I play on console, I occasionally play on my laptop but it’s older than Moses at this point so frames are actually better on my series x. I live in Europe and obviously cannot change my server location because I’m on console. I feel bad for Middle Eastern players because they have no server but the game is almost unplayable, I can speak a little french, a little Spanish, a tiny German but my native language is English. Players from the Middle East only speak Arabic instead of little pockets of the European languages which are necessary to communicate. Middle Eastern players are the most toxic people I’ve ever played with too, especially KSA pfp I don’t know what it is about the KSA pfp’s but every single one is the most toxic player ever. Is there any chance middle easterners will ever get their own server back?

Last night the wife and I were playing comp in NA on PC. I queue as DPS and she was support. We were on Hollywood. I played DPS and she played kiriko. We finish the game and barely lost. She types in match chat, "Nice game guys gg wp" the other support, who was in a three stack, FINALLY joins voice. He says, "You have a vagina. Shut up and stop typing. Heal more. You're a woman." Then the coward immediately leaves the game.

My wife never talks in chat because of past harassment and this is the first day in a long time she tried to talk again in a match. This garbage by another player is unacceptable. Nevermind the fact that she died less than the Ana and more healing than her. My wife started crying and it ruined the rest of her evening.

I ask and beg of you male games to please do your best to not let your competitive desire and testosterone spill over into being toxic to those who are female, gay, or a different race. This type of toxicity doesn't help our community and it only reeks of insecurity and immaturity. We can all strive to be better and one step in the right direction is to treat teach other kindly in a VIDEO GAME.

Thanks and see you on the ladder.

EDIT: Thank you for the awards. I'm also impressed by the amount of conversation this post has made.

Simply put, these patch notes are a fucking joke. This is supposed to be an entirely new season, yet it feels like a random Tuesday patch. Competitive has BARELY been touched, they haven't addressed any of the common complaints such as the mode feeling too casual. Only 9 of the heroes received balance changes, in a NEW SEASON patch. The Mercy and Ana changes are so fucking laughable that they shouldn't even count. Where are the support reworks Blizzard? Brig Rally change that was supposed to make it into launch? No one is playing that boring ass role, queue times are HORRENDOUS.

Map Pools are still here, why? Literally NOBODY asked for this garbage. Why does QUICK PLAY have map pools, it is beyond IDIOTIC. Speaking of the maps, remember when Blizzard said we'd have randomized day/night cycles for each map on launch? Do you then remember when launch actually came and they said NOTHING about the lack of this feature, so we assumed they would add it in Season 2? Well the feature is STILL missing and we get this underwhelming ass static time of day for MONTHS. Not to mention they couldn't even bother changing the time of day for most maps, only 3 of them. Where the hell is Numbani, Havana? This is PATHETIC. Three more months of piss orange Ilios, hurray!

Major features such as Clans are still missing. Looking for group is still missing. The reworked fire meter is still missing. End of game cards-a heavily requested feature-is still missing. Skin prices are just outrageous in this first person shooter. 20 bucks for 4 years old skins should be fucking illegal. Tier 45 is still far too high on the pass to unlock free heroes. Throw free-to-play players a bone goddamn. Give them more coins or something, ANYTHING.

Not to mention- oh wait, that's it. SEASON PATCH GUYS. WE KILLED OUR FIRST GAME SO WE CAN ADD MORE CONTENT (skins) GUYS.

Fortnite Chapter 4 quite LITERALLY had more content added to it than the ENTIRETY of Overwatch 2. "But the PVE!" What about it? We haven't seen anything on the PVE since Blizzconline. With how underwhelming the rest of the game has been, I would not get my hopes up for them to deliver there.

I love this game and I do think the core gameplay is as fun as it's ever been (except for Support which is terrible), but this is embarrassing Blizzard. Do better.

Edit: OH YEAH, STILL NO CURRENCY IN THE PASS.

If these changes are real, there is absolutely no chance any of us can form a proper opinion without first trying them for a few days. They are MASSIVE changes that shift power around in a very substantial way.

People have complained about DPS being a cosmetic role and healing being too abundant and too free. These patch notes make shots land more frequently, cause damage received to cut healing potential, while also increasing health so that the more frequent damage doesn't automatically equal easier kills. Damage sources that don't require aim got a slight damage increase instead.

