Overwatch Megathread: Bastion is our friend

Out of curiosity, what level does 325 hours of Quick Play get you to? I’ve played 19 hours of quick play and competitive. I’m a level 252 with the vast majority of my time in Lucio Ball, Mei’s Snowball offensive and CTF, but I have no clue how much I’ve played though because those hours don’t get tracked.

I’d pick Mercy if we have units with a high rate of fire (Bastion, 76, D.va, etc), so I can amplify that damage. If we have some slower rate of fire guys (McCree, Roadhog, Hanzo, etc) I’d go Zen to amp the damage on the target so we can team up on them.

I use voice chat when I’m playing ranked solo queue but rarely in Quick Play, unless someone’s saying something interesting. It’s not worth the effort of callouts or dealing with salt in voice chat during Quick Play, but I find it essential in ranked play.

I’m level 360-something. On average I think every hour of playtime gets me one level up.

I never use voice chat with strangers BUT I don’t play comp as yet, and I feel like mics are more common on PC than PS4 (that I play on)? I don’t even use the overwatch chat function when with pals, we always just have a party chat instead

I use team voice for competitive because callouts are crucial and I often play backline so I have better visual than other team members. Strangely I’ve gotten very low amounts of harassment, which is different from harassment I’ve gotten in chat???

I mostly use voice chat because I mostly play grouped with my brother and we coordinate and also make dumb jokes. but I keep it plugged in and will pipe up when I see something usefull, like where symettra has boobytrapped

Here’s a video that points out some neat things to appreciate about Overwatch’s level-design.

I use voice chat in Comp and it’s a SERIOUS toss up. It depends on what rank you’re at and when you’re playing. I got stuck in bronze this time and voice chat is fucking horrible. It’s all shit about “HEY ARE YOU A GIRL” and “X hero requires no skill”. Last two seasons, I was in gold and silver, and the vox in those ranks is a lot more kind because people actually give a shit about winning. I’ve gotten so tired of it that I usually I just keep the chat open and mute myself.

I wish that Blizzard, rather than having a ping in place for healing, went the HotS route and had one for “request assistance”. As Mercy or Zenyatta, I don’t really need healing, but I do need someone to peel this Genji the fuck off me.

In other news, I’ve tried low gravity mode on the PTR and I can confirm that it’s the best thing about that game now. Nothing compares. Nothing comes close.

r/Overwatch and some other OW subreddits have been talking about a PS4 cheater that Blizzard hasn’t banned yet. He’s in the top 500 for comp. mode.

I can’t mention his name because it would count as witch hunting but he’s a hacker who DDoS attacks his opponents and then wins the game by holding their connection down, so they are unable to rejoin to the match. He is able to do this because the PS4 system has a bug: if someone joins to your party (voice chat) you are able to get his IP. So basically at the beginning of the match he creates a party, invites all six enemy players, and if one of them accepts the invite, nukes his connection.

After finishing the last season on 4200, his placement matches in season 5 put him to 2800, and I got to experience a match against him last night: Imgur: The magic of the Internet

I have lots of proof I can’t post here because of the witch hunting rule, on /r/OwConsole we have posts about him almost weekly. There’s video proof of him on youtube:

  • threatening his teammates who decided to throw the game because they didn’t want to support a hacker (everyone knows his name in grandmaster for doing this, he is like an infamous celebrity), telling them that he’s going to hack their account and expose their IP’s on his website

  • in another match, bragging about his hack on voice chat, saying that all enemy players accepted his party invites, and asking his teammates which enemy hero he should disconnect (a minute later he disconnects 4 enemy players).

  • countless videos from different uploaders, where he DDoS attacks the enemy and makes at least one of their players leave

And the best part: he was never banned. Not even once, he is still playing with his main account. He is doing this since march, every single day, and he hasn’t received any punishment. On console we don’t have a report system in Overwatch, and Sony tells us that we should contact Blizzard about it.

