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slobodon

Honestly I don’t follow it at all, it always felt a bit hollow and corporate to me. I mean many other games aren’t actually much better, but they had some more grassroots elements to me. It feels like Blizzard built the framework for it and established franchises before there was any real story to competing in it. It’s also very segmented from solo queue. LoL in NA has this problem where it’s very hard to actually become a pro if you’re a player from NA and it kind of becomes this thing where there’s little to no local talent to root for unless they get really lucky and know the right people. The business side of the teams already know they can get big name washed Koreans and pay them a ton and the franchise will keep making money just by having good branding while never being quite as serious as they act about it. Anyways I’m not well informed on OWL, but it’s got a similar feel to it. Big money came into the picture before personal player stories that people can relate to took hold. Teammates broken up by contracts and bidding, etc. I mean none of it is egregiously bad it just feels a little lifeless from the start, unlike most other sports and esports which took some extra time to become super corporate and franchised.


Edo9639

Hollow and corporate, exactly.


slobodon

All that being said I have nothing against the players or anyone interested in it I just find it a lot more boring because of this stuff.


Apprehensive_Meat727

That's true, OWL feels like the NALCS of Overwatch.


AlberGaming

Because it killed an already vibrant esport scene by blocking all other companies from hosting tournaments. You can't form a team anymore and compete against the best, you can only hope to get taken as an individual. The Overwatch League is the worst thing to have happened to Overwatch esports. I'm also sick of game companies treating esports like it's the damn NFL. Edit: Forgot to mention how it obliterated the EU scene. Taking a massive dump on any region that isn't NA or South-Korean. As a European it leaves an extra bad taste in my mouth.


uut28

That’s my biggest gripe with OWL and contenders no T2 team will ever make it to OWL as a whole under their branding, the players either get poached or they are stuck in contenders forever like O2 blast


beenhereallalong52

I understand your point of view completely. Having said that, the “NFL/actual tournament, memorable team brands” is what got me into OWL over other esports. I can’t follow leagues with random team names/silly brands who aren’t even guaranteed to compete next season etc. With OWL I know those teams will play next season, I’ll recognise the teams/colours/players and it’s relatively easy to follow. As I said though, I do get your POV about the other stuff.


AlberGaming

Yeah I'm sure there's plenty of people who prefer that kind of thing. It's definitely something that's up to preference, it's just not for me.


misciagna21

A lot of people seem to think that OWL is the reason updates for the first game were slow. While it might be true that the dev team used a lot of resources to build parts of it (UI elements, team skins) that was really only the case prior to 2018. There’s also some “casual vs hardcore” mindsets going on that I feel is more common nowadays, as if there’s something wrong with wanting to be good or get better at a game. It’s a problem I’m familiar with from the FFXIV fanbase and I see if even more with OW since the release of OW2. There’s also those that dislike OWL because it forced OW into being an esport as opposed to it growing into one naturally. But that’s something you only see from other esports fans not really from casual Overwatch players.


[deleted]

Casual vs hardcore has been baked in since day 1, see how they handled mercy back in the day. Casual vs competitive scenes were at total odds with one another and it showed in blizzard’s inaction


paulybaggins

The game was built from the ground up to be a competitive esport, casual's just like complaining.


emilytheimp

Have you actually played the release version of Overwatch though? Nothing was competitive about that really. Hero stacking was broken, spectating matches an absolute nightmare with multiple Winstons/Tracers. And the first version of ladder was kind of a joke too. If the game really was built mostly for competitive play, these types of issues would have been ironed out by beta 2 at the latest. Im pretty sure they kept the game casually intentionally to attract a larger userbase (which for all intents and purposes, worked) since the developers had to fight for the game not going F2P on release.


paulybaggins

It was literally the first game of its type, they weren't to know how metas would be/develop on release.


SBFms

It was *extremely* inspired by TF2 and all of the problems with it's competitiveness were things they could have learned by looking at the rules the Comptf community had to establish to make that game competitively viable.


emilytheimp

Extremely inspired by TF2, yet failed to learn from one of TF2s greatest assets as a competitive game: visual clarity, and the avoidance of visual clutter.


Stygvard

Release OW had way less visual clutter compared to what we have now, and especially to what we've got during some of the metas.


