. By the way I was a Symmetra main

The general consensus about overwatch is: everyone loved Overwatch. Now, nobody even likes it. All devs going forward should see Overwatch as a case study in how to kill your own video game.

I used to defend this game from being called a ‘dead game’ but now even I don’t play it anymore

I think it really started going down when the introduced doomfist. The character list was pretty balanced between healers, tanks, and damage. There was hype from launch about the character. Everything pointed to him being a tank. Then he was a damage character with near uncounterable one shot capability. After that, the OW team continued to fumble the bag

Aside from all the problems with the OWL, Overwatch 2 and blizzard falling out of grace, there's just a looot of problems in OW's very core game design that ended up making life incredibly hard for the people trying to balance it, unlike any other game where you can select a character for PvP. - Heroes have abilities that can counter other heroes strongly, making the heroes countered by the meta hard to enjoy - Ultimates allow very little counterplay aside from other ultimates, making it extremely important for the meta to squeeze the most out of them to allow even less counterplay - Hero switching being allowed and heroes countering others means you can't implement a ban system to help limit the meta options, which will always always be picked once they're figured out - The above makes balancing a complete fuckin tightrope, as making one char marginally more powerful means everyone will run it in the meta and end up countering a bunch others like tracer - Blizzard's insistence on keeping a firm grasp on the meta, potentially because of that, disallowing the fun of people discovering the game and playing how they want to in favor of rigid abilities that always do what they're "meant" to do, killing creatvity with stuff like mercy boosts

Playing Overwatch during 2016-2018 were the best times I've ever had playing a game in a long time. I've put in so many hours into this game and have a lot of great memories and met so many good people so it really hurts having to see this game get ruined because of Blizzard's incompetence.

Overwatch has to be one of the most mismanaged disasters I’ve ever seen. A game that went from the top of industry to a shadow of its former glory all in the course of a few years. It’s safe to say that the whole concept of Overwatch 2 was a mistake. They should have kept adding to OW1. It’s sad since the core gameplay still feels years ahead of every FPS that came out this year. Blizzard just has no clue what they’re doing with this.

Overwatch in its prime is hand down the best game I've ever played. However, it was more important for its designers to create the game they want to create, than to satisfy their audience. Terrible and ignorant developers. I'm actually glad it failed.

Personally, I always though the addition of Moira and the follow support characters is what killed the meta, resulting in everyone leaving. Prior to her you COULD deal reliable DPS as a healer, but it was always going to be secondary to the support. Healers were still squishy and needed protection. Moira/Brigitte/Baptiste are all support characters that can easily hold their own against a damage dealer, and often times win. This allowed the meta to switch away from damage dealers being required, as the healers themselves could now deal damage. The mercy change was also non-sense to do.

Overwatch on release was one of the best games I've played. Simple, you could find matches instantly it had great graphics, colours, matchmaking and 0 technical issues like hit reg, bad servers or lag making for a super smooth experience. It's sad that they didn't keep it up

I will forever be thankful to overwatch for the top-tier r34.

I remember in 2016 a good buddy of mine said I should try Overwatch because he himself has been looking forward to the game since 2014. June 2016, I bought the game and after that I fell in love with the game and played it actively until mid 2019 and then the problems with the game came along as well as the controversies at Blizzard. It's sad to see such a good game today is completely dead. I will miss the 2016-mid 2019 time.

only think keeping overwatch relevant is the porn

You didnt talk about how there has been NO content in 19 months. How are we expected to wait for nearly two years with no updates.

I'd also like to point out that the inception of the Overwatch League killed all of the amateur/tier2 pro/tournament scene, Blizzard wanted all of the views to be on the OWL and there ended up being no real place to foster new talent in smaller third-party tournaments. The influx of new pros being mostly dead, and the lack of smaller tournaments to fill OWL downtime, were tangible factors to the game's death too.

Overwatch had an amazing potential, looked really great and overall just such a good game, but Blizzard fucked up their chance so bad

What killed OW is two fukking years without updates. No new heroes, no new maps no nothing. With only a promise of a OW2 that just not looking fun at all.

