Awesome video, expresses what I love about TF2, Smash and gaming in general. I do think Smash Ultimate kind of pales compared to Melee in this sense. For me it's movement tech, and tech in general (usually unintended) that make a character fun, unique, and creative, and I think anyone can agree Melee has a lot more of that, even if Ultimate is a lot more polished in its design.
In my experience, overwatch is a lot like chess. There’s a ton of different moving pieces with different moving capabilities. At the pro level, a lot of the minmaxed moves are common knowledge, that’s why in chess the first moves take seconds. However with a full team of complimentary pieces allows the abilities to experiment and succeed with “off-meta” play styles. Take goats. At the time Goats implemented their new strategy, every team stuck to a more formal team composition.
@@zx-dx719 I'm not "new" but I am shit at the game and I have fun... a lot of fun! I'm also a junkrat player though so in most places I've been told my opinion is void. I do think that in the cast of hero's junkrat might be one of the most diverse. that might be the issue. I don't really know what I'm yappin about tho so...?
@@zx-dx719 the game is more fun as a new player because you get to learn all the interactions and discover what works best for you. Every game gets a bit stale once you learn everything there is to know. That’s why a lot of the long term players (like myself) switch between characters or focus on mastering one. The now-constant balance changes help keep the game feeling fresh too
@@2close2sun ngl it’s fun to shit on characters, and some have pretty low skill ceilings and high skill floors. But every character is fucking annoying if the player knows what they’re doing
he is simply peak character design for any game ever but he’s surrounded by pure garbage. idk how ow can make a character so perfectly designed then you just have bap, kiriko, and orisa. i don’t understand
I would like to note that from my personal perspective, OW characters are designed with a specific playstyle in mind, not as generalist. Trying to create the feel TF2 does with 30+ characters creates an insane amount of overlap.
Even with fighting games, characters are created with archetypes in mind. They all fit into a certain niche. Lucio here also fits a niche and is considered a pretty lackluster support in the current meta unlike previously
tf2 characters are so well designed with a solid playstyle in their original loadout, but when custom loadouts come into play they can have a lot more diversity, which is completely different than overwatch, where characters are meant to do only that one role that same way and you have to keep switching. Being able to switch heroes to counter every time is somehow bad to overwatch because you have no incentive to learn to play any hero in different ways, if it comes to that it is easier to just switch, and that is not entirelly the case for tf2, i think OW would get a lot better if they started to take more inspiration from paladins, if someone on the other team counters your character, you can't switch, you can at most chose different cards and talent at the start of the match, maybe change the items you buy, but not the character, if it is to overwhelming yo will also have to switch positions and work with your team to eliminate whatever is making your life harder, while overwatch you just switch, and then the other team switches to counter you again... and you switch again...
I actually disagree a lot. Lucio is extremely adaptable and flexible in his playstyle, especially compared to other heroes in the game. You can play him to int into the enemy backline if you have the mechanics, you can be a team leader if youre a brainiac, you can be a flanker control duelist if you are against tracer, sombra, genji, or soldier. You can passively sit back and farm beat if you want to counter enemy ultimates as much as possible. His flexibility is why hes so good, not just his speed
And especially do NOT listen to the "reddit Lucio" hate wave, there have been t1 professional Lucio players who have that play style and some have even won championships.
ALSO also, the optimal mercy play style is absolutely damage boosting and looking for opportunities to Glock an enemy down in valk, healbotting on mercy is a quick way to do nothing (could just be on Moira, kiriko, ana, or bap and you would get a thousand times more value.)
yes bro exactly. I was watching this video scratching my head thinking the exact same thing. Pros and high ranks use lucio because he doesnt just have one playstyle, and its switching between and micromanaging the best playstyle when opportunities present themselves is why he is used. Hes not just an aura-bot, hes a backline defender, enabler, and a duelist at a moments notice. Understanding which to do is why hes good.
I feel like the problem here is that you see gameplay as either being Conforming to what the hero should do and being creative, when in reality the best players in the game are able to do both constantly
Gonna have to disagree on this one. I'm far from the best Lucio player (mid Diamond after playing him for over 4 years), but what keeps bringing me back to him are how many different ways there are to play him and the insane skill expression with his movement. You can brawl with your tank. You can dive with your tank. You can protect your backline from flankers. You can be the flanker. You can poke at the enemy Widow to keep her on her toes. You can B-line and frag the enemy Widow when she's not paying attention. You can parkour to get back from spawn faster. You can parkour to jump over a Rein shatter. You can parkour to dive the backline. You can parkour to go protect your backline. You can amp heals to help your team outlive a dive. You can amp speed to disengage completely from an enemy ult and speed your team right back in. You can beat to hold W with your team and go ape shit. You can save your beat to counter an enemy ult. You can boop someone off the map. You can boop someone away from your backline. You can go over the enemy tank and boop them into your team. The possibilities are endless. What differentiates average Lucios from good Lucios from godly Lucios is much less about what they do, but when they do it. The best Lucios do all of this at the same time.
