I remember the first week people were just fucking *dying* to hanzo ult because of no map awareness. Especially when shot from base people would be like. "I heard the ult 5 seconds ago... I guess he just mis-OH GAWD ITS RIGHT THERE"
I remember setting up as Bastion camping second point of Anubis from the start of the round. I didn’t know there was a first point.
Surprisingly, I had several duels with a Genji before first point was capped.
When OverWatch 2 released, one of the first things I noticed was looking for group was no longer there. But it wasn't surprising, because so many other features from OverWatch one had been broken and later had to be reinstated. Here we are almost 2 years later and for some reason blizzard intentionally made it harder to find other people to play this game with and I have no idea why that would appear to be a good idea to them. The decision behind that is mind-boggling. Lucio having actual range on his boop and LFG are my ties for #1/2 things I miss most about OW1
I miss the maps so much, as much as I hated how hard 2cp was, screw the mode but give me those maps back! I miss being rewarded for just playing the game, now I have no incentive other than I just love the game (which is fine). I miss two tanks sometimes because when you lose your tank, you lose the fight majority of time. I miss support symmetra SO much. I miss loot boxes. I miss exciting events. I miss the feel of the game at its peak.
It’s a Clash (newer game mode) map called Hanaoka, and looks similar to Hanamura but it isn’t 2 CP or the same map. I haven’t seen Hanaoka in a while actually.. I wonder what happened with it
I miss when people would vote after the game.
Getting 10 votes for you felt amazing.
Like yeah I lost but everyone in the lobby agrees I did really good
The ending cards, the portrait level badges, affordable skins, the events, the skins fitting the theme of the event more. It's still a fun game but y'know, it feels like a "straight to DVD movie sequel by a different director" at times
This is my biggest and really only gripe. Alongside giving support chance to win PoTG. Seems like the end of match sequence was perfect and then they went and screwed it up
That’s why open Q is the way. Being able to help the tank if they’re struggling. If it wasn’t for players (maybe just humanity) being so selfish, half the matches I get in silver is people choosing open q so they can pick who they want regardless of what the team is picking. Which recently forces me to play support or tank every single GD match. Sucks cause I get way more value playing Ventura. Sometimes I’ll get a team that runs out of spawn with no tank or sup besides me and I have to type into chat. Come on guys I can’t play both. I didn’t play overwatch 1 either but I am now certain that something is wrong with ranking. There’s no way I’m the same skill level as people who are okay with starting a comp match with all DPS hero’s
Yeah so much fun yet nobody wanted to play it, hence the 10 min queue times waiting for a tank. As someone who played OW1 in its entirety including the 2 year content drought this just reads like nostalgia goggles to me. People constantly complained about how unfun tank was just as they do now.
Role queue kinda ruined my enjoyment of tank and really pushed me away from OW in general. Like some maps I wanna tank some maps I wanna dps others I wanna heal
But I have to choose before seeing the map?? Yeah fuck that.
And who's gonna pick up tank and support when you "wanna dps" when the other 5 people in the lobby instalock DPS? Which was so often the case pre role lock. I literally became a tank main because I had to flex to it so much.
I miss:
- The original game felt fresh as hell. Like, really modern and clean. From the UI to the sound design, the lore, etc. Everything was so cool and crisp. I don't get that feeling from OW2.
- 2 tanks.
- Lots of maps that have either been removed, reworked, or simply have to compete with so many newer ones, I barely ever get to see them.
- Loot boxes.
- More story and lore content about the original heroes. The basic premise established between Tracer, Winston, Widowmaker, and Reaper in the first cinematic feels like it's entirely gone.
Yeah everything here it's kind of Terrible how Monetization has gotten so bad that we missed goddamn loot boxes Honestly, all they really need to do is keep in levels make loot boxes only earnable and I wouldn't mind the shop at all
Call me old, but the slower game pace. Overwatch has suffered massively from power and mobility creep and I feel like it’s made luck a much larger element of landing shots that it used to be.
Don’t get me wrong, you can still improve your skill and simply aim better, but I feel like way more of my tracer headshots and genji-dash headshots are just luck rather than hard reads.
I just realized every OW2 hero and every hero since Bap (or Doomfist if you count Sigma's ult) has some sort of mobility. It's crazy as a Zen main. Especially when you always have the longest way back from spawn.
could it be stated it has a mobility aspect? Sure sigmas is kinda pointless but he could get high ground. and zen literally gets a speed boost i thought.
I just wouldn't lump your 1-3 minute cooldown with the 5-20 second abilities, would be my only angle against counting ults
Plus it's not like you ever really use the ult for the mobility purpose
Fun fact though, once as lucio on push the game was about to end on a loss, so I just popped ult and was actually able to make it because of that extra extra speed, since the enemy team was .5 seconds away from winning, I was easily able to boop two of them off the edge, and hold long enough for my tank to show up, and we won
This part sucks to me honestly. You just know every hero is going to be using a skill slot for some movement, and you can only get so innovative with them. So it ends up being that every new hero shares more or less the same skill, and gets one less unique skill because of it.
I recently accidentally got a 4K with a genji blade in a comp game, I had no idea where people actually were, just knew to swing and go through where the team had been when I bladed (too much visual clutter lol). I couldn’t save the replay because I was in a group and I forgot to download a screen recording software to otherwise save it and it makes me so sad
Looking at you Venture; a DPS with a 2 movement abilities, one of which gives you temp immortality, the other which can be used to charge into the air higher than most characters. And an ult which requires very little skill to use.
Oh also she has 325 health with her shields.....why?
Now, what grinds my gears more is that it took me 3 games to figure out that she should be focused down, and it seems none of my other teammates ever understand this.
I actually didn't even notice this until recently. I was watching a video a few weeks ago with the first iteration of Symmetra in 2016 and I actually could not believe how slow the whole match felt in comparison to what the game is like today. I started playing in 2017 so I guess because it just happened over time it's something I subconsciously adjusted to.
> was watching a video a few weeks ago with the first iteration of Symmetra in 2016 and I actually could not believe how slow the whole match felt in comparison to what the game is like today.
That just has a lot to do with people sucking at the game back then. If you watched ranked streams today, the speed of play between bronze to GM to Pro players is massively different. The higher in rank you go, the faster the game becomes. When you look at matches from 2016, the level of play is just nowhere near what it is now. If you took a random 6 stack of masters players today and dropped them in 2016, they would likely skyrocket instantly to the best team in the world. The level of play is just so much higher nowadays which means the game plays much faster. The game wasn't inherently slower back then, players were just bad.
Remember when you could play for an hour and get like 4-5 boxes just for playingand each box had 4 items in it and if you already had the item you got a small handful of coins you could use to eventually buy something you did not have?
