Overwatch's Information Vacuum
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- Опубліковано 3 жов 2024
- What's an information vacuum? What's an Overwatch? And how are these two concepts related? Find out in the all-new video from an over-caffeinated Canadian with a shaky grasp on data analysis and an even shakier grasp on reality!
Also, after how many of you were able to recognize a relatively obscure 20 year-old game soundtrack in the background of the last video, I went for an even more obscure one for this one. 10 points to the first person who manages to identify it (unless it's Content ID, no points for Content ID).
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11:14
Apex Legends actually had this issue when Mad Maggie was being teased. Her passive was described as "temporarily highlight enemies you damage". The only other time "highlight" has been used in the game was with Bloodhound's ultimate, which would turn enemies red to the player's vision, as long as they were visible. Any form of wallhack was described as either a "scan" or "reveal".
People started freaking out, because they thought that Maggie's passive was just more wallhacks, but I recognized the wording and was telling people they shouldn't worry, because the wording indicates that it was a highlight, not a scan.
And then Respawn put clown makeup on my face, because it was, in fact, a wallhack passive.
Except unlike every other wallhack ability, it's not for teammates. So while it was usually highlights for one person and scans for teams, now she gets to kinda go against that and be really confusing too :D
I truly wish video essays like this were more common, this is the kind of content that can inspire people to do something with the information, to push for things to be better. One day your videos might even grow enough to reach the devs themselves. This is well put together and I look forward to seeing what else you have to offer.
I’m working on a highly detailed essay about why orisa rework makes no sense, sub if you want to see that
Problem is that many OW UA-camrs are like a wet piece of bread in their criticism.
Since their channel depends on ow, they cannot be too hard on it at the risk of them losing either blizzards favor, their audience, or the game that brings their audience.
I've realised I don't even bother reading the hero descriptions anymore, I've found them so useless at actually explaining how heroes work that I'd almost forgotten they existed. This information vacuum explanation makes alot of sense I hadn't consciously realised. Thank you!
yeah, the only thing useful from the hero descriptions is if I genuinely don't know what a hero does at all to give me some kind of idea of what to do with them
I recently realized i don't actually know if you can apply a Moira's regeneration effect on targets that are already full hp.
(Case: If I heal my Hanzo to 200hp and 0.5s later Spraying Soj will hit him for 5dmg will he heal back up to 200, or soon fall to her rail headshot and so I need to get back to him or warn him, as 5dmg is often being scuffed at)
at the *barest* minimum, pulling a valorant. In the buy menu, it gives you damage numbers, range values, and any special properties the gun has. It might be a bit overwhelming, but it will at least give people the data required to understand the game.
Yeah it’s better for the information to exist for when a player is ready for it than for the information to just not exist in-game at all.
Even then, they don't tell you firemodes. I would buy a gun, and then die with it because it was semi-auto or burst, and that was mentioned nowhere in the buy screen.
@@DreadCore_ I think it's on the bottom right in the gun description. (Inside the buy menu when hovering a gun)
@@DreadCore_ yeah i was confused about that too turns out that ads is counted as a special property which changes your fire mode. Still it is written at the bottom right.
i have 1500 hours in valorant and still get surprised by numbers in the buy menu, like for example how the spectre does exactly the same damage as the classic (iirc)
Honestly I've never thought about this in this way, but it's shockingly true. I recently wanted to stop depending on a few heroes and learn most of the roster, and I never really realized how much I depended on content creators on UA-cam rather then the actual game in order to learn the basics of each hero. It's honestly kinda shocking how much overwatch pushes itself as a competitively charged game, and ofc there will always be skill involved with the gameplay, but the amount of people who probably have their info on heroes skewed, for instance I did at one point think sombras hack increased all damage, sounds crazy lol
Wait it doesn't? I thought it increases hers and her allies damage?
@@rawrdino7046 its SOMBRAS passive
OW could communicate a lot of additional information about abilities via drop down bullet points that explicate on the ability’s quirks but their UI design seems to prioritize succinctness and cleanliness over everything else even when it paradoxically creates a worse user experience.
Another information vacuum that I encountered yesterday was I was talking about bastions dmg reduction to my friends and none of them knew he had an inherent 30% incoming dmg reduction in his turret form as well as the 30% reduction from his armor
You could really blow their minds with Cassidy’s damage reduction while he’s rolling lol
@@TheViveros wtf
@@TheViveros he WHAT?
that's crazy cause the wiki says 20%
@@TheViveros excuse me what did you say ???
Wow, that's the best Moira guide I've ever seen
Everyone’s gonna learn a thing or two today, even if it’s just about how much damage a Moira actually does
I literally didn't realise that orbs slow down when healing or damaging. I just thought it was random
I have over a thousand hours in this game and never realized that moira's standard damage heals herself
Except she does not have a lock-on, soft or hard. It's visual feedback that lets you know you're hitting a target. It still needs to be aimed by the player and can be evaded by opponents.