- brawl with your tank - dive with your tank (same as brawling with your tank) - you can protect your backline from flankers. - You can be the flanker. - You can poke at the enemy Widow to keep her on her toes. (has nothing to do with Lucio's kit, literally every hero except brig can do this, that doesn't make it a new playstyle) - You can B-line and frag the enemy Widow when she's not paying attention. (and what if she is paying attention? or if they don't have a widow?) - You can parkour to get back from spawn faster. (not a playstyle. there is never a time where parkouring from spawn isn't beneficial.) - You can parkour to jump over a Rein shatter. (not a playstyle) - You can parkour to dive the backline. (this is just being the flanker like you've previously mentioned) - You can parkour to go protect your backline. (this is just protecting your backline like you've previously mentioned) - You can amp heals to help your team outlive a dive. (usually not worth it, like how he mentioned experimentation isn't rewarded) - You can amp speed to disengage completely from an enemy ult and speed your team right back in. (you should do this, otherwise you're not utilizing his kit to it's max potential) - You can beat to hold W with your team and go ape shit. - You can save your beat to counter an enemy ult. (these are the only two ways to use beat, but you should save it to counter unless they don't have a specific win condition) - You can boop someone off the map. (not variety) - You can boop someone away from your backline. (this is again protecting your backline from flankers) - You can go over the enemy tank and boop them into your team. (just brawling with your tank) The possibilities are endless. Except they aren't. - Play with your frontline / tank - Play with your backline / support (Except other heroes do this much better. Lucio's value scales the more people are in range, and the backline usually never needs speed.) - Flank (very difficult unless you're extremely talented, unviable for most ranks) - You can use your ult offensively or defensively (hitting tab and depending on the team comp will tell you the optimal way to use it.) That's it.
@@notfunnyperson3496 Ok here you go : - Play with your frontline/tank : Brawling and diving with your tank are different. In a brawl, you're playing much less aggressive as it's very easy to get stacked out if you try to jump on someone in the enemy death ball. You can pounce on someone that's very low and get back to your team fast, but you're usually playing more of a sheep herder using your speed to help your tank weave in and out of the enemy close range characters. In a dive, you're coordinating with your tank to nuke a specific target or force defensive cooldowns to go for a kill on a subsequent dive instead of winning a war of attrition like in brawl. Brawl switches between the aggressive and defensive playstyle very fast and very often. Dive usually goes all in on offense for a bit, then full retreat for a bit. - Play with your backline/support : Lucio's value doesn't only come from how many people are in his aura (in a game where everyone is playing perfectly grouped it does, but that's about it) but also how from quickly you can peel for different teammates. You also don't only peel for your support. Sure, Brig is better at babysitting a single person, but Lucio can quickly go from helping your dps on an off-angle fight off an enemy dps on an off-angle to helping your support live a flanker's engagement. One is a lot more aggressive than the other. Also, your supports do need speed to get back to the rest of the team after dealing with or going on their own flank or off-angle. Your ana will really appreciate getting back in los of your tank to do her job after she's been stuck in a closed room with an enemy tracer for 10 seconds while your tank didn't look behind them are took a more aggressive position. Reaper tp'ed in to your other support? Speeding them away from him after hitting a boop will do more than healing them since you can't outheal a point blank reaper doing reaper things. - Flank : much easier than you claim it to be. Even if you can't 100-0 someone on a whim (the "assassin Lucio" playstyle), you can absolutely disrupt the enemy team by being an annoying fly on the wall and pulling aggro from as many enemies as possible for as long as possible (the "distraction Lucio" playstyle). It might take you 10 seconds to kill an enemy backliner by yourself, but assuming they have more awareness than a newborn, they're going to look at you, and those are 10 seconds the enemy tank isn't getting their main source of healing, or 10 seconds where your dps aren't contested by a long range enemy dps or both at the same time. Assassin Lucio is much more viable the higher you climb since you should have better mechanics and pull off the assassinations more reliably. Distraction Lucio works wonders in lower ranks where the enemy won't shoot back at you (in which case you turn into a mini assassin) or where the enemy also can't just burn you down (in which case you can consistently pull aggro from half the enemy team for entire team fights). Both are flanky playstyles, but both play very differently. - Depending on the map, the environmental kill Lucio playstyle also opens up, where you're taking the weirdest off angles, feeding your brains out to get behind the enemy tank and boop them into the deathpit or rolling out into the enemy spawn to spawncamp someone by booping them off the Illios spawn room into the crack between it and the actual map. This is very close to the assassin playstyle, but still different enough since your micro-positionning matters WAY more and you need to be at specific angles at specific times to throw someone into the abyss. So really, there's dive Lucio, Brawl Lucio, aggressive-protective Lucio, full-protective Lucio, assassin Lucio, distraction Lucio and environmental kill Lucio. Again, as I said in my original comment, the beauty of Lucio is that his mobility allows him to switch between these playstyles at a moment's notice and your overall playstyle shifts from game to game. Some games, you're playing a dive/assassin/distraction combo. Some games, you're playing a distraction/aggressive-protective combo. Other games, you're playing a brawl/environmental kill/full-protective combo. There's definitely points to be made about how some characters are very one dimensional, like how most tanks devolve into different flavors of "I stand there shooting the enemy frontline rotating my cooldowns to survive" or "I engage the backline and try to get a kill or two before I explode" or how a lot of dps characters fall into either the "I stay back and poke until I get a kill" or the "I harass the backline until something dies on either team" category, but Lucio is just about the worst example to use to make the "every character has a set playstyle" argument. You can group playstyles together all you want, but at some point you're just making overgeneralizations because you don't understand the nuances between them. If all you can notice is which role the teammate you're helping out is on or if you're protecting/attacking, then that's a you problem.
