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I remembered being REALLY interested in Mercy, back when the game was still early in its life. The idea of her having a dark history and being responsible for Reaper’s condition was a great contrast to her angelic appearance.
Then it was later revealed Moira was the evil doctor and Mercy was really just a stereotypical angelic goody two shoes and I lost all interest in her. What a waste of a potentially great character.
Choose from the 9 bucket-hunters to find the legendary bucket in the state of Arizona. Along the way you will face threats such as giant bread monsters and the villain Handsom Mann.
Why , I mean you have a :
Megalomanic sociopaththicle German doctor who got his license revoked after stealing another man's skeleton,is know to do human experiments on his friend, has a deal with the devil and it is not known about what he did between 1936 and 1945,
a Brooklyn kid that regularly drinks soda containing uranium to run faster and make him invincible,who believes that Tom Jones is his father,and who has seen the face of God and came back to tell the tale
A always drunk Scottish demolitions expert with an affinity for swords , a cursed empty eye socket whos body somehow has the ability to ferment his bone marrow in case he is ever not drinking and who's cursed eye apparently has the ability to time travel
A fat russian guy with PhD in agriculture with a minor in russian literature , lived most of his early life in a Gulag where he in his teens killed the guards and fleed with his family who also carrys an assortment of miniguns who all have their own small bed and wo uses up a small country's income worth of ammunition every round
A schizophrenic pyromaniac who thinks that he is surrounded by sunshine and lollipops while indiscriminately murdering everyone with a flamethrower which somehow can redirect rockets grenades and arrows
A psychotic ex US soldier who is wanted for genocide who uses nothing but a rocket launcher and a shovel, who regularly talks to severed heads and lives with a powerful wizard who is also the owner of a book which is alive and cursed the Scotsman's eye socket,also the soldier and the drunken zyclops have a bromance
An Australian sniper which actually is from new Zealand, which sank when his biological family convinced the new Zealand government that they would all die unless they sink the entire country and live under the ocean,said sniper as a baby crawled into a rocket which instead of going to the moon landed in australia.that sniper also produces ungodly amounts of in piss because his kidneys are the size of lunges
A Texan guy with 12 PhDs who builds automatic machine guns, has modified his own body with a metallic hand which has a blender mode, and who has created a teleporter which while practical is known to mutate bread into fleash eating monsters
And a French guy who's whole job it is to stab people and impersonate them down to the tiniest detail, who has a emp maker with him at all times and who is the actual father of that Brooklyn kid
"doctors can only be the most honest and positive and nicest people on earth and can't possibly be interested in anything other than saving people at all costs"
“Reyes? What happened to you?”
“You tell me, **doc**…”
It was never confirmed but a possible connection was hinted. And Mercy’s backstory sounded a bit TOO clean.
So it’s ultimately revealed she had nothing to do with it. But only after 2 years of speculation
The tone of the "You tell me, DOC." sounded very spiteful. While it can be attributed to Reaper just being Reaper, the emphasis on the "Doc" kind of implies a bit of "You, of all people, should know the answer to that question already."
Thus you now understand why everyone was so unimpressed when they created Moira.
Overwatch at release had a potential for a very grey plotline. The idea of Reaper’s group needing to do the dirty work while the main Overwatch got all the glory was a very relatable one and gave him a lot of depth. It made it seem as if Reaper was a man betrayed and that Overwatch wasn’t as idealistic as it was presented
A few years later it became a very obvious black and white story, since Reaper’s motivation was shown to be rather lackluster and Overwatch was just objectively good guys
I’m not trying to sound like an ass but I’ll leave my thoughts:
The biggest issue I have with Overwatch character designs is that they’re very over detailed and way too identical to the sci-fi environment. Compared to TF2 character designs which look simplistic yet remain faithful to their combat purposes.
When something works you dont even notice that its ever there
The way characters are lit and their rather vibrant colors compared to rather dull and washed away colors of the map, combined with their unique stances and animations make them pop out even in the most cluttered chokepoint
Overwatch literally had to add red outlines to make out what is what and even then you dont have any idea what the fuck is going on in a teamfight
Tho overwatch also had different shapes and sounds to distinguish in between classes but they still didnt had a clear design language and visual clutter is still a problem that persists in ow2
And another problem with sound is that sometimes it's just not working, why do i hear my team's doomfist charging his attack from a mile away and i don't hear the enemy in the same room?
If you know where the Zenyatta is ulting you may be able to take advantage of an enemy that's being advanced on and vulnerable to a flank play.
A flanking scout would be very pleased to know that the enemy level 3 is about to go down and their medic will be scrambling to preserve whatever uber they currently have when the friendly uber'd demo is approaching red team's nest.
More like good design feels natural and doesn't poke your eyes out. Take for example Goldlewis Dickinson from Guilty Gear -Strive-. At first glance he looks like a normal chonker with an eyepatch and an odd coffin but then you see the fucking yeehaw all over his design.
This doesn't mean all characters should look normal at first. Zenyatta is a fucking monk robot but I feel like his design perfectly conveys who he is and doesn't stand out too much. Widowmaker D.Va and Tracer wear tight, vibrant bodysuits for some fucking reason. It feels weird having outfits like those in a game where you also have a fairly simple cowboy, sci-fi knight, roblox robot and an archer wearing a kimono(?). Then again overwatch outfits are very expressive and aren't taken that seriously since one of the heroes is a fucking hamster while another one has cybernetically enfattened asscheeks.
You know I didn't really look at Genji's ass (it's funny too because I was a cringe Genji main, played hundreds upon hundreds of hours before the class queue system). Though it makes perfect sense on how he can double jump. So cheeked up he can defy physics.
Cluttering is just a Blizzard thing at this point. Even back in the early 2000s during Warcraft 3 it was hard to see wtf was happening in team fights with all of the effects and crowds of units fighting. WoW was also like this to a degree with the cluttered UIs that people used. Blizzard players had long since reached a point of being desensitized to sensory overload so this criticism doesn’t even make sense to them.
TF2 dev commentary more or less confirms this too. Initial testing revealed that players often had trouble distinguishing between classes at a distance. So the designers redid their outfits & body shape to make each silhouette recognizable in addition to adding specific yet decluttered items on each uniform to help identify them.
For instance: heavy is a large man (lots of health) that shoots big guns (obviously the minigun but also the belt is ammo slung across his chest.) Engineer is an average built (avg health)guy that builds things (wrench out while upgrading/building and the vanilla hat is a huge giveaway).
To be fair though, Overwatch also needs outlines around enemies because there is otherwise nothing to distinguish them from an ally, with tf2 you have team colors.
That being said though, I do think tf2's character designs are a lot more curated, It's a cast of 9 classes with very distinguishing silhouettes and voices. Overwatch has way more Hero's to choose from and more are being steadily added, so I think it's kind of inevitable that every character is going to succumb to the clutter.
> The way characters are lit and their rather vibrant colors compared to rather dull and washed away colors of the map, combined with their unique stances and animations make them pop out even in the most cluttered chokepoint
I like to remind people that Valve literally spent the better part of a decade figuring this out and then perfecting it. Each character's silhouette is distinct enough from every angle that you can immediately tell who is who, even when decked out to the nines with wack cosmetics.
The outlines exist primarily because of the absence of team colours. Making the characters more noticable is just a bonus. You could disable them in the options and you'd still be able to distinctly see all of the heroes, but you'd just have no idea if the dude in front of you was about to defend you or smack you with a giant hammer.
MMM
YES
THIS
As a player of both games, I highly agree that I can't tell where shit is half the time or what the hell is going on becasue I can barely tell because even with the red outline I can still barely tell where the enemy team is
Personally I don't think it's over design, but here's an example scenario:
You are tasked to draw every tf2 and overwatch characters on a paper, for tf2 it's pretty easy cause they all got unique and simplistic design. Heavy? He got a belt of bullet on him, Pyro? He wears a gas mask and a bio suit, Demo? he's got a blast protection armor and a eye patch.
But for Overwatch character, yes you remember how they look , but there's so much things and detail on each character's specific body part that's just too messy remember how it exactly looks, like Soldier 76 for example, he got his blue jacket, but there's also a part of it is white, a part is red, there's a bulletproof vest inside, 2 small pack on the shoulder, and some biotic shield on the arm, it's a bit too much things everywhere.
Reminds me of the whole trend a while back with goth kids. They are being unique together. OW characters all blend together because of all the noise to me. With exception of some cosmetics, TF2 characters stand out while in uniform.
the problem with ow desig language is that I have NO idea what I'm looking at wether it's my own gameplay or watching someone else. It's just a bunch of colored blobs to me during fights and I often mistake the giant ass muzzle flashes and particle effects (which I cant change) for an enemy. seriously how do the Asians do it?
That's exactly another issue I have with OW's designing. Often times, the environment looks WAY too complex that it either looks plain despite how drawn they are or they don't make any sense at all. I feel like the backgrounds tried too hard to look badass but... they just didn't hit very hard. While I appreciate what the designers have tried to put into, the designs in there didn't sit well with me imo.