I never knew that she's healed for 50 hps with her ult. I thought it was only if you hit enemies with her ult
nothing is a bigger eye opener for this problem than trying to introduce a friend to this game and realizing that you’re doing like all of the legwork in explaining characters, maps and modes. Also, the amount of times I’ve heard people yell “HOW DID WE WIN?!” after winning a game of Push feels like a bad sign
That moira abilities section is rediculously useful. You could cut it down and upload it as a youtube short. Then make a series for every character. Genuinely useful information i didnt know. Thank you.
On a related note on your video, I had the same issue with apex. Not enough in-game statistics are available in that game.
The problem is especially important in OW where abilities are different. League for example still has this problem. I want go learn how much an ability gets stronger for each level, but I cant see that in the home menu. They atleast have the excuse of a grossley outdated engine and spaghetti code (still not a good excuse). But blizzard has no excuse for having such weak ingame resources for players.
Making those shorts would be great for growing your channel as well if youre trying to do that
I'm so glad that somebody is finally talking about this. Back when I got into OW1, I was desperately searching for top down schematics of maps because I would always get lost. To this day I don't know all of the health pack locations on maps, and don't get me started on hero specs. I watch a lot of UA-cam content on the game, so I have a good grasp on the specifics now, but my boyfriend has no clue what most heroes do, simply because it's impossible to find out in game.... Its sooo frustrating
In league of legends, champion abolities and rune pages have simple descriptions of what they do, and you have the option to hold shift to see all the numbers and scalings if you want to get into the details. Overwatch could really use something like this
I’ve noticed the information vacuum problem has been getting more and more common as time goes on, especially in games with set content cycles like Apex, R6, DBD and Overwatch (pre drought).
I credit it mostly to these developers not taking into account the fact that as their games get more complex with more and more content, the information given to new players also needs to get more, ya know, informative.
Or, on the other hand, there’s the possibility they’re fully aware that their games are approaching some kind of singularity where they’ll get too complex for new players at all and they’re choosing to oversimplify everything so people aren’t scared to keeping come in. I got scared downloading DBD two years after it came out, I doubt I would’ve got it at all if I waited until this year.
I think there's definitely an element of this in a lot of games with devs not really realizing that the issue is becoming more and more severe as their games get more complex over time, and then they do kinda end up being frogs in pots of slowly-boiling water on that one. Overwatch has never really provided much information (most of the hero info screens are ripped straight from OW1) so it was already bad, but it does get worse over time because of those factors. Overwatch 2's release seemed like the prime time to do a bit of a reset on all that info and give some new details, particularly given that they wanted to attract a bunch of new casual players - but then those new players bounced right off the game because Blizzard inexplicably decided they didn't need to explain how the game worked to new players *or* how the game had changed from OW1 to OW2 for people who'd played the first game lol
This video and the last one can apply to so many games. You really understand the problems and explain your POV clearly. Blizzard is trying to have their cake and eat it too with being a casual game and also hyper competitive. They learned nothing from League Of Legends and Fortnite. League can be info overload but I'd rather have that than what OW has.
Thank you! And I agree, I think it can definitely be overwhelming when a new game throws a bunch of info at you but it’s better to have it so that you can come back to it when you’re ready rather than not having it at all.
@@TheViveros recently league has been stepping up their game to help new players. Reccomended builds, runes, jungle paths, summoner spells, etc etc are great to help people get into the game. it doesn't fix the problems with all these things being either unneccesarily complex or oversimplified yet confusing, but it does let new players actually play the game without having to worry about complex systems and learn them at their own pace.
however, what overwatch could really learn to implement is that league by default allows you to hold shift and hover over any rune or ability to see all the exact numbers on it: the scalings, the ratios, the levels, the cooldown, etc etc. it also allows you to hold C to see all the hidden stats your champion has.
currently with league, all these bells and whistles aren't really helping their new players, despite how great it is. the biggest problem for new players is the ridiculous amount of bots and misinformation in the tutorial, both of which lead to miserable experiences that make me wonder if the friends I helped get into the game 4 years ago are the last generation of actual league players, because low elo league has become a new kind of hell.
its even more crazy that overwatch has actually done more to *remove* information about heroes that made their kits and abilities more digestible, because there was at one point during ow1 a whole slew of videos accompanying each ability in the hero information tab that showed you exactly what the ability looked like in gameplay. these videos used to be housed fully within the game client and are now relegated to the overwatch website, and are more of a cinematic representation as opposed to a previously in-engine showcase
I can't believe I forgot that existed, my god
Coming from Tf2 as I was always curious of the game,the "similarities" were enough to give me the game sense of what to do (Especially and ironically from playing MvM on how to go about Rein's shield) But I must say that the lack of damage numbers in game really,really hurt the experience. Everything was trial and error for the first 150 games as I had memory of the original game on how some heroes are supposed to work but damage falloff isn't communicated so there were awkward few games where I was doing the equivalent of a 2014 Amby-spy (for the uninititated,headshots from across the map) without realising. Orisa's javelin left me with the impression of keep people away when her gun was effective at mid-range. I still have difficulties with Hog's alt-fire, Junkrat,despite how similar to Demoman is,I found rather baffled on how accurate you had to be with the nades to make them go direct impact. Echo,while I get the fundamentals,is frying my brain and while I could go on forever,I found myself losing half my comp losses because of a stupid Sym-Torb combo on the enemy team because nobody shoots the damn turrets. Everyone kills the people that placed them but the nests themselves remain in place pecking at my shield out of my hammer range. And while I have experienced worse classification of information (*cough* Warframe's million and one statuses *cough*) Few numbers won't hurt. Or how about listing their passives? Like the REAL passives.Junker queen has it and it doesn't state meleeing someone causes that instance of dots required for healing.