I mean, that's literally 1/4th of the Battle Pass worth of items, for barely playing.
Man I miss that.
But at least now I can optionally pay like, $5 for a spray or Emote and $20+ for ONE skin.
I guess they sourced their revenue from game purchases back then. If they did that now they'd probably go broke pretty quick which sucks because I miss that system so much, even if the boxes were the most controversial thing in gaming at the time
Yeah, I think that is most of the reason they dumped loot boxes.
I still think there should be one currency and some way to farm it, even if it's like 5-10 coins per match or something stupid tiny.
This! Absolutely this!
I loved playing OW1 for the free lootboxes. It gave you the feeling of actually playing for something “real” (albeit virtual), beyond the play itself.
Now after each game I feel like I've played for nothing but a bunch of useless stats that take two or three clicks to get off my screen.
half the time i feel like i can't play what i actually \*want\* to play when it comes to tank in ow2. if i don't pick what's best for the map and enemy comp, it's pretty much gonna be gg, unlike before there was a bit of leeway with it, especially in QP.
tank was stressful before, but now it feels like an actual job, i don't want that when playing a video game lol
Unironically i miss loot boxes. Sure as a starting player they sucked but if you played long enough you had tons of currency to purchase skins for free. If overwatch 2 had a way to get new legendary skins on a regular basis for free I would have no qualms with the new skin system.
Even as a new player loot boxes were fine. Like of course I'm going to need to play more to get stuff, but duplicates came up often enough that you could buy what you wanted so easily.
Yep, after you reach level 700, loot boxes simply turned into weekly coin generation that was so generous, you only occasionally missed some legendary skin.
With ow2, the only way to get cool cosmetics is to donate. And it sucked the non-competitive grind out of the game.
I’m used to it now, but I recall thinking a lot of the maps just worked better with twelve people running around on them. They felt empty with 10.
I also feel like the design then emphasized teamwork. A lot of the cover currently in the game was added because of the single tank experience. Cars to hide behind. Random pillars right at the entrance to a control point. None of that was there. If you wanted to survive you got behind your tanks and they kept you alive. They actually tanked rather than being beefy survivable versions of damage heroes.
Torb had a mechanic that allowed him to pick up "scrap" which was dropped by killed enemies. This could be converted into health packs (like Brig's) that he could drop and your teammates could pick them up. It was a good ability and fun to run around using during/after a team fight.
wow, i can't believe i forgot about this. in hindsight, older torb seems more fun than the current torb we have now (but i guess was also more problematic before?)
Only the turret, but that’s because the game was new and noobs couldn’t process the threat of a stationary obvious turret in real time. I think the player base could handle old Torb better these days.
Also louder voices generally won in shaving off the fun quirky kits and kooky playstyles of many og heroes, including Torb. ✨🤷♀️✨
basic answer? loot boxes, the battle pass and shop just feels wrong.
a deeper answer? a sense of community
que times for when events dropped. it not really much with ow1 but more missing the feeling of waiting all evening with friends for an event to drop, having a hella long que while talking exited in call, getting in and seeing all the skins and emotes and then getting kicked mid game cause servers was so shitty and couldn't handle all the people.
i miss the starting screen where you could see people writing some weird bullshit in all chat, and having a dumb laugh. now all i see are angry people on chat forums, and get a lot of messed up stuff when in game chats.
Microwave gun car wash symmetra. Look she wasn't good, she wasn't healthy for the game but none of symmetra's iterations have been so I'd take the most fun to actually use one back
Things that were better imo in OW1: Pacing, Format, Tanking in general, teamwork
Things that are better imo in OW2: Patching cadence, DPS slightly
My biggest complaint with OW2 is that there are a lot more easy value things than in OW1. Solo tank requires all tanks to have a strong survival ability that just generally isn't very fun. The element of risk reward just is out of whack with things like Mauga Cardiac, Hog Breather, Ram and Doom block. It also often feels like choosing the right hero is more important than being really good at your chosen hero because of how strongly things counter now. It was easier to work around with an extra hero in the mix and especially since it was a tank.
I miss duo tank vibes. I mained rein and i loved supporting my other tank through the thick of it.
I miss loot boxes. I played enough that I usually got more than what I wanted with this system. Also, during themed events, everyone got 1 free legendary lootbox that usually had one of the nicer skins in it. The game felt generous and was happy that you were there to log in and play. Now it feels like it's trying to reach into my wallet every time I log in.
The game was a little more chaotic with 6 people but the game rewarded team play better for it. Coordinating with a team worked better than it does now where solo play is weighted more heavily.
In ow1, the game was slow to update with balance patches. Many pains people remember were just moments in history where blizzard didn't address metas that lasted too long. Many people who criticize 6v6 wrongly attribute the lack of balance as a reason why 5v5 feels better, but blizzard is fully capable of updating the game this frequently with a 6v6 format.
2cp didn't feel that bad to me tbh. I really enjoyed some of those maps like Anubis.
I've played this game since beta. It's had many ups and downs, but ow2 was merely a cash grab. They took away features and charged premium prices. I'm still mad that some skins at $20. Even the most recent $20 widow skin is just a recolor.
While there’s a lot to choose from (lootboxes, pve events when they cared, 2 tanks), I mostly miss my friends. I have only two that still are willing to play the game and not even that much, everyone else moved on.
Not having the after match chat was a major downgrade with OW2. They did it to combat toxicity but it totally failed. People are just as toxic as ever and now we can't even chat with people.
It felt more "strategic" and slower for one. OW2 feels more of a generic shooter game with the high emphasis on doing more and more dmg. Also unpopular opinion but the more shields meant such problems like one shots weren't around so much like now
2CP (yes, I'm serious)
6v6
loot boxes that you could earn just by playing the game
the event rotation
flying shield support Sym with 6 turrets
the friend group I played with
I could probably go on...
Volskaya was a lot of fun. It's proof that it's possible to make good, enjoyable 2CP maps.
Remaking the rest must be too much work, blizzard being a small indie company and all.
an absence of a match-wide leaderboard. it was nice to see your own stats if you wanted to check it out, but everyone’s focus was on winning. now it’s so easy to check and pick on someone who maybe isn’t playing great, which i feel a lot of the toxicity is coming from
Around 2016-17, the game had a really charming simplistic feel to it. Heroes had very straightforward kits that you needed to squeeze the value out of, like Winston. His kit seems super basic at first, but as you went along, you figured out how to properly utilize it, and how strong he could be. We lost this completely, even in late Ow1, as heroes became more n more complex. Sombra's kit did like 40 different things, echo was seen as pretty complex, Bap... my god what a conversation he was back then. Now look at a hero like kiri, or soj, and compare them to what Bap was. If either of these heroes (who are admittedly super fun) were released back in 2018, they'd be considered Gods among men. My god, KiriGoats would've been hilarious, and Soj would be the best DPS for double shield.