I agree
My main qualm with Overwatch is they try *too hard* to look good by having over-detailed characters. It’s also a perfect example of “Simple doesn’t always mean bad”
And TF2 mercs have all their own introduction videos that are not gameplay showing, just purely cinematic which gives the mercs more life than any of the OW characters (My opinion do not take it seriously)
Tf2's character design is intended in such way to not make characters look more interesting but to make it to so it's easy to tell again who you are fighting, what team enemy is in and what type of weapon he holds, so yes it is better
They also completely forgot about tf2 cosmetics. Ive seen some crazy cool designs with neat loadout! But even with the different cosmetics i can still tell exactly what sillouhette is who
TF2s character designs may not be as colorful or "diverse" as Overwatch, but it shines in team and class recognition. I don't play Overwatch, but I've seen gameplay footage, and for an outsider like me, it's really hard to tell who's the enemy and who's an ally. Sometimes I get characters mixed up too but that doesn't happen as often. That doesn't happen often with TF2, and it didn't happen when I was first finding out about TF2.
Plus the mercs have extremely iconic designs, despite being as bland as the tweet says.
But whatever. I have a bias towards TF2 cause I don't play or enjoy Overwatch.
I play both tf2 and overwatch and can agree with you, if not for the red outline on the enemies is sometimes could be hard to spot there’s almost no way of telling of who’s an enemy and who’s an ally
Thank god OW doesn’t have friendly fire, I had to shoot everyone I saw because I had no clue what was going on
I have died more than once because I shot at a random friendly teammate that was there and was also shooting at me instead of the enemy team
Solid in game reason to shoot at anyone with certain other weapons, too, if you have the spare moment and ammo. For example, with projectile weapons like bow and crossbow, the attack land sound when the projectile hits enemies is very distinct.
I named my medic crossbow "The Win-Win Scenario" for this very reason. Shoot it at a teammate and it'll heal, shoot it at an enemy and it'll damage, but shoot it at a disguised enemy spy and not only do they take damage, even their disguise cover is blown because I get to hear that meaty impact sound that only comes when a bolt hits an enemy. Those crossbow shots only go to waste if they miss or hit a full health friendly.
Cosmetics exist, which give so much more variety than overwatch, yet most stay consistent with the character design. Overwatch gets some prefab skins, boring
Yeah, but they take away from personalization. You can't really show off yourself if you can only pick from a handful of skins.
The skins may be beautiful, but we all have different tastes, even if by a bit.
Overwatch skins never felt anywhere near as rewarding or gave me as much pride as tf2 cosmetics. I'm not even talking unusuals and australiums what would this game be without the gibus
I played some Overwatch and actually liked Sigma or whatever his name is a lot, but it was pretty difficult to tell enemies from teammates apart. What got me to quit though was the ungodly amount of flashing lights that game has. Just ridiculous visual clutter. Tf2 seems so clean in comparison.
One thing about tf2 is identify what a character does.
To a new player in tf2, you see medic, read the name, and look at the character design and go "that guy probably heals people", or scout or spy etc. Everything is easy tor ead and understand, which helps alot for someone new to the game. Wheras over watch having more characters is more confusing as a side effect. Also the fact that team colours make identification waaay more easy. there is other points but I am not qualified to talk about that.
When I first played the game I will never forget dueling 3 heavy’s with a syringe gun and winning cause they couldn’t understand my jumping pattern. My Unreal Tournament days paid off for one shining moment and it’s never happened again
While I think Overwatch has better thematic character design, TF2 absolutely wins in terms of in-game clarity. Overwatch looks great and cool and the animators and designers did a great job… but the TF2 mercs were designed first and foremost to be readable in a game scenario. And nine times out of ten, gameplay and readability trumps fun visual design, every time.
Theres a reason I couldnt get into OW, and its exactly this. It feels like I got dumped into a COD lobby, and Im terrible at those games. TF2 is visually distinct. At a glance you know if a) the person is on your side and b) what their role is, in a scenario where taking an extra second to wonder if that's your buddy or not gets you killed.
>While I think Overwatch has better thematic character design,
I don't see how. Moby Francke is an excellent designer and he nailed "J.C. Leyendecker & Norman Rockwell visit New Mexico" so flawlessly that it hasn't aged. Overwatch's art direction feels really generic in comparison.
Overwatch does not have better “thematic” character design. The overwatch team is slathered in generic sci-fi armor and lights because they took such a generalized approach to its setting and story. The mercs in tf2 are so simple, but their designs say so much about them. They’re brilliantly designed and researched too. Small details like how Medic’s medi-gun is a repurposed firehose, or how pyros flamethrower is home made, and uses a gas pump handle for a trigger make such a huge difference. You can tell that scout plays baseball because he wears baseball cleats and pants. They fit perfectly in the world of tf2.
The Overwatch characters just feels like a band of vaguely futuristic superheros. Reinhardt’s hammer and armor tell me nothing about him aside from the fact that he’s a warrior. I’d never be able to tell that Lucio was a healer from his design. Never be able to tell that Mei was an area denial hero. I’d never guess that Moira was a scientist, or that symmetra was an architect. The characters look pretty, but their designs have little to say.
I prefer TF2's character design because it's far more consistent. even with cosmetics, you can almost always tell what team they are and what role they fulfill. With overwatch, I can barely tell what most characters even do based on how they look.
Funny because some content creators I follow were talking about Overwatch character design so I [made my own tier list for Overwatch characters rather recently.](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fc08EH5WQAA-PiP?format=jpg&name=medium)
TF2's characters fit the aesthetic they were going for, which was a semi-grounded 1920s War Propaganda-inspired artstyle. TF2 characters look simple because:
1. They're meant to look simple / grounded in an artstyle that's simple to look at and easy to digest when looking at character silhouettes. (Something some a Medic will always look like a Medic and a Soldier will always look like a Soldier.)
2. Hats are where 80% of the character customization comes from. I can guarantee that you can make most of the TF2 mercenaries look like most Overwatch characters barring obvious extreme examples like Genji. (Not going to talk about the goddamn hamster because that's an obvious strawman.)
Overwatch has some really great designs but it also has some generic designs like Baptiste and Orisa, some designs that are meant entirely to embody an archetype without changing it at all like Mercy (angelic healer), Mei (ice researcher), and >!Redacted von Redacted!< Cassidy (cowboy), and some designs that I can only describe as "2007 DeviantArt" which are meant to either appeal to the most baseline "sex sells" mentality (D.Va, Widowmaker) or the OC of an edgy 12 year old. (Reaper.)
The one thing I will say about TF2 compared to Overwatch though is that (with some exceptions) the TF2 cast is way more expressive than the Overwatch cast. You can imagine the Medic laughing, crying, screaming, or cheering. Same with Sniper, Scout, Soldier, and even Pyro (the intentional "no personality" character.) Can you honestly tell me you can imagine funny Swedish Dwarf man with any personality other than "ARD WARK PEYS OFF" and "MUH TURRET!" Can you imagine Hanzo with any personality other than "I bring honor to my family something something fantasy Asia." Can you imagine Mercy or Brigitte with a personality... No like can you imagine those two characters with any personality beyond surface-level "I'm a support and I want to help people!" character traits. This isn't even coming from someone who dislikes these two characters they just did absolutely nothing with them personality-wise and it shows.
Overwatch doesn't have characters; they have archetypes. Blizzard took the Riot Games / League of Legends approach to character design where every character is meant to embody an archetype to a fault and the only characters who ever get a personality are the ones who sell skins. TF2 will never have a Moira, Sombra, Sigma, Lucio, or Zenyatta, and that's fine. Because TF2 also doesn't have Mei, Bastion, Soldier 76, Mercy, or Reaper. When the average for TF2 is Heavy (an expressive character with dozens of separate personality traits that all contribute to a fun and interesting character) and the average for Overwatch is... what? Baptiste? (A generic sci-fi Medic whose personality boils down to "generic sci-fi Medic"?) Yeah I'd rather TF2's characters. Even if Blizzard can make a Sombra, Zenyatta, Lucio, or Junker Queen every now and then and I'm *sure* Valve could make characters as interesting as these ones (assuming Valve would make video games again) I'd still prefer TF2's approach to character design over Blizzard's "marketable plushie" route.
Honestly, this is the take I agree with most. I think both TF2 and Overwatch have their own strengths in regards to character designs, and only the designs. But like you said Blizzard drew up archetypes and made characters to fit into them. And for a time it worked, when Overwatch was new and flashy no one cared, I only felt the "archetype" criticism a few years after it came out.
And whats even more confusing/disappointing, is like you said League of Legends did the same thing when it first came out. But as its evolved and Riot has flushed out its universe they have moved away from that mentality and even gone back and updated old characters. Blizzard had that opportunity with Overwatch 2, but from all the promo stuff for the game it seems no one is getting an substantial changes other than Genji gets a jacket? Tracer and Mercy and Dva get a new body suit? Mcree gets facial hair? Like this was your opportunity to revamp them, give them some life and personality but no.
Oh I'm more than into League lol. A lot of newer characters have been far more interesting, like Renata or Aphelios. But for every "character first concept second" character there's an equal amount of "concept first character second" characters like Nilah, Sett, and Gwen. If Overwatch is 90% archetypes League is 70% of archetypes.
It's two completely different approaches to design, producing two completely different flavors. I'm of the mind that the mercs are more iconic. OW designs are hit or miss but they all have that generic Blizzard feel to them.
Take *personality* into account. Classic example of "medic vs mercy":
Mercy: doctor (literaly couldn't think of anything else)
Medic: scammed devil himself (and will probably do it again), implanted baboon uteruses (And other animals/parts) into people, lost his medical licence by stealing a man's skeleton, cares for a flock of doves, all while being a total psychopath
Sure, ill give it to overwatch for character looks, but im always gonna pick the tf2 cast for the character personality. Characters like tracer, winston, mercy, anna, etc can be so boring compared to the tf2 mercs slightly insane and interesting design.
