Yeah, i'm not really into cartoon looking games like tf2. Just looks too cheesy for my tastes.

 

I quite like the idea of this game, but I'm betting that the similarities to some of the MOBA games and the fact that it's basically designed for e-sports are going to make this the absolute worst player-base, personality-wise, that we've ever seen. I'm not sure that's possible after LoL, but people's toxicity in large, smelly groups never cease to surprise me.

 

It's Blizzard so it's fairly likely that it wont be free to play and paid games always have a sightly better community because there is more punishment for getting banned etc. And Blizzard games in general have fairly decent communities. No way will the community be worse than LoL.

 

It can only be f2p if they implement customisation, otherwise, there's seemingly no other way to monetise the game afaik.

 

Hats. HATS. HATS. HATS.

 

That was the best trailer I've ever seen! I probably won't play the game but I'd really love to see a movie come of this!

 

This is probably the leftovers of Titan. It looks interesting though, I'll probably give it a bash when it comes out.

 

Totally different kind of game.

 

This is blizzard. Shoulder pads.

@Sorrows: Aye, I'd bet on it. Unless it turns out bad. Which is possible.


I'm bored so I'm going to talk about negative nancy things that may or may not end up being a thing. It will be impossible to tell the actual state of the game until we see a fluid match, but from the trailer:
The medic's revive skill looks...strong. Medics are almost always useful in games like this, but it could make or break a game in this case. And the medic didn't look all that fun to play, but it's hard to tell from a choppy trailer.

Paper. As I've mentioned the characters seem to go down really fast. Like, CoD levels of fast. It might just be showing moneyshots though, so it's hard to tell.

The reaper. The reaper's AoE skill looks like it will be prone to frustrating tactics. I can see half the playerbase using the Reaper, and the skill could end up being an incredibly annoying aspect of the game.

Again, I'm not trying to be a bitch about it. These are just things I'm going to be watching for once we see more of the game. I could be wrong. I probably am. But boredom.

TL;DR: Medic aoe revive, reaper aoe kill thingy, and paper health may or may not end up being a thing. Possibly.

The blink girl looks fun though.

 

From what I read, the Revive is actually a map-wide team revive.

Health values do seem all over the board, though. From 150(albeit with a temp invulnerability skill) up to 1k, or 600 + 1k+(2k?) shield.

 

@Fen: Well if it's map wide that's just worlds better. Or worse. All it means is medic is going to be absolutely necessary.

It's hard to tell from health values. The disparity there is pretty funny, but it really depends on how much damage is done on average.

 

I wanna be the guy one-shotting people by swinging a sledgehammer around. I dont know how viable he'll be, and I don't fucking care. Just let me smash people like they were mosquitoes.

 

So I just got back from Blizzcon, and I see a thread about overwatch, and I feel the compulsive need to post.


I've played Wow for about 7 years. I've been playing SC2 arcade games for years. I've been in Hearthstone since early closed beta, and I've had Alpha access to Heroes of the Storm since like 8 months ago.

What I'm saying is, theres a lot of stuff for me to care about at Blizzcon.

And all I did this entire weekend was play Overwatch. I would play the 2 match set up (one time as offense, one time as defense), leave the play area, and immediately get back in line to play again.

This game is fun as fuck.

(gonna address random posts I see in the thread as I go now)

Every playable character is super distinct right now, and has a clearly defined kit that can make pretty much any well played hero carry. Except for maybe Mercy, but who the fuck cares cuz youre grappling around to your team mates and floating and healing and its awesome.


There are two very distinctly different Tank/Heavy characters: Reinhart and Winston. Reinhart is Giant Hammer Dude. He doesn't even get a gun. He swings his hammer, has a short CD charge that, if you pin someone with it, is a oneshot against anyone who is also not heavy, and a giant barrier he can put up thats essentially a 2000 health shield. His ulti is like a ground shockwave that's surprisingly hard to use right, due to how often the floors change, but does a shitton of aoe damage when used right. He's a mother fucking terror in hallways and places without a lot of potential mobility.

I've seen several Reinhart strategies over hte weekend, including a double Reinhart Phalanx strat that broke through a triple Tornbjorn turret setup that was eating people alive trying to leave a chokepoint.


That's another interesting thing about Overwatch- There's no limit to the amount of players on a team who can play a hero, You could run 6 Reinharts if you felt like it, but you would get crushed by a more mobile/aoe team.

You can also FREELY change what hero youre playing as in the middle of the match, but you get sent back to your base when you do. I actually confirmed that one with a dev- its not just a testing feature, they plan that to be how matches are played in competitive play as well right now.


Winston, the giant monkey man, is a very different tank to Reinhart. For one, his leap is on a shorter CD (and stuns on landing), and he moves faster in general. He also drops his shield (it's like a bubble) and it has a longer CD on it. He has an actual gun that does insane aoe damage up close, but does less and less if you aren't directly in their face.

He's a lot harder to use right then Reinhart, but hes more mobile in his tankery. He's more of an Offensive Tank to Reinhart's Defensive one. He flies at your face over and over, and his ulti removes the cd from his leap and turns his attack into a oneshot punch basically. Lasts about 8 seconds or so.


Mercy's the most fun of the supports to play, because one of her abilities is a grapple hook to allies, regardless of where they are as long as theyre in mostly Line of Sight and in range. What I mean by that is you can grapple up and float behind Phara (Rocket Dude if you saw the panel), then Grapple back down across the map to save your winston who just dove in and stunned the enemy. She has a channeled heal and a channeled damage-increaser, can sorta float Princes Peach style, and her ulti IS strong, but I'm pretty sure its not map wide.