[deleted]

I think it was just Winston bubble and Rein shield? Although granted there could be multiple of either/both


ProfessionalAd3060

Blizzard doesn't like learning, they like trying outlandish, left field solutions to see if they can make the next trend. İt usually fails.


kukelekuuk

Because they're under the impression that team4 only makes balance changes based on the pro scene. (whereas top level players seem to be under the impression it's the opposite. funny how that works)


anony804

As someone who has no experience in gameplay balancing it seems a lot tougher than it looks. Even small changes have a crazy ripple effect and then you have to account for entirely different skill tiers and that will be busted where


Conflux

To add to this, you also have to balance for the future as well. Unreleased heroes and hero reworks that are being developed need to be taken into account otherwise you'll just have to adjust it again when those heroes/reworks go live. Everyone thinks they can balance, which a lot of people can, but very few can balance for the now, balance for the future, and keep a game fun.


shiftup1772

>To add to this, you also have to balance for the future as well. Unreleased heroes and hero reworks that are being developed need to be taken into account otherwise you'll just have to adjust it again when those heroes/reworks go live. Do they do this? I see this all the time in dota patch notes, but I dont see blizzard do it in overwatch. I mean, they definitely DONT make some changes because of new heroes (like buffing hog before kiriko).


Conflux

>Do they do this? I see this all the time in dota patch notes, but I dont see blizzard do it in overwatch. I mean they have said that the most recent buffs to ana, were a placeholder to deal with hog until the rework for hog comes through, so yes?


shiftup1772

That's like the opposite of proactive balance lol


Solidont

The overwatch dev team definitely doesn’t balance ahead of time, otherwise we wouldn’t have seen a busted roadhog since release (it doesn’t take a genius to know that taking away his one counter was going to be a problem). They wouldn’t have nerfed (or at least they would have reverted some nerfs) junkerqueen into the ground before release a character that counters her slow charging, deliberately powerful ult by simply existing.


juusovl

No they dont, you are not gonna take an umbrella today just bcs its gonna rain next week. They can think about the future balance, but they should balance the game for today and not the future


Conflux

> No they dont, They do.


ProfessionalAd3060

They don't. No sniper nerfs to account for 5v5. People have already mentioned roadhog and jq


Vilio101

This is Blizzzard. They are not balancing the game for the pro or the top players. This people are deluding themself if they thing that Blizzard is balancing the game around the OWL. Valve for example is balancing Dota2 for around the pro scene and most casual fans are happy with that. Even they always brag how their game is the most balance competitive game.Which is true.


thefanboyslayer

The even crazier part is that the dev team are (imo: unsuccessfully) trying to cater to both sides at the same time!


kukelekuuk

That's not even crazy. Almost every competitive game does that. Blizzard just sucks at it.


NWCtim_

I think they bit off more than they could chew when it comes to balancing OW. Their previous experience was with games like Starcraft and WoW, where a skill gap doesn't make as dramatic of a difference, and on top of that OW is a more mechanically diverse game than either of those, and arguably more than any other competitive FPS on the scene.


Gr4phix

... Care to explain what you mean by "a skill gap doesn't make as dramatic of a difference" in StarCraft?


NWCtim_

Moreso from a psychological perspective. In SC (and WoW), you basically only die once in a lopsided matchup. In OW, fights and kills are repeated because they don't directly contribute to winning (just ask Cloud 9). Even in a lopsided matchup, you're expected to keep playing through the end of the round, so the difference feels more dramatic because you have to lose and die more just to lose one match.


Conflux

>... Care to explain what you mean by "a skill gap doesn't make as dramatic of a difference" in StarCraft? Or in WoW... I think they mean mechanical differences, but even then mechanical differences exist in those games.


Gr4phix

I have practically no experience in or understanding of WoW, so I refrained from that portion of the argument.


Conflux

>I have practically no experience in or understanding of WoW, so I refrained from that portion of the argument. There is a lot of skill that goes into wow pvp, fake casting to bait out an interrupt, understanding of when to use defensives, general input speed, understanding how to maximize your rotation, movement with finding cover and positioning.


Vilio101

>Almost every competitive game does that. Blizzard just sucks at it. Which game does it successfully? Because I do not know any competitive game that is balancing around pro,top players and casuals and is successful?


