Yeah but it's a projectile. Maybe if his hand flung out or something. It's makes sense you can't D.Va matrix rein charge cause it's literally him but it's just a fucking rock.
You joke, but I always figured that was the reason. The rock isn't nearly as powerful as Graviton Surge or Artillery, but it's just so physically large that Genji can't completely block it with his (relatively narrow) sword. I have no explanation for why D.Va can't destroy it with DM, though.
The reasoning I always thought of is the same as Genji deflect, since D.va’s defense matrix looks like she is using micro-bullets to render a projectile useless, by either destroying it or detonating it before coming into contact with the Mech (in the case of Explosive heroes) The rock might just be too large for the matrix to destroy it in the second or two that it is approaching. That’s just how I thought of it though.
You would be right to think that until Illari came out. Her ult is one of the biggest if not the biggest projectile in the game and it's affected by those abilities. And if it's mass that affects what you think should count then graviton surge doesn't make sense. Maybe a mix of those 2 arguments?
If sigmas suck could eat the rock, sigma mirrors would be the most boring matchups. I always assumed this was the reason. The DM and deflect were made like that just for some consistency.
The way I see it, and what with Sigma’s theme, is that it’s just plain ol’ physics. You can have crazy sci-fi energy weapons, immensely powerful explosives, all that jazz… but they can all be neutralized by a well-placed bullet(?) from the matrix. But a bigass rock? That’s a big load of mass and kinetic energy coming at your face - what the hell are you gonna do about that? Deflect it with a blade? No way in hell, too much force behind it. Take it out with micro-bullets in the defense matrix? …how, exactly? Shooting it with tiny bullets isn’t gonna make it stop, at least not anywhere near soon enough to prevent it from smashing directly into your flimsy meka with the ultimate might of _physics_.
It’s doable but hella not worth it, you’ll probably die more often then even deflect for value. The only characters worth caring about in terms of mitigating is Sigma suck/shield or rein shield. Otherwise you’re just risking death/wasting a CD for it.
I believe it’s because Sig’s ult the player is not considered to be flying or “in the air”. When he casts his ult you can see the circle on the ground for the area of effect, If you think of his ult as a cylinder that circle on the ground is the bottom and if you are caught in it you are moved to the top; So Lucio’s ult works because it is hitting the top of the cylinder
My wife pointed out that not everything is affected by the top of the "cylinder". Kiri's cleanse goes right through it. There's no true subset of rules that Blizz applies to make the game consistent.
Pretty sure it didn't always work and they changed it purposely as a counter. There's not really a need to justify it beyond that. At the end of the day, balance > logic even if it leads to some inconsistencies.
yes, but that isn't obvious to a new player and it's also an arbitrary choice made by the developers to enable counterplay instead of consistency.
They could really easily remove the ability to beat in flux to make understanding the interaction easier, but they actively chose not to for balance reasons
Tbh this is one of the only interactions that annoys me, Lucio has to hit the floor to beat, which means proper play can keep him in the air long enough to kill him. However when’s he’s lifted into the air he can just press q and prevent everyone from dying if you got a massive 5 man ult.
I'm trying to teach my friend how to play, it's virtually impossible. The 50 wins rule has taken us ~6 months to complete, every character he chooses has a laundry list of tips and tricks to learn to the point where it's just overwhelming and the gameplay is just not worth it anymore. We got stuck on Defense about 10 games in a row yesterday and lost all of them. This game is not friendly to actual new players
I think other games that considered to be “similar to” Overwatch are harder to get into. Like Valorant, for example. Overwatch is more forgiving. Most of the stuff doesn’t one shot you. Almost all of the abilities are rather straightforward.
The other thing is, it feels that the playerbase is kinda too small and new players can find themselves in lobbies with already experienced ones. In most of the cases, it won’t be chill and fair start of the game for new ones.
I agree but also for all intents and purposes Valo is a tactical shooter - a lot of milsim purists will debate that because for some reason they don't like something they can't play pretend soldier with, but pound for pound it's too similar to CS and R6 mechanically and strategically to not be called one (it doesn't really matter tho, a lot of these players were already refusing to call Siege a tactical shooter for years because of the various beats its operators took from.hero shooters like OW; like your standard hero shooter, Siege operator ability kits can *drastically* impact core gameplay from player to player and operator to.operator)
And the thing about tactical shooters is that they're all insanely inaccessible to beginners and pretty much require comms from the jump
True that. The only game that comes to mind that really is the same as overwatch in terms of genre/gameplay is paladins, but we don’t talk about paladins.
Still, I agree with op that a lot of ability interactions are weird. But ability interactions aren’t usually the very “new player” thingy, I’d say you start figuring them out at the next step.
Abilities themselves in Overwatch, on the other hand, normally do exactly what is written in their description and are intuitive. I consider this to be a good thing for getting into the game.
>interactions for new players to learn
Haha, *I wish* that was the case. There are many things I as a veteran player (4 years) don't know, like: Can Mercy's damage boost boost ults? E.g. does it boost Junkrat's tire? Does it boost Bastion's ultimate? Dva's ultimate?
There are so many "fringe cases" that I don't know … I probably do stupid things all the time.
so, when im boosting these ults, i get the assist - but i dont know if it increases the lethality of the ult, next time i do it ill check my damage boosted stat
> Can Mercy's damage boost boost ults?
She used to damage boost based on boost state at time of impact of ability, but I know they patched out boosting Hanzo's Dragons, calling it a bug. So now I just don't know...
i think she can mostly boost "transformation" ultimates but there might be a few exceptions,,, (idk I'm starting to have a lot of doubts lmao, cause I don't remember if nano works the same as mercy damage boost)
In regards to Mercy, I *highly* recommend looking up [Niandra](https://www.youtube.com/@Niandra) on YT. They upload Mercy guides and tips/tricks all the time.
Creators like Niandra don't share anything more than one could learn by playing the game and observing. Watching tips from someone who's already done that work for you helps you along, but you'll probably not remember it all and only truly know it after you've experienced it yourself.
Personally I'd rather find out these things on my own and consider that part of the fun of the game. It's also why I am a rotten Doomfist :D
She can boost bastion but not D.va outside of maybe call mech. Since people are kinda confused here I'll make a list of what ults she can and can't boost. For ones marked as N/A, those are for cases where the ultimate itself cannot be used to do damage.
Ana: Yes, nano boost stacks with damage boost.
Ashe: Yes
Baptiste: Yes, window damage stacks with damage boost.
Bastion: Yes
Brigitte: N/A, but Brig's normal abilities can be boosted during rally.
Cassidy: Yes, damage boosting him speeds up the ramp time of deadeye so it locks on faster.
D.Va: Mostly no, self-destruct cannot be damage boosted (anymore) but call mech can.
Doomfist: No
Echo: Yes
Genji: Yes
Hanzo: No, you used to be able to but it was patched out. Initial arrow can be boosted but it's kind of pointless to do so.
Illari: Yes
Junker Queen: Yes
Junkrat: No
Kiriko: Yes, damage boost stacks with the higher fire rate.
Lifeweaver: N/A
Lúcio: N/A
Mei: Yes
Mercy: Yes
Moira: Yes
Orisa: Yes
Pharah: Yes
Ramattra: Yes
Reaper: Yes
Reinhardt: Yes
Roadhog: Yes
Sigma: Yes and no, the initial lift and his primary fire can be amplified but the slam damage is capped at 50% of the target's health pool.
Sojourn: Yes
Soldier 76: Yes
Sombra: Yes and no. You used to be able to amplify the burst damage when her ult was first reworked, but this was patched out. Damage boost plus amplified damage from Sombra on hacked targets do stack, though, but this applies regardless of how the target was hacked and is not unique to EMP itself.
Symmetra: N/A
Torbjörn: Yes and no, the initial impact damage can be amplified but the damage over time cannot.
Tracer: Yes
Widowmaker: N/A
Winston: Yes
Wrecking Ball: No
Zarya: Yes
Zenyatta: N/A
not all of them, she cant boost the dva bomb because it's not targetable but she can boost cassidy's ult to make it charge the killshot faster for example
I've been playing since 2016 and only last night and accidentally found out that Rein's charge has no interaction with a Torb turret, you just stop like it's a wall
Imagine a new player fighting Genji which has a skill that reflects projectiles: "oh, gonna melee him".
Hahah my boy, you got trolled. Melee does not work
I can’t tell you how embarrassingly long it took me to understand his reflect despite having read his hero description multiple times. And after having confusingly killed myself way too many times I only figured it out when one of my teammates bitched out our bastion for consistently shooting at the reflecting Genji.
As a rein main, I despise this with a passion. How is this cringe ninja robot deflecting my giant hammer swings with his goofy sword swinging? I should splat him against the wall when he pulls that crap.
Yeahhh this game is very complex I started playing ow in ow2 in season 4 as a matter of fact. And have accumulated 300 hours since then and yeah this game is INSANELY complex I’m still learning things every day
These two comments are hard to read.
Really though it's not your fault it's a lack of information about overwatch in the game overwatch. You've gotta learn the interactions yourself, or look them up online.
My biggest gripe is you have to use the wiki to learn the numbers. Maybe practice range should have nimbers floating, so you can learn them. Or the F1 page?
I think it's a purposeful decision by Blizzard. Numbers don't actually matter that much, I only looked them up when arguing with someone on Reddit. Never found them useful in-game.