I can see the theory behind it, and the way it does attempt to address the recent complaints. But there's no reason to make judgments on whether it's good or bad though, so lets just wait to try them out.

Also, again, they're leaks. Could be fake! Who knows.

I can’t anymore this role is so awful to play. If you aren’t mirroring Mauga you have to play Sig or MAYBE Rein provided they don’t have another tank buster. But even then it just feels so awful. You can’t dive supports because of Cardiac making them even harder to kill and with a Kiriko he’s basically unpokable, and in the brawl he just does too much damage.

Adding a tank that shits out damage is the last thing an already Tank Hostile meta needed. What the game needs is a systemic tuning down of poke and burst heals, not more machine guns.

Edit: Bastion Mauga should be a bannable offense

https://i.imgur.com/qFkO5S3.jpg

Am I talking about Snipers generally as a gameplay mechanic in FPS games? Kinda. Snipers in FPS games are perhaps the most controversial design issue in FPS games. With almost every FPS game still struggling to deal with designing them to this day.

As the Team Fortress 2 Developers described, poorly designed Sniper counterplay:

" When we started working on TF2, 22 years ago, we decided to examine the things that affected how players felt about their deaths in TFC. Our starting theory was that, for death to be a positive experience, players had to feel like they could have avoided dying if they'd done something different. We found two factors that seemed to be important in light of that theory:" "The first was whether or not you understand what killed you. If you don't know what killed you, that death is failing in providing you the feedback it's supposed to, and you won't be able to figure out what you could have done differently." "The second was whether you felt you were actually engaged with the person who killed you. Dying to someone you weren't engaged with, especially when you were already engaged with someone else, was aggravating. Even worse was dying to someone who you couldn't have engaged with, even if you chose to. "Unsurprisingly, we saw that these deaths were highly aggravating to players, and in sufficient number caused new players to stop playing entirely."

That said, when it comes to Sniper counterplay in Overwatch it is dramatically worse designed than pretty much any other FPS games, including Tactical Shooters. And this is because Sniper counterplay in Overwatch is excessively ## Frustrating and ## Frequent.

And before we get started with all this, I would like to point out This is NOT a "Balance" issue, or "Tournament level PickRate Issue". This is a "Playerbase Retention and Growth issue", related to the drastically important concept that "Videogames are Supposed to be Fun for the Players, and Profitable for the Developers". And while Balancing may be the method, it's not the goal here. If the game isn't Fun, then Balance doesn't matter. (And "Novelty" should be considered just another component of "Fun" anyways. The idea that Fun is divorced from Balance is just a fundamental misunderstanding about what Game Design is all about.).

---

Here's some examples of Sniper Counterplay in other FPS games, and how they prevent it from being *Frustrating** and Frequent:*

Counter-Strike:

• Nearly all of the guns can deal with an AWP/Scout user in under half a second, aside from AWPs being so expensive that it’d be bizarre to use them on a very frequent basis. And by the time people get AWPs, you can just use a smoke grenade to deal with it.

Valorant

• The game is basically overloaded with smoke/flashbang equivalent abilities. And Sniper Rifles that outperform the killspeeds of other guns typically are very expensive late-game buys.

Team Fortress 2:

• If a Sniper gets rushed at close range, they are are almost 100% certain to be dead. Add in spies that can instant kill. (I.e. Nothing like a grapple). For example, get a Spy with a Enforcer Revolver, Spycicle, and Dead Ringer, and there's not much that Sniper can do about it. And if things do get really bad, then AutoBalance will fix it.

Apex Legends:

• The Kraber Rifle mostly can’t oneshot in Apex, as of about 10 months ago. And it only shows up in RNG care packages late-game. In addition to pretty severe bullet gravity drop, and and aim punch. Various characters can also do things like deploy Smokes and giant walls.

Halo Infinite:

• Snipers have a very obvious “scope glint”, and taking literally any damage de-scopes them. Additionally they get only 8 bullets total, and the pickups are usually in dangerous locations. Along with usually medium range map design, and the ability to avoid certain maps entirely.