I have to say I disagree. I've mained Lucio ever since last Summer when one of my school teammates invited me to a team that needed a main support. I picked up him and Brig, and instantly I started noticing how much more I could do in a team with full communication as the funny frog boi. Every single scrim I'd find my movement becoming a little bit smoother or my aim a bit sharper. Once my mechanics were up to snuff, I started learning how you can aid your team on a macro level as well. First it was being able to "mark", or duel the enemy flankers on an off angle with my high survivability. Then it was getting comfortable enough to be able to wallride above my enemies and boop valuable targets into my team. When you're passionate about the character you play and how comfortable you feel in your gameplay, I'd say it's actually really rewarding and even natural to find avenues to implement your own individuality. I love Lucio a lot and I'm a firm believer that you don't have to play passive or overaggro to be effective. Maybe I'm just seeing his super high mechanical skill ceiling as a counter argument against yours, but this is just my belief.
@@iloveferrets5859 I think ana is relatively well designed. A lot of the designs do be one-note as fuck but i think ana would be a great character if damage and healing were lower and the game was slower and more proactive. Right now the "without sustain everyone dies immediately" and the "when the enemy does a play, use this to counter it" environment shoves ana into a box but i remember a time when (ana on rein-zarya back in the day) the game was more lenient and i felt like i had a lot of stuff i could do on ana.
@AluRooftop hopefully the new patch will slow things down and allow ana to be more of a playmaker for the team, rather than someone who just slows the game down even further
this is how Lucio should be played tho more or less, and with 1 tank only flanking and letting only 1 supp heal the tank is soooo risky. You have not disproven anything the video said.
Not to the “tf2 better durr” guy but I think this is why loadouts are such an effective design for a hero shooter. Since the mercenaries are allowed to switch their weapons around while still maintaining their class roll for the most part it allows you to get creative with their tools more easily, in contrast to the more rigid design of overwatch hero’s that generally do one specific thing only.
I would argue that the Overwatch equivalent of changing loadout is swapping to a similar hero. TF2 have few characters, so each one must have lots of variety to keep players engaged. In OW, Engie and Gunslinger Engie would be two heroes, Sniper and Lucksman Sniper would be two heroes.
@@mistermiles3271 TF2 loadouts were largely inspired directly from how people played the classes. Gunslinger engineer was born because you did genuinely have some engies who would plop down a level one sentry hyper-aggressively and forget a lot of that "defense" stuff. The direct hit was born from landing direct rockets on specifically airborne targets being so damn satisfying, the market gardener from a similarly silly way to get kills. Most loadouts and most playstyles came from direct inspiration of what people were already able to do with the classes. OW characters were made in relative vacuums, their complexities self-contained and overlap as minimal as possible. If anything, that fact is the most damaging for designing classes with depth, as none of it directly builds off of anything else.
Overwatch is designed this way. You're not meant to find varying playstyles in one hero. You're meant to find varying playstyles across the hero roster. TF2 has 9 heroes with slight variations of playstyle. Overwatch has 30+ heroes with varying playstyles.
This, exactly. You have a few general hero archetypes, and then tons of variants with unique playstyles. For example, Doomfist and Winston are both high-mobility dive tanks, but Winston is more defensive with his barrier and armor, while Doomfist is more offensive with his stuns and burst damage. Lucio and Brigitte are both AOE healing main supports with low-average damage, but Brigitte plays to keep her team alive and deny offensive pushes, while Lucio is more about speeding your team quickly into a fight and exploiting weaknesses with headshots and his boop.
I suppose. But sometimes there's one playstyle that I _want_ to play as. And when counterpicking and team comp means that one playstyle will result in a definite loss... Well, it's not fun. I understand that any sort of composition-based FPS is going to have compositions with upsides and downsides, but the downsides here are too severe.
@@Chameleonred5 That's okay. Not every game can appeal to every person. If a game isn't fun, it means that you may be prioritizing things that the game itself doesn't prioritize, and would be better suited to find a game more in-line with what you find fun. For example, a game less about strategy and coordination with a team, and instead allows a variety of playstyles at any given time.
I'm confused. Did this video just complain about how healers are designed in a way that they do not encourage players to disregard their low hp teammates? Man, imagine picking a role and not doing what you're supposed to do.
I gotta say, starting the video with saying "stolen mechanics" while referring to a something that didn't even invent the mechanic is a really solid way to make you sound levelheaded.
While there are some common misconceptions in this video, you are correct in identifying that the game punishes creativity statistically.... however, if you are good enough at what you do, you can overcome this. Having been one of these Top 500 "Funny Lucio's" myself back in Overwatch 1 and indeed, Lucio isn't the only one suffering from this. The optimal way to play should also be the most fun way to play, In Overwatch AND ESPECIALLY OVERWATCH 2, that is not the case.... you do what you are designed to do, or lose.... I don't play Overwatch anymore, I have no friends that want to play it anymore and while that didn't stop me from enjoying Overwatch 1 even in the late stages I can't say playing Solo is any fun in Overwatch 2. Also blizzard is a shi-tscum company that I no longer feel right supporting after knowing what it has done
Thank you! I appreciate the feedback. Some of those misconceptions may come from my perspective as a casual player. While I did do a lot of comp research for the video (and I feel most of my arguments apply regardless), I think my point is most valid when looking at Overwatch's heroes from the perspective of a casual who will never be able to put in the time or effort to overcome the natural walls that have been placed by Blizzard's game design.
@@LucidMakesVideos Well with your point, If you're a casual player why care? Yeah winning feels good but I'd rather have fun and lose then not have fun and win. In casual you're not losing rank or making anyone else lose their rank so I don't get why the issue is that big.
@@2close2sun some people can enjoy a game casually and still enjoy winning. I may not want or feel the need to learn the best rollouts and positions for the roster, but I can still want to win and feel bad when we dont
@@2close2sun I feel like this comment perfectly illustrates the real problem plaguing overwatch imo: The game isn't fun to lose. It is made to be the least fun experience imaginable in most games. "Winning" is TOO MUCH of an objective in every match.