The fact their solution to balance their game is to remove a player slot is so tone deff is actually pretty funny.

When you think about it, TF2 and Valve has done basically the opposite. Almost no major balance changes, no official competitive, no official updates for a long time... And the game is still going

Overwatch was one of my favorite games ive ever played and it peaked in the first year. After that it took a sharp nose dive with every new hero they added throwing off the balance and the metas. Brig was in my opinion the main turning point in killing the game because she filled every role. Instead of properly balancing her, they changed every other character around her and it threw everything off. Before you could run any comp and rotate between dps. It wasn’t run goats/double shield or you lose. It hit a point of becoming boring. Last time i played the game was so unbalanced from powercreep and the dps getting big buffs to shred shields and tanks to compensate for double shields so supports couldnt out heal damage and it forced supports to dps instead of healing or else they would lose. Thats what made the game fun, the balance of ever role and knowing that if you are good on your role, you are going to bring a big impact to the game.

I like how they say “and even casual players” well you just put majority of your player base in last place.

I played overwatch not that long ago because my friend died, and he really likes that game. We grouped up and wrecked everything in his name. It was awesome.

"If you want your team to win youre going to have to play whats meta." THIS, this here is the problem with overwatch. If you foster skill over meta like good competitive fps games do, youll have instances where a team can play off meta, brilliantly, and win. It happens in nearly every other competitive fps, rts, and fighting game. Blizzard forcing the meta on people because they cant fucking balance killed overwatch.

I remember how much I used to desperately want overwatch when I saw the first ever OW animation- I was younger then and had been so inspired by it that I had drawn posters and art and even did a school assignment on it as just the whole concept and the characters just resonated with me. When I finally got the game YEARS later, I was so infatuated and played it all the time and even had a team from my school for fun. But then suddenly the queues became emptier and the gameplay was getting more and more boring. And then I tried valorant and I have just played that since. But I miss overwatch and all the memories I associate it with :((( i really hope blizzard gets it together and revives the game :((

It goes to show that an e-sports scene has to happen organically...you can't *force* it into existence.

I think the lore was another factor in how interest declined, at least for me. With OW, you had these really distinctive and intriguing characters in this cool quasi-superhero world--giant mecha-monsters menacing Korea, Australia being a post-apocalyptic wasteland, a super-intelligent gorilla who was raised on the moon, robot monks, cyber-ninja, all these cool characters with hinted-at backstories and rivalries....and then it just went nowhere. We got flashback PVE missions to round out backstory (which mainly just told us what we already knew), and short movies which were really good but again, didn't tell us anything we didn't already know. New heroes and events didn't really advance the story beyond "Overwatch is verrrrry slooooowly getting back together, Talon is enacting their vague Evil Plan." I think the "seriously?" point for me was Storm Rising, where the big reveal is that Doomfist is secretly working with....some guy we've never seen before. Years in, and we still had no idea why characters like Symmetra or Pharah were even in the game, or which side they were on. It started to feel like the X-Files, when the "mystery" started to feel like a cover for "yeah, we have no idea where to take this story, so we'll just pile mysteries and Cryptic Hints on top of each other as a holding pattern". Oh, Sombra might be a double agent within Talon! Why do we care about that again? Of course, all this stuff doesn't matter in terms of pure gameplay. But I think it made a difference for me and many other players (a lot of the monetization of the game revolved around skins, voice lines, tags and other things rooted in the lore, after all). I'm middling at BEST in terms of skill, but even if I don't aspire to being a pro or even Gold-ranked, good lore keeps me invested, and makes me feel like a character in the world as well as a player clicking on things I want to go away. That was why I gave OW a shot even though I don't normally like FPS games. With Overwatch, that element was always weak in the actual gameplay--much like League of Legends. But LOL has very strong development of the lore outside the gameplay (and in its sister franchises), something Overwatch really flopped in.

The fact that Team Fortress 2 outlived Overwatch is the best thing to see.

