An Overwatch design concept - Decisions or Mechanics?

Core Design

There’s been a lot of talk in the Overwatch community on what the developers wanted, about what they expected and how things have played out during release.  The hottest of these topics currently is the idea of hero swapping, counters, one tricks, and how Overwatch was designed around it.  How this “core idea” must be followed and if it isn’t then according to the masses you’re not playing Overwatch correctly. 

The problem I have with the “core idea” of counter picking is that there is very little follow through displaying it. While it’s true that some heroes have an advantage over others, it’s been shown that its nowhere near the absolute need to change your hero.  We’ve all won games with a disadvantageous matchup where you “should” lose.  Furthermore, a majority of changes in the game have been made opposite of this “core idea”.  Bastion, Symettra, Torbjorn, Junkrat, Reaper and Pharah have all changed so that they are more effective in overall combat rather than making them stronger in a niche.  Partially because niche heroes are a flawed concept, there are only weak heroes and strong ones.  No one would pick a hero that’s good in 30% of a map when you can pick someone who’s good in 70% of the map.  Even within that 30% of the map where a hero is strong they can still lose or even worse!  With multiple ways to attack each point, you can dodge where a hero is strong.  Completely bypassing any sort of niche strength a hero has.

Clearly versatility is key, blizzard’s words may have not backed this up but their actions in changing the game have.  If niche heroes are being moved away from; as are counters, then surely hero swapping as a core design is being moved away from as well.  Don’t get me wrong, It’s an important concept but it’s not core.  This may just be a guess, but the community is confusing counter picks with the most important design idea in Overwatch which is simply.

“To make a FPS genre game that is accessible to everyone”

Now this is a core design element.  This is something that is decided before the first hero was created, before the first map thought about.  An idea that is easily marketable with the focus on accessibility to all skill levels.  It’s clear and concise.  It’s beautiful.  It is an idea that flows within all heroes and maps.  Its ingrained in Overwatch to such a point that everyone talks of it unknowingly.  How so?

An attack on skill.

I’ve been playing FPS games for 20 years now, I’ve seen a lot come and go.  I’ve tried to get friends to join and build communities around each game, but the FPS genre is difficult to get into.  It’s very intimidating, even players that get into it for a bit are soon to quit, the reason?  Skill.

The raw mechanical ability to quickly and precisely attack instantly will put a lot of gamers off once they start to see the upper limits of the professionals.  Most play enough to keep their skill at an average level but never climb.  They’ll watch the game, talk about it but never play as well as they believe they can.  This skill requirement was an iron clad rule of the FPS genre, until Overwatch. 

Overwatch is attempting to do something no other FPS has succeeded in doing at a fundamental level.  Making decision making as important, if not more important than mechanical ability.  Don’t get me wrong- at the highest levels, like all skills in life, decision making is more important because your raw mechanical ability is at the point that you don’t have to worry about it.  A talented pianist doesn’t put much thought into pressing each key. Rather, they think about the emotion of the song and how to use their individual technique to highlight the aspects of their music. However, this ability to weigh decision making so heavily is only a privilege gained by those who have the fundamental mechanics mastered. No amount of decision making will make it easier for you to run faster; only dedicated time and effort will bring that.

However, Overwatch leverages decision making with the introduction of abilities into the genre.  Near all abilities in Overwatch are more about when you use them, not your ability to use them.  Like roadhog’s hook, genji’s deflect, junkrat’s mine, mei’s wall.  These abilities are large, easy to use abilities where your ability to aim them is not nearly as important as when or where you use them.  More to the point, all ultimates are easy to use. Most auto-aim and simply require you pressing a button at the correct time or in the correct position. 

This design allows players with low mechanical skill to play with those of higher skill levels.  How brilliant!  You may not be able to aim as good as your best friend, but you can heal him, or hold a shield in front of him.  You allow him to do his job easier with decision based abilities, not skill based mechanics.  It also allows players that couldn’t touch top levels of other FPS games in the past a way to climb effortlessly with a decision based hero.  Simply press a button and do what you’ve never been able to do before!

This isn’t the limit of this concept.  We can add other heroes into the pool with varying degrees of decision/mechanical ability needed.  Head-shotting can be difficult for newer and older players alike, but a decision based headshot would fix this issue, such as scatter shot.  Now everyone can feel like a sniper without the mechanical ability needed.  It’s a brilliant way to bring in everyone to play a FPS, no matter what type of hero you want to play there will be multiple versions of it with varying degrees of mechanical and decision skill needed.  This allows for a larger hero pool naturally, so future growth is set.

