100% on everything here. I love the idea of hero-specific challenges that aren't just a matter of waiting until you get lucky. And let other players know that you've done it with a cosmetic or a spray or something. If as Rein I consistently block enemy shatters, there should be a recognition for that. Maybe even have tiers -- So you could have a badge or something that shows bronze/silver/gold if you blocked 20%/35%/50% of shatters in your last 10 games. Other heroes could have similar challenges: D.Va - Used DM on a percentage of eatable ults. Widow - Average number of headshots. Baptiste - Number of teammates kept alive through otherwise lethal damage using IF. Ana - Ulting enemies slept, or healing blocked. Etc. etc. etc. Basically things that teach you to think about impact, and not just a raw stat like damage dealt or number of kills.
I like this, however, they would need to fix some things first. E.g. Immortality death prevention only counts when the damage done in a single hit/burst is greater than the heroes current health, which means, if for example soldier 76 still only did 19 damage then even if he should have killed squishy player if they weren't protected it wouldn't count towards IF deaths prevented. It's a really annoying thing about IF field. I don't know if this is the exact case but I know of times I've saved the entire team with it and it says I only saved 3 people. I think this is a great idea but it would need to be implemented carefully because of flaws/bugs like this.
TheBrokeDad they should not give rewards for stats. That would incentivize people to care more about stats then winning. That’s exactly what they were trying to avoid with the metals system.
@@tobe.moemeka The reason medals like damage dealt, kills, and objective time are misleading is because you can do them at the wrong time. A kill is useless if you were in 1v5. Sitting on the payload is the wrong move if you're a MT and you need to push ahead to take more ground. But it's almost never a bad time to block an enemy shatter, or sleep dart an ulting Pharah. These things are nearly always the right move, regardless of what else is happening. So I don't think incentivizing them is a bad thing.
@@curtispritchard5938 True. There would be challenges from a technical standpoint. But the end result is more people understand the game better, so it's a worthwhile goal I think.
Sorry about the audio issue around 16:55 to 18:10 guys, it uploaded a bit off but hopefully you can bear with it/used the closed captions if you really don't like it!
Did you base this entire video on the assumption that everyone playing this game, started upon release? Many players may have only been playing for only a couple of seasons.
"The best place to learn OW is outside of OW" "The medal system is built around making the player feel empowered and useful regardless of truth." See the flaw? Ow doesnt teach people how to Ow yet it rewards you for playing poorly. Holding people back. To be fair though, if you really care you would go study like anything else.
Would it be toxic if I just started linking this video to my team after crazy losses such as (this is real) I had a teammate tell me last night that Zaryas bubbles heal teammates...
I had a Lucio a while ago: he asked why I'm not just walking back as Rein after 3 Sym turrets hit my back while walking pass a choke. This was BEFORE the slow-downs had been nerfed.
I (literally) was thinking of this today after a maddeningly frustrating series of games where my team simply ran off doing their own thing in all directions. I came to the conclusion is that I blame Blizzard firstly for the overall lack of basic and fundamental understanding of playing within the context of a team. I am not a high level/skill player but basic, fundamental things like not trickling in, fighting around your tanks and peeling for supports are lost on a large majority of our player base. Blizzard should have integrated and maintained a level of "in-game" education. People shouldn't (and I think likely wont) always come to RUclips or educational Twitch streams to learn the game. Today was the 1st time since release where I literally was "this" close to uninstalling. I dont have 4-6 hours a day to play and I am tired of the fun lottery of Overwatch just to get a decent game. This game is FAR from simple despite appearing so on the surface. I have spoken.............
Totally agree. I cant even practice new characters in quick play anymore because Blizzard allows level 5,6,7 beginners onto teams. Common sense, get to level 25 before qp so people can actually learn. Matchmaking is fundamentally broken so I gave up.
I've brought this topic up myself before, but I'm genuinely so glad you've covered this - I don't know if you took inspiration from any of my previous comments, but it's comforting to know we're on the same page with this one. Keep up the good work bud!
It's so hard to know what you did wrong when you lose in overwatch. Other people can say "watch your replays", but what am I supposed to look out for if I have very little prior experience in this type of competitive game? This lack of meaningful information that teaches key concepts of the game really stops many people from deliberate practice, and I am so supportive of the ideas shared in this video.
A counterpoint to this: It's hard to make a guide on how to play each of the roles when the roles themselves get drastic changes over a few months. For instance, during dive meta, some people thought Rein was unplayable. Of course in low ranks, this didn't matter too much but the question came down to, how would you teach the tank role? Do you pick the best tank Winston and go with his principles? Do you pick Rein? Let's say Rein because he is an easier hero to understand. How do you get players to transition between characters of the same role when they play so differently? A Rein guide might be nice but it translates poorly to learning D.Va, for instance. What about if the game develops a completely different style of playing the guide character, such as during the GOATS meta. Should the guide be updated for that as well? If we want Blizzard to develop a guide for new players, we should probably establish as a community what should be in the guide. In my head, those things would probably be what some people refer to as fps fundamentals. Things like holding corners, high ground advantage, sightlines and LOS and how LOS abilities work, projectiles vs hitscan, basic ultimate mechanics (as in what counts for ult charge and what does not), favor the shooter and how it affects 1v1s. This can go alongside basic team concepts like avoiding trickling, playing for synergy, basic team formation, etc. Feel free to add more ideas here. IMO anything beyond the absolute basics becomes a bit more difficult to implement as they can change in appearance over time.
@@austinbryan6759 This seems like an idea we can do already with the Workshop. Imagine instead of posting video guides, you play Workshop tutorials and Blizzard hopefully can implement them into the actual game as a card if they're good enough.
I've climbed from low gold to diamond since the game has come out. For a long time I didn't get much further than low plat even though my mechanics had gotten much better over time. It wasn't until I got private coaching to really learn the game and what game sense in Overwatch should include. Back when Call of Duty Black Ops 2 released I got it Christmas 2011. I had never owned a call of duty game before and had never really played a console shooter online competitively before, but just by playing the game and watching RUclips videos from pro players I was able to learn the game and get top 10 in the US comp ladder for the game in only a few months. A similar situation happened with Apex Legends. I had never played Battle Royale games before, and wasn't good at it. But just by playing I got way better and better and climbed the competitive ladder. All that to say there's something different about Overwatch that makes it much more harder to learn and improve in than other competitive FPS games. The coaches I've worked with have said that my mechanics are similar to a masters player, but my game sense is that of a plat. Which explains why I'm between the 2 ranks. Idk if it's just me, but game sense has been harder to learn in overwatch than other FPS games I've played in the past 10 years even with all of the educational content online. It's an ever changing thing that can be difficult to piece together in a comp match with 11 players I've never played with or against before not to mention a meta that rewards ability usage over raw mechanical skill so just hitting head shots won't always create the impact you'd normally expect from an FPS.
You need to recognize when it is your time to shine and when to encourage the team to do stuff. It is hard to see when something is your fault if a teammate fucked you over or made a misplay that was unavoidable for you. I forget who said it but 33% of games you need to be the difference maker, 33% of games your team wins it, and 33% of games are unwinnable regardless. The meta pre barrier nerf I was able to carry 85% of games by simply choosing Orisa and duoing with a sigma but now this statistic is relevant again.
I would argue that Trickling In is the single biggest problem for Overwatch. So many people playing this game come from other shooters. Not ever understanding that you can't 1 v 6 even when your ult is up. They're so used to regular old team death matches from CoD, Battlefield and even Halo, that they refuse to see how much MOBA aspects are apart of OW.
As for the medal system, I believe it was Surefour who I heard float this idea: There should be a “% of healing received” stat. The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve come to believe that if it were the ONLY medal it would be better than our current stats. Hear me out... At its core, % of healing received (PHR) is an indication of where the team’s resources are going. It can be read into multiple ways. Say you have a Genji. If he’s always in the backline spamming “I need healing” and is getting 2% of the team’s healing resource, you know his positioning is terrible and he is feeding. If he’s playing in a good position on the flank in LOS and moving in with tanks, and is complaining about getting 2% PHR, then he is justified and it’s a support problem. If your Rein is getting 10% PHR and is always trying to get the team through the choke, you know the supports are either trying to dps, or the other tank is face tanking to get all the heals just to live, or the dps need to be pocketed because they are playing way to aggressive before the engage. Conversely, if your Rein is gettin 70% PHR then you know he is being far too aggro and forcing the supports to bail him out and starving his teammates of the ability to make plays. Clearly this kind of stat would be beneficial. A couple other useful stats could be “damage taken” and “damage dealt to focused target,” the latter could maybe be calculated by if you deal damage to an enemy that has been shot by a teammate within 4 seconds or something. Regardless, the key to all of these stats is that it is viewable by everyone on the team. This will contribute to everyone’s understanding of what is happening in the match and what needs to change, on the fly in-game. Edit: Also I love the ideas presented in the video SVB! So cool, especially the in-game tutorial/tips and actually connecting the timed challenges to the hero instead of just “play until you win 9 times.”
what if the problem is that no one is peeling for supports? if your supports are constantly dueling flankers, regardless if they win or lose the duel, that's time spent not healing and it won't reflect in the PHR stat. in the time your ana or mercy is dueling a tracer or genji, your rein or orisa could be gunned down. hell, even moira could struggle with this, despite the fact that she would win most duels with perfectly timed fades and damage orb. if your healers attention is being taken away by flankers, the problem is that they need a dps in the backline. and again, that wouldn't show up in a PHR stat.