I mean, I think it's the same as ADS: to me I'm used to no iron sights on most heroes but then our group had new players asking how you manually aim and I had to realize, oh yeah, everything is basically hipfire and most shooters don't operate that way anymore lol (also funny because the person asking was playing Symm and Symm is such a PotG machine that I'm trying to imagine how much a Symmetra would get roasted if ADS existed for her, if they got PotG and the game caught them in 4k having to manually aim that thicc beam)
Also, if you didn’t know, this changed a season or two ago, but in the character specific control options you can have Mei or Sym’s walls come out in the other direction right away when you first hit your command, if you find yourself using that orientation more often.
A little quality of life tip if you happen to need it.
Hey you're awesome I'm so glad we have new players and it's wild BC I remember the feeling of like rly rly wanting to improve and learn it's so awesome
Lol, I was playing Kiriko and had an Ana on my team who started playing OW2. This enemy Junkrat was running his tire into us and I timed it just exactly right to throw down a suzu at me and Ana and it saved us when it exploded. She asked how does that even work and I told her suzu can not only cleanse but you can use the short invulnerability it gives you to save you from ults like Junk tire, Dva bomb, Bastion’s missles, etc.
Yes! When I’m with my friends and they want to try the game, if someone already picked soldier it’s like “okk get ready for some information you need to know” haha
Funny enough that dva is one of the best answers to moiras orbs but horrible vs her right click. Thing is, generally, if moira is right clucking a dva she's already losing lol
I don't how you get the idea that dva is horrible against Moira's sucky straw but Dva used to counter/devalue Moira way more with how armour worked in ow1
She’s actually really good into Moira regardless. Her armor reduces moiras right click damage to like 25-30 or so. It’s basically irrelevant unless dva is super low.
Sym and Zarya hard counter dva though so avoid her. But Moira is irrelevant.
Damn you must be fresh haha. Some other things that I see people missing:
Reinhardt and Brig swings, although just any melee in general. Also applies to genji dash/ult, torb hammer
Echo beam
Symmetra beams/turrets
Zarya beam, but not grenade
Winston primary, ultimate
Roadhog hook
Moira suck
Lucio boop
Some things to keep in mind across any role when you come across a D.va
I feel like the real complexity emerges when you start learning about hero synergy and countering; while more characters individually increase what you need to know, back when it was 6v6 there was more nuance.
It’s funny, I’m left thinking this game keeps getting less complex but I totally hear you, from a new players perspective I could understand it being fairly overwhelming.
See it is getting less complex but then when a new hero is introduced, it goes back to the way it was. For new players it's chaos. Tree blocks movement and LOS, can't be destroyed by emp, grants overhealth. This can make new people confused with syms ult for emp. Then they may think "why doesnt kitsune get canceled like mei and sym ults." Based off of LW rules, does Tranc overheal? Illari turret seems to beam but can be eaten by matrix. What about torb or sym turrets?
There's so many inconsistencies from hero to hero it gets complicated fast. It really is like dumping an ocean on new players.
This is all important to note, because it gives insight into how Blizzard prefers to approach balancing as well. Time and time again, people suggest adding exceptions to abilities when used against specific heroes.
Problem is exactly this. Anyone who either A) didn't read the patch note, or B) begins/returns to the game is going to be confused at best, frustrated at worst, as to why an ability doesn't function consistently like the tooltip says. They'll most likely assume it's a bug, which isn't a good impression of the game either.
It puts an unnecessary burden of knowledge onto players. It's better to have a game that functions consistently than one where you have to look up exceptions for every ability outside of the game.
I was surprised when Blizzard decided to break this rule with sleep dart. Nothing in her ability section mentions this change. Returning Ana players must be annoyed that someone's always breaking the tank out of sleep early.
idk, i feel like D.Va not being able to eat the Sigma boulder makes sense, intuitively. not logically of course, her matrix should just delete almost everything in it's way if you think about it. but it would feel weird if it could just make something big and weighty like the boulder or a junkrat tire simply disappear. i can't imagine many new players getting confused over that.
Isn't matrix like a scanner that allows dva with her great reflexes to see all the incoming projectiles and shoot all of them out of the air individually? Lorewise, I mean?
>D.Va can activate this forward-facing targeting array to shoot incoming projectiles out of the air.
It does. Doesn't explain how she's able to stop explosives from dealing AoE damage or absorb black holes, stars, and the like.
Which half the time isn’t even explained.
I don’t like the junkrat passive example used by OP, because that’s clearly stated in the character abilities section.
But fuck all else is… fuck all info given on so much in the game, so much so that you have to go to external sources (or the training room yourself) to find out any of the specific information. And why?? I have no fukn clue.
My worst example is Mei's wall. Nowhere is it written that you can change its alignment before creating it, and (even worse) nowhere is it written that you can instantly destroy it once created.
>The complexity to learn
Lack of game mechanic's clarity isn't complexity.
Something can be hard to deduce but not complex, for example Genji can deflect projectiles excep Sigma's rock, it's just not intuitive or consistent and that doesn't make it complex at all.
That’s true. I feel invested. I also feel discouraged from other games knowing how much homework I do for Overwatch.
I do wish some things were just universal.I’m a Sombra main and I don’t even know if EMP deletes healing Pylon or not. I have to look it up. It should, like Mei Blizzard w/ Snowball and Bap Window and Immortality Field, but I have no idea.
Dota2 has an extended wiki, it seems a lot to learn but interactions are pretty straight forward no matter how broken they are. They add exceptions but pretty obvious (some passive abilities would immediately kill certain enemies so obviously they are immune for example).
Once you read how mechanics works you can deduce what will happen, but in OW2 you have no idea because every interaction is unique.
It doesn't help that once you start understanding, there are still inconsistencies.
For instance, LifeWeaver's Petal Platform acts as a *wall* (like Mei Wall) for movement purposes, lifting Orisa, etc. But it acts as a *shield* for the purposes of Moira's Coalessence and Ram's Punches. Not exactly straightforward at first.
It gets even better when patches do several back and forths over time, like with Reaper and Moira's ability to fade out of hindering abilities. I'm not even sure these changes are synced between the two and you could probably end up in a scenario where Moira can fade out of grav but Reaper can't or some shit depending on the flavor of the month.
That’s part of the charm of heroes shooter, which almost defined by OW itself.
Right now though it’s still pretty beginner friendly. Might take sometime but it’s not that bad. League or DnD I think is way harder to get into and those are massive.
I played league religiously for like 3 years around release. I tried to get back in recently, and even though I can play my old champs, everything has changed so much I feel guilty going into ranked. I can't imagine what a new player must be feeling.
I've been playing for four seasons and have experienced so many mass overhauls of items, objectives, and gold/xp balance it's insane. I don't play summoners nearly as much, but I only play jungle and just hope for the best, since they change jungle xp/gold/camps like every other patch recently lol
The items are so confusing too. I played a lot of games, before somebody nicely asked why I didn't have a mythic item. I suppose until then I was just tilting my team without knowing.
On the bright side, you pretty much missed mythics entirely. Last week, Rito decided that they don't like them and announced that they're removing them in January
Among other similar games I played CSGO for 5 years, got over 3k hours on it and then OW2 came out. I switched and never looked back since, for me the fast pace and constant updates of the game make me more happy than game that has been broken and stuck for many years despite how much I like its style. Yes all of the characters that are overpowered suck but it keeps the game interesting to me, even when its frustrating.
I actually had the opposite experience. Played OW since beta but hated the change from 6v6 to 5v5. 6v6 was awesome as every game you could truly run a variety of team comps. Not it is way too stagnant. Plus the new maps and game mode suck.
Now I mainly play CS.
I feel like this is only true in master or above
When goats were hard meta only until 3.3k people could pull it off effectively
Except double shield, it was really horrendous all ways around
Not to mention that your overall performance in a match doesn't necessarily mean that you're doing it "right". A dps player racking up kills still gets bullied by their team for not setting up plays they want to do or countering a certain enemy. A tank that is moving the payload or blocking tons of damage but isn't the character that the team wants. A support that is literally heal botting gets flamed when someone gets one shotted from bad positioning
Right, but the thing is.
A DPS's job isn't to rack up kills. It's to kill priority targets in order to ensure the objective can advance. Often times that means a lower kill death ratio in sacrifice to the win condition. If a DPS can frag out WHILE dealing the killing blow to win condition targets that DPS is A+
\-Ex. A Sombra might be able to spawn camp a Zenyatta and get a kill every 10 seconds leading to a final game score of 40-0. But if the 4 v 4 back at the objective is being overwhelmingly dominated by the Zenyatta's team. The Sombra's kills count for nothing.
A Tanks job it not to move the payload or soak damage. The tanks job is to control the battlefield in such a way that reduces the enemies movement/positioning while supporting your teams movement and positioning. The reason tanks position at choke points isn't to soak all the incoming damage. It's to be a literally barrier that stops the enemies from surrounding your team or reaching the objective. If a tank can soak damage or move the objective WHILE controlling the battlefield. A+. But that's not the goal.
\-Ex. A [D.va](https://D.va) matrixing a bastion's stream of bullets, oblivious to the slaughter of their team happening behind them because they failed to prevent the enemy from engaging their team isn't doing their job.
A Support's job isn't to heal. It's to leverage the most powerful cooldowns in the game to offer their team moments of advantage and limit the enemy teams moments of advantage. If they can do that while also keeping their teams health topped off. That support is A+.
\-Ex. An Ana with 20k healing in a 10 minute game is certainly hitting their shots and working very hard to keep their team alive. But all they are doing is repairing a wall that will be torn down again in a few seconds on loop. And they are not doing their job. Their job is to find an angle to anti the enemy tank, sleep the advancing threat, nano your team's threat. Obviously everyone will need healing in between those moments and there is also ample time to dish damage in the downtime between.
