Overwatch open beta - What are your impressions?

[Fallow]

Howdy escapees,

Overwatch has been out for a day now, and surely many of you have been gunning away in the high-speed shootouts during that time.

What are your impressions of the game?

Have you pre-ordered?

Do you find the price reasonable?

What do you like or dislike about the game?

(At what pricepoint would you consider buying the game?)

 

[SlumlordThanatos]

I'd give my impressions, but I don't have permission to post in the beta forums.

Even though it's, you know, an open beta.

OT: The game is pretty fun, until you get stuck on a team of three Hanzos/Widowmakers and they all refuse to change. The game also still needs balance fixes: matches still heavily favor the defender, which means the only worthwhile game mode is whatever the King of the Hill mode is.

On top of that, they took a page out of Bungie's playbook and forgot to place character bios IN THE GAME. I'd prefer to not have to go elsewhere to get the fluff, but I guess Blizzard can't be bothered to put it anywhere but on their website. They don't need a campaign, but character bios and a few other tidbits of fluff in the actual game isn't too much to ask...right?

I also haven't been able to find a Team Deathmatch playlist. Sometimes I just wanna cut lose and kill some bitches without having to worry about "objectives" or "payloads", but I don't have that option. Hell, I don't even have the option to choose the game mode I want; at least CoD lets me choose between TDM, SaD, or Kill Confirmed. Speaking of game modes, there needs to be more. Free-for-all, Kingslayer, or a three-point Control-style game are all modes that I would play...and yet, they are missing. I get that this is a team game, but some basic shooter features are inexplicably MIA.

I didn't preorder; God Himself would have to descend from Heaven and command me to preorder this game. It's also still far too expensive; I saw people on the beta forums defending the price point, saying that for the price of a nice dinner, you get hours upon hours of entertainment. This is true, but I can also get hours and hours of entertainment for less than half the price if I go get CS:GO, or even free if I play Warframe or Team Fortress. There is just not enough content here to justify the pricepoint.

I'd buy it for $20, maybe $25. But $40 is a bit much, and I feel sorry for the poor suckers who are buying it for console at $60.

 

[Glongpre]

I enjoy it.

What it really needs is more objective variations. All it seems to have is a linear type thing. My favourite shooter is Enemy Territory, and it had a nice blend of different objective types. Sometimes you would escort, sometimes capture the flag, sometimes bomb something, sometimes all of them in one map.

Anyway, pretty solid.

Also, it works very very well on my crap laptop. Pretty impressive Blizz.

Some of the characters lack a little compared to others, but they are all pretty unique.

 

[Cryselle]

I hope they get on things like aimbotting extremely quickly and hard though. Even in the open beta you're seeing players (generally Hanzo) where in the killcam they track your head through a wall, shoot you, then instantly snap to another player's head, and repeat.

 

[Buffoon1980]

Personally, and this really is just my personal opinion, I find Battleborn to be a vastly more engaging experience. I freely admit this is largely because I suck; my experience of Overwatch has been to choose a character I like, then get murdered over and over by one of the three or four characters that seem to be enormous death machines, while I ineffectually wave my pea shooter of a weapon in their direction and try to heal my team mates, which is really tough since they, too, seem to die in about 1 second, making it kind of tough to get any actual healing done. But like I say, I suck.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Overwatch really emphasizes team play, lone-wolfing it will more than likely get you and your team killed. So if you're a solo player, you're in the wrong game. Make friends, form groups and use tactics if you want to win. Each character is a subclass of their respective part so there's a LOT of versatility to the roster, though there does need to be some balancing to a few characters. Each character has strengths and weaknesses. I'll say this much, I've found that every character CAN take on the others, but you've got to know how best to utilize them and again I emphasize team tactics over lone-wolfing.
I'm hoping Blizz cracks down early on botting, because the game itself is quite enjoyable IMO, but I've been playing since closed beta and very early in at that.
Overall rating? 8/10 - Needs some patching but very enjoyable and worth a buy should you find team multiplayer games as being in your wheelhouse. Not for everyone, but definitely solid mechanically, graphically wonderful and relatively bug free.

 

[Cowabungaa]

My impressions?

Dear Christ I'm hooked like a Roadhog victim. It's not even out of the beta and I've already recuperated the purchase price more than enough to warrant it. And that's before map and gameplay mode updates. Yeah, I'm loving this game.

That said, oh my God it can make me salty like no tomorrow. And it can use some attack-defense balancing.

 

[The Madman]

I played it previously in one of the past beta weekends and am playing it again now and... yeah, it's good. Good enough I'll probably end up picking it up shortly after release.

Only real problem I have is that I keep trying to strafe jump and do other tricks that work in UT but wont work here. Would be really cool if in the future they added a character that did play that way though, after all there's already a 'modern shooter' style character.

