But it’s a problem in single-player games too. If I’m losing a game in Marvel Snap I can retreat and I won’t lose as much rank, but if I have a challenge to play cards in the last turn, I have to see it through to the end, even when I know I’m going to lose. In these instances I have two competing objectives – win the game or play a six-cost card. When you’re playing as though you’re trying to do something other than win, you’re engaging in deviant play. Games should not encourage this, yet almost all of them
I also finally understand why people give a shit about these characters beyond their battle abilities . I feel a kinship with Junkrat. He’s a wildcard, like Charlie in Always Sunny. He’s just a silly little guy, and I love him for it. I’m going to read up on his story before I dive back in tonight – I never thought I’d do that for any hero shooter. I couldn’t even count how many heroes there were, and Junkrat has made me hopeful I’ll find more I love, but if I don’t, I’ll happily main this wacky pyromaniac until he runs out of li
Challenges also incentivize deviant play, which creates a negative game experience. In team games, this means pursuing goals that are different from the rest of your team. The stated objective of the game – get the most kills, score the most goals, capture the most objectives, ect. – may not align with the goals of each individual player. We’ve all seen (and been) the player ignoring the objective while trying to sniper headshots because we had a challenge for it. Both teams suffer when players are asked to do something different than the game’s objective, but the person messing up the game for everyone else is getting rewarded for
Having one tank in Overwatch has made support a complete nightmare, and it’s made some tanks completely redundant in certain modes. I’ve been playing a lot more Mercy, finding it helpful on defense especially as I flutter from teammate to teammate, frantically keeping them alive while they fend off the enemy’s push. But all it takes to stop that is a Zarya toggling her shield, walking right through all of them, killing me, and then strutting back to safety. The lone tank is busy holding the line and the DPS are busy killing the enem
On payload and other defend-and-attack maps, shield-based tanks are now the best bet, leaving other picks less viable. It’s much harder to defend your team with a hook and some healing juice, but that’s no fault of tanks like Roadhog – they’re not meant to be the defenders, they’re there to draw aggro and punish lone wolves. It can still work playing offense-based tanks with the right player, but it takes a lot of skill, and that means lower-ranked matches are a headache. You have to know how to push, stay alive, and defend the team all at once, and failing that brings everyone down. Throw in a damage-focused healer and you have a constant stream of marching into the line of fire and then sitting in spectate waiting to respawn. There’s a reason team kills have become frequent enough to warrant their own challen
With so many flocking to the game now it’s free, the cracks are starting to show. I don’t know if we’ll see 6v6 return – at least, not in quick play and competitive – but whittling down the team size by gutting a tank has made Overwatch 2 inherently imbalanced, and no amount of hero tweaks will patch up the h
Does anyone actually enjoy doing daily challenges in games? I for one resent logging in to play and finding a list of chores to do. Even trivial challenges – something I would accomplish through normal play – rub me the wrong way. I don’t know what I’m more upset about: that someone invented such an anti-player progression system, or that every developer in the world took one look at it and said “Yep, that’s good enough for
Challenges do not make games better, and the designers know that just as well as we do. When a game asks you to get three kills with a sniper rifle or win matches with a specific character, it isn’t trying to increase your enjoyment or help you improve. Challenges are nothing by hollow engagement boosters designed to increase player retention. Someone at the top of the ladder needs to see an increase in hours played month-over-month, and the fastest and dirtiest way to do that is to coerce players to complete daily challen
Imagine Rocket League, but the cars are Lúcios, and you get the idea. You have to boop your way through the stadium and push the ball with your gun (or fist), and score a goal against the enemy team with the gigantic ball. It’s a nice change of pace, being rather different compared to most game mo
With Overwatch 2, we finally got a new mode with Wrath of The Bride, where we play with Sojourn, Ashe, Junker Queen, and Kiriko as we venture through the map and face new challenges, which is a good refresher for the second-oldest event in the g
On the other side of things, playing against one tank is even more of a chore because both healers are now focused on the same tank, rather than dividing their heals between two. Take Orissa. She can buff herself and deflect damage, all while Mercy and Moira both keep her health full, meaning that it’s much harder to take her down. If you lose track of other players and focus too much on that singular tank, the enemy DPS can easily swoop in and pick you off. It’s all much harder to play for both sides, but the solution is sitting in the first game – adding a second tank. Overwatch 2 achievements|https://overwatch2tactics.com/ was designed for two of each role and it shows; pulling one away has completely disrupted the way it fl