@@endless_del except it will, if they're not healing during that time it means that the percents aren't changing, if rein was at 30% phr then it'll stay like that until they start healing others, this can also be thought of situationally if they have a lot of flankers then the backline is gonna be healed more etc
Definitely agree, I regretfully didn’t start really trying to learn how the game is supposed to be played until I was almost a silver portrait. Once i did i went from gold to diamond. I’m still trying to cut bad habits from ignorance of game best practices.
My favorite noob behavior as a 5 time top 500 who doesn't play anymore was always ALWAYS when people sub masters came to a dead stop at a choke and just stood there. Like...hello ? Move? Make space? Initiate please? Nope, stand still until everyones dead. I had a diamond Rein tell me once it was my job to stand behind his shield and kill everyone before he could move forward. UHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
This is why I main tank. I win the majority of my games by pressing W. I can't even begin to describe how many times I had to initiate a fight, while playing DPS. My tanks would stand at the choke and yell at me to get picks
They need to change the training room to more.. Realistic character models, the training bots have outrageously large head hitboxes, the 2 bots that do shoot, shoot way too slow and with way too low of damage to test how barriers or Zarya bubbles would get affected in an actual game. (Literally takes like 4 minutes to reach 100 charge on Zarya) and just in general Ive seen people make small additions to the training range that have made it so much more realistic with Pharah's flying unpredictably, widow grappling through the air just replace most of the training bots with actual characters then you can just get a feel for actual hitboxes not huge over exaggerated ones.. Anything small like that could already make the game much easier to learn at least on a mechanical level
Too many of my teammates … (1) seem to think the Only Important Thing is to stand on the objective (good luck with your 1v6); (2) will think to click "Group Up" but won't actually pause to wait for others (good luck with your 1v6); and (3) are only ever aware of things that affect them directly. Are you guys not even noticing the Reaper, the Mei, the Winston, the Rein (!!) in the back line? Do they play with sounds off, only ever looking forward, instantly forgetting the crazy aggro Rein who just charged past? Maybe so (good luck with your 1v6). Anyway, agree that a lot more in-game education would be great, but some of what's needed is much-much more basic than what you described.
100000% everything here. I was talking to a friend last night who is painfully new to the game and he has no idea how it sorms. He plays every night but watches no content. This means he has no Meta Game practice, Point of View, or metric for how the game is played. On top of this, he has LITTLE understanding to what heroes do what. But one thing he said rang true..."I wish the hero screen had a better description on what each ability does"...this was right after he didnt know the Shield on Hammond procs from proximity to enemies. He had no idea and was doing it PRE slam. I WISH the game gave a little tutorial video, not online, on what the hell each character does, is supposed to do and what a pro looks like
I have an idea, why not use the workshop to make tutorials to teach prople how to play properly? For example, a dive tutorial where you program a Winston to jump on an enemy and then you, as Dva, have to protect him with your matrix. You win if Winston kills the enemy and doesn't die.
This would probably be best as Blizzard might not have the expertise of teaching specifics like that. I do feel like Blizzard should do something for extremely basic concepts.
You take content creation to another level that nobody else takes it to. I love the ideas, I agree with all of your suggestions 100% and I hope Blizzard hears your voice. Keep up the killer work!
The weird part about the Mercy challenge was someone complaining they couldn't get her skin because the queue times were over 10 minutes. In other words, someone who refused to play anything but dps was mad they couldn't do that to get a support exclusive skin.
It's funny, but before even mentioning Dota, that's exactly the game I was thinking of. I've quit that game multiple times because of the community, and having to play with the greediest 4 DPS line-ups, and people who had no clue how to team fight. I started playing the game about 8 years ago, and 3 years in the community was just like Overwatch's. It took a while for the base level of Dota's community to raise the floor of the game to decency, which makes it less accessible to newer players, but the game has also done a great job of building teaching mechanics within the game. Dota 2 is the best designed game I know. No redundant characters despite 120 of them, and there can be no mistake that winning objectives matter more than stats. Like supports know they won't have have the best stats, so they just do what they need to do to help others put up a strong game. Some hard carries know their win condition isn't kill/death ratio or dmg stats, but to farm and push until they are powerful and then they win when it matters. For example, Naga Sirens for most part may only get 10 kills and 28,000 dmg to heroes as the hard carry because they aren't fighting most of the game, but once they are farmed up, they are almost guaranteeing a win, while other heroes may put up 60,000 dmg and 20 kills, but they can't actually take over a game late, like a Lina for example. In Dota, roles and objective gaming are clear roads to victory, not stat padding. That's what I love about that game. OW has been doing some of the things Dota has recently done to encourage better team play, like role ques and stuff. OW will get it right eventually I hope, it may take a bit of time, but yeah they do need to show more care for teaching.
this is really good! You don't just say that its a problem but you also address a well thought out and practical solution. I really appreciate this hopefully more will too!
I've tried to teach a few of my mates how to play the game. They're pretty casual so they're not going to go and watch videos. Trying to explain all the tips and tricks and even the basics was really hard. I had to make a smurf because my games were too hard! I don't want to get them to play with bots too much, that would build bad habits.
I'm glad I found this channel, I've been trying to understand what I should be doing with certain heroes midfight and all the youtube videos are just basic tips that ive already heard
I have 60 hours in overwatch and 2100+ hours in Rocket League and I just wanna say that game is amazing at training its players. The difference between a plat two years ago and a plat now is night and day, both tactically and especially mechanically
SVB I love you but, it's really not fair to blame Blizzard for the lack of information when the game was intentionally designed to encourage players to learn through experimentation. I think many players who experienced the beta and launch of the game will agree that those early days were the most fun in Overwatch's history. No one knew what they were doing and were trying out different things to learn. Even the basic rules such as players per team, the payload etc. were intentionally left out, I think so that players could get into the action as quickly as possible. And as you can see, no one had a problem understanding these rules, even if they don't always pay attention to them. I can totally get behind the medal system being awful though. It's too easy to draw conclusions from it, positive or negative, and it practically breeds toxicity.
I’m pretty sure Blizzard doesn’t want a meta or one way to think. They want everyone to find their own way to play and every hero be usable all the time. This is why there isn’t any educational content. They don’t want a meta or a “conventional idea”
For a game seemingly built to be simple to understand, it sure does have a lot of issues communicating itself. Really wish Blizzard could at the very least add in ingame 1st party resources, even if it's as simple as a 1st party hitbox viewer/tester, anything is better than the anxiety generating grindfest we have to go through now to understand when pressing a button is good or not. :/
I actually think the problem is even *more* deep rooted than you suggest. Blizzard aren't just not implimenting resources for players to actually learn the concepts of the game, I genuinely think they don't understand them thenselves. The impression I get from interviews and the abysmal balance of the game is that the development team are ignorant (see 12 months of the Goats meta) and arrogant (see Jeff's responses at the latest Blizzcon press conference, especially his comments on power creep). I don't have any faith in the development team anymore, I think they're bad at their jobs and the only way I see anything close to what you're suggesting being implimented is if Overwatch is handed over to people with even a little bit of humility and competitive understanding.
hillarious that you made the super jump example. because blizzard actually doesnt like advanced techniques that much. they will even patch them out sometimes, because its always better to just have a narrow streamlined design of a character when said character also by accident could have really exciting techniques that the devs didnt intend. so then you can patch around those advanced techniques. oh boy that sure sound cool. nah uh, not for blizzard.
Two things about the mercy- challenge: 1. I don't think they will ever do a challenge about an unintended mechanic/glitch 2.Another suggestion would be an special workshop-mode. Like the one for Rein to block stuff like other shatters and sleeps. "Play this mode in the arcade-> get 20 successful blocks in a row-> get your spray
i think doing that for all skins isn't too smart from a business standpoint, maybe an animated recolour for reaching a threshold like healing for supports damage for DPS and maybe ult damage for tanks, I think it would encourage playing better for a reward
While I'd love to see this sort of thing implemented, I think it's been a conscious decision on Blizzard's part not to. OW has thrived by appealing to a largely casual audience, they don't want people to feel like they're playing the game wrong as that turns away casual fans. The medals 'work' in that respect as people only notice them when they're doing well, if it displayed KDA and some more adcanced stats that draws attention to the negatives of your play.
this is amazing! have you gotten a hold of any of the educational content creators to have their help to push this? people with closer ties to blizzard? idk karQ, jayne, stylosa?
Something I've always wished Overwatch would do which could be a neat way to teach people how to play different heros would be some mission focused co-op maps. Like an infiltration mission with the Widow, Sombra and Reaper, where they have segments that show off the specific, hard to pull off moves of the different heros, and teach you a bit about how to go about playing them through mini objectives - Plus maybe even extra challenges to teach harder moves, get bonus xp if you manage a specific event where you need to pull off a in air headshot as Widow, or get behind enemy lines unseen as reaper). If nothing else it would be fun as heck, and let you get the feel for different heros, without the pressure of having to figure it out mid match.
@SVB I've never watched guides and educational content to the degree I do for Overwatch. Perhaps this is largely due to Blizzards total lack of doing it themselves. Although years of watching guides and I'm still stuck just shy of diamond, so I wonder if there is a way to make better use of the knowledge I pick up? I'm a decently smart person, but still struggle to climb. I've been plat my entire 3 years, just moving from low plat to high 😑
P.S. I work full time and am in my 20s, so I also wonder if I'm just not committed enough? I have over 1000hrs, but I would love your thoughts on why I'm still stuck, @SVB. Love your insights!
As boring as it is I hear watching your own replays and writing things down that you can do better is a huge difference maker, and yes time played can greatly affect how successful you climb. Especially as a average player.
