Overwatch 2

I did play a little of Overwatch 2 when it launched. It's been a long while since I played Overwatch, well before role locks.

I have mixed feelings about the role locks. I pretty much ended playing as a support in all of my games. I kind of feel bad about playing a DPS or tank, and then playing poorly. At least support fewer people want to play.

5v5 is interesting as well. It feels faster-paced than 6v6. I also liked the new Push mode where you have a robot pushing something on both sides of the map. It's a very nice visual representation of progress, especially when you have a game where the robot is flipping from side to side a lot.

Of course, the main topic around Overwatch these days is monetization. Overwatch 2 basically flips the monetization model on its head from Overwatch 1. Overwatch 1 was basically "buy-the-box, earn loot, optionally purchase more loot". Overwatch 2 is "game is free, but you have to buy battle-passes and purchase cosmetics". Probably the various laws against lootboxes from Europe also played a part in this decision. Theoretically you can earn some stuff by playing, but you have to play quite a bit.

To be honest, I think Overwatch 2 should have gone all in. Don't offer the theoretical path, just expect people to pay. Free players get nothing other than the base game, and new heroes only after the season ends. I think that would have at least ended most of the arguments in the community. Rather than the current state where half the community complains about it being too difficult to "earn" rewards, but doesn't want to pay for anything.

I don't know. I'm just tired of people who play for free whining that the game company isn't catering to them enough. Tired of incessant monetization arguments everywhere you look in the game community.

Overwatch's Latest Character: Ashe

At Blizzcon, Overwatch introduced their latest character, Ashe:

It's good to see a more basic hero, one who focuses on her straightforward weapons rather than special abilities. Ashe feels very much like a hero that could have been released at launch.

I was a fan of UT99 back in the day, and it's great to see a Shock Rifle variant make it into Overwatch. The Shock Rifle secondary fire was a slow-moving energy ball which could be detonated with the laser primary fire. Much like Ashe's dynamite. The skinning for that ability is just perfect, by the way. It's very intuitive, and fits her character like a glove.

The Ultimate ability, calling in help from B.O.B., is also unique. B.O.B, is really popular on the forums for some reason.

One of the most interesting things about this reveal is that Ashe actually loses in the animated short which introduces her character. Almost always, the hero reveal pumps up the hero, making her seem more competent. Ashe's loss is extremely unusual. And yet, I think it worked here, because Ashe is a small-time villain. It actually ginned up a lot of audience sympathy for her.

I do wonder if this would have worked with a male hero, though. Would an lower-competence male hero generate sympathy, or disdain?

The Problem of One-Tricks

The current major cause of angst in Overwatch are "one-trick" players. These are players who play almost entirely with a single character and refuse to play other characters. The problem is that Overwatch is a game where you can swap characters to better match different situations.

Add to that the fact that some characters are seen as weak, or specialized, and a lot of people become unhappy when another player chooses a character that seems sub-optimal.

The other problem here is that generally, if you play a lot on one character, you become better at that one character than you are at the others. A Torbjorn main can rightfully feel that she plays best on Torbjorn, and would be worse on the character her teammates want her to play.

Of course, no one complains if you one-trick a character who is in demand and who people don't play. Mercy players or tank players come to mind.

Not to mention that if you play in regular team, each teammate often gravitates to the same roles. Dave is the support, Sally is the tank. From an outside point-of-view, this is one-tricking, but the big difference is that everyone on the team is comfortable with it.

So far, Blizzard's stance is that--as long as you try to win--playing one specific character is acceptable. But there are signs that resolve may be cracking. One-tricks are often reported by other players, and can get caught in the automated banning systems.

I wonder what a purely mechanical solution would look like. Imagine that, in competitive, any hero who's playtime this season is more than one standard deviation away from your average playtime per hero is locked out. So your hero pool would be limited at the start of a game, and you'd be forced to play on a wider variety of heroes.

It would make matchmaking more difficult, as you'd now have to account for available heroes when assembling a group. It wouldn't do to make a group where everyone is locked out of the healers (as unlikely as that is).

On the other hand, perhaps your rating in Competitive would be more representative of your ability in the game as a whole, and not just with one hero.