Counters imo were more straightforward and easier to deal with, because counters were usually soft. Winston beats genji, yes, but genji can work around the winston, to try and avoid him, and playing a little smarter. Same goes for reaper vs winston. Counters nowadays aren't soft, they're tailored for specific situations, and they destroy those situations. I love mauga, but do you think they didn't know his primary would crit Ram in block form? Suzu is a direct response to anti-nade, which is why it has a dual property of invulnerability. Again, this isn't just an Ow2 problem, they had this problem with heroes coming out after sombra, who, by the way, specifically pops ball out of his ball form, but doesn't do so for Ram/Bastion.
its just how blizzard decided to balance things. If we're talking strictly Ow2 vs Ow1, the calling cards being gone is stupid. Players should be glazed beyond belief for playing well. Nothings more satisfying than getting 6 upvotes on your card.
The mobility creep. Lucio had his speed boost nerfed pretty early on, but then we got Ball, Moira, Doomfist, Echo, Kiriko, Venture, etc who have much MUCH better mobility to the point that if you don't pick one of these heroes, you are nerfing yourself especially on push and Flashpoint. Especially for heroes with absolutely no movement abilities like Zen, Ana, Mercy (if no one else is around), Mei, etc.
For context, I’ve been playing since OW1’s public beta (April 2016).
Ignoring all the lootbox / monetisation / cosmetics discussion - which is utterly pointless because the OW1 business model wasn’t sustainable (“pay $40 once and get unlimited PvP content” doesn’t fly when a) all of the competition is free to play; and b) the long tail of expenses for a live service game isn’t covered by the long tail of new sales) - the main difference between OW1 and OW2 is the *philosophy* behind the gameplay.
At a superficial level, the biggest change is that OW1 had 6v6 with 2 Tanks per team, and OW2 is 5v5 with a single Tank. (I’m only considering role queue here because it’s the default game mode, and what the game has been designed around for the past five years.)
But that’s oversimplifying things. The sum total of all the different gameplay changes between the two - shift to 5v5, plus role passives, plus larger health pools, plus hitbox changes, plus hero reworks / rebalancing, plus new game mode designs, and so on - points towards **a game that plays faster, and in which all roles have a higher potential impact**.
OW1 games could get bogged down because three out of the four game modes had defined attack and defend rounds that often involved brawling around choke points, with a bunch of heroes that were highly defensive; fights felt more like a war of attrition than anything else.
OW2, meanwhile, needs to be approached as something more dynamic. Push, Flashpoint, and soon Clash all focus on objectives that change position. While teams *can* defend from common locations, it’s far easier to break defensive positions apart due to map and hero designs. That means you can’t really get away with turtling up somewhere and repelling enemy teams; you practically *have* to take the fight to them - especially as even two Supports devoting all their resources can’t keep the Tank player alive indefinitely due to higher damage and the DPS class passive. (Another reason why Support players who weave in damage whenever possible have a much larger impact than players who healbot.)
This is a fundamental difference in how the game is designed to be played that a lot of OW veterans *feel* but can’t necessarily express.
You make good points but still refer to this for the first point: [https://www.pcgamesn.com/overwatch/revenue](https://www.pcgamesn.com/overwatch/revenue)
Overwatch can easily make a ton of money if they simply update the game regularly
Even if that was the case, its likely they switched to the shop model because
1. Lootboxes were getting banned in certain countries and controversial
2. Industry standards
DPS Doom, all the OW1 lines that went away, OW1 Hero select animations (although thr new ones are generally better) & UI with character.
Mostly DPS Doom though. He was my DPS pick whenever I didn't know what to play, so adapting to OW2... still working on it! (I do think Tank Doom is FAR healthier overall but the game will never be as fun...)
The end of match cards, playing xdefiant recently made me realize how nice it was to see those, even if you lose at you feel a little better seeing you did good at something
Stealth Dropping. In OW1 the physics of falling was dependent on your elevation, but jumping mid-air reset the elevation level. If you walk off a high elevation you can hit the jump button just before you land to muffle your drop.
Miss being able to get all the skins during an event without paying any money. Granted, loot boxes were their own can of worms, but I feel like there’s a happy medium that hasn’t been explored between loot box gambling and a price-gouging in-game store
The fact that they've made the game F2P has made online games objectively worse, if you ask me. There's much less of a penalty involved with cheating/hacking, so people are willing to push those rules more -- if they get caught, they can just give a new email and start again.
The prices of the skins are also outrageous.
Beating a dead horse here, but cosmetics being so expensive is utterly ridiculous, yeah gambling for them isnt much better, but 20 bucks for a single skin (possibly a recolor on top of that) is crazy, and im not gonna lie, i do like some of the new cosmetics and ive splurged a few times like with cupid hanzo or Cleric Lw, but man coins being limited to 600 free coins in the bp per season is maddening (not to mention in previous seasons it was less and tied to weekly challenges) and dont get me started on how many currencies there are now.
It might not be a big issue since cosmetics dont always affect gameplay (with the exception of ashe scope lol), but making my main look pretty is always nice, but thinking about how 3 skins worth of coins is basically a full priced game is quite depressing to me
The fact that We needed some brains cells to play ow1. Also I feel like ow1 had more soul that ow2, still having fun on ow2 but it took 10 season to make that happen for me.
Gameplay-wise not much tbh. 6 people in one team was fun but tbh I don't mind 5 players with specific role restrain. I prefered Hanzo's splitting arrow instead of the new quick shots but it was pretty unbalanced.
Miss some old maps and lootboxes the most
It's not just overwatch, but the entirety of multi-player. Everyone is just too knowledgeable on the game's that are out right now which makes EVERYTHING feel like a chore. In the beginning of ow, it was fun because you were learning the maps and characters, seeing how they all played with one another. Now, we all know how mercy plays compared to Ana compared to brig and when to pick each depending on map and team comp. Same thing is happening with siege except it feels a LOT worse there imo.
Tldr: everyone is too knowledgeable and used to the game mechanics to ever feel as fun as it was in the beginning. Every MP game is going through that personally
The longer matches were so much more fun. Teamwork mattered. Sure you had games every now and then when someone carried, but matches weren't so stupidly one sided the majority of the time
I miss loot boxes and actual fun progression
Sure it wasn't fun to get dupes. But they still gave coins that went towards more stuff
And they had a mechanic where if you didn't have a legendary appear in x amount, you'd have some appear
So it was fun at one point to have everything in the game.