I suspect Blizzard would counter argue that tactical and strategic education is the responsibility of the community. There is plenty of content on You tube aimed at providing players of all levels with advice, examples, theory crafting etc. to improve their play. I agree with the answer to "Why are we so bad" is perhaps because there is no (effective) in game incentive to be a better player. I guess I am too cynical or I know Blizzard too well to expect them to go through the time and expense to implement some of the very appealing suggestions you have made. Thank you for the excellent video (except for the audio issue which is a minor thing for me) and for your desire to see improved play across the board.
Thank you so much for making this video. Perfectly describes my frustration with OW, and why I quit back in July (after being a consistent player since launch). I agree the lack of education/knowledge among the players comes down to blizzard’s poor management of the game. But I think it’s more than blizzard not having a desire to educate us; I think they are actually afraid to educate the players. Because I think from a game design perspective they actually don’t have a very strong vision for how the interactions in the game should happen. So they might be wary of instructing the players how the game works if they themselves don’t really know or don’t have the desire to lead us towards *something.* You can see the proof of this in Blizzard’s choices when designing heroes and patches; the list of bad patches and decisions is too long and we all are familiar, but one thing has always been the same: they have been constantly trying to straddle the fence between casual and hardcore gameplay and they fail to draw proper distinctions between these philosophies within the game and within the different modes/playlists. They want the game to be everything to all types of players but in reality this just creates a lot of toxicity/frustration because the game itself lacks direction. And now they are going to pull it in even more directions and make the community even more atomized with the PvE Overwatch 2 expansion. They should fix the glaring issues with ranked and the overall balance issues and lack of player knowledge before even considering a whole new expansion that will add even more balance issues and information gaps to the game, but oh well. My opinion is the game won’t improve unless blizzard is able to 100% honestly acknowledge the flaws in this game and actually have a plan how to fix them and a very strong vision/roadmap for how the game should look in the future. But I think they’re just gonna try to keep it going as is for as long as possible and just add new characters/maps until the game just dies, never achieving the status of legendary e-sport that it could’ve been under different leadership/creative direction
Well try to answer the question objectively, how should the game be played? Should it be played aggressively with mobile characters? Should it be methodical positioning? Should it rely on the dps role? Tank role? Support? Game developers who pigeonhole their games tend to suffer in the long run. Hell, Blizzard did it themselves with Starcraft 2. They learned from that mistake, decided to let the players figure out the game themselves, and patched to enable rather than disable. This is why you see more buffs than nerfs.
Gaussian Entity I think the best place for the balance of the game to be is in a state where new players receive enough introductory information and helpful tips along their progression (like all of SVB’s suggestions) so that the majority of the players start on the same baseline of game knowledge before entering ranked. Ranked should also be improved with features like pick/ban on characters and map voting in addition to SVBs ideas about in-game tips. Then at the highest levels of play there should be no skill cap; I think Blizzard should also walk back their decisions to take out what they deemed “exploits” that require skill to execute (like the Genji triple jump) because these mechanics allow for the skill ceiling of the game to climb higher as the game ages, giving it longevity. Before OW I was a dedicated TF2 player, and part of the reason I logged 100x more hours in TF2 was because there were many mechanics in the game that required deep knowledge of how the game engine worked in order to break it. Techniques like rocket jumping that when mastered can open up ways to play never thought possible. Unfortunately blizzards philosophy towards development and balance is one focused on polish and consistent/predictable gameplay rather than competition. I would argue that this philosophy pigeonholed the game far more than what they did with Starcraft 2, etc, because it punishes experienced players who put in the time to master techniques in order to make new players more comfortable or not feel like they have a disadvantage. But at the same time Blizzard has chosen to provide absolutely no help to guide new players how the game actually works; they put too much energy in telling us how NOT to play (thru their balance changes and character/map additions) rather than creating a space where players can explore their characters to the highest reaches of the skill ceiling while rewarding team work and game knowledge as well. OW is not even close to achieving this, because in the majority of ranked games people don’t even know proper pathing or avoiding trickling or any kind of basic knowledge required for a barely coherent game.
Map oriented hero tips would be amazing, because players would be able to make a well educated decision, before starting a game. Honestly the #1 mistake I see players in my rank making, are that they rush into the enemy alone, and don't understand why they died. The team eventually dies with them, because they believe that they should move up with the tank (after their mistake, even), and die too.
I like the idea of having challenges and honestly I thought this was gonna be the big thing Blizz would implement this year. Blizz can definitely do better with challenges to encourage people to do things they normally wouldn't do. For example: Win 5 games as tank in a competitive game to earn this spray. The second tier can be: Win 5 games as Winston in a competitive game. The third tier can be: Average less than x deaths per 10 on Winston in competitive games. If they replicate this formula for every character and do it often enough, it would incentivize people to stop being one-tricks and possibly help them to learn the game on their own without Blizz actually needing to add training wheels or guides to teach the players directly.
I love the ideas presented here. The tool tips seem really helpful and the hero specific challenges seems like a fantastic idea; Heroes of The Storm, another Blizzard game, has been doing challenges for ages that encourage the player to play a specific role and in some cases achieve specific goals e.g. do X amount of damage in a winning game. I’m not saying the HOTS system is perfect but I think it does help the game and Overwatch could easily take a leaf out of that book in terms of making the challenges feel more exciting rather than “play any hero mindlessly until you win enough games and you get a skin. Yay.” Some great points SVB!
The build guides in dota were honestly amazing. I took for granted how much they actually helped me learn and how well implemented they were. Seamless implementation in real matches. I'm not sure how well it would work in an FPS, but I want Blizzard to try.
The entire reason I'm nearly diamond now is because of you, even though I got banned from your discord server (and metal cup) for some, questionable reasons, I still watch your videos because you have a great and educational channel. Do I regret what I did that spiralled into my ban, of course, I would be much better if I didn't make those mistakes, however, your channel has gotten me from low gold to high plat Thank you for everything you have done to and for this community
You didn't mention how utterly useless the F1 Hero Information screen is which gives me the impression that you completely forgot about its existence... Something which I wouldn't blame you for. Seriously that thing is atrocious. It doesn't give ANY numbers whatsoever.. What's the Cooldown? What's the damage? Range? Other effects? ANYTHING?
Here’s the problem is there are tons of players who simply don’t care. I’ve tried to give people tips on the middle of the game in nice ways and they just tell me to shut up and play the game.
I just started playing Overwatch right before role que and placed low gold or high silver. Now at the end of the year I'm high gold to low plat. With help from friends who have been playing for 2 years plus. I can say it has really improved my play and game sense. To another year of learning.
I agree with you on the importance of education - OW is at its worst when you feel you’re losing because of cluelessness rather than because the other team are better.
This is dead on!!! NO offense to players that have 700 plus hours in in Plat or below, but they get extra triggered when someone tells them to play right ( WHICH SHOULD BE SECOND NATURE WITH THAT MANY HOURS). Either they don't wanna grow, or they they are to stubborn to grow.
Been saying this from the start. Blizzard made a complex niche team game, Disneyfied it, then completely failed to tell all the starry eyed casuals how to play.
Wasnt there an application called visor that was being used a year ago. I vaguely remember it giving actually useful tips to you, like ult tracking, but it was banned by blizzard. I feel like it would be good for the game for blizzard to do something similar for quickplay while you rank up to 25 then a much more watered down version in comp.
i really like the idea of those Rein tips for point A kings row attack. Is there a full list someone in the community has made anywhere with all heros for each map?
Well, I kinda understand why Blizzard doesn't bother. They had a whole effing cinematic about STAYING BEHIND THE SHIELD, Orisa announces that STAYING BEHIND THE SHIELD is recommended every single match, every single queue you get a HINT that grouping up may be beneficial, and people still go in front of their tanks all the time and tricle in. The most fundamental flaw of Overwatch is it's description as a FPS. It sold copies of the game, sure, but it is also responsible for why general skill is so effing low. >50% of the player base want to play an FPS, when it is a team-based moba.
Love the video SVB, can you do a new orisa guide or vod review? I've played orisa as my main for the last few seasons and climbed big time with her. Since the latest patch I'm absolute dog shit with her, the barrier goes down very fast and it's hard to defend with her now.
Speaking of DOTA built-in guides, I wish Overwatch would allow you to select any character ability in Hero Gallery and watch tons and tons of clips from OWL of people using it correctly. Right now, the clips are so bad! They have this great resource of OWL replays and could just build a VAST library of clips from pros doing everything that can be done with that ability. For instance, Halt would have clips of halt+hook, halt environmental spots, halting a Wrecking Ball to kill his speed, halt+rock, halt+slam, halting Rein to create distance and so on. Maybe there could even be some small paragraph explaining how the ability is being used to accomplish the basic aims of the game. That way people would learn what those basic aims even are! (zoning, looking for pick, creating space, forcing cooldown, pathing, splitting, pressuring backline, stalling, countering an ability etc) Maybe you could even subscribe so you get like a new "new item" marker on the hero in the gallery whenever new clips are added. God I mean sometimes you'd wonder if people are actually even getting paid to come to work at Blizzard HQ and think about what could do to actually improve the game. They could just freelance that stuff for aspiring coaches, analysts and pedagogues for what is a big sum of money for those freelances but virtually nothing for Blizzard. Because Blizzard devs have no idea how their own game works, let's be honest.