@@m4stermodder spontaneous name change, but still sebbo, I'm a casual player myself and I do agree with you fully. No, it doesnt feel good to lose and yes, winning feels god. but HIS logic is that you either A) Not have fun, get the most use out of the character B) Have a lot of fun, but throw and while that's simply not the case (he might just not be good enough to play his prefered playstyle). my point is that given those 2 options that HE'S saying are the only 2, I'm picking B over A any day.
Yeah man, Lucid feels right for you. The new color scheme is much more eye catching too! I have tried to play Overwatch (and I mean really comepetitive) about twice now. Once in 2016, once in 2022. You get burnt out fast with how limited it is just like you said. Well put!
Yes cause they want people to buy more stuff to use instead of actually enjoying the game how they want to play. No wonder TF2 is more popular with no updates.
40 hours is definitely very little to work with relative to Overwatch. There are people with hundreds of hours in this game that still don't understand certain ability interactions or how to position properly on particular maps. There's just a lot to learn in OW, much like other ability focused games. That said I agree that there is a lack of skill expression on some heroes and I think older supports like Mercy and Lucio in particular feel a bit stale in OW2.
I like playing mercy to try to be a slippery little bastard who evades everyone’s attempts to kill me. I feel like supports with good movement have more expression in how they avoid or dance around enemies than in how they interact with them directly
disagree, as a mercy player (i know, that whole mercy mains yappertron train :( ). I think maybe lucio if you were an ow1 player as his base playstyle hasnt changed, but mercy herself has experienced multiple waves of changes even within ow2 which involved even t500 having to relearn muscle memory and figuring out how to reimplement old mechanics and create new ones with the improved flexibility. i thought she was mid and boring until i really starting putting in the hours. even now im still learning, picking up weird tech that comes in surprisingly useful and improving my decision making (and at times, glocking lol). her ceiling is definitely much higher than people give credit for, but unlike lucio OTPs you can really only know a good mercy if you ARE a main due to her low but consistent impact level. that kind of improvement was pretty visible personally as i look back on old footage for review, which i think does put some weight on the "not stale" category. as the previous comment said, there is tons of expression in understanding the dangers to you and knowing how to avoid them (e.g. how would you GA against a winton? you have to exactly position that your GA will send you in the direction he came from preferably, timed to leave right before he lands and starts any damage. and against DVa it gets even more micromanaged and complicated).
Varying playstyles in OW are meant to be split into different heroes, not single heroes with varying playstyle. If you don't like the playstyle of one hero you move to another. I understand the desire for people to play heroes they think are cool, but they only do so if they really really like that hero. I often find I select heroes based off playstyle and not who I like personally or not. It also creates consistency in what to expect from said hero when they are picked on your or the enemies team.
The Widow example is pretty much on the money imo. Looking at tf2, it also has snipers that just hang in the back and don't do anything but snipe. But you can absolutely be a sniper who goes up front and quickscopes people if you're good enough.
I remember when the real variance of Day One was the lack of limits on role or character count. You could have 5 winstons and 1 lucio because it was funnily torn down by 5 torb and a mercy.
To be fair, most of Wrecking Ball momentum relies on his hook, which has a cooldown. If he messes up, he'll have to wait a while Lucio can just jump near a wall and get an easy momentum-foward, his speed boost gives him an advantage too
The thing I find rather funny is that they HAD a solution in the form of the Talent Trees, which where something probably based of off HotS' system. HotS has so much more skill expression due to the large amount of talents per hero. Unlike other MOBAs HotS does not have the base item system , an antiquated system but that's just my personal bias, HotS allows for so many different builds which fundamentally change how a character is played. Anyway I just wanted to add my two cents before it sinks into the void of the internet.
but god a talent tree in Overwatch just sounds like a recipe for a hot broken mess of a comp game lol. Blizzard is already struggling enough trying to balance the game, if they had to balance every possible iteration of every single hero I'm pretty sure they would just give up.
Im gonna be honest this is one of the reasons i still adore paladins, you really can shape your character into diffrent playstyles with card and talents
It's honeslty disapointing to see the lack of ressources evil mojo has. The game has so much potential to become really great. The caracters are so much fun and all have so many different and unique playstyle. Every game feel so much different from one a other. There is so much diversity and depth to be explore. But there is a lot of bugs, the game is really unpolished, the game is , most of the time, unbalanced, the gameplay can feel clonky and lot of talents, champions and cards are simply unplayable. I wish that evil mojo is, on day, going to get the ressources they rightly deserve.
I'd say there is a note to point out which doesn't apply to pvp so, the pve bits where he is included and usable (my only example and experience of that being the temporarily available free underworld mission) where lucio gets addiotion to his kit, his speedboost also increasing the attack speed of himself and everyone else in range, 20% default and 40% durring amp doesn't add too much but, those who actually know this is a thing can help out when needed a ton, cuz if you kill targets faster, there is less time to take damage, compared to those who just stick to staying on heal even at close to full health I'd be lying if I said that most of the lucios in those modes that I saw knew about speed boost increasing the fire rate
As a support main for the last 3 years I must say that this video perfectly described my problem with Overwatch. OW usually feels like doing the same thing over and over again even though I try to play every hero not the intended way. But since counter-picking is so strong and common in OW it's almost impossible to have fun because whenever I try to flank as Zen or DPS Lucio and actually get some picks the enemy team always counter-picks. Anyways this video was amazing keep up the good work!