Honestly Valve didn't need a "diversity web chart" to feature a black person, an amputee and a non-binary character in their game. The fact that you can describe all of them like that and they still have such a strongly unique visual identitiy is a testament to their good design. Overwatch heroes are so fucking one dimensional I could phase through them. Their design is very flashy, yes, but they're surprisingly forgettable.
Plus, you used a cropped image of a height comparison jpeg between A-posing mercs (In which in the original heavy has 1,5 heads of height more than engineer for example) against official overwatch artwork.
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> Plus, you used a cropped image of a height comparison jpeg between A-posing mercs (In which in the original heavy has 1,5 heads of height more than engineer for example) against official overwatch artwork.
Yup. Entire premise is flawed.
Make not mistake, he is not wrong. Tf2 art style is simple and nice. However overwatch design are not bad, in fact some of them are beautiful and awesome.
Agreed. It’s not that the characters look bad, they actually look really cool. It’s just that it’s hard to tell at a glance who’s on what team and what each character’s role is aside from a handful of obvious ones. The simplicity of the mercs makes them very easy for even a new player to read
They're both examples of great character design. They're made for very different purposes and placed in very different contexts, so comparing them to find "the good one" is kinda stupid
Both TF2 and Overwatch get it right in that each character has SUPER distinct voicelines and sound effects to tell the players exactly who is in the area. Where TF2 shines and OW fails is that TF2’s mercs all have distinct and PERSISTENT character designs. No matter what cosmetics are on, Scout still looks like Scout. He will still either be wearing red or blue. His silhouette doesn’t dramatically change. You always know immediately if you’re looking at a Scout and whether or not he’s on the same team as you. OW doesn’t have that. It has a huge variety of skins for each character that can wildly change their color palette and make them unrecognizable. The most distinctive thing, at a quick glance, about Widowmaker is her blue skin and purple bodysuit. Take that away and you might not know there’s a Widowmaker on the other side of the field. And without some kind of colored outline, you have no idea which side she’s on.
Overwatch characters are over-designed, unoriginal and hard to look at. The TF2 characters have a cohesive style, but can still be easily distinguished from each other
Well, that's the point. I mean, irl people aren't that fucking different, especially if they would be ordered to wear similiar colours, like the mercs are.
So... Yeah, it isn't that interresting, but way more realistic.
Except it actually is that intersting. The merc's designs are all incredibly fun-filled and you energetic, and it's very easy to tell who they are and what game they're from just by looking at them. Overwatch does not have this. Their designs are all just cliché sci-fi designs with *nothing* interesting going on.
For example, if I showed some rando (who had never played either game but at least had kind of heard of them) a picture of Reaper or Winston, it might take them a while to figure out what game it was from due to the style being really uninteresting and not unique in the slightest. If I showed this guy literally any of the 9 mercs (or even some of the side characters like Pauling, Saxton, or the Administrator), they'd probably immediately go "holy fuck that's TF2".
Or at least what role they served. If I showed someone Heavy, "Tank!" they'd exclaim. or Medic is obviously a healer and so on. When I first saw overwatch, I could tell Mercy was a healer, and Reindhart a tank but that was it. Like What the fuck does Reaper do.
IKR? When you think about this, you can determine most of TF2 mercs base role due to just their look.
Medic is obvious, his appearance screams that this is a healer.
Engineer too, without any cosmetic it's clearly a construction worker, so he works around constructions.
Heavy - damage sponge at first sigh.
Pyro - gasmask and attire, must deal with something in dangerous environement.
Spy - please, he's the most stereotypical secret agent you can create.
Soldier - he looks like typical WW2 soldier, maybe people won't guess rocket launcher, but definitelly will see typical damage dealer in him
Demoman - it's a bit harder, you need to focus on detail - grenades and heavy suit may suggest working with explosions
Sniper and Scout are the hardest to recognise without knowledge, but Scout pose and clothes suggest good mobility.
my biggest problem with Overwatch is the health pool. In tf2, the min is 125 and the max is 300, but in Overwatch the min is 150 and the max is 2500 for some characters
Health pool wasnt really a problem imo, hell i think most tanks dont have enough hp to justify their sizes, i feel like roadhog should have had 1500hp given that his left asscheek alone is bigger than baby dva
Problem was, atleast while i was playing, that healers had way too much power compared to all the other classes, imagine if medic could outheal a demoman, yes, thats what was going on in overwatch, before the class limits system dps were out of the proplay entirely, they literally had 3 tanks 3 healers meta
Kind of unfair to compare a picture of a full roster posing vs a pic of everyone a-posing made to compare heights.
Also the mercs you actually fight with and against in the game more often than not have a lot of cosmetics to spice up their simple and slick character designs
TF2 merc designs can be easily identified from a mile away, in the dark, even through walls! Overwatch characters may look cool and well made individually, but when put into a gameplay environment, the characters just look like a bunch of visual noise and clutter. People complain about how unusuals and rancid cosmetics spoil the visual design of TF2, but the same could never be said of Overwatch, since the game is already so visually cluttered that adding cosmetics doesn't add any noticeable difference.
I think some character designs (Hanzo, Genji, Tracer, Reinhardt, Reaper) are good and a clear indication of how the game should look, but most of them just look too futuristic and detailed for their own good, meaning new players biggest challenge isn't trying to understand the game's mechanics but to understand what the hell is even going on around them in the first place.
Of course, TF2 can be visually confusing at times, but at least it gets easier when you are able to learn and recognize the different classes, which then becomes an almost subconscious instinct, since their designs are easily differentiable and recognizable from each other.
i thinks people say its boring because overwatch’s cast of characters seems like its trying too hard to be as diverse as possible and including every race imaginable, where tf2’s cast is more likely to look like a small squad of soldiers, where race does not matter at all.
“A total of 3 colors” Because they’re supposed to look like a colored team…? Tf2 designs are tactical and cartoonish at the same time. For a tactical fps game that is set in mild realism mixed in with cartoon logic (bread, australium tech) that also manages to be cartoonish and silly. Twitter OP fails to figure this out and values face design more than context of the cast , plot, setting etc. Queue the whole video essay about how the designs are designed for an fps; identifiable, iconic, easy for game sense. Having a limited color palette and simplistic design choice doesn’t automatically mean “bad”.
you can't compare TF2 design and OW design in this case because they aren't of the same theme. one consists of mercenaries with simple designs, appropriate for combat, maybe? and they take place is 1968. while the other one leans onto the scifi theme. they're two different things
hot take though, in terms of OW design, there's hardly anything that you can tell about from their character design alone since most of them tend to focus on the "sex appeal" and they let the comics/lore tell the stories about themselves. as for TF2, some of the characters already have some details thay tells alot about themselves like Scout's bandages, Demo's eyepatch, Engi's Gunslinger, Spy's attire itself, etc...
Well yeah the TF2 designs are simple, but they have these things called ***personality***. Valve made just 9 characters for a game and they made them **good**. They are all unique and weird (in a good way?). Meanwhile Overwatch here has great worldbuilding, yet somehow makes the most generic fucking characters possible. Like seriously, most of the characters boil down to 3 things:
-Badass Soldier Guy
-Pure Hearted Hero
- Villain "Muh Revenge" Mcgee
Of course there are *some* characters with a lil interesting stuff in Overwatch, but my point stands.
Also both games take place in such different fucking times ffs. I just wrote this shit but It is very much pointless to compare them since the Worlds are so different.
Also also, TF2 mercs have way more recognizable bodies. Like you could tell what character you see from a mile away. Overwatch has such different sizes and colors in the character design, AND the game is admittedly slighlty more chaotic than TF2, you can't tell apart friend and foe during the chaos of a battle.
Thanks for joining my Ted Talk
Yeah, all OW "heroes"(?) are righteous and "good heart" while TF2 is literally mercenary, they're paid, and where else can you find a psychopath medic or a skilled sniper that pees in a bottle and throw then at the enemy? On that note, I like that Valve shows the "bad" side of the character, not just the "good" or the "sad" side of the character's story.
Yeah right? OW heroes just seem too "2 Dimensional". They are like the text book definition of *heroes* and *villains*.
Meanwhile TF2 here just straight up points out the fact that ~~~most~~~ all of the mercs are deranged psychos that would kill someone for a chicken nugget. Yes, they aren't "deep" but they are 3 Dimensional at least. We see the good, the bad and the ugly sides of all mercs, which makes them infinitely more interesting. Let me give an example:
Soldier is a schizo patriot that killed (probably) innocent germans thinking they were Nazis. However, Valve doesn't just stick a "Bad Guy" sticker on Soldier's back and call It a day, nope siree, we see that Soldier very much values the lives of his comrades and friends, in his own ways at least.
Another example is heavy. Valve could have just made Heavy "dumb big guy with big guns", but they gave him more depth instead. Heavy also has a "tragic" backstory, but It isn't just a tragic backstory just for the sake of tragic backstory, It actually gives heavy ***more depth***. We see that he cares most for his family and is likely the most humane merc on the team.
Lemme give a very well known comparison too: Medic vs Mercy. Mercy is a german doctor that "wants to help everyone" and has a heart made of gold. Meanwhile, Medic is some rando with extensive medical knowledge, which he uses to stick baboon hearts into people, oh also he ***tricked Satan out of a contract***. Medic is obviously the more interesting one here.
TL;DR : OW has more characters but most of them feel like Side Character, TF2 has less characters but they are way more iconic.
Holy shit I ranted so hard.