Yeah Blizzard seems really scared of numbers for some reason. A lot of game devs are. Both Overwatch and Apex don't have numbers on character screens for the fairly basic yet vital fucking information known as COOLDOWN TIMES.
Can i just say i love your editing. Its such a minor thing but tiny things like transitioning to a new clip as kiriko teleports or sombres ults its so clean i love it. Idk if you do it yourself or not but whoever does it fairplay to them.
Thank you! I do all my edits myself, and it’s been a really nice surprise to get such a positive response to how I do them haha
This is exactly the kind of thing my partner was complaining about recently. Why is nothing ever explained in this game??? I'm so used to getting info from OW content creators that I feel like I know most of what's going on, but when he plays I usually have to explain to him what happened to him, why he died, what moves his character uses and how they may have changed from OW 1 or even from the last patch. I'm starting to get the feeling I don't actually know what's going on when I play, but I know *enough* to explain away when something is *actually* screwing up in game. Sort of a middle ground between knowledge and blissful ignorance.
This man spoke nothing but truth for 16 and a half minutes
this is like one of those moments where you're doing a puzzle, and just once piece immediately recontextualizes the entire thing
As a former Battlefield player, I'm reminded of an opinion I've held of that series for years. Playing it at any decent level requires vast sums of knowledge that the game never, ever gives you. Basic strategy tips, weapon data, pretty much everything is in the dark, and I always thought DICE used UA-cam as a crutch to not have to teach their audience a thing. And it made the experience miserable for many of us for many years. The fact that PTFO became a thing is a tribute to how little players understood about the game, and that reflects on the developers.
Hearing this my mind immediately goes to Age of Mythology. Whilst it could have made information more accessible, it did a really good job combining information with a video about each faction accompanied by a voice-over and subtitles. Imagine if each hero had a video of their gameplay, along with subtitles and a voice-over explaining what was happening and how best to use their abilities.
Holy, I am just 5 mins in and the amount of information you have already provided is crazy. You deserve all the growth you are getting. Very excited to keep watching and seeing future content.
@Viveros chapters are a hugely useful resource for some people, here are the timestamps for this video if you would like to add them in
00:00 Intro
00:28 Information Vacuums
1:17 What is Overwatch's Information Vacuum?
7:29 Why is information vacuum such a problem?
12:24 How can this be fixed?
Thank you, will do shortly! Totally meant to and then my brain just short-circuited preparing for a family event lol
I played Overwatch on and off since season 3, and every time I tried to pick up the game again, I always felt like a brand new player not having any info readily avalible. this video essay shined a light on an issue I knew only subconsciously, and honestly, I would love to watch hours of videos like this as long as they are well written like yours!
The weirdest thing blizzard does is keep hard stats to themselves and not explain anything
The damage numbers absolutely need to be listed on the hero screen. I hadn't played OW in years, so I don't remember how much damage/healing every ability does or if the numbers got changed at some point.
Back when Moira first came out, I think I must have been lucky to main Junkrat. The only experimenting I had to do was calculating when to detonate the mind to jump high or far and how much the balls bounce or even how high they launch. I swear they nerfed those balls, they felt heavier after a while. But with Moira, I had no idea, I just experimented during a match.
Never realised overwatch was pretty much built on the idea of “get a feel for it”
i actually played valorant before ow1, and the thing i found so horrible when learning ow1 was not even having an option for a mini map, it took me so long to learn all of ow1 maps. i can't imagine how hard it is for new players to learn all the ow1 and new ow2 maps at once. it was something i hoped they would add as a toggle on/off option in ow2
A good game that remedies this problem (to an extent) is the platform fighter Multiversus, which not only has detailed movelists for the characters that use keywords, it also has those keywords condensed into a glossary available from the main menu. The game isn't very old nor very competitive but the community at almost all levels is able to communicate clearly and understands better what problems are (most of the time). Good work with the vids viv, keep it up!
i think fighting games have always been really good about this
@@chuckled125 probably a combination of fighting games having been around longer than FPSes + being generally very complicated and technical
I don't play OW anymore, but I've played a fair amount of Moira. This is the first time I've ever heard of her lingering heal, cleanse, and enhanced jump.
this was a really well made video! i did saw some mistakes, like at 4:04 where you said moira beam has a softlock. That is a widespread misconception but moira's grasp is actually a beam with an animation that shows you if you're hitting someone which looks like a lock on enemies. other than that this video really explains why people misunderstand a lot of concepts about the game even for heavily experienced players.
What quality content! Keep doing exactly what you're doing my dude. :)
So glad the algorithm blessed me with your channel. When I started playing overwatch, I had fun fumbling through games and slowly learning the maps and abilities, but I only started really learning the game when I happened upon a stylosa video. At this point, I just wish the IP would end up in the hands of adequate developers like Riot
I disagree that the game should give you info about which heroes counter which, synergy etc. Those meta things are pretty subjective and change over time. Big agree about providing as much info as possible about hero, objective and map mechanics.