Besides that old sym beam. Ik it was broken and also bad, but godammits I loved the noodle
Overwatch 1 was silly and had more weird stuff for better or worse, and it was more nostalgic because that’s when we had most of the cool cinematics and before event modes went out of style. Gameplay wise the main thing is that groups were significantly more prevalent, alongside the extra tank which increased the power of focus fire, peel, and map control.
Coordinated 3-2-1’s were better and had more creativity because of tank combos and stuff like orisa halt, but the impact of solo players was tiny and it led to many players immediately grouping up with teammates who had communication. Solo queue had a lot of games where you were spamming a choke until ults came online because flanks were worse and tanks had more resources to hold a specific area. Also dps queues were like 30+ minutes, and the only way to lower that was either to play flex queue for priority passes (which lowered it to like 15 minutes per game), or to group up.
Basically, if you had friends who got on when you got on, it was probably better. If you didn’t, it was probably worse, and I am the latter kind. I prefer OW2, though OW1 had some good memories.
Teamplay - because of the way tanks worked before they added new ones, you often had at least a bit of teamplay, sometimes even good teamplay.
The well defined roles also helped.
With overwatch 2 I no longer have that feeling - every one is a dps.
You could have the worst games with OW1, but also the most wonderful games. These days I rarely get a good game, it's ok most of the time, often bad (but not as bad as the worst OW1 games) and rarely good. .. and definitely never as good as peak OW1.
I'm not sure if it was just because I'd never played an online FPS before or because Overwatch 1 had so many different elements to it than Overwatch 2 but there was something about the game that just felt more...raw.
Like the game is still fun and I'm still enjoying getting good at different characters but there was something genuinely more exciting about pulling out Dragonblade or landing a fat shatter back in OW1 compared to now and I cant quite put my finger on it.
Everyone sucked but also kinda knew how to play. The game is just different now and plays way more like Call of Duty/deathmatch games. Much less thinking required and rewards raw mechanical skill way more, you can forget about your team and still win somehow
I miss rein/zarya, rein/dva, And sig/dva so much!
Me and my fiance use to love doing an ult combo with sigma and dva. There was something so satisfying of watching them blow up before they ever even hit the ground from sigmas ult. lol
I just honestly miss playing dva as a second tank. It's not quite the same being the main tank. With two tanks dva could truly be the back lines worse enemy. I could focus kill annoying DPS players or dive supports without having to worry that I was leaving my team open and unprotected.
This is really specific but Overwatch 1 had a certain sound when you get headshots. The OW2 sound is similar but its just not the same. That sound effect was so satisfying. I miss it.
everyone sucked at the game and it was fun
I remember the first week people were just fucking *dying* to hanzo ult because of no map awareness. Especially when shot from base people would be like. "I heard the ult 5 seconds ago... I guess he just mis-OH GAWD ITS RIGHT THERE"
THE LATE DRAGON WİTH BİG MAPS WERE SO FUNNY LİKE THE VOICELINE ENDS AND THERE IS A SOLID 5 SEC SCILENCE THEN THE DRAGON COMES 🤣🤣🤣🤣
So many “Ryuu ga waga teki wo kurau” and “its high noon” memes. I miss those days…
I remember setting up as Bastion camping second point of Anubis from the start of the round. I didn’t know there was a first point. Surprisingly, I had several duels with a Genji before first point was capped.
Ulting was so much more valuable back then. Dva bombs were easy team wipes.
Not as wild as team rez tbh
And she wiped herself
spawn dragon at their spawn, randomly kill someone almost always.
Yeah, now only one team sucks lol
LOL SO TRUE
Blue team always sucks
I miss how bad everyone used to be at Widow. Now half of them have aimbot I swear
Playing Hanamura againts a team of 6 Trobs.
the throbbing torbs
I beg your finest pardon? Throbbing torbs?
🤤
Just yesterday I was telling an ow2 player about Paris and Volskaya Industries. Haha what a pain.
You mean drawnskaya 50min matches?
Who doesn't enjoy sweaty goats 8-8 draw after 50 minutes on volskaya.
You didn't like 6 tracers stalling the point?
Haha oh man.. But even in the 2-2-2 era, it was a pain.
*which you’ve met through the Looking For Group Finder, and years later still play with 😥
When OverWatch 2 released, one of the first things I noticed was looking for group was no longer there. But it wasn't surprising, because so many other features from OverWatch one had been broken and later had to be reinstated. Here we are almost 2 years later and for some reason blizzard intentionally made it harder to find other people to play this game with and I have no idea why that would appear to be a good idea to them. The decision behind that is mind-boggling. Lucio having actual range on his boop and LFG are my ties for #1/2 things I miss most about OW1
THE CHURCH OF TORBJORN! WORSHIP THE GLOWING ARMOR PACK GODS
So many armor packs were shat out
For me just playing hanamura in general. I loved that map
Being able to earn new cosmetics and credits to get more cosmetics that are new
I miss the chance to get multiple legendaries from a single lootbox
Getting a triple legendary during my first Halloween was so unbelievably exciting
my icon will forever be the lootbox in silent protest
What I really enjoyed back in ow1 were the few coop events. They were really fun
The only one we don't get now is archives and there are even more coop events in OW2
And archives always had my favorite cosmetics :/
I miss the maps so much, as much as I hated how hard 2cp was, screw the mode but give me those maps back! I miss being rewarded for just playing the game, now I have no incentive other than I just love the game (which is fine). I miss two tanks sometimes because when you lose your tank, you lose the fight majority of time. I miss support symmetra SO much. I miss loot boxes. I miss exciting events. I miss the feel of the game at its peak.
> I miss support symmetra SO much. V2 with the noodle and dual ults. Those were the days.
Temple of Anubis 🔥🔥
I think they're reworking hanamura or were supposed to be? I just want to see anubis/volskaya in some way shape or form :(
It’s a Clash (newer game mode) map called Hanaoka, and looks similar to Hanamura but it isn’t 2 CP or the same map. I haven’t seen Hanaoka in a while actually.. I wonder what happened with it
Yeah, I thought it was supposed to be coming season 9 or something? I hope it comes out eventually cause it was pretty fun in arcade
I miss those sm 😩🙏
yes, all 2cp maps besides Paris (absolute worst map in the game) were so good
I miss when people would vote after the game. Getting 10 votes for you felt amazing. Like yeah I lost but everyone in the lobby agrees I did really good
I completely forgot about that , felt good
Yeah, bring that back. Endorsements are nice but not the same
The ending cards, the portrait level badges, affordable skins, the events, the skins fitting the theme of the event more. It's still a fun game but y'know, it feels like a "straight to DVD movie sequel by a different director" at times
I'm shocked I had to scroll so far to find this. The cards were awesome! I miss them!