This is such a bizarre video. I never watched RUclips videos on Overwatch until I was in T500. When was the last time you saw a game tell you how to complete it. Blizzard wants you to learn the game yourself. Use your brain and predict what will happen. The more hero’s you play, the more you understand the game. (You’ll learn what to do if that hero is fighting you, you’ll know the weakness etc) -> e.g. I play hog and I know ana is more counter, so once I hear or see one of her abilities is used is my chance to be more aggressive etc. Things like this is what makes the game fun regardless of the shit that’s in there
Maybe having guides for each rank would be better. A guide for bronze players would be very basic, then a little more advanced for silver etc. Would help players try to get out of their rank
I love how passionate and how much you care about the community. But I can’t agree with you that Blizzard has the responsibility to teach people how to play. If someone truly wants to get better they will do so. People are all in their ELO for a reason
Okay, "responsibility" might be the wrong word..... It's grossly suboptimal toward the goal of making a better experience. Of course everyone is in the rank they are in for a reason, but that is not a case against what he is saying. Imagine playing football where all of the players don't know anything at all but the basic rules and scoring of the game. Of course the naturally gifted players are going to dominate the game. A gifted player who is fast and almost never drops a pass will be able to have a great impact on the game but if we still have those gifted players run to the end zone screaming for the tight end to block for them every time the play goes wrong literally every single freaggin play, that is no fun at any level of the game. Playing more and increasing ones skill would not help the problem of having unfun games because of the misunderstandings but doing things that increase the overall understanding might.
@@TheRealNickG Ahh makes sense. I hate to nitpick, but your bit on playing more and increasing ones skill not helping is indeed true. BUT if you truly did want to improve and get better you most likely will find other avenues to improve your play.besides just brute forcing your way through. Practice smart, not hard.
I think a game mode where 2 players are selected, one from diamond and above and the other from platinum and below and then those players are matched together on a two man team. They are then in a team together for a short season period say 1 week where they queue up together and face off against other 2 man teams in a 2v2 competitive system (a similar thing could be done in a 3v3 environment.) In this mode you are stuck playing with the person you get matched with for that entire season whether the season be 1 hour long or 1 week long or whatever. In this situation, the higher ranked player would be encouraged to give helpful tips to the lower ranked player, as they would be gaining rank in this competitive system (the SR gain and loss for both players would be win/loss based only, where win streaks cause you to gain more SR per each consecutive win and the same for loss streaks.). I think this sort of mode would be really awesome for the game especially if it came out with a regular 2v2 or 3v3 competitive mode where players can group up or solo q as normal. This "buddy" type mode would be really interesting where a high ranked player would be encouraged to help the lower ranked player get better at the game in order to net more consecutive wins. I imagine a system where the team that wins is usually determined by the skill of the lower ranked player and not the carry of the high ranked player. This mode would be broken into a best of 5 rounds to determine the winner, first the high ranked players and low ranked players would be separated so they face of in individual 1v1's simultaneously to determine the first 2 rounds, then for the remaining rounds a 2v2 situation would take place. Let me know what you think about this type of idea, im not a game designer so im not sure if this is realistically possible but it could be interesting.
Since the announcement of Overwatch 2, this is the type of thing I want them to include in the PvE mode. Essentially, like you said, reward the players for doing the things they're supposed to do, and punish them for doing the things that are stupid. An easy example is the Reinhardt. Charging in during the PvE mode is probably suicide. Play with your team and smack anyone in the face who gets too close. If they all get to close, YOU ARE ALLOWED TO BACK UP. Maybe if you team wipe, you can get a tip. "If the enemy begins to push on you with a lot of resources, it's okay to back up, and wait for a moment." etc etc. While your description with the little red dot was clear, I feel like with the immense amount of maps, locations, hold points, objectives and heroes, it was be unlikely that there would be fleshed out tips for specific heroes. My thought, prior to watching this video, was using the PvE scenarios to teach players about whats good and what's not. On the other hand, with your points, you could have Hero-specific, tutorial maps. For example, learn how to play Reinhardt in optimal situations, like Kings Row. Or learn how to play long range heroes like widow on Junkertown or Havana. A good explanation of why a hero is strong on certain maps will help players to carry that information over to other maps. Doing it in this manner might also have a player play more heroes, and not just one. Lucio is strong on a lot of control points, but maybe not as much on Junkertown, whereas other supports like Zen, Ana, or Baptiste might be a better choice.
In truth though, I have question for the community. I’m a relatively new PC player about three months, swapping from Xbox. I was diamond on console, and I still find myself having trouble with the mouse-hanging out in silver on dps currently and plat on tank and support. I’m currently running 5.5 sens, 800dpi, but I’m playing on a mousepad from 1995. It’s tiny; would an xl mousepad really help with being able to have better arm movement and aim? Thanks!
The problem can be summed up in one word. eSports. Whenever a company moves in that direction, it always leaves the game and new players behind. The issue with the hero specific challenge is probably because it will only allow 1 player per match to make progress on the challenge. Still, I get it. There must be a way to teach people about heroes.
What I still miss is some kind of in-game-statistics so you can see who is carrying and who is lagging (elims, kda, etc). This would make the life of a support much easier. Also hiding your profile should be forbidden/removed, all stats should be public and there should be websites showing them. This gives players a way to compare and check progress.
Hero specific challenges are very interesting, but I can see some problem if this was happening as an event challenges. For Mercy example, everyone will try to fight to play mercy in the game and it might be really different for people to finish the challenge during the event. Also, the game quality during the event might be awful because one person in the team is more focused on challenge than actual winning. However, I think this can be a good additional to achievements system or something new just for educational purpose. Maybe pressing F1 shows hero skill description as well as available and completed achievements for that hero. To motivate players, perhaps players get special skin for that hero if they finish all the challenges as they have mastered a hero.
Pretty sure Blizzard is thinking of it as an mmo where new players will ask senior players how to play and in turn create a stronger sense of community. If they are maybe allow senior players of a certain sr to sign up for some mentor thing and new players can click on some get mentored button in the menue and first person to respond gets put in a group with them
I love the tip system you suggested. I have a bronze/silver dps acct to play with my friend and my god it's a different world down there. God bless their souls
One problem for learning Overwatch is that in the normal game, you can't know what map you'll be playing. So you may have watched a bunch of videos on how to play a certain hero, and suddenly you're playing that hero's worst map. How great would it be to have an arcade game that rotates daily to play just one point of one map?
The game simply needs a personalized review system that spoonfeeds each player what they did well, what they did poorly and what they need to work on after every single game. All this needs be baked into the Video review system. Complicated perhaps but would be a really good addition for people in ranked. I.e “You lost this game because of x,y,z action, if you held your ult for a fight that was already lost you may have turned the tide next fight..” etc
I think one of the reasons OW became super popular at launch was because of all the things the game does to make you feel like you´re playin good. The medal system and the on fire bar mean nothing gameplay wise, but its a like a pat in the back saying "hey, you´re pretty good", or even worse "hey, you´re best than the others" even if you´re playing poorly (Moira, Road and Zarya players are the most affected by this). The problem with this is that gives you little information about what is actually happening, and it works as an incentive for toxic behavior against YOUR TEAM (i have more medals, so i should blame the lack of progress to others), wich results in a general lack of cooperation. My suggestion is that Blizzard should either: 1) Remove the medals, and only provide feedback of your own stats in comparison to your past results in the same map with the same character; or, 2) Give us MORE information so we evaluate it more more accurately. Ex. instheat of showing your medals by pressing tab, show us the exact numbers of damage, heal, etc. that each player of the team has in that exact moment. This will not only mitigate the problem of the toxic dps moira gold medal overlord, but it will also help the rest of the team to check witch part of the strategy is being walled by the enemy team and, hoppefully, do something about it besides flaming.
my first thought on your idea about having the hero challenges require hero-specific things worries me to the extent that that would mean EVERYONE is trying to play that character to get the achievements so it would be kind of difficult. Maybe something more general like ok the challenge is for mercy but the specifics of the challenge revolve around the support class or something so you wouldn't necessarily ONLY have to play mercy to earn your way toward the challenge.
100% on everything here. I love the idea of hero-specific challenges that aren't just a matter of waiting until you get lucky. And let other players know that you've done it with a cosmetic or a spray or something.
If as Rein I consistently block enemy shatters, there should be a recognition for that. Maybe even have tiers -- So you could have a badge or something that shows bronze/silver/gold if you blocked 20%/35%/50% of shatters in your last 10 games.
Other heroes could have similar challenges:
D.Va - Used DM on a percentage of eatable ults.
Widow - Average number of headshots.
Baptiste - Number of teammates kept alive through otherwise lethal damage using IF.
Ana - Ulting enemies slept, or healing blocked.
Etc. etc. etc.
Basically things that teach you to think about impact, and not just a raw stat like damage dealt or number of kills.
And stuns interrupting cast abilities and ults. I don’t know why they show dva eating ults and not this.
I like this, however, they would need to fix some things first. E.g. Immortality death prevention only counts when the damage done in a single hit/burst is greater than the heroes current health, which means, if for example soldier 76 still only did 19 damage then even if he should have killed squishy player if they weren't protected it wouldn't count towards IF deaths prevented. It's a really annoying thing about IF field. I don't know if this is the exact case but I know of times I've saved the entire team with it and it says I only saved 3 people.
I think this is a great idea but it would need to be implemented carefully because of flaws/bugs like this.
TheBrokeDad they should not give rewards for stats. That would incentivize people to care more about stats then winning. That’s exactly what they were trying to avoid with the metals system.
@@tobe.moemeka The reason medals like damage dealt, kills, and objective time are misleading is because you can do them at the wrong time. A kill is useless if you were in 1v5. Sitting on the payload is the wrong move if you're a MT and you need to push ahead to take more ground. But it's almost never a bad time to block an enemy shatter, or sleep dart an ulting Pharah. These things are nearly always the right move, regardless of what else is happening. So I don't think incentivizing them is a bad thing.
@@curtispritchard5938 True. There would be challenges from a technical standpoint. But the end result is more people understand the game better, so it's a worthwhile goal I think.