The game also still needs balance fixes: matches still heavily favor the defender, which means the only worthwhile game mode is whatever the King of the Hill mode is.

Funny, I've seen people complaining the opposite as well, that the maps too heavily favor the attacker. Personally I've around 50/50 so haven't noticed any real imbalance myself.

 

[Sassafrass]

I've only played it a bit (Like...four games or so) but it's fun and frustrating. Funstrating.

Mostly because I'm new to it (Learning shit at 2am when on 4 hours sleep? Best decision) and as such, I'm not really paying attention too much to what's going on and making stupid decisions, like Reinhardt charging into two Bastions, and secondly because NO ONE IS RUNNING A FUCKING SUPPORT CLASS UNTIL I DO, THEN 3 OF THE FUCKERS POP UP. Like, I get it. Tracer's fun to play as. We don't need 2 or 3 of her though. Switch out to a defence or a support, as NO ONE runs support. And I can say, even from my four games, a good support player makes all the difference. Shit, I helped nearly push a victory as a support in my first game.

But yeah, I can see it being fun. Only real issue I've found so far is that it feels very similar to Titanfall. Not in a gameplay type of way, but in a "This is gonna be super fun for 30 hours or so then I'll play it sporadically" type of way.

 

[Zhukov]

I like it. It's fun. Fun was had.

The map design is good. The heroes are fun and varied enough that there's likely to be someone for almost anyone. It looks nice. The presentation is fantastic.

- Tracer is crazy fun if you have half a brain. Insane mobility coupled with decent close range damage, and the approximate durability of wet tissue.
- Rheinhart (or however you spell it) is very satisfying when you pull him off.
- Zarya is damn near unstoppable if played well and can wipe entire teams in combination with some some other characters, but is relatively easy to counter.
- Mercy can turn the tide of entire fights in a satisfying and decisive manner despite being a healer.
- Bastion is fun and simple and can wipe teams if you have good positioning. (Although I think his ult is somewhat at odds with the rest of his character design.)
- Mei offers incredible team-fight utility to the quick-thinking player and is a terrifying 1v1 duelist.

My only character complaints regard Mcree and Roadhog. The former has a close range stun and a mag dump fire mode that spell instant death for squishy characters that get near him while still being accurate and damaging at medium or long range. The latter has a hook that briefly stuns enemies and drags them into the barrel of his shotgun. Thing is, the hook seems to track targets a bit. Roadhog is probably my best character but I feel a bit bad when my hook follows someone around a corner.

Most of my frustrations stem from the fact that I'm playing it with other people. It suffers from MOBA syndrome. As in, it's based on objectives and team play and you are utterly reliant on your team having a clue in order to get anything done.

For a start, not many people want to play healer. That includes me, so I just grit my teeth and make do with health packs. Pick a self-healer if I need to.

Also, gamers apparently learn very, very slowly. The amount of times I've died alone on the capture zone while my team pussyfoots around the edges. The amount of times I've watched from cover as my team walks into a Mcree ult. The amount of times I've watched people funnel into choke points. The amount of times my team has picked two Tracers on a control point map.

I don't know, maybe I've been teaming up with children or something. That's the thing about the internet, you never know when you're dealing with a nine year old.

Playing solo is fun, but if you care about winning then you are going to be frustrated at times, period.

Playing with a team of six friends would be amazing.

 

[Weresquirrel]

Gonna echo the sentiment of the others and say there's not enough people willing to play support. My current favourite to play as is D.Va but I almost always end up playing as Mercy because everyone seems to plump for one of the more killy characters. I think the game would be better if you had a dedicated group to play with where you can formulate strategies and synergise better.

Otherwise, it's quite fun, dripping with personality. Not sure if I'm willing to actually pay for it yet though. I keep getting reminded of what happened with Titanfall and Evolve, where I played the open beta, thought: "Yeah, this seems pretty fun. If I can get a regular group these'd be a laugh." and then they got left by the wayside.

Addendum: I have been experimenting with other characters and have since found a new love for Mei. She's pretty versatile. She can long snipe relatively effectively, provides useful support and control in close quarters, and her ultimate can really mess with an opposing team in the right circumstances. Also, she's adorable.

 

[Summerstorm]

Played it yesterday. No hype for me, just read here it is free and thought: Eh, why not?

Impression:

Game seems ok, if a bit "safe". Only rudimentary tactics possible and only limited abilities and synergies between characters (and no secondary weapons, loadouts etc.) So it is pretty much vanilla-oldschool TF2.

I like the short banter of the characters in the startup. (They should expand upon that, and implement lines IN PLAY - Characters congratulating, scolding etc.)
The Characters are only "alive" in their introductions and that unlockable crap.