Overwatch League

You have to hand it to Blizzard. They went full-bore into eSports with the Overwatch League. Paid rosters, teams associated with cities, branding, professional sportscasting, even allowing fans to purchase team skins. They're really treating Overwatch League as a true professional sport.

The question, of course, is if this will work out. So far, it looks to be doing okay. I think they had 400,000 viewers for the first matches, and future matches seem to be about the 110,000 viewers mark. The real test is if they can attract significant advertisers and sponsors. That is what will make OWL profitable.

I've only seen part of one match: the last three games of the Los Angeles Gladiators versus the Philadelphia Fusion. LAG came back from being down 2 games, and won the last 3 games to win the match. It was reasonably interesting, more or less like watching regular sports on television. Blizzard integrating the stream into the Battle.net app was an excellent decision, as it made it very easy to check out.

The only issue I had with the actual broadcast is that it was sometimes hard to keep track when the camera switched to a different player. Adding a fast wipe or transition there would be really nice.

The structure of a match is pretty interesting. It's technically best-of-five games, but teams play at least 4 games. This gives it a similar feel to halves and quarters of a football or basketball game, with one possible period of overtime.

One thing I noticed is that OWL really validated Blizzard's decision to allow hero swapping in Overwatch. On the last game, LAG started with an unorthodox 3-damage lineup including a Widowmaker. They then switched to a 3-tank lineup when the Fusion reacted. It reminded me of matching lines in hockey. I was impressed by that, and am considering using my free currency on an LAG skin.

(Everyone gets some free OWL currency, enough for a skin for one character.)

I'm unlikely to really follow OWL, but it's definitely an intriguing experiment. I hope it proves successful for Blizzard. If you haven't seen a match, it's worth catching one just to see the league in action.

Blizzcon Predictions

Blizzcon starts tomorrow. What do you think will be announced?

I predict:

• The next WoW expac is announced. It focuses on Kul Tiras and the nagas. The void will be in the background (perhaps for the expansion afterwards).

• No new classes, but playable Vrykul and Nightfallen.

• A completely new gear slot which uses the artifact mechanics. We go back to normal weapons.

• Overwatch announces a new support character. A male healer that heals like Ana or Mercy.

• Diablo announces a new Druid class for 2018, released much like the Necromancer.

Those are my wild guesses. Of course, by the time you read this, Blizzcon will probably be in full swing. What do you predict will be announced?

High Skill Gameplay Versus Low Skill Gameplay

Another day, another forum/reddit post about the state of max level gameplay in FFXIV, this time focusing on healers. My current theory on why FFXIV is experiencing unhappiness is because the "high skill gameplay" does not match "low skill gameplay".

To see what I mean, let's look at WoW. In WoW a mythic healer plays much like a normal healer, only better. They both cast the same spells, but the mythic healer gets in more casts and triages better. The mythic healer probably makes better use of cooldowns. The normal healer's goal is to slowly refine her gameplay to match the mythic healer.

In contrast, in FFXIV, high skill gameplay and low skill gameplay is very different. If you're in a low skill group, you want to have the tank in tank stance and focus on threat moves. The healer heals more than she damages.

In contrast, high skill gameplay often has the tank in DPS stance, and using DPS stats. The healers are often dealing damage as well, with one estimate of a healer casting 3 damage spells for every healing spell.

I think a game has trouble when you're in the middle, when you're not sure if you should be using the low skill or high skill tactics.  You go low skill when the rest of the group is high skill, and they get upset for you wasting their time. You go high skill when the rest of the group is low skill, and you end up wiping.

In contrast, in WoW, how you should play is fairly straightforward. You tank, heal or dps to the best of your abilities. You don't need to significantly adjust how you play.

Another game which has issues with the low skill/high skill dichotomy is Overwatch. Certain heroes are much stronger and weaker at different levels of the game. Widowmaker and other snipers become a lot better when people can aim. Meanwhile, Torb and Bastion are much more potent against low skill players who have trouble dealing with them. But the "meta" is defined by the high skill players, and that can cause issues in low skill gameplay.

An Accidental Game of Competitive Lucioball

 Overwatch's latest event, the Summer Games, started today. I don't play Overwatch a lot, but I logged in today while eating dinner to open the free lootbox. (Sadly, I didn't get anything interesting.) After that, I started clicking around to see the new skins and other elements.