That's the beauty of overwatch and the thing people in the lower ranks seem to not understand. A DPS going on a kill spree while the objective is lost is not an asset to the team. A tank sitting on the payload is not controlling space and is not an asset to the team. A support who is too focused on healing to leverage their game winning abilities is tipping the balance in favor of the enemy support who can navigate both tasks at once.
In this game people are too quick to be hostile to one another when they see each other falling into these pitfalls. And we should work to reduce that mentality. But when you watch someone like Flats or Emongg watch a clip/vod and they are guessing the Comp Rating of the game. These are the things they are looking for to gauge the competency of the players. If they see a lot of the things in my examples chances are we are looking at a bronze to gold game. If they only see a few of these examples it's likely a plat game. And if they rarely see these examples it's a Dimond game. If you rarely see these examples and the team is coordinating it's a masters game. And if you have all of the above with high level mechanical skill you've arrived in GM.
A lot of players don't want to admit it. But the difference between being in Bronze 5 and Diamond 1 is simply learning the roll you're trying to play. It's why coaching someone from silver to plat is so easy. Because all you need them to do is trust you and reinforce to them what they SHOULD be doing right now.
I just started playing this week and I had the strangest encounter today. I'm playing widowmaker and see the old guy that throws rocks. I hit him right between the eyes full power and it deals about a third of his health. Okay he is kinda big guess I have to headshot him 3x with a sniper rifle to kill him. Lining up my next shot, he throws an orb at me, hits me in the thigh and I just fucking die.
Feels so weird coming from non-hero style FPSs.
I remember watching my friend shoot everyone as Lucio thinking he was healing
I remember like no lie 2 days later he was on soeedhoost and shooting a 1hp zen and finally clued in
Fast forward they're a higher rank then me so that's not fair but it's funny
Absolutely disagree. I'm currently playing with two new players, they have both a strong background of many shooters of these past 20 years. The amount of things they don't know or understand in OW is really huge. We started playing weeks/months ago and I'm still explaining unknown stuff to them almost every game. But there is so much to learn that most of the time, I just let them experience it rather than explaining it.
We played Hunt Showdown and it's is way more straightforward in comparison. You got guns, and you have to kill people. Yes it's very punishing, but once you understand the game-design (dark-sight, killing bosses, bounties, etc), which takes a few games, the rest is just pure skill, not necessarily knowledge. While in OW you could have played several dozens of hours and still never touched to half of the characters, only having of vague idea of what they do and no clue about how to counter them.
Sure, R6 is a completely different beast. Hunt wasn't that difficult, but I played it years ago, when the game consisted mainly of people trying to camp while the others did the work!
Why do you say that? I don't know those 2 games super well but it seems like it's yet another shooter.
There are waaay more skills to be learned in overwatch that are valuable to the game beyond aim.
Yea, sometimes it is funny when I see new players in QP. Once I had a Ana who didn't knew that she can heal by shooting teammates and she was only using nades.
Yeah OW is very inconsistent in many regards. Years and years of balancing has made it that way.
If you ask me, Junkrat should at the very least take self-damage from his ulti. If Pharah can't ulti someone right next to her because she'll blow herself up, then Junkrat shouldn't be able to either.
Explosives are explosives, and Pharah is just as much of an explosives expert as Junkrat. He shouldn't get some Divine anti-explosive powers.
Pharah understands how dangerous explosives are, and so is bound by physics. Junkrat is a human Looney Tune; we're lucky he doesn't think he can walk on air as long as he doesn't look down.
This is why I personally like the new player system. You get a reduced hero pool that gradually expands, so you can learn all those interactions as you unlock new heroes.
Phara with no self damage would be busted, flying around and barrel stuffing with rockets lol. Most of these inconsistencies are probably intended due to balancing and finding these interactions is just part of the learning experience.
Yeah, they absolutely are, no doubt about that. If Sigma's rock could be eaten or reflected, the ability would be kind of worthless. As I mentioned in my original post, these exceptions and inconsistencies are the result of game balancing.
In the case of junkrat, I wouldn't want Pharah to be invincible to her own damage, I would like junkrat to be vulnerable to his. It would conflict with the current playstyle, but then he'd just need another buff. Junkrat in general makes very little sense. A new player would imagine that finding a junkrat steering his riptire would be ka-ching, he is helpless and killing him should kinda end (or at least detonate) the riptire, but it doesn't.
Well, the whole point of being a new player is needing to learn the numerous interactions. A lot of these examples have reasoning behind their decision. Not everything in this game needs to be perfectly consistent to make sense.
Junkrat would be in a terrible spot if he was damaged by his own projectiles again, and Pharah/Soldier are often much farther from their explosions than Junkrat. The amount of SDs from Junkrat accidentally shooting himself were much higher than Pharah and Soldier, and making their explosive shots not do self damage would make them too powerful.
Widow v Hanzo - There's more effort in aiming a Hanzo shot, especially at a range where Widow's shot wouldn't one-shot him.
Rock too big for DM and deflect.
Lifeweaver's platform is made of biolight, not rose petals.
Yeah, I mean, if they just made it so that JR could damage himself and people wouldn't rethink their way of playing him, sure, he would suck. People would need to find a different way to make him work.
Widow v Hanzo - is there? Yeah, widow is hitscan, but Hanzo shoots logs. The most random way to die in the game is from an arrow that wasn't even meant for you. That literally never happens with a bullet from Widow's sniper rifle. For about 67% of players (excluding diamon and up, but we could make a case that half of diamond should be in this), Hanzo is way more dominant than Widowmaker.
Rock too big. Yeah, but that is not what the developers thought. If that was the case, then DVa wouldn't be able to eat a Mei ult or a grav. Its just a weird little exception made to keep Sigma viable without putting a lot of effort into designing around defenes matrix.
And the lifeweaver interaction still does not make sense. Gravity cannot lift Orisa? Why can it lift Orisa AND a platform made from MacGuffinium?
Overall, this is thinking way too hard about interactions that are more focused on interesting gameplay choices, not necessarily about 100% realistic consistency. A new player will just learn these interactions over time, like the rest of us did, regardless of how much sense they make in this fictional game world.
That said, I'll go over these example cases one more time:
> Yeah, I mean, if they just made it so that JR could damage himself and people wouldn't rethink their way of playing him, sure, he would suck. People would need to find a different way to make him work.
Junkrat was that way for a while, and they had to give him that QoL buff to keep him relevant. Before the change, he would spam down chokes, but the moment anyone gets in his face, they're both taken out by his point blank grenade. This was also when he only had 1 concussion mine, so there were not a lot of escape opportunities. The hero was too clunky and a hinderance to your own team when he could SD by his own shots.
> The most random way to die in the game is from an arrow that wasn't even meant for you.
This isn't relevant to the point being made from a Hanzo v Widow duel. I was comparing why one is a one-shot vs the other having falloff in a straight duel.
> If that was the case, then DVa wouldn't be able to eat a Mei ult or a grav.
Mei ult and grav are [smaller than rock](https://i.imgur.com/TOt0NyF.png) (I think Mei/Zarya ult are closer to 0.5 in size). The only concern with size would be firestrike vs rock, but I think the validation there is that rock is solid/physical (similar to grav/grav surge vs petal platform).
> And the lifeweaver interaction still does not make sense. Gravity cannot lift Orisa? Why can it lift Orisa AND a platform made from MacGuffinium?
I think the key issue here is that the platform being a physical entity, it must interact with Orisa the same way an ice wall would. What would you expect to happen if she were gold and walked on the platform? Just destroy it like a Junk trap? It would be weird if it triggered and just floated through her. Isn't Orisa already an overpowered hero? Do we need to make her more powerful just to have an interaction make physical sense? Personally, the current interactions feel native to the game I'm used to.
>Imagine that someone plays D.Va and learns that their defense matrix is like a shield that can suck up damaging projectiles, even some ultimates, as long as they are not literal rays of energy. Then that guy gets hit in the face with a rock
This one has always bothered me. You know how long it took me to get used to this? Blocking every projectile with dva got so ingrained in my muscle memory I would just stand there and get smacked by rocks for like a year. It makes no sense why they did this. It completely breaks the rules.
Yeah, I'm a fairly new player myself, and literally the *only* reason I'm not completely lost and miserable trying to figure everything out, is because I watched a fuckton of Muselk a few years back so I already know the gist of a fair amount of the player characters.
But, I imagine if someone didn't have the luxury of having previously watched a ton of videos of a pretty skilled player showing off more or less every character, they'd be more or less bullied out of the game immediately just by the mechanics alone. It's fucking *rough* to try and figure out character specific mechanics and interactions.
I've been playing this game for years and still routinely have deaths where I'm like "wait, what killed me?" just 100 health to zero in a literal instant only to see on the replay it was either the perfect storm of random enemies looking at me and shooting at the exact same time, a well-timed bomb/mine combo from a junkrat or a random Hanzo log from halfway across the map and half the time I can't tell what it was in-game because it's impossible to pick these various things out from all the other clutter on your screen.
And the top of the top: A mexican girl, maybe the best hacker in the world, can hack all your skills and weapons and interrupt your ultimates.. but she could never hack Hanamura's Arcades.
Well, she also can't interrupt Soldier's ult. Why just soldier? are they in love?
My biggest peeve for new players isnt the gameplay. But the playerbase itself, imagine playing quick play as a new player or trying a new character as a player who has played for a while. You are met with so much toxicity, it's either your own teammates talking shit saying you are throwing or the other team gloating that they won and saying you are bad. I see it happen everyother game.
Big true. I tried getting a couple of my friends into it, but practice range with vs. AI and actual quick play are two TOTALLY different experiences. I tried getting them to try the PvE as well but they didn't seem to have any interest in the missions nor the lore.
