Overwatch takes the Class-Based Team Shooter formula, and tries to hamfist the iconic, unique-hero-of-the-week roster template inside of it, and it’s immediately obvious why this doesn’t work right out of the box as well: The concept of these characters is that they are not only a part of a large, varied roster of characters (which follow a constant flux of balance), but are also designed to fill set roles in a team composition and progression, as well as functioning as completely independent team choices. The primary reason is that Overwatch, like many other mainstream games, subsists almost entirely on surface-level emulation of other games except this time, ActiBlizzard stepped out-of-genre with what they copied, which was obviously the DotA-like (Or as a certain marketing team calls them: ‘MOBAs’) genre. It’s very simple to break down the issue, and why this is the case. This is something fairly obvious to many experienced players of the game that aren’t caught down to the pubes defending it from any observation or criticism, and it’s something my friends who play the game talk about frequently, though not always directly. You see, there’s one common thread present throughout every single character in Overwatch’s roster, and it’s consistent between every character’s core features.Įvery Hero is designed independently of the rest of the game. What has caught my attention this time is one of Overwatch’s many, many flaws: It’s Class- I mean, Hero design and not in the ‘designed like generic pornbait with cardboard personality’ kind of design, I mean mechanically.

This concept has started to dwell in my head again as the usual drama circles ActiBlizzard’s Overwatch, a game built on so many buzzwords that it could’ve been based on an E3 script.

Those of you who’ve read through my old content might recognize the topic of ‘game design in a vacuum’ when I covered Poise’s vanishing act in Dark Souls 3.

Git gud league of legends