Sorry about the audio issue around 16:55 to 18:10 guys, it uploaded a bit off but hopefully you can bear with it/used the closed captions if you really don't like it!
Did you base this entire video on the assumption that everyone playing this game, started upon release? Many players may have only been playing for only a couple of seasons.
@@iansmith3016 if they havent improved after a couple of seasons the point still stands. if you invest tens of hours into a game, you should improve
I'm getting some bad audio distortion around the 17 min mark. Otherwise another great vid!
LOOOOOL Bro my chwest
Thanks, thought my headset was broken, lol
I scrolled down so i can see if my headphones are broken...
14:35 Hey! My man Fitzy has a lot of educational videos about Sombra. Respect for the hack master.
"The best place to learn OW is outside of OW"
"The medal system is built around making the player feel empowered and useful regardless of truth."
See the flaw?
Ow doesnt teach people how to Ow yet it rewards you for playing poorly.
Holding people back.
To be fair though, if you really care you would go study like anything else.
To be fair though, if you really care you would go study like anything else.
Would it be toxic if I just started linking this video to my team after crazy losses such as (this is real) I had a teammate tell me last night that Zaryas bubbles heal teammates...
No it cant hurt
It truly is amazing how much people just don't know about this game.
Omg I'm dead, healing bubbles XD
LOOOOOL Bro my chwest
I had a Lucio a while ago: he asked why I'm not just walking back as Rein after 3 Sym turrets hit my back while walking pass a choke. This was BEFORE the slow-downs had been nerfed.
Me stands waiting for my team
genji runs in past me and wastes his ult
Ghost uwu
i need healing
i need healing
i need healing
i need healing
*whole team dies*
Genji: uses ult in a 1v6
I (literally) was thinking of this today after a maddeningly frustrating series of games where my team simply ran off doing their own thing in all directions. I came to the conclusion is that I blame Blizzard firstly for the overall lack of basic and fundamental understanding of playing within the context of a team. I am not a high level/skill player but basic, fundamental things like not trickling in, fighting around your tanks and peeling for supports are lost on a large majority of our player base. Blizzard should have integrated and maintained a level of "in-game" education. People shouldn't (and I think likely wont) always come to RUclips or educational Twitch streams to learn the game. Today was the 1st time since release where I literally was "this" close to uninstalling. I dont have 4-6 hours a day to play and I am tired of the fun lottery of Overwatch just to get a decent game. This game is FAR from simple despite appearing so on the surface.
I have spoken.............
Totally agree. I cant even practice new characters in quick play anymore because Blizzard allows level 5,6,7 beginners onto teams. Common sense, get to level 25 before qp so people can actually learn. Matchmaking is fundamentally broken so I gave up.
I've brought this topic up myself before, but I'm genuinely so glad you've covered this - I don't know if you took inspiration from any of my previous comments, but it's comforting to know we're on the same page with this one. Keep up the good work bud!
It's so hard to know what you did wrong when you lose in overwatch. Other people can say "watch your replays", but what am I supposed to look out for if I have very little prior experience in this type of competitive game? This lack of meaningful information that teaches key concepts of the game really stops many people from deliberate practice, and I am so supportive of the ideas shared in this video.
A counterpoint to this:
It's hard to make a guide on how to play each of the roles when the roles themselves get drastic changes over a few months. For instance, during dive meta, some people thought Rein was unplayable. Of course in low ranks, this didn't matter too much but the question came down to, how would you teach the tank role? Do you pick the best tank Winston and go with his principles? Do you pick Rein? Let's say Rein because he is an easier hero to understand. How do you get players to transition between characters of the same role when they play so differently? A Rein guide might be nice but it translates poorly to learning D.Va, for instance. What about if the game develops a completely different style of playing the guide character, such as during the GOATS meta. Should the guide be updated for that as well?
If we want Blizzard to develop a guide for new players, we should probably establish as a community what should be in the guide. In my head, those things would probably be what some people refer to as fps fundamentals. Things like holding corners, high ground advantage, sightlines and LOS and how LOS abilities work, projectiles vs hitscan, basic ultimate mechanics (as in what counts for ult charge and what does not), favor the shooter and how it affects 1v1s. This can go alongside basic team concepts like avoiding trickling, playing for synergy, basic team formation, etc. Feel free to add more ideas here. IMO anything beyond the absolute basics becomes a bit more difficult to implement as they can change in appearance over time.
Roles haven't changed. They are what they are. Cornering, barrier management, taking space, etc are all fundamental concepts unrelated to meta.
do you have a brain?
@@embza_ Idk do you?
SVB offers the solution by having new videos and guides by content creators posted in gane update often and have rating systems as well
@@austinbryan6759 This seems like an idea we can do already with the Workshop. Imagine instead of posting video guides, you play Workshop tutorials and Blizzard hopefully can implement them into the actual game as a card if they're good enough.
I've climbed from low gold to diamond since the game has come out. For a long time I didn't get much further than low plat even though my mechanics had gotten much better over time. It wasn't until I got private coaching to really learn the game and what game sense in Overwatch should include. Back when Call of Duty Black Ops 2 released I got it Christmas 2011. I had never owned a call of duty game before and had never really played a console shooter online competitively before, but just by playing the game and watching RUclips videos from pro players I was able to learn the game and get top 10 in the US comp ladder for the game in only a few months. A similar situation happened with Apex Legends. I had never played Battle Royale games before, and wasn't good at it. But just by playing I got way better and better and climbed the competitive ladder. All that to say there's something different about Overwatch that makes it much more harder to learn and improve in than other competitive FPS games. The coaches I've worked with have said that my mechanics are similar to a masters player, but my game sense is that of a plat. Which explains why I'm between the 2 ranks. Idk if it's just me, but game sense has been harder to learn in overwatch than other FPS games I've played in the past 10 years even with all of the educational content online. It's an ever changing thing that can be difficult to piece together in a comp match with 11 players I've never played with or against before not to mention a meta that rewards ability usage over raw mechanical skill so just hitting head shots won't always create the impact you'd normally expect from an FPS.
You need to recognize when it is your time to shine and when to encourage the team to do stuff. It is hard to see when something is your fault if a teammate fucked you over or made a misplay that was unavoidable for you. I forget who said it but 33% of games you need to be the difference maker, 33% of games your team wins it, and 33% of games are unwinnable regardless. The meta pre barrier nerf I was able to carry 85% of games by simply choosing Orisa and duoing with a sigma but now this statistic is relevant again.
I would argue that Trickling In is the single biggest problem for Overwatch. So many people playing this game come from other shooters. Not ever understanding that you can't 1 v 6 even when your ult is up. They're so used to regular old team death matches from CoD, Battlefield and even Halo, that they refuse to see how much MOBA aspects are apart of OW.
As for the medal system, I believe it was Surefour who I heard float this idea:
There should be a “% of healing received” stat. The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve come to believe that if it were the ONLY medal it would be better than our current stats. Hear me out...
At its core, % of healing received (PHR) is an indication of where the team’s resources are going. It can be read into multiple ways. Say you have a Genji. If he’s always in the backline spamming “I need healing” and is getting 2% of the team’s healing resource, you know his positioning is terrible and he is feeding. If he’s playing in a good position on the flank in LOS and moving in with tanks, and is complaining about getting 2% PHR, then he is justified and it’s a support problem. If your Rein is getting 10% PHR and is always trying to get the team through the choke, you know the supports are either trying to dps, or the other tank is face tanking to get all the heals just to live, or the dps need to be pocketed because they are playing way to aggressive before the engage. Conversely, if your Rein is gettin 70% PHR then you know he is being far too aggro and forcing the supports to bail him out and starving his teammates of the ability to make plays.
Clearly this kind of stat would be beneficial. A couple other useful stats could be “damage taken” and “damage dealt to focused target,” the latter could maybe be calculated by if you deal damage to an enemy that has been shot by a teammate within 4 seconds or something. Regardless, the key to all of these stats is that it is viewable by everyone on the team. This will contribute to everyone’s understanding of what is happening in the match and what needs to change, on the fly in-game.
Edit: Also I love the ideas presented in the video SVB! So cool, especially the in-game tutorial/tips and actually connecting the timed challenges to the hero instead of just “play until you win 9 times.”
I dont like this, there is no formula for how much healing each team mate should get, just sounds like more tilting at supports
what if the problem is that no one is peeling for supports? if your supports are constantly dueling flankers, regardless if they win or lose the duel, that's time spent not healing and it won't reflect in the PHR stat. in the time your ana or mercy is dueling a tracer or genji, your rein or orisa could be gunned down. hell, even moira could struggle with this, despite the fact that she would win most duels with perfectly timed fades and damage orb. if your healers attention is being taken away by flankers, the problem is that they need a dps in the backline. and again, that wouldn't show up in a PHR stat.
@@endless_del except it will, if they're not healing during that time it means that the percents aren't changing, if rein was at 30% phr then it'll stay like that until they start healing others, this can also be thought of situationally if they have a lot of flankers then the backline is gonna be healed more etc
Definitely agree, I regretfully didn’t start really trying to learn how the game is supposed to be played until I was almost a silver portrait. Once i did i went from gold to diamond. I’m still trying to cut bad habits from ignorance of game best practices.
If they implement player guides in Overwatch, I bet DPS Moira guide will be the most upvoted and popular
My favorite noob behavior as a 5 time top 500 who doesn't play anymore was always ALWAYS when people sub masters came to a dead stop at a choke and just stood there. Like...hello ? Move? Make space? Initiate please? Nope, stand still until everyones dead.
