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.
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.