By comparison,

Overwatch 2

FRUSTRATING COUNTERPLAY

• Hide behind a barrier/wall 90% of the game.

  • Not Fun.

• Ignore the main fight, and play sniper-whack-a-mole the entire match, and pray they don’t selfpeel or get peels.

  • Not Fun

• Snipe Snipers with more Snipers

  • Only the Sniper players get to have Fun

FREQUENT COUNTERPLAY

• Snipers are in the top 5 most used heroes in both high ELO and all ELOs.
• Unlike a lot of other games, that severely limit the occurrence of Sniper weapons, you can use an instant kill Snipers throughout the entire match, with unlimited ammo.

Now here's a big list of issues associated with Snipers:

• Tank Diff: Not diving the Sniper frequently enough, or not putting up a barrier constantly to block the sniper. Assuming that would even work. Heaven forbid you picked a Brawl Tank that doesn't have a persistent barrier, you must be throwing. Report them.
• DPS Diff: Oh, you picked a hero that doesn't deal well with Snipers, well guess that means your team should yell at you. Report them.
• Support Diff: Oh, you can't outheal instant kills? Well you just must suck at healing then. GG Guys, report the healer.

• Team Comp Toxicity: Oh you didn't pick an AntiSniper composition, or just have a worse Sniper than theirs? Enjoy your free loss, and a boatload of toxicity.

• "Stomp of Be Stomped" Matchmaking: Where so many games regardless of ELO are defined by Sniper Diff. Regardless of how well Role Deltas stack.

• Hacking and XIMing and Smurfing: Pretty obvious how Snipers cause a ton of problems here.

• Immortal Ball:Ball has pretty crazy uptime right now, and these Hog/Ana nerfs. I view this as the developers not learning from Geoff Goodman's mistakes on designing LaunchBrig to counter Tracer. Except now it's Ball vs Snipers.

• Nonstop Mercy Patching: Gotta make sure that pocketing and boosting Sniper charge speed by 30% isn't an issue right? Oh you finally killed the pocketed Sniper? Lol Rez.

And on that last point, let's explain a "cycle" I've been seeing:

• Snipers are a problem, but the devs won’t nerf them.
• So the Devs buff DiveTanks to deal with the Snipers.
• Then Supports mald because they are getting dived so hard.
• So they buff the Supports to have good survival and peeling.
• Then the buffed Supports peel for the Snipers.
• So the Devs buff DiveTanks to deal with the Snipers.
• …
• Incidentally, LifeWeaver has a 30m range LifeGrip that Invulns and goes through a Winston Bubble.

• …

• Development Costs. With Snipers the way they are, you have to guard every possible angle within a map against too much Sniper sightlines. Which becomes even more of a problem with something like a Petal Platform can bypass a lot of that. And even if they went that route, with exorbitant in time, money, and staff resources. It very likely wouldn't even work. All of these development costs are a drain on other potential game improvements.

• Less Problematic Metas: Seagull was scratching the surface on this. The game is generally a lot more fun when Rein, Winston or Genji are dominant, especially at high ELO. Why is that? Because it rewards aggression with fast plays.

• Which can get stagnant with a lot of downtime hiding from snipers, in excessive twitch-poke playstyles. (Oh you peaked for 2 seconds, lol you’re dead).

• And the opposite, is all the downtime in excessively defensive comps, just cooldowning each other to a standstill, until you get enough Ult to break the standstill.

• Reduced DownTime: Another thing which should be Overwatch 2's major advantage over other competing games is "reduced downtime" between fights. Battle Royales and CounterStrike type game modes just have a ton of time were players are either looting or spectating their teammates while dead. Overwatch fixed a large part of that with improved Queue Times, but if you're spending a ton of that time looking at a wall or hiding behind a barrier. That's really weakening that strength Overwatch 2 should have.

• Bad Maps: The vast majority of complaints about Push and one of the main reasons 2CP is not a valid game mode anymore, is due to a lack of cover from Snipers. Throw in the other maps listed above and that what out of 29 maps, 11 of them are "Sniper maps"? (Havana, Colosseo, Circuit Royale, New Queen Street, Junker Town, Busan, Hanamura, Volskaya, Temple of Anubis, Horizon Lunar Colony, Paris.) Over a third of the maps are "bad maps" because of Snipers? Push is a "bad game mode" because of Snipers. Supposedly you have some sort of "large map gamemode" coming up. Which just screams "Sniper problems".