I had a diamond Rein tell me once it was my job to stand behind his shield and kill everyone before he could move forward. UHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
This is why I main tank. I win the majority of my games by pressing W. I can't even begin to describe how many times I had to initiate a fight, while playing DPS. My tanks would stand at the choke and yell at me to get picks
audio is cutting out around 16:55 to 18:10, really bad on the ears.
Yeah i thought my headphones were broken or something
Good I thought my phone was broken
RUclips "automagically" trying to edit out background music used w/o permission?
They need to change the training room to more.. Realistic character models, the training bots have outrageously large head hitboxes, the 2 bots that do shoot, shoot way too slow and with way too low of damage to test how barriers or Zarya bubbles would get affected in an actual game. (Literally takes like 4 minutes to reach 100 charge on Zarya) and just in general Ive seen people make small additions to the training range that have made it so much more realistic with Pharah's flying unpredictably, widow grappling through the air just replace most of the training bots with actual characters then you can just get a feel for actual hitboxes not huge over exaggerated ones..
Anything small like that could already make the game much easier to learn at least on a mechanical level
Too many of my teammates … (1) seem to think the Only Important Thing is to stand on the objective (good luck with your 1v6); (2) will think to click "Group Up" but won't actually pause to wait for others (good luck with your 1v6); and (3) are only ever aware of things that affect them directly. Are you guys not even noticing the Reaper, the Mei, the Winston, the Rein (!!) in the back line? Do they play with sounds off, only ever looking forward, instantly forgetting the crazy aggro Rein who just charged past? Maybe so (good luck with your 1v6). Anyway, agree that a lot more in-game education would be great, but some of what's needed is much-much more basic than what you described.
100000% everything here. I was talking to a friend last night who is painfully new to the game and he has no idea how it sorms. He plays every night but watches no content. This means he has no Meta Game practice, Point of View, or metric for how the game is played. On top of this, he has LITTLE understanding to what heroes do what.
But one thing he said rang true..."I wish the hero screen had a better description on what each ability does"...this was right after he didnt know the Shield on Hammond procs from proximity to enemies. He had no idea and was doing it PRE slam.
I WISH the game gave a little tutorial video, not online, on what the hell each character does, is supposed to do and what a pro looks like
I feel personally attacked
Kappa
Cray
Paladins tutorial teaches payload and objective just saying
I have an idea, why not use the workshop to make tutorials to teach prople how to play properly?
For example, a dive tutorial where you program a Winston to jump on an enemy and then you, as Dva, have to protect him with your matrix. You win if Winston kills the enemy and doesn't die.
This would probably be best as Blizzard might not have the expertise of teaching specifics like that. I do feel like Blizzard should do something for extremely basic concepts.
You take content creation to another level that nobody else takes it to. I love the ideas, I agree with all of your suggestions 100% and I hope Blizzard hears your voice. Keep up the killer work!
The weird part about the Mercy challenge was someone complaining they couldn't get her skin because the queue times were over 10 minutes.
In other words, someone who refused to play anything but dps was mad they couldn't do that to get a support exclusive skin.
It's funny, but before even mentioning Dota, that's exactly the game I was thinking of. I've quit that game multiple times because of the community, and having to play with the greediest 4 DPS line-ups, and people who had no clue how to team fight. I started playing the game about 8 years ago, and 3 years in the community was just like Overwatch's. It took a while for the base level of Dota's community to raise the floor of the game to decency, which makes it less accessible to newer players, but the game has also done a great job of building teaching mechanics within the game. Dota 2 is the best designed game I know. No redundant characters despite 120 of them, and there can be no mistake that winning objectives matter more than stats. Like supports know they won't have have the best stats, so they just do what they need to do to help others put up a strong game. Some hard carries know their win condition isn't kill/death ratio or dmg stats, but to farm and push until they are powerful and then they win when it matters. For example, Naga Sirens for most part may only get 10 kills and 28,000 dmg to heroes as the hard carry because they aren't fighting most of the game, but once they are farmed up, they are almost guaranteeing a win, while other heroes may put up 60,000 dmg and 20 kills, but they can't actually take over a game late, like a Lina for example. In Dota, roles and objective gaming are clear roads to victory, not stat padding. That's what I love about that game. OW has been doing some of the things Dota has recently done to encourage better team play, like role ques and stuff. OW will get it right eventually I hope, it may take a bit of time, but yeah they do need to show more care for teaching.
this is really good! You don't just say that its a problem but you also address a well thought out and practical solution. I really appreciate this hopefully more will too!
I love asking my co-healer to try heal me more cuz I die a lot and getting the respond "I am gold healing what are you talking about?"...
I've tried to teach a few of my mates how to play the game.
They're pretty casual so they're not going to go and watch videos.
Trying to explain all the tips and tricks and even the basics was really hard.
I had to make a smurf because my games were too hard! I don't want to get them to play with bots too much, that would build bad habits.
I'm glad I found this channel, I've been trying to understand what I should be doing with certain heroes midfight and all the youtube videos are just basic tips that ive already heard
I have 60 hours in overwatch and 2100+ hours in Rocket League and I just wanna say that game is amazing at training its players. The difference between a plat two years ago and a plat now is night and day, both tactically and especially mechanically
Overwatch has a tutorial?!
SVB I love you but, it's really not fair to blame Blizzard for the lack of information when the game was intentionally designed to encourage players to learn through experimentation. I think many players who experienced the beta and launch of the game will agree that those early days were the most fun in Overwatch's history. No one knew what they were doing and were trying out different things to learn.
Even the basic rules such as players per team, the payload etc. were intentionally left out, I think so that players could get into the action as quickly as possible. And as you can see, no one had a problem understanding these rules, even if they don't always pay attention to them.
I can totally get behind the medal system being awful though. It's too easy to draw conclusions from it, positive or negative, and it practically breeds toxicity.
I’m pretty sure Blizzard doesn’t want a meta or one way to think. They want everyone to find their own way to play and every hero be usable all the time. This is why there isn’t any educational content. They don’t want a meta or a “conventional idea”
For a game seemingly built to be simple to understand, it sure does have a lot of issues communicating itself. Really wish Blizzard could at the very least add in ingame 1st party resources, even if it's as simple as a 1st party hitbox viewer/tester, anything is better than the anxiety generating grindfest we have to go through now to understand when pressing a button is good or not. :/
the workshop can be used for guides like your node idea. but usually its used for fun custom games instead so it might not be played much.
I actually think the problem is even *more* deep rooted than you suggest. Blizzard aren't just not implimenting resources for players to actually learn the concepts of the game, I genuinely think they don't understand them thenselves. The impression I get from interviews and the abysmal balance of the game is that the development team are ignorant (see 12 months of the Goats meta) and arrogant (see Jeff's responses at the latest Blizzcon press conference, especially his comments on power creep). I don't have any faith in the development team anymore, I think they're bad at their jobs and the only way I see anything close to what you're suggesting being implimented is if Overwatch is handed over to people with even a little bit of humility and competitive understanding.
Spot on video. Now blizzard will completely ignore it..
hillarious that you made the super jump example. because blizzard actually doesnt like advanced techniques that much. they will even patch them out sometimes, because its always better to just have a narrow streamlined design of a character when said character also by accident could have really exciting techniques that the devs didnt intend. so then you can patch around those advanced techniques. oh boy that sure sound cool. nah uh, not for blizzard.
Two things about the mercy- challenge:
1. I don't think they will ever do a challenge about an unintended mechanic/glitch
2.Another suggestion would be an special workshop-mode. Like the one for Rein to block stuff like other shatters and sleeps. "Play this mode in the arcade-> get 20 successful blocks in a row-> get your spray
Like the video and comment 😁 give engagement stats to our ow content makers always.
It would be nice to actually feel like you've earned the skins.
literally, it would be really cool if having certain skins that you've earned in a challenge meant something about your skills with that character.
i think doing that for all skins isn't too smart from a business standpoint, maybe an animated recolour for reaching a threshold like healing for supports damage for DPS and maybe ult damage for tanks, I think it would encourage playing better for a reward
While I'd love to see this sort of thing implemented, I think it's been a conscious decision on Blizzard's part not to. OW has thrived by appealing to a largely casual audience, they don't want people to feel like they're playing the game wrong as that turns away casual fans. The medals 'work' in that respect as people only notice them when they're doing well, if it displayed KDA and some more adcanced stats that draws attention to the negatives of your play.
Hopefully this will be Blizzard’s next big task in OW. I’d gladly put a hold on any new heroes, skins, events, etc. for a dedicated tutorial
this is amazing! have you gotten a hold of any of the educational content creators to have their help to push this? people with closer ties to blizzard? idk karQ, jayne, stylosa?
Something I've always wished Overwatch would do which could be a neat way to teach people how to play different heros would be some mission focused co-op maps. Like an infiltration mission with the Widow, Sombra and Reaper, where they have segments that show off the specific, hard to pull off moves of the different heros, and teach you a bit about how to go about playing them through mini objectives - Plus maybe even extra challenges to teach harder moves, get bonus xp if you manage a specific event where you need to pull off a in air headshot as Widow, or get behind enemy lines unseen as reaper).
If nothing else it would be fun as heck, and let you get the feel for different heros, without the pressure of having to figure it out mid match.
Overwatch community: The lack of tutorials is hurting the overall player base.
FGC: First time?
Your suggestions on how to implement it can be done in the workshop mode, however, I do agree it should be a default mode that replaces the tutorial.
@SVB I've never watched guides and educational content to the degree I do for Overwatch. Perhaps this is largely due to Blizzards total lack of doing it themselves. Although years of watching guides and I'm still stuck just shy of diamond, so I wonder if there is a way to make better use of the knowledge I pick up? I'm a decently smart person, but still struggle to climb. I've been plat my entire 3 years, just moving from low plat to high 😑
P.S. I work full time and am in my 20s, so I also wonder if I'm just not committed enough? I have over 1000hrs, but I would love your thoughts on why I'm still stuck, @SVB. Love your insights!