I've met so many amazing people playing this game, and I'm still amazing friends with most of them to this day. I made so many good memories in the first 2 years (been playing since Halloween 2016) and I genuinely had more fun playing this game than any other game, I even climbed from silver to masters. As much as I'd love to let it go, I just can't do it. Something about the comfort of those old memories just won't let me leave. Remembering coming home from school for winter break being so eager to play with the new Winter Wonderland skins and play the winter gamemodes with my friends. Those memories are the reason I can't leave this game, it just breaks my heart too much.

The constant change of rosters is what got me out of the Overwatch League. I grew really attached to some teams and players, like the Shanghai Dragons. They were the only team to NOT score a single win during the season, and I was rooting for them every match, no matter who the opponents were, because I wanted to see them win at least once. Then, they completely changed the team (aside from Geguri), they enventually won but I wasn't feeling invested anymore. The name was the same, but not the players, so why should I be happy ? These aren't the same people that didn't see one win in a season, but a fresh roster of players who I had never heard of before. The teams, the players, and the interactions between them was what made the Overwatch League for me. So when they cut that out, I just quit watching it and never returned...

overwatch was golden for a while, and still could be amazing if they updated the game and balanced their game properly. gameplay lore esports was so good at one point

Also worth mentioning: while the “home team” aspect may have worked in theory, some teams (like Boston Uprising) saw an almost entire team roster turnover between Season 1 and Season 2. It made it impossible to become attached to players, which in turn made it hard to stick with a team. By the time Season 2 rolled around, in addition to the controversial changes to the game, the team you tuned in to watch barely resembled the team you had grown attached to the season prior, so it became much easier to just stop tuning in.

I use to be a Mccree and Bastion main; back when you could play as a character you liked and if you was skilled enough could beat through a match without relying on meta. Then matches became one noted when seeing every match had the same meta. So I’ll be skipping overwatch 2, though I’m glad with the memories I had playing the first one

Honestly, Overwatch was a MOBA masked as a FPS. And after playing league for years, heroes of the storm for years and smite for years... every MOBA had a "Tank Meta" at one point. And in all of them it was somewhat resolved. But Blizzard aldready had to resolve a "Tank Meta" problem, they should have known better.

The problem for me wasn't the balance itself, but how much time it took for them to do something. I remember GOATS being for MONTHS in the meta

"What killed Overwatch was Blizzard; it was an avalanche of decisions..." Even in a video like this they threw in some puns!

if you think you can trust blizzard with ANY game, you are living in a dream world. Giving such a toxic company money should be illigal anyways

it’s finally nice to open up about my opinion. Overwatch really changed the way i see games, it was the first game i truly dedicated time and effort into. I was a sped doomfist main (peaking at 4.6k) and i had the best time of my life. so many amazing people, great memories. it truly hurts saying though it is my least favorite game ever. i will always have this soft spot for the game, but goddamn how do you fuck up a game so hard.

Remember back in like 2016 when everyone was tracer or reaper for halloween. OW went from all that hype to where we are now

A story mode would've been nice. Why not give us a campaign so that your characters get to be more fleshed out instead of using cinematics?

I started OW when it released, I was a Reaper main mostly but I loved to play S76 too. I made many friends and even found a community. Everyday after school I'd come home to play and OW inspired me with it's characters and aesthetics. This game was the reason I got so good at drawing because I would make fanart of the characters regularly. I never play anymore even though I got accepted into OW2 beta. It's so sad to see it go. I wish they made an official comic series or something because I love the characters so much.

I think the last time Overwatch was still talked about was around 2018. I didn't hear much about it since. I think that was the last time it was even considered good. The funny thing about Blizzard games is that it's mostly they themselves that are actually killing them, not necessarily the competition.

The first few months of this game were the best gaming experience I’ve ever had. I wish I could experience something like that again.