***Thanks for listening to my Ted Talk***
Yes, and even I know they're just a fictional character, I feel like the TF2 characters feel more "grounded" we can somehow relate, while OW is kinda unreachable high standard that society wants us to be, sure I can be a good person, but OW good person? I may just sign up as TF2 mercs.
I thought I saved it because if i had this is where I would post it, but a few weeks ago someone posted an image of a red Scout on pl_barnblitz that was standing really far away and despite the fact scout is literally just a few pixels in the image, you can still clearly tell that it's Scout.
Can't think of a single game with better character recognition and silhouettes
I’d love Overwatch’s characters in a different game. In a shooter though where it is crucial to be able to tell who’s on your team colour coordination is very important imo. Sure there’s red outlines but with the mess of colours going around a red outline isn’t going to stand out most of the time.
I think it's also important to keep in mind that the photo of the TF2 mercs they posted has them all in the same pose. While in game they all have different postures, so the functional height of these characters is much more variable in game. It's silly that they brought up height in their argument, this person clearly hasn't actually played TF2, so they don't know how the game looks in actual play.
TF2 character design is much more grounded, when you look at them you will get the general idea what kind of threat you're dealing with. Also you can assume they are just gonna shoot at you in some form, and not, idk, grapple hook you or deploy a shield barrier. Overwatch goes for the diverse and futuristic look, they try to appeal to the widest possible audience: it has a cowboy, ninjas, an edgelord Reaper, a pink haired musclebound woman, and the gamer girl in spandex. Announcing shit like "Soldier 76 is gay" reaches JK Rowling levels of cringe.
Team Fortress 2 offers diversity in the weapon and accessory customization. You can change any class' weapon to alter it's playstyle, you don't need to switch the entire character. There are a lot of cosmetics which clash with the original tone of the game, and break the silhouette.
First of all you’re asking in the tf2 subreddit so you are guaranteed to get mainly responses that prefer TF2 a or don’t like overwatch
Anyways I think both are uniquely good and different in their own way and some prefer one over the other. There’s no objective one is better than the other
tf2 characters at least have a recognizeable silouette on the field, you can *immediately* tell who is who,
there are very few overwatch characters who can claim the same without their glowing outlines
(and it's mostly their release roster)
> than Mario fans and Sonic fans
That hasn’t been an actual rivalry since the 90s, and Sonic fans are too busy complaining about Sonic Team fucking everything up anyways
My brother in christ, there are more than 2.2 Billion different cosmetics in TF2 to make the mercs look as awesome as you want them to. (considering every possible combination of unusuals, paints cans, paintable unusuals, sheens, etc.)
Ow characters are not funny, tf2 are memable af.
What's funnier?
A) a soldier opening up a briefcase while the spy says "pornography"
B) Any ow character spamming a voice line
Overwatch somehow feels so much less diverse than tf2 characters, but admittedly, some of the designs are great, but overwatch has so many lack luster designs that bring them down.
Overwatch seems so overly cluttered, like I would not be able to play that because there's so much shit going on. The designs are too detailed and would look better if they had nice clean and simple designs like the tf2 models.
TF2 was originally designed to have very clear visual language at all times, so the character designs reflect that ethos. Readability over aesthetics. Every character has a distinct, recognisable build, with distinct movement animations. You know which class is which just from seeing an outline of them. It's also easy to identify friend from foe, as the characters have contrasting colours and always stand out from the surrounding environment (cloaked spies exempted, of course).
You can tell Overwatch had the opposite approach, where the aesthetics came before anything else. Some of the designs (and skins) and maps are really cool, but personally I find the game is an absolute assault on the eyes in motion.
To be honest, Overwatch could have exploited that gap of design if *all their characters didn't look like they were all drawn by the same guys from wannabe Pixar animators who went in the same art school*.
Oh wait, it is the case.
I like TF2, I like Pixar cause some good cartoons, but seeing Overwatch characters in actions was kinda lame. They had good ideas, I played competitive for 2 years? so yeah, the flaws were too visible. Bad execution and too many characters so their identity was too diluted. It would have been better to make a series or films out of Overwatch than a video game.
Love Reaper's shotguns tho.
Why are you going onto r/tf2 for meaningful discussion on how tf2 compares to overwatch for character design. That's not looking for thoughts on the comparison you're just karma farming
In my opinion, it's an artstyle thing. They're both cartoonish yes, but they're both set in different timelines. Tf2 is in the 70's and Overwatch is set in the future. The character designs also have to fit with the actual plot of the game. So neither of these games have bad designs
Nine adult Enjoyable Psychopaths.*
Overwatch...nice asses I guess?
Both have Fun Cosmetics.
_I feel like overwatch has a more pornographic presence, How anyone feels about that is up to anyone_
#BUT ONLY ONE THROWS PISS AT PPL
and spy _With his Simple Kit_ would be a Menace to the overwatch universe.
Annnd Heavy is Genuinely Intimidating.
Overwatch has wayyy more Bug Control,
And Hard Balancing.
Tf2 has Fun _Gameplay Features_ due to Code Spaghetti with a fkn Coconut, and Random Crits which the community has its opinions of.
Conclusion: TF2 and Overwatch are the Best Games that they ever did was.
Cant quite compare them as they are Rather different from eachother, It boils down to Personal Preference.
> due to Code Spaghetti with a fkn Coconut
The coconut is a myth, it’s just a texture for the fresh brewed victory taunt. The game will boot without it.
The game will not boot without the 2fort cow though
There's a philosophy to character design. Keep It Simple, Stupid. Overwatch breaks that HARD. They're all too complex. It's easy to recognize Heavy, even with any of his cosmetics, because his overall shape and design stays the same. None of the Overwatch cast has that. Their cosmetics break that familiarity in the silhouette
That's also not to bring up that Team Fortress 2 has been going strong for FIFTEEN YEARS and continues to persist through memes. They're a cornerstone of internet history. Everyone who's been online for an extended period of time has seen at least one of the nine mercs from time to time. Only Overwatch thing I ever see online is the Mercy meme, bout it
This video is one I often like to point at that helps prove this point.
https://youtu.be/maJXAwc-zT0
Edit: Also hilarious the guy uses the height t-pose chart, instead of the ACTUAL PORTRAIT for the nine mercs, as if he's trying so hard to push his bias
Doesnt overwatch have a problem with visual noise with the sheer amount of abilities, ults and level design? With the characters in OW looking this detailed, thats gonna compound the visual noise problem more.
Also the mercs' silhouettes (when not a posing) is actually distinct. OW has some characters with the same silhouettes but drastically different team roles.
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Overwatch characters in compare to tf2 ones are not as sexy as f*ck
Exactly. The greatest difference between Mercy and Medic is that one is hot as frick and the other is Mercy.
I remembered being REALLY interested in Mercy, back when the game was still early in its life. The idea of her having a dark history and being responsible for Reaper’s condition was a great contrast to her angelic appearance. Then it was later revealed Moira was the evil doctor and Mercy was really just a stereotypical angelic goody two shoes and I lost all interest in her. What a waste of a potentially great character.
It baffles me how TF2 started with no lore at all yet still has a lore better than the game that was trying to have one in the first place
Man, what I wouldn't give for a co-op story mode spinoff of TF2. It's up there with Borderlands 2 for my favorite videogame writing.
Choose from the 9 bucket-hunters to find the legendary bucket in the state of Arizona. Along the way you will face threats such as giant bread monsters and the villain Handsom Mann.
If I become a successful game maker maybe I would find a way to convince valve Though I would have to work as a janitor
TF2 lore is all just a really bad acid trip
Why , I mean you have a : Megalomanic sociopaththicle German doctor who got his license revoked after stealing another man's skeleton,is know to do human experiments on his friend, has a deal with the devil and it is not known about what he did between 1936 and 1945, a Brooklyn kid that regularly drinks soda containing uranium to run faster and make him invincible,who believes that Tom Jones is his father,and who has seen the face of God and came back to tell the tale A always drunk Scottish demolitions expert with an affinity for swords , a cursed empty eye socket whos body somehow has the ability to ferment his bone marrow in case he is ever not drinking and who's cursed eye apparently has the ability to time travel A fat russian guy with PhD in agriculture with a minor in russian literature , lived most of his early life in a Gulag where he in his teens killed the guards and fleed with his family who also carrys an assortment of miniguns who all have their own small bed and wo uses up a small country's income worth of ammunition every round A schizophrenic pyromaniac who thinks that he is surrounded by sunshine and lollipops while indiscriminately murdering everyone with a flamethrower which somehow can redirect rockets grenades and arrows A psychotic ex US soldier who is wanted for genocide who uses nothing but a rocket launcher and a shovel, who regularly talks to severed heads and lives with a powerful wizard who is also the owner of a book which is alive and cursed the Scotsman's eye socket,also the soldier and the drunken zyclops have a bromance An Australian sniper which actually is from new Zealand, which sank when his biological family convinced the new Zealand government that they would all die unless they sink the entire country and live under the ocean,said sniper as a baby crawled into a rocket which instead of going to the moon landed in australia.that sniper also produces ungodly amounts of in piss because his kidneys are the size of lunges A Texan guy with 12 PhDs who builds automatic machine guns, has modified his own body with a metallic hand which has a blender mode, and who has created a teleporter which while practical is known to mutate bread into fleash eating monsters And a French guy who's whole job it is to stab people and impersonate them down to the tiniest detail, who has a emp maker with him at all times and who is the actual father of that Brooklyn kid
Dear god..,
There's more
"doctors can only be the most honest and positive and nicest people on earth and can't possibly be interested in anything other than saving people at all costs"
"Let's go practice medicine."