As boring as it is I hear watching your own replays and writing things down that you can do better is a huge difference maker, and yes time played can greatly affect how successful you climb. Especially as a average player.
I suspect Blizzard would counter argue that tactical and strategic education is the responsibility of the community. There is plenty of content on You tube aimed at providing players of all levels with advice, examples, theory crafting etc. to improve their play. I agree with the answer to "Why are we so bad" is perhaps because there is no (effective) in game incentive to be a better player. I guess I am too cynical or I know Blizzard too well to expect them to go through the time and expense to implement some of the very appealing suggestions you have made. Thank you for the excellent video (except for the audio issue which is a minor thing for me) and for your desire to see improved play across the board.
Thank you so much for making this video. Perfectly describes my frustration with OW, and why I quit back in July (after being a consistent player since launch). I agree the lack of education/knowledge among the players comes down to blizzard’s poor management of the game. But I think it’s more than blizzard not having a desire to educate us; I think they are actually afraid to educate the players. Because I think from a game design perspective they actually don’t have a very strong vision for how the interactions in the game should happen. So they might be wary of instructing the players how the game works if they themselves don’t really know or don’t have the desire to lead us towards *something.* You can see the proof of this in Blizzard’s choices when designing heroes and patches; the list of bad patches and decisions is too long and we all are familiar, but one thing has always been the same: they have been constantly trying to straddle the fence between casual and hardcore gameplay and they fail to draw proper distinctions between these philosophies within the game and within the different modes/playlists. They want the game to be everything to all types of players but in reality this just creates a lot of toxicity/frustration because the game itself lacks direction. And now they are going to pull it in even more directions and make the community even more atomized with the PvE Overwatch 2 expansion. They should fix the glaring issues with ranked and the overall balance issues and lack of player knowledge before even considering a whole new expansion that will add even more balance issues and information gaps to the game, but oh well. My opinion is the game won’t improve unless blizzard is able to 100% honestly acknowledge the flaws in this game and actually have a plan how to fix them and a very strong vision/roadmap for how the game should look in the future. But I think they’re just gonna try to keep it going as is for as long as possible and just add new characters/maps until the game just dies, never achieving the status of legendary e-sport that it could’ve been under different leadership/creative direction
Well try to answer the question objectively, how should the game be played? Should it be played aggressively with mobile characters? Should it be methodical positioning? Should it rely on the dps role? Tank role? Support?
Game developers who pigeonhole their games tend to suffer in the long run. Hell, Blizzard did it themselves with Starcraft 2. They learned from that mistake, decided to let the players figure out the game themselves, and patched to enable rather than disable. This is why you see more buffs than nerfs.
Gaussian Entity I think the best place for the balance of the game to be is in a state where new players receive enough introductory information and helpful tips along their progression (like all of SVB’s suggestions) so that the majority of the players start on the same baseline of game knowledge before entering ranked. Ranked should also be improved with features like pick/ban on characters and map voting in addition to SVBs ideas about in-game tips. Then at the highest levels of play there should be no skill cap; I think Blizzard should also walk back their decisions to take out what they deemed “exploits” that require skill to execute (like the Genji triple jump) because these mechanics allow for the skill ceiling of the game to climb higher as the game ages, giving it longevity. Before OW I was a dedicated TF2 player, and part of the reason I logged 100x more hours in TF2 was because there were many mechanics in the game that required deep knowledge of how the game engine worked in order to break it. Techniques like rocket jumping that when mastered can open up ways to play never thought possible. Unfortunately blizzards philosophy towards development and balance is one focused on polish and consistent/predictable gameplay rather than competition. I would argue that this philosophy pigeonholed the game far more than what they did with Starcraft 2, etc, because it punishes experienced players who put in the time to master techniques in order to make new players more comfortable or not feel like they have a disadvantage. But at the same time Blizzard has chosen to provide absolutely no help to guide new players how the game actually works; they put too much energy in telling us how NOT to play (thru their balance changes and character/map additions) rather than creating a space where players can explore their characters to the highest reaches of the skill ceiling while rewarding team work and game knowledge as well. OW is not even close to achieving this, because in the majority of ranked games people don’t even know proper pathing or avoiding trickling or any kind of basic knowledge required for a barely coherent game.
Love you videos. I like you ideas and talk about anothers subjects of the game. Hope some of the ideas gonna be implement!
Map oriented hero tips would be amazing, because players would be able to make a well educated decision, before starting a game.
Honestly the #1 mistake I see players in my rank making, are that they rush into the enemy alone, and don't understand why they died.
The team eventually dies with them, because they believe that they should move up with the tank (after their mistake, even), and die too.
I like the idea of having challenges and honestly I thought this was gonna be the big thing Blizz would implement this year. Blizz can definitely do better with challenges to encourage people to do things they normally wouldn't do. For example: Win 5 games as tank in a competitive game to earn this spray. The second tier can be: Win 5 games as Winston in a competitive game. The third tier can be: Average less than x deaths per 10 on Winston in competitive games. If they replicate this formula for every character and do it often enough, it would incentivize people to stop being one-tricks and possibly help them to learn the game on their own without Blizz actually needing to add training wheels or guides to teach the players directly.
Can you make a video on handling ranked anxiety? Whenever I don't feel anxious after playing ranked, I'm anxious again the next day
Very nice my friend. I like both your ideas and your personality. You earn a sub.
I love the ideas presented here. The tool tips seem really helpful and the hero specific challenges seems like a fantastic idea; Heroes of The Storm, another Blizzard game, has been doing challenges for ages that encourage the player to play a specific role and in some cases achieve specific goals e.g. do X amount of damage in a winning game. I’m not saying the HOTS system is perfect but I think it does help the game and Overwatch could easily take a leaf out of that book in terms of making the challenges feel more exciting rather than “play any hero mindlessly until you win enough games and you get a skin. Yay.”
Some great points SVB!
I struggle so much in plat.
I really want to see that idea you suggested about the mercy recall challenge in game. Most of the skins in game don't mean shit but good rng.
The build guides in dota were honestly amazing. I took for granted how much they actually helped me learn and how well implemented they were. Seamless implementation in real matches. I'm not sure how well it would work in an FPS, but I want Blizzard to try.
The entire reason I'm nearly diamond now is because of you, even though I got banned from your discord server (and metal cup) for some, questionable reasons, I still watch your videos because you have a great and educational channel.
Do I regret what I did that spiralled into my ban, of course, I would be much better if I didn't make those mistakes, however, your channel has gotten me from low gold to high plat
Thank you for everything you have done to and for this community
You didn't mention how utterly useless the F1 Hero Information screen is which gives me the impression that you completely forgot about its existence... Something which I wouldn't blame you for. Seriously that thing is atrocious. It doesn't give ANY numbers whatsoever.. What's the Cooldown? What's the damage? Range? Other effects? ANYTHING?
And critical warnings like "targets must be in line of sight" for Mei's blizzard and Baptiste's immortality field.
Here’s the problem is there are tons of players who simply don’t care. I’ve tried to give people tips on the middle of the game in nice ways and they just tell me to shut up and play the game.
I just started playing Overwatch right before role que and placed low gold or high silver. Now at the end of the year I'm high gold to low plat. With help from friends who have been playing for 2 years plus. I can say it has really improved my play and game sense. To another year of learning.
I agree with you on the importance of education - OW is at its worst when you feel you’re losing because of cluelessness rather than because the other team are better.
This is dead on!!! NO offense to players that have 700 plus hours in in Plat or below, but they get extra triggered when someone tells them to play right ( WHICH SHOULD BE SECOND NATURE WITH THAT MANY HOURS). Either they don't wanna grow, or they they are to stubborn to grow.
Would you be able to make hero specific guide mocs as videos? Or is it too much work?
i would love blizzard hiring you men, great ideas
Been saying this from the start. Blizzard made a complex niche team game, Disneyfied it, then completely failed to tell all the starry eyed casuals how to play.
Wasnt there an application called visor that was being used a year ago. I vaguely remember it giving actually useful tips to you, like ult tracking, but it was banned by blizzard.
I feel like it would be good for the game for blizzard to do something similar for quickplay while you rank up to 25 then a much more watered down version in comp.
they split the game into 3 parts: game 1 pvp, game 2 pve, game 3 tutorial got to wait for game 3 to come out to learn how to play
i really like the idea of those Rein tips for point A kings row attack. Is there a full list someone in the community has made anywhere with all heros for each map?
Well, I kinda understand why Blizzard doesn't bother. They had a whole effing cinematic about STAYING BEHIND THE SHIELD, Orisa announces that STAYING BEHIND THE SHIELD is recommended every single match, every single queue you get a HINT that grouping up may be beneficial, and people still go in front of their tanks all the time and tricle in. The most fundamental flaw of Overwatch is it's description as a FPS. It sold copies of the game, sure, but it is also responsible for why general skill is so effing low. >50% of the player base want to play an FPS, when it is a team-based moba.
This video was so good it brought tears to my eyes. This is very much needed in overwatch.
Love the video SVB, can you do a new orisa guide or vod review? I've played orisa as my main for the last few seasons and climbed big time with her. Since the latest patch I'm absolute dog shit with her, the barrier goes down very fast and it's hard to defend with her now.