Overwatch was probably one of my favourite gaming memories. Coming home for winter break and just spamming the winter 3v3s with my friends was so exciting. It is really sad to see it go so down hill so fast - It's one of the only games I still don't mind playing non-stop but the failure of the competitive scene and the lacklustre appearance of OW2 has killed all hype in the community which is really unlucky. Atleast we have PH content sadge

It makes me sad to know I'm playing a dead game... but I'm loving it! It's also good that all the pros and nitpickers have found a new realm, leaving this one much more approachable to new players learning to love all that remains of the game; being all we've ever known. And I'm happy with it the way it plays now. Looking forward to 2.

God, this is depressing coz I really love the lore, the emotional cinematics, some of the great music, and the characters of Overwatch. I'm a massive fan of character design and Overwatch's style look really special and interesting to me at least when it was first revealed. Coz back then most fps game characters had designs that are more 'military-esque' and 'serious, dark, and gritty' which are fine but it was becoming very stale, repetitive and boring for me coz almost every game at the time follow this same approach to character design. Beside all that tho, gotta love Tracer, Sombra, Genji, Dva Winston, and more at least on their character design. Yeah sure Genji's character was influenced by Metal Gear Solid's Raiden but still, they're great and cool designs and I really feel bad coz there's a likely chance that this game series will be like second Darkstalkers. I hope not but you never know.

*5 Years Later:* Blizzard: Overwatch 2 is a failure boys time to get started on Overwatch 3.

That moment when tf2, despite the bots, is still somehow more alive than overwatch

Hentai is the only thing that keeps Overwatch alive.

This was my favourite game ever, and may continue to be my favourite game of all time, but there's no denying how far it fell. It's no longer the game I fell in love with, but it's still so hard to let go. I'm trying to enjoy it for what it is, and I'm holding out that Overwatch will redeem itself with Overwatch 2, but god damn if Blizzard are making it REALLY HARD to hang in there. My hopium levels are at like 5%, I'm still here hoping but I'm almost out of gas. If Overwatch 2 marketing doesn't get off it's ass in the next month or two in preparation to get us properly hyped for OWL 2022 and the new heroes and other core content I might go insane. Blizzard doesn't deserve my hopium but it's there anyway because I fucking love this game and want it to succeed, but that in no way guarantees loyalty from me if they fuck it up. Overwatch sits on a fucking knife's edge right now, and I see equal probability that the game becomes a massive hit or plummets even further down than its current reputation. It all depends on the moves Blizzard makes in the next few months.

one of the most addicting primes and saddest falls a game has ever had

im surprised you missed a couple things from a more casual side of things: OW2's whole intent was to be the game that OW was originally supposed to be: a Story-driven PvE game rather than a PvP game. Jeff's original idea was to expand more on the lore and have a more PvE side rather than PvP, but it was Activision that wanted the team to focus more on going PvP instead. OW2 was supposed to make his original vision a reality, but now that he left and most of Activision is gone to crap, the series is as good as dead unless another company buy the IP's corpse. why else do you think there was almost no story whatsoever in the original game?

I still remember the glory days of Overwatch, but now TF2 is still just like my childhood

I feel like Overwatch Died when OverWatch 2 was Announced… It was really the FINAL NAIL IN THE COFFEN

to me it just became so boring! allways the SAME events! ALWAYS nerfing the wrong characters but buffing the BS characters that can allready one shot you accross the map!

I grinded to GM in this game, from bronze, over 2 years, and as soon as I hit it, I realized I hadn't enjoyed the game in forever. The game is great, but the lack of content, and the Metas killed the game. Peopel complained about dive, but at least is was fun. Goats was hell on earth. Still have nightmares from someone locking in a DPS then the entire team going "Go goats or we lose"

With Blizzard's announcement of the PvE mode's cancellation, Overwatch as a Franchise died faster than TF2's _pre-launch development cycle_

Part of what really hurt the game for me was the constant meta shifting. And not in a good way, heros would go from amazing to shit overnight. Doom filled a role that had already been filled twice. Moira should have never been built. Brig was litterly a DPS, Tank, and Healer , and reallly reeeally killed it for me.