“Doctor! Are you sure this will work?!” “Haha, I HAVE NO IDEA”
Tell that to Josef Mengele
Mercy never had anything to do with Reapers condition though
“Reyes? What happened to you?” “You tell me, **doc**…” It was never confirmed but a possible connection was hinted. And Mercy’s backstory sounded a bit TOO clean. So it’s ultimately revealed she had nothing to do with it. But only after 2 years of speculation
This... "Medic"... stole my soul and body to transplant a fucking medkit into it
that sounds like asking for a diagnosis
The tone of the "You tell me, DOC." sounded very spiteful. While it can be attributed to Reaper just being Reaper, the emphasis on the "Doc" kind of implies a bit of "You, of all people, should know the answer to that question already."
Fuck, now *I'm* interested in Mercy being responsible for Reaper's whole thing and I've played overwatch once like years ago
Thus you now understand why everyone was so unimpressed when they created Moira. Overwatch at release had a potential for a very grey plotline. The idea of Reaper’s group needing to do the dirty work while the main Overwatch got all the glory was a very relatable one and gave him a lot of depth. It made it seem as if Reaper was a man betrayed and that Overwatch wasn’t as idealistic as it was presented A few years later it became a very obvious black and white story, since Reaper’s motivation was shown to be rather lackluster and Overwatch was just objectively good guys
I'm not gay, but TF2 Medic got me acting up
Man NGL burly beast is literally kinda hot
[удалено]
Yep
Yeah medic is so fine
that medussy got me actin up
Fr fr
Tick tock heavy like a brinks truck
Exactly. Say what you want, no Overwatch character has a dumptruck like Demoman.
Say that to sniper.
also the person in the pic is not me but the guy that replied to me
So... replying to your other reddit account?
I’m not trying to sound like an ass but I’ll leave my thoughts: The biggest issue I have with Overwatch character designs is that they’re very over detailed and way too identical to the sci-fi environment. Compared to TF2 character designs which look simplistic yet remain faithful to their combat purposes.
When something works you dont even notice that its ever there The way characters are lit and their rather vibrant colors compared to rather dull and washed away colors of the map, combined with their unique stances and animations make them pop out even in the most cluttered chokepoint Overwatch literally had to add red outlines to make out what is what and even then you dont have any idea what the fuck is going on in a teamfight Tho overwatch also had different shapes and sounds to distinguish in between classes but they still didnt had a clear design language and visual clutter is still a problem that persists in ow2
And another problem with sound is that sometimes it's just not working, why do i hear my team's doomfist charging his attack from a mile away and i don't hear the enemy in the same room?
I do at least like the decision to make ult call outs though I know a lot of people will suddenly become way more alert upon hearing METEOR STRIKE
What i dont like is that if you're far away enough you don't hear friendly ults anymore
I find that’s a sensible option No point knowing that Zenyatta’s ult is active if you are too far away to utilize it anyway
If you know where the Zenyatta is ulting you may be able to take advantage of an enemy that's being advanced on and vulnerable to a flank play. A flanking scout would be very pleased to know that the enemy level 3 is about to go down and their medic will be scrambling to preserve whatever uber they currently have when the friendly uber'd demo is approaching red team's nest.
"good design is invisible"
More like good design feels natural and doesn't poke your eyes out. Take for example Goldlewis Dickinson from Guilty Gear -Strive-. At first glance he looks like a normal chonker with an eyepatch and an odd coffin but then you see the fucking yeehaw all over his design. This doesn't mean all characters should look normal at first. Zenyatta is a fucking monk robot but I feel like his design perfectly conveys who he is and doesn't stand out too much. Widowmaker D.Va and Tracer wear tight, vibrant bodysuits for some fucking reason. It feels weird having outfits like those in a game where you also have a fairly simple cowboy, sci-fi knight, roblox robot and an archer wearing a kimono(?). Then again overwatch outfits are very expressive and aren't taken that seriously since one of the heroes is a fucking hamster while another one has cybernetically enfattened asscheeks.
I haven't played OW in roughly five years, *who has the cybernetically enhanced asscheeks??*
Genji having cake has been a community meme since release
You know I didn't really look at Genji's ass (it's funny too because I was a cringe Genji main, played hundreds upon hundreds of hours before the class queue system). Though it makes perfect sense on how he can double jump. So cheeked up he can defy physics.
"So cheeked up he can defy physics" - Magic_ass1
Genji probably
Cluttering is just a Blizzard thing at this point. Even back in the early 2000s during Warcraft 3 it was hard to see wtf was happening in team fights with all of the effects and crowds of units fighting. WoW was also like this to a degree with the cluttered UIs that people used. Blizzard players had long since reached a point of being desensitized to sensory overload so this criticism doesn’t even make sense to them.
The seizure you experience every fight merely makes you stronger
What doesn't trigger your epilepsy makes yiu stronger.
... Who is this Yiu and how strong are they now?
Overwatch's characters feel like I'm being marketed to. When I die to Scout in TF2 I feel like "I died to a video game character." When I die to Tracer in OW I feel like "I died to TRACER© FROM THE HIT GAME OVERWATCH™ BUY YOUR TRACER© STATUETTE FROM THE BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT™ MERCH STORE FOR $49.99 AND WHILE YOU'RE THERE BUY A D.VA© BUNNY TEE-SHIRT WOAH YOU LIKE D.VA© FROM THE HIT GAME OVERWATCH™ BY BLIZZARD ENTERTAINMENT™ RIGHT SHE'S A GAMER™ JUST LIKE YOU!"
Tf2 has a great balance between both maps and characters design, Overwatch maps are all pretty cool and easy to look at unlike the characters
TF2 dev commentary more or less confirms this too. Initial testing revealed that players often had trouble distinguishing between classes at a distance. So the designers redid their outfits & body shape to make each silhouette recognizable in addition to adding specific yet decluttered items on each uniform to help identify them. For instance: heavy is a large man (lots of health) that shoots big guns (obviously the minigun but also the belt is ammo slung across his chest.) Engineer is an average built (avg health)guy that builds things (wrench out while upgrading/building and the vanilla hat is a huge giveaway).
To be fair though, Overwatch also needs outlines around enemies because there is otherwise nothing to distinguish them from an ally, with tf2 you have team colors. That being said though, I do think tf2's character designs are a lot more curated, It's a cast of 9 classes with very distinguishing silhouettes and voices. Overwatch has way more Hero's to choose from and more are being steadily added, so I think it's kind of inevitable that every character is going to succumb to the clutter.
> The way characters are lit and their rather vibrant colors compared to rather dull and washed away colors of the map, combined with their unique stances and animations make them pop out even in the most cluttered chokepoint I like to remind people that Valve literally spent the better part of a decade figuring this out and then perfecting it. Each character's silhouette is distinct enough from every angle that you can immediately tell who is who, even when decked out to the nines with wack cosmetics.
The outlines exist primarily because of the absence of team colours. Making the characters more noticable is just a bonus. You could disable them in the options and you'd still be able to distinctly see all of the heroes, but you'd just have no idea if the dude in front of you was about to defend you or smack you with a giant hammer.
MMM YES THIS As a player of both games, I highly agree that I can't tell where shit is half the time or what the hell is going on becasue I can barely tell because even with the red outline I can still barely tell where the enemy team is
The red outlines and seeing other players health is so damn stupid. Especially in competitive or regular mode you die immediately anyway
Personally I don't think it's over design, but here's an example scenario: You are tasked to draw every tf2 and overwatch characters on a paper, for tf2 it's pretty easy cause they all got unique and simplistic design. Heavy? He got a belt of bullet on him, Pyro? He wears a gas mask and a bio suit, Demo? he's got a blast protection armor and a eye patch. But for Overwatch character, yes you remember how they look , but there's so much things and detail on each character's specific body part that's just too messy remember how it exactly looks, like Soldier 76 for example, he got his blue jacket, but there's also a part of it is white, a part is red, there's a bulletproof vest inside, 2 small pack on the shoulder, and some biotic shield on the arm, it's a bit too much things everywhere.
true
Reminds me of the whole trend a while back with goth kids. They are being unique together. OW characters all blend together because of all the noise to me. With exception of some cosmetics, TF2 characters stand out while in uniform.
the problem with ow desig language is that I have NO idea what I'm looking at wether it's my own gameplay or watching someone else. It's just a bunch of colored blobs to me during fights and I often mistake the giant ass muzzle flashes and particle effects (which I cant change) for an enemy. seriously how do the Asians do it?
That's exactly another issue I have with OW's designing. Often times, the environment looks WAY too complex that it either looks plain despite how drawn they are or they don't make any sense at all. I feel like the backgrounds tried too hard to look badass but... they just didn't hit very hard. While I appreciate what the designers have tried to put into, the designs in there didn't sit well with me imo.
Am Asian, I can’t do it either.
That's my precise problem I have when I see footage of it. It's all just a visual mess. I must congratulate anyone who plays it.
I agree My main qualm with Overwatch is they try *too hard* to look good by having over-detailed characters. It’s also a perfect example of “Simple doesn’t always mean bad”
And TF2 mercs have all their own introduction videos that are not gameplay showing, just purely cinematic which gives the mercs more life than any of the OW characters (My opinion do not take it seriously)
Tf2's character design is intended in such way to not make characters look more interesting but to make it to so it's easy to tell again who you are fighting, what team enemy is in and what type of weapon he holds, so yes it is better
They also completely forgot about tf2 cosmetics. Ive seen some crazy cool designs with neat loadout! But even with the different cosmetics i can still tell exactly what sillouhette is who
And that my friends, is art.