Also: the game seems to mask network problems. Can't see how my latency is to the other players and who is server (or are the servers blizzard?) Overall i had some problems. (i have a good connection, dependable line) and i can SEE in the deathcam that the enemies saw me differently (I had someone headshot me while i was in a combat roll with McCree) Killcam showed that he did kill me before and that i never rolled - my body went into a totally different direction. Also dying in cover and such happens a bit too often.

ALSO again: I can't get any information in regards to other players. When i am playing i want to see how the others are doing, but i only get my kills/deaths, how often i did something and shit, but no rudimentary list of the other players. Can't see who is most dangerous and such. bugs me... i hate lack of information.

Have to look again but there is no server/game-browser, or is there? So far ok, but what if my taste specializes? (Like i prefered to play Arena mode in TF2 for... hundreds of hours)

I found that i just can't hit well in that game (Maybe i am getting old) But with a rocket or Grenade launcher i am doing ok.

Overall it is fun, will buy it, when it's down to 10 bucks or maybe 20.

 

[Politrukk]

it gets a big resounding meh from me, the characters all seem to miss something and sure that means balance but it's a bit weird when you keep feeling like you're missing something.

Hanzo and Widowmaker seem to be big favourites and rightfully so, their gameplay input vs score output is very low, you just charge up and one shot most players and when playing Hanzo you can charge up scattershots that also one hit most players.

But if you took that away from these hero's they'd be worthless.

Then we have D.VA for example who's a tank with short range blasts.... only they seem to be hitting people from across the map, but if you take that away the character is useless again.

The game is so balanced in some regards that it feels completely unbalanced.

On a more positive note:

Map design is good.
Presentation is good.
Gameplay is smooth and i'm on a low end machine.
Matchmaking is decent.
Unlocks are a fun addition.

 

[Captain Marvelous_v1legacy]

Well, I've played for a bit and I've got to say. I don't mind the game. It's fun. But I hate the other players. Particularly their habit of abandoning the objective. It happens so much that it's actually become frustrating. Oddly enough it only happens in PvP. When in a game against the AI the players will actually play the objective, but I guess that's because the AI tend to b line it straight toward the objective.

 

[DefunctTheory]

I played half a match during closed beta then quit and haven't gone back, much to the chagrin of my friend who gave me the key.

I'm sure there's a fine game in there - In fact, I'm 100% certain of it. But I am not willing to wade through and learn 30 fucking heroes to enjoy it. I played for about 5 minutes, got killed at least 15 times, and I still have no fucking idea what happened during any of those kills, except for the one where I killed myself as Tracer. The character roster and move sets are reminiscent of DOTA/LoL, but without the above view camera angle that lets you see what some of the heroes you may not know buy heart is doing. So my time playing was mostly consumed by 'whats that, whats this, is that person attacking me or not, I don't know what their gun animation is supposed to look like.'

On a more meta note, this is the 5th game in a row I've played that fell into the 'I can see how people could like it, but I hate it' category, and I'm starting to get a bit scared.

EDIT: Oh, and the UI is nice. You can mess around in menus without abandoning matchmaking.

 

[Sassafrass]

Gonna echo the sentiment of the others and say there's not enough people willing to play support. My current favourite to play as is D.Va but I almost always end up playing as Mercy because everyone seems to plump for one of the more killy characters. I think the game would be better if you had a dedicated group to play with where you can formulate strategies and synergise better.

Otherwise, it's quite fun, dripping with personality. Not sure if I'm willing to actually pay for it yet though. I keep getting reminded of what happened with Titanfall and Evolve, where I played the open beta, thought: "Yeah, this seems pretty fun. If I can get a regular group these'd be a laugh." and then they got left by the wayside.

Addendum: I have been experimenting with other characters and have since found a new love for Mei. She's pretty versatile. She can long snipe relatively effectively, provides useful support and control in close quarters, and her ultimate can really mess with an opposing team in the right circumstances. Also, she's adorable.

After playing a bit more of it while awake and aware as to what the shit is going down, I agree with this whole heartedly. Hopefully more and more people will realise that a healer is pretty much vital to doing well. I'm personally jumping between being Winston and Mercy myself, to help balance shit out. Two tanks is fun, but if they're both pulling agro, they're both gonna die, and fast, so sometimes you need to drop out and pick up the healing slack.

I'd also recommend to Blizzard that they try and make it so you can't end up on a really unbalanced team. I was on a team earlier with two Tracer's, two Reapers and a Black Widow. They were just getting mown down and even my best attempts at healing couldn't hold off a crushing 100-0 loss on a capture mission. The only way I can suggest they do that is limit it to one of each hero per team, which would help promote the learning of other characters, but that would also upset those who specialise in that character if they can't get to them.

 

[Fappy]

Gonna echo the sentiment of the others and say there's not enough people willing to play support. My current favourite to play as is D.Va but I almost always end up playing as Mercy because everyone seems to plump for one of the more killy characters. I think the game would be better if you had a dedicated group to play with where you can formulate strategies and synergise better.