I remember building my new PC because of Overwatch, after four years of gaming hiatus. That game really helped me during 2017 and 2018 when I really struggled with mental health. There was something for everyone, and I think that was the thing that attracted so many people. The game had such a large potential that it was almost tangible. Loads of pages on Artstation dedicated to custom heroes and maps, Reddit threads about the lore, the universe, the heroes and their relationships. I think that if Blizz even took a glance at the creativity of the community, this game would have still been popular. But no, all of that potential is wasted, eggs were placed in the wrong basket, and with the lawsuits and Valorant on top of that, I think that the game is done. And I am beyond sad to see the game I loved so much crash and burn in that way.

I think OW became way too teamplay-dependent for it's own good. Requiring teamwork is fine, but OW pushes it to the extreme. ALL metas have revolved around stacking specific abilities/ultimates for maximum cheese. If even 1 out of 12 players in the match doesn't feel like coordinating, the game falls apart and becomes a one-sided stomp fest. If that player happens to be a tank, then you might as well quit the match early. This is why matches can be so wildly inconsistent even though you individually aren't playing any better or worse. Your performance is heavily dependent on what 11 other players enable you to do (or not do). That's also why the community is most toxic out of any online game. Every individual on the team can feel they're playing great, but if the other team just stacks ultimates slightly better and counter-picks they will have a MASSIVE inherent advantage that no amount of individual skill can overcome. Matches can often be lost at the hero select screen before they even begin. Even wins feel unsatisfying when it's clear someone on the enemy team isn't coordinating or getting hard countered. If all 12 players aren't on the same page, the entire experience is fucked for everyone.

It's probably just nostalgia but u started playing the game during the dive meta and I thought it was just beautiful. A well orchestrated, team based attack dependant on a perfect combination of timing, targeting and skill. Dva Winston, zenyatta mercy, tracer genji. Just lovely to watch the best go at it this way. Travers and genjis dueling one another. Zenyatta and mercy protecting one another. Dvas and Winston's harassing the entire map. Man I miss it.

The word dead doesn’t mean anything if people are actually still playing.

I had fun for the first three years of Overwatch. It made so many memorable memories that I'll cherish forever. I gave up when I realized that it had been three years and yet they have yet to expand the lore. I was captivated by the lore, the designs and the world. But nothing came. Only scraps of stories and a few cinematics. Nothing concrete. Looking at Arcane, I felt this was how Overwatch could have been. I'm happy for LoL fans to see their characters made into animated series. Overwatch... You have been great. Thank you for giving the amazing memories..

Game was so much fun at launch. Sure there were a lot of characters that were completely broken (roadhogs hooks, widow HS ramp up, Genji triple jump, hanzo scattershot, etc) but it made it fun. It was frustrating, but also fun because you could easily abuse the same stuff. Instead of nerfing the heroes that were fun, they shouldve buffed the heroes that were bad. They went down the path of every new hero needing some sort of CC and it literally just made it so you spent more time not playing the game and dying because you get chain cc'd, thats a lot less enjoyable than getting hooked through 5 walls across the map.

watching overwatch used to be extremely hype. there’s been some amazing plays i remember. the zarya ult at eichenwalde was one of my favorites. played the hell out of it, got to grandmaster with a couple friends but I haven’t played it seriously in about a year and a half now. the games are too stale

I love the first few years of Overwatch, it was fun had a group of people at work that would get together every night. I loved countering on they fly just to mess with the oppositions hero’s/strategy’s that they would play. But for me what stoped me from playing was all the ability changes to my favourite hero’s to a point that they no longer the same. As well too many types of shields and barriers and not enough aoe damage to counter them all.

This really breaks my heart. I met the most incredible people playing this game, who literally changed my life and honestly? I still love playing it. Overwatch's gameplay is something I feel like I'll never find anywhere else. But i can't deny that the game is dying, it's been bad decision after bad decision with no sign of stopping. Why did you have to do this, Blizzard? Why sabotage one of the biggest sources of enjoyment in my life to hell like this? All you had to do was not ruin it. Announcing a sequel must've been the stupidest decision I've ever seen a company take in the scenario that they were in.