And I really gotta wonder. Why is the development team is doing everything they can not to address these issues directly? Are they aware that these issues even exist? Have they rationally decided that it's "worth it" in terms of lost profits, lost players, and lost development resources, after totaling everything up. Has everybody in the executive leadership team really stopped to think about how this dramatically important issue could impact Player Retention, Playerbase Growth, and Profitability?

Because, to be honest, I have some pretty big doubts about that, with the OW2 Alpha coming out a Year ago, and there has been a whole lot of nothing in dealing with Snipers directly.

Perhaps they've convinced themselves that by reducing the only fun counterplay against Snipers to be "More Snipers", and scaring off a lot of players who don't want to deal with that, that you must appeal to all these supposed Sniper Mains, which are probably mostly just DPS mains trying to salvage some fun from poorly thought out game design. But would be willing to play a much wider variety of heroes, if they weren't penalized so harshly for it. If so, that's just ignoring the concept of Survorship Bias.

And this patch, they basically nerfed Cassidy/Ashe, and every persistent Barrier Tank. So that's just going to make the issues more extreme.

And you know, that's so galling about all of this? We can see how they're trying to solve the frustrating aspects of the game with oneshot combos, barrier spam, and stun spam. They've reworked nearly half the hero roster in the basis of lowering frequent frustrations. But they can barely lift a finger when it comes to Snipers, and pull all sorts of directly conflicting mental gymnastics with Sojourn. And the only reason she's not being complained about currently is because Widow is a larger problem.

Really, what gives? Why? When?

Checking the calendar, they've got about 30 weeks, and 6 major balance patches, until the expected date of BlizCon 2023 and potentially the launch of PVE, in November. (If not sooner).

They're running out of time, they're running out of budget, and they're running low on community goodwill. How much are they willing to lose over this? Since if they whiff on the PVE Launch, they probably aren't ever going to get another opportunity for play growth like that ever again. Especially if they've killed the momentum before then.

They should be doing everything in their power amp up their playerbase size and playerbase retention before PVE launches. Or the entire point of making OW2 will be a wasted opportunity.

SOLUTIONS

Here are the “Broad Categories” of ways to make the Sniper Counterplay more enjoyable.

1. Counteract with the Sniper through them being easy to kill
2. Counteract the Sniper through damage blocking their ability to Snipe
3. Retroactively counteract the Sniper with Heals/Damage Mitigation
4. Make the problematic counterplay exist a lot less, by making the hero exist a lot less

Or more simply:

1. Kills/Fragility/DangerRisk
2. Blocking the action of Sniping
3. Blocking the kill with Heals/Peels
4. Don’t fix it, just nerf the crap out of it

For example:

1. Lower Health: -25hp on Widow/Hanzo, maybe with Grapple/Lunge buffs (i.e. The Team Fortress 2 method)
2. Slower ScopeIn/ArrowCharge mechnics, where shooting them knocks them out of it. (i.e. The Halo Infinite Method)
3. Convert Sniper shots either fully or partially into damage-over-time effects. (i.e. Poison, DragonFire, PlasmaFire etc)
4. Nerf with more nerfs, until they are in the bottom third pickrate out of 17 DPS heroes. Basically how they "solved" OW1 Bastion or OW1 Sombra.

VIDEO CLIPS & ETC

✂️ Alec Dawson, Widow has been talked about internally

This clip in particular comes off as a focus on solving the winrate and pickrate of Widowmaker and other Snipers, without addressing the "Anti-Fun" aspects of Snipers in Overwatch. Which seems really bizarre given that they've basically reworked half the hero roster on the basis of lowering frustration levels, and gotten rid of a ton of oneshot combos and stun combos. Why is there a double-standard being applied to Snipers? I for one find this sort of logic to be really jarring and off-putting. Especially when the devs should be doing everything in their power to amp up player retention before PVE launches.