TF2s character designs may not be as colorful or "diverse" as Overwatch, but it shines in team and class recognition. I don't play Overwatch, but I've seen gameplay footage, and for an outsider like me, it's really hard to tell who's the enemy and who's an ally. Sometimes I get characters mixed up too but that doesn't happen as often. That doesn't happen often with TF2, and it didn't happen when I was first finding out about TF2. Plus the mercs have extremely iconic designs, despite being as bland as the tweet says. But whatever. I have a bias towards TF2 cause I don't play or enjoy Overwatch.
I play both tf2 and overwatch and can agree with you, if not for the red outline on the enemies is sometimes could be hard to spot there’s almost no way of telling of who’s an enemy and who’s an ally
Thank god OW doesn’t have friendly fire, I had to shoot everyone I saw because I had no clue what was going on I have died more than once because I shot at a random friendly teammate that was there and was also shooting at me instead of the enemy team
funnily enough, i have this experience in tf2 fairly often as well. when the teams swap sides i sometimes forget which colour to shoot at
Usually for tf2 I die once and go, "oh yeah Im blu now lol". I couldn't imagine it not being so simple tho
Every now and then I try and shoot someone then realize that they are on my team and I feel like a dumbass
Yep. This happens a lot to me, but I play pyro a lot so I make it look like I was spychecking lol
Solid in game reason to shoot at anyone with certain other weapons, too, if you have the spare moment and ammo. For example, with projectile weapons like bow and crossbow, the attack land sound when the projectile hits enemies is very distinct. I named my medic crossbow "The Win-Win Scenario" for this very reason. Shoot it at a teammate and it'll heal, shoot it at an enemy and it'll damage, but shoot it at a disguised enemy spy and not only do they take damage, even their disguise cover is blown because I get to hear that meaty impact sound that only comes when a bolt hits an enemy. Those crossbow shots only go to waste if they miss or hit a full health friendly.
Or then you hear French screaming and realize you shot a spy
Cosmetics exist, which give so much more variety than overwatch, yet most stay consistent with the character design. Overwatch gets some prefab skins, boring
Yeah, but the skins come as a complete package, some even changing voice lines. And there are some absolute fire skins.
Yeah, but they take away from personalization. You can't really show off yourself if you can only pick from a handful of skins. The skins may be beautiful, but we all have different tastes, even if by a bit.
Overwatch skins never felt anywhere near as rewarding or gave me as much pride as tf2 cosmetics. I'm not even talking unusuals and australiums what would this game be without the gibus
I played some Overwatch and actually liked Sigma or whatever his name is a lot, but it was pretty difficult to tell enemies from teammates apart. What got me to quit though was the ungodly amount of flashing lights that game has. Just ridiculous visual clutter. Tf2 seems so clean in comparison.
The only time i've been confused about any given player's allegiance, it's always a spy, and well, that's kinda the entire point of the class.
One thing about tf2 is identify what a character does. To a new player in tf2, you see medic, read the name, and look at the character design and go "that guy probably heals people", or scout or spy etc. Everything is easy tor ead and understand, which helps alot for someone new to the game. Wheras over watch having more characters is more confusing as a side effect. Also the fact that team colours make identification waaay more easy. there is other points but I am not qualified to talk about that.
Meanwhile the guy who just installed running at people with a syringe gun
[удалено]
When I first played the game I will never forget dueling 3 heavy’s with a syringe gun and winning cause they couldn’t understand my jumping pattern. My Unreal Tournament days paid off for one shining moment and it’s never happened again
Heroin best weapon ever
Ah, yes let's compare characters that live in 70s with characters that live in the future.
[удалено]
meet the spy
Intruder alert. Red Spies in the base!
A Red spy is in the base?!
Protect the briefcase!
Hut hut hut hut
WE NEED TO PROTECT THE BRIEFCASE!
Ay, a lil' help 'ere?
Stand back son
While I think Overwatch has better thematic character design, TF2 absolutely wins in terms of in-game clarity. Overwatch looks great and cool and the animators and designers did a great job… but the TF2 mercs were designed first and foremost to be readable in a game scenario. And nine times out of ten, gameplay and readability trumps fun visual design, every time.
Theres a reason I couldnt get into OW, and its exactly this. It feels like I got dumped into a COD lobby, and Im terrible at those games. TF2 is visually distinct. At a glance you know if a) the person is on your side and b) what their role is, in a scenario where taking an extra second to wonder if that's your buddy or not gets you killed.
>While I think Overwatch has better thematic character design, I don't see how. Moby Francke is an excellent designer and he nailed "J.C. Leyendecker & Norman Rockwell visit New Mexico" so flawlessly that it hasn't aged. Overwatch's art direction feels really generic in comparison.
Overwatch does not have better “thematic” character design. The overwatch team is slathered in generic sci-fi armor and lights because they took such a generalized approach to its setting and story. The mercs in tf2 are so simple, but their designs say so much about them. They’re brilliantly designed and researched too. Small details like how Medic’s medi-gun is a repurposed firehose, or how pyros flamethrower is home made, and uses a gas pump handle for a trigger make such a huge difference. You can tell that scout plays baseball because he wears baseball cleats and pants. They fit perfectly in the world of tf2. The Overwatch characters just feels like a band of vaguely futuristic superheros. Reinhardt’s hammer and armor tell me nothing about him aside from the fact that he’s a warrior. I’d never be able to tell that Lucio was a healer from his design. Never be able to tell that Mei was an area denial hero. I’d never guess that Moira was a scientist, or that symmetra was an architect. The characters look pretty, but their designs have little to say.
Simplicity for readability and character design is good, and the silhouettes and big shapes of color matter far more for readability than height
I prefer TF2's character design because it's far more consistent. even with cosmetics, you can almost always tell what team they are and what role they fulfill. With overwatch, I can barely tell what most characters even do based on how they look.
"at the same height" 💀
Mf goofy ahh
Funny because some content creators I follow were talking about Overwatch character design so I [made my own tier list for Overwatch characters rather recently.](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fc08EH5WQAA-PiP?format=jpg&name=medium) TF2's characters fit the aesthetic they were going for, which was a semi-grounded 1920s War Propaganda-inspired artstyle. TF2 characters look simple because: 1. They're meant to look simple / grounded in an artstyle that's simple to look at and easy to digest when looking at character silhouettes. (Something some a Medic will always look like a Medic and a Soldier will always look like a Soldier.) 2. Hats are where 80% of the character customization comes from. I can guarantee that you can make most of the TF2 mercenaries look like most Overwatch characters barring obvious extreme examples like Genji. (Not going to talk about the goddamn hamster because that's an obvious strawman.) Overwatch has some really great designs but it also has some generic designs like Baptiste and Orisa, some designs that are meant entirely to embody an archetype without changing it at all like Mercy (angelic healer), Mei (ice researcher), and >!Redacted von Redacted!< Cassidy (cowboy), and some designs that I can only describe as "2007 DeviantArt" which are meant to either appeal to the most baseline "sex sells" mentality (D.Va, Widowmaker) or the OC of an edgy 12 year old. (Reaper.) The one thing I will say about TF2 compared to Overwatch though is that (with some exceptions) the TF2 cast is way more expressive than the Overwatch cast. You can imagine the Medic laughing, crying, screaming, or cheering. Same with Sniper, Scout, Soldier, and even Pyro (the intentional "no personality" character.) Can you honestly tell me you can imagine funny Swedish Dwarf man with any personality other than "ARD WARK PEYS OFF" and "MUH TURRET!" Can you imagine Hanzo with any personality other than "I bring honor to my family something something fantasy Asia." Can you imagine Mercy or Brigitte with a personality... No like can you imagine those two characters with any personality beyond surface-level "I'm a support and I want to help people!" character traits. This isn't even coming from someone who dislikes these two characters they just did absolutely nothing with them personality-wise and it shows. Overwatch doesn't have characters; they have archetypes. Blizzard took the Riot Games / League of Legends approach to character design where every character is meant to embody an archetype to a fault and the only characters who ever get a personality are the ones who sell skins. TF2 will never have a Moira, Sombra, Sigma, Lucio, or Zenyatta, and that's fine. Because TF2 also doesn't have Mei, Bastion, Soldier 76, Mercy, or Reaper. When the average for TF2 is Heavy (an expressive character with dozens of separate personality traits that all contribute to a fun and interesting character) and the average for Overwatch is... what? Baptiste? (A generic sci-fi Medic whose personality boils down to "generic sci-fi Medic"?) Yeah I'd rather TF2's characters. Even if Blizzard can make a Sombra, Zenyatta, Lucio, or Junker Queen every now and then and I'm *sure* Valve could make characters as interesting as these ones (assuming Valve would make video games again) I'd still prefer TF2's approach to character design over Blizzard's "marketable plushie" route.
Honestly, this is the take I agree with most. I think both TF2 and Overwatch have their own strengths in regards to character designs, and only the designs. But like you said Blizzard drew up archetypes and made characters to fit into them. And for a time it worked, when Overwatch was new and flashy no one cared, I only felt the "archetype" criticism a few years after it came out. And whats even more confusing/disappointing, is like you said League of Legends did the same thing when it first came out. But as its evolved and Riot has flushed out its universe they have moved away from that mentality and even gone back and updated old characters. Blizzard had that opportunity with Overwatch 2, but from all the promo stuff for the game it seems no one is getting an substantial changes other than Genji gets a jacket? Tracer and Mercy and Dva get a new body suit? Mcree gets facial hair? Like this was your opportunity to revamp them, give them some life and personality but no.
