(AfroGamers.com) Recently, Blizzard’s hit free to play game, Overwatch 2, started its new season. As someone who put a lot of hours into the original game and now Overwatch 2, I think that it is safe to say that there are some problems with it, especially at the bronze to gold experience levels. Here are some of the biggest downfalls when it comes to playing at these levels.
Strange Matchmaking
From what I see on streams and hear from the few times that I turn on my microphone, the Overwatch 2 matchmaking is not good at all. At the levels that I am at, I tend to just click the flex role button and wait for about 30 seconds before I get into a game. Most of the time, I get into the support role and a few times into the tank role. Never the DPS role because the wait is usually more than 5 minutes, and I don’t want to wait that long.
The more that I play the game, I start to think that I would be willing to wait 5 minutes if the matchmaking was better. From what I see, I tend to have the same experience as most people have. I like to call it either-or matchmaking. This means that either you are going to steamroll the other team, or you are about to get steamrolled. There is rarely an in between where the games are competitive. It isn’t about winning or losing these games, its about being competitive and having the right level of difficulty for your level.
I think that this is a combination of the game’s strange ranking system and their outrageous wait times. With the ranking system, I’ve talked to a lot of people at my level that constantly have the same experience when it comes to the ranking system. It is typically very inconsistent when it comes to ranking up or down. You need to win five games before you can get a new evaluation. There are times that I got 5-1 and stay the same rank and there have been times that I went 5-3 and went up and also, I went 5-2 and went down. There is no consistency, and the reason why it is like that is not explained very well.
I know that the quality of the games go hand in hand with the wait times, but it sucks to get into a group with other players, wait ten minutes to get into a match only to steamroll the other team in five minutes or get destroyed in four minutes and do the process all over again. I like the low wait time in the support role, but I would be willing to wait longer if I get better games as the outcome but if not, I would keep it the same way. At least I get to play the game.
Lack of Game Knowledge
In the ranks that I tend to float around in the game, I understand that I am playing with a lot of newer players and players that just aren’t as good as the better players. Even though it gets frustrating at times, I don’t mind because I know what comes with the rank that I am at.
I think that the biggest issue that I have at my rank is that there are a lot of players that just don’t understand the basics of the roles. The character that you choose is irrelevant. Of course, you want to know the ins and outs of the character that you pick but the goals for the role that you play are all the same no matter what character you pick.
Many games that I get into, you see strange character picks, which I am fine with, but there is a point that you must count your losses and switch to a character that you know how to play with. One of the many reasons why games at my level go bad is because instead of going to quickplay to learn how to play a character then putting them to the test in competitive, they come straight to competitive to try a new character while other players are seriously trying to grind and level up.
While this is rarely the reason why I lose games, it adds to it many times. Something that I noticed is that Overwatch 2 does not have a proper in-game training system that goes through the ins and outs of each role, what they are supposed to do, and how they are supposed to be played.
Because of this, many players at my level probably go to outside sources like Twitch or YouTube to figure out how to play the game. This is a good tool to use and I also look at a lot of Overwatch content creators too. The difference is that I can look at a streamer like Flats and realize that I am not that. What he is doing and his level of knowledge about the game are completely different from what I can do now. Instead of watching to emulate, I watch to pick apart and implement aspects of his game into the way that I play to have fun.
A fix to this, even though I know Blizzard wouldn’t do this because they don’t want to make players feel bad, would be to force players to either win a certain number of games with a character before you can join competitive or just make a training system that you must complete before you can join. I cannot tell you the number of times that I have been frustrated by a tank not understanding that two supports cannot out heal the damage of five characters targeting only you and to find some cover or a DPS pinging that they need healing only for me to find that they are behind two walls on a high ground.
Social Disconnect
One of the biggest downfalls of the low rank in Overwatch is probably the saddest because the few times that it is good, I remind me of why a game like this is great. Most of the time that I play, there is no one in voice chat. To be honest, it is probably for the best because whenever someone does have a mic, it is usually to boss someone around or to tell them how much they suck or to change into the character that they want them to play.
In chat, the biggest thing that you see is some kind of “diff” which means that the reason why your team is winning or losing is because of a certain “diff” like saying support diff when you are losing means that the other team’s support is so much better than your support that it is the reason why your team is losing.
A personal experience of this from me happened earlier this week when a Sombra player tried to say that the reason why we were losing the game was because of a support diff. Usually, I at least try to see if that is valid and identify the reason why we were losing. What I found was that three and a half minutes into an attack phase on Numbani, our Sombra player had 800 damage. When looking at the supports (we had a Moria and I was Baptise), our healing numbers were about 2000 less than the other team’s support combined, but we had a Wrecking Ball as our tank that came back to us to get healed and an Ashe that we kept healed. The only one that complained about the healing was the character that we shouldn’t have to worry about healing because they can hack health packs, go invisible, and move faster than everyone else.
After I turned my mic on so that I could be slightly toxic towards the Sombra player (with Moria joining in on the fun), he quickly left the voice channel and of course we lost. This shouldn’t be happening, especially at lower levels. Even though we roasted the Sombra guy, whenever this tends to happen, I just tell the player that they are most likely somewhere around the same rank that I am, and that it means that most likely, we both aren’t as good at the game as we think or else, we would probably be higher.
When you do turn on the mic and start talking to some people that are cool and chill, it makes the terrible matchmaking and poor ranking system more bearable. I don’t mind losing at all if I am having fun and the quickest way to have fun is to have other people to have fun with. Even though these experiences are far and few between, I think being in a voice channel with some laid-back people is the peak Overwatch 2 experience and one of the reasons why the game is as big as it is.
Staff Writer; Tardell Swift
This brother is new to writing yet has many different interests such as gaming, hip hop, wrestling, and manga.
You can follow him on Twitter; PhirewoodGaming and keep up with his thoughts there as well.