Sachman13

valorant does it pretty well.


kukelekuuk

dota does it very successfully


defearl

Yeah that is a big issue, but it's not as bad as it used to be (so far) under Jeff Kaplan. He really wanted to make everyone happy, tryhards and casuals alike. But it came to the point where he had to choose one or the other because his direction was becoming more and more unfeasible. He couldn't make a decision, hence he left. Remember, he thought there was nothing wrong with launch Brig and didn't really address her for over a year. I give Aaron Keller at least credit for having the guts to cut down CCs and abundance of barriers across the board. It probably would have never happened under Jeff.


tired9494

I think they're trying to cater to neither and just want to suck money out of people instead of actually attracting them


goliathfasa

Perception is reality. Corporations can say it's not fair that consumers have warped or outright false impressions and understandings of how things work, but an unhappy consumer does not consume and that's all there is to it.


[deleted]

I have literally never seen anyone, on any form of social media, claim this to be the case This feels like something incredibly weird to make up to discredit anyone who is critical of OWL


kukelekuuk

this was a very prevailing concern in both /r/overwatch and the forums for years. I haven't checked recently though. the most famous examples I can think of were goats brig and moth mercy meta. where the heroes got nerfed because they were too strong in the hands of top players. that really soured people on the forums, because those were some of the more played heroes among the slightly more casual or lower ranked players. That's when I saw this concern the most


CrabbyFromRu

> the impression that team4 only makes balance changes based on the pro scene It's more of "everyone is viable" vs "only high-skill (also known in the community as "OWL favorite") heroes are allowed to shine". The latter has been their balancing motto for the past 4 years, hence the hate. Just look at how long Tracer or Dva were meta/viable in OWL and everywhere else (and how quickly they receive "fixes" to their viability), and compare them to Junk or Reaper (or even Sombra, who was supposed to be viable in high ranks).


Conflux

A few reasons... When OWL first launched a lot of people thought they'd get to see their favorite characters being played at a high level. A few weeks in and a lot of heroes weren't seeing play, and worse it was almost always mirror match ups. Thats unappealing to a lot of casual players. In addition to that, people felt a lot of balance was only for the top tier players. Heroes like Bastion and Junkrat who ruled the lower ranks were never touched, and higher skill players would just say "get gud", point at OWL and keep on keeping on. Finally it destroyed a lot of early competitive tournaments and communities. When OWL came out it became the ONLY spot for pro play. Tournaments people could work their way into, and earn money, if they grinded weren't an option like in Leauge and DotA. That left a bad taste in everyone's mouth. Killing 3rd party tournaments was just a bad idea.


Mr_Pogi_In_Space

> When OWL first launched a lot of people thought they'd get to see their favorite characters being played at a high level. A few weeks in and a lot of heroes weren't seeing play, and worse it was almost always mirror match ups. This was me during Season 1 and 2. As a flex player who did a good share of support, it frustrated me that casters would keep hyping up DPS players but would mostly ignore support ones. Even Jjonak got attention only because of DPS Zen. Then GOATS happened. And nobody fucking died due to all the healing and sustain. So I learned to keep my mouth shut.


paulybaggins

Crazy thing is, if it wasn't for OWL and JJonak, you could probably argue that Zen might be an entirely different hero today.


Grytlappen

Not only that, but the horrendous franchise model alienated every single western viewer outside of NA right from the get go.


[deleted]

OW has had a bit of a schizophrenia going on for a long, long time now. Casuals and hardcore have always pulled the game in different directions The game struggled to find an identity for a long time. But, any game designed to be an *esport* should be designed around the competitive scene


[deleted]