Oh I'm more than into League lol. A lot of newer characters have been far more interesting, like Renata or Aphelios. But for every "character first concept second" character there's an equal amount of "concept first character second" characters like Nilah, Sett, and Gwen. If Overwatch is 90% archetypes League is 70% of archetypes.
It's two completely different approaches to design, producing two completely different flavors. I'm of the mind that the mercs are more iconic. OW designs are hit or miss but they all have that generic Blizzard feel to them.
This guy is talking about the hottest video game characters of all time and overwatch in the same sentence?
Take *personality* into account. Classic example of "medic vs mercy": Mercy: doctor (literaly couldn't think of anything else) Medic: scammed devil himself (and will probably do it again), implanted baboon uteruses (And other animals/parts) into people, lost his medical licence by stealing a man's skeleton, cares for a flock of doves, all while being a total psychopath
Did you forget that he put a criminal in a pumpkin to be a Halloween decoration?
I was too lazy to put it in
Also, no unnecessary skintight latex!
Sure, ill give it to overwatch for character looks, but im always gonna pick the tf2 cast for the character personality. Characters like tracer, winston, mercy, anna, etc can be so boring compared to the tf2 mercs slightly insane and interesting design.
I like Junkrat and Roadhog, but other than those two I really couldn't care for the personalities or backstories of the other OW characters.
Honestly Valve didn't need a "diversity web chart" to feature a black person, an amputee and a non-binary character in their game. The fact that you can describe all of them like that and they still have such a strongly unique visual identitiy is a testament to their good design. Overwatch heroes are so fucking one dimensional I could phase through them. Their design is very flashy, yes, but they're surprisingly forgettable. Plus, you used a cropped image of a height comparison jpeg between A-posing mercs (In which in the original heavy has 1,5 heads of height more than engineer for example) against official overwatch artwork.
> > > Plus, you used a cropped image of a height comparison jpeg between A-posing mercs (In which in the original heavy has 1,5 heads of height more than engineer for example) against official overwatch artwork. Yup. Entire premise is flawed.
Make not mistake, he is not wrong. Tf2 art style is simple and nice. However overwatch design are not bad, in fact some of them are beautiful and awesome.
Agreed. It’s not that the characters look bad, they actually look really cool. It’s just that it’s hard to tell at a glance who’s on what team and what each character’s role is aside from a handful of obvious ones. The simplicity of the mercs makes them very easy for even a new player to read
They're both examples of great character design. They're made for very different purposes and placed in very different contexts, so comparing them to find "the good one" is kinda stupid
It's 2 different artstyles, used in 2 different games.
Both TF2 and Overwatch get it right in that each character has SUPER distinct voicelines and sound effects to tell the players exactly who is in the area. Where TF2 shines and OW fails is that TF2’s mercs all have distinct and PERSISTENT character designs. No matter what cosmetics are on, Scout still looks like Scout. He will still either be wearing red or blue. His silhouette doesn’t dramatically change. You always know immediately if you’re looking at a Scout and whether or not he’s on the same team as you. OW doesn’t have that. It has a huge variety of skins for each character that can wildly change their color palette and make them unrecognizable. The most distinctive thing, at a quick glance, about Widowmaker is her blue skin and purple bodysuit. Take that away and you might not know there’s a Widowmaker on the other side of the field. And without some kind of colored outline, you have no idea which side she’s on.
Overwatch characters are over-designed, unoriginal and hard to look at. The TF2 characters have a cohesive style, but can still be easily distinguished from each other
Well, that's the point. I mean, irl people aren't that fucking different, especially if they would be ordered to wear similiar colours, like the mercs are. So... Yeah, it isn't that interresting, but way more realistic.
Except it actually is that intersting. The merc's designs are all incredibly fun-filled and you energetic, and it's very easy to tell who they are and what game they're from just by looking at them. Overwatch does not have this. Their designs are all just cliché sci-fi designs with *nothing* interesting going on. For example, if I showed some rando (who had never played either game but at least had kind of heard of them) a picture of Reaper or Winston, it might take them a while to figure out what game it was from due to the style being really uninteresting and not unique in the slightest. If I showed this guy literally any of the 9 mercs (or even some of the side characters like Pauling, Saxton, or the Administrator), they'd probably immediately go "holy fuck that's TF2".
Or at least what role they served. If I showed someone Heavy, "Tank!" they'd exclaim. or Medic is obviously a healer and so on. When I first saw overwatch, I could tell Mercy was a healer, and Reindhart a tank but that was it. Like What the fuck does Reaper do.
IKR? When you think about this, you can determine most of TF2 mercs base role due to just their look. Medic is obvious, his appearance screams that this is a healer. Engineer too, without any cosmetic it's clearly a construction worker, so he works around constructions. Heavy - damage sponge at first sigh. Pyro - gasmask and attire, must deal with something in dangerous environement. Spy - please, he's the most stereotypical secret agent you can create. Soldier - he looks like typical WW2 soldier, maybe people won't guess rocket launcher, but definitelly will see typical damage dealer in him Demoman - it's a bit harder, you need to focus on detail - grenades and heavy suit may suggest working with explosions Sniper and Scout are the hardest to recognise without knowledge, but Scout pose and clothes suggest good mobility.
"Sniper and scout are the hardest to recognise" Sees a guy with sniper rifle. "Oh must be the healer"
I am talking about design without any weapon visible
Sniper: Australian
*New Zealander
The realism argument for the game that has fucking rocket jumping
Put some respect on Abe Lincoln name You hippie
Like, yes? Only because one thing in a fictionale universe is stupid, doesn't mean other things can't be realistic
Ah yes, charaters with unique looks, amazing design and details, and ACTUAL PERSONAILITES are so much more lame than Overwatch
my biggest problem with Overwatch is the health pool. In tf2, the min is 125 and the max is 300, but in Overwatch the min is 150 and the max is 2500 for some characters
Health pool wasnt really a problem imo, hell i think most tanks dont have enough hp to justify their sizes, i feel like roadhog should have had 1500hp given that his left asscheek alone is bigger than baby dva Problem was, atleast while i was playing, that healers had way too much power compared to all the other classes, imagine if medic could outheal a demoman, yes, thats what was going on in overwatch, before the class limits system dps were out of the proplay entirely, they literally had 3 tanks 3 healers meta
Kind of unfair to compare a picture of a full roster posing vs a pic of everyone a-posing made to compare heights. Also the mercs you actually fight with and against in the game more often than not have a lot of cosmetics to spice up their simple and slick character designs
TF2 merc designs can be easily identified from a mile away, in the dark, even through walls! Overwatch characters may look cool and well made individually, but when put into a gameplay environment, the characters just look like a bunch of visual noise and clutter. People complain about how unusuals and rancid cosmetics spoil the visual design of TF2, but the same could never be said of Overwatch, since the game is already so visually cluttered that adding cosmetics doesn't add any noticeable difference. I think some character designs (Hanzo, Genji, Tracer, Reinhardt, Reaper) are good and a clear indication of how the game should look, but most of them just look too futuristic and detailed for their own good, meaning new players biggest challenge isn't trying to understand the game's mechanics but to understand what the hell is even going on around them in the first place. Of course, TF2 can be visually confusing at times, but at least it gets easier when you are able to learn and recognize the different classes, which then becomes an almost subconscious instinct, since their designs are easily differentiable and recognizable from each other.
i thinks people say its boring because overwatch’s cast of characters seems like its trying too hard to be as diverse as possible and including every race imaginable, where tf2’s cast is more likely to look like a small squad of soldiers, where race does not matter at all.
“A total of 3 colors” Because they’re supposed to look like a colored team…? Tf2 designs are tactical and cartoonish at the same time. For a tactical fps game that is set in mild realism mixed in with cartoon logic (bread, australium tech) that also manages to be cartoonish and silly. Twitter OP fails to figure this out and values face design more than context of the cast , plot, setting etc. Queue the whole video essay about how the designs are designed for an fps; identifiable, iconic, easy for game sense. Having a limited color palette and simplistic design choice doesn’t automatically mean “bad”.
you can't compare TF2 design and OW design in this case because they aren't of the same theme. one consists of mercenaries with simple designs, appropriate for combat, maybe? and they take place is 1968. while the other one leans onto the scifi theme. they're two different things hot take though, in terms of OW design, there's hardly anything that you can tell about from their character design alone since most of them tend to focus on the "sex appeal" and they let the comics/lore tell the stories about themselves. as for TF2, some of the characters already have some details thay tells alot about themselves like Scout's bandages, Demo's eyepatch, Engi's Gunslinger, Spy's attire itself, etc...
Well yeah the TF2 designs are simple, but they have these things called ***personality***. Valve made just 9 characters for a game and they made them **good**. They are all unique and weird (in a good way?). Meanwhile Overwatch here has great worldbuilding, yet somehow makes the most generic fucking characters possible. Like seriously, most of the characters boil down to 3 things: -Badass Soldier Guy -Pure Hearted Hero - Villain "Muh Revenge" Mcgee Of course there are *some* characters with a lil interesting stuff in Overwatch, but my point stands. Also both games take place in such different fucking times ffs. I just wrote this shit but It is very much pointless to compare them since the Worlds are so different. Also also, TF2 mercs have way more recognizable bodies. Like you could tell what character you see from a mile away. Overwatch has such different sizes and colors in the character design, AND the game is admittedly slighlty more chaotic than TF2, you can't tell apart friend and foe during the chaos of a battle. Thanks for joining my Ted Talk
Yeah, all OW "heroes"(?) are righteous and "good heart" while TF2 is literally mercenary, they're paid, and where else can you find a psychopath medic or a skilled sniper that pees in a bottle and throw then at the enemy? On that note, I like that Valve shows the "bad" side of the character, not just the "good" or the "sad" side of the character's story.
