Flats Reacts To "Mourning Overwatch: A Final Farewell"

[@macabrevoid]

I understand for flats as a high comp player its hard to get their take, but the main point is that as a casual player, there is nothing left but competitiveness. There's no room to having fun or learning characters because the modes and such don't allow that without being steamrolled or screamed at by your teammates. The casual mode was quickplay where you could enjoy the game. Yes "one team has to win, its competition" but at the end of the day, it felt like QP and Ranked were different beasts that QP I could go to enjoy with my friends and have fun until we messed around in arcade, while Ranked was this thing for the sweats. The archive missions and such, sure were not the best, but they kept the casual player base happy and content. You didn't have to play the main game, you could enjoy those ones and there was the promise of PVE on the way that made it so that "hey, there's gonna be a mode for me!". But with that stripped away, there is ONLY comepetive shooter left, and if you're not with the program, tough sh- "git gud" and be forced to sweat in QP. And the stuff about the lore, people say "oh but the comics mentioned this" yea, a small comic that 95% of the player base don't know or have interest. The Apex legends point was about how in main source media (animated shorts, cutscenes, etc.) they wore their characters and stories on their sleeves and didn't force people to go to supplementary material to learn the story. Overwatch used to, but now that PvE is a pipe dream and dead, the lore is just shallow in the background, nothing to build up to or be And I appreciate Flats adding a competitive look at it and talking about metas, but I feel like you miss the point that video is about a casual player who boots up the game and wants to have fun with their friends, not a streamer or comp player who knows the deep metas and such, but just a person who wants to have fun. And so Overwatch moving towards hyper competitiveness felt horrible for casual players who were used to the wacky fun of 6v6 OW1 and now we're left with "BATTLE PASS, NEW COMPETITIVE OW2" and all the casual stuff lost in favor of that.

[@PaulStargasm]

And then they decided to ban people for leaving QP...

[@landenthe70s]

I agree. Overwatch went full competitive. The fun aspect doesn't feel really exist. If they kept the cinematics and PVE the game would have brought back so much.

[@TChunky]

im a casual player and can NEVER play ball because enemy immediately swaps to stun, hack etc. I cant learn certain heroes because the CASUAL game mode is so toxic and competitive. I could go to training room to learn, but thats not the same learning experience at all

[@majones117]

This is why I quit most games. I have 1 maybe 2 games I like to try hard in. Other games I play for fun and be forced into playing competitive is awful and most quickplay modes turn into competitive especially at low mmr

[@airrss]

i agree 100%, I actually just deleted game a few days ago, i’ve tried to have fun for months now and it’s just not the same anymore, losing 6 qp games in a row even though i was doing a good job helping my team, did it for me. I cant have fun on this game, for some reason it’s not allowed. That’s really what this game has come to, if you’re not winning you’re not having fun.

[@az_street_walker4181]

16:53 this went way over your head flats and everyone in chat she’s does not care about winning getting rolled or losing in a close fashion means nothing to her she’s there for FUN she wants to play her characters with her boyfriend/husband and that’s that seeing a win (might be cool) but she truly doesn’t care so when teams do 5 dps and a support with her she isn’t like “well fuck we lost what a waste” she just plays that’s the true casual outlook so when role queue was introduced and she was forced into a role and subsequently expected to do well in that role and have the team berating her while she’s simply just trying to have fun it ultimately sucked the fun out of it for her idk why this was so hard to grasp for chat and flats

[@az_street_walker4181]

48:56 “that’s really misleading” shut tf up vip at the end of the day even though it is a twitch thing overwatch 1 clips by default ARE GONE unless you specifically look at certain content creators and scroll for a hour to find them blizzard made the sequel blizzard caused overwatch 1 to shut down twitch simply updated to the games new name but blizzard ultimately decided to make a sequel which in turn made the category go away

[@giuseppevaccaro7521]

Streamers are hurting this game so much for all the wrong reasons

[@123Suffering456]

I think this is just super hard to get for people who've never played on the casual side of it. I have been on both sides of the coin, have played more casually with casual friends of mine and been super sweaty with my other friends I played comp with. So I get both sides of it, but I think this is only because I have the experience. Interesting thing is that it's very similar in WoW as well - the sweatier players there also don't get why some people play casually and how they think about the game. So I think this is just a general thing about us gamers that we struggle to get the reasoning for why someone enjoys a game and why they might play it differently than we do. I understood the points this person was making and felt the loss as well because I was very involved in OW pop culture before as well, have written fanfiction about it together with one of my casual friends and stuff like that, been speculating on lore and what cinematics we may get in the future. Stuff like that. That is all lost now and will continue to be, even though I still plan to check out the 6v6 and just stick with the competitive side of the game if I enjoy it.

[@firebreathercat133]

She's 100% right. OW killed its casual fanbase through its mishandled story/IP management (literally the biggest waste of potential of all time) and just overall lack of cool new features that casuals care about. I'm a comp player mainly and technically I do agree that the game feels good rn in a balanced perspective but I also miss 6 stacking with my friends. It's not a zero-sum game, I think you can cater through both.

[@yoshihammerbro435]

Ya as a casual nothing in the game other than the Uprising and Italy game mode event made me invested in the lore, it was only cinematics outside the game etc. 😔

[@thedreamistaken1017]

​@@yoshihammerbro435same here

[@Rohndogg1]

It didn't "kill its casual playerbase" It traded an old one for a new one. I'm casual, I peaked plat but really I'm just a washed Halo 2/3 player that needs an FPS fix and I can relax playing Overwatch more than I would playing Halo because it's not the one I was actually really good at and I don't take it as seriously. I have low to mid double digit comp hours but easily over 1000 hours in quick play or mystery heroes. I'm pretty much the peak definition of casual. And yes, I love the lore and want more and it's what made me play the game in the first place. But I also found open queue 6v6 MISERABLE. I hated it. I ended up not actually playing that much overwatch despite buying it all the way back in 2016. When 2 was coming out I came back and I have been playing more or less consistently since. I mostly finish the battle pass, but not always. i missed the JQ zeus skin but now with prisms there's a chance I get it now. There's positive change happening and there's definitely plenty of other quickplay warriors like me out there just playing after work and on the weekends. If that's not casual idk what is.

[@firebreathercat133]

@@Rohndogg1 Actually I dont think the solution is to go back to open queue or 6v6. I think game design has never been better as a comp player but in general there's not much incentive for an average casual gamer to play OW over the other FPS games when you have Fortnite, Apex Legends (now Marvel Rivals as well) dominating the space with cool cinematics, lore, cosmetics, constant updates and overall fun chaosness. I think there needs to be more integration with the custom games community. Maybe add clans?? Maybe feature the most popular custom gamemode on the menu perhaps?? Idk alot of overall quality of life things you can do to keep it fresh without putting in to much effort.

[@milo4075]

In my opinion overwatch 2 hasn't ever been balanced we never gotten a patch that made people understand or be "okay I'm fully fine with this patch" it's been nothing burgers for the most part the overpromised of pve TRULY killed the game hype and story now the new cinematic are absolutely horrendous in this new style I hope for the art team the best but the balance team really sold this game down the drain

[@theblackunicorn261]

Ironically, Flats missing her points is exactly her points. I've been a casual player since 2017, and frankly a lot of Flats' arguments just falls flat (pun very much intended) for me. I know his opinions are definitely gonna be different considering he's a pro player, but its because he's a pro player that he knows how to critique individual characters, their buffs, their nerfs, and the balance issues. We're casual, we don't play competitively, we don't know how to balance stuff, and even if we said something or gave an idea, people are 100% gonna bash us for "unfair balancing" or being "too stupid to even raise the idea" But just because we can't balance the game doesn't mean we're not allowed to say something if the game's going to shit. Flats likes the recent season-relevant title screens because, again, his job is to play the game, and to review its contents. Casual players prefer seeing their own characters because the recent screens are pretty much giant advertisements for the battlepass/cosmetics. Lastly, Flats went on and on about how a PVP game is gonna be competitive, and while yes, that's correct, it's also not the point. Instead of a PVP game with competitive aspects, Overwatch has become just competitiveness. New players can't join that easily anymore because they're not allowed to even practice characters they want without being flamed for being bad, casual players can't even play who they want to play without constantly dealing with people yelling at them to swap, the goal of the game has switched from "a game" to pretty much "a job". I doubt Flats can really get this considering he's been playing since the start, and has gotten completely used to it, but the number of people I know that are straight up scared to try the game is shocking. "Overwatch becoming f2p opens up to new people coming in", yeah, new players that would come in, get screamed at by anyone and everyone for trying to learn the game, and leave almost instantly. Feels a little countereffective. If people are too scared to even play the game, there's something very wrong with the game. Even casual players can recognise that.