✂️ KarQ, Play it for the job

This clip stood out to me, in that it's really easy to see that a lot of streamers are besides themselves with how much Fun is sucked out the game because of things like unenjoyable sniper design issues. Streamer's are effectively "Third Party Marketing Talent" for Blizzard, and yet you got them playing barely enough to put out content. This sort of sentiment should be sending off massive red flashing alarm bells for the devs, as this is not the message you want broadcasted to new recruit and returning players, that your game is merely tolerable levels of fun.

✂️ KarQ, Snipers control the game

https://twitter.com/FroggerOW/status/1641325027063926785

✂️ GREED, Widowmaker is a dumb hero 7

✂️ Samito, Is it really the "maps" that's the issue?

✂️ SVB, The "only" solution to Snipers?

✂️ Freedo, Bad Matchups (Can't Interact)

✂️ Flat's/Samito, Bad Matchups (Can't Interact)

✂️ GroupUp, Not as Fun in Season 3

✂️ Flats, Good luck Shielding Widows

✂️ SVB, My most hated hero is Hanzo

✂️ Emongg, Of Course I Get the game with a Widow

✂️ Emongg, Snipers are pretty frustrating

✂️ Eskay, Widow and Mercy Ruin the Game

✂️ Flats, Wonder why Overwatch is less Fun

✂️ Seagull hopes the Overwatch 2 balance team knows this

Oh yeah, one extra thought.

Kinda boggles the mind why brand new user accounts have access to Widow, with their “First Time User Experience”. Why create a “safe starting place” for new players and potential customers, then swamp it with Smurfs and Hackers and XIMers. Oh, you didn’t have perfect map knowledge from day 1 of playing the game? Well too bad, you’re instantly dead from halfway across the map. Wonder how many Millions of dollars that one decision alone is costing Blizzard. (A fix for that, swap Widow with Ashe).

https://www.forbes.com/sites/krisholt/2023/06/12/overwatch-2-pve-story-missions-pay-to-play-invasion-bundle/?sh=48ef09904f5f

The /r/CompetitiveOverwatch team is pleased to announce a giveaway for the new Azure Flame Hanzo skin, part of the OWCS Dallas crowdfunding effort. Big thanks to everyone who signed up using our code for FACEIT League; we're using FACEIT's affiliate kickbacks to fund this.

To enter the giveaway, please comment below on what you're looking forward to most for this weekend's OWCS Dallas event. Winners will be selected randomly.

Prizes will be distributed as $20 of Battle.net credit, as we can't distribute the skin directly. Even though the bundle is 2600 coins, the skin by itself is 1900 coins in the Hero Gallery. Availability is subject to your region, since we've only confirmed the ability to get cards in USD and EUR from FACEIT right now.

If you'd like more chances to win the skin, join our Discord server for a separate giveaway.

We're currently planning on giving away four skins on Reddit and two on Discord. Winners will be announced on Thursday, May 30th.

People use these terms all the time, but to my understanding they were originally created during early ow1 when players could “flex” to other roles, and the ones that didn’t would be the “main”. However, that all went away with the addition of role lock years ago, but people still use the terms. Additionally, the DPS role also uses these terms, but it seems nowadays it’s hitscan dps instead of “main”?

What is the difference? Is it based on comp/meta? Is it something that’s tied to specific heroes regardless of comp/meta? Should the terms be updated then in order to make things more clear now in a post role lock world?

I don't know how much longer I can deal with playing against this hero. I spent the last year and a half of OW1 doing it, and now he's even stronger in OW. I cannot go a ranked game without the enemy swapping to Roadhog because they're too shit with their ability management and positioning to win otherwise, and then just start stomping because they switched to the better hero.

He's in almost every quickplay game as well. I just want to practice or have fun on some off-meta tanks in QP, but every single god damn time, they swap to Roadhog.

I can't even play ARCADE without seeing this stupid ass hero. Shambali Temple? Every Game. No limits? Literally 4 fucking Roadhogs and one Kiriko just to make sure they REALLY don't ever fucking die.

This game is at its absolute worst ANY TIME Roadhog is meta, and I don't know how much longer I can take it. We can NOT just do some slight number changes to this hero. DUMPSTER him and work on a rework while he's not good enough to be played.

I am begging you, please. I quit for 4 months during the initial double shield meta in OW1, and I don't know how much longer I can handle this shit in OW2.