Overwatch prides itself on these characters with high skill ceilings, Like Lucio, Tracer, Winston, purely because they have such a high allowance on the different ways you can play the characters, And it feels like you can’t “master” them Imo one of the games many strengths that the average eye struggles to see PS: Great Video man, criticisms of Overwatch to me are exceptionally dull and boring because they all sound the same, but yours stands out and you make some really good points
The way you described playing lucio is how lucio is played in a 5 man in voice team play. Where you as the lucio have to shot call, identify what ults you have to counter with your ult and make plays with your speed as a team. In solo ranked, you HAVE TO REDDIT LUCIO but only sometimes, identify situations where you can get away with playing aggressive. The way I see it is to multitask as much as possibe, don't over commit on anyone except your other support and sometimes the tank. Never over commit on the enemy team. Always try to keep a mental note of where everyone in the lobby is and act with the tools you have, with lucio's speed and wallride you can be in most parts of the map and be involved in everything.
I feel like Overwatch could have benefited from having hero "variants" that slightly alter their gameplay, similar to what Garden Warfare does. It would probably be absolute hell to implement though. Btw, you only scratched the surface of what you can do with the Marksman in Ultrakill. You can also punch the coins to juggle them and boost the ricochet damage or use them to reflect hitscan attacks from enemies.
The variation usually comes from cooldown and ult usage. For a typical game the neutral fight might look similar from both sides, but you'll find big differences in how cooldowns are spent.
Tbh I’ve always found playing creatively and experimenting to find something that works is one of the most rewarding parts of the game, because when characters are shoved in a box like that everyone expects them to play a certain way, other team included. Back when bastion was immobile with infinite turret mode in OW1 I spent hours and hours perfecting the “flanking bastion” strategy and NOBODY expected it. It is SIGNIFICANTLY harder to be creative in this game, but I think that also makes it SIGNIFICANTLY more fun and rewarding when you are
personally, even though i've played tf2 and overwatch, i always come back to paladins. i love how i can change to multiple playstyles with every caracter
as someone with 100s of hours in both Overwatch and TF2, I can say that I definitely enjoy each game for different reasons. TF2 for its mechanical depth and high speed gameplay, and Overwatch for its teamwork aspects and playing with friends. I would quite literally never play Overwatch without queuing up with one of my friends, because then I'd be missing out on the sole reason I enjoy the game in the first place, while TF2 is much more of a solo endeavour for me
As always, the production and recording of the video are immaculate, great video! Overall I agree with one of the conclusions being that the design team has leant to a more lenient, straight forward design with their heroes. All three of the newest heroes (Lifeweaver, Illari and Mauga) lack nuance or variety in their gameplay, and thus, character expression and as a result they all have been a nightmare to balance. However, I think the character expression you portrayed in this video is either misaligned or maybe misunderstood with the way I see it in OW. OW has an inherent focus on team play (as you mention in the video), and as a result, teams are bound to have similar purposes overall, and it's the better game knowledge and proper execution of those ideas that eventually snowball into the better team winning. I'll admit ignorance in most of the games you mention here since I haven't really played them myself, but I think the reason why they are able to have such focus on personal skill expression is because good play in those seems to be a lot more selfish than OW because they focus more in your individual (and frankly, mostly mechanic) gameplay. In OW, being good at an individual character inherently means that you're also good at understanding how your character helps your team, and it doesn't always mean that you always gotta play right next and for your team all game, sometimes it means that you gotta play more selfishly (like how usually flankers play), but in the end, they do it because it's the most selfless thing they could be doing. The thing is, we've actually had a hero that was not just selfish, but if you actually didn't master how to play completely on your own, you were actively throwing, and that is OW1 Doomfist. While not considered to be very good overall, he had a massive skill expression and high skill ceiling he had almost a cult following player base that mastered every single detail of his kit and grinded his rollouts for hours that ultimately end up in you one shotting at least one person on the enemy team. What was the problem? Well, the developers ultimately decided this is just not how the game "should be played". A Doomfist that mastered all these techniques essentially appeared out of thin air and just kill a person for free, and that is nothing that has a ton of of counterplay if any, and the tricky thing about him is that even with all that, he was still not very good, if any step of his plan failed, he's dead 90% of the time, so it's not like it was very fair against the Doom players either. As a result, he had to be reworked as a tank where his purpose could be a lot more defined and aligned with how an OW game usually plays. While OW doesn't have that raw character expression in those games that you mention, I think what makes the game so fun is actually how the different characters interact with all the many set mechanics in the game and how they can use them to their own advantage, and that is nuanced enough that makes the game extremely hard to master. Lucio is actually one of the most beloved characters across all ranks, and extremely valuable even at top play because he can actually do so many of these things. He can peel, he can hold an off angle on his own, he can enable the tank, soft the burden of your fellow support with the amp heals while he can do other stuff, you can actually (and should imo) play like a Reddit Lucio and flank and 1v1 the character, it's just that understanding how, when, against who and on top of that executing it successfully is incredibly hard, and in the end, if you're able to understand these things, you are overall better at the game, and how transferable the skills you gain in one hero to another despite how different they might actually play in practice is a beautiful thing about OW. So I don't think Lucio is a character that doesn't do much actually, but rather, he has to play bound to certain rules that the game puts for him, and at that, I think he's one of the best, since he can do pretty much everything (this is all if winning game is a priority of yours anyway, if you're just playing for fun you can just play Lucio like you don't give a fuck, move around the map and 1v1 everyone in their team). P.D: I actually believe a better candidate for a video like this would have been Mercy. When having such high mobility actually doesn't correlate to expression, since her whole identity as a character is being an elusive DPS pocket that lacks all the nuance and different things Lucio can do.