7:06 I remember seeing this live a long time ago. Seeing this again and rewatching the swap happen as soon as they saw the enemy team on GOATS tore a hole in my heart, the same one from all those years ago.

*Golden rule for online class-based games:* The potential of the offense needs to outweigh the potential of the defense, otherwise games quickly become repetitive and methodical with predictable outcomes. Fast-paced gameplay means there's more variety and more room for mistakes and quick plays demanding lightning-quick reaction time or precision aim. Slow-paced turns it into a less complex Chess match since the game is now slow enough for players to consider their options like in Chess, but the game likely has infinitely *less* options available than Chess. If two classes both have the potential to blast each other off the planet in a period of less than 4 seconds, the game is exciting. If neither class has the capacity to kill the other in a max of 4 seconds, then things turn to shit. I never understood the appeal of Overwatch personally, because at the time of it's release, the game it was compared to was TF2. I tried OW during a free weekend and what quickly became apparent was that Overwatch was attempting to create a team dynamic via the shield mechanics provided. The problem was that the shield mechanic is a poor choice overall, as it creates a hard number of damage that needs to be dealt before any actual damage can get in, and players have ample time to react before a shield actually drops. Compare for example if a Scout faces a Heavy-Med vs. if a Tracer faces a Mercy-Reinhart. With the first example, this is indeed a very tricky matchup for the Scout, but it's 100% possible for the Scout to pull it off. If he ambushes at the right moment, he can kill Med with two clean meatshots before the two can react, and if he succeeds in landing 5 consecutive meatshots on Heavy whilst dodging and juking his shots, he'll secure the kill. Overwatch's counterpart....? It's just not realistic, aside from using your ultimate, which is not exactly interesting gameplay. It also doesn't help that Tracer's *default* speed is actually nothing special; she runs as fast as Pyro in TF2, so this means she has clear limitations to her mobility based on her blinks available. All this just means the outcomes are predictable. People *live* for those hype moments where the Scout manages to overcome the Heavy-Med combo, or hell, successfully chain his kills and wipe the entire enemy team. With Overwatch though, team wipes are pretty much exclusive to dropping a well-timed ultimate, which is not nearly as fulfilling for the players or the viewers. TBH, it's little surprise Valorant is stealing OW's playerbase, because Valorant again restores the golden rule that TF2 and other successful multiplayer games understand: offense >>> defense. Yes there are different classes with different skills, but ALL of them can just land clean headshots and win that way. You CAN singlehandedly team wipe in Valorant, you CAN go hero mode and save the day. The fact that hero mode is something that would only happen if your opponents spontaneously lose all their brain cells is exactly why Overwatch is waning in popularity as quickly as it is.

- Announces a new game, everyone gets excited - Claims the release will be sometime next year - Next year comes and goes - People expect the game will arrive any day, so they stop playing OW1 in anticipation - Game never comes, people who left OW never come back - Game dies from lack of updates and failure to release on time

I will never understand why no gaming company ever, when balancing anything. Do tiny incremental changes. Oh is Mercy too op? OK her healing per second changed from 12 to 10. And then wait a month n check her win rate. But no, blizzard always overnerf and overbuff and it seriously contributes alot to a game losing players

My guy doesn't even mention the 1.5 years of double shields

When was the last time an actual sport had a meta change? Literally never. Why do eSports feel the need to rework theirs every few months? And usually for the worse.

For me the first year and half was the best. Seriously the best gaming experience I've ever had. It was fun having no hero limits but I understood why they changed it to one hero allowed on each team. It made sense. But for me was when they made quick play more like comp by adding role que.... the role que was good for comp but really for quick play? It forced the 2 2 2 which works but it lost the whole reason why I enjoyed overwatch. I loved how I could be healing but the team comp needed more damage so I would switch to reaper to counter their tanks then their comp would change and have more healers or more dps, so then our comp had to change to match theirs. Multiple times through the match the comp changed and it's what made the game so much fun. You weren't stuck to one role the whole game. I initially went into the game only wanting to be good at healers but because of these types of games I had to be able to be good at dps and tanking so when the time need to help the comp out I could switch. Is pharah wrecking us? Do we need to focus that down? People would switch to counter that. People would say yo im ass at mcree or soldier but ill do heals and then someone who was on heals would swap. And after that the enemy comp would swap their pharah to counter our counter. It was just so much fun. I get it lots of people didn't play healers so it was an issue and adding that ensured there was always 2 healers. but for quick play I hated the whole role que thing. It got pretty bland after that and I lost interest.