Decisions may be great, but this is still a FPS.  There needs to be a skill you can tangibly get better at to prove your worth against other players. There must be some metric to facilitate the kind of competitive environment that Overwatch so badly wants.  The game has introduced some notion of this concept of mechanical skill via the primary weapon.  The strongest way to define a player’s mechanical skill is how consistent they are with the hero’s primary weapon.  This allows for the competitive nature that is in a FPS game to exist.  With that said, some abilities do require some degree of aiming which allows for players to grow and show off there as well.

Now begins the issue with decision based gaming, or the perceived decision based nature that is Overwatch.  With the subtle push of decision over skill most players now believe that nearly everything is decision based.  We’ve all seen it before, “If we only had hero X instead of hero Y” “we could have won if we attacked right” or the angry comments “our X decided not to do their job so we lost”.  As if every game can be won purely on decisions, how absurd!  Never do players say “the enemy team was more skilled”, “They did a good job shutting X down”, “I can’t play X, can we run something else”. 

We’ve all started to believe that every game is winnable through decisions alone.  That skill is a non-factor.  It’s to the point that no one asks what someone’s skillset is before demanding what heroes should be played.  Not everyone can play all the heroes in the game at the same level.  That is not expected at the professional nor bronze levels of play but the community has the tendency to scream and lash out as if some players decided to lose the game because of this disagreement.

The community believes that decisions matter more to such a point that if you run certain heroes into another, you’re deciding to lose instead of understanding that they simply weren’t skilled enough.

Maybe Overwatch was created for everyone a little too much.  Focusing on decisions brought a lot of new players to the genre, most wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for this concept.  With decisions being king and Overwatch being for everyone there comes an issue that is impossible to avoid.  What if someone is simply better than you?  If it was a wrong decision, that can be corrected and you’ll win next time.  What if someone is mechanically better than you?  You simply cannot win, unless, there are heroes that directly attack a player’s mechanics.

Every hero in the game has advantageous and disadvantageous matchups based on their kit.  Looking carefully, you’ll notice nearly all advantageous/disadvantageous matchups are based on decision type abilities that limit the mechanical ability of another player.  The common ones are Winston against genji, Phara against junkrat, McCree against tracer, mobile heroes against snipers, shotguns against tanks.  There are multiple examples of this in Overwatch where a hero has a decision based advantage over another’s mechanical based skill.  This is fine until we forget about skill and favor decisions blindly. 

The idea of hero switching and “counters” is nothing more than an attempt at allowing lesser skilled players a chance at beating higher skilled players based on decisions.

Some see it as a good example of game design.  I see it as an easy excuse for poor balancing, an excuse to control a player that's too skilled.  For example, you encounter a skilled tracer and lose.  If you go to the forums and ask around the answer you’ll get is as easy as “pick their counters”, ta-da, instant balance.  I’m sure we’ve all seen the response of “just pick X” to deal with an issue.  Suggesting that skill doesn’t matter, just your decision on who to play.  We’ve believed in this decision over skill concept so hard is that we forget at the highest levels you can be skilled enough to overcome the “counter” obstacles.    

Everyone has to see the reality is that a good widow can take out mobile heroes, genji has often won against Winston, a tracer can easily kill a McCree.  It takes a good deal of skill but it is possible and the rewards are monumental.  If you have the ability to force out multiple heroes with one pick, then your team has the advantage in hero selection.  If that one hero can now play against those tough matchups then you’ve won the game simply from the enemy over allocating resources on one hero that’s still doing damage.  Millions of dollars will be won in Overwatch from this concept alone, thousands already have.

The community cannot fall into the complacent idea that we’re all good at Overwatch.  Too many players believe they can make good decisions but play poorly.  The truth is you do need mechanical skill and it’s more important than decision making.  It’s great that Overwatch works at all levels of play but the community has to understand at the highest levels anything is possible with enough skill.  If Bisu “The Revolutionist” from broodwar proves how far a community and a player must go to find an acceptable answer then It will take all of us exploring each hero on each map with multiple tactics for years before we can even conceive the idea of a “right” way to play it.  In a few years we’ll all look back and laugh at how we played.