Also, your whole team will rarely be dead- the most I ever saw rezzed by it was 2, and it's not instant either. But yeah it is strong.

Characters actually don't go down that fast, except for, well, Tracer. Each character has a healthbar, and most of htem are different. Tracer is the lightest at 150 health, which is usually about 2-3 dead on shots. To make up for it, she has insane mobility.

She also doesn't do nearly as much damage as other players- you have to really empty out her gun to kill people, unless they are also light. So if youre playing her, youre bouncing around like a madman disrupting the enemy team from behind, because you triple blinked past their choke point.

Her blink has a max of three charges iirc, and around 5-10 sec cd on refreshing them. We (my guild had 5 of us stomping everyone over and over, we didn't drop a single map the entire second day of the con, and only once on the first) had a strategy on the asia map where our Tracer, right after we capped the first point, just dashed across the map and blinked over a gorge to get to the second choke point and cap it before the other team even realized they lost the first point.

Her rewind is a long length (wanna say 15 sec) cd, that brings her back a bit in position, ammo, and health. Her ulti is a melee range sticky bomb (she has to be right next to you to tag you with it) that obliterates face. I saw a lot of fun strats with her of blinking past reinharts shield, dropping the grenade, then rewinding back out.


Reaper is actually an extremely tactical character, and if noobs try to play him like anything else you can just laugh as they die over and over. He has a moderate duration stealth (like 8 seconds worth), an EXTREMELY slow short range teleport (like the cast time animation is around 3-5 seconds), and his ulti is basically Katarinas.

How youre supposed to play him is to have him teleport behind the enemy team before you engage them, hopefully with a tank/Phara/Tornbjorn distracting them, stealth up, and then destroy them from behind. He does more damage with his shots then a lot of dudes do, but if you just run in facefirst youre gonna die.


I personally spent the most of my time playing Phara, "Rocket Dude". She has a jetpack going for her that's got a low fuel supply (i.e. you can't float forever, you can get up ledges on your own easily but then youre out), but the fuel supply refills EXTREMELY fast if youre not using it. Her shift ability shoots her really high in the air on a 12 sec cd, so you would use that and then fly around for whatever reason you want to be flying around.

Her other ability is a a ranged aoe knockback, ie its a little bomb thinger that when it hits something everything in a small area around it gets knocked away. Her gun is a rocket launcher too, so its really long range high aoe damage. It actually gets around a number of shields if you aim correctly, like Reinharts or Bastions. Her ulti is a 6 second or so missile barrage that locks you in place when you use it, so if youre in the air you stay in the air. You can move where youre targetting though.

I had a shitton of fun with her, lots of staying on the high ground and blasting away.

If you want something completely different, theres Tornbjorn the turret making dwarf. His main ability is his giant ass turret. He has a gun and stuff, but you can swap out his gun for a hammer that, when you have enough 'scrap' (a mechanic unique to him, whenever bullets and shit are shot it leaves scrap on the ground he auto collects moving near it) can upgrade his turret twice to be even more rape face.

Tornbjorns turret hurts. On Phara, a moderately meaty character, it takes about 5-6 turret hits to kill me from full health. They auto target whoever is closest I believe, and take about 2-3 hits to kill. A well placed Tornbjorn turret will decimate an enemy team if they dont take it down quick.

Symmetria also drops turrets, and if you saw the gameplay preview, shes the one who has the teleporter ulti. Shes also important becuase her normal attack ignores shields, letting her do meaningful damage to the likes of Reinhart.

Theres a sniper in game in Widowmaker, and her grapplehook is pretty fun. Her ulti is also amazing in that it gives her entire team heat vision of the other team for about 10-12 seconds. I didn't play her, but we had a widowmaker on our team who loved her and played her every game.

Hanzo the Samurai dude with the crossbow is hard to play right, but its a pretty sneaky playstyle- lots of bouncing arrows from a distance and setting up shots vs running in and dying over and over.

One of the funniest moments we had was with a Bastion on our team on the Asian map. Bastion has a self-turret mode where he puts a shield in front of himself (1000 health, so very meaty). We had our Bastion right behind our capture point (on defense), and I was a Reinhart blocking the corridor in.

Our bastion then filled up his ulti gauge, which lets him deploy a little mine on wheels which you drive to where you want to place it and then let it go. Once someone sets it off, it basically does the Reaper/Katarina ult.

So I'm blocking the corridor against an enemy Reinhart with a Reaper and a Mercy behind him. Our Bastion drive the mine right through the reinhart shield, drops it, then triple kills the enemy team.



This game was a fucking blast. I played about 15 matches throughout the tournament, including an epic STOMP against two of the EG Heroes of the Storm players (keylax and LZgamer) where they didn't even make it out of their starting base the entire time they were on offense.

 

Man, that does sound awesome. Thanks for the review, I am now excited for it, community be damned.

E: How does one "Thumbs Up" a post?

 

The characters that really carried the hardest that I saw were good Reinharts and good Torbjorns with Tracer/Pharah/Hanzo/Mercy/Widowmaker doing more to support their team/disrupt the enemy then being the win condition.

Like we had one of our guildies join us later, and was like "I always play Heavy in TF2, and I will carry you all on Reinhart". He just sat down, learned hte buttons, and just mowed down the other team. Reinhart forces you to deal with him AND avoid him, because his charge, if it hits you, WILL one shot you (unless youre Winston, basically). You have to play the mobility game, which Pharah (who can fly out of his range), Widowmaker (who can snipe him from anywhere), Hanzo (who can jump up walls) excel at better then Reaper and Tracer, who tend to have a harder time getting vertical.