[@dragonologist7966]

flats is so deep in the "why is everyone trying to play this competitive game casually". i think hes lost the plot

[@mathewhenson7686]

I think he has seen the plot wither up and die so naturally he has immersed himself in the competitive aspect But blame Blizzard for their flop, not the streamer It's like his segment on how Aaron and Jared had to deliver a crap message and he says to not kill the messenger when it wasn't the messenger's fault anyway

[@Dyingincursioninc]

Legit my thoughts as well, its like dude she clearly established she was a casual that placed bronze and silver but into the memes and story

[@snowsnowsnowcherry]

the porche trip did a number on him lmao

[@FishyFishy_]

1:38:22 this part is crazy interesting to listen to "OW needs people like this to move on (...) People like this stop us from having a better game in the future" I was really touched by her video and I feel genuinely shocked hearing this from Flats. Nothing against him but I wouldn't have expected that. I feel like without all of these people that really care about the IP (and it comes in so many flavors, she talked about just playing to RP for fun or being an artist foremost and thats 100% totally fine and part of the game's community like everyone else), and without everything that caters to these people, there's nothing left that makes OW have its own unique spark. It's just unremarkable. And I don't want to sound elitist but I'm also personally not buying the "People that join the game today still have that same magical experience, I see them talk in chat about how much they like the game". I know it's selfish but I just can't see it personally. The impact on pop culture back then was insane for a reason

[@luisguess3885]

yeah it's pretty much like, that 40 dollar game you bought and payed for and then got no content for 3 years and then blizzard slapped you in the face taking all that stuff away and giving you ow2? it's a good thing and you need to move on and it's okay it's not okay :(

[@ObsidianQuasar]

Yeah I don’t think flats gets that a huge number of skin and battlepass sales are casuals. Sure he and emongg will buy stuff but a lot of competitive players and streamers don’t spend money on the game. They got multiple accounts and are just not gonna throw a ton of money they don’t have at the game. Especially mid to low level streamers. I watch a few who get a couple hundred viewers and they might buy a skin if chat donates for it LOL.

[@tmathis9882]

Yeah I was feeling the same disconnect when he was talking about the 45 seconds after a match and talking to each other. As a former casual overwatch player I often did use that time complimenting my teammates or lightly ripping the opponent about how they stomped us or had one person who just rolled me multiple time. It was great to actually see the players names only to have them be on your team the next match. I feel like the toxic nature that Flats was talking about is the sign that casual players are leaving the game because if I am only playing a few games while I would like to win of course it is more important to me that I felt like they were good matches and I had fun and OW2 has just never given me that.

[@Tron3108]

6:42 cinematics and the whole message behind Overwatch is what brought me to the game. The characters and their stories are why it's so important to me

[@yoshihammerbro435]

But sadly.... nothing ever came of it 😔

[@christopherwilson5300]

Same I wish it was still that

[@ShindlerReal]

You must be the only one

[@sansidotti]

​@@ShindlerReal Hardly. As tough as the game gets there are many people who got originally captured by the characters and still holds them in heart.

[@faxmine]

But... But they make no money!! Think of the profits!!! We could be spending resources, instead of making yucky cinematics, and spend it making skins instead!

[@thatsnotgonewellatall5517]

Not gonna lie hearing her mention her friend of 7 years passing and it being a integral part to her journey with gaming and it being completely ignored and talked over cause of a drops issue is fucking wild...

[@staleeyez]

Yeah, fr that bugged me. I just hopped to the original video after that.

[@koddaszol]

"My friend of seven years passed-" "Chat give me a -Nodders- if it's working?" Fuckin' -wild-.

[@denn7s]

it's not that deep

[@tevildech1122]

@@denn7s It kinda is, thats absolutely fucking bonkers to do

[@vanilla9886]

​@@denn7syeah thats the point, flats only sees these as content farm, he doesn't actually care about anything said in this video lol

[@christianrolls8902]

Flats not getting her points is exacly the point.

[@jopvasquez6056]

Which points?

[@chris_bb]

which points noob

[@mickeyboy90]

I like when he’s talking about ow1 effects vs ow2 effects like there arent loads of new ui things that are super important to see suzu, jq, overhealth, anything weaver, pylon etc All the ow1 things still exist + theres more ow2 things. But lowkey this clip is a bad representation of bad ow2 ui. + games absolutely fried 6v6 wont bring back the game ow (devs or management idc) doesn’t care about the game and only care about the $ they can extract from you.

[@denn7s]

he is getting her points. her points are just stupid

[@tmathis9882]

@@mickeyboy90 To add to this it Flats even said in video that he plays at the lowest settings so he doesn't see all the stuff she was talking about. For the casual player I would say maybe 50% bother going in and adjust those settings and even then they want the best looking setting not the thing that gets them one more fps. So he missed the point BECAUSE he is a high level player that cares about those little details. I love Flats videos but this one definitely feels like a miss.

[@nihili4196]

20:20 her issue isn't that game became competitive. That's not a problem. The problem is that there is ONLY competition to this game. At this point you can strip the game of all the assets, voice lines, give every character base, low poly skin and have them fight in white test chambers. There is no story, only content to look forwards to are new skins, one hero every three months and balancing. And let's be honest, balancing is a byproduct of having flawed game. And heroes are very loosely connected to the world in game. The problem isn't that the game became competitive. The problem is that only thing making it worth playing is competition, and that is driving the problem harder. The more competitive it becomes on lowest skill levels, the less people overall stay in game. The less people stay in game, the more competitive game becomes. Also, the less players are in lower tiers, the harder it is to climb out, due to inherently pyramid based tier system. You won't ever leave gold because game is actively driving bronze players away, therefore you're constantly fighting against being sucked back into silver.

[@goliathus8815]

Balance is essential to a competitive game. Needing balance is not a flaw at all. The problem is there is nothing to keep the casual playerbase. I can tell you the backstory for every overwatch character since 2016. Even side characters like mondatta or balderich von Adler. With one major exception, I know nothing about hazard except that he is a thief, and even that im not sure about... There is Zero story anymore, no cinematics, no origin stories, nothing.

[@onurbuken3641]

I wouldnt say that, its the "its qp bro" mentality. People have every right to practice the hero they want for sure. The problem is, its a team based shooter. If your skills are subpar with a hero, the game basically becomes 4v5.

[@nihili4196]

@goliathus8815 that's what she was trying to say, I believe. But also, keeping the casual playerbase, as well as being inviting to new casual players is what slows down the process of the lower ranks becoming overcompetative for their own good.

[@simon-the-bar5657]

@@onurbuken3641 except it's just quickplay. The moment you start raging in QP, you should stop playing because your relationship with the game is unhealthy. Role queue made QP just as toxic and sweaty as comp

[@Rohndogg1]

@@goliathus8815 He served in the military and was wounded. The government got him the most basic of replacement limbs and things were tough. His home life was rough before that and that's why he joined the military. After all of that he was jaded. He fell in with the Phreakz because they do body mods. He got better cybernetics and eventually they found out about the vanadium alloy at Oasis that was currently being experimented on by Moira. Hazard and the Phreakz broke in and he infused the Vanadium into his body/cybernetics and that's how we get to where he is in game. This was all in the comic which was read by the voice actor right here on youtube and in his trailer. Two youtube videos. Completely free. The lore is just as accessible as any of the older cinematics are.

[@thahrdworkingingo]

"why did they not watch OWL" as a casual, the answer for me is theres nothing to get from it. I only watch content if its sufficiently entertaining or i learn stuff relative to What I experience int he game. OWL is just good players playing OW. I find watching just overwatch to be boring when i could play it myself. Im not into it enough to really feel the impact of watching professionals play at a much higher level because to me it feels like OW but people have better aim. Im facing this same thing now, actually. I watched a lot of content on ow2, came back to it after months of watching content, and now that i can play OW2 and dont like it I just stopped watching most of it.

[@GameBooAdvancePlus]

Compare that to early DotA championships where the skill ceiling is so high that casual players would constantly see plays they'd never see in their entire playtime and an infectious atmosphere from both the crowd and commentators and, yeah. Overwatch never had the sauce to be a truly competetive game while still being exciting.

[@Rohndogg1]

I just see OWL like a sport. Like watching football or baseball or something.

[@BoinkadelicJones]

I watch pro LoL every weekend. I don't like OWL because I don't get to see everything. LoL is top-down, so I get to see more of the map, but OW is first person which means the visibility even when they pan over the map is not great.

[@GuilhermeRamosGrispy]

​​@@BoinkadelicJones valorant is also first person but is one of the biggest competitive esports in gaming in my opinion. overwatch just isn't and never would be a competitive game

[@BoinkadelicJones]

@GuilhermeRamosGrispy True, I personally have a hard time following any esports that are first person. Top down to me is a much easier viewer experience.

[@kevintrudel1127]

Flats her criticism of how crowded it is visually. In the past couple years, whenever I've tried to get someone new to join Overwatch, it universally turns them off.

[@CalamariZander]

yeah just the clip she showed wasn’t even that crowed so that didint help

[@grxviton-surge8908]

"my friend of 7 years passed away" chat, are drops working????

