Overwatch: HYPETRAIN HAS LEFT THE STATION Spring 2016 Release Confirmed!

[Mr.Moron]

I've heard people complain about Heroes of the Storm match making but this is something else. I must be like 4-24 at this point. I get I suck, but could you maybe stick with people who suck just as much? The appeal of blizzard games has always been accessibility and the being able to have a solid play experience with other players of your skill level regardless of what that is. I'm so not getting this from this game. I spend more time dead than alive and I'm lucky to get 1 kill for every 10 times I die.

I've never had more of curb-stomp-chain play experience in any game than I'm having here.

[AgentPaper]

I've heard people complain about Heroes of the Storm match making but this is something else. I must be like 4-24 at this point. I get I suck, but could you maybe stick with people who suck just as much? The appeal of blizzard games has always been accessibility and the being able to have a solid play experience with other players of your skill level regardless of what that is. I'm so not getting this from this game. I spend more time dead than alive and I'm lucky to get 1 kill for every 10 times I die.

I've never had more of curb-stomp-chain play experience in any game than I'm having here.

Try out different heroes. Aside from that, note that making the matchmaker work is exactly what this beta is for, so just make sure to note it when a match or particular player is bad.

[Olinser]

I've heard people complain about Heroes of the Storm match making but this is something else. I must be like 4-24 at this point. I get I suck, but could you maybe stick with people who suck just as much? The appeal of blizzard games has always been accessibility and the being able to have a solid play experience with other players of your skill level regardless of what that is. I'm so not getting this from this game. I spend more time dead than alive and I'm lucky to get 1 kill for every 10 times I die.

I've never had more of curb-stomp-chain play experience in any game than I'm having here.

It has to start you somewhere. Given that it literally JUST came out, there are an awful lot of people that the matchmaker is trying to place. So it has started everybody out at their best guess at 'average'.

If you are extremely far below the average its going to take a while to actually get down to your true skill level.

I mean, not to put too fine a point on it, but they're trying not to tank you all the way to the bottom too fast, even if you are that bad.

[Mr.Moron]

Try out different heroes. Aside from that, note that making the matchmaker work is exactly what this beta is for, so just make sure to note it when a match or particular player is bad.

I have been doing all those things. I actually really like the end of match feedback tools. I'd other love to seem them ported into their other titles. However they're gonna tune this thing to be much more responsive. I get it's a beta and that's why I'm powering through, but this thing is scheduled for launch in just a few months! I might expect this kind of experience from a game 10-12 months out from launch but being this close to retail while still only being able to offer players like me a near-permanent view of the "Kill Cam" is kind of disconcerting.

SC, HoTs & Hearthstone all found a place for me pretty quickly (Silver League, Rank 30 and Rank 19-18 respectively), this game is putting me in the grinder and keeping me there. It's really tough.

[Ionbound]

So, I figured out the counter to Bastion: Reaper. Jesus christ Reaper. Especially when there's two of them.

[ChaosOS]

Developer update: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKG8Yx6F7uc

TL;DW: Future Heroes and Maps to be free, More audio options incoming, Killfeed coming, Improvements to other score screen items coming.

[Ionbound]

Oh thank god, on all of those fronts. That's awesome.

[Mr.Moron]

Developer update: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKG8Yx6F7uc

TL;DW: Future Heroes and Maps to be free, More audio options incoming, Killfeed coming, Improvements to other score screen items coming.

Neat. I always suspected they'd be going in this direction. That said I do think the game could have lived through payed hero updates, despite so many folks being worried about it. Though the free model does give them a bit more freedom in doing that. I suppose it's a non-issue now.

Side Note: Was does Jeff Kaplan always sound like he's about to break down in tears?

[Seerow]

Developer update: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKG8Yx6F7uc

TL;DW: Future Heroes and Maps to be free, More audio options incoming, Killfeed coming, Improvements to other score screen items coming.

I'm curious how long development will continue without selling heroes/maps or a sub fee. Like the money to keep making new heroes/maps has to come from somewhere.

[ChaosOS]

I'm curious how long development will continue without selling heroes/maps or a sub fee. Like the money to keep making new heroes/maps has to come from somewhere.