Otherwise, it's quite fun, dripping with personality. Not sure if I'm willing to actually pay for it yet though. I keep getting reminded of what happened with Titanfall and Evolve, where I played the open beta, thought: "Yeah, this seems pretty fun. If I can get a regular group these'd be a laugh." and then they got left by the wayside.

Addendum: I have been experimenting with other characters and have since found a new love for Mei. She's pretty versatile. She can long snipe relatively effectively, provides useful support and control in close quarters, and her ultimate can really mess with an opposing team in the right circumstances. Also, she's adorable.

After playing a bit more of it while awake and aware as to what the shit is going down, I agree with this whole heartedly. Hopefully more and more people will realise that a healer is pretty much vital to doing well. I'm personally jumping between being Winston and Mercy myself, to help balance shit out. Two tanks is fun, but if they're both pulling agro, they're both gonna die, and fast, so sometimes you need to drop out and pick up the healing slack.

I'd also recommend to Blizzard that they try and make it so you can't end up on a really unbalanced team. I was on a team earlier with two Tracer's, two Reapers and a Black Widow. They were just getting mown down and even my best attempts at healing couldn't hold off a crushing 100-0 loss on a capture mission. The only way I can suggest they do that is limit it to one of each hero per team, which would help promote the learning of other characters, but that would also upset those who specialise in that character if they can't get to them.

I've been mostly playing Mercy since last night and find healing actually pretty fun in this game. It's all about her homing dash. Stick behind the tank, pumping heals into him, and when you spot a DPS taking damage you zoom over to them and patch them up right before they fall. Her ultimate can change the course of a fight as well. Still trying to get the hang of switching weapons on the fly. Her pistol is surprisingly good. Killed quite a few DPS heroes with that dinky thing lol.

 

[Sassafrass]

Gonna echo the sentiment of the others and say there's not enough people willing to play support. My current favourite to play as is D.Va but I almost always end up playing as Mercy because everyone seems to plump for one of the more killy characters. I think the game would be better if you had a dedicated group to play with where you can formulate strategies and synergise better.

Otherwise, it's quite fun, dripping with personality. Not sure if I'm willing to actually pay for it yet though. I keep getting reminded of what happened with Titanfall and Evolve, where I played the open beta, thought: "Yeah, this seems pretty fun. If I can get a regular group these'd be a laugh." and then they got left by the wayside.

Addendum: I have been experimenting with other characters and have since found a new love for Mei. She's pretty versatile. She can long snipe relatively effectively, provides useful support and control in close quarters, and her ultimate can really mess with an opposing team in the right circumstances. Also, she's adorable.

After playing a bit more of it while awake and aware as to what the shit is going down, I agree with this whole heartedly. Hopefully more and more people will realise that a healer is pretty much vital to doing well. I'm personally jumping between being Winston and Mercy myself, to help balance shit out. Two tanks is fun, but if they're both pulling agro, they're both gonna die, and fast, so sometimes you need to drop out and pick up the healing slack.

I'd also recommend to Blizzard that they try and make it so you can't end up on a really unbalanced team. I was on a team earlier with two Tracer's, two Reapers and a Black Widow. They were just getting mown down and even my best attempts at healing couldn't hold off a crushing 100-0 loss on a capture mission. The only way I can suggest they do that is limit it to one of each hero per team, which would help promote the learning of other characters, but that would also upset those who specialise in that character if they can't get to them.

I've been mostly playing Mercy since last night and find healing actually pretty fun in this game. It's all about her homing dash. Stick behind the tank, pumping heals into him, and when you spot a DPS taking damage you zoom over to them and patch them up right before they fall. Her ultimate can change the course of a fight as well. Still trying to get the hang of switching weapons on the fly. Her pistol is surprisingly good. Killed quite a few DPS heroes with that dinky thing lol.

Yeah, her flight ability is damn useful and her ultimate is very useful if you hold it for a couple of downed players or a really good tank. And I've not been too accurate with her pistol, but I'll agree it's useful to at least weaken someone up or at least force a low health hero back a bit.

 

[barbzilla]

I've been playing it for about 5 hours now and it makes me very happy that I didn't pre-order the game. I don't think it is a bad game, but it isn't worth the price of admission. I honestly believe that this game will go to the bargain bin within the first 8 months post release, and just outside of a year it will be free to play. Hell, they've even added in F2P features in the form of cosmetics that drop from gold chests, remove those and charge $0.50 -$2.00 each and you will have a solid start.

Now, other than my griping about the lack of content and my irritation at the price for said lack of content, the game has actually been pretty fun. It still needs a fair amount of balancing, and a much better match making/searching system, but the combat itself flows pretty nicely.

 

[Objectable]

It's like TF2, but actually fun.