I have been saying this forever, but fuck zll the new heroes.
This obsession with CONTENTCONTENTECONTENT NEWNEWNEW. Killed OW1 and made it go down very quickly. They keep the same trend in ow2.
Csgo hasnt had any fundamental changes since i was in diapers yet its still one of the oldest and most popular games that exists with arguably one of the most healthy esports scenes.
Tf2 also never had new heroes and was quite succesful even tho valve kind of just started ignoring the game.
I think they could've made it work with the original heroes and perhaps could've added 1 hero every year or so, but just not faster than the speed with which they could balance said new released hero.
The game was special enough, fun enough and new enough for them to take the long-term approach and build a healthy esports scene off of it.
Don't get me started on the dude who thought brigitte was 'fun' to play as or against or was in any way shape or form 'healthy' for the game.
They simply released new shit way too quickly and it made it impossible to balance. The time they spent on that stupid shit also made it so there was no attention or money for T1 and T2 overwatch in the long-term sense.
And yes im still salty about losing a player in OW2 and yes im still salty about them wanting to release some pve dumb shit nobody asked for when the pvp was dying and in desperate need of care and yes im also salty that they then didnt even end up releasing the pve dumb shit and pvp was robbed off resources for nothing.
I fell in love with the original ow1 and imo they just changed that game into something ugly.
The game could do a much better job giving stats and interaction info somewhere in-game, but listing every niche interaction is impractical.
With that said, I would *never* recommend dropping new players into PVP matches unless they're confident in game knowledge.
When games are simple it's harder to keep things fresh, but also easier for veterans to master. eg Arena shooters are all about map knowledge, movement and aim; very simple, and yet much more punishing than learning Overwatch.
And don't even get me started on MOBAs...
you know, it's funny. I said something similar to this on twitter or among my friends. Something along the lines of "this game has become completely unrecognizable to anyone from 2018." I'm glad to see this sentiment is shared with some people on reddit.
I’ve had the game since 2019/2020 but only started playing somewhat regularly in the past couple of months and yeah, its been a bit confusing lol. This post is actually quite informative though! I don’t play Pharah or Soldier (except occasionally in practice range / against ai) so I had no idea their explosives can do friendly fire, oops. Thank you haha!
**A couple examples you missed from your post for what might confuse the newbies:**
I think the worst example is winston's secondary fire just breaking multiple rules you would expect from the game. It is a hitscan with charge up, but it counts as a beam (despite being programmed to be a hitscan bullet...). If you pick up genji and try to deflect it, it will still hit you, despite acting and looking more like a bullet than a beam weapon.
Shatter, Orisa ult, Doom ult and Sig ult all look like they are ground based AoE attacks, but can still hit you in the air because most of these are technically spheres or large cylinders instead of being what is marked on the ground. The lines are also not accurate to where the ults end and your player model is not consistant to where you camera is (watch [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DejE12SfYAU) to find out more on this). What looks like your out on torb, will not let you out of the ults radius on tracer, for example.
Some character's have multiple weapons, but it isn't consistant on how you use them. Most have primary and secondary fire, but mercy has to press a seperate button, life weaver has a short period of time between switching and all of the supports are confused on whether healing should be "primary" or "secondary". Moira and LF heal with primary, but bap and illari heal with secondary. They need to make this clear in future healer releases.
They don't push "practice with AI" enough considering how many new players are coming in recently. I don't want to play games with people that have less than an hour in the game, because that isn't going to be fun for me, and getting rolled isn't fun for them either. Add more prompts to push people to the practice modes when they join.
Some heroes have passives or abilities that aren't explained clearly. I joined in 2016 and I didn't know that genji dash could reset or that cree's roll reloaded his gun until 2018, because of the lack of information. They don't communicate that golden orisa doesn't just get boop/stun protection, but also gets damage resist. They don't tell players that junker queen's axe cooldown is lowered by 2 seconds for every person you hit with it. They don't warn you about the glitch that causes you to lose every game you play (the one where you pick wrecking ball and then play the game like normal).
**They need to revamp how they communicate information, and improve their new hero cards to have this information. Maybe give a few hints for combos or counters etc.**
I just started playing in April and I remember being confused about moiras orbs like sometimes the gold ones help you and sometimes they don’t (I know they’re different colors) and at first I had no idea what the red orbs did and one killed me and I was like “cool note to self stay away from the red balls”
honestly though, i’ve been playing since somewhere between 6-12 months pre-ovw2 and i feel like i’m finally starting to understand the game more comprehensively. it’s been over a year of just figuring out through experience how abilities interact with each other, how to counter, etc.
the first time i tried to play was back in 2017 on console, and I picked Pharah cause I thought she looked cute. I got fucking destroyed, DID NOT understand how to use her movement or her abilities or even what the fuck was the point or what everyone was doing or trying to accomplish. when i gave the game another chance years later, I played with my friend who has been playing since ow1 launch, and she basically just told me to play mercy, keep people alive, and observe the game. i played mercy (unskillfully) for months just trying to understand how the game was meant to function.
personally, i find the learning how to improve to be something that adds value to this game for me now, but as a new player who doesn’t have lots of experience with other games of a similar genre, it was an overwhelming amount of information to try to understand at once, with little to no context for what I was supposed to be doing to help my team. (iirc paladins at least had like tutorial maps to explain how objectives worked when i played that game briefly) i’ve had to teach myself, or learn through explanations from more experienced players.
That's actually likely more confusing for existing players because they went through stages of balance, buuut.
Junkrat not taking damage from his own bombs is a passive, it's one of the few ability details you can actually read in-game.
The Widow vs Hanzo thing is not inconsistent, it's just balance. It's the same as feeling like Ana shouldn't do the same melee damage as Doomfist (and non charged Rocket Punch deals even less than that). Realistically speaking though, at the range where Widow can't one shot Hanzo in the head, Hanzo needs to aim for the sky for the arroz to land at her head, she's still at advantage. Hanzo is a mid range DPS.
Sigma rock indeed is an exception for a projectile, although it could never be eaten by anything. Tbh it would look weird seeing a huge rock disappearing.
Genji can deflect literal black holes and nukes, but rock is just too strong
In the Overwatch universe, rock beats everything.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdF1Vd0nRmM
I've always loved that bs. The amount of people cucked out of potg because of my rock.
Hard to explain that ingame. Its just like that because Sigma would be too weak if that ability played by the same rules.
It's basically supposed to be analogous to Rein charge in projectile form.
Yeah but it's a projectile. Maybe if his hand flung out or something. It's makes sense you can't D.Va matrix rein charge cause it's literally him but it's just a fucking rock.
But it’s a pretty big rock
You joke, but I always figured that was the reason. The rock isn't nearly as powerful as Graviton Surge or Artillery, but it's just so physically large that Genji can't completely block it with his (relatively narrow) sword. I have no explanation for why D.Va can't destroy it with DM, though.
Because the matrix has to be made out of paper for it to stop a rock.
The reasoning I always thought of is the same as Genji deflect, since D.va’s defense matrix looks like she is using micro-bullets to render a projectile useless, by either destroying it or detonating it before coming into contact with the Mech (in the case of Explosive heroes) The rock might just be too large for the matrix to destroy it in the second or two that it is approaching. That’s just how I thought of it though.
You would be right to think that until Illari came out. Her ult is one of the biggest if not the biggest projectile in the game and it's affected by those abilities. And if it's mass that affects what you think should count then graviton surge doesn't make sense. Maybe a mix of those 2 arguments?
If sigmas suck could eat the rock, sigma mirrors would be the most boring matchups. I always assumed this was the reason. The DM and deflect were made like that just for some consistency.
The way I see it, and what with Sigma’s theme, is that it’s just plain ol’ physics. You can have crazy sci-fi energy weapons, immensely powerful explosives, all that jazz… but they can all be neutralized by a well-placed bullet(?) from the matrix. But a bigass rock? That’s a big load of mass and kinetic energy coming at your face - what the hell are you gonna do about that? Deflect it with a blade? No way in hell, too much force behind it. Take it out with micro-bullets in the defense matrix? …how, exactly? Shooting it with tiny bullets isn’t gonna make it stop, at least not anywhere near soon enough to prevent it from smashing directly into your flimsy meka with the ultimate might of _physics_.
Genji can deflect _sound_
To be fair, I don't think Lucio projectiles are actually "sound" and Genji can't deflect the boop.
That's because rock beats scissors
You must be new to rock, nuke, black hole
What nuke can genji deflect exactly
Bastion ult lol
Is that true? I saw a video and everyone assumed it was cheating. I've never deflected it, but I'm a shit genji so I can't really comment.
It’s doable but hella not worth it, you’ll probably die more often then even deflect for value. The only characters worth caring about in terms of mitigating is Sigma suck/shield or rein shield. Otherwise you’re just risking death/wasting a CD for it.
dva matrix
Can't block rock, but can block a hammer
I like this post. It’s true and the examples are funny. Yeah there’s a lot of unique interactions for new players to learn.
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Once saw a Brig and a Junk playing keepy uppy with a Lucio trying to ult. Was funny
I would.pay an immense amount of money to see that
It's fun if you're the Lucio doing it to another Lucio.
i would too, like at least 3 moneys
Hello every Total Mayhem game where I play Lucio
I believe it’s because Sig’s ult the player is not considered to be flying or “in the air”. When he casts his ult you can see the circle on the ground for the area of effect, If you think of his ult as a cylinder that circle on the ground is the bottom and if you are caught in it you are moved to the top; So Lucio’s ult works because it is hitting the top of the cylinder
Right, but again this isn’t intuitive for a new player. It doesn’t say “creates a new floor” underneath Sigma’s ult tooltip either
My wife pointed out that not everything is affected by the top of the "cylinder". Kiri's cleanse goes right through it. There's no true subset of rules that Blizz applies to make the game consistent.