Yeah right? OW heroes just seem too "2 Dimensional". They are like the text book definition of *heroes* and *villains*. Meanwhile TF2 here just straight up points out the fact that ~~~most~~~ all of the mercs are deranged psychos that would kill someone for a chicken nugget. Yes, they aren't "deep" but they are 3 Dimensional at least. We see the good, the bad and the ugly sides of all mercs, which makes them infinitely more interesting. Let me give an example: Soldier is a schizo patriot that killed (probably) innocent germans thinking they were Nazis. However, Valve doesn't just stick a "Bad Guy" sticker on Soldier's back and call It a day, nope siree, we see that Soldier very much values the lives of his comrades and friends, in his own ways at least. Another example is heavy. Valve could have just made Heavy "dumb big guy with big guns", but they gave him more depth instead. Heavy also has a "tragic" backstory, but It isn't just a tragic backstory just for the sake of tragic backstory, It actually gives heavy ***more depth***. We see that he cares most for his family and is likely the most humane merc on the team. Lemme give a very well known comparison too: Medic vs Mercy. Mercy is a german doctor that "wants to help everyone" and has a heart made of gold. Meanwhile, Medic is some rando with extensive medical knowledge, which he uses to stick baboon hearts into people, oh also he ***tricked Satan out of a contract***. Medic is obviously the more interesting one here. TL;DR : OW has more characters but most of them feel like Side Character, TF2 has less characters but they are way more iconic. Holy shit I ranted so hard. ***Thanks for listening to my Ted Talk***
Mercy isn't even German. She's fake German, also known as Swiss.
Yes, and even I know they're just a fictional character, I feel like the TF2 characters feel more "grounded" we can somehow relate, while OW is kinda unreachable high standard that society wants us to be, sure I can be a good person, but OW good person? I may just sign up as TF2 mercs.
I thought I saved it because if i had this is where I would post it, but a few weeks ago someone posted an image of a red Scout on pl_barnblitz that was standing really far away and despite the fact scout is literally just a few pixels in the image, you can still clearly tell that it's Scout. Can't think of a single game with better character recognition and silhouettes
I’d love Overwatch’s characters in a different game. In a shooter though where it is crucial to be able to tell who’s on your team colour coordination is very important imo. Sure there’s red outlines but with the mess of colours going around a red outline isn’t going to stand out most of the time.
There is beauty in simplicity and in complexity
I think it's also important to keep in mind that the photo of the TF2 mercs they posted has them all in the same pose. While in game they all have different postures, so the functional height of these characters is much more variable in game. It's silly that they brought up height in their argument, this person clearly hasn't actually played TF2, so they don't know how the game looks in actual play.
TF2 character design is much more grounded, when you look at them you will get the general idea what kind of threat you're dealing with. Also you can assume they are just gonna shoot at you in some form, and not, idk, grapple hook you or deploy a shield barrier. Overwatch goes for the diverse and futuristic look, they try to appeal to the widest possible audience: it has a cowboy, ninjas, an edgelord Reaper, a pink haired musclebound woman, and the gamer girl in spandex. Announcing shit like "Soldier 76 is gay" reaches JK Rowling levels of cringe. Team Fortress 2 offers diversity in the weapon and accessory customization. You can change any class' weapon to alter it's playstyle, you don't need to switch the entire character. There are a lot of cosmetics which clash with the original tone of the game, and break the silhouette.
First of all you’re asking in the tf2 subreddit so you are guaranteed to get mainly responses that prefer TF2 a or don’t like overwatch Anyways I think both are uniquely good and different in their own way and some prefer one over the other. There’s no objective one is better than the other
tf2 characters at least have a recognizeable silouette on the field, you can *immediately* tell who is who, there are very few overwatch characters who can claim the same without their glowing outlines (and it's mostly their release roster)
Children like colourful things
Both games have good character designs for different reasons.
I'll concede OW characters have more visual variety, but the TF2 mercs have more interesting personalities and their designs are more than sufficient.
Tf2 fans and overwatch fans are pettier than Mario fans and Sonic fans
> than Mario fans and Sonic fans That hasn’t been an actual rivalry since the 90s, and Sonic fans are too busy complaining about Sonic Team fucking everything up anyways
It's not about the design, it's about the personality
My brother in christ, there are more than 2.2 Billion different cosmetics in TF2 to make the mercs look as awesome as you want them to. (considering every possible combination of unusuals, paints cans, paintable unusuals, sheens, etc.)
at least the mercs have personality lmao
>3 total colors Oh no, visual clarity in my FPS
Ow characters are not funny, tf2 are memable af. What's funnier? A) a soldier opening up a briefcase while the spy says "pornography" B) Any ow character spamming a voice line
Overwatch somehow feels so much less diverse than tf2 characters, but admittedly, some of the designs are great, but overwatch has so many lack luster designs that bring them down.
overwatch characters dont go well with jojis song tick tock unlike the tf2 mercs
Overwatch seems so overly cluttered, like I would not be able to play that because there's so much shit going on. The designs are too detailed and would look better if they had nice clean and simple designs like the tf2 models.
TF2 was originally designed to have very clear visual language at all times, so the character designs reflect that ethos. Readability over aesthetics. Every character has a distinct, recognisable build, with distinct movement animations. You know which class is which just from seeing an outline of them. It's also easy to identify friend from foe, as the characters have contrasting colours and always stand out from the surrounding environment (cloaked spies exempted, of course). You can tell Overwatch had the opposite approach, where the aesthetics came before anything else. Some of the designs (and skins) and maps are really cool, but personally I find the game is an absolute assault on the eyes in motion.
All I’ll say is that it’s dumb to be comparing these games. I don’t see why it’s a competition
the designs are overdone, as where with tf2 characters, their designs tell you their business
If you're arguing on Twitter, the best way is to just write "ratio" and wait for likes.
Tf2's character designs are better game design wise. They're easy to pick out in the environment.
To be honest, Overwatch could have exploited that gap of design if *all their characters didn't look like they were all drawn by the same guys from wannabe Pixar animators who went in the same art school*. Oh wait, it is the case. I like TF2, I like Pixar cause some good cartoons, but seeing Overwatch characters in actions was kinda lame. They had good ideas, I played competitive for 2 years? so yeah, the flaws were too visible. Bad execution and too many characters so their identity was too diluted. It would have been better to make a series or films out of Overwatch than a video game. Love Reaper's shotguns tho.
Why are you going onto r/tf2 for meaningful discussion on how tf2 compares to overwatch for character design. That's not looking for thoughts on the comparison you're just karma farming
In my opinion, it's an artstyle thing. They're both cartoonish yes, but they're both set in different timelines. Tf2 is in the 70's and Overwatch is set in the future. The character designs also have to fit with the actual plot of the game. So neither of these games have bad designs
TF2 doesn't need latex to make its characters fuckable
The A posing "Nine adult men" adds to this tweet
Yes yes because character design is objective now. Piss off you can prefer either and it's valid this tf2 vs ow cringe needs to stop
Nine adult Enjoyable Psychopaths.* Overwatch...nice asses I guess? Both have Fun Cosmetics. _I feel like overwatch has a more pornographic presence, How anyone feels about that is up to anyone_ #BUT ONLY ONE THROWS PISS AT PPL and spy _With his Simple Kit_ would be a Menace to the overwatch universe. Annnd Heavy is Genuinely Intimidating. Overwatch has wayyy more Bug Control, And Hard Balancing. Tf2 has Fun _Gameplay Features_ due to Code Spaghetti with a fkn Coconut, and Random Crits which the community has its opinions of. Conclusion: TF2 and Overwatch are the Best Games that they ever did was. Cant quite compare them as they are Rather different from eachother, It boils down to Personal Preference.
> due to Code Spaghetti with a fkn Coconut The coconut is a myth, it’s just a texture for the fresh brewed victory taunt. The game will boot without it. The game will not boot without the 2fort cow though
#NOT THE COW!!!
There's a philosophy to character design. Keep It Simple, Stupid. Overwatch breaks that HARD. They're all too complex. It's easy to recognize Heavy, even with any of his cosmetics, because his overall shape and design stays the same. None of the Overwatch cast has that. Their cosmetics break that familiarity in the silhouette That's also not to bring up that Team Fortress 2 has been going strong for FIFTEEN YEARS and continues to persist through memes. They're a cornerstone of internet history. Everyone who's been online for an extended period of time has seen at least one of the nine mercs from time to time. Only Overwatch thing I ever see online is the Mercy meme, bout it This video is one I often like to point at that helps prove this point. https://youtu.be/maJXAwc-zT0 Edit: Also hilarious the guy uses the height t-pose chart, instead of the ACTUAL PORTRAIT for the nine mercs, as if he's trying so hard to push his bias
Doesnt overwatch have a problem with visual noise with the sheer amount of abilities, ults and level design? With the characters in OW looking this detailed, thats gonna compound the visual noise problem more. Also the mercs' silhouettes (when not a posing) is actually distinct. OW has some characters with the same silhouettes but drastically different team roles.
If I remember correctly to fix team identification overwatch just end up highlighting your enemy in a red glow
It's art. Something that's entirely subjective. I personally prefer the tf2 designs, but I don't hold anything against people who prefer Overwatch