This + styles of play (brawl vs. rush vs. dive) + different screens for numbers accessible in game and one for simple descriptions
your video essays are well written and just generally good to chuck on and listen to.
The biggest example of the information vacuum I've seen is when the game reset everyone down two ranks, and I went from Tank (Gold) to Tank (Bronze). I was talking in a voice lobby and I was watching the mercy just pistol whipping every time they had their ultimate, I just ignored it at first thinking it was bronze mismanagement of beams/pistol. We were all excited for OW2 though and I managed to build a conversation with the mercy and asked them why they were doing this instead of healing. They didn't know that mercy healed more and the beams connected to people, and thought that the mercy ult only made her fly around which = dps time.
Moira is another big information vacuum character and it's difficult to approach people when you see them make the mistake with her healing because it comes off as confrontational.
In the "cleanup heals phase" after a successful team fight, a lot of moiras in high gold/low plat where I play will heal people up to full hp using their piss, where you're meant to heal them up mostly and then let the 35/hps that occurs for 2 seconds after heal them up to save on her piss.
its really great being able to affirm my opinions from a content creator with authority on the subject. thanks viveros for the affirmation!
jokes aside, ever since the game came out, i've always wondered why there's no overhead map available to players. u can see it in OWL, but other than that, its not available to the public except for some fan-made overhead maps. new players just joining the game will just have to fumble around for 100 hours until they figure it out or search up the fan made maps. EVEN THEN, its still hard to remember all the health pack locations and possible flanking routes in all the maps. in valorant, i've learned all the maps within like 20 hours of playing. in overwatch, even after 20, 30, 40 hours, it still felt like im learning the map and i still have yet to learn all the health pack locations. wish they would just give us an overhead map even if its just in the menu so i can actually learn where everything is.
Oh no I have become part of the problem
It was the survivorship bias video. Not many people had heard of that concept before, and I saw it posted everywhere. Great stuff, nice work.
Thank you! Honestly I don't know how that happened with that video, the algorithm threw it at absolutely everyone out of nowhere - I didn't even post it anywhere except my own Twitter account, so I was shocked to see it blow up like that.
@@TheViveros It appeared in my UA-cam feed the day you posted it, and I went to post it on the official forums only to find someone else already had.
As much of a glitchy and unpolished mess as Paladins is, it still does this right. Every hero has a stat screen with descriptions worded similarly to this: (Evie's Primary Fire) "Fire a frozen blast every 1s that explodes to deal damage in an area. Deals 850 damage, has a maximum Ammo count of 6, and has a range of 300 units. The explosion is fully effective up to 3 units and will hit enemies up to 10 units away." Overwatch's hero descriptions read like: (Soldier's Primary Fire) "Automatic assault weapon" OW is trying so damn hard to make their ESports/Competitive gain any traction, but when the most basic of abilities aren't explained by BLIZZARD, who will remove a .7 inch spot on a wall that is completely detached from main chokepoints just so doomfist or another movement-heavy hero can't stand on it, the SECOND it is discovered online, that makes me realize why.
This is a bit of an angry rant now, but I'm just damn tired of the company KNOWN for its polish refusing to provide the simplest and most base-line access to information about their game.
Great video, you put your thoughts together very well and the editing is clean and crisp.
Blizzard's approach to how to present hero information has its merits. Keeping it simple makes it more accessible, less overwhelming for new players, but at the same time it makes it impossible to get more detailed information for those that actually want to look deeper into the game.
A very important concept of game design that it's sadly constantly overlooked is to give the players options. It's nice Blizzard made the descriptions short and simple, players can get an idea of how a hero works from the start, but the lack of an option to show internal values for players that are starting to feel more comfortable and prepared is astonishing, specially considering how those values are constantly referenced in patch notes that are made publicly.
It's kinda baffling how TF2, the game that so strongly influenced OW and was made more than a decado ago has actual tutorials for characters, maps and gamemodes while OW has none of that
Paladins does a better job. They have a simple explanation and then a little tick box that opens up a complex version of the explanation with every detail about the ability including duration, damage numbers, and other mechanics.
A little aside from the main topic I suppose, but your lengthened versions of ability descriptions got me really excited to share a thought I've had about games with complex mechanics in general - This might sound obvious, but I feel like having the option to switch between displaying short and long descriptions for abilities is really important to a lot of games out there, and I feel it's honestly extremely underused.
Like, I don't even know a single CCG that does that, beyond just having keywords you can find separate definitions of within Cards - when CCGs are like the perfect genre for that kind of thing!