That's why I liked the old doomfirst so much, he was the only hero in the game who had some kind of ability expression, but the new doomfirst became a puch bot and whenever someone discovers a new movement tech blizzard simply bugfix, instead of embracing the bugs that made the hero so fun in the first place
This is why I found myself enjoying Paladins much more. The heroes you pick can be customized rather nicely; with Talents that determine a base playstyle, decks that emphasize certain aspects of that playstyle, and items you purchase over the game to tweak to the specific match. When I choose Pip (A character that shoots bursting projectiles, lobs a AOE heal projectile, and can do Big Bounce) I can choose to play a talent that makes the AOE heal biger and burstier with a shield applied. Or I can choose to make it so that his weapon shots do bonus damage with slow and life-rip. Or make it so those weapon shots deal precision healing, sort of like a crossbow medic in TF2.
This is why I loved Overwatch 1 Doomfist. He had 3 play styles not just 2. He had Slam, shoot, uppercut, shoot, punch style. Brain dead charge your fist around corners then leave immediately. Or rollout style. Most players did the first two, but his "reddit" doomfist at its peak was insane
I feel like the dive tanks also kind of reveal Overwatch's biggest problem as well. A lot of the dive tanks kind of do the same thing. Chipsa made a video talking about this, but a lot of characters have been really samey lately. D.V.A., Ball, Winston, and Doomfist have the same playstyle, Torbjorn kind of lost his identity, they babied Roadhog's kit too much, etc.
This is why i loved the loadout mechanic in Paladins. You play the same hero but with different perks and loadouts they would turn almost into a new hero. Just look at the many ways you were able to play Androxus. Although i will say that in turn it makes it much more difficult to know what the enemy hero uses. Yes you can read their perks while tabbing etc but youd have to know most of them for every hero and then also know the benefits of those combinations. Thats probably why ow will never add smth like that.
Personally, I think you can switch between the two playstyles on the fly depending on what's happening in the match. Is your team firmly pushed up and dominating? You can be more aggressive and go for riskier plays. Is your team trying to break through a choke or tough hold? Maybe help them out at least until they get past the stalemate. I find myself doing this in most matches, I almost never exclusively play one way or the other.
You could not possibly be more wrong. The real issue is that you aren't good at his mechanics. Lucio can climb walls faster, jump higher, move faster, and even fly like echo,phara, and mercy if you know how to actually play him. The problem is, you didn't take any time to understand the depth of the game as a whole and thus can't play Lucio. You listened to other people instead of just playing the game and figuring it out.
Weirdly this is the same way how I got into a game a friend screams at me to play and took time for to start but then started to love even also maiming Lucio
A great video. As a Lucio main, I was frustrated that you didn’t bring up his boop. I also feel that there are more winning playstles that are worth discussing. I disagree with your perception of Lucio’s style being put into a box. I feel that lucio has a high level of effective skill expression. For instance, it’s rewarding booping an enemy away from cover or off high ground. Or booping away flankers in your team’s backline. There’s also a notable amount of crowd control that allows Lucio to control angles by positioning the enemy between him and the edge granted by his boop. Another viable playstyle is thriving off distraction. With the goal to take attention away from the fight you take off angles, trying to control space and bait enemy cooldowns. Anyway, thanks for adding thoughtful analysis into the discourse regarding Lucio.
Lucio is an incredibly powerful flanker due to his mobility. A lot of people dismiss this playstyle as trolling, but dps lucio is very popular and successful in high-level games. A lot of overwatch's heroes are specialists, but lucio (alongside most supports) is very diverse in available playstyles.
Having played a total two matches of Overwatch years ago when the game first released, and now seeing this video about Lúcio... I am left wondering. They designed a Jet Set Radio/DJ/Support-type character whose optimal way to play is by being... boring? Why the hell isn't there a sort of "style meter" and a "rythm game" associated with Lúcio's gameplay? How about having to stay on the move, wallriding, jumping over enemies, killing them and shooting your gun in specific timings to match the rythm of your tunes to get buffs to your abilities, cooldowns and gun damage? The Style meter would boost the range and effectivess of your healing as well as the intensity of your speed buff, maybe even overcharging it so that it lingers for a few seconds after your teammates leave its radius? At the same time, your gun would get improved shot speed, penetration, and damage, whenever you timed them with the tunes you are playing?
that sounds really fun actually. Unfortunately it would directly go against everything it seems Blizzard wants support, and as a consequence Lucio, to be, so chances are low.
I got into overwatch the same way, except I wasn’t a fan of how different it was from other shooters. Now I play every day and I wish I stayed during its golden days
i kinda do both, speed boost and wall ride to get in their faces trying to get head-shots and punching, spamming boop, then wall ride backwards to my team. my percentage of cross-fade is usually around 50 to 60 percent leaning more towards speed. i would say boop is maybe his strongest part of kit, as you can boop enimeis off map, and off cart/point on the last tick. imo lucio is the most fun to play, i really get into the flow with him more than any other hero at the moment.
i play like a dps lucio but i dont forget my team, i go for a kill or 2 and go back to my team, i dont heal too much but i do good amount of damage or kills, the you dont get a reward when you play how the game wants to, its when you can combine it with your play style
well, Lúcio and many other OW heroes are design that way cuz... its a Team based shooter. You can't go wacky like TF2 or Super Smash. TF2 is an the same genre but its mayhem all the time, 24 players shoting with 9 different characters with hundrerds of different weapons, walking in an big map. And smash is an fighting game, its you against the world. In OW you are punish for playing out of the box cuz if you have no idea what you are doing, you are punishing your team. Yes you can play outside of the box, and this require time and practice and not all heroes can achive that.
