Overwatch

I haven't made any friends through Overwatch, but I have made several friends through other reasons that happen to play it, which gives us something to do together. So less of it giving me friends, more that it's helped me maintain new friendships.

I've made a handful of acquaintances through Overwatch. I'm not sure if I can really call them friends, since, even though they're on my friends list, we rarely play together and many seem to have dropped off of playing Overwatch entirely. Kind of nature of the beast, I guess, for reasons mentioned by others above. I experienced the same thing on a bigger scale with Left 4 Dead where I had a lot of acquaintances from playing the highest difficulty together, but the game was pretty revolving door for people, so I was kind of lucky to play with them again more than once or twice. Another comparison is WoW. Made a lot of friends there due to the game being conducive to dedicated guilds and whatnot. I only have one left I talk to on a regular basis now, but back in the day, I still talked to several of the others for months after one of us quit the game.

I introduced Overwatch to my girlfriend, and since then we play almost every day. Before then she played League of Legends, and now she finds that game a boring stallfest compared to high octane fast paced Overwatch action. It can be good for playing with people you already trust, and it's a thing to do, so you know?

Honestly, if it wasn't for her continued interest in it, I would have dropped it already.

edited 17th Jan '18 8:43:18 AM by Luminosity

That's kind of the situation I find myself in. A couple of friends I had from other games got me into this. If I'm being perfectly honest, I was really lukewarm on the game on release because no matter where I looked, all the lore I searched for/through seemed to be grossly incomplete or non-existent. They slowly lost interest, though, so I've been also losing interest. I can basically only get them to come back for the PvE events.

They take a really long time releasing a new hero.

Not really? I mean, wasn’t Moira only a few months ago?

They seem to have been keeping to a schedule lately: one in the spring, one in the summer, and one in the fall. Orissa dropped in March, so I’d expect the next hero around then.

I would hope they released them at a more frequent rate. Every three months feels too slow.

And don't say "well they take their time balancing and testing because this isn't a MOBA and designing character for a FPS is not easy and they have to come out perfect" because history told us that even with that timeframe heroes have come out either UP, OP or bugged as hell.

Moira was the only exception and even then she was plagued with bugs.

I found this an interesting video on the subject:

I don't know if you've already seen this video, or if you or anyone else is really up for going through an ~12 minute video, but I found it a pretty insightful look at how the two games make different kinds of social spaces — including mentioning that, as others here have hinted at, "TF2 is where you go to meet your friends; Overwatch is an activity you do with your friends".

I think this is one thing that has kept me coming back to TF2 on-and-off even now, probably more often in all honesty than I do to Overwatch. TF2 makes big spaces, where there's more room to muck around or do silly/strategically-unwise things with enemies, where I can recognise an individual player in a moment thanks to a relatively-unique combination of cosmetics, where I can form real rivalries over a match and taunt without feeling like I'm just BM-ing. Nothing like killing that one player who's dominating you from a bunch of cheap kills, right? Overwatch has emotes, it has skins, but none of its systems ever really focuses in as much on the kind of player relationships you can make in a match.

Obviously this is in part personal preference and Overwatch's approach has its own advantages. But you'll forgive a bit of gushing from a poor sod with nostalgia goggles stemming back to 2011, eh?

edited 17th Jan '18 1:12:00 PM by Lavaeolus

Blizzard releasing new previews of the general lootbox update every day until it goes live on their twitter account.

First up is sprays.

Looks like the theme here is child versions of the characters in various alternate skins.

However a few of the sprays show the heroes in skins that don't seem to exist or been announced. Hanzo seems to be in some sort of traditional Japanese outfit, Phara has a golden skin, and D. Va is in a dress like her Lunar New Year skin but it's a completely different dress and her hair is dyed. Also Lucio has some sort of green outfit coming that I missed the first time around.

edited 17th Jan '18 1:21:45 PM by Falrinn

Pop idol D.Va?

Looks more like a Neko D.Va

@fasoman: Every new hero comes out with bugs and balance problems!

Also @fasoman: Come out with new heroes faster!

Can you please stop being so rude to other posters? It's not funny, it's just mean.

I have a feeling will get more than 3 new characters this year. It seems like they’re aiming for each month to have something new.

I was going for "silly," not "mean," but I'll try to moderate my tone. Limitations of a text-only medium and all that.

But yes, it does strike me as more than a little silly to observe that the timetable Blizzard has set for themselves results in most new heroes being released with some degree of bugginess and balance problems, and then conclude that it would be a good idea for them to release heroes FASTER (and hence, presumably, buggier and less balanced).

But even if they could guarantee that every new hero would launch entirely free of technical problems, I still don't think I'd want to see new heroes launching significantly faster than they are. It takes time to get accustomed to a new hero's capabilities and interactions, how they fit in a team comp, how other characters become more or less viable with the new one on the field. 3-4 months seems like about the right adjustment period for the community to figure a new hero out.

edited 18th Jan '18 11:30:15 AM by HighCrate

And today's reveal for the standard lootbox update is:Asp Phara!

Got to say, big fan of the gold color scheme.

This is what perfection looks like.

They made it gold and shiny so people would actually start to shoot the damn pharah

>Soldier sees equally gold and shiny Mercy and Pharah

>Confused

>Fucks Torbjorn

Man, today I'm on a roll playing as Zarya. Three quick matches playing as Zarya and all of them won, with me getting either three or four gold medals each. The best moment was when I just jumped the gun and ulted just to stop ulting enemy Genji, which also ended up dragging enemy Tracer and Hanzo as well, netting myself a POTG.

If only there was Widowmaker in that Graviton Surge as well, it would've been perfect.

It's so wonderful stopping an ulting Genji. Still remembers fondly whacking him with my hammer. Also shooting him in the face as Mercy. "Ok, gonna uninstall now", the Genji actually typed.

edited 19th Jan '18 3:07:53 AM by HottoKenai

Interrupted enemy ults are indeed the Most Wonderful Sound in the game.

It annoys me how many people try to run away from an ulting Genji, making a last stand to quickly put him down usually has less casualties.

edited 19th Jan '18 4:00:10 AM by Kiefen

I hate one-tricks.

I get it that when you specialize in certain character and are very good with them can bring a lot of utility but when the enemy team keep countering you and you are asked to change but don't then what's the point?

3 comp games in a row with Symmetra one-trick. Lost 2 and won 1

Today on Overwatch: Emotes!