Here's an example - Imagine a Card In a Card Game, which is a Unit with the Passive ability that whenever your Opponent takes Damage, it also Damages the Opponent for Half of the initial Damage taken. For its normal ability description, you could just write: "When the Opponent takes Damage, this also Deals half the initial Damage taken to them" - but that leaves some important questions open... If you get 2 of these, do you create an infinite Damage Loop? What's Half? Are we rounding up or down? And if this a Card game where certain Cards are able to be played whilr it isn't your turn to negate enemy abilities, are you allowed to do that to negate that ability, or are you not allowed to respond at that moment? These are important questions to answer, not knowing the behaviour can genuinely lose you games, but writing answers to all those questions into the description would make the Card Text extremely cluttered and verbose - so it baffles me that CCGs don't simply add like a small little [...] button or something onto their Cards that you can press to get the more detailed description.
Eg:
"When the Opponent takes Damage, this also Deals half the initial Damage taken to them"
[...]
- This Effect is active during both Player's Turns so long as this Unit is still alive on the Board
- This Effect does not trigger from other Copies of this Unit
- Halved Damage is Rounded Down
- This Ability cannot be Negated
To bring this back around, all the information you added when talking about Moira is valuable, but of course if it was simply dumped onto the screen it would just turn her Hero Info Page into a Text Wall that scares off new Players. If you implemented something like that though, it'd be perfect! Again, it genuinely kinda baffles me that this isn't common practice with basically any game which contains multiple abilities with relatively complex implications.
Yeah I don't think it's necessary for something like this to totally replace the current hero info screens (or at least a version of the hero info screens that are accurate) but it should be there *somewhere.* There's a balance that needs to be struck between accessibility and providing information, but I think failing to provide enough information ultimately makes the game way more inaccessible than providing too much - you can always ignore a wall of text explaining a mechanic in a game like League if it's overwhelming until you feel like you're familiar enough to make sense of it, but if the information doesn't exist in the first place then you're putting new players at a massive disadvantage against anyone who has played for long enough to learn the details about mechanics, which makes the game pretty inaccessible too.
@@TheViveros Oh yeah, I'm definitely one to lean towards having more information over quick & easy readability if one had to be sacrificed generally.
I think back in Overwatch 1, in the Hero Gallery you could view small videos in the hero description page. They weren’t perfect and often were outdated, but at least they were something. Things like the ambiguity around Moira’s biotic orb were solved because there was a demonstration.
I just want to say I love your content and I think we need more people making videos like this in the OW community, I hope you continue to grow because you deserve it
9:04 this, that statement, i thought that i was the only one to have that kind of thought process, you just earned yourself a like minded subscriber.
I super casually play OW2 and nevermind not being used to any new heroes since OW1's last couple years, not knowing any flanking points on the new maps has significantly increased the learning curve for me. A lot of games I play have been pretty bare bones with getting new players up to speed and genuinely it needs to change
Perhaps for the map issue, they could add a built in recon mode like the Splatoon games have where you can just run around the map with nobody else on it to scout out important locations and the like. Make it obvious too. In Splatoon 3, the recon mode is access through a very conspicuous npc in the game’s hub (she’s even explicitly pointed out to the player during the hub tutorial). Overwatch doesn’t have a hub but I think recon mode should be a pretty easy to spot area on the menu.
You explained the information vacuum so well! I’ve been playing since 2016, watching Karq and flats for info has been my routine for years lol
I watched your survivorship bias and failed OW universe expansion video and thought I had already subscribed back then, but apparently I forgot! 😅 Love your videos, happy to see you’re getting the recognition you deserve, and I hope your channel continues to grow!! Good luck ❤
Awesome video dude! Its so rare to find an overwatch creator who talks about actually unique topics and talks about them in a productive way! Keep up the great work, cant wait to see you and the channel grow!
literally was just watching your survivorship bias video and I checked your channel for more and I see something uploaded 15 minutes ago
Never expected this to turn into a video pleading for critical thinking in overwatch when listening to content creators… bravo great work
What I like about these videos is you don't have to play Sombra to enjoy it. Keep it up 👍
0:12 the youtube algorithm works in mysterious ways my dude... though in all serious, your content is really great, so we're happy to be here
Thank you so much! It really is strange, but it’s been great that so many people have been enjoying what I’ve been putting out 😊
Just started the video but I've recently been thinking about how Overwatch needs to implement lore in ways like Apex Legends. Like how we are going to be hearing the same 80 voice lines for the next 4 years. Will we see these characters evolve and have relationships like Loba/Valk, Bloodhound/Fuse? Or will we keep hearing about Murphy and only get new stuff from new characters. Characters haven't evolved or changed in the 6 years since Overwatch 1 and I feel like they can be using these season breaks to do so. We only know the past.
Okay now to actually watch the video, sorry it's been on my mind for months-
I get what you mean, Apex is a fun game to play once in a while to see what’s changed and what’s up with the characters, whereas nothing really changes with the Overwatch heroes kinda just tread water. I actually did a video on how Overwatch failed to expand its universe a couple videos ago, you might enjoy that one too if you haven’t already seen it!
It's because overwatch is supposed to just be a sandbox, lorewise. They took a bunch of characters and are playing with them in a dollhouse, making them shoot each other, work on the same team as their enemies, and fight copies of themselves. The overwatch lore doesn't come from overwatch the game, overwatch the game just uses overwatch's lore as a backdrop for the game.