I accidentally clicked on Competitive Lucioball in the Arcade, and Overwatch managed to sign me for a match within seconds! Normally matchmaking takes up to a minute, so I'm not sure if Blizz has made major improvements with the matchmaker or if I was just lucky (unlucky?).

I hurriedly tried to figure out how to play Lucio, praying that I at least would not score any own goals. Luckily my teammates were able to carry me, and we actually won!

I'm kind of surprised Blizzard made a competitive version of Lucioball. It is kind of fun, and it is a level playing field. At the very least, no one can complain about your choice of character. Still, it's pretty unusual to get a competitive ladder for an event side-game which won't be around for very long.

Adding a Time Component to Ranking Systems

Overwatch has added competitive play and a ranking system. The ranking system is a 0 to 100 scale, centered on 50. If you win matches you gain in rank, if you lose matches, you lose rank. As is pretty standard, the magnitude of the gain or loss depends on the rank of your opponents.

For the most part this system is pretty serviceable, but it has its quirks. For one thing, it's zero-sum: the ranking gained matches the ranking lost. Then Blizzard decided that if someone left a game in-progress, hitting the remaining members with the full loss would be too punishing, so the loss is greatly reduced. But since its zero-sum, the winning team gets a very small gain. Which is arguably fair, as there's nothing great about winning when you're up a person. However, this has led to people quitting when they are losing, to "punish" the winning team.

There are other issues. In general, your rank settles down after a while and does not really change, leading to a feeling of stagnation.

I think it would be interesting to add a time component to these ranking systems. The current system for Magic: the Gathering does something similar.  Here's my idea:

Let's start with the existing rank, R.

Then let's add the concept of a Time-Adjusted rank, T = nkR + nm, where n is the number of days since the start of the season, and k and m are constants.

What this does is cause the ranking curve to go higher and wider as time goes on. Let's say that on Day 1, the ranking system goes from 0 to 100. On Day 10, the Time-Adjusted ranks would range from 10 to 1010. (The constants adjust how the curve changes.)

However, the rank the player sees does not automatically increase each day.

The final piece we need is a Display rank, D. This is the number that players see, and are ranked by. The Display rank only changes when the player plays a game.  The Display rank increases, targeting the Time-Adjusted rank. The Display rank doesn't need to jump directly to the Time-Adjusted rank, it might do so in stages. Cap the amount gained per match, only jump halfway to the target, etc.

The big advantage of the Display rank is that it is decoupled from the real rank. It does not have to be zero-sum. Indeed, it does not have to decrease at all. You can set up so it always increases (or stays flat).

To go back to our earlier example, on Day 1 Jane plays a bit and has a real, time-adjusted, and display rank of 50. She then doesn't play for a week or so. On Day 10, her real rank is still 50, her time-adjusted rank is now 510, but her display rank is 50.  She plays a game and loses. Her real rank drops to 49, her time-adjusted rank is now 500. But her display rank increases from 50 to 150 (increase in display rank is capped at 100 points for a loss). As she continues playing, her display rank continues to increase, win or lose.

Such a system keeps the forward momentum going. You are always moving forward. The better players move forward faster and higher, but even the worse players see movement. The system also encourages players to keep playing steadily. You can't achieve a high rank early and then stop playing.

Since display rank is not zero-sum, you can do things like penalize leavers 10 points, without modifying the other players' increases.

There are a few negatives, of course. It's harder to compare players' skill, as a lower display rank might just mean that you haven't played in a while. And you do have to play steadily, especially near the end of a season. Playing the first two months and skipping the last month is worse than skipping the first month and playing the last two months.

Overall, though, I think a time-adjusted ranking system is better as a whole, and focuses people on playing the game rather than gaming the ranking system.