[@slicvic00]

Bro that was insane and it took me out of the vid. I felt crazy that no one said anything

[@yoshihammerbro435]

Ya just ignored it somehow

[@theuigauss]

Im assuming he missed it

[@minnie3843]

likely...holy hell flats

[@derick5295]

idk if he was hrs and hrs on stream that day or not, but some parts of this video he is kinda lost lmao, like in 20:20 when he understand a complete different thing that she was saying 😭😭

[@MommyHelpU]

1:10:35 I HARD disagree. As an Ow2 player, I would much rather see my characters in my skins, in my hero poses than an advertisement everytime I booted up the game. I literally can feel my eyes roll to the back of my head everytime I saw One Punch Man Doom, or My Hero collab, hell I even bought the Le Serrafim collab and got tired of seeing their faces after awhile. I agree it was personalized and I would like something like that in the game instead of an advertisement everytime. Fortnite gives you ads at the top left of your screen while still displaying your custom character with whatever music you want now. I loooove hearing Better Off Alone everytime I login to Fortnite… so yea I agree with the players that say that was a nice touch.

[@BiscuitSniffrr]

I've liked some of the backgrounds but it should be an option. You should be able to choose your background for favorite characters on random skins or select skins while also allowing you to have the default background which would be the seasonal and event backgrounds.

[@MommyHelpU]

@@BiscuitSniffrr right! Customization is freedom for the player and makes your experience that much more enjoyable.

[@milamber319]

Also completely disagree with him. How is an advertisement EVER better than anything.

[@123Suffering456]

Yeah, I remember how I used to be excited when my favourite heroes appeared in the background in the skin I'd chosen for them at the time. I would sometimes take screenshots of it to then use as my desktop background when I was really into OW and it was my main game. Was cool. Also an opportunity to see your skin and sometimes a reminder that I was bored of the current one and wanted to change it for another. I liked it. A simple thing and not the worst for sure that it's gone now, but I think it gave the game more of a personal touch even in the main menu.

[@rjp94]

I'll never forget the cowboy bebop one or the Porsche one where the audio on the title screen was so annoying I couldn't wait to get off it or would just leave the game. Stuff like that, while minor, does matter enough if you're going to be on it during a queue.

[@ZeProblematicz]

1:09:40 - Yes, I also vastly prefer a random character/skin combo I actually own rather than some promo of an event/sale happening.

[@aaronstacey9612]

Flats i love you man but the disconnect is crazy, the majority is casual I understand you are right in your high rank games scenarios but you are wrong when it comes to what the 99 percent goes through. I applaud you trying to get this different perspective but giving solutions to low ranks with high rank justifications make no sense. Also casuals buy mercy/kiri skins they are the money makers.

[@stormwolf0988]

To claim that low skill players can't feel slight adjustments seems disingenuous to me. As someone who was hard stuck gold sure one small tweak felt like nothing but you could feel the direction the character was going. You could tell that the character you loved didn't feel as good to play as it did 2 months ago. So I don't think it's appropriate to dismiss her balance opinions.

[@luckytanuki5449]

Felt it with mercy myself. Havent had nearly as much fun playing since then and have slowly stopped playing. 5 days before season end i was at plat 2, I could have easily gotten to diamond 4 but i had no motivation to at all since none of the characters appealed to me anymore.

[@Mikethatguy7]

As a fellow casual player, girls opinion is based. I couldn’t disagree more with several of flats opinions. Sure, cater to your loyal players at the highest level. I can say with 100% certainty there are more potential paying customers that are casual than there are at the highest skill level. Not only is the take wrong on almost every level, it’s also suboptimal for a for profit company that is publicly traded. Love flats but a lot of cope in this video.

[@damousx6860]

Tbh yeah

[@luisguess3885]

to make the most money you cater to the biggest audience which i guess you could say that is the competitive players now where it use to be casuals but now theyve ran all the casual players out so now they have to cater to what is left

[@Eyesonly302]

Top players even mute the music and lower the graphics settings for more frames per second, and dont even touch characters they dont like or are underpower, developing a game for those players is a waste on all levels

[@danielavila1679]

when it is said that there is no more room for experimentation, it means that it is no longer possible to test a hero in quickplay because it would be trolling.

[@yoshigames96]

You absolutely can, that's why it is quick play my guy You can literally turn off the voice and text chat, so that's not an excuse

[@ObsidianQuasar]

@@yoshigames96I used to do that, til I got a ban for “throwing” apparently I was being reported on.

[@yoshigames96]

@@ObsidianQuasar damn

[@Not_Ciel]

18:30 this is exactly what I noticed during Classic mode. People kept saying "OW1 was not better, you just have rose tinted glasses!!!!" but when classic came out I had this realization that OW1 WAS more fun. It was terribly balanced, extremely janky, a lot of heroes felt horrible to play.....but it was chaotic, it was FUN and that's what initially drew me into OW. OW2 doesn't feel that way at all.

[@Zedetir]

Exactly this, this take is the one I've had and not been able to put into words. OW doesn't work as a balanced shooting game, hero shooters do NOT work as competitive games, these are meant to be "fucking around" games, not leagues or anything of that nature. This whole idea is like saying all platformers should only be made for and cater to speed runners.

[@goliathus8815]

I havent finished the video but i do have to say, The problem is that they got rid of everything in overwatch that the casual players liked. The balance honestly does not matter in the slightest to a true casual player. What the casual players care about was the pve events and the cinematics. It was all about the story. But for some reason blizzard decided that pve events and cinematics did not matter anymore. And then they started trying to balance the game for casual players. Now all the casual players have left to find other games and the balance from a competitive perspective has been completely destroyed. This is why todays silver players look like 2019s plat players. Because all of the bronze and silver players abandoned the game. Now a true casual doesn't fit in anywhere in the ranked system because there are no true casual players left.

[@yoshihammerbro435]

Ya nothing in the game other than the Uprising and Italy game mode event made me invested in the lore, it was only cinematics outside the game

[@goliathus8815]

The problem is there is nothing to keep the casual playerbase. I can tell you the backstory for every overwatch character since 2016. Even side characters like mondatta or balderich von Adler. With one major exception, I know nothing about hazard except that he is a thief, and even that im not sure about... There is Zero story anymore, no cinematics, no origin stories, nothing.

[@StormierNik]

Because Blizzard became extremely invested overtime on short term returns. Blizzard for maybe since HotS died has been focused on siphon as much money out as possible of a sinking ship. The ship isn't sinking now, because they got what they wanted. Which was a buyout from Microsoft. They wouldn't want to be bought out by another company if they were doing well. They clearly weren't. And now that they're bought out they can keep focusing on draining wallets and not care about brand identity or integrity.

[@luisguess3885]

i played overwatch 1 some and have much experience with fps games over my humongous gaming career and i got back into overwatch and played about 50 hours in 2 weeks and then decided to hop into competitive, immediately bronze 5 fighting for my fuckin life. i was genuinely surprised having lobbies full of people with 200, 500, 1000, 2000+ hours in bronze 5, like i was expecting people who could barely use a mouse or were completely new to the game and boy was i wrong. my gaming ego was demolished and i was ready to hand over my gamer card. but it's like you said if i was say playing gold back in the day bronze is probably where i belong now

[@simon-the-bar5657]

I feel like flats seriously missed the point of her video and her sentiments are the exact same ones I've heard from my own friends who quit and myself who's playing other games now. It's not fun. Role queue is not fun. Why is there role queue in quickplay? The moment role queue was added to quickplay, quickplay became just as sweaty as comp. So now there's two comp modes. Arcade isn't a viable alternative because of queue times. Casuals suffered because of whiny high tiers and that's something people have been saying forever

[@yoshigames96]

There is literally open queue for quickplay and competitive my guy, if you want to play open queue, you can totally do it For me it's awful to play, it's just chaos

[@simon-the-bar5657]

@yoshigames96 queue times make it impractical

[@pool8443]

​@@yoshigames96 Yeah but the game isn't balances around Open Que, which is why the game modes don't work

[@yoshigames96]

@@simon-the-bar5657 I use to play sometimes with my Friend and we get match faster than in role queue, what are you talking about

[@yoshigames96]

@@pool8443 yeah it is harder to balance open queue because of how It works, I get that I mean that's why I don't like It haha

[@AtomicPuma9]

1:10:00 I’ll take the random background and random hero over today’s promo deals they put as the main menu. It was very cool seeing YOUR character there doing its idle animation and being able change skins with the lighting of the map that was in the background. It takes away from the personality of the game and is replaced with whatever slop they put into the shop that week/season or OWCS which most of the player base doesn’t care about.

[@G-Realla]

Just within the first 10mins of this video gives me such a sad feeling because her talking about how she joined a community for rp goes to show how amazing clans/guilds would have been back in the day

[@grimmparagon427]

@@G-Realla it's crazy too that they've even mentioned working on this and it still has yet to happen. We've lost so many social options over the years that made the game so much more fun. Even when I hated playing OW back when 2 had yet to come out, just using group finder made me play it 3 times as much as I would usually just finding new people to hang out with. Like for me the games always been perfectly fun enough, I just need people to enjoy it with more

[@G-Realla]

@ yeah there was so many basic features when 2 dropped that they just didn’t have but had in the original it still irks me that they somehow managed to get rid of reque for awhile there

[@sillyme7484]

@@grimmparagon427 they removed group finder for what reason???? ;-; Was it the people complaining about 5 stacks in qp or something?