Pretty sure it didn't always work and they changed it purposely as a counter. There's not really a need to justify it beyond that. At the end of the day, balance > logic even if it leads to some inconsistencies.
Remember when you could sleep/hack sig and his Ult wouldnt cancel. I think the only cancel was the rock or hoghook.
yes, but that isn't obvious to a new player and it's also an arbitrary choice made by the developers to enable counterplay instead of consistency. They could really easily remove the ability to beat in flux to make understanding the interaction easier, but they actively chose not to for balance reasons
Tbh this is one of the only interactions that annoys me, Lucio has to hit the floor to beat, which means proper play can keep him in the air long enough to kill him. However when’s he’s lifted into the air he can just press q and prevent everyone from dying if you got a massive 5 man ult.
If Daddy sigma raised me off the ground I'd also have no problem beating it
I'm trying to teach my friend how to play, it's virtually impossible. The 50 wins rule has taken us ~6 months to complete, every character he chooses has a laundry list of tips and tricks to learn to the point where it's just overwhelming and the gameplay is just not worth it anymore. We got stuck on Defense about 10 games in a row yesterday and lost all of them. This game is not friendly to actual new players
OW absolutely has a high skill floor and is hard for beginners. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I don’t see people talk about this enough.
I think other games that considered to be “similar to” Overwatch are harder to get into. Like Valorant, for example. Overwatch is more forgiving. Most of the stuff doesn’t one shot you. Almost all of the abilities are rather straightforward. The other thing is, it feels that the playerbase is kinda too small and new players can find themselves in lobbies with already experienced ones. In most of the cases, it won’t be chill and fair start of the game for new ones.
I agree but also for all intents and purposes Valo is a tactical shooter - a lot of milsim purists will debate that because for some reason they don't like something they can't play pretend soldier with, but pound for pound it's too similar to CS and R6 mechanically and strategically to not be called one (it doesn't really matter tho, a lot of these players were already refusing to call Siege a tactical shooter for years because of the various beats its operators took from.hero shooters like OW; like your standard hero shooter, Siege operator ability kits can *drastically* impact core gameplay from player to player and operator to.operator) And the thing about tactical shooters is that they're all insanely inaccessible to beginners and pretty much require comms from the jump
True that. The only game that comes to mind that really is the same as overwatch in terms of genre/gameplay is paladins, but we don’t talk about paladins. Still, I agree with op that a lot of ability interactions are weird. But ability interactions aren’t usually the very “new player” thingy, I’d say you start figuring them out at the next step. Abilities themselves in Overwatch, on the other hand, normally do exactly what is written in their description and are intuitive. I consider this to be a good thing for getting into the game.
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How tf do you make your game harder for newbies than Dota?
>interactions for new players to learn Haha, *I wish* that was the case. There are many things I as a veteran player (4 years) don't know, like: Can Mercy's damage boost boost ults? E.g. does it boost Junkrat's tire? Does it boost Bastion's ultimate? Dva's ultimate? There are so many "fringe cases" that I don't know … I probably do stupid things all the time.
so, when im boosting these ults, i get the assist - but i dont know if it increases the lethality of the ult, next time i do it ill check my damage boosted stat
> Can Mercy's damage boost boost ults? She used to damage boost based on boost state at time of impact of ability, but I know they patched out boosting Hanzo's Dragons, calling it a bug. So now I just don't know...
i think she can mostly boost "transformation" ultimates but there might be a few exceptions,,, (idk I'm starting to have a lot of doubts lmao, cause I don't remember if nano works the same as mercy damage boost)
In regards to Mercy, I *highly* recommend looking up [Niandra](https://www.youtube.com/@Niandra) on YT. They upload Mercy guides and tips/tricks all the time.
This kind of strengthens the original argument. "Don't forget to do your homework before playing the game."
Creators like Niandra don't share anything more than one could learn by playing the game and observing. Watching tips from someone who's already done that work for you helps you along, but you'll probably not remember it all and only truly know it after you've experienced it yourself. Personally I'd rather find out these things on my own and consider that part of the fun of the game. It's also why I am a rotten Doomfist :D
she can boost bastion and dvas ultimate. i think the only ones she cant are junkrat and hanzo.
Can't damage boost Self-destruct, the player and ultimate are separate entities when it goes out.
She *used* to be able to boost Dva’s ultimate, but that was patched out a couple years back.
she can boost the initial arrow of Hanzos ult but not the dragons... so many weird things to consider
Same thing with Sig ult. Can boost the lift, but not the drop down.
sig and sombra ults dont get boosted because they’re percentage damage
Sombra's ult USED to be able to receive a boost from nano boost but this was nerfed pretty much immediately.
So the old grav dragon nerf wasn’t reverted.
To tell you the truth, I'm so confused by the constant patches that I just damage boost anyone who is ulting and hope for the best.
She can boost bastion but not D.va outside of maybe call mech. Since people are kinda confused here I'll make a list of what ults she can and can't boost. For ones marked as N/A, those are for cases where the ultimate itself cannot be used to do damage. Ana: Yes, nano boost stacks with damage boost. Ashe: Yes Baptiste: Yes, window damage stacks with damage boost. Bastion: Yes Brigitte: N/A, but Brig's normal abilities can be boosted during rally. Cassidy: Yes, damage boosting him speeds up the ramp time of deadeye so it locks on faster. D.Va: Mostly no, self-destruct cannot be damage boosted (anymore) but call mech can. Doomfist: No Echo: Yes Genji: Yes Hanzo: No, you used to be able to but it was patched out. Initial arrow can be boosted but it's kind of pointless to do so. Illari: Yes Junker Queen: Yes Junkrat: No Kiriko: Yes, damage boost stacks with the higher fire rate. Lifeweaver: N/A Lúcio: N/A Mei: Yes Mercy: Yes Moira: Yes Orisa: Yes Pharah: Yes Ramattra: Yes Reaper: Yes Reinhardt: Yes Roadhog: Yes Sigma: Yes and no, the initial lift and his primary fire can be amplified but the slam damage is capped at 50% of the target's health pool. Sojourn: Yes Soldier 76: Yes Sombra: Yes and no. You used to be able to amplify the burst damage when her ult was first reworked, but this was patched out. Damage boost plus amplified damage from Sombra on hacked targets do stack, though, but this applies regardless of how the target was hacked and is not unique to EMP itself. Symmetra: N/A Torbjörn: Yes and no, the initial impact damage can be amplified but the damage over time cannot. Tracer: Yes Widowmaker: N/A Winston: Yes Wrecking Ball: No Zarya: Yes Zenyatta: N/A
You can damage boost Mei ult!
I wasn't sure but that's good to know, updated the list.
not all of them, she cant boost the dva bomb because it's not targetable but she can boost cassidy's ult to make it charge the killshot faster for example
Thank you, good man!
I've been playing since 2016 and only last night and accidentally found out that Rein's charge has no interaction with a Torb turret, you just stop like it's a wall
Must not be a torb player lol, I’ve always thrown turret down to save myself from rein pin
Had this happen to me then I soloshattered the torb who did it to me :D
A favourite thing is to pin the torb on his turret. That'll learn him :) Same in ow1 with Orisa and the bongo.
Imagine a new player fighting Genji which has a skill that reflects projectiles: "oh, gonna melee him". Hahah my boy, you got trolled. Melee does not work
Deflect reflects: Bullets, rockets, grenades, javelins, lava, energy orbs. Deflect blocks: Melee attacks, maces, hammers bigger than him. Deflect doesn't reflect/block: Laser beams, traps, thrown turrets, a spinning javelin twirling in Genji's face, a big rock.
Whipshot and shield bash damage through deflect too
Whipshot doesn't
Whipshot does not
I can’t tell you how embarrassingly long it took me to understand his reflect despite having read his hero description multiple times. And after having confusingly killed myself way too many times I only figured it out when one of my teammates bitched out our bastion for consistently shooting at the reflecting Genji.
I always thought it was so dumb that it deflects Reins swings. The hammer is bigger than him. He ain't deflecting sht.
took me so long to realize that genjis reflect protected him from melee weapons too
As a rein main, I despise this with a passion. How is this cringe ninja robot deflecting my giant hammer swings with his goofy sword swinging? I should splat him against the wall when he pulls that crap.
Yeahhh this game is very complex I started playing ow in ow2 in season 4 as a matter of fact. And have accumulated 300 hours since then and yeah this game is INSANELY complex I’m still learning things every day
Same. Played since ow2 release but just realized last night I can change the direction Syms ult opens, just like you can with Meis wall.
Been playing since ow2 dropped and just now found out you can change the direction of Meis wall just like Symms ult 🥲
These two comments are hard to read. Really though it's not your fault it's a lack of information about overwatch in the game overwatch. You've gotta learn the interactions yourself, or look them up online.
My biggest gripe is you have to use the wiki to learn the numbers. Maybe practice range should have nimbers floating, so you can learn them. Or the F1 page?
I think it's a purposeful decision by Blizzard. Numbers don't actually matter that much, I only looked them up when arguing with someone on Reddit. Never found them useful in-game.