I definitely agree! I've been playing this game for 3 years now and I'm still discovering things I was never told about...ㅠㅠ
It's always baffled me that the only valuable numbers in the game are distances printed on the ground in the practice range. No damage numbers, no falloff distances, no anything. Sad.
I remember when Overwatch first came out and that one of the biggest talking points people said in 2016 is that compared to it's competitors, it explains the game well enough for you to get a basic understand on how to play the game. Just being able to press F1 whenever you like to get the jist of the hero you're playing was something that not many games did at the time. This was great for the game to gather and maintain it's playerbase but as that playerbase got more experienced and more serious, the help that the game gives you is no longer useful.
I think a big part of the issue is also that when it came out we were all learning it together, so it was less of an issue - the amount of information you needed to be on par with the average player was low because nobody had had the time to learn much. Now, though, new players are having to contend with people who’ve been playing it for years and years, which means that that lack of information actually (imo) makes it harder for new players to get into it. Like, if we’re all starting grade 1 math together, then it’s ok if none of us know what multiplication is. But if you’re dropping a first grader into a grade 9 math class without any intention of catching them up to speed, then of course they’re going to struggle and have a miserable time.
The survivorship bias video was awesome but I found out channel through the kda video. It is one of the best analysis videos I've seen in a while. Hope to see more of those tore off videos.
Training courses to teach players about heroes would be great. You can have the narrator tell you tips as you play through them, and some turtorials should be in actual maps like Practice Vs AI
I love these videos you're making. Most videos and rants about Overwatch focus purely on numbers- pick rates, damage values, overvalued cosmetics, etc. Your videos are so refreshing and very insightful!
Can’t wait for when you blow up and I can confidently say that I’ve been here since 3.5k. Love ur stuff so much, pls keep it up
Devs clarified before OW2 Launch that there will be no hero specific information regarding numerical values in the Hero "Tutorial Screen", unfortunately seems like theyve done it on purpose. Probably not to "Intimidate newer players."
They could just do what paladins did.
If they really want to make it simple and clean they should add something like how LoL does it where you can press a button or something to look at more info so that you can still get more info but also can keep it clean if you want
So true, and sure, maybe implementing a personalized tutorial for all all 76 heroes would be a lot of work, fixing the outdated ability descriptions on the F1 screen shouldn't take more than maybe 15 minutes tops. So many times it seems like Blizzard is not even putting in the bare minimum and it makes one wonder how these projects are managed.
This problem occurs in a lot of games. This could easily be fixed by a UI setting in the options menu to show detailed tooltips. General, quick and dirty 1-2 sentence descriptions for what the ability does in simple mode, and a full breakdown of what it does in an opt in detailed mode.
While I was aware of overwatch many years ago, I was only able to pick it up with ovw2 being f2p
The information vacuum was certainly a problem for me. In the moment, of course I reference the hero info screen, I utilize the practice range, and even make my own solitary custom game
And as you said, there are external sources for the needed information, but making them accessible within the game itself is urgently needed especially now that it's far more open access from being f2p
Just found your video and I have been binging your content. Your content is super unique!! Really enjoy watching it, thank you for making them :)
Information vacuums are are a common occurrence everywhere in every game. It's the responsibility of both the devs to convey as much important information as they can as clearly as possible AND the players to actually be aware enough to consume and properly understand that information. Back when OW first launched, the amount of people I had to tell that the payload on escort maps provide a small amount of healing to the attacking team was STAGGERING. It's not like that kind of information was hard to figure out. Some people can really just lack that basic amount of awareness when playing the game, so I think these things can often go both ways.
This is a great video. Honestly I'm new to overwatch 2 and i played the damage character Moira, and i didn't even know moira's teleport cleansed her.
I (someone who will never even touch Overwatch 2) am enjoying these videos.
And wow, this is a worse problem than I thought, because people think Moira has a lock on. She doesn't, her beam visually targets the enemy's centre of mass, but the beam itself is exactly like Zarya and Symmetra's.
That definitely isn't true. I can't believe that.
@@godlyvex5543try it out in the practice room. It has a bigger hit box then visually indicated but it isn’t actually a lock on.
No it locks on in an area the size of reapers spread
Whoa, I've been in the ow community since 2019, and I've been obsessed with ow2 news, and I thought sombra's hack worked like discord. Glad you cleared that up, but it just proves your point!
I legitimately thought it did too right when OW2 came out, and had to check and make sure because it *seems* like it does - after all, the entire team can see hacked enemies through walls (or at least they could when she was initially reworked, I don't *think* that's been removed but I'm not 100% sure), and there aren't any other heroes in the game whose damage boosting abilities work like that.
found you recently, and while i don't really care for this game since the oct 4th patch, your assessments of it are still interesting and entertaining to watch. I hope you go far as well :)
I've thought about this before but could never put it into words!!! I find myself reading hero abilities thinking, "Damn I absolutely wouldn't understand this if I didn't play this game before"
Same! I tried to help a friend get into OW2 a few weeks back and it really brought the issue into sharp focus because OW told him *nothing* and it made him decide to stop playing. A lot of us learned it by just playing hundreds of hours of the game, but especially for people who also started with the OW1 launch, we got to learn and grow alongside everyone else - new players today not only have no info, but also have to play against the people who’ve played thousands of games and know all of it already, and will probably be rude to them for not knowing all of it to boot.