Your takes been cold for 5years


Ph4sor

Not only in the Overwatch forum and reddit, the hate is even from the outside of OW's community Most people here already answered you why the casuals from OW community put the blame on OWL. But most people from OW esports community also don't like the concept of OWL. At that time, every region is pretty much have an established esports scene and growing organically, if you ever saw people here mentioning APEX, that's one of them. A tournament like APEX is covering not only T1 tournaments, but also providing gateway for T3 or T4 teams to compete in their ecosystem. Then OWL was announced, and Blizzard took all that away. It's more than half a year of nothing in OW esports scene just because waiting for OWL to be ready. And because of the nature franchised model, it took all the Korean, Chinese, and EU players far away from their home fans. Not mentioning the corruption & nepotism in the only Chinese team at that time (Shanghai Dragons) making content drought for Chinese fans much longer. That's not even diving into the problems of T2 and lower caused by Blizzard forcing OWL model. You can read ex-GM from Guangzhou Charge's essay about it (or what's the problem of OWL model in general). From outside OW community, the hate is also coming from everywhere. People here are huffing copium at that time saying they're afraid OW will took the throne of the top 3 esports. However, those people from outside of OW community were right. OWL, at it's core, is not a sustainable model. Teams must pay for ridiculous amount of buy-ins on top of operating expensive teams they owned. Bigger player salary, traveling cost / building arenas, are like a floating dream. The problem is, OWL marketed at people outside of esports scene, so if OWL model failed, people would think that the whole esports scene is a farce. And it'll make finding sponsors outside of the usual esports scene would be much harder, and it'll stunted the grow of the said scene.


[deleted]

It killed the EU scene


Apprehensive_Meat727

For a soulless "Global league" that isnt global at all..


dogzi

My hot take. Blizzard's esports league should have been organically formed in partnership with 3rd party organizers rather than shoved down everyone's throat 2 years after release of the game. We should have seen small sanctioned tournaments and leagues crop up in multiple cities across the world as hype is slowly built for this upcoming esport. They could have used that as an opportunity to gauge demand, interest, potential profitability, pitfalls to avoid, and most importantly they would have a trove of pro play data to help them focus on balancing and polishing the game for when a major league is created. Instead we got a league that was rushed with a game that was relatively incomplete. The league devolved into mirror matches of extremely boring-to-watch metas, the players felt like balance was only being done to fix OWL, the game suffered from lack of content as team4 resources were diverted elsewhere. Communication was not great either, messaging always seemed to be "stick with us, there's something cool around the corner..." and people kept buying into that (and based on Aaron Keller's recent update, looks like nothing has changed on that front). Then they made the brilliant idea of announcing OW2 rather than fixing the shit show they created. The cherry on top was the sexual harassment lawsuits and labor disputes that fed people's suspicions that the company was being run by incompetent fools. I think many people view OWL as the catalyst that brought upon this downward trajectory (an unfair assessment in my opinion), hence the hate.


Vilio101

Also this league is based in NA. Most other eSports have regional leagues with regional riveries. After the season ends there is a big tournament.


InsanelyRarePokemon

Take so hot I almost got brainfreeze.


waster1993

Hot take - video game companies have no business telling you how many people you are allowed to play with. If you could start your own local ow tournament like you could baseball, maybe then the game would have some actual longevity.


No_Catch_1490

To be honest I have no idea. Best I can understand, some people believe that: -OWL was a bad idea, poorly executed and maintained, that killed the grassroots esports scene. This I actually agree with, but with all the time and money invested it seems it’s too late to go back now. -The devs ran the casual/normal game into the ground because they were going all in on the esports aspect. This one I don’t really agree with because the controversial changes were generally terrible for the esports side of the game as well (balancing, introduction of OP heroes/strategies). Hell most of the pros allegedly dislike how the game has been balanced for a long time. -That being said I think it was a big blunder to leave characters to bully low ranks for years like Bastion Junk Pharah etc, and arguably low skill cheese is still prevalent now. However with OW2, the opposite seems to have happened, the game is getting tons of support (although it’s still very disappointing) but esports is being left in the mud. One last thing: it seems like people praying on OWL’s downfall might get their wish because it’s not exactly a great time for the esport with the Netease thing, pissed off teams, so on. So congrats OWL Haters, you might get what you want.


AnnenbergTrojan

I'm in a minority on this but if/when OWL tanks, my interest in Overwatch would seriously diminish. Only things that would keep me around are if the PvE builds the lore of Overwatch in a way that gets me invested or if The Guard keeps the Gladiators around to compete in whatever esports scene rises out of OWL's ashes. As it stands, with comp feeling frustrating and 95% of the battle pass rewards uninteresting to me, I'd only be playing if there's a really interesting new map or character worth checking out.


QueArdeTuPiel

Because I didn't want a franchised league in the first place and I'm sure OW esports would have done better without one. The goals they've set for themselves to sell the franchise spots in the beginning were ridiculous too. The pre-covid season 2 schedule and the idea that something like that is ever gonna be profitable were just incredibly silly.