[@cml7072]

​@@sillyme7484 this was OW so it was 6 stacking and no because 9 times out of 10 you would be put against another 6 stack. Its beause they didnt want to pay for the system to run it anymore because it used its own servers that were based somewhere (thats what i heard years ago like)

[@Guile_The_Exile]

Flats completely missed the point of the "I miss the menu being random." Like WOW...

[@cruzmelon12]

1:43:00 Bro shes in tears about saying goodbye to the game that changed her life and you're gonna bring up how you can form better informed opinions because you're more involved, im sick.

[@blu7384]

Seriously. insanely tone deaf & disrespectful as shit.

[@Radi_nce]

genuinely disgusting how disconnected from reality he is when making this slop content

[@denn7s]

if she's in tears about a video game changing, she needs to grow tf up. how can you be a grown adult and this emotionally immature?

[@flyingsquids7547]

The biggest overlap between apex and ow is they both killed their casual community

[@danteisontheway]

damn the people juding her for sounding "shaky" at the end yall never got too disapointed in a game you played in for a long time just for it to turn into a bad corner? seems like its being HARD to get her point 😭🙏

[@zichirichi]

it's just a game now that was her point before it was a universe where you can have fun knowing the characters playing them wasn't about just playing the meta pick or the op characters

[@carlosrosadolu]

I think Flats is missing the point of the video.... the video isnt "the balance bad" its "the whole reason a lot of people connected with overwatch is 100% gone (cutscenes, stories, etc.) and all thats left is the sweats" aka us. There is literally no reason to join the game unless you want to play a sweaty comp game. The casual audience is so miniscule and dying because there is nothing to look forward to or keep them in the game.

[@goliathus8815]

What do i want? Simple, i want content that is not tied to the shop. And i want lore.

[@KingKuron_]

I love when she talks about how there's a character for everyone. When I first played Overwatch 1, I mained Zenyatta because he reminded me of Buddhist monks my family would see often when we went to Buddhist temples to pray, and that shaped my gameplay preferences for being a Support player. Even more so with the addition of Lifeweaver, who is Thai, like me. But I don't feel as much love for them as Blizzard does as they do from me. I could not say they give two shits about them over other characters

[@antoniolandos1650]

i think the whole argument about the loading screens / home screen with the hero and random map is that it felt personal and showed heart. remember this video is coming from the perspective of someone who was casual, loved the goofy parts, and liked to dive into lore (i mean cmon they read the ow comics and researched apex lore). for them it was a different way to be invested in the game rather than just hopping in ranked like a lot of people do

[@Dingle.Donger]

I met my wife through Overwatch looking for group. That feature was removed for OW2. OW dev team is actively hurting the dating scene.

[@funwalkthroughs1285]

This is awesome lol

[@shannonwaipouri1730]

Ggs well played my bro

[@123Suffering456]

Met a friend I played with for a couple years and had a good friendship with as well through LFG. Not quite the same thing, of course, but it shows that LFG brought people together.

[@AbyssalExalt]

Take a shot for every “good bye overwatch dead game” and try not to die

[@The-Crow173]

In the last 2 hours alone i would have died

[@themilkman8647]

Say less, I’ll try to be back in an hour and 46 min

[@tswrangle1000]

For me, I'll be a lil buzzed

[@themilkman8647]

@ lil buzzed? Sounds like a rookie

[@brenthazelton6891]

Real and true

[@noahodum9737]

Flats, I was a casual player until 2019, in 90% of my games people tried to work around eachother and tried to create an enjoyable experience. You did have the occasional genji 1 trick that woiuldn't swap after going 0-15 but it wasn't that common and most of the time everyone was just trying to have fun. I became a sweat in 2019 when I got out of the military and honestly, I miss the 2016-2018 days. This video made me so sad. Edit: I have 100 hours in marvel rivals, and in QP i'm more likely to get a tank player than in competitive.

[@ShadowCrescent]

Honestly, I believe that Flats very much missed the point of the video. I mean it makes sense since he is very ingrained on the competitive side, and that is ok. However, the big problem here is that OW has lost its luster of the years. Especially with the severe downplaying and talking down to it is pretty wild. She basically echoed what many people (most notable being Samitio) has been saying for years at this point. It can't keep up and to not only ignore the beginning of the friend who died saying "Hey! Are drops on?" and the fact that she found her husband through the game. It really did set a precedent for the whole video and the rest of the opinions levied on here. I'd have that much attachment too if both of those things happened. Casual players have nothing left to chase for or have anyway to have fun in OW or to progress. Now of course, this dev team for OW2 has put in the elbow grease and trying new things like the 6v6 experiment and stuff. However, this cannot undo the damage that Overwatch, as an IP, has done to itself. Flats talks a lot about stuff wanting to be actionable. From a competitive stand point, yea there are many things gameplay wise that can be actionable. However, things like Lore, Cinematics, and the other things have really no relative actionable qualities. I mean he even said it himself that cinematics now a days are not as good as they were back then. At that point, what can you do? The scope being defined here that she mentions is that Overwatch used to be this Hero Shooter that had defining lore for each character for you (the player) to attach to and play for a long time. It has now turned into a game that is FINALLY finding its stride as of writing this, but it is still lost in which way to go. The counter points levied here by Flats is something Riot already does with Valorant. I felt like the Apex Legends example in the video is sort of middling. Killjoy and Raze being a confirmed couple, Clove being non-biinary, among the other agents having something that is being latched onto. There is no sense of community anymore in Overwatch. I went to Anime Weekend Atlanta this year, and you want to know (in terms of shooters) that I saw? Valorant agents. I saw a lot of KJs, Yorus, I even met a Fade and a Sage while I was there too. No Overwatch in site. While yes, Gameplay is different, the core audiences overlap extensively. You have an agent you want to latch on, while yea you can't switch mid match, you have power to carry a game. Also, you can play casually and have fun in Swiftplay or the other game modes where people chill, then you have Unrated and Comp for the sweaty players. That is a well balance between casual and competitive, and even now with 9.11, Neon got kneecapped after dominating for so long in ALL levels. Not just high level play, in ALL levels. The casuals are happy, because now they do not have to deal with a speed demon menace that farm ult and kill everyone with it while running around, and high level players are happy now that slide isn't such an oppressive tool to where you get full accuracy any more while sliding across to kill your enemy. Its doable. Just Blizzard does not choose to enact on it in any way, and, in turn, it caused OW to be the laughing stock of gaming. The whole content creator segment, while a bit overkill, it has its merit of truth. If the game dies, if you are not established in anyway outside of Overwatch, you are extremely cooked. Plain and simple. But seriously though, the severe downplay towards this video was insane, and it was clear Flats only watched this, because he wanted to keep drop farming from the beginning of the video. Actually insane.

[@flario12]

the point shes making at 57:11 is that it feels a lot more punishing to go on "side quests" in overwatch 2. in ow1 you could go as like 2 people (dva/tracer/lucio/etc) off on a much bigger flank and either harass their backline or meet another set of like 2 people and have a separate fight 'over there' while the main fight around the objective still happened. now if you do this, especially with your tank, there isnt enough presence around the objective so you basically give it up and lose the fight. it was fun going on a little adventure with your dva and it being a decent play but now if youre using your tank for that you need to full commit to that play because the one tank is so valuable. the point flats makes of ow2 being more open and flanky is true but the problem is if you take that angle its way easier to get that space (a lot of the time free) and once you have it its way harder to use it to get a kill since the supports needed to be buffed sm to be able to defend themselves because that space is so much easier to take now. for a lot of people it was more enjoyable to have to fight for the space and once you earn it the backline was a lot easier to take those duels with

[@PaulStargasm]

23:00 wow how out of touch is Flats to think that the people on the hard grind are the ones spending all the money on skins.

[@mr.shreddergaming1940]

I personally never watched Overwatch league because i just find the competitive scene in games incredibly boring.

[@-cactus.raven-]

Owl was the only one I really ever followed, and even then that was very loosely. I agree tho that it is just pretty boring a majority of the time

[@shannonwaipouri1730]

Was awesome to see shanghai dragons go from losers to the best lol that journey was a ride and a half

[@niconicowryyy9679]

20:49 I think this whole talk is just completely wrong. "Oh it doesn't matter at lower levels of play so just balance around the peak" is both wrong and leads to a lot of gameplay issues for lower levels of play. An example I always thing about for this is in League of Legends, the champion Yorick some years ago was, when looking at high levels of play, very weak, like 47% winrate, and in the patch notes he was getting nerfed. This made no sense to a lot of hyper competitive players because at the highest levels he was weak, so why nerf him? Well because at the time he was sitting at like 55-56% winrate in low elos. Buffing him to just 50% winrate in high elos would have put him at utterly absurd winrates in low elos, and this is the majority of the playerbases experience. To repeat something a Riot dev said when asked about this sort of thing and one thing he said while explaining the issues with just balancing around the top was that "low rank players deserve to have fun too."