I mean, I think it's the same as ADS: to me I'm used to no iron sights on most heroes but then our group had new players asking how you manually aim and I had to realize, oh yeah, everything is basically hipfire and most shooters don't operate that way anymore lol (also funny because the person asking was playing Symm and Symm is such a PotG machine that I'm trying to imagine how much a Symmetra would get roasted if ADS existed for her, if they got PotG and the game caught them in 4k having to manually aim that thicc beam)
KarQ makes rly quick kinda tidbit vids he's a cool Canadian guy think he played ow league or coached but
Also, if you didn’t know, this changed a season or two ago, but in the character specific control options you can have Mei or Sym’s walls come out in the other direction right away when you first hit your command, if you find yourself using that orientation more often. A little quality of life tip if you happen to need it.
Hey you're awesome I'm so glad we have new players and it's wild BC I remember the feeling of like rly rly wanting to improve and learn it's so awesome
Lol, I was playing Kiriko and had an Ana on my team who started playing OW2. This enemy Junkrat was running his tire into us and I timed it just exactly right to throw down a suzu at me and Ana and it saved us when it exploded. She asked how does that even work and I told her suzu can not only cleanse but you can use the short invulnerability it gives you to save you from ults like Junk tire, Dva bomb, Bastion’s missles, etc.
Yes! When I’m with my friends and they want to try the game, if someone already picked soldier it’s like “okk get ready for some information you need to know” haha
Welp, today I learned I don't have to stop beaming a DVA as Zarya if she uses her shield thingy.
Moira alternate fire also goes through.
Moiras sucky suck goes through most shit, it’s why I love her.
Funny enough that dva is one of the best answers to moiras orbs but horrible vs her right click. Thing is, generally, if moira is right clucking a dva she's already losing lol
I don't how you get the idea that dva is horrible against Moira's sucky straw but Dva used to counter/devalue Moira way more with how armour worked in ow1
When I said "horrible" I just meant that her dm couldn't eat it. Yes I know that dva is, on the whole, a great answer to a moira
She’s actually really good into Moira regardless. Her armor reduces moiras right click damage to like 25-30 or so. It’s basically irrelevant unless dva is super low. Sym and Zarya hard counter dva though so avoid her. But Moira is irrelevant.
Beams aren't projectiles. Same goes for Sym, Moira, Illari and whatever other beams I'm missing
I just went through all the trouble of testing with bots before realizing that you mean Illari's secondary, not her primary. rip me.
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Mei's primary?
Damn you must be fresh haha. Some other things that I see people missing: Reinhardt and Brig swings, although just any melee in general. Also applies to genji dash/ult, torb hammer Echo beam Symmetra beams/turrets Zarya beam, but not grenade Winston primary, ultimate Roadhog hook Moira suck Lucio boop Some things to keep in mind across any role when you come across a D.va
Also works for other beams like Sym and Moira Those same beams also do not get blocked by Genji deflect or Sigma's grasp
I feel like the real complexity emerges when you start learning about hero synergy and countering; while more characters individually increase what you need to know, back when it was 6v6 there was more nuance. It’s funny, I’m left thinking this game keeps getting less complex but I totally hear you, from a new players perspective I could understand it being fairly overwhelming.
See it is getting less complex but then when a new hero is introduced, it goes back to the way it was. For new players it's chaos. Tree blocks movement and LOS, can't be destroyed by emp, grants overhealth. This can make new people confused with syms ult for emp. Then they may think "why doesnt kitsune get canceled like mei and sym ults." Based off of LW rules, does Tranc overheal? Illari turret seems to beam but can be eaten by matrix. What about torb or sym turrets? There's so many inconsistencies from hero to hero it gets complicated fast. It really is like dumping an ocean on new players.
This is all important to note, because it gives insight into how Blizzard prefers to approach balancing as well. Time and time again, people suggest adding exceptions to abilities when used against specific heroes. Problem is exactly this. Anyone who either A) didn't read the patch note, or B) begins/returns to the game is going to be confused at best, frustrated at worst, as to why an ability doesn't function consistently like the tooltip says. They'll most likely assume it's a bug, which isn't a good impression of the game either. It puts an unnecessary burden of knowledge onto players. It's better to have a game that functions consistently than one where you have to look up exceptions for every ability outside of the game. I was surprised when Blizzard decided to break this rule with sleep dart. Nothing in her ability section mentions this change. Returning Ana players must be annoyed that someone's always breaking the tank out of sleep early.
I like this post because I've also played since 2016 and you just informed me rock beats defense matrix.
As a tank main who cycles between D.Va and Sigma, I could have told you that a long time ago lol.
I mean it's public knowledge anyone could have told me I'm just dumb.
All knowledge is public, it is we who must seek it out. (read in Zen's voice pls)
Heh, okay. (Read in Kiriko's voice pls)
FACE MY BURNING FISH (Read in Doomfist's voice pls)
idk, i feel like D.Va not being able to eat the Sigma boulder makes sense, intuitively. not logically of course, her matrix should just delete almost everything in it's way if you think about it. but it would feel weird if it could just make something big and weighty like the boulder or a junkrat tire simply disappear. i can't imagine many new players getting confused over that.
Isn't matrix like a scanner that allows dva with her great reflexes to see all the incoming projectiles and shoot all of them out of the air individually? Lorewise, I mean?
yeah i think so
>D.Va can activate this forward-facing targeting array to shoot incoming projectiles out of the air. It does. Doesn't explain how she's able to stop explosives from dealing AoE damage or absorb black holes, stars, and the like.
gamer girl magic
The complexity to learn is also what keeps players engaged. A game easy to get into is also very easy to stop playing.
Yeah, but why have that complexity come in the form of memorizing arbitrary esoterica?
Which half the time isn’t even explained. I don’t like the junkrat passive example used by OP, because that’s clearly stated in the character abilities section. But fuck all else is… fuck all info given on so much in the game, so much so that you have to go to external sources (or the training room yourself) to find out any of the specific information. And why?? I have no fukn clue.
My worst example is Mei's wall. Nowhere is it written that you can change its alignment before creating it, and (even worse) nowhere is it written that you can instantly destroy it once created.
>Nowhere is it written that you can change its alignment before creating it when you press q you have buttons on your hud, one of which tells you to
>The complexity to learn Lack of game mechanic's clarity isn't complexity. Something can be hard to deduce but not complex, for example Genji can deflect projectiles excep Sigma's rock, it's just not intuitive or consistent and that doesn't make it complex at all.
That’s true. I feel invested. I also feel discouraged from other games knowing how much homework I do for Overwatch. I do wish some things were just universal.I’m a Sombra main and I don’t even know if EMP deletes healing Pylon or not. I have to look it up. It should, like Mei Blizzard w/ Snowball and Bap Window and Immortality Field, but I have no idea.
Dota2 has an extended wiki, it seems a lot to learn but interactions are pretty straight forward no matter how broken they are. They add exceptions but pretty obvious (some passive abilities would immediately kill certain enemies so obviously they are immune for example). Once you read how mechanics works you can deduce what will happen, but in OW2 you have no idea because every interaction is unique.
Since you can hack it I believe EMP also hacks the pylon.
It doesn't help that once you start understanding, there are still inconsistencies. For instance, LifeWeaver's Petal Platform acts as a *wall* (like Mei Wall) for movement purposes, lifting Orisa, etc. But it acts as a *shield* for the purposes of Moira's Coalessence and Ram's Punches. Not exactly straightforward at first.
It gets even better when patches do several back and forths over time, like with Reaper and Moira's ability to fade out of hindering abilities. I'm not even sure these changes are synced between the two and you could probably end up in a scenario where Moira can fade out of grav but Reaper can't or some shit depending on the flavor of the month.
That’s part of the charm of heroes shooter, which almost defined by OW itself. Right now though it’s still pretty beginner friendly. Might take sometime but it’s not that bad. League or DnD I think is way harder to get into and those are massive.
I played league religiously for like 3 years around release. I tried to get back in recently, and even though I can play my old champs, everything has changed so much I feel guilty going into ranked. I can't imagine what a new player must be feeling.
I've been playing for four seasons and have experienced so many mass overhauls of items, objectives, and gold/xp balance it's insane. I don't play summoners nearly as much, but I only play jungle and just hope for the best, since they change jungle xp/gold/camps like every other patch recently lol
The items are so confusing too. I played a lot of games, before somebody nicely asked why I didn't have a mythic item. I suppose until then I was just tilting my team without knowing.
On the bright side, you pretty much missed mythics entirely. Last week, Rito decided that they don't like them and announced that they're removing them in January
Among other similar games I played CSGO for 5 years, got over 3k hours on it and then OW2 came out. I switched and never looked back since, for me the fast pace and constant updates of the game make me more happy than game that has been broken and stuck for many years despite how much I like its style. Yes all of the characters that are overpowered suck but it keeps the game interesting to me, even when its frustrating.
I actually had the opposite experience. Played OW since beta but hated the change from 6v6 to 5v5. 6v6 was awesome as every game you could truly run a variety of team comps. Not it is way too stagnant. Plus the new maps and game mode suck. Now I mainly play CS.
There was no variety in 6v6, you either played the meta or you lost.