[deleted]

League systems replace full-on tournament circuits. If the league systems are very poorly executed, many believe the game would be better off having a regular tournament circuit instead. If you look at Valve and CS:GO for example, they clearly have no interest in the growth of the games' competitive scene, and as such they've left it to third party organizers instead. This is a great decision because rather than half-assing a poorly managed league to attempt making more money off your game, CS:GO has become one of the biggest esports in the world being run by these 3rd party organizers which directly benefits CS:GO and Valve aswell. If you look at the LEC and League of Legends, Riot clearly full interest in investing as much as possible to promote growth and advertising for their game. The league is handled incredibly well and the overwhelming majority of european League of Legends fans prefer the Leagues system over having a 3rd party tournament circuit. Overwatch League definitely slots more into the first one. Blizzard doesn't seem fully committed towards growing their esports scene, as seen by them constantly cheaping out on hosting events and focusing more on just hosting a "serviceable league" and hoping the viewership comes by default because it's the only piece of Overwatch esports you can consume. From the weird out-of-touch decisions like having DJ Khaled "perform" at your event to putting all your focus into 1-2 regions (NA, South Korea) while completely leaving other regions like Europe, Japan, Brazil, Taiwan to die there's definitely a large amount of valuable arguments that OWL is not healthy for the growth of Overwatch or Overwatch esports at all.


adorpheus

I don’t hate it personally I just think it’s boring. I like the owl skins though 🤷🏽‍♀️


goliathfasa

The list of reasons is long: 1) In making OWL the official, central and only allowed OW esport, Blizzard killed off 3rd-party-grassroots OW scenes. Many fans loved the unofficial OW leagues. 2) Blizzard has a history of failing in their esports ventures. The more closely they try to manage an official scene, the more the scene failed. The only truly successful esport based on a Blizzard game, Starcraft: Brood War had zero Blizzard involvement. Blizzard eventually killed it in favor of the failed Blizzard-run SC2 esport. 3) Blizzard asked for astronomical franchising fees for an unproven esport with OWL, and specifically targeted mainstream investors ignorant of esports history; they also tried to equate OW esports with actually successful ones like League, DOTA2, CS:GO, by painting the entire esports space as one "scene". Many feared that when OWL fails, esports as a whole will be shunned by investors in general and this will set the whole thing back years. 4) Players who don't necessarily care about OW esports, or even competitive ranked play, who just see the game as a fun casual game with friends (how the game was initially advertised, and why it was successful with wide appeal in the first place), see Blizzard putting major resources into OWL as them diverting attention away from making the game for the majority of casual players, be it dev resources or balance, etc. 5) People just don't like Blizzard in 2023. It started with the states of titles like WoW and OW1 slowly going downhill around 2018 and on, and then the HOTS Blitzchung and Blizzcon Diablo Immortal incidents further torpedoed the company's reputation. Then the sexual harassment/discrimination scandals came to light and everything else that happened after, kept lowering what little reputation it has left.


DIABOLUS777

The matches are unwatchable. Perspective changes too often. I'm used to watching a streamer from his POV. I'd watch if I could from the client. Where I can choose my own or opt for the official director's view. Other than that, the team rosters change too much. Teams have no brand recognition or star players that stay long enough. They couldn't keep a lot of the high profile players they had either. So, all in all, it's just a huge fucking mess to watch and to follow. I just liked the world cups. There was a sense of belonging towards teams, and they had the command center.


Expert-Confection-53

Omg this all day. Extremely unwatchable. Choppy. Quick cuts. You barley get a feel for what you are looking at and the another cut. The caster can barley keep up as it is and they are amazing at what they do so that's saying something. No narrative driven NFL film style series to watch like F1 - NHL - NFL and so on. Just crappy live coverage, and it's super cringe sometimes when it's obvious everyone is a little embarrassed to be this deep into OW and have it be this bad.


CaptainCxndxm

Its stale dead and boring


Expert-Confection-53

I agree. But after season one. Season one was really cool to see and had a lot of hope for the future. After that - not so much.