[@tmathis9882]

This makes more sense to when you think about how casuals usual want to play the hero they fell in love with. In comparison high level players will often play whatever is meta so if you balance around the bottom a majority of the player base gets to have fun playing the heroes they fell in love with and the higher level will just ignore those heroes just the same they would when one little tweak bumps them out of meta.

[@damsone4751]

Flats is far too into competitiveness that he can’t even see the little things that make the game great. Like for him to say, “Why didn’t she watch any OWL”. I was a competitive player and tried to get into GM but only made it into Masters. In my OW phase, I have never even watched a single game of OWL unless it was clips I saw throughout the Internet. Hell, I think a lot of comp players don’t even watch OWL, so I would suspect a casual player to care even less

[@Lunar_Valkyrie]

Flats doesn't realize why OWL died apparently. Not many people want to watch constant mirror-matches. It's bad enough playing them, but then you'd at least be playing it. Watching it is torture.

[@hamchurger4566]

No but she said she was super into overwatch for years. Its strange she didnt watch OWL. she created art, RP servers, watched yt clips. She consumed every piece of overwatch media except OWL

[@Abyss-Watcher]

OWL was literal mirror matches where the teams went Goats and that got really boring and even now if i ever decided to watch any team stream im sure i would see constant counterswaps its not gripping enough to even bother watching. League of Legends is entertaining because well there is over a 150 champs so every game can vary, and players can go whatever they want in terms of build and strategy. People wanna see strange and weird stuff. In a team game like ow you have the issue that popping off is cool but doesn't do much outside move a point or capture a point. You make insane plays in LoL you can get level, gold, and objective advantages.

[@quintonbrady3238]

In 51:00 I believe they mean being both healed, hacked, and stunned together, the effects blend OVER each other, making it hard to tell what is HAPPENEING to them, rather then being able to physically see

[@magb8632]

Then it's just a problem of her not being able to describe what she means

[@BiscuitSniffrr]

@@magb8632 She described it good for people who have been out of the loop on the game and haven't played it as it's confusing to newer players but if you play the game constantly for hours then it's going to look normal to you.

[@magb8632]

@@BiscuitSniffrr that's what i mean i think this is supposed to reach both the competitive people and casuals but like you i dont think it reaches the competitive people used to this visual overstimulation

[@nihili4196]

52:04 doesn't that agree with her tho? If visual clutter is the same, but there are two less players, doesn't it mean that the clutter got worse?

[@greatgypsyking104]

I understand that alot of it is not the same as your perspective, but as a casual she is totally right because the majority of people that play the games are casuals

[@jonathanpotempa7489]

21:00 I agree, i couldn't tell the difference between most minute patch changes, but i believe some of the points she is making is about Blizzard spending most or all their resources catering to the highly competitive aspect of the game, the competitive community, while almost neglecting the part of the community that is more lax and just wants to play to have fun.

[@CurlyCross]

to this point. Diamond is the top 10%. That means Plat and Below is 90% and they cater to the 1%. I agree balance needs to be done at the highest level, because if it's not the highest level is broken. at the lower levels they won't capitalize on the best characters. To think the top 5% of the players spend more is crazy. Balance competitive around the high end, give content around the low.

[@Darknessfall4ever]

hey flats ... i just wanna point out something tiny but huge .. OW1 was successful because of the casual player base .. it was never the pro esports crap .. the pro esports scene etc appeared to cannibalize on the success by billionaires and it didn't appear organic like starcraft 2 (and that is why it failed and the main reason beside more reasons ) casuals is who made Overwatch big .. (fan made content all this was free marketing for the game ,those things who brought more casuals into the game and made bigger and bigger and bigger ) it wasn't blizzard success on epic emotional videos it was a team effort (devs + players ) this is what makes games BIG.. not 250M marketing budget . or streamers . most off my friends dont even know what twitch is and they all gamers +25 years overwatch casual players is 95% of the players base ( different tiers and types of casuals ) the 5% is vocal the 95% 1% of them is vocal the rest moved on . IP growth mainly dependent on casuals .. growth doesn't come from twitch . growth come from TV ad .....etc + casual fan base fun content you may disagree but it is the hard truth and a fact . wanna add something else i work in production and i worked with studio that ATV Outsourced work for .. skin wont take a year when you have the main model who ever said it takes A year to make mystic skin is pure BS and if it is real who ever responsible for production needs to be fired .. mystic skin would max need 70 working hrs wanna add something else i disagree with you alot on i t Overwatch 2 have ZERO content BP and recycled mods from arcade isn't content .. some arcade modes have more time investment in them. they need to look at the seasonal game modes and enhance it and make it Fun they need to put effort on it Overwatch 2 make money that can produce this content even if they hired more people Overwatch 2 isn't fun experience for any type of player . you saying OW2 Is stabilizing oh boy you in for surprise ( more jobs will be cut in the next 6 months ) Overwatch 2 doesn't have a vision more than play store you ask what casuals want casual want lore,effort ,feeling that they have a voice ,seasonal events ,friendly player interaction with the game (you know the tiny box you get each level in OW1 ... Guess what that kept players engaged more than anything OW2 Added ) OW2 isn't pro shooter game with hitboxes patch and never will be i agree with her on the balancing team EGO .EGO destroyed world of warcraft and guess how they fixing it .starting to listen to the casual players like in this video ..and for 1st time in 10 years people are talking positive about wow . the only opinion matter for growth is the casual player base that doesn't talk or engage on the game content creators . the OW pro scene will never grow because the company doesn't allow it to grow organically in marketing you build on the organic interactions not the way around because you will attract the wrong audience to your product and will put you in the wrong pass .. the pass of doom i hope you read this and answer it cheers

[@mintparfait]

I think you are confusing human nature with YOUR nature. There is a certain surpisingly large number of people who do not care about competition in the slightest. A loss is literally as fun as win. It's the same reason I and many others never watched OWL. I could not care less about people playing competitively. It is boring. Its probably why they never improve too, its just not a priority.

[@funwalkthroughs1285]

This is so interesting! I’m such a competitive player and all the games I play, sometimes I don’t have fun while losing. It’s refreshing to hear this insight. Ty :)

[@denn7s]

competition is literally in human nature. you are the exception

[@Lfcme]

Flats you're kind of frustating while reacting to this. You keep rebuking their points with "what would you want them to do". They spent SO LONG talkkng about what they loved. The lore, the more competitive style, the lack of creativity in events, skin events being the majority of the effort and progression. Listen to her! Also moving on isnt so simple, there's nothing that fills the itch it scratches. Hero shooters are in a weird state. Marvel Rivals is a well crafted game but man it just isnt the same

[@anthoniebouchard2448]

...."that's a testament to it's definitely not over yet." "Now let's go jump into Marvel Rivals!"

[@ebhaenger8246]

16:30 For all the Overwatch 2 players who never had the chance to play OW1: You can’t compare today’s QP with QP from OW1. Those were two veeery different experiences. The joke about OW2’s QP being sweatier than comp started like a meme but has unfortunately become reality fast after Blizz's devblog . Back then, QP in OW1 was where no one took things too seriously. Sure, there were casual matches, but you’d also find lobbies where - Players would recognize each other and have some shit chat without the rist of raising eyebrows > reports > bans. Very toxic players got mass avoided. - Your entire team might crouch through a big flank, only to run into the enemy team.. stare awkward at each other and ether your whole team backs up, while someone in chat writes "beep, beep, beep..." Or they’d crouch along with you with no destination. - If two players started flaming each other, the rest of the lobby might turn it into a fight club watch their 1v1 or ignoring them entirely while minding there own business. - or if a cheater got exposed, wich happened very rarely, both teams would gang up 11v1. - if both of you (enemy and you) don't hit shit while on a flank, there is that moment you staring at each other awkwardly, and silently agreed that this moment never happened. Not always of course, but such things happened in one week more often, then now in OW2 in 2 years. OW1 QP players, for the most part, understood what it meant to just have fun and enjoy the game without needing to sweat every second of their existence.

[@Wannabe-Philosopher]

After playing rivals, my desire to even look at overwatch has dwindled significantly. the only reason I'm even watching this is because flats is awesome.