Skins most likely.

[ChaosOS]

http://us.battle.net/overwatch/en/bl...ary-9-2-3-2016

Beta starts back up Feb 9th, with 2 new maps, a new game mode, balance changes, progression system, and more!

[ChaosOS]

BETA ONLINE! Invites are going out as we speak, check your battle.net accounts! (Emails tend to be delayed a bit)

Patch notes: http://us.battle.net/forums/en/overw...ic/20742184292

[Legoshrimp]

It seems like I am in (it is letting me DL it at least.)

[ChaosOS]

I also got in!

[AgentPaper]

Welcome to the club! Just downloaded and checked the patch notes. Huge changes to Bastion and Torbjorn, will be interesting to see how it all plays out but the changes look promising.

Unhappy to see Reinhardt's ultimate nerfed so heavily, especially when it already felt pretty hard to hit people with it already. The damage nerf I can understand, though. That said, with way ultimates charge up passively instead of when you take damage now means that Reinhardt (who would before be using his shield and thus not taking or dealing a ton of damage usually) can use his ultimate more often, so perhaps this way you won't feel like you have to get so much out of every use compared to before (where if you didn't wipe 3+ enemies with it, felt like you'd wasted your ult).

[ChaosOS]

The other change is you can turn while casting, so if people are trying to juke you can ensure the hit

[AgentPaper]

The other change is you can turn while casting, so if people are trying to juke you can ensure the hit

Sure, and that's nice, but not being able to turn was never really a big deal. The ability casts quickly enough that by the time your opponents can react, they're probably already stunned. It does lessen the pain a bit by letting you turn to hit someone who would have been in your arc pre-nerf though.

[ChaosOS]

PATCH NOTES!

http://us.battle.net/forums/en/overw...ic/20742334760

TL;DR

Bastion and Torbjorn Nerfs

D.Va buffs

Small Mei buff

Voice line spam nerfed

Bug/exploit fixes

[ChaosOS]

Although I realize that nobody is actually in the beta, a round of balance changes was patched in today: http://us.battle.net/forums/en/overw...ic/20742644653

[AgentPaper]

I'm still in, and concerned about the nerfs to Lucio and Genji. Lucio I can accept was probably a bit strong, but this nerf seems to over-do it a bit. Genji I felt was already in a good place, so even less sure about that, but will be interested to see how things shake out.

[ChaosOS]

Genji was proving to be overly strong when paired with Orb of Harmony, which is why he ate a nerf. I think mitigating his need for orb of harmony by shifting some of his HP to shields would be a good buff, since right now a lot of Genji's power comes from his strong harass-disengage-heal plan that's enabled by the orb of harmony regen

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Yet Another MOBA... really, Blizzard? LOL wasn't enough for you?

Pass. For all the many and varied flaws inherent in the MOBA genre that wasn't addressed and apparently seen as 'features' rather than 'glaring problems'. Eh, maybe it's just the genre itself that is flawed. I don't care anymore.

[AgentPaper]

Yet Another MOBA... really, Blizzard? LOL wasn't enough for you?

Pass. For all the many and varied flaws inherent in the MOBA genre that wasn't addressed and apparently seen as 'features' rather than 'glaring problems'. Eh, maybe it's just the genre itself that is flawed. I don't care anymore.

Overwatch isn't a MOBA, it's a first-person shooter. A closer parallel would be Team Fortress 2, though it does borrow a few MOBA elements, namely the large (and planned to grow in the future) roster of heroes, the specific roles of each hero (though the roles are not the same ones as in a MOBA), and of course the idea of an "ultimate" ability, which in this case you charge up over the course of the game (basically a long cooldown that you can affect by playing better).

The parallels are much stronger with TF2, though, with short, objective-focused matches between two teams. Even the objectives themselves are similar, with payload, capture point, and king of the hill being very similar to how they work in TF2. And of course stuff like Torbjorn's Turret working a lot like the Engineer's (though aside from that the two are quite different) and more vague comparisons like Zarya/Heavy, Pharah/Soldier, Junkrat/Demoman, Tracer/Scout, etc.