I remember rewatching the Hanzo and Genji cinematic every day because of how good it was.

This video made me genuinely sad. I loved this game. I played it since beta. When Bastion had that front face shield, when lucio can 1v1 any dps, when sym was a support that could give a single person some armour and many more. To watch it slowly die, to see how disconnected blizzard was, to see my love for the game turn into frustration... this made me so sad that I am beyond words. I loved Overwatch but its just that, past tense, I think it is time to move on.

Changes need to made in small incremental ways. For example if you to buff a tank or nerf a shooter do so by half a percent to 1% a weekly to see what feels right.

I think you basically forgot the biggest problem. The lack of content. The first year of Overwatch was a MASSIVE success. That the early e-sports events with Lucio-, Winston- and Tracer-stacks were garbage was irrelevant. Because its the community that keeps a game alive. Looking back, Overwatch stopped growing exactly when Blizz decided to slow down content development. When people stop being excited for a game, the E-sport won't hold its own.

"Overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer" -Darkest Dungeon

See, I remember the best moment I had with Overwatch was pushing a payload as a solo Roadhog in 2018. Everyone else were supports or DPS, they were off playing for kills rather than the objective. The rhythm of fighting other players and pushing the payload was amazing. It was a hilariously off-meta match, but I'll seriously take off-meta games over "Both teams play meta and the one with better timing wins" any day.

Atleast the Rule 34 is going strong for Overwatch : )

I played OW because I was hooked in its lore, how each character correlate and especially the animated shorts which were amazing after hearing of the news that Micheal Chu leaving I had an inkling that things are going south then on

For me, what really killed Overwatch was the Blitzcheung incident. OW's lore revolves around optimism for a better future, with hope playing a big role in the messaging. Blizzard's heavy-handed bans and blatant simpering toward China's authoritarian regime ruined that illusion for me. From that point on, narrative dissonance kept hitting me whenever I hear any of OW's heroes voice lines. Tracer, Mercy, Winston, Zenyatta, Lucio--Blizzard's actions turned them into hollow mockeries of what they represented.

since i started playing overwatch like a year and a half ago the biggest update to the game was changing soldiers recoil and its just been so sad

6:50 He’s talking about Dive here btw

I'd argue that the creation of the OWL was one of the major contributing factors to the downfall of the game. They didn't let the scene come organically, they forced it into existence. To add to it, OW was just not designed to be a competitive game. On another note Jeff Kaplan was an awful dev that does not deserve the respect people have for him. He used to insult and make fun of people making suggestions about balance or things to make things better, only to have to implement their suggestions months later and never apologize or admit he was wrong. Not that it was out of character since he was one of the most toxic Everquest players to touch the game.

This game will always have a special place in my heart, the first game that I bought and introduced me to multiplayer games in general. The friends I made along the way too. The company chocked it to death and it’s a shame, I hope one day I can having fun again with this game.

Even though the game is basically dead i will always remember this game as it is the first fps game i really started to love and get addicted to but it really makes me sad how fast this game is dying