Unintended Consequences of Anti-Toxicity Systems

Jeff Kaplan made an excellent post on the Overwatch forums about matchmaking. It's definitely worth the read. The most interesting part, however, was this section:

For example, we recently realized that “Avoid this player” was wreaking havoc on matchmaking. One of the best Widowmaker players in the world complained to us about long queue times. We looked into it and found that hundreds of other players had avoided him (he’s a nice guy – they avoided him because they did not want to play against him, not because of misbehavior). The end result was that it took him an extremely long time to find a match. The worst part was, by the time he finally got a match, he had been waiting so long that the system had “opened up” to lower skill players. Now one of the best Widowmaker players was facing off against players at a lower skill level. As a result, we’ve disabled the Avoid system (the UI will go away in an upcoming patch). The system was designed with the best intent. But the results were pretty disastrous.

Essentially, players took a system meant to avoid toxic players, and instead chose to avoid players who were simply more skilled.

Another issue with this system is that it didn't have a cost. I think time and again, games have shown that when an action does not have a cost associated with it, people will abuse it. Think vote kicks from MMOs. Then the action gets removed or hedged with excessive restrictions, such that it becomes fairly useless.

Imagine if avoiding a player cost 50 credits (the currency for the cosmetic items). The amount of people who abuse this system would drop drastically. But if there was a cost, everyone would complain that they had to pay "real" money to avoid the people harassing them. Yet the end result is that we lose the avoid ability entirely.

Favorite Overwatch Heroes

Like everyone else, I've been playing a fair amount of Overwatch over the last week. I'm level 15, and I've only gotten one Legendary skin so far. However, it happened to be the one skin I actually wanted: Devil Mercy. So Lady Luck has smiled on me.

Heroes never die ... for a price!

Inspired by Syl's post at MMO Gypsy, I'm going steal her format and list my favorite heroes so far.

A) Heroes I feel confident playing

1. Mercy - highest playtime so far

2. Lucio - preferred for pushing the payload

3. Reaper - the one hero I can kill people with

4. Torbjorn - turrets have good aim

B) Heroes I’d like to get better at

5. Reinhardt

6. Winston

7. Junkrat

8. McCree

9. Bastion

C) Heroes that feel awkward

10. Symmetra

11. Roadhog

12. D.Va

13. Zarya

14. Soldier 76

D) Heroes I haven’t really touched

15. Mei

16. Widowmaker

17. Genji

18. Zenyatta

19. Hanzo

20. Pharah

21. Tracer

The biggest issue so far is that I don't really have a tank character that I understand and can play decently. I can put up Reinhardt's shield and walk to the objective. And sometimes Winston works well, but sometimes I just continuously die.

Otherwise, since I'm willing to heal, I don't get much of a chance to play offensive characters, especially the snipers.

So far Overwatch has been a lot of fun. The matchmaking seems to be working well. I have a good mix of wins and losses, and there have been many close and exciting games.

Overwatch Open Beta Tips From a Bad Player

The Overwatch open beta starts this week. Early access is May 2 if you pre-ordered, and it fully opens up a couple of days later.

Overwatch is an amazingly fun game, and I'm a terrible FPS player. I wasn't in Closed Beta, but I was in the stress tests. So here are some tips from someone who is probably worse than you are.

1. Don't be afraid to solo queue.

Obviously, if you have friends, queue with them. But the solo queue is surprisingly balanced. It seems to quickly find your skill level. As well, matches aren't independent of each other. The players from the last match will be the same players in the next match. Only the teams are shuffled. So maybe there was an awesome enemy Pharah last game that kept killing you. This game, you might end up on the same team as her. This goes a long way to keeping the matches even and popping quickly.

2. Don't bother with AI games.

Maybe play one match to get the hang of things, but I would recommend jumping directly into matches with other players. Playing against the AI just isn't the same as playing against humans. If you want to figure out a hero's abilities, use the training room to see how they work, but then fling yourself against other players.

3. Try to focus on one hero from each category.

There are four categories of heroes: Offensive, Defensive, Tanks, and Support. You generally want a mixed squad, so if you're capable of playing at least one hero of each type, you can fill in for any missing element. Also, tanks and support can be a little more newbie-friendly as they are less reliant on aim and are often a little less fragile than the others.

4. Don't switch heroes too much.

You can switch heroes every time you die, but I recommend playing the entire match as the same hero, at least at the start. They do take some time to get used to, so they might feel frustrating at first until they click for you.

5. Stick with your team.

If you're all alone, it's better to retreat for a few seconds and meet up with the rest of your team, rather than throwing yourself at the enemy. Also remember that the game is about objectives, not a death-match, so emphasize pushing the objective.