[@epzo]

Overwatch is better tho most heroes has more abilities in overwatch which makes it more fun most rivals heroes has like 2 abilities. Makes it very unfun

[@theuigauss]

Same I love this game but holy fuck playing marvel rivals for the first day made me realize how miserable I felt playing ow compared to rivals

[@theuigauss]

@@epzo more abilities doesn't mean better

[@__-fi6xg]

same

[@Hoodini2253]

@@epzogames been out a single week. keep coping

[@samuelham4520]

This is the most out of tocuh Flats video I think I've ever seen. I get it, he's a comp player and she's super casual, but damn the entire vid kinda flew over his head

[@googleoperationcyclone]

The existence of pvp in a video game does not make it inherently competitive I think they're point is focused on the Ranked game mode being favored instead of the pve game mode they "had to kill ow1" to make but abandoned anyway, and their abandonment of story and lore in favor of a more "zoomer fps" game It's not a matter of IF we'll get a Nicki Minaj skin, it's WHEN OW had a soul, an individual world and lore, but is being abandoned in favor of m o n e y

[@sagastar4108]

Flats is invested and informed in a completely different aspect of overwatch to this video’s whole point and that’s okay but still not grasping her main point that causal gamers aren’t playing this game anymore because there’s nothing to entice them in and make them stay is honestly funny. It’s obvious that he was never in the casual scene, and because of that he’ll never fully grasp just how bad we’ve been let down. Skill issue unfortunately.

[@coldrage20t8]

Making sure everything is hyper balanced for e sports and high skill gamers is what KILL games. I know pros and high skill people hate to hear it but it's a fact.

[@ikhalid1418]

overwatch's killed both its casual and competitive player-bases. the casual player-base wants story, pve, arcade modes, characters talking with each other, social interactivity, etc. while the competitive player-base wants well designed characters and abilities, quick MEANINGFUL balance patches, ranking system that doesn't turn your hair gray before you hit your 30's, game objectives and maps that aren't designed to suck the fun and excitement out of your body. it'd be interesting to see if MR pays attention to that, or they'll just be a wackier rerun of OW, but in 3rd person.

[@milamber319]

1:16:15 I dont think she moved on I think the game moved her on. This whole rant has been about how OW has become more and more and more focused on competitive aspects and leaving the casual players behind at every turn. You might say it had to happen. You can have that opinion. But don't misunderstand the message. She stopped playing, not because she was ready to move onto another game but because the game moved on to focus on a different player base. They slowly killed off the aspects that she enjoyed. Open queue. 6v6. The story. Rewards just for playing. They slowly added things that made the game feel bad. A focus soley on the shop. Role queue. 5v5. You can make excuses for WHY that happened. But dont tell her she is the reason... She is not the reason.

[@chrism8793]

Every time Flats reacts to one of these, i feel he gets agressive towards the takes in the video. He is extremely biased and because he doesnt understad the other perspective, he just calls it stupid

[@demifolk8940]

22:00 nope, you’re just wrong here. the masters+ players are maybe spending more money individually but players like her are the ones making up a majority of the revenue for the game. they play the game almost as much as you guys, and spend probably just as much money. but they make up like most of the playerbase. if anything, high level players would less likely to spend money because they only care about the competitive integrity of the game so they dont care to get skins. not actually but i usually see them be a bit more modest, idk how many whales i met that are just a regular plat or gold player you might not like it as a higher level players but the changes they made for competitive ruined the casual player experience. role queue made playing dps miserable or impossible. ow was always created to appeal to casuals, why the hell would they make multiple characters they require little to no mechanical skill but high value if they didn’t want to appeal to casuals? it was always intended to be a game for everyone. thats why events were a regular thing, why arcade was a thing. why the workshop was created. why cinematics were made. mobas dont release “fun” gamemodes at the rate overwatch did my gf loves that stuff, shes thinks its amazing. shes similar to this gal in how she played. we used to play arcade a ton, now we never touch it in ow 2 because tanks are so unbalanced for it. i wouldnt be surprised if arcade player count dropped considerably my friends play tank way less, my gf was always my tank duo. she cannot STAND playing tank because its so miserable. and competitively, the game isnt that much better from what i hear. they have done a horrible job making anyone happy. the switch to 5v5 also split the community in general. such an awful, awful decision i hate how this girl was like “dont dismiss my opinion” and flats goes ahead and puts her with the “only plays a few hours a day” crowd when someone with 1000+ hours is anything but a loyal fan. thats so many more hours than any normal person would put in a game, but shes not as loyal as you because she isnt high ranked? what the hell kinda logic is that LOL

[@AlexKeyes299]

Casual players logic won't make sense to us. It's just how it is. Different lives create different sets of living conditions and that goes with gaming. Some people dont have the time for it. It's stupid and they won't get it the way we don't get them

[@mintparfait]

Most people have empathy to help them understand other people.

[@demifolk8940]

⁠@@AlexKeyes299This is such a weird ass way to talk, a casual player is casual because they either dont take the game as seriously as you or they take other aspects of their lives seriously instead. You sure as hell can understand them, you are probably a casual in a completely separate game. Unless you don’t play other video games? Which would make you a casual gamer in that case. Whatever you don’t understand is either ego or lack of empathy. OW was always built to appeal to a casual playerbase. Not only did they let them down, they let down the competitors too. There is no difference between your loyalty and someone who never touched ranked. They could have just as much if not more love for the game than any top 500 could.

[@demifolk8940]

@@mintparfaithe lacks a weird amount of empathy for “casuals”. its so strange. he acts like they think about the game completely differently. i dont get whats hard to understand that this girl probably was more loyal if not just as loyal as him and his peers. shes not even blaming top 500 players or anything, shes saying they only balanced for them and thats true. there were a number of ways they could be keep casual play fun but flats hand waves it with “actually we’re more important” which isnt true. casuals like this give more money for a game. he seems to think loyalty has to come with high ranked, but casuals players are loyal too. no one is more important, both sides are just important. keeping casuals happy does not come at the expense of high level play; that seems to be the fundamental misunderstanding flats has here

[@nihili4196]

38:04 i know that Aaron most likely got a script to read here... But you can absolutely make fun of them for saying bs like this. I know they're not personally the reason why PvE got canned, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't ridicule that moment, just because Blizzard decided to use them as meatshields. This was a bullshit announcement filled with corpo bullshit reasoning. If anything, we should ridicule it even more. We should never let Blizzard forget that moment, just like we should keep reminding them the "do you guys not have phones" and other fuckups.

[@jaesaces]

I think in response to the part about 20 minutes in where Flats talks about balancing needing to be for the high end that it's important to look at other games and how they handle it. League of Legends for example does not always balance champions around professional or high tier players. Some champions have kits that are way more powerful in low elo than high and vice versa and since their champion pool is so large there is room for some champions to not be "pickable" for pros while they're perfectly fine or even very good at low elo. Unfortunately for Overwatch they have a relatively small hero roster and their designs in general are a bit harder to tweak in the same ways.

[@luisguess3885]

honestly if they had just kept overwatch 1 up and running a lot of people would have no leg to stand on, but they didnt, they took everyones 40 dollars and then gave no content for 3 years and then went f2p so yeah i want the old stuff back

[@Sheila_Chu]

i thought you were reacting to the short "dragons" i was like ?????? a little late for that 😭

[@duongnguyen-s1i]

better late than never :D

[@ccaesers]

despite me being a competitive player i did love the heroes and lore AND the community that came with overwatch, but its just not the same as it used to be :/

[@Spluge_McDucktv]

I still feel like PvE could have had a chance as a separate spinoff style game. Like a separate Overwatch heroes vs Omnics Helldivers/Darktide style game would have gone pretty hard.

[@jingbadatti9956]

On the flanking thing. In OW1 it FELT like you could do more because different tactics were super distinct, in OW2 you can do whatever you want but it always just feels like a deathmatch. It's kinda the same as the hero balance direction, in OW1 you had super niche heroes that were basically playing different games. Now it feels like you can play any hero (tanks excepted) without hard throwing, but everything feels samey.

[@SoulOfFenrir]

40 minutes in and so far I guess its due to just being a hardcore competitive player, but what I took from the video is that competitive good 5v5/6v6 isn't what brought many casuals into the game, the world and characters did. That is gone now basically.

[@Joe-ti7qd]

What makes you a hardcore competitive player? What gives you thst moniker? You just sweat or something?

[@Star_Nya]

It's interesting seeing the vast difference in the KZbin comments and the Twitch chat.

[@potatoelord3797]

This is my last day on overwatch as well I loved this game i have since it came out ill always remember doing chores and earning pocket money to buy the game but i have to say goodbye I cant play or watch this game anymore and many i know are doing the same I love you flats I hope your audience base stays alive when alot of us og lurkers stop watching the ow content thanks for all the years bro

[@AraArandom]

Casual here, this person made a lot of good points despite a few weird ones. I had a lot of similar experiences. Experimenting was a huge part of the game for me as well, especially when I had my five squadmates on with me and we'd just try to find the most ridiculous team comps to play with in quick play. We'd lose a lot, but we didn't care. We were having fun with the game we paid for, hanging out on discord and stuff. You know, doing what friends do. Then the game started pushing out changes that made it harder to enjoy these little moments and it was never the same. Gone were the days of our Six-Rein trains charging down mid or Triple Pharmercy and now we had to play 2-2-2. I accepted this change with open arms, because unless I was playing with friends, queueing up and being forced onto a role I didn't want to play felt miserable. Some of my squadmates didn't, and dropped the game , and that was that. No more "let's just fuck around in QP", it was now "let's play watered down competitive". The game just started to feel way too hypercompetitive. You'd find Sweats in QP, sweats in Arcade, hell you'd even find sweats in CUSTOM GAMES. Shit would make me genuinely crash out. I kept playing because sunk cost or whatever, but then OW2 dropped. Like the creator of the vid, I happily purchased stuff because I thought it'd help fund the game's future. It didn't, we got lied to, everybody knows what happened. Not blaming Aaron or the other devs for all of this, they were victims of The Shareholdening (tm), like us. dropped it october 2023 when it was showing that they had made budget cuts for everything other than shop skins. Also they fired the people who made the unique stuff in the game. Reinstalled it when Venture dropped because they looked like a legitimately fun character to play (and they are!), played one game of QP as them, got called the n-word because we lost and immediately uninstalled the game again. Sometimes, letting go is needed. I don't play the game anymore, I still care about it, but I'm never playing that shit ever again. btw ow1 had lobby screens to advertise events and OWL aswell as the random hero lobby screens, shows we could have both, they just decided to not do it for ow2.