I 100% agree overwatch core identity was the fact that each hero had a very distinguishable play style and that’s what made playing them and playing against them very dynamic and made each round feel unique
I would argue most characters have varying play styles if you know them well enough. You could play doom fist as a front line pusher or a back line assassin. Hanzo as a long range sniper or up close sniper. Or even Moira as a dps more then a healer. It all depends of how in depth you the know the characters, and usually once you learn characters like that you can play them in all situations.
In over watch 1 My main was zenyatta, I loved how he could passively heal but also had a high skill ceiling with his damage potential. I often played zen in the arcade modes and loved fighting with him, but as more hero’s got released, my golden zen balls became obsolete because I need a specific team build that sticks together constantly to help me not die in two seconds and basically if the tanks or dps like a roadhog or a solder who could heal himself because zen is not famous for his actual healing ability I loved Zen as a character but simply put, I couldn’t play him the way I wanted to, if I could play him at all, most often than not I found myself playing mercy or Ana because my teammates didn’t want to pick up the slack of healing left by Zen’s low healing out out. But yeah, I loved overwatch, but without friends and/or really good consistent and well designed game updates, it’s just become a chore for me to keep up with. I’ve found more enjoyment in playing games that allows and rewards player creativity.
all of you sayin that "ow isnt supposed to have multiple playstyles for one character, it has multiple playstyles across 20+ heroes" are so conditioned that you dk that it'd be more, idk, FUN to have DIFFERENT WAYS of playing a character.
i still remember a period of summer when i had a rein/lucio duo queued against me every game who would just rush backline and roam the map like sime hivemind pacman ready to pick us appart while their snipers stood a 100 miles away having us choose which way to look
A few things you can improve on as lucio if you feel you arnt getting better. You said that its hard to hit shots as lucio but your able to make it easier by knocking them into corners with boop you dont have to preidict where theyre going. Another thing dps lucio can actually be really good cause lucio can 1v1 almost any non-tank character so if you see someone low by themseles in the backline you can easily dive them and 1 burst them.
also reddit lucio is viable as long you dont spend the whole game hunting for kills and only go for them if you get a chance or theyre playing widow cause you canny easly 1 tap them since they stand still and are really tunnel visioned
Well said! Nobody else has been able to explain better why exactly I stopped playing Overwatch and switched to other games, like TF2 and Paladins. After running the same song and dance for years it gets really tiring. Sure, you can improve at what you're doing to climb the ranks, but you can never really do something new with the same Overwatch characters unless you're willing to get yelled at by your team and probably reported for throwing.
Pretty easy to understand why you feel like this. Going from TF2 to Overwatch will have you confused about why heroes dont have alternative playstyles. For example: - When you see a Soldier, it can be anything from roamer to trolldier - When you see a Demoman, its anything from sticky spammer to demoknight - When you see an Engie its anything from turtle engie to battle engie - But when you see a lucio theyre probably going to speed boost in and heal their team.
This was always my main contention with Overwatch throughout all my years of playing it. The fact that every person should be able to play every character in their own unique way but can't because "teamwork" demands that everybody plays in limited and strict manners that ultimately satisfy only a few, all for the sake of getting wins when the point of a game is to have fun for yourself. This got so bad that people were (and still are) actively policing how other people play and it became a divisive issue back when Overwatch was pay-to-play. That's why PvE was the exact perfect announcement Overwatch needed to make because of the customization and freer ways to play characters. Lo and behold though, right? My gaming history involves fighting games, RPGs, and stylish action games (like Devil May Cry and Bayonetta) so to play a game where I can't put my own unique spin on a character eventually ends up gathering dust in my library. No one believes me when I say that the games that stand the test of time are the ones where players, of every skill level, can be the best in their own niche.
In Lucio's Defense about the fact that it deals damage... It probably is less that his music is really bad and more that he's blasting Bass Boosted Brazilian PHONK directly into his enemies' eardrums.
after 10000 hours in tf2, i played overwatch and noticed the difference within minutes. it's so weird that so few people can notice the fundamental issue with not just overwatch, but most of these simplified shooters... in tf2, there will generally always be a "default" in any scenario, or a specific play that is generally just better or the "norm" over others. But you can absolutely just go your own way and do whatever the hell you feel like, because the movement in tf2 is just so much crazier and allows for SO much more skill expression. The shit you can accomplish with a lot of practice in tf2 is incredible and is the entire reason why tf2 is such a fun game to play. In overwatch if you understand basic positioning and gamesense and aim you can basically play any hero immediately without much effort, because every character is only really designed to be played the Default Way or the Lose The Game Instantly Way. as someone that loves aiming, overwatch is a guilty pleasure because characters like soldier 76 are really fun for aiming. But the game itself reeks of same-ness, in the sense that there is barely any difference between how the #1 player in the world might play X character vs how the #395832098 player plays the same character. obviously the #1 player will have better positioning, gamesense, and of course aim, but to what end? they are both attempting to do the same things in the same ways with the same character. in tf2 there was such a depth in how people responded to stimuli and how people played the game that it was genuinely a fascinating experience to just look at people and try to read their minds. what is this person thinking? what will they try to do? by simply looking at their movement, reading how they played the game before they interacted with you, etc., you could get a feel for what they were going to do in the near future, sometimes generally based on the class they were playing, but more so based on what YOU figured out about how THEY play the game (the person behind the character). in overwatch, if you are shooting an X, you know that they will most likely move like Y because Y is the only correct choice for X. If X moves like Z instead of Y, they lose. meaning whether you are shooting at the best X in the universe or just some joe shmoe, you can generally predict gameplay loops just based on the character you see on your screen (X) instead of the person controlling them. to me, that is the real essence of what makes a game good or bad, and is the fundamental "how" for implementing skill expression (greater movement and aim depth) -- railroading character interactions with such simple movement means that there is no real opportunity to do anything creative without just throwing
i feel like the probem where flexibility was killed was with role queue then after with 5v5 heroes like dva lost their identity from a defender to a offensive tank to a defender again to a nothing heroe all balance chanced has made her a different heroe and it feels like the game lost its spark when role queue happened
One thing that I think blizzard could do to make lucio feel more enjoyable and flexible, would be to add some sort of slider or multiple settings to his crossfade, in which players could choose to use a combination of speed and healing, which would allow for much more micro decisions and flexibility surrounding the character. Another way they could adress the issue of lucio's playability would be to buff his projectile speed, allowing players at a lower skill level to join the #luciomafia
Healers that can crank out good damage are frustrating to go against in general, especially lucio as he has tons of mobility and passive heal so fighting him feels like a chore.