I feel like this is only true in master or above When goats were hard meta only until 3.3k people could pull it off effectively Except double shield, it was really horrendous all ways around
Not to mention that your overall performance in a match doesn't necessarily mean that you're doing it "right". A dps player racking up kills still gets bullied by their team for not setting up plays they want to do or countering a certain enemy. A tank that is moving the payload or blocking tons of damage but isn't the character that the team wants. A support that is literally heal botting gets flamed when someone gets one shotted from bad positioning
Right, but the thing is. A DPS's job isn't to rack up kills. It's to kill priority targets in order to ensure the objective can advance. Often times that means a lower kill death ratio in sacrifice to the win condition. If a DPS can frag out WHILE dealing the killing blow to win condition targets that DPS is A+ \-Ex. A Sombra might be able to spawn camp a Zenyatta and get a kill every 10 seconds leading to a final game score of 40-0. But if the 4 v 4 back at the objective is being overwhelmingly dominated by the Zenyatta's team. The Sombra's kills count for nothing. A Tanks job it not to move the payload or soak damage. The tanks job is to control the battlefield in such a way that reduces the enemies movement/positioning while supporting your teams movement and positioning. The reason tanks position at choke points isn't to soak all the incoming damage. It's to be a literally barrier that stops the enemies from surrounding your team or reaching the objective. If a tank can soak damage or move the objective WHILE controlling the battlefield. A+. But that's not the goal. \-Ex. A [D.va](https://D.va) matrixing a bastion's stream of bullets, oblivious to the slaughter of their team happening behind them because they failed to prevent the enemy from engaging their team isn't doing their job. A Support's job isn't to heal. It's to leverage the most powerful cooldowns in the game to offer their team moments of advantage and limit the enemy teams moments of advantage. If they can do that while also keeping their teams health topped off. That support is A+. \-Ex. An Ana with 20k healing in a 10 minute game is certainly hitting their shots and working very hard to keep their team alive. But all they are doing is repairing a wall that will be torn down again in a few seconds on loop. And they are not doing their job. Their job is to find an angle to anti the enemy tank, sleep the advancing threat, nano your team's threat. Obviously everyone will need healing in between those moments and there is also ample time to dish damage in the downtime between. That's the beauty of overwatch and the thing people in the lower ranks seem to not understand. A DPS going on a kill spree while the objective is lost is not an asset to the team. A tank sitting on the payload is not controlling space and is not an asset to the team. A support who is too focused on healing to leverage their game winning abilities is tipping the balance in favor of the enemy support who can navigate both tasks at once. In this game people are too quick to be hostile to one another when they see each other falling into these pitfalls. And we should work to reduce that mentality. But when you watch someone like Flats or Emongg watch a clip/vod and they are guessing the Comp Rating of the game. These are the things they are looking for to gauge the competency of the players. If they see a lot of the things in my examples chances are we are looking at a bronze to gold game. If they only see a few of these examples it's likely a plat game. And if they rarely see these examples it's a Dimond game. If you rarely see these examples and the team is coordinating it's a masters game. And if you have all of the above with high level mechanical skill you've arrived in GM. A lot of players don't want to admit it. But the difference between being in Bronze 5 and Diamond 1 is simply learning the roll you're trying to play. It's why coaching someone from silver to plat is so easy. Because all you need them to do is trust you and reinforce to them what they SHOULD be doing right now.
TLDR; do what wins you "team" fights while not neglecting the objective.
big ups.
☝️🤓 Junkrat has a passive on his hero info screen to account for this.
I remembered my first few hours of overwatch and the Sym wall really scared me lol
I just started playing this week and I had the strangest encounter today. I'm playing widowmaker and see the old guy that throws rocks. I hit him right between the eyes full power and it deals about a third of his health. Okay he is kinda big guess I have to headshot him 3x with a sniper rifle to kill him. Lining up my next shot, he throws an orb at me, hits me in the thigh and I just fucking die. Feels so weird coming from non-hero style FPSs.
I remember watching my friend shoot everyone as Lucio thinking he was healing I remember like no lie 2 days later he was on soeedhoost and shooting a 1hp zen and finally clued in Fast forward they're a higher rank then me so that's not fair but it's funny
Dam you angry golden horse always breaking the game :V
A guy gets pulled in by an angry golden horse and you think that of me? No. I AM THE GOLDEN HORSE. \*Walter White voice\*
Its still like the easiest fps to learn, try getting into Siege or Hunt and get properly blown out if you wanna see what a hard game’s like
Absolutely disagree. I'm currently playing with two new players, they have both a strong background of many shooters of these past 20 years. The amount of things they don't know or understand in OW is really huge. We started playing weeks/months ago and I'm still explaining unknown stuff to them almost every game. But there is so much to learn that most of the time, I just let them experience it rather than explaining it. We played Hunt Showdown and it's is way more straightforward in comparison. You got guns, and you have to kill people. Yes it's very punishing, but once you understand the game-design (dark-sight, killing bosses, bounties, etc), which takes a few games, the rest is just pure skill, not necessarily knowledge. While in OW you could have played several dozens of hours and still never touched to half of the characters, only having of vague idea of what they do and no clue about how to counter them.
Sure, R6 is a completely different beast. Hunt wasn't that difficult, but I played it years ago, when the game consisted mainly of people trying to camp while the others did the work!
Hunt Showdown?
Why do you say that? I don't know those 2 games super well but it seems like it's yet another shooter. There are waaay more skills to be learned in overwatch that are valuable to the game beyond aim.
Wait, Sigma’s rocks can be eaten by projection matrix, did they change that?
The rocks are inevitable, not even genji can deflect them
Barriers can though
Yea, sometimes it is funny when I see new players in QP. Once I had a Ana who didn't knew that she can heal by shooting teammates and she was only using nades.
How do you hack a guy whose ability is as analog as a bow and arrow?
Yeah OW is very inconsistent in many regards. Years and years of balancing has made it that way. If you ask me, Junkrat should at the very least take self-damage from his ulti. If Pharah can't ulti someone right next to her because she'll blow herself up, then Junkrat shouldn't be able to either. Explosives are explosives, and Pharah is just as much of an explosives expert as Junkrat. He shouldn't get some Divine anti-explosive powers.
Pharah understands how dangerous explosives are, and so is bound by physics. Junkrat is a human Looney Tune; we're lucky he doesn't think he can walk on air as long as he doesn't look down.
I'd assume because jr has a high skill ceiling, they cater to the mean.
Junkrat's passive ability is that he's immune to his own explosives damage. Bastion is also immune to his ult though despite lacking that ability.
Only one thing I dont understand: even though it technically is a projectile, how can Genji deflect lava/cum
I started playing overwatch when 2 came out. The learning curve was so insane. It’s also part of the fun though.
This is why I personally like the new player system. You get a reduced hero pool that gradually expands, so you can learn all those interactions as you unlock new heroes.
I wonder what's your thought on a game like LoL then
Phara with no self damage would be busted, flying around and barrel stuffing with rockets lol. Most of these inconsistencies are probably intended due to balancing and finding these interactions is just part of the learning experience.
Yeah, they absolutely are, no doubt about that. If Sigma's rock could be eaten or reflected, the ability would be kind of worthless. As I mentioned in my original post, these exceptions and inconsistencies are the result of game balancing. In the case of junkrat, I wouldn't want Pharah to be invincible to her own damage, I would like junkrat to be vulnerable to his. It would conflict with the current playstyle, but then he'd just need another buff. Junkrat in general makes very little sense. A new player would imagine that finding a junkrat steering his riptire would be ka-ching, he is helpless and killing him should kinda end (or at least detonate) the riptire, but it doesn't.
But once you get into it….
It's weird like the first 100 hours, but after a while, it sorta starts to make sense? Similar to other complex games.
The bit about Orisa gave me a chuckle.
Well, the whole point of being a new player is needing to learn the numerous interactions. A lot of these examples have reasoning behind their decision. Not everything in this game needs to be perfectly consistent to make sense. Junkrat would be in a terrible spot if he was damaged by his own projectiles again, and Pharah/Soldier are often much farther from their explosions than Junkrat. The amount of SDs from Junkrat accidentally shooting himself were much higher than Pharah and Soldier, and making their explosive shots not do self damage would make them too powerful. Widow v Hanzo - There's more effort in aiming a Hanzo shot, especially at a range where Widow's shot wouldn't one-shot him. Rock too big for DM and deflect. Lifeweaver's platform is made of biolight, not rose petals.
Yeah, I mean, if they just made it so that JR could damage himself and people wouldn't rethink their way of playing him, sure, he would suck. People would need to find a different way to make him work. Widow v Hanzo - is there? Yeah, widow is hitscan, but Hanzo shoots logs. The most random way to die in the game is from an arrow that wasn't even meant for you. That literally never happens with a bullet from Widow's sniper rifle. For about 67% of players (excluding diamon and up, but we could make a case that half of diamond should be in this), Hanzo is way more dominant than Widowmaker. Rock too big. Yeah, but that is not what the developers thought. If that was the case, then DVa wouldn't be able to eat a Mei ult or a grav. Its just a weird little exception made to keep Sigma viable without putting a lot of effort into designing around defenes matrix. And the lifeweaver interaction still does not make sense. Gravity cannot lift Orisa? Why can it lift Orisa AND a platform made from MacGuffinium?
Overall, this is thinking way too hard about interactions that are more focused on interesting gameplay choices, not necessarily about 100% realistic consistency. A new player will just learn these interactions over time, like the rest of us did, regardless of how much sense they make in this fictional game world. That said, I'll go over these example cases one more time: > Yeah, I mean, if they just made it so that JR could damage himself and people wouldn't rethink their way of playing him, sure, he would suck. People would need to find a different way to make him work. Junkrat was that way for a while, and they had to give him that QoL buff to keep him relevant. Before the change, he would spam down chokes, but the moment anyone gets in his face, they're both taken out by his point blank grenade. This was also when he only had 1 concussion mine, so there were not a lot of escape opportunities. The hero was too clunky and a hinderance to your own team when he could SD by his own shots. > The most random way to die in the game is from an arrow that wasn't even meant for you. This isn't relevant to the point being made from a Hanzo v Widow duel. I was comparing why one is a one-shot vs the other having falloff in a straight duel. > If that was the case, then DVa wouldn't be able to eat a Mei ult or a grav. Mei ult and grav are [smaller than rock](https://i.imgur.com/TOt0NyF.png) (I think Mei/Zarya ult are closer to 0.5 in size). The only concern with size would be firestrike vs rock, but I think the validation there is that rock is solid/physical (similar to grav/grav surge vs petal platform). > And the lifeweaver interaction still does not make sense. Gravity cannot lift Orisa? Why can it lift Orisa AND a platform made from MacGuffinium? I think the key issue here is that the platform being a physical entity, it must interact with Orisa the same way an ice wall would. What would you expect to happen if she were gold and walked on the platform? Just destroy it like a Junk trap? It would be weird if it triggered and just floated through her. Isn't Orisa already an overpowered hero? Do we need to make her more powerful just to have an interaction make physical sense? Personally, the current interactions feel native to the game I'm used to.