In Paladins, even if its not an "ideal solution", each hero screen display the same type of infomartions as in OW, but you can press a button and the hero screen turns into a much more complex and detailed info screen about each ability (including Cooldown time, damage values...). It still lacks some infos, but it works well IMO, for one reason :
The first time you launch the game, and/or you're a casual, you don't want to be overwhelmed with all those numbers and just wanna know the basic of what each button do. And when you feel comfortable enough, you come back to the hero screen and press the magic button to show details and learn more.
I love how well this video was put together, I avoided any overwatch 2 trailers because I wanted to be surprised when it came back and I on god was wondering why sombras (who is my main) we’re running around hacking without coming out out of invis and I had to watch the youtube video just to learn why because it didn’t display that in the hero information
The no map preview is a valid point, but I disagree on the hero information part. The ability descriptions are good ENOUGH for a new player. A new player just wants the quick, basic gist of each ability, not be bogged down by a wall of text explaining exact dps, range, and falloff. Most the Moira info pointed out can be figured out in 5 seconds of using the ability, a shorter amount of time than reading all that text. They're mostly fine, and anyone caring that much about advanced stuff like damage falloff and synergies are going to go look up outside guides anyway.
The best compromise is what Dota 2 does: have an advanced tooltip option that toggles on and off a way more detailed wall of text dump on every possible stat about each ability on the tooltip. If it's turned off, you just get the basic description.
(seriously though, Push mode blows. 90% of whoever wins the first fight wins the match, with a painfully long slog death march until the end, and half your playtime is running around en empty, horribly designed map. They can't delete that mode fast enough. I would go back to A/B capture map marathons rather than play another push mode)
My friend is new to OW2 and he always asks me how much damage does "X" ability do and a lot of the time I can't give him a 100% confident answer because that information isn't provided in game.
Legitimately what inspired me to make this video was a friend who's a former CS:GO semi-professional player who's also spent a decent amount of time in Valorant who wanted to get into Overwatch 2, and even though he's extremely familiar with competitive FPS games and knows the basics of this kind of thing, it was still so hard to catch him up on how Overwatch works. I don't think he's played again since the day we tried together because it was such a frustrating experience to have to juggle so many different mechanics that the game wasn't properly explaining, and the hero info screens did a poor job of explaining the differences between the heroes he was trying to pick - let alone explaining how the heroes he was playing against worked. Obviously people can *eventually* grind their way into learning it, but the game turns a lot of people off by making it so initially frustrating to figure out the basics, especially when they come into Overwatch with experience from other games that don't work anything like this.
My man always gets into the real issues facing OW
The thing I liked about overwatch 1 was that characters (except for the newest ones) would have little videos that you could watch in the hero information screens that would show each ability. Bringing something like that back would be nice
If it were not for community videos I quite literally would not understand enormous parts of how this game works. People like mL7 and Awkward create these detailed hero guides and they are an absolute godsend but really resources like that should be a supplement to a robust onboarding system. A player should be able to, within the game, access information that explains deep and nuanced aspects of gameplay including positioning, task priority, space control (dear god there is exactly zero explanation in game of how the tank role works on even the most basic level). The reality is that if you want to progress beyond even low silver you NEED to be going online to find guides that higher skill players interested in educating the community have created.
The best analogy I can think of is trying to pass a course in university where the only thing they give is exams. No lessons, no lectures, just tests. Once you identify the material you can go online and find resources that people have provided to learn it, sure, and you can always put together a study group to share and experiment with this info, but really, it would be so much better if you just had... actual lessons.
Shit, Blizz could get have gigs for T500 players to create guides that are available ingame.
in a perfect world you should click on the hero info screen and be shown an assortment of guides, tips, and lessons explaining how the hero works and how to practically play them.
The bare minimum Blizzard could do is approve certain guides online and offer links to them through hero info pages ingame. Either way, the game client should do something, anything, to either provide or refer to resources that provide real, applicable information on how to play a character.
Dude, bump. Hopefully the devs see this. You'd think they'd under how important this stuff is when they know how important this information is to the game and to the community. Maybe they're waiting til the game is in a more stable balance state? That's my only guess and only excuse I'd give them. Hopefully they have a really nice screen to display all that but are waiting til balance is better to save resources. If not than I honestly don't get how this isn't already a thing. I don't think your the first to make this point hell I've even thought of the idea in some capacity before, but this is a really comprehensive video and not too long with all the necessary detail so great stuff! Sub from me for sure
binged your channel and like the issues you point out and how you explain stuff in general. it feels like so many of these things should be obvious with how easily you stack examples of how, in this case, lack of info isnt helpful for anybody. super duper ultra well done :)
yeah, ive played overwatch for over a month now and this is how i learned that moiras fade cleanses negative effects :/
Ok great vid, and second when it comes to fade description, based on what it says i would assume that this is a form that last forever that moira can take similar to sombra or ball rather than an hability that dosent last very long and is often used as a quick escape option. Is very misleading tbh
I think that solving the vacuum is an important point, but in the same vein of thought, we have to avoid information overload. Like you said, it's a complex game for a new player, and there has to be a balance between dropping stats and numbers for new players when they inherintely don't understand the "feeling" of the damage or health numbers when playing the game, yet. Also in the same vein for experienced platers we are missing important stats that we want to see.