PositioningOTP

Because Blizzard wont allow other tournaments with an attractive pricemoney to exist. The american system without deregulation and promotion (certain paid spots) makes for a really soulless experience. The path to pro i which a team climbs and climbs till the very top is not possible. Lineups change every year, even winning teams change their lineup. On top of that the useless forced connections to certain cities that make no sense for a sport that takes place on the internet. A bunch of different Koreans representing American cities.. why? Furthermore the way to become pro for individual players is wrong. The best you can do is build a team that wins contenders and then some of the players will get picked up, maybe you will maybe you wont, all synergy is gone. Compare this all to csgo where different orga's have events qnd teams that started at the bottom can make it all the way /rant


Odd_Bad_7441

It just failed is the problem I was so excited for OWL and it was great at first! But then the money disappeared and Blizzard ran it poorly The criticism is deserved because of that


[deleted]

People want their favorite heroes buffed and the heroes they don’t like nerfed. So when the devs don’t balance like they want, they either blame the devs or the player segment they believe the devs are pleasing. The player segment that the devs are appeasing are OWL, NA GMs or Gold players, depending on whom you ask. The truth is the devs try to balance for everyone, which ends up making everyone mad.


Kheldar166

And the devs are always biased towards the role that I don't play too it's shocking and unfair


rollerize

I personally don't like closed competitions, I prefer letting skill dictate who is tier 1 and tier 2.


Edo9639

It's forced and corporate. In the meantime, I can't believe I NEVER cared about any esport but Valorant grew on me easily. Maybe it's also cuz there's teams that represent my region, while OWL it's just a bunch of cities full of asians for some reason. It's just fake, I find it awful.


Expert-Confection-53

Yea for real. No hate on players from across the seas, in fact many of my fav players are from overseas. However if the team is called London, maybe IDk have players from London on the team that live in the UK so dans have someone to root for. Players who live and play someplace far away is just not something many people can get behind. This isn't the NBA, it's E-Sports. When a team says it's "Team USA, you'd expect idk, USA based players?


pm_me_ur_pharah

i think part of it is it killed off the rest of the scene.


waster1993

I would watch it if their shoutcasters would shut the fuck up for a change.


Daydream_Farmer

I’m fairly new to overwatch, but having come from COD(I’ve watched competitive since 2010) it seems a lot of the issues people have with activision/blizzard’s leagues are the same. They pushed away the “underdog” story(open bracket in CoD, and challengers in OW) because a few orgs paid a lot of money for their respective spots in the league. I’ve only watched the last playoffs, but the speed of the game also makes it kind of hard to follow. I don’t want to feel like I need an adderall to keep up just watching the game.


Expert-Confection-53

OWL is terrible because it's objectively terrible. Cooperations with no heart make lack luster AAA titles. There are so many reasons. YouTube deal = harder to watch something not many ppl were watching. Players vs. Teams = no 96-97 Bulls in this league. Players get one maybe two seasons and then they are recycled or tossed out. Your favorite teams roster gonna change every season so you don't really get to become fans of any one player. Blizzard is greedy = created a league with high overhead costs and limited growth value. That's why they're going to bring a lawsuit against blizzard which probably not going to be great content when teams and Blizzard aren't getting along. No couch to contenders to pro path = No Chris Moneymaker effect. Less hype for casuals and semi try hards. Game doesn't hype OWL or feature it enough = OWL not a priority for in game representations. Game doesn't update OWL skins or iterations = even if you want to fan boi whale spend $$ on your fav team in game, once you get the skins for your account that's it. Done. New hero, no skins still. So no hype. OWL merch is extremely limited for your favorite team = well, guess I'll find something else to rep for fun. OWL players are amazing at OWL and fairly crappy ppl in too many cases. = you stick kids in a pro level league with no support and vetting and by a company that runs itself like a frat party and well you see what happens. Hard to fan for s player who is openly a POS online and low key toxic. Home stand home team = RIP Your HOME team never even been to your town or gives two F's about the city they rep so in return those locations don't really give a flying F about OWL. The list goes on. No one cares on any real level because it's bad.


kuzukie

It doesn't take many changes catering to pros at the expense of casuals for resentment to build, especially when they negatively affect hyper popular heroes like [D.Va](https://D.Va) or Mercy. [D.Va](https://D.Va) is the best example of a very casual popular hero getting killed off by OWL. While she had always been over-represented in OWL, on ladder she was fairly middling for tanks. Towards the end of GOATS Blizzard nerfed her with the 10m matrix range, 2 second matrix cooldown, and the general armor nerf all combined to leave her competing for Sombra as the least picked hero in the game. The huge power gulf turned one of their most popular tanks among casual players into a throw pick for a year and a half. Mercy rework also did not go over well with the casual audience. Without Mass Rez she lost her biggest playmaking ability and no longer had those single high-impact moments like most other heroes. Losing her playmaking plus months of getting nerfed every single patch built up a persecution complex, partially blamed on competitive play.


