The State of Competitive Overwatch
The current competitive system works as follows: at the start of each season, you complete 10 placement matches, which allows the system to place you in a tier where it feels you belong, based on your placement match results and one's matchmaking rating (MMR). Typically you will get placed slightly lower than where you finished the previous season, if it wasn't your first. The most likely reason for this is to give an individual incentive to push to get up to their previous mark and beyond. Within the first number of matches one's skill rating (SR) will increase faster with wins to try and get you to where you belong quickly. In an ideal world, as you get better at the game, your rank will increase.
First, let's start with the good. The mode is, in fact, competitive. I do find myself challenged and some of the matches I'm in are exciting and have you at the edge of your seat. Some of my teammates are active in the chat and encouraging others. Some teammates are willing to be flexible in hero selection and will help round out a solid composition.
To a degree, I think your SR rating does reflect your skill level, however, there always seem to be a number of matches that feel out of your control, regardless of how well you play. Sometimes you get teammates that are throwing games or leaving early to lose SR. Sometimes you get players trolling, throwing up Mei walls in spawn. Finally, and sometimes most frustrating, you will have all of your teammates that refuse to be flexible with hero choices. I'd like to dive into each of these individually.
Throwing games or leaving early. Let's first start by saying that Overwatch is a completely team based game. To lose a teammate is everything. It puts you at such a significant disadvantage, that your chances of winning drops somewhere close to zero, as long as the other team is relatively competent. My question to anyone that participates in this act is, "What's the point?" You are in a rank because your skill level has put you there. Why would you play competitive, if you didn't want the games to be competitive? It can be really frustrating, especially if you have been on a losing streak. So, what can be done about this? Well... Blizzard has built in penalties, such as higher SR reductions if you don't finish the game, as well as the new reporting system. Both additions help, but ultimately it still occurs. It is difficult to find a solution that would cure this, as any additional penalties would either be too harsh or non impacting. You could severely increase the SR loss or time ban, but you may push players away. Some players, myself included, have lost connection and if I were to be banned for an extended period of time, I would be discouraged. Ultimately, I think by creating a better environment to make players less frustrated may be the only viable solution.
Trolling is also baffling to me. Again, why are you playing a competitive mode if you are trying to throw the game? I think the new report system has helped out with this issue. I haven't seen it occurring as often and hope that it continues.
Team chat. This is a team game that involves communication, especially to line up ultimate use, target prioritization and even during team composition building. Don't you love when you have a Zenatta in a 2-stack that hasn't joined team chat? Which enemy is discorded? Who knows... Or maybe a Sombra that pops her ultimate willy-nilly? A simple solution is to force everyone into team chat during competitive matches. There are mute functions if you get annoyed with a teammate or he or she is showing toxic behavior. If you play competitive Overwatch, you should want to be in team chat, even if you do not have a mic of your own. Even listening to when others are going to use ultimates or which target they are prioritizing is a huge advantage.
Team flexibility. This is probably my biggest pet peeve. If you play competitive, you must want to win, right? In order to win, each team must build a viable composition. The key term here is "viable composition." This does not mean that someone cannot be Hanzo or Torbjorn or Widowmaker. That's not what I'm getting at. What it means is that a team composition should include certain key pieces, such as at least one healer and at least one tank. Some other examples, would be choosing a hitscan character if the opposing team has a Pharah or having a shield tank if the opposition has a Widowmaker or Hanzo. I cannot tell you on how many occasions I have had all of my teammates choose DPS and defense characters, and have left my having to choose between if we need a tank or healer. Before the game has started you already feel like you can put one in the loss column. How could we combat this? There have been individuals that have suggested a role select. That could work, having players identify two roles they wish to play as. This way you don't get a team of all DPS or mercy mains. This would allow for more balance. However, Blizzard doesn't seem interested in the idea, nor are they even a huge fan of their own categories. Another option could be to use hours logged on a character to be included in the matchmaking algorithm, so that players can be grouped up according to what they would most likely play. The issue here is that players like to be diverse and explore the use of different characters to keep the game new.
I do like the idea of role select, but I would like for it to be something that could be changed on any given day. I think in all likelihood, Blizzard would need to take a deeper look at the categories and re-arrange them before they could add a role select. My thought, is that they could get rid of the defense category and split those heroes accordingly, depending on their skill set (see the chart below for my re-arrangement). They could also split up healers from other support characters. Should Symmetra be in the same category as Mercy? I don't think so. The type of support Symmetra provides is very different from the type of support a healer provides. For example, I think Symmetra has a closer role to that of Torbjorn, than that of Ana.
From the menu, this is how the system could work: when you select competitive to find a game their could be a menu where you can select the role you wish to play during that given match. Matchmaking would be flexible, but would include at least one healer role, one tank role and one offensive role. This way, matches would be more competitive now that you have a team that is composed of a viable composition.
Competitive Overwatch is still extremely fun to play, but there are clear improvements that can be made by Blizzard to make the game mode more competitive and less frustrating. Hopefully they will reveal some new changes at BlizzCon. Let me know what your thoughts are on competitive mode and what you think of my solutions discussed!
| Pesonal Overwatch Hero Categories | |||
| Offense | Tank | Healer | Support |
| Domfist | D. Va | Ana | Sombra |
| Genji | Orisa | Mercy | Symmetra |
| McCree | Reinhardt | Lucio | Mei |
| Pharah | Winston | Zenyatta | Torbjorn |
| Reaper | Zarya | ||
| Soldier: 76 | Roadhog | ||
| Tracer | |||
| Bastion | |||
| Hanzo | |||
| Junkrat | |||
| Widowmaker | |||
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