In terms of stat numbers, one of the ways to overcome this, in my opinion, comes from a game from 2003 (and my fav game) Rise of Nations. In the options, it had a slider to give you the option to find out how much information you wanted when you held your cursor over something that would provide you information. This could be the health of a unit, the damage it does, any unique abilities etc.
Depending on where you set the slider, it would take out certain info at "basic", completely remove the stat numbers at "none" or add very small stat numbers at "detailed". I think having this system and making it apparent it exists so everyone can choose the level of info they would like would be a really good feature. It would also compliment some of the other suggestions you made in the later part of the video. Great video btw!
Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it! I definitely agree that the difficulty for the developer is trying to find the balance between providing enough information that you can learn everything you need to know but also not overloading players, particularly new players. I think Overwatch is in a uniquely difficult position with that because a lot of characters have a unique mechanic that no other heroes have - you have to find a way to explain the concept of how Sombra's hack or Ana's sleep dart or Reinhardt's charge function to players who might've played a hundred hours but have no concept of how those specific mechanics work. I like the idea of a slider, though - even if there were just three stages of information like "Basic overview", "Full explanation", and "All the numbers", it would be a good way to ease people into it and make it clear where to find the next layer of information once they're comfortable with the character enough to be able to use it.
Thank you for regurgitating my opinions back at me from a voice of authority, you do it very well c:
Oh no I'm part of the problem
I remember when I played push for the first time...I think I could speak for everyone when I say it was very confusing. It took me four or five games before I completely understood it. When first playing, I thought games would end weirdly, or my team would somehow win...it wasn't explained, so I had to figure it out on my own, it didn't help playing on maps I've never played on before.
I eventually figured it out...but just something telling me how to win or how it worked would've been helpful to skip the initial confusion. Funnily enough out of the years I've been playing OW, push was the only game mode to have confused me...even with payload & 2cp it was pretty straight forward.
My definition of beam type weapon is a weapon that is a hitscan DOT and can not be eaten/deflected. Reinhearts fire strike goes through barriers and that that ability is still considered a projectile even if no other projectile does that.
your videos are amazing so far!! cant wait for ur next ones!
Even the wiki is wrong in, at least, one of its assertions: Moira's biotic grasp doesn't really has a soft lock-on, her grasp's hitbox is more akin to Winston's, being a cone that goes in front of her. The misconception comes from the animation, representing it as a beam that bends to hit its targets.
I completely agree with these points. I'm a new player coming from Valorant, and my biggest criticism was the lack of a minimap or explanation to the gamemodes themselves.
This whole thing is the exact reason mercy is still expected to be a main healer by new players
I remember when I first started playing overwatch I thought it was a simple game because of how short the descriptions for everything were
The hero info screens need to be directly connected to whatever database the game actually uses to operate the weapons, so all damage and effects are updated whenever they make a patch. This is probably too much to ask for from a small indie team though considering it took then 2 months to fix the menu alignment on the competitive start screen.
A bigger problem is the baffling array of interactions that require mythbusters style investigations. Like here's an example: there are couple kinds of "cleanse" in the game, moira fade, zarya bubble, kiriko suzu. And there are some status effects, anti-heal (purple), stuck with sticky grenade, stuck with pulse bomb, stuck with sonic arrow, frozen from mei ult, on fire from ash dynamite, sleep dart'd, caught in junk trap. Which cleanses clear which effects? What exactly happens in each case? Even if you've played for hundreds of hours you're unlikely to get everything right.
tbh when i started to try and main Mercy i didn’t know when to use the damage boost or who to pocket at a given time
the game barely gave me any details and the community was VERY split on it
it’s overwhelming as a casual player
And then your teammates who've been playing the game since 2016 are gonna yell at you, someone who picked it up an hour ago, for not knowing the things that it took them months to figure out on their own. It's definitely not a positive experience for new players.
There are maps I've been playing for years and I still sometimes find health pack locations I didn't know about
7 hours of Flats Content had me ROLLING 😂 Got CALLED OUT LMAO! Well said and great video.
It's something I've been dealing with as someone who came in after being gone for 4 years. For example, I was combing through UA-cam trying to find if Symm beam charges faster or just does more damage with Mercy damage boost. Going from KarQ videos from years ago to random Symm one tricks I wasn't able to find it till I went elsewhere. It was just a question I had since Kiriko Boosts specifically speed of beam rate and not damage for both Zarya and Symm. Anyways thanks for the great video!
THANK YOU. As a new overwatch player, getting into the game is exhausting. I keep getting stuff wrong and getting yelled at by teammates for not knowing stuff. By comparison, Valorant was much, MUCH easier to learn. I know the valo maps by heart and how to counter each agent while in OW i'm still surprised when I get killed by an enemy in some way I didn't know they could do, even though I tested them all out in the range 😭 it's so frustrating and Blizzard really really needs to work on making those stats more accessible. Thank you for the vid!!