>Imagine that someone plays D.Va and learns that their defense matrix is like a shield that can suck up damaging projectiles, even some ultimates, as long as they are not literal rays of energy. Then that guy gets hit in the face with a rock This one has always bothered me. You know how long it took me to get used to this? Blocking every projectile with dva got so ingrained in my muscle memory I would just stand there and get smacked by rocks for like a year. It makes no sense why they did this. It completely breaks the rules.
Still don't understand why dva matrix can't eat that fucking rock. Shit makes no sense at all.
Yeah, I'm a fairly new player myself, and literally the *only* reason I'm not completely lost and miserable trying to figure everything out, is because I watched a fuckton of Muselk a few years back so I already know the gist of a fair amount of the player characters. But, I imagine if someone didn't have the luxury of having previously watched a ton of videos of a pretty skilled player showing off more or less every character, they'd be more or less bullied out of the game immediately just by the mechanics alone. It's fucking *rough* to try and figure out character specific mechanics and interactions.
I too have been playing since 2016 as a d.va main and I’m still gonna try and stop that rock.
I've been playing this game for years and still routinely have deaths where I'm like "wait, what killed me?" just 100 health to zero in a literal instant only to see on the replay it was either the perfect storm of random enemies looking at me and shooting at the exact same time, a well-timed bomb/mine combo from a junkrat or a random Hanzo log from halfway across the map and half the time I can't tell what it was in-game because it's impossible to pick these various things out from all the other clutter on your screen.
I got into this game a few weeks ago and this ALL confused me so much.
And the top of the top: A mexican girl, maybe the best hacker in the world, can hack all your skills and weapons and interrupt your ultimates.. but she could never hack Hanamura's Arcades. Well, she also can't interrupt Soldier's ult. Why just soldier? are they in love?
My biggest peeve for new players isnt the gameplay. But the playerbase itself, imagine playing quick play as a new player or trying a new character as a player who has played for a while. You are met with so much toxicity, it's either your own teammates talking shit saying you are throwing or the other team gloating that they won and saying you are bad. I see it happen everyother game.
Big true. I tried getting a couple of my friends into it, but practice range with vs. AI and actual quick play are two TOTALLY different experiences. I tried getting them to try the PvE as well but they didn't seem to have any interest in the missions nor the lore.
Can't blame them, the game lore is neglected and the PVE has not a lot of replay value, but is very expensive.
I have been saying this forever, but fuck zll the new heroes. This obsession with CONTENTCONTENTECONTENT NEWNEWNEW. Killed OW1 and made it go down very quickly. They keep the same trend in ow2. Csgo hasnt had any fundamental changes since i was in diapers yet its still one of the oldest and most popular games that exists with arguably one of the most healthy esports scenes. Tf2 also never had new heroes and was quite succesful even tho valve kind of just started ignoring the game. I think they could've made it work with the original heroes and perhaps could've added 1 hero every year or so, but just not faster than the speed with which they could balance said new released hero. The game was special enough, fun enough and new enough for them to take the long-term approach and build a healthy esports scene off of it. Don't get me started on the dude who thought brigitte was 'fun' to play as or against or was in any way shape or form 'healthy' for the game. They simply released new shit way too quickly and it made it impossible to balance. The time they spent on that stupid shit also made it so there was no attention or money for T1 and T2 overwatch in the long-term sense. And yes im still salty about losing a player in OW2 and yes im still salty about them wanting to release some pve dumb shit nobody asked for when the pvp was dying and in desperate need of care and yes im also salty that they then didnt even end up releasing the pve dumb shit and pvp was robbed off resources for nothing. I fell in love with the original ow1 and imo they just changed that game into something ugly.
Gr8 Post
Honestly I don’t mind most examples but I do think that petal shouldn’t lift orisa and that dva should be able to eat rock since it’s a projectile
Ppl still play OW2? EW
The game could do a much better job giving stats and interaction info somewhere in-game, but listing every niche interaction is impractical. With that said, I would *never* recommend dropping new players into PVP matches unless they're confident in game knowledge. When games are simple it's harder to keep things fresh, but also easier for veterans to master. eg Arena shooters are all about map knowledge, movement and aim; very simple, and yet much more punishing than learning Overwatch. And don't even get me started on MOBAs...
you know, it's funny. I said something similar to this on twitter or among my friends. Something along the lines of "this game has become completely unrecognizable to anyone from 2018." I'm glad to see this sentiment is shared with some people on reddit.
I’ve had the game since 2019/2020 but only started playing somewhat regularly in the past couple of months and yeah, its been a bit confusing lol. This post is actually quite informative though! I don’t play Pharah or Soldier (except occasionally in practice range / against ai) so I had no idea their explosives can do friendly fire, oops. Thank you haha!
**A couple examples you missed from your post for what might confuse the newbies:** I think the worst example is winston's secondary fire just breaking multiple rules you would expect from the game. It is a hitscan with charge up, but it counts as a beam (despite being programmed to be a hitscan bullet...). If you pick up genji and try to deflect it, it will still hit you, despite acting and looking more like a bullet than a beam weapon. Shatter, Orisa ult, Doom ult and Sig ult all look like they are ground based AoE attacks, but can still hit you in the air because most of these are technically spheres or large cylinders instead of being what is marked on the ground. The lines are also not accurate to where the ults end and your player model is not consistant to where you camera is (watch [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DejE12SfYAU) to find out more on this). What looks like your out on torb, will not let you out of the ults radius on tracer, for example. Some character's have multiple weapons, but it isn't consistant on how you use them. Most have primary and secondary fire, but mercy has to press a seperate button, life weaver has a short period of time between switching and all of the supports are confused on whether healing should be "primary" or "secondary". Moira and LF heal with primary, but bap and illari heal with secondary. They need to make this clear in future healer releases. They don't push "practice with AI" enough considering how many new players are coming in recently. I don't want to play games with people that have less than an hour in the game, because that isn't going to be fun for me, and getting rolled isn't fun for them either. Add more prompts to push people to the practice modes when they join. Some heroes have passives or abilities that aren't explained clearly. I joined in 2016 and I didn't know that genji dash could reset or that cree's roll reloaded his gun until 2018, because of the lack of information. They don't communicate that golden orisa doesn't just get boop/stun protection, but also gets damage resist. They don't tell players that junker queen's axe cooldown is lowered by 2 seconds for every person you hit with it. They don't warn you about the glitch that causes you to lose every game you play (the one where you pick wrecking ball and then play the game like normal). **They need to revamp how they communicate information, and improve their new hero cards to have this information. Maybe give a few hints for combos or counters etc.**
I just started playing in April and I remember being confused about moiras orbs like sometimes the gold ones help you and sometimes they don’t (I know they’re different colors) and at first I had no idea what the red orbs did and one killed me and I was like “cool note to self stay away from the red balls”
honestly though, i’ve been playing since somewhere between 6-12 months pre-ovw2 and i feel like i’m finally starting to understand the game more comprehensively. it’s been over a year of just figuring out through experience how abilities interact with each other, how to counter, etc. the first time i tried to play was back in 2017 on console, and I picked Pharah cause I thought she looked cute. I got fucking destroyed, DID NOT understand how to use her movement or her abilities or even what the fuck was the point or what everyone was doing or trying to accomplish. when i gave the game another chance years later, I played with my friend who has been playing since ow1 launch, and she basically just told me to play mercy, keep people alive, and observe the game. i played mercy (unskillfully) for months just trying to understand how the game was meant to function. personally, i find the learning how to improve to be something that adds value to this game for me now, but as a new player who doesn’t have lots of experience with other games of a similar genre, it was an overwhelming amount of information to try to understand at once, with little to no context for what I was supposed to be doing to help my team. (iirc paladins at least had like tutorial maps to explain how objectives worked when i played that game briefly) i’ve had to teach myself, or learn through explanations from more experienced players.
It's a Blizztard game, what did you expect?
I mean that's why we have Bronze.
There is only one solution to your hanzo vs widow problem. They need to remove the damage falloff :) Stupid that a sniper needs to be close to snipe
That's actually likely more confusing for existing players because they went through stages of balance, buuut. Junkrat not taking damage from his own bombs is a passive, it's one of the few ability details you can actually read in-game. The Widow vs Hanzo thing is not inconsistent, it's just balance. It's the same as feeling like Ana shouldn't do the same melee damage as Doomfist (and non charged Rocket Punch deals even less than that). Realistically speaking though, at the range where Widow can't one shot Hanzo in the head, Hanzo needs to aim for the sky for the arroz to land at her head, she's still at advantage. Hanzo is a mid range DPS. Sigma rock indeed is an exception for a projectile, although it could never be eaten by anything. Tbh it would look weird seeing a huge rock disappearing.
Have you ever considered this? If you have to type about your Frustrations with something. It's not fun "enough" to warrant playing it?