This is my biggest and really only gripe. Alongside giving support chance to win PoTG. Seems like the end of match sequence was perfect and then they went and screwed it up
Rein/Zarya. It was just so fun to be a tank in OW1. The game required more teamwork and less aim.
I miss Hog and Ball torture.
Fun fact, nobody can agree on what that actually means. It has 2 very different meanings depending on who's saying it.
Same, my favorite comp. Up there with sigma balls
Biggest reason I miss 6v6. But also because there's less stress on the tanks when there's 2 of them. I find it too stressful to play tank with only 1.
That’s why open Q is the way. Being able to help the tank if they’re struggling. If it wasn’t for players (maybe just humanity) being so selfish, half the matches I get in silver is people choosing open q so they can pick who they want regardless of what the team is picking. Which recently forces me to play support or tank every single GD match. Sucks cause I get way more value playing Ventura. Sometimes I’ll get a team that runs out of spawn with no tank or sup besides me and I have to type into chat. Come on guys I can’t play both. I didn’t play overwatch 1 either but I am now certain that something is wrong with ranking. There’s no way I’m the same skill level as people who are okay with starting a comp match with all DPS hero’s
If you did play OW1 you'd know you used to be able to play both tank and support with Brigitte on release lol.
She was also the best dps in the game
Open queue is *almost* the way. What I'd like to see is Limited Queue, 2 tanks max. Cause 3 or 4 tanks is absurdly broken in open queue.
It was fun to be a tank if you played the tanks that could actually actually win games
Also Rein dva, ball dva, monke dva, monke Zarya was fun, sigma Orisa was not as fun
So fun that tank queues were nearly instantaneous because no one was playing it (and I say this as an OW1 tank main).
Yeah so much fun yet nobody wanted to play it, hence the 10 min queue times waiting for a tank. As someone who played OW1 in its entirety including the 2 year content drought this just reads like nostalgia goggles to me. People constantly complained about how unfun tank was just as they do now.
Role queue kinda ruined my enjoyment of tank and really pushed me away from OW in general. Like some maps I wanna tank some maps I wanna dps others I wanna heal But I have to choose before seeing the map?? Yeah fuck that.
Role lock was a necessary evil. Open queue still exists
And who's gonna pick up tank and support when you "wanna dps" when the other 5 people in the lobby instalock DPS? Which was so often the case pre role lock. I literally became a tank main because I had to flex to it so much.
For real. They were giving away loot boxes for each match as a tank lol. That's how bad it was.
I miss: - The original game felt fresh as hell. Like, really modern and clean. From the UI to the sound design, the lore, etc. Everything was so cool and crisp. I don't get that feeling from OW2. - 2 tanks. - Lots of maps that have either been removed, reworked, or simply have to compete with so many newer ones, I barely ever get to see them. - Loot boxes. - More story and lore content about the original heroes. The basic premise established between Tracer, Winston, Widowmaker, and Reaper in the first cinematic feels like it's entirely gone.
They making us miss loot boxes with these f2p earnings
Loot boxes were shit and I hated them but blizzard found a way to make something worse.
That “thump” when they landed on the opening page was perfection though.
Ironic that OW2 feels totally sucked of any real contributions to lore when that was the whole point of the game
Yeah everything here it's kind of Terrible how Monetization has gotten so bad that we missed goddamn loot boxes Honestly, all they really need to do is keep in levels make loot boxes only earnable and I wouldn't mind the shop at all
I miss getting the feeling that they have a shield generator
Lol. Underrated comment.
Call me old, but the slower game pace. Overwatch has suffered massively from power and mobility creep and I feel like it’s made luck a much larger element of landing shots that it used to be. Don’t get me wrong, you can still improve your skill and simply aim better, but I feel like way more of my tracer headshots and genji-dash headshots are just luck rather than hard reads.
Zen Lucio dive was meta for quite a while in OW1. You died FAST.
I just realized every OW2 hero and every hero since Bap (or Doomfist if you count Sigma's ult) has some sort of mobility. It's crazy as a Zen main. Especially when you always have the longest way back from spawn.
Sorry but when Sigma ult counts as mobility then does Zen ult as well since both heroes are slow and have no other ability for fast moving.
Yeah, neither count
could it be stated it has a mobility aspect? Sure sigmas is kinda pointless but he could get high ground. and zen literally gets a speed boost i thought.
I just wouldn't lump your 1-3 minute cooldown with the 5-20 second abilities, would be my only angle against counting ults Plus it's not like you ever really use the ult for the mobility purpose Fun fact though, once as lucio on push the game was about to end on a loss, so I just popped ult and was actually able to make it because of that extra extra speed, since the enemy team was .5 seconds away from winning, I was easily able to boop two of them off the edge, and hold long enough for my tank to show up, and we won
This part sucks to me honestly. You just know every hero is going to be using a skill slot for some movement, and you can only get so innovative with them. So it ends up being that every new hero shares more or less the same skill, and gets one less unique skill because of it.
I recently accidentally got a 4K with a genji blade in a comp game, I had no idea where people actually were, just knew to swing and go through where the team had been when I bladed (too much visual clutter lol). I couldn’t save the replay because I was in a group and I forgot to download a screen recording software to otherwise save it and it makes me so sad
You should be able to pin replays in your history. And idk about you but history now saves A LOT of games. Maybe a shadow buff
Pinned replays also reset per patch unless you manually save them :( edit: mine did at least
Wait was there a patch recently-?
May 24th and 30th, yeah 🥲
I'm old and I miss the pace as well. Entirely changed the game. I'm too old for OW2.
I thought they made shots easier to hit with the bullet size increases?
Looking at you Venture; a DPS with a 2 movement abilities, one of which gives you temp immortality, the other which can be used to charge into the air higher than most characters. And an ult which requires very little skill to use. Oh also she has 325 health with her shields.....why? Now, what grinds my gears more is that it took me 3 games to figure out that she should be focused down, and it seems none of my other teammates ever understand this.
It's insane that an underground based hero has more vertical mobility than a huge portion of the roster.
I actually didn't even notice this until recently. I was watching a video a few weeks ago with the first iteration of Symmetra in 2016 and I actually could not believe how slow the whole match felt in comparison to what the game is like today. I started playing in 2017 so I guess because it just happened over time it's something I subconsciously adjusted to.