6. Use ultimates aggressively.

Ultimate abilities charge quite quickly, so don't hesitate on using them. You have to fail with them a few times to figure out how to use them best.

7. The Kill Cam is your best teacher.

Whenever you die (and you will die a lot) a kill cam will come up showing your death from the opponent's point of view. This is the best way to learn. You can see what you did wrong, and see what your opponent did right.

I think Overwatch is an amazing game, and I strongly recommend that you all try it out. There are lots of different heroes with different playstyles, so I'm sure you'll find at least a couple you enjoy.

The Missing Element in Competitive Seasons

Overwatch has released its current plans for competitive ranked play.  Basically, it will have "seasons" that are one month long, as in Hearthstone. Everyone starts at the bottom rank, and you try to play your way up through the various divisions. At the end of the month, prizes or bragging rights are handed out, and the ranks are all reset.

The immediate reaction from the community is that the seasons are too short. That they would much prefer a season which was 3 or 6 months long, giving people time to come to their true rankings.

I am not entirely in agreement with this view. In an odd way, I think that the current season length is both too short and too long. The real problem, in my view, is that the competitive structure of many games is missing a crucial element.

The missing element is tournaments.

As an analogy, let's look at a sport like tennis. Tennis has matches between two players or teams. Tennis has a 52-week season where the entire pro community is ranked. But tennis also has intermediate structure of tournaments.

A tournament is different from a season, and has a lot of desirable properties. The time frame is much shorter. Only a subset of the community participates. Most players don't attend every tournament. Each tournament usually produces different winners and different results. Prizes handed out at the tournament level end up going to wider variety of players.

Overwatch wants a lot of these properties for its seasons. But a month is too long for a tournament. It's long enough that most players cannot skip it if they want. But it's too short to act like a true season does and produce definitive rankings.

My suggestion for Overwatch would be to actually break the current "season' into a tournament which runs weekly and a longer season of 3,6, or 12 months which aggregates the weekly tournament results. This way players have less pressure to participate in every tournament. There are more changes at the top, with different players placing in the Top 100 each week.

I do think that many games have this same hole in their structures. They have individual matches, and they have long seasons, but they don't do anything with the medium time-frame. The only games I can think of that significantly utilize this time-frame are Path of Exile and Magic Online.

For example, imagine that Overwatch you could join a league. Leagues start every hour and run for four hours. You are only matched with people in your league. When you get two losses, you are knocked out of the league. At the end of the time, the person who won the most matches without getting two losses wins the league.

I think that there's a lot of room for fun game play in this medium time-frame. Obviously, the time frame is long enough that not everyone will participate. It can't be the only option to play. But it could stand to be used a lot more than it is currently.

One Joke, Two Communities

Today is April Fool's Day, so the internet is useless as normal. However, I found one interesting thing. Both the Reddit Eve Online and FFXIV communities posted the same joke, and both were upvoted to the top of their respective pages.

The difference, though, is a little illuminating about the respective communities:

• Think I found the most awesome FFXIV player to date.

• Think I found the most embarrassing person in the whole of r/Eve (Link to comment history)

(The joke is that both these posts linked to the history of the current viewer.)

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The best April Fool's joke I saw this year was also on Reddit, in the Overwatch page. The moderators made a small notification that sometimes appeared in the lower right corner and looked exactly like the Battle.Net notifications that appear on your desktop if you have the Battle.net app open. The notification said "Overwatch is now playable."

Understated, perfect for the target audience, and brilliantly cruel.

Blizzard's F2P Model

The Overwatch beta returned today. This time they included more information on their progression and cash shop model. This is interesting because they have settled on the same system used in Hearthstone. So I thought I'd take a look at that model.

Here's a diagram of the system:

The first point is that the items are not sold directly. Rather containers containing a random assortment of items are sold. In Hearthstone, it's card packs. In Overwatch, it's loot boxes.

You can get the containers either through time and gameplay (levels in Overwatch, dailies in Hearthstone) or by spending real currency. This exact ratio of time to real currency can be changed. In Hearthstone, since it is fully F2P, it's weighted towards real currency. Overwatch is B2P, so it appears that levels through gameplay will be the main method.