Speaking of DOTA built-in guides, I wish Overwatch would allow you to select any character ability in Hero Gallery and watch tons and tons of clips from OWL of people using it correctly. Right now, the clips are so bad! They have this great resource of OWL replays and could just build a VAST library of clips from pros doing everything that can be done with that ability. For instance, Halt would have clips of halt+hook, halt environmental spots, halting a Wrecking Ball to kill his speed, halt+rock, halt+slam, halting Rein to create distance and so on.
Maybe there could even be some small paragraph explaining how the ability is being used to accomplish the basic aims of the game. That way people would learn what those basic aims even are! (zoning, looking for pick, creating space, forcing cooldown, pathing, splitting, pressuring backline, stalling, countering an ability etc)
Maybe you could even subscribe so you get like a new "new item" marker on the hero in the gallery whenever new clips are added.
God I mean sometimes you'd wonder if people are actually even getting paid to come to work at Blizzard HQ and think about what could do to actually improve the game. They could just freelance that stuff for aspiring coaches, analysts and pedagogues for what is a big sum of money for those freelances but virtually nothing for Blizzard. Because Blizzard devs have no idea how their own game works, let's be honest.
Excellent video!
This is such a bizarre video. I never watched RUclips videos on Overwatch until I was in T500.
When was the last time you saw a game tell you how to complete it.
Blizzard wants you to learn the game yourself. Use your brain and predict what will happen.
The more hero’s you play, the more you understand the game. (You’ll learn what to do if that hero is fighting you, you’ll know the weakness etc) -> e.g. I play hog and I know ana is more counter, so once I hear or see one of her abilities is used is my chance to be more aggressive etc.
Things like this is what makes the game fun regardless of the shit that’s in there
Maybe having guides for each rank would be better. A guide for bronze players would be very basic, then a little more advanced for silver etc. Would help players try to get out of their rank
Can the workshop be utilized for some of what you've described?
The challenges should focus on relative progress and not absolute skill, so all players could get the rewards.
I love how passionate and how much you care about the community. But I can’t agree with you that Blizzard has the responsibility to teach people how to play. If someone truly wants to get better they will do so. People are all in their ELO for a reason
Okay, "responsibility" might be the wrong word..... It's grossly suboptimal toward the goal of making a better experience. Of course everyone is in the rank they are in for a reason, but that is not a case against what he is saying. Imagine playing football where all of the players don't know anything at all but the basic rules and scoring of the game. Of course the naturally gifted players are going to dominate the game. A gifted player who is fast and almost never drops a pass will be able to have a great impact on the game but if we still have those gifted players run to the end zone screaming for the tight end to block for them every time the play goes wrong literally every single freaggin play, that is no fun at any level of the game. Playing more and increasing ones skill would not help the problem of having unfun games because of the misunderstandings but doing things that increase the overall understanding might.
@@TheRealNickG Ahh makes sense. I hate to nitpick, but your bit on playing more and increasing ones skill not helping is indeed true. BUT if you truly did want to improve and get better you most likely will find other avenues to improve your play.besides just brute forcing your way through. Practice smart, not hard.
I think a game mode where 2 players are selected, one from diamond and above and the other from platinum and below and then those players are matched together on a two man team. They are then in a team together for a short season period say 1 week where they queue up together and face off against other 2 man teams in a 2v2 competitive system (a similar thing could be done in a 3v3 environment.) In this mode you are stuck playing with the person you get matched with for that entire season whether the season be 1 hour long or 1 week long or whatever. In this situation, the higher ranked player would be encouraged to give helpful tips to the lower ranked player, as they would be gaining rank in this competitive system (the SR gain and loss for both players would be win/loss based only, where win streaks cause you to gain more SR per each consecutive win and the same for loss streaks.). I think this sort of mode would be really awesome for the game especially if it came out with a regular 2v2 or 3v3 competitive mode where players can group up or solo q as normal. This "buddy" type mode would be really interesting where a high ranked player would be encouraged to help the lower ranked player get better at the game in order to net more consecutive wins. I imagine a system where the team that wins is usually determined by the skill of the lower ranked player and not the carry of the high ranked player. This mode would be broken into a best of 5 rounds to determine the winner, first the high ranked players and low ranked players would be separated so they face of in individual 1v1's simultaneously to determine the first 2 rounds, then for the remaining rounds a 2v2 situation would take place. Let me know what you think about this type of idea, im not a game designer so im not sure if this is realistically possible but it could be interesting.
Since the announcement of Overwatch 2, this is the type of thing I want them to include in the PvE mode. Essentially, like you said, reward the players for doing the things they're supposed to do, and punish them for doing the things that are stupid.
An easy example is the Reinhardt. Charging in during the PvE mode is probably suicide. Play with your team and smack anyone in the face who gets too close. If they all get to close, YOU ARE ALLOWED TO BACK UP. Maybe if you team wipe, you can get a tip. "If the enemy begins to push on you with a lot of resources, it's okay to back up, and wait for a moment." etc etc.
While your description with the little red dot was clear, I feel like with the immense amount of maps, locations, hold points, objectives and heroes, it was be unlikely that there would be fleshed out tips for specific heroes. My thought, prior to watching this video, was using the PvE scenarios to teach players about whats good and what's not.
On the other hand, with your points, you could have Hero-specific, tutorial maps. For example, learn how to play Reinhardt in optimal situations, like Kings Row. Or learn how to play long range heroes like widow on Junkertown or Havana. A good explanation of why a hero is strong on certain maps will help players to carry that information over to other maps. Doing it in this manner might also have a player play more heroes, and not just one. Lucio is strong on a lot of control points, but maybe not as much on Junkertown, whereas other supports like Zen, Ana, or Baptiste might be a better choice.
Such great suggestions, but will blizz ever do this? I say: let’s go at it ourselfs! Use the workshop, video’s, etc!
These a fantastic ideas! I love them. Blizzard, I want SVP guides in Overwatch for Christmas! Please!
An overhaul to the tab screen would make the game feel fresh
In truth though, I have question for the community. I’m a relatively new PC player about three months, swapping from Xbox. I was diamond on console, and I still find myself having trouble with the mouse-hanging out in silver on dps currently and plat on tank and support. I’m currently running 5.5 sens, 800dpi, but I’m playing on a mousepad from 1995. It’s tiny; would an xl mousepad really help with being able to have better arm movement and aim? Thanks!
Many great points. OW has always felt incomplete and under supported and this has a lot to do with it.
The problem can be summed up in one word. eSports.
Whenever a company moves in that direction, it always leaves the game and new players behind.
The issue with the hero specific challenge is probably because it will only allow 1 player per match to make progress on the challenge. Still, I get it. There must be a way to teach people about heroes.
What I still miss is some kind of in-game-statistics so you can see who is carrying and who is lagging (elims, kda, etc). This would make the life of a support much easier. Also hiding your profile should be forbidden/removed, all stats should be public and there should be websites showing them. This gives players a way to compare and check progress.
Hero specific challenges are very interesting, but I can see some problem if this was happening as an event challenges. For Mercy example, everyone will try to fight to play mercy in the game and it might be really different for people to finish the challenge during the event. Also, the game quality during the event might be awful because one person in the team is more focused on challenge than actual winning.
However, I think this can be a good additional to achievements system or something new just for educational purpose. Maybe pressing F1 shows hero skill description as well as available and completed achievements for that hero. To motivate players, perhaps players get special skin for that hero if they finish all the challenges as they have mastered a hero.
Pretty sure Blizzard is thinking of it as an mmo where new players will ask senior players how to play and in turn create a stronger sense of community. If they are maybe allow senior players of a certain sr to sign up for some mentor thing and new players can click on some get mentored button in the menue and first person to respond gets put in a group with them
I love the tip system you suggested. I have a bronze/silver dps acct to play with my friend and my god it's a different world down there. God bless their souls
One problem for learning Overwatch is that in the normal game, you can't know what map you'll be playing. So you may have watched a bunch of videos on how to play a certain hero, and suddenly you're playing that hero's worst map. How great would it be to have an arcade game that rotates daily to play just one point of one map?
The game simply needs a personalized review system that spoonfeeds each player what they did well, what they did poorly and what they need to work on after every single game. All this needs be baked into the Video review system. Complicated perhaps but would be a really good addition for people in ranked.
I.e “You lost this game because of x,y,z action, if you held your ult for a fight that was already lost you may have turned the tide next fight..” etc
I think one of the reasons OW became super popular at launch was because of all the things the game does to make you feel like you´re playin good.
The medal system and the on fire bar mean nothing gameplay wise, but its a like a pat in the back saying "hey, you´re pretty good", or even worse "hey, you´re best than the others" even if you´re playing poorly (Moira, Road and Zarya players are the most affected by this). The problem with this is that gives you little information about what is actually happening, and it works as an incentive for toxic behavior against YOUR TEAM (i have more medals, so i should blame the lack of progress to others), wich results in a general lack of cooperation.
My suggestion is that Blizzard should either: 1) Remove the medals, and only provide feedback of your own stats in comparison to your past results in the same map with the same character; or, 2) Give us MORE information so we evaluate it more more accurately. Ex. instheat of showing your medals by pressing tab, show us the exact numbers of damage, heal, etc. that each player of the team has in that exact moment. This will not only mitigate the problem of the toxic dps moira gold medal overlord, but it will also help the rest of the team to check witch part of the strategy is being walled by the enemy team and, hoppefully, do something about it besides flaming.
Last idea is fantastic but rip support que times
my first thought on your idea about having the hero challenges require hero-specific things worries me to the extent that that would mean EVERYONE is trying to play that character to get the achievements so it would be kind of difficult. Maybe something more general like ok the challenge is for mercy but the specifics of the challenge revolve around the support class or something so you wouldn't necessarily ONLY have to play mercy to earn your way toward the challenge.