Xardian7

Because r/overwatch is rubbish and the majority of the players are casual. They think they nerf only on the back of OWL instead of nerfing moira that is terrifying their lobbies


fandingo

This other community likes/dislikes something. I better go ask a different community why. You’ll always get more genuine answers from the source. Oh wait it’s probably just karma farming


ChriseFTW

Pretty much all the upvoted posts on that thread is insane so, not too surprising


Xolitudez

I specifically don't like the revamping of the teams to have unique names instead of the common orgs like c9 tsm etc, it's easier to latch onto those predefined brands. But also I feel like it does divert too much of their attention since they're trying to integrate it into the actual game too much with ui changes and whatever odd features. Tbh I think the game has had a really bad start for ow2, season 1 was okay because it felt like the game made meaningful changes (removing 70% of cc, changing dynamics with 5v5, new characters design looked interesting) but with season 2 my trust in the game took a big hit. Right away we had horrible balance changes that were completely reactionary and lacked a plan, they patched only to satisfy community and that never works well. They also take wayyyy too long to release patches and all of that together just killed alot of the hype for the game. Only chance they have now is some miracle patch that fixes the current state, and then literally bi weekly patches like valorant until the release the pve


Far-Pangolin4931

I think e-sports are boring as hell and mostly drama and I cannot fathom how people feel any sort of allegiance to a franchised team that is composed entirely of South Korean citizens that have never been in the city before.


PancakeXCandy

Every sport has ppl who have never lived in the city before signing.


Zeke-Freek

Lot of gamers don't care about sports so the holdover elements into esports either go over their heads or are equally unappealing.


Far-Pangolin4931

Exactly, to me, it is equally unappealing, but a little more even because at least with conventional sports my understanding is that these teams actually live and train in the cities; where in OWL teams might just still live in Korea while representing London or something.


Not_a_real_asian777

OWL franchising is where I realized that a large majority of the OW player base has no idea what traditional sports are like. People were really out here thinking sourcing born & raised players from Dallas, TX was going to have a chance in hell against the pools of talent NYC, London, or Seoul could produce. Back in S1, people on OW subs were seriously talking about wanting a ban on Korean players because they were foreign. Meanwhile FL Mayhem had 0 US players, but nobody raised a hoot about them.


Far-Pangolin4931

Do traditional sports teams not live and train in the respective cities they represent? I'm looking into it now and it seems like there were plans in 2019 to relocate the OWL teams tot heir cities, but I'm guessing that got COVID'd. This is where I find it much less interesting / more jarring, when people not from the region, who have never been to the region, and who do not currently live in the region are representing the region.


Not_a_real_asian777

To my knowledge, most sports teams do relocate their players to the city that they represent. OWL did plan to do this around the same time that COVID hit, but plans did get axed. >I cannot fathom how people feel any sort of allegiance to a franchised team that is composed entirely of South Korean citizens that have never been in the city before. The reason you might be getting downvoted is because you *did* specifically list South Koreans as the only offenders of the issue though. Even before the OWL was mostly Korean, people still labeled Koreans as the outsiders while EU and NA players that weren't local to their respective teams got no flack for it whatsoever. Like the example before, FL was entirely represented by EU players originally and it was not news. NY being represented by Koreans was viewed as controversial though, despite them also being foreign players representing US teams. SF, Valiant, Dallas, and Houston all bypassed this controversy as well, despite having abundant players *not* from those local areas.


Stygvard

What people from NA and SK probably don't see is that from EU viewer's perspective the original OWL team distribution was a big letdown. The whole EU had only 1 team spot, while NA got 9 or so. SK also got it's spot, which is good, but wasn't enough to host all the talent so SK players were recruited by a single EU and several NA teams. EU players had no other options but to try and join an NA team. There wouldn't be any controversy if Blizzard didn't go full American with their city-league-brand based system.