A major problem for me at least is how ineffective you can feel most of the time as supports. In MOBAs, your entire team could be getting completely destroyed on the other side of the map, but you can do well in your own lane, so you at least *feel* like *you’re* doing well. In Overwatch, you can get 1.5k+ healing per minute on top of 800+ damage per minute (speaking from experience) and lose, and you’ll feel like you did nothing, because despite those stats, hardly anyone on the other team died, which depending on which character you play, you can have very little control over. It made me feel like a spectator when I was playing, to the point where I largely gave up playing support and started playing DPS instead, specifically Tracer. I was amazed at just how much more in control I felt playing her, I could sometimes break a choke by myself, just by going in the backline and one-clipping one or both of their supports. Half of your job as a support is to *stop* them from doing that, I know, but it made me realise just how passive supports can be, in comparison to the proactive nature of DPSs. It made me feel like a disappointed parent, throwing everything I have into my teammates only for them to die while being pocketed. A lot of characters are very dependent on others, and trying to babysit a blatantly out of position player only for them to die because they’re being shot by the entire enemy team even though you’re throwing all the healing you can at them is the worst feeling in the game. And it happens all the time. I’m fairly sure this game had a negative impact on me, because along with some IRL stuff, it really made me feel like nothing I did was good enough, or that I couldn’t change anything, my situation was purely decided by the people around me. I kept playing because I desperately wanted to feel in control, but I didn’t. I moved on to Smite, a MOBA, and even though I can still lose even if I play like a god, it doesn’t feel anywhere near as bad as Overwatch, and I can point at things that happened in the game and say “I did that, I got that kill, I body blocked for my hunter, I made that call that got us the fire giant,” etc. I feel like I have more control, which is what I wanted. It’s possibly because supports in that game don’t have to heal, and most can’t, their job is more akin to a tank in Overwatch, but they can survive longer, have better CC, and can protect their allies better. TL;DR Overwatch has bad balance and some roles just don’t feel impactful, other games make all roles feel satisfying. Same time next week, Mr Therapist?

Today it’s not blizzard business, Microsoft have this sealed coffin lol

GOATS was really the turning point, I think. Before that, people would always say "I'm quitting OW" but they would never actually do it. Then Brig and GOATS came and they actually did.

I loved this game and I used to play it everyday with my friends. But as soon as echo was in the game and Jeff left all my friends have stopped playing and I’m all alone and every time I play this game I just feel depressed. So good one blizzard

13:22 "Say goodbye to your kneecaps, chucklehead!"

It was fun when it lasted back in 2016- 2017 I would be excited and hype to open up overwatch and grind the ladder and it was amazing playing with friends . Now opening the game feels sour and frustrating as all the characters don't feel right playing anymore

Overwatch is a genuinely interesting discussion topic to me because it shows that an esports first design just isn't guaranteed to work and is actually quite likely to fail for a simple reason: It wasn't designed to be a fun game before anything else. The peak of overwatch as an experience was in the beta when everything was new, novel, and not very well balanced. Thinking about it, it's kinda weird to design like that because no major sport or esport I'm aware of started from the idea of "hey let's spend 5 billion dollars on this weird ball game so people can watch us throw balls at hoops or whatever". It's skipping a crucial step where the community/public decides it's a game worth that kind of investment, not whoever made the game before it's even finished. Consider other popular esports like Smash Bros or just any fighting game. Many of those games never intended to be esports superstars, many of those fighting game franchises started as fun arcade cabinets and Smash in particular never had any real aspirations to be a major competitive game. But the key difference is that people *wanted* to play those games in a highly competitive scene to show off their skill and that's how their competitive scenes grew into actual global fighting game tournaments. There are also things to be said about how basing some of your games design around Dota/LoL is also a terrible idea because while yes those games do have big competitive scenes, the vast majority of players I've seen talk about those games in any capacity are absolutely miserable. Having a vast pool of characters while cool on paper is also incredibly difficult to balance and becomes exponentially harder every time you add a new character. This is why TF2 went the route of adding new weapons instead of characters because if a class is performing way too well with a particular item they can just nerf that one item without affecting the entirety of the character or how that character interacts with every other character.

Lets go back to no restrictions, those full-Torbjorn matches were the solution

Heh... i remember when Overwatch was coming out, and people we're like "Overwatch is the TF2 killer", good times..

My biggest gripe is that Overwatch killed Battleborn through marketing alone but overwatch 2 is literally everything battleborn already was. Blizzard failed to balance the game so everyone could play it (instead of sweaty genjis and doomfists being cheap) and it had no content except seasonal stuff when the first game needed so much work. It’s a lot of wasted potential and it just makes me disappointed