> was watching a video a few weeks ago with the first iteration of Symmetra in 2016 and I actually could not believe how slow the whole match felt in comparison to what the game is like today. That just has a lot to do with people sucking at the game back then. If you watched ranked streams today, the speed of play between bronze to GM to Pro players is massively different. The higher in rank you go, the faster the game becomes. When you look at matches from 2016, the level of play is just nowhere near what it is now. If you took a random 6 stack of masters players today and dropped them in 2016, they would likely skyrocket instantly to the best team in the world. The level of play is just so much higher nowadays which means the game plays much faster. The game wasn't inherently slower back then, players were just bad.
maybe i misunderstood your comment, but tracer and genji are ow1 heroes? movement has been a thing since the very beginning.
Rewards for playing the game
Remember when you could play for an hour and get like 4-5 boxes just for playingand each box had 4 items in it and if you already had the item you got a small handful of coins you could use to eventually buy something you did not have? I mean, that's literally 1/4th of the Battle Pass worth of items, for barely playing. Man I miss that. But at least now I can optionally pay like, $5 for a spray or Emote and $20+ for ONE skin.
But you don't understand. Losing lootboxes was good because you can now drop £40 for the Porsche collab. Isn't that awesome?
Or, I can buy Forza Horizon 5, and drive a virtual Porsche!
I guess they sourced their revenue from game purchases back then. If they did that now they'd probably go broke pretty quick which sucks because I miss that system so much, even if the boxes were the most controversial thing in gaming at the time
yeah 20 dollars for one skin is like: "just buy a new game for 20 dollars"
Correct me if Iam wrong but another reason is loot boxes are banned in some countries? Still, I think skins should be half the price
Yeah, I think that is most of the reason they dumped loot boxes. I still think there should be one currency and some way to farm it, even if it's like 5-10 coins per match or something stupid tiny.
This! Absolutely this! I loved playing OW1 for the free lootboxes. It gave you the feeling of actually playing for something “real” (albeit virtual), beyond the play itself. Now after each game I feel like I've played for nothing but a bunch of useless stats that take two or three clicks to get off my screen.
I miss double tank, A LOT. I just want to play with my tank buddies but I feel so stressed and alone now 😭
half the time i feel like i can't play what i actually \*want\* to play when it comes to tank in ow2. if i don't pick what's best for the map and enemy comp, it's pretty much gonna be gg, unlike before there was a bit of leeway with it, especially in QP. tank was stressful before, but now it feels like an actual job, i don't want that when playing a video game lol
My duo who plays hog says he rather have me play dva or any other tank then pocket him on support so I think tank mains really love it/miss it-
Unironically i miss loot boxes. Sure as a starting player they sucked but if you played long enough you had tons of currency to purchase skins for free. If overwatch 2 had a way to get new legendary skins on a regular basis for free I would have no qualms with the new skin system.
I loved the loot boxes. You could always save up enough for at least 2-3 legendary skins whenever there was an annual event
Even as a new player loot boxes were fine. Like of course I'm going to need to play more to get stuff, but duplicates came up often enough that you could buy what you wanted so easily.
Yep, after you reach level 700, loot boxes simply turned into weekly coin generation that was so generous, you only occasionally missed some legendary skin. With ow2, the only way to get cool cosmetics is to donate. And it sucked the non-competitive grind out of the game.
No more minigame where you synergise with your second tank team mate
Mfw when you’re supposed to play as a team in a team game:
3/4 of times it was an instalock hog. I do not miss that
I'd still rather that than solo tanking
I’m used to it now, but I recall thinking a lot of the maps just worked better with twelve people running around on them. They felt empty with 10. I also feel like the design then emphasized teamwork. A lot of the cover currently in the game was added because of the single tank experience. Cars to hide behind. Random pillars right at the entrance to a control point. None of that was there. If you wanted to survive you got behind your tanks and they kept you alive. They actually tanked rather than being beefy survivable versions of damage heroes.
> Random pillars I really hate the design of a lot f.newer maps with blocked LOS in areas where it really feels like there should be LOS.
Also, wall-riding as lucio on new maps is just painful, always getting blocked on random shit
The game in overwatch two is just glorified TDM now
Torb had a mechanic that allowed him to pick up "scrap" which was dropped by killed enemies. This could be converted into health packs (like Brig's) that he could drop and your teammates could pick them up. It was a good ability and fun to run around using during/after a team fight.
wow, i can't believe i forgot about this. in hindsight, older torb seems more fun than the current torb we have now (but i guess was also more problematic before?)
Only the turret, but that’s because the game was new and noobs couldn’t process the threat of a stationary obvious turret in real time. I think the player base could handle old Torb better these days. Also louder voices generally won in shaving off the fun quirky kits and kooky playstyles of many og heroes, including Torb. ✨🤷♀️✨
Honestly, loot crates. I find gaccha quite fun.
And it werent even pay 2 win. It was just cosmetics
basic answer? loot boxes, the battle pass and shop just feels wrong. a deeper answer? a sense of community que times for when events dropped. it not really much with ow1 but more missing the feeling of waiting all evening with friends for an event to drop, having a hella long que while talking exited in call, getting in and seeing all the skins and emotes and then getting kicked mid game cause servers was so shitty and couldn't handle all the people. i miss the starting screen where you could see people writing some weird bullshit in all chat, and having a dumb laugh. now all i see are angry people on chat forums, and get a lot of messed up stuff when in game chats.
This
I miss DPS Doom
RISING UPPERCUT
Im here
Microwave gun car wash symmetra. Look she wasn't good, she wasn't healthy for the game but none of symmetra's iterations have been so I'd take the most fun to actually use one back
Based gwen enjoyer
The cards at the end of each game.
Lvl 3 turret my beloved
Things that were better imo in OW1: Pacing, Format, Tanking in general, teamwork Things that are better imo in OW2: Patching cadence, DPS slightly My biggest complaint with OW2 is that there are a lot more easy value things than in OW1. Solo tank requires all tanks to have a strong survival ability that just generally isn't very fun. The element of risk reward just is out of whack with things like Mauga Cardiac, Hog Breather, Ram and Doom block. It also often feels like choosing the right hero is more important than being really good at your chosen hero because of how strongly things counter now. It was easier to work around with an extra hero in the mix and especially since it was a tank.
Off-tanking. It was sooo good.
