My thoughts on a game that I thoroughly enjoy and "is dying". Overwatch.

Ok, so it should be known at this point, for people into Blizzard Entertainment and specifically Overwatch, that the game is at a state that a lot of people consider to be annoying, obnoxious and simply not fun. However I have a few things to say for myself about the game and my experience while playing it for almost 2 years.

First of all, it's an online video game. It depends on a player base, which therefore means it depends on people. People are unpredictable, and as someone on the internet, both you and I know that people can be quite unpleasant in this virtual world. Games are no exception! Due to the comfort and ease of not experiencing the human emotions first hand when you're talking to someone online, people tend to be quite destructive and toxic. And when a game fully depends on team play, strategy, awareness, communication, "it's everyone's fault but mine". "I did everything I could." "I was at my very best and the team threw the game." "All the players in my team are typically trash, but I usually pop off." You get the point. So it's not that the game promotes this kind of behaviour, it's just that it's a lot easier to blame someone else so that you get the upper hand and feel better about yourself. However this is not healthy for the person doing it or the person reading/listening to it. Hence it's called toxic behaviour. Now that we mentioned the matches, let's go deeper into it and say that not only are people toxic towards each other in the matches, they are toxic to the game as well. To the developers, to the company, to the designers and so on and so forth... Ever since Season 3 when I started to focus on playing Competitive Overwatch, i've seen people complaining about anything and everything. "Triple tank meta is trash, I want to play something else." ; "Quad tank sucks!" ; "Roadhog is broken, please fix!" ; "Genji is overpowered and stupid, what the hell Blizzard?! NERF HIM!" ; "Dive meta is so boring!" ; "The game was great until GOATS comp. appeared!" ... Again, you get the point. Which is, people haven't stopped complaining... EVER! 

So, do you really expect a "miracle" that saves Overwatch from people complaining? It will never happen. Again, it's an online videogame and therefore it will always suffer from people complaining. Personally, i'm always complaining about Pharah, because I think it's a hero that requires too much focus towards the sky and leaves you way too vulnerable towards enemies on the ground. But a lot of people disagree with me and you know what? I'm okay with that! I can respect it as an opinion just as I hope my opinion is respected as well. 

Now, moving on to Competitive itself... Personally, I believe that it should be reset every Season and before I get judged, allow me to explain : If you keep playing with the same ranks all the time, sure, it is fair. However, there's little to no room for improvement. Do you get better at playing an instrument by playing the same song over and over again? I doubt it, you will probably start attempting more difficult songs once you stagnate at a certain point. So, with that said, I believe that if the SR was reset every season, there would be a mix between highly ranked players that would "force" someone to improve in order to get to their level. And again, before you judge this statement, let me say that i'm not talking purely about aiming capabilities. I'm talking about basic knowledge that you should've developped once you reach level 150 or 200. Game sense, awareness and communication. Three key factors to succeeding in Overwatch. With that said, if you continuously play with Gold ranks and lower that do not communicate whatsoever, you will never learn to communicate properly. You will never feel confident enough to call the shots. And if you do, hey, congratulations! Keep aiming higher (At all the Pharahs)! If you stagnate in Gold and lower, playing against others that might have an equal or worse aiming capability than you, you won't necessarily improve... I mean, you can but... You're not really "forced" to. So I think it would be good if the SR got reset every season and perhaps make the seasons a bit longer too. But (!), there's also another issue with the lack of SR resets. Players that abuse certain heroes that are incredibly strong in a specific meta with low skill cap and high reward. These are players that you go through their profile to find that they stagnated in a rank for multiple seasons but that then show up in the highest ranked matches one tricking a hero. And as if that wasn't bad enough, due to the fact that you remain around the same rank for multiple seasons even after your placement matches, they might as well be there for who knows when. And if you try to counter argument with : "But they will derank on account of not being good enough for the ranks they are sitting at." ; I will reply to you asking if you think that matches depend on that single person? Well, they don't! So with that said, they might as well sit in higher ranks for 2, 3, maybe 4+ seasons due to the fact that they are playing with really good players who attempt everything in their power to win and rank up. So as long as you're not throwing the game on purpose, as long as you're not a complete dead weight to your team, you can probably sit in those ranks for longer than the season a certain hero allowed you to get to. 

To wrap it up, I think Blizzard still has a long way to go to figure out the best way to make Overwatch Competitive a truly fun experience for both veteran and rookie players. But it doesn't depend on Blizzard single handedly, it depends on us as well, the players. It depends on us to not complain about every single little detail. People got Roadhog nerfed to the ground in the first place because it felt humiliating to get hooked, stunned and pulled into a fat, goofy walking character that shoots junk out of his Scrap Gun and then lets out a massive laugh. This is the power that the community has and Blizzard has always listened to the community. World of Warcraft has always been a victim of that as well. Anyways, enjoy the game guys, stop being so annoying and so picky. They're not naive, immature and ignorant children working on a game randomly just because. They're hired and paid professionals. Suggest things, absolutely! But there's been complaining every single season and unless we change that behaviour, the complaining will never stop!