The back half of this video started to crystalize some things I was already thinking about after watching the latest season of Kimmy Schmidt this past couple weeks.

Kimmy Schmidt took some heat in the first season for revealing that a white rich lady was secretly native american, despite being played by the very white, [polish mostly] Jane Krakowski. despite the probably deserved flack the show used the angle to talk about mixed race and native american issues in a way that a lot of TV today and certainly historically just wouldn’t try.

Similarly with Overwatch the game has courted some controversy for it’s first nations Pharah skins and it’s Polynesian Roadhog skins which certainly feel at least a little like appropriation, and it if isn’t (if Pharah was always part First nations, if Roadhog is actually Polynesian or part Polynesian) they haven’t done a great job of communicating that. but in particular Tracers Lion Dance emote stuck out to me because that comes as a direct result of Overwatch having done a Lunar New Year event. and in fact probably all of these variably questionable cultural references probably stem from a deliberate attempt from the Overwatch team to represent a multicultural and global community instead of a more common America centric approach. It’s an attempt which, even just coming from Exotic Canada I appreciate.

None of this is to say that we should overlook the shortcomings in these or other works. and I certainly don’t want to tell people. least of all people in a minority how they should feel about any of this. I just think that as more and more creators make admirable attempts to step beyond their own cultural perspective and represent the broader diversity in the world we are more and more going to find instances where they misstep, and I think we need to have an awareness and an understanding that this sort of thing is going to accompany attempts to broaden the representation and the worldview of stories that we tell.

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Blizzard can make all the attempts they want but that also means they are absolutely 100% open to criticism. I don’t see the problem but I also don’t think people should go easy on it or give them undue backpats for it.

That’s all. It’s a giant company. This is part of the dance.

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oh, absolutely. not at all trying to take them off the hook for it. and with trying to represent a broader segment of the world there comes a responsibility to get it right. I just meant to say that it was interesting that this sort of misstep seems to come as a side effect of trying to get outside their comfort zone and not quite hitting the mark, rather than say, playing it very conservatively and filling your game with a bunch of white Americans. and perhaps that these sorts of mistakes are the growing pains that creators are going to have to be on the lookout for as society hopefully moves in the direction of better representation overall.

I suppose the elephant in the room here is that the best way to avoid that stuff is to build your diversity from the bottom up, and let diverse people tell their stories instead of a bunch of white dudes trying to tell them.

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So be real with me fake internet friends: Has anyone actually gotten a new skin from these anniversary lootboxes? Because I’ve opened over a dozen of them, and have gotten exactly 0 anniversary skins (but plenty of dupe older skins)

I’ve opened maybe 10 lootboxes, and I’ve gotten the Symmetra skin, a handful of dance emotes and plenty of profile pictures. I just want to get either the Pharah or Tracer skin, and then I’ll just buy the other one.

I wonder if they change the drop rates between events. I got almost every Christmas skin, but not a single skin from Uprising.

you uh, you might not want to hear this, but I’ve gotten the Hanzo, Zarya, Pharah and Mei skins so far.
For the Uprising event I didn’t pull a single skin though, so: swings and roundabouts.

I got all the skins I wanted in Uprising, got none of those I wanted (but still a few others) this time around. I have bought 20 lootboxes and opened like another 25 earned through gameplay and the sheer number of opened lootboxes vs. the contents have been a little disappointing.

Damn it, I just want that Mei skin.

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ban non-event legendaries from event lootboxes or up the dupe compensation by at least x3

or both

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RE: Uprising- I managed to pull Rein, McCree and Widow from said event. Have not bought any lootboxes since Halloweenie, where I failed to get Junk or Mercy >:(

The only dance emote I’ve gotten is Tracer, which is NICE, but I want that skin too. Luckily I have enough Overbucks to buy Tracer come next Sunday, but I also want that Junk dance.

I just find it so hard to believe that the dance emojis are going to be un-purchasable after this event.