The container contains several times, with pre-determined rarity. This is pretty much any collectible card pack system.

The most interesting part of Blizzard's model is how duplicates are handled. If you get duplicate items, you can convert them to a game currency (credits in Hearthstone, dust in Overwatch). You can then use the game currency to create specific items.

One key point is that you cannot buy specific items directly. Instead you have to go through the entire chain, and there is effectively loss when going from the random item to the specific item. You might have to get five random rares to purchase once specific rare.

There's also no secondary market involved. SWTOR and Magic:the Gathering has much the same system for the first part, but after you get the random items, you can buy and sell them on a secondary market. However, going through the secondary market means that prices vary with supply and demand. You can have two rares: one highly-sought and worth a large amount; and the other disdained, and can be picked up cheaply.

In contrast, in the Blizzard model, each rare is be broken down into the same amount of game currency, and each rare also costs the same amount of game currency to get directly. This maintains a minimum level of value for each item.

This system also gives Blizzard a lot of knobs to tweak:

• The cost of a container in real currency
• The cost of a container in time
• The number and distribution of random items in a container
• The amount of game currency generated by an converted item
• The amount of game currency needed to purchase a specific item

It also has a minimum number of products available to purchase, making the store very simple. It's also relatively fair, combining both the fun and excitement of opening random packs with a path to obtaining specific desired items for a known and expected price.

Overwatch Stress Test Beta Impressions

I was lucky enough to get an invite to the Overwatch Stress Test Beta this past weekend. I last played an First Person Shooter well over a decade ago, Unreal Tournament 99. So I didn't expect much from this test. I fully expect that I am in the bottom 20% of Overwatch's audience.

I didn't take any screenshots, so have some Blizzard ones.

My first reaction is that despite how terrible I was, Overwatch was really, really fun. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Overwatch has that "just one more game" draw to it. Matches are fast and frantic.

For the most part, I stuck with Mercy, who is a healer. Mercy is an excellently designed healer. She can heal or buff allies, and her ultimate is a resurrection of all dead allies. She's very well designed for new players, as her ability targeting is quite forgiving and has a decent about of computer assist. On the other hand, she's pretty fragile, and you'll die a lot. Blizzard nailed the aesthetic of a basic healer here. It's even great when, at the end of match, you see a Play of the Game, and it's your teammate and you can see that you healing/buffing them throughout their play.

After playing healer for a bit, I tried out some of the other characters. I'm pretty terrible at aiming, so I wasn't having much luck until I tried Reaper. For some reason, I just clicked with Reaper, and managed to actually get as many kills as deaths in a few games. I even got a couple kill streaks and a Play of the Game (which was basically me charging blindly at a group of people and magically killing several of them somehow).

A Blizzard screenshot of Reaper

There are a lot of heroes, and they all feel different, both to play as and fight against.

There are also some interesting design decisions. I don't know if other modern FPS'es do this, but if time expires, but there are still people fighting on the object, the game goes into overtime and continues until either the objective is cleared or the attackers claim it. It makes for some amazingly tense final seconds of a match, and is just so much fun.

There is no also killboard for the entire group. Instead, at the end of the match, Blizzard feature four people (who can come from either team) who have done quite well based on whatever metrics they capture. For example, people can show up for number of kills, healing done, damage absorbed by tanks, etc. Then everyone can vote for one person to be MVP. Blizzard then shows you personal stats for the match, and compares them to your average play. So there is a bit of feedback there, as it's really nice to show up on a card, and to slowly drag your averages up.

By focusing on the positive plays, Blizzard avoids embarrassing or humiliating lower skill players, but still provides them decent feedback. I hope Blizzard stands strong on this decision, as a lot of better FPS players on Reddit and the like seem to be demanding a killboard.

There's also no progression systems built in. It's very much a throwback to old FPS games of the 1990s where your character was the same in every match and didn't really change or level up. I liked this, as it is a lot easier to drop in and play, and outside of player skill, opposing characters behaved predictably.

Overall, I thought Overwatch was a lot of fun. Of course, I have zero idea what its competition is like, or what the hardcore FPS scene is like. But I'll probably pick up Overwatch when it is released.