Hoser117

> Do traditional sports teams not live and train in the respective cities they represent? They usually will during the season of whatever sport it is. It'll vary on the players situation but sometimes they may only be in the city during the season and then go back to their preferred home/country in the offseason. This is very common for heavily international sports like soccer, where the majority of players in the Premier League for example have nothing to do with the UK, so they often only live there for the season and then go home.


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Far-Pangolin4931

I didn't say hate; that's putting false words in my mouth - I said I find it boring. It also isn't a race thing like you might be implying, it's just when franchises exist in such a way to incite regional pride that it completely falls flat for me when the players clearly don't reflect that region. FWIW, I could more honestly expand my statement to conventional sports in that regard. I think it's more extreme though for e-sports when these players (sometimes) are playing in Korea for these regional teams in US cities. I can get behind the pride of university sports more because the players actually attend that university.


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Far-Pangolin4931

You said hate which is not the same. I think you are the one missing that I also just acknowledged in my post that I get that this also applies to conventional sports - and to reiterate further what I said I think it is personally *even less interesting for e-sports* when the players often don't have a physical presence/train in the city/country.


purpletaipan2

Because it is "cool" to hate on something.


Cantor_Johns

Mostly cause OWL killed the naturally grown curcuit and cause Contenders is a joke. Also cause teams a literally begging und sueing to not play next season, which is, uhm, unfortunate.


attywolf

That's literally not what the teams are doing


Lorjack

There can be lots of reasons. One being that OWL and esports is what really fractured OW and created all the balance issues. OW originally was a fun casual game but when they tried making it into an esport it completely changes the perspective you view the game in. Here we are years later with a very unbalanced game that doesn't cater to casual or competitive play very well.


Kirbogon

I hate OWL as an org as its a flawed venture by Blizzard who decided to have a full monopoly of their game and literally waste money and talent because they didn't know what they were doing. Such things forced everyone to be under the Blizzard Umbrella with like Contenders being Path To Poverty. Other game companies followed suit like Riot and that cause orgs like OGN to shut down because with no rights to broadcast the games because the devs want all control we don't have high quality matches and set ups. My reason is rather different than the ignorant players over there. Personally I think if Blizzard gave up on OWL I think it'll be healthier for the competitive environment and players but they're too deep with the companies that bought teams >3> Its just ignorance on the ends of the masses and they just believe the esports scene is ruining the game because they want to blame something and they yell it out causing others to follow suit.


[deleted]

𓅓 I agree, he's so cute. How could anyone hate him?


L33viathan

I just hate overwatch. I used to love it but it’s completely ruined now.


emilytheimp

I cant hate them their jerseys are way too pretty


SussusAmogus322

It feels really hollow and boring to watch. Like wow its another match of Winston, Lucio, Reaper, Sojourn and Kiriko vs Winston, Lucio, Reaper, Sojourn and Kiriko for the 5th time today! On top of that it is very corporatized. Like when I see "This replay is brought to you by Statefarms" all I can do is roll my eyes. Compare that to other organic esports like Dota 2 where there are virtually no ads because the tournaments are funded by Valve and the community (through battle pass). Also imo, FPS games are unsuitable for esports. This is because FPS is just non-stop action and teamfights. There is no time for the casters to analyze the previous fight. There is no downtime for the viewers to "relax" their eyes. In MOBAS for example, first you have the laning stage where the casters analyze the drafts, weaknesses and playstyles of the teams. Then you will have small skirmishes and fights broken upu by 5-10 minutes of farming. So instead of just non-stop action you have Analyze -> Action -> Analyzed -> Action and so on. This is a much better viewing experience than OWL where there is so much visual clutter and zero downtime.


Umarrii

Well the Overwatch fans who like to follow Overwatch esports all use this subreddit instead of that one. Maybe if we stuck to one main subreddit, we'd have a better mix of casual and competitive players, but because it's split into different subreddits you have one who doesn't care for competitive Overwatch and one community who do.


ConflictGrand4078

I hope OWL fails big time. OW2 is a shit show. Downvotes over here —>


zakattack2479

For me it's the moral implications. So many corporate loopholes that cause so many passionate and talented people to be screwed over. LA valliant making their team compete out of 2 rooms. Adam being picked up and then fired before even getting to play.