[ChaosOS]

Yet Another MOBA... really, Blizzard? LOL wasn't enough for you?

Pass. For all the many and varied flaws inherent in the MOBA genre that wasn't addressed and apparently seen as 'features' rather than 'glaring problems'. Eh, maybe it's just the genre itself that is flawed. I don't care anymore.

Not only is Overwatch blatantly not a MOBA, it's an FPS, but Riot games makes LoL, Blizzard's MOBA is Heroes of the Storm. The large roster of characters is similar to any other class-based shooter, and the ultimate abilities part is no different from TF2's medic having Ubercharge

[The_Jackal]

Overwatch isn't a MOBA, it's a first-person shooter. A closer parallel would be Team Fortress 2, though it does borrow a few MOBA elements, namely the large (and planned to grow in the future) roster of heroes, the specific roles of each hero (though the roles are not the same ones as in a MOBA), and of course the idea of an "ultimate" ability, which in this case you charge up over the course of the game (basically a long cooldown that you can affect by playing better).

The parallels are much stronger with TF2, though, with short, objective-focused matches between two teams. Even the objectives themselves are similar, with payload, capture point, and king of the hill being very similar to how they work in TF2. And of course stuff like Torbjorn's Turret working a lot like the Engineer's (though aside from that the two are quite different) and more vague comparisons like Zarya/Heavy, Pharah/Soldier, Junkrat/Demoman, Tracer/Scout, etc.

I believe he's thinking of Heroes of the Storm. Which is a MOBA. At any rate, you can't really blame Blizzard for wanting to recapture the genre that they made possible. I'm not a MOBA fan either, my opinion is that it's a dumbed-down RTS, but clearly appealing to the lowest common denominator is a profitable enterprise.

[ChaosOS]

Release info and Open Beta: http://us.battle.net/overwatch/en/blog/20055970 and http://us.battle.net/overwatch/en/bl...ay-24-3-7-2016

TL;DR Releases May 24th, Preorder beta May 3rd and 4th, straight up Open Beta May 5th-9th. Progress will be reset at end of open beta. Both include consoles (XBox One and PS4)

[chainer1216]

So I just preordered the game for PS4, I'd rather have it on PC, but my desktop is junk. Anyone else going to be on PlayStation?

[NeoVid]

Overwatch isn't a MOBA, it's a first-person shooter. A closer parallel would be Team Fortress 2, though it does borrow a few MOBA elements, namely the large (and planned to grow in the future) roster of heroes, the specific roles of each hero (though the roles are not the same ones as in a MOBA), and of course the idea of an "ultimate" ability, which in this case you charge up over the course of the game (basically a long cooldown that you can affect by playing better).

The FPS/MOBA hybrid idea got my attention from the start, because I'm still hoping for something that will be able to take the place of one of my absolute favorite unsuccessful games, Super Monday Night Combat. I haven't been keeping up with Overwatch's development as much as I hoped, despite an attempt to get into the beta. If TF2 is the best comparison, that's good and bad to me... TF2's one of my most played games ever, but I was hoping for something more unusual than another shooter with unique character types.

I'm told there will be a free weekend around launch? If that's true, I can do something crazy and let actually playing it decide my opinion.

[Legoshrimp]

I'm told there will be a free weekend around launch? If that's true, I can do something crazy and let actually playing it decide my opinion.

Don't be silly, Join the hivemind.

[ChaosOS]

The FPS/MOBA hybrid idea got my attention from the start, because I'm still hoping for something that will be able to take the place of one of my absolute favorite unsuccessful games, Super Monday Night Combat. I haven't been keeping up with Overwatch's development as much as I hoped, despite an attempt to get into the beta. If TF2 is the best comparison, that's good and bad to me... TF2's one of my most played games ever, but I was hoping for something more unusual than another shooter with unique character types.

I'm told there will be a free weekend around launch? If that's true, I can do something crazy and let actually playing it decide my opinion.

Open beta is May 5th-9th, progress will be wiped clean for launch. For those of us that have preordered we get early access May 3rd and 4th