Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
WTF.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA.
Ok, I know this is obviously a bot game vs AI, but….
WTF.
I have shit accuracy. I am a total noob. I’m not familiar with the map at all.
How the hell does this happen?
Then I went to play an actual game with players.
First round: Went via some side route or other (as inferred from seeing other players charge up a central path toward the objective.)
Managed to be fast enough to overtake the objective by a half metre, set up in an unobtrusive corner slightly behind the presumable viewpoint of the opposing team staring straight ahead at the spawn objective.
They had no chance at all.
First round won.
Second round: One or two opposing team players switched to Reinhardt. The frontal barrier shield puzzled me a bit and I spent a little way too long a time dicking around out of turret form trying to reposition and figure out how to get around behind them and failing and totally ignoring the team fight and objective, while the opposing team sat on it.
Second round lost.
Final round: Decided not to play Reinhardt’s game any longer. Remembered during trying out all the heroes’ skills on the practice map that the frontal shield only has 2000 health. Turreted up a nice long distance away, held down the left mouse button while aiming in the general vicinity of the big blue glowing rectangle thing sitting on the spawn.
Another Bastion on my team did the same thing. Two Reinhardts on the opposing team = no more shield, then dead.
Our team moved in onto the capture point. I de-turreted and went around the sides again, looking for a nice angle on a completely unfamiliar map. Found a cute side room whose only entry seemed to be nearer our team than theirs. Had a decent enough side view of the capture point. Finished off about 3-4 people that were dumb enough to move into my sight line aka on the capture point, while the other five members of my team destroyed those that didn’t dare get on said capture point for obvious reasons.
After that game, I uninstalled Overwatch.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. It’s got that super well-polished Blizzard look all over it.
I was deeply impressed by the very guided tutorial, which really assumes the person playing it is completely new to FPSes and may need some adjustment time with getting familiar with the controls and so on.
After that, you get to play around in a little private Practice Range map to shoot bots (literally robots) and have friendly bots to test out all your skills on. You learn about Hero Swapping and have all the time in the world to try out every Hero’s skill in blissful peace and quiet.
(Albeit, the map closed on me once because I stayed too long, and I had to start it again.)
This is worlds apart from trying to learn MOBA hero skills from either watching a video or having to be in a serious business game lasting 45 minutes where your teammates will rip you apart for being noobtastic.
Then you can ramp up to something less potentially hostile and 100% cooperative by going up as a player team against a set of bots, or Practice vs AI.
Which I think it is a GREAT idea… except a little HAHAHAHAHAHAHA WTF HAHAHAHA in practice. See above.
I suppose they were easy bots or something. Who knows. I was yolo solo-queuing by just hitting the Practice vs AI button.
After which, I presume it’s vs other players time, and/or ramping up AI difficulty in some way that wasn’t obvious on first glance.
Given how lethal every hero appears to be capable of being, I suppose Blizzard decided to err on the side of generosity by ramping up the chance that everyone will get at least partial “wins” by scoring some kills here and there, even if their team loses.
However, this may be at odds with the snowball mechanic of MOBAs or some such. Apparently, it’s less fun to be on the losing team’s side because you end up with one or two men down, and promptly keep losing from being outgunned and outflanked or whatever.
I dunno. I was busy playing Bastion.
Now, I’m -sure- Bastion has counters, as more skilled players would tell you. I’ve been a TF engineer, my turret and I have been outplayed countless times by skillful medics.
Apparently the Widowmaker can snipe Bastion to death from really far away (presuming not noob player with good aim), Genji can reflect a Bastion to autokill themselves (counter = recognize a Genji and don’t freaking shoot until the skill is over), etc.
I’ve been on the receiving end of a Reinhardt charge and pinned against the wall and shotgunned to death (during the lost round in which my positioning was very very bad.) Not fun.
I hear Roadhog can do a Pudge and meathook a turreted Bastion into his waiting arms of insta-death.
Is it going to take a little while for newbie players to realize this? Yep.
Is it still going to be possible for a thinking Bastion or Torbjorn to outwit many of the casual players out there? I’m guessing, YEP.
Is Blizzard going to nerf Bastion a teeny bit more because it seems quite ludicrously OP compared to other heroes? A qualified maybe-yep.
(I heard some guy on Reddit went up against a pre-made team of 4 Bastions and 2 Reinhardts. I laughed my ass off on reading that team composition.)
Is Bastion still going to be playable and enjoyable post-nerf? Is it possible to learn a bunch of other heroes to counter Bastion? Is it still going to be possible to play and position Bastion skillfully to out-counter the counterers? Probably all of the above, yep.
But you know, I realize that I don’t have the patience nor the time for it, personally.
It feels a little like I’ve done this before, with Team Fortress, and TF has a bit more of that jump-in, jump-out, soloqueue, play your own minigame fun, as opposed to the small team, very objective-focused, MOBA-like teamfight style of Overwatch, where team synergies are likely what you’d want to focus on at higher levels of play.
If you had a team of friends to get together and knock out a few rounds while voice coordinated, sure, yeah, it’s probably a little more fun like that. (Then again, MANY other games would be a little more fun like that.)
I’m especially NOT paying $40 USD or more for the privilege of jumping in to casual play a few rounds here and there for kicks.
$20 USD, maybe. I’d buy it if/when it ever goes on half-price or free to play.
I mean, TF2 is free to play. Dota 2 is free to play. League of Legends is free to play. That’s their competition right there.
It’s a little bit of a shame because the polish could knock your socks off, the heroes all feel pretty unique and cute; if you were a play-all-the-things player, you’d have a really fun learning curve mastering each hero; many of the heroes all feel like they’ve stolen a little bit from MOBAs or other FPSes here and there (a pudge meathook, an enigma black hole pull, dwarf turret playbook is nearly a dead ringer for the TF engineer, etc.) and it’ll be interesting to see how players put them together in new and surprising ways…
… but um… there’s probably still a few more balancing passes and iterations to go in order to make sure that a few heroes aren’t overwhelmingly favored over everything else…
…and ultimately, it’s me. I’m playing too many other games, most of them free or already with initial outlays paid for, to have 1-3 hours a night to commit to Overwatch. So… why should I pay $40 USD for a game I have no time to play just yet?
Does not compute.
I’d give one thing to Blizzard though. They got me to download the Battle.net Launcher. It is a super-slick well-polished affair like pretty much all their other games. Which are conveniently displayed in super-slick fashion in a vertical row screaming “Play Me For Free” or “Try It For Free.”
I already downloaded Diablo 3 to give it a spin. Cute. Also another thing I actually have no time to sit through a long story for, but maaaybe, if it ever goes on 50% sale ever ever again.
I have been waiting for a cheaper Starcraft 2 for eons. All three of the chapters are finally out now. Some kind of battlechest bundle can’t be much farther away. Maybe 2017 or 2018… In the meantime, I could actually ‘try it for free.’
No doubt, I will take Heroes of the Storm out for a free spin too at some point.
(Already messed around with Hearthstone on the Android phone. Meh. It’s a card game. It makes money off selling the promise of power/options in card packs. Standard schtick.)
So the only thing I probably WILL be keeping for now is the launcher and the Battle.net account. The rest can wait for another day, far far ahead in the future. That’s probably already a win in Blizzard’s book.
Why I Game 