[@CurlyCross]

Flats' take on this video reminds me of the Steve Buscemi, "Hello fellow kids" meme.

[@TheNatos]

15:53 this is when my group stopped really playing OW too. all they did was make the game less fun for casuals, the vast majority of the playerbase, to appease the 1%. which frankly is something blizz does with all their games

[@gd3500]

Only flats could turn a 46 minute video into an hour and 46 minute video 😂

[@spiraltriggerex]

I feel for the video content creator. OW was not just a competitive hero shooter, but had its selling point be the characters and their interactions. The world pulled people out in. Over the years that character side is almost completely gone, so if the game doesn’t keep you in then the issues become way more noticeable. OW isn’t dead, but it’s definitely not in a good place overall. It may be in a good place compared to itself, but not in gaming overall. I think some of the chat don’t understand how some people are attached to the game where walking away isn’t easy. The thing they loved and built connections was there, but it was slowly eroded over years. The content creator met her spouse on OW, so I get why she stuck around even though it would’ve been better for her to cut ties at the latest when PVE was canceled.

[@georgioszampoukis1966]

This is exactly why Rivals was a success, because it is fun. What happened was that a small portion of OW players became so good at the game that they dominated the rest 90% of the playerbase.People dont understand that at the moment, Plat 1 means that you are in the top 10% of players... Plat 1!!! It also means that OW uses half of the ranks (4) to distribute less than 10% of the playerbase.I get that you need to balance the game around the top level, but the current rank distribution is just madness. The Champion rank fixed the experience for 1% of players and destroyed it for the rest of them.

[@Xiatter]

Life would be worse if either Overwatch or Marvel Rivals didn't exist.

[@johnsmith-ol9qj]

At 21:16, unfortunately, that argument is a Bad Reason Fallacy, The reason A given for argument B is bad, therefore conclusion B is not valid. The games road map hadn't gone anywhere and there was a very well observed majority that wanted the game to actually go away from being more competitive. Many of those post are still on reddit, twitter, tumblr, etc. The true reason OW went competitive was the execs decided that E-Sports was the golden goose that would make them more money. In fact your career stemmed of them making that decision as you are an "OW competitive Influencer". Outside of your very loud vocal minority there were large groups that wanted PVE, (cough, cough what OW2 was supposed to be and why majority of the playerbase bashed OW2), more people wanted more story and for the world to be fleshed out. That over focus on competition and flawless gameplay is actually what killed the game because instead of working on other aspects of OW, they stuck to OWL, which in conjunction with the PR nightmare tanked their game.

[@OPBRMethod]

erm im silver and thats a fallacy 🤓

[@johnsmith-ol9qj]

@@OPBRMethod That's kinda the point, Majority of the playerbase is not in the top ranks nor does your skill at playing the game correlate to your skill at game design or game feel. In fact because to get to that level you have to play Meta nearly every game and keep to key playstyles it concentrates your view of the game considerably. Your argument or point rather just shows how bad that mentality is for the health of the game and for brining new players in which is how they make money.

[@Tron3108]

3:40 I barely watched Overwatch League because if I'm gonna be watching Overwatch, I might as well be playing Overwatch

[@e.and.f]

It's genuinely just not a fun game to watch.

[@teksnotdead902]

I might start watching next season. Whens it start up again?

[@nailinthefashion]

​@e.and.f it used to be, but then mirror goat comp got stale very quickly, and then the sequel never felt as competitive ever again so I stopped entirely.

[@ianemory5800]

Yeah i don't see me going back to OW without the game making major changes

[@grimmparagon427]

I imagine in a few months, maybe half a year to a year when people actually get good at rivals, it'll be much easier to see it's flaws and how it truly differs.

[@ianemory5800]

@grimmparagon427 maybe, but I don't see the fact that the Rivals feeling more fun to play changing. Especially with good awful Tank feels to play in OW.

[@grimmparagon427]

@ianemory5800 Tank only really feels bad to play when you have it in your mind that you're only losing because their tank is unbalanced or not fun or fair to play vs. Other than that I have fun playing tank plenty, it was my favorite role when I was getting back into the game.

[@ianemory5800]

@@grimmparagon427 Strong disagree. Tank feels worse in OW2 than any PVP game I've played. Including OW1.

[@aeonamadi]

1:18:00 I don't feel like this was a bad reddit take. In fact, I think they were voicing the premise of their video but in a targeted, if somewhat mean-spirited way (that lost the message it was trying to deliver without further expansion). I myself got into Overwatch 1 because of the memes, the lore, and that casual atmosphere, but as the game progressed into the more competitive stakes of Overwatch 2 all of that is largely just... Dead and gone. If you look up Overwatch at this exact moment, the greater majority of the content IS competitive content creators who are high-tier and talking about that competitive atmosphere. Flats himself largely thrives on bronze roasts, patch update takes, and hero reveals. All of that is meaningless to a casual player who otherwise just... Wants to play the game for largely different reasons. But the fact of the matter is that the content that appeals to those types of players doesn't exist anymore. I mean they posted a blog about the Vanadium thing as a precursor to Hazard and the reaction was "Holy hell we actually lore drops now?" So from the perspective of a casual player in an unending content drought - yes, that is the take you would have: That the current content streamers are presenting collab skins from a dying company for a shell of a game that pushes for people's wallets. You can say that it's a bad reddit take, but what's the counter argument? What ELSE is there for content creators to really use as their subject matter? When you boil Overwatch down to its base components as it is today, that casual content is non-existent in any form other than skins. That isn't the fault of content creators or competitive players - but it is a circumstance of the game's change in direction. Edit: 1:26:00 Flats talks about this more and I'm glad he got the message in the end. I was just genuinely worried that the perspective and anger from the video's creator had overshadowed the point.

[@ljb5163]

It’s still crazy to me how we haven’t gotten a proper cinematic since Kiriko.

[@ryanr3804]

For me, if I play OW, it’s to play Reinhardt and that’s it lol. Every other experience is better on rivals imo, but the voice acting and the pure rush of Reinhardt is the only reason I haven’t uninstalled Overwatch

[@michaelle4031]

Nah if ow goes back to 6v6 the tank experience would be 10x better in ow compared to rivals. Might be a hot take but given time people will start to see overwatch tank design is so much better than marvels. But if your a dps player I do feel like rivals would be more fun.

[@Cheebzsta]

@@michaelle4031 I'm a old school OW1 player who'd happily cover MT but also played a lot of OT as well, just loved tanks, and the experience is still (largely) there in open queue. But it hinges on me duo-ing with my partner most of the time. The number of times I see someone pop on Rein, I'll swap to Zarya and they'll take that as a cue to swap *off* of Rein instead of going all-in on him is heart-breaking to me. That combo, along with smart usage of speed boost, is a cornerstone of peak Rein gameplay and disappointingly few people recognize it. While the overall gameplay of Overwatch is lightyears better the loss of tank-synergy thinking leaves me a bit suspicious about how the 6v6 experience will work. Cuz I suspect it'll be a lot of Doomfist/Hogs/Orisa/JQ rather than Zarya/Dva living their best off-tank lives carrying their teams to victory or even wacky JQ/Ram rush comps. :(

[@-cactus.raven-]

@@michaelle4031 Their bit different games with different game feel, I get why people do the comparison but let it just exist for a bit.

[@rachetmarvel931]

Rivals tanks are ass. Also rivals is poorly optimized on PC.

[@michaelle4031]

@@-cactus.raven- they are different. But even without comparing the tank exchange is not good in rivals

[@SekundesCCFFVII]

I remember PVE when they didn't promote the Sojourn cinematic but gave a big marketing push for fucking John Cena

[@awqha]

1:19:52 I think there are some games that (although might not be competitive SHOOTERS) even though they get very old, still are just as casual as they once were. Example being GTA Online. From the beginning, to now, ever public lobby will have a couple people sweating killing everyone, then a couple people midlevel minding their business, and a couple of NEW players, messing around being silly. New players coming in 11 years after release and the map being big open sandbox allows all levels of players to do their own thing, the game isnt ruined by the competitive players.