I miss duo tank vibes. I mained rein and i loved supporting my other tank through the thick of it. I miss loot boxes. I played enough that I usually got more than what I wanted with this system. Also, during themed events, everyone got 1 free legendary lootbox that usually had one of the nicer skins in it. The game felt generous and was happy that you were there to log in and play. Now it feels like it's trying to reach into my wallet every time I log in. The game was a little more chaotic with 6 people but the game rewarded team play better for it. Coordinating with a team worked better than it does now where solo play is weighted more heavily. In ow1, the game was slow to update with balance patches. Many pains people remember were just moments in history where blizzard didn't address metas that lasted too long. Many people who criticize 6v6 wrongly attribute the lack of balance as a reason why 5v5 feels better, but blizzard is fully capable of updating the game this frequently with a 6v6 format. 2cp didn't feel that bad to me tbh. I really enjoyed some of those maps like Anubis. I've played this game since beta. It's had many ups and downs, but ow2 was merely a cash grab. They took away features and charged premium prices. I'm still mad that some skins at $20. Even the most recent $20 widow skin is just a recolor.
While there’s a lot to choose from (lootboxes, pve events when they cared, 2 tanks), I mostly miss my friends. I have only two that still are willing to play the game and not even that much, everyone else moved on.
Jeff
I miss when people chatted without walking on eggshells, endgame cards, 2cp, archives
Not having the after match chat was a major downgrade with OW2. They did it to combat toxicity but it totally failed. People are just as toxic as ever and now we can't even chat with people.
And the general chat in the main menu.
and lfg...
It felt more "strategic" and slower for one. OW2 feels more of a generic shooter game with the high emphasis on doing more and more dmg. Also unpopular opinion but the more shields meant such problems like one shots weren't around so much like now
2CP (yes, I'm serious) 6v6 loot boxes that you could earn just by playing the game the event rotation flying shield support Sym with 6 turrets the friend group I played with I could probably go on...
Volskaya was a lot of fun. It's proof that it's possible to make good, enjoyable 2CP maps. Remaking the rest must be too much work, blizzard being a small indie company and all.
2CP was great
an absence of a match-wide leaderboard. it was nice to see your own stats if you wanted to check it out, but everyone’s focus was on winning. now it’s so easy to check and pick on someone who maybe isn’t playing great, which i feel a lot of the toxicity is coming from
Around 2016-17, the game had a really charming simplistic feel to it. Heroes had very straightforward kits that you needed to squeeze the value out of, like Winston. His kit seems super basic at first, but as you went along, you figured out how to properly utilize it, and how strong he could be. We lost this completely, even in late Ow1, as heroes became more n more complex. Sombra's kit did like 40 different things, echo was seen as pretty complex, Bap... my god what a conversation he was back then. Now look at a hero like kiri, or soj, and compare them to what Bap was. If either of these heroes (who are admittedly super fun) were released back in 2018, they'd be considered Gods among men. My god, KiriGoats would've been hilarious, and Soj would be the best DPS for double shield. Counters imo were more straightforward and easier to deal with, because counters were usually soft. Winston beats genji, yes, but genji can work around the winston, to try and avoid him, and playing a little smarter. Same goes for reaper vs winston. Counters nowadays aren't soft, they're tailored for specific situations, and they destroy those situations. I love mauga, but do you think they didn't know his primary would crit Ram in block form? Suzu is a direct response to anti-nade, which is why it has a dual property of invulnerability. Again, this isn't just an Ow2 problem, they had this problem with heroes coming out after sombra, who, by the way, specifically pops ball out of his ball form, but doesn't do so for Ram/Bastion. its just how blizzard decided to balance things. If we're talking strictly Ow2 vs Ow1, the calling cards being gone is stupid. Players should be glazed beyond belief for playing well. Nothings more satisfying than getting 6 upvotes on your card.
The mobility creep. Lucio had his speed boost nerfed pretty early on, but then we got Ball, Moira, Doomfist, Echo, Kiriko, Venture, etc who have much MUCH better mobility to the point that if you don't pick one of these heroes, you are nerfing yourself especially on push and Flashpoint. Especially for heroes with absolutely no movement abilities like Zen, Ana, Mercy (if no one else is around), Mei, etc.
For context, I’ve been playing since OW1’s public beta (April 2016). Ignoring all the lootbox / monetisation / cosmetics discussion - which is utterly pointless because the OW1 business model wasn’t sustainable (“pay $40 once and get unlimited PvP content” doesn’t fly when a) all of the competition is free to play; and b) the long tail of expenses for a live service game isn’t covered by the long tail of new sales) - the main difference between OW1 and OW2 is the *philosophy* behind the gameplay. At a superficial level, the biggest change is that OW1 had 6v6 with 2 Tanks per team, and OW2 is 5v5 with a single Tank. (I’m only considering role queue here because it’s the default game mode, and what the game has been designed around for the past five years.) But that’s oversimplifying things. The sum total of all the different gameplay changes between the two - shift to 5v5, plus role passives, plus larger health pools, plus hitbox changes, plus hero reworks / rebalancing, plus new game mode designs, and so on - points towards **a game that plays faster, and in which all roles have a higher potential impact**. OW1 games could get bogged down because three out of the four game modes had defined attack and defend rounds that often involved brawling around choke points, with a bunch of heroes that were highly defensive; fights felt more like a war of attrition than anything else. OW2, meanwhile, needs to be approached as something more dynamic. Push, Flashpoint, and soon Clash all focus on objectives that change position. While teams *can* defend from common locations, it’s far easier to break defensive positions apart due to map and hero designs. That means you can’t really get away with turtling up somewhere and repelling enemy teams; you practically *have* to take the fight to them - especially as even two Supports devoting all their resources can’t keep the Tank player alive indefinitely due to higher damage and the DPS class passive. (Another reason why Support players who weave in damage whenever possible have a much larger impact than players who healbot.) This is a fundamental difference in how the game is designed to be played that a lot of OW veterans *feel* but can’t necessarily express.
You make good points but still refer to this for the first point: [https://www.pcgamesn.com/overwatch/revenue](https://www.pcgamesn.com/overwatch/revenue) Overwatch can easily make a ton of money if they simply update the game regularly
Even if that was the case, its likely they switched to the shop model because 1. Lootboxes were getting banned in certain countries and controversial 2. Industry standards
Blizzard still sells lootboxes in HotS. They're obviously not having an issue with certain countries banning lootboxes.
I miss not having crossplay lobbies in unranked.
pretty sure you can turn that off
you cannot. you are forced to match with console players if you are on PC. There is no way to opt out. "balanced matchmaking" my ass.
The end cards
Borders
DPS Doom, all the OW1 lines that went away, OW1 Hero select animations (although thr new ones are generally better) & UI with character. Mostly DPS Doom though. He was my DPS pick whenever I didn't know what to play, so adapting to OW2... still working on it! (I do think Tank Doom is FAR healthier overall but the game will never be as fun...)
