Overwatch

Qhue_sl said:

I was actually just thinking: Given that an entire fairly structured community / playstyle has already developed over the course of these two phases of beta anyone who actually buys the game and starts playing on day one is going to be at a severe disadvantage. For those people it is as if they happened to pick up a 6-month old copy of Battlefield or whatever and are jumping into the middle of an already established hierarchy with known strengths / counters / maps etc.

Sure this knowledge deficit can be overcome, but if you are the sort of person who enjoys those early experiences of learning how the whole game works you are SOL by being a paying customer vs. part of the "in-crowd".

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They're changing shit constantly in the beta. At best people who have played more simply know the maps better (mostly for hallway/flank/HP pack locations) and have a better basic understanding of the heroes. But strengths, weaknesses and counters change pretty rapidly.

Also theres hardly anyone in the beta as well. I see literally the same people constantly when I get matched up. It could be an MMR thing but I see the same names constantly. And not just because they're level 100 and live under a neckbeard but even people around my level I see pretty frequently.

Fawe_sl said:

I see a lot of the same people as well and I only play 1-2 hours a day. I think a lot of beta testers aren't FPS fans. They play it a week then quit. This is easy to see when looking at the twitch numbers. They started high and have since dropped off. I like the game but I'm not sure it'll be a top 4 twitch game. Their ranked queue is going to need to be top notch and appeal to the masses to be able to retain numbers.

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Its really, really hard for people to want to watch a game they can't even play. Even if you take into account a ton of LoL/DOTA/SC viewership are people who mostly watch the game versus play but not even having the opportunity to experience the game for yourself I can see as being extremely frustrating for viewers.

Then there is also the issue that people like Seagull just constantly stack and roll uncoordinated newbies. You can only watch that so much. Hopefully in the future he'd have to enter an actual ranked queue but as it stands Seagull pretty much always runs with a full time Mercy and a full time Reinhardt while he plays DPS. So he has all the bases covered and he's playing uncoordinated non-stacks. Its just boring to watch.

Tenks_sl said:

Its really, really hard for people to want to watch a game they can't even play.

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Counterpoint: Hearthstone's beta. The game is so easy to watch that it blew up on Twitch during beta. But Hearthstone is definitely an anomaly being the first digital CCG based on a huge IP.

I wonder if Overwatch's viewership/popularity will spike once it releases.

Either way I think people overvalue twitch viewership. I don't really care how many people like watching the game because it's really, really fun to play. A game can be healthy without an esports/twitch scene.

Tenks_sl said:

Either way I think people overvalue twitch viewership. I don't really care how many people like watching the game because it's really, really fun to play. A game can be healthy without an esports/twitch scene.

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True, I probably overvalue Twitch viewership as I'm one of those casual gamers, watching HotS at night as I cook dinner or wash dishes rather than playing myself. The thing about the esports / twitch scene is that it at least gives something for people (like me) something to aspire to in terms of skill / team coordination.

Watching casted CS:GO I can do but watching a first person stream not so much. The CS:GO spectator client is better and the spectators are better. Possibly because CS:GO is a bit more static. You can see that the T's are swinging into B so you know where the action will likely occur in this scenario and you can observe the rotation of the CT's off from A. But with OW we're still not exactly sure what we need to be looking at and the spectator client does no favors in that regard, either. I think in time once the game is figured out a bit more (eg; Oh they have Reaper on Dorado that means we need to observe this hallway because that is a key Reaper path and action will likely occur between him and the Junkrat defending the entrance) the spectating should be a bit less hectic and confusing.

I also somewhat dislike the ebb and flow if you will of CS:GO. I dislike eco rounds. I get why they occur but as a viewer watching this "throw away" round where the biggest storyline that can occur is someone gets an extra pistol kill isn't horribly exciting to me. I honestly get bored watching CS:GO because it feels like the map is just played on repeat. "T goes to B. T smokes here, flashbangs here, mollys here. Lets see if CT can defend this time." I understand that is an extremely basic analysis of what is going on since I don't actually play competitive CS:GO but I can only watch a few rounds until it feels like it goes on repeat.

And if you use twitch viewership to gauge esports than Hearthstone is an even bigger outlier because no one takes it seriously outside of a twitch streamer game.

Wow my first time ever playing this game in the morning on NA. These players are baaaaaaad at this time. Like just terrible. I was getting 3-4 golds easy because my opponents were equally incompetent but in the end usually my team's incompetence won out to make us lose.

Looks like IGN leaked the release date in an advertisement. May 24th. Open beta starting May 3rd for all pre-orders made before the end of April.

http://imgur.com/U6YrSN1

I wish they'd give the game a bit longer to marinade so they could get things like ranked queue right. Launching Heroes of the Storm without a proper ranking really hurt the long-term viability of the product. Maybe they have a lights out one running internally but to go from "none" to "great" in one patch ... I'm skeptical.

They need to just start letting pre-orders in the beta. That would help balancing plans.

Hekotat_sl said:

They need to just start letting pre-orders in the beta. That would help balancing plans.

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I would have pre-ordered if they would let me into beta. Lords know why they aren't doing it.

Araxen_sl said:

I would have pre-ordered if they would let me into beta. Lords know why they aren't doing it.

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Would probably be more people than they're ready to take on. They've already said they regret calling it a beta instead of an alpha.

They need to nut up, it's fucking Blizzard, they have to cash flow and resources to tackle a few million players for beta.