[@mantleg.9858]

This may not be the case exactly for overwatch, but in other competitive games that I've played, balancing a character for the highest level can raise the skill floor needed to be effective. This in turn makes it much more difficult for lower rated players to find success and have fun with a character. This is completely based upon personal experiences and I have no idea exactly how frequently changes affect the skill floor ect. This is just showing a way that balancing affects lower rated players in a way noticable for them.

[@zplatfr6428]

I mean, who’s to blame for the state of this game? After seeing the community in flames because of hyper tanks, seeing a new game with much more fun gameplay, seeing people flame the balance patches, they decide that what would save the game is going back to 6v6 and giving Orisa a buff, making the hypertank problem even bigger. They removed the privileges of having bought the game (free loot boxes), we stayed They put out terrible patches to the balance and cosmetic, we stayed They started having aggressive monetization of those ugly skins, we stayed They cancelled the PVE, some of us stayed They continued caring more about our wallet than the game, we stayed but now marvel just releases a game that despite not being perfect, it doesn’t have 90% of the flaws overwatch has. I should’ve left this game back when the cowboy was renamed to Cassidy. Of course a developper that has such horrid office conditions could not make something that lasted. I’d want to blame only the investors for leeching off the game, but they’re not the ones putting out the content

[@Duane-p1d]

Bro yap lol

[@AlexKeyes299]

its fr like leaving my ex, best thing i ever did and i wish i did it sooner lmfao, you just have to be shown what youre missing/whose NOT ABSUING YOU lmfao

[@xblindx]

You all raged against lootboxes and insisted world governments intervene to ban them outright, and now want them back. I fcking hate gamers

[@damousx6860]

Fault of Content Creators, Devs and The very committed players

[@Duane-p1d]

@damousx6860 it really isn't , ow fans are not happy about anything, they complain about eveyy, nothing is good enough lmaoooo

[@Zwow007]

The craziest thing to me rn as I'm playing marvel rivals is that I see a lot more people play strategist and in a lot of the quickplay and comp games i've played people lock in strategist first over dps. Unlike overwatch where you had to bend someones arm just for them to even play support.

[@heartcoma]

That's crazy because its the exact opposite in ranked and there's hundreds of posts talking about it lmao

[@hamchurger4566]

Want to say uhhh not really atm but its only halfway through week 2 of the game. But i do think there is alot more people that want to play stratergist mainly cause they do damage

[@Zwow007]

@@hamchurger4566 probably it's also the fact that most strategists can heal people by shooting them rather than just spam abilities

[@hamchurger4566]

@@Zwow007 there is also that. However i do think the damage is a bigger factor because the dps fans dont mind going stratergist in games now

[@neuffexx]

I do certainly feel that overwatch needs to come back around and do more "story" related stuff, like cinematics in-game comics or something to build out the world. Im generally competitive when it comes to games like this, but even I got into it because I liked the characters their interactions with each other and their history they shared. Thats why I was happy that, even though silent, they added more character voice lines when playing them together in game. Most people wont notice this, I tihnk even Flats himself didnt and was told so by chat some time ago, but it does add something to the game that not a lot of shooters do from what I know.

[@neuffexx]

And I do agree that this game has primarily become a competitive sweat fest, I remember the Arcade and Workshop modes having a (at least to my limited recollection) SIGNIFICANTLY bigger player base in OW1. Hell when was the last time that you werent in que for less than 10min because you didnt want to play the same 4 arcade modes that see most of the player numbers in that category, or had an update for the Workshop that actually improved it and added more features/functionality so that people who wanted to make funny silly things didnt have to throw 300+ workarounds at the wall in hopes that it somehow does the thing they wanted when it is a simple thing and should be available. Ability resources being one of the things they did actually ADD to the workshop, but has never worked as far as I know, so no I cannot create a wreaking ball that spins infinetly, I cant make a wrecking ball that grapples players or a hog that hooks someone permanently to himself (using the actual hook functionality, again workarounds exist).

[@DaybreakKingTrue]

I love how about halfway through the chat and flats seem to forget that this is a casual view and that they are playing at such a low level and the gameplay is so different. Like it gets pointed out earlier that goats was bad at low level but doesn't apply it to overwatch 2. Edit: Also no one has an answer because they took everything and squished over years into the tiny box it is now. It would take so long to unwind the years of mistakes that made OW2 into the shambling husk it is.

[@MrCalalf]

I agree with her that balancing for the highest skilled players was a mistake. For me, as a casual OW player, I stopped playing simply because I’m just not excited about new seasons, events, and updates anymore The game has always been fun but by season 12 it just became uninteresting.

[@Joe-ti7qd]

You played for 12 seasons...wow.

[@MrCalalf]

@@Joe-ti7qd Technically 11 season since i stopped playing at season 12, and I enjoyed every season, it’s just gotten unexciting to me

[@nihili4196]

39:13 oh bullshit. PvE requires less balance, so balancing that would have been an afterthought. But also let's not act like Blizzard is releasing three dozens new heroes every year. We get like, three of them. But i guess that would have been too much for our beloved small indie company

[@TheBuildMiner210]

at around 16:50 I am pretty sure they werent solo queing most of the time considering what they talked about earlier on, they played the game with people from the communities they joined so people not swapping probably wasnt much of an issue as you could actually communicate. I personally am also a somewhat casual player, started quite a bit earlier than they did and was primarily solo queing by the time role queue came around and that is the one change that made the game playable for me

[@starcrossedsaint]

1:10:00 My problem is how obnoxious they are now. The recent Soldier and Mei skin backgrounds had really obnoxious and loud sound effects. I don't know a way to shut them up but I would genuinely just turn my headset all the way down outside games to avoid hearing the annoying sound effects. Maybe I'm just autistic but

[@sithlorddoge5882]

I loved overwatch and role queue killed my fun. People think casuals don’t feel any of these changes but it’s just wrong. I was a dva main too and I lost my rein duo when 5vs5 started. After all my friends quit mauga came out and it was the last straw for me. I haven’t played since.

[@CaptainExpansion]

The whole backgroud argument really comes off as, "oh, youd rather see your charachter with the skin youre rocking over a blatant advertisement for the current season/sellout crossover? Damn, thats objectively wrong"

[@DreadedGhoul575]

11:52 Eh, I'd still play Archives if it was available, since Uprising had a countdown and defend objective and it was the hardest one on legendary.

[@yianovich]

Bogur once had a very good point. They balanced the game to the point where actions have very little consequence beneath the highest level of gameplay. PS: yeah i have very actionable ideas as to what overwatch should allocate resources for and I'm sure a major part of the community has amazing ideas as to how to make overwatch better but the problem with a profit chasing based company and game is that community feedback becomes irrelevant and no power is ever distributed to the masses

[@RlVlN]

3:32 as a casual LoL player of 5 years I’d say now I’ve only recently (like starting last year) started watching the competitive side of it specifically this year 1) LoL has been going on for much longer and when I started playing LoL I started getting recommended all the worlds songs and their cool animated videos from previous years which are absolute bangers (I love music and animation so I’m hyped every year for the next release) 2) the performances at this years Worlds I was hyped for because Riot got Linkin Park to do the worlds theme and also Ashinko performed Paint the Town Blue song from Arcane (The show about League lore that i love) which was cool too see 3) Recently Caedrel (a big LoL streamer who’s done a lot for the community) got a team together consisting of other big streamer names specifically TheBauffs who I’ve been watching his KZbin videos because they’re chill and he’s a chill guy. Caedrel set up this team and instantly got them participating in a streamer tournament and it was cool to see Bauffs performing competitively and also the fun banter between all the guys on the team. Just today they also participated in an event where they went up against one of the biggest LoL esports teams T1 (who won Worlds this year) which consists of Faker who is the literal goat of League so it was fun to watch them go up against T1 even if it was a for fun match.

[@devinthompson2957]

I agree with so much of this I maybe leaned slightly more completive to casual but definitely more casual, maybe "hardcore casual". Like any game, win or lose, i dont care that much. I know most of the time the team that wins is the one that played better, thats it. I'll gladly lose 10 games in a row if the games are still fun or good matches. I liked learning the game and playing the game as well as I could. Watched OWL and plenty of other YTs. I knew the game knowledge and could play fairly well mechanically. But I started to fall off very hard about 2018-2019. I ended up playing a lot of arcade as well because quickplay just became "lesser ranked" and as I started playing less and less it was harder and harder to jump back in and learn new characters, or even want to play period. I really just wanted to do more with these characters and so was super excited for OW2... Then it came out, was fine but not enough for me. And then havent really played much since. I feel like I had my time and I'm good. Any game has a point you stop playing. Felt like I "beat it" so to speak. A true sequel was what I was looking for. Something that felt knew, that captured the magic, excitement, and pure fun of year 1-2 OW (for me of course) Like if a proper PvE or story mode or full experience like that came out, I would be there DAY ONE!! Like seriously I would be so excited to be with the characters again. But idk if that'll happen anytime soon. Hopefully Rivals kinda forces them to get desperate and do the things to bring more "casual" fans again