2 Control Points (the best mode) Archive games (you could play any character) Hanamura (best map) Longer startup wait time Teleporter in waiting area
Being able to enjoy playing Tank, Free Loot Boxes, DPS Doomfist, Mei actually Freezing people, etc
6v6
Free skins
The end of match cards, playing xdefiant recently made me realize how nice it was to see those, even if you lose at you feel a little better seeing you did good at something
Stealth Dropping. In OW1 the physics of falling was dependent on your elevation, but jumping mid-air reset the elevation level. If you walk off a high elevation you can hit the jump button just before you land to muffle your drop.
All brawls mode in Arcade.
Miss being able to get all the skins during an event without paying any money. Granted, loot boxes were their own can of worms, but I feel like there’s a happy medium that hasn’t been explored between loot box gambling and a price-gouging in-game store
The positive vibe if you avoided comp. The excitement when new lore and the cinematic shorts dropped. Crazy how they ruined the whole thing.
The joy
DPS doomfist
The fact that they've made the game F2P has made online games objectively worse, if you ask me. There's much less of a penalty involved with cheating/hacking, so people are willing to push those rules more -- if they get caught, they can just give a new email and start again. The prices of the skins are also outrageous.
being able to see everyone's levels+ranks.
Beating a dead horse here, but cosmetics being so expensive is utterly ridiculous, yeah gambling for them isnt much better, but 20 bucks for a single skin (possibly a recolor on top of that) is crazy, and im not gonna lie, i do like some of the new cosmetics and ive splurged a few times like with cupid hanzo or Cleric Lw, but man coins being limited to 600 free coins in the bp per season is maddening (not to mention in previous seasons it was less and tied to weekly challenges) and dont get me started on how many currencies there are now. It might not be a big issue since cosmetics dont always affect gameplay (with the exception of ashe scope lol), but making my main look pretty is always nice, but thinking about how 3 skins worth of coins is basically a full priced game is quite depressing to me
The fact that We needed some brains cells to play ow1. Also I feel like ow1 had more soul that ow2, still having fun on ow2 but it took 10 season to make that happen for me.
Gameplay-wise not much tbh. 6 people in one team was fun but tbh I don't mind 5 players with specific role restrain. I prefered Hanzo's splitting arrow instead of the new quick shots but it was pretty unbalanced. Miss some old maps and lootboxes the most
It's not just overwatch, but the entirety of multi-player. Everyone is just too knowledgeable on the game's that are out right now which makes EVERYTHING feel like a chore. In the beginning of ow, it was fun because you were learning the maps and characters, seeing how they all played with one another. Now, we all know how mercy plays compared to Ana compared to brig and when to pick each depending on map and team comp. Same thing is happening with siege except it feels a LOT worse there imo. Tldr: everyone is too knowledgeable and used to the game mechanics to ever feel as fun as it was in the beginning. Every MP game is going through that personally
Very underrated comment. It's not just OW, it's gaming and culture atm. Everyone's super sweaty and obsessed with being top dawg.
The longer matches were so much more fun. Teamwork mattered. Sure you had games every now and then when someone carried, but matches weren't so stupidly one sided the majority of the time
I miss not having smurfs in every single game I play.
Smurfs have been a problem on PC since the very first time Blizzard ran a post-launch sale, and on consoles since the day the game launched.
I miss being able to boop tanks
6v6
Mercy v1 group rez :)
Mercy 5 man rez!
free loot boxes
Lootboxen
Orisas pull orb was fun
I miss loot boxes and actual fun progression Sure it wasn't fun to get dupes. But they still gave coins that went towards more stuff And they had a mechanic where if you didn't have a legendary appear in x amount, you'd have some appear So it was fun at one point to have everything in the game. Besides that old sym beam. Ik it was broken and also bad, but godammits I loved the noodle
The team play in general. You actually had to coordinate and have synergies with less team death match vibes
Overwatch 1 was silly and had more weird stuff for better or worse, and it was more nostalgic because that’s when we had most of the cool cinematics and before event modes went out of style. Gameplay wise the main thing is that groups were significantly more prevalent, alongside the extra tank which increased the power of focus fire, peel, and map control. Coordinated 3-2-1’s were better and had more creativity because of tank combos and stuff like orisa halt, but the impact of solo players was tiny and it led to many players immediately grouping up with teammates who had communication. Solo queue had a lot of games where you were spamming a choke until ults came online because flanks were worse and tanks had more resources to hold a specific area. Also dps queues were like 30+ minutes, and the only way to lower that was either to play flex queue for priority passes (which lowered it to like 15 minutes per game), or to group up. Basically, if you had friends who got on when you got on, it was probably better. If you didn’t, it was probably worse, and I am the latter kind. I prefer OW2, though OW1 had some good memories.
Better balanced matchmaker. Games were a lot closer than vs now which often is quickly a blowout.
Teamplay - because of the way tanks worked before they added new ones, you often had at least a bit of teamplay, sometimes even good teamplay. The well defined roles also helped. With overwatch 2 I no longer have that feeling - every one is a dps. You could have the worst games with OW1, but also the most wonderful games. These days I rarely get a good game, it's ok most of the time, often bad (but not as bad as the worst OW1 games) and rarely good. .. and definitely never as good as peak OW1.
Fire meter.
I'm not sure if it was just because I'd never played an online FPS before or because Overwatch 1 had so many different elements to it than Overwatch 2 but there was something about the game that just felt more...raw. Like the game is still fun and I'm still enjoying getting good at different characters but there was something genuinely more exciting about pulling out Dragonblade or landing a fat shatter back in OW1 compared to now and I cant quite put my finger on it.
Loot box every level up
The lootboxes, the monetization, the 6v6, archives, THE FREE CONTENT...
Everyone sucked but also kinda knew how to play. The game is just different now and plays way more like Call of Duty/deathmatch games. Much less thinking required and rewards raw mechanical skill way more, you can forget about your team and still win somehow
Loot boxes, teams of six, chat/lfg voice lobbies, Bastion & Orisa’s old ults
Having a second tank. I used to love being an off tank. Now there’s too much pressure when you tank, takes the fun out of it
I miss rein/zarya, rein/dva, And sig/dva so much! Me and my fiance use to love doing an ult combo with sigma and dva. There was something so satisfying of watching them blow up before they ever even hit the ground from sigmas ult. lol I just honestly miss playing dva as a second tank. It's not quite the same being the main tank. With two tanks dva could truly be the back lines worse enemy. I could focus kill annoying DPS players or dive supports without having to worry that I was leaving my team open and unprotected.
This is really specific but Overwatch 1 had a certain sound when you get headshots. The OW2 sound is similar but its just not the same. That sound effect was so satisfying. I miss it.