As a Lucio you have to hold yourself back so much, don’t do the worlds fastest roll out your team can’t catch up. Yes their is a environmental kill possibility don’t attempt every boop. Yes he has a heal but if your just going to be healing swap off after first point cause you lose all reason to play him if it isn’t aggressive
My problem with Lucio is unless your team is really good or the enemy team is really bad, its difficult to carry with him. He’s an enabler and not many non-Lucio players really know how to use his kit to their advantage. Also the new update for Season 9’s DPS passive makes his healing genuinely much worse, ignoring the boop buffs. Theres sadly just so many other supports that can support their team better.
9:15 that's an interesting point about game design overall. to me it seems like the same difference between smash bros top tiers and bottom tiers. even though it's a different genre what determines viability in these kind of games is versatility and options. steve will always be able to do more than little mac simply because he has more tools to utilize. also mentioning that to make a mechanically deep and fun character they must either be able to have the tools to be adaptable and versatile for many scenarios or have many tools that synergize well, I would define this metric coverage vs combo. the biggest issue is when you have games like pokemon where you have the options to both do coverage and combo but never the resources to accomplish either, also doesn't help that the strongest moves are also the most situationally out of the player's control. random can be good but it needs to always be worth it and not just the potential to be devastating. no thanks on a 1/500 chance I win immediately I would prefer a 1/10 that gives me the advantage if succeeds and only wastes my time or has no effect if failed. alternatively just 2/3 chance you succeed but 1/3 chance you risk detriments.
Part of the reason for the constrained design is the sheer number of heroes combined with Blizzards desire to *force* OW to be an e-sport. All heroes *MUST* be distinct, which is fine. All heroes *MUST* be balanced, which is a fair ideal. But then, for the sake of an audience which is almost never there, All heroes *MUST* be immediately recognizable, both in character and in play, and having varying play styles goes against this.
I originally thought that this also applied to medic, but medic has a different way of playing than Lucio. Lucio has aoe healing, meaning that he has less choices giving him a less diverse playstyle. By giving medic a single-target weapon, he has to figure out who to heal and when. Medic doesn't have as much fancy tech or strategies like the soldier or spy, but he does have variety in how he's played because Medic is all about making choices.
I remember playing overwatch during 2016-2017, i was a bastion and symmetra main (they were over powered i also heard later). I quited because i had to get bored and the play style was getting stale. I don't regret quiting since both the game and story doesn't appeal to me.
I just got hit with a weird feeling when you said you had played some games on your friend's ps4 in middle school, the weird realization that someone I presume to be older than me is in fact a few years younger at least.
I’m also a long time tf2 player, so this all makes sense to me. You should convince that friend who got you into overwatch to play tf2 and see how fast they switch games entirely
Masters Lucio here. If you're playing any support without looking for kills, you're dragging your team down. Learning to balance getting kills with supports is actually the norm above metal ranks. Just like high rabk mercy players understand damage boost is vastly more valuable than heaking. These things are just very counterintuitive to outsiders.
I generally agree with the sentiment. In overwatch the variance in play style tends to be in the macro level, in how each hero of the team plays of each others abilities, rather than how how the abilities are used by the individual player. There are some dissagreements when it comes to lucio since I have put a few hundred hours into the charecter. First of all the so called "reddit lucio" playstyle isn't necesarilly bad, as long as it's not the primarry objective of the player to get kills. getting an elimination is always value to your team, it's only a question of when can you leave your team to get it (lucio isn't really good at long range so getting a kill involvels closing the distance with wallriding) and when is the enemy in a position where you can kill them without getting killed by their team mates. The other point I take issue with is wallriding having little use, when in fact it has a ton of uses. wallriding when mastered let's you basically be everywhere at once, you can start with healing your tank in the frontline, then in a split second dart to your backline to help your ana fend of a flanker, and then fly to the enemy backline to help your own flanker secure a kill.
As someone who’s played for many years I think the variance in play style for a lot of overwatch 1 supports is just limited by the game knowledge curve. Supports beyond kiri and illati can play more offensive but only if they have great positioning and skill at the hero. Perhaps the skill level to get the most fun from these heros is too high, but I hope the focus on team empowerment outside of damage/invice isn’t lost.
I really just think the game isn’t for you man this does not seem like a good representation of the character and almost everything you seem to hate abt it I love
speaking as a high level dps and support player, there's such a big difference in lucio playstyle between me and someone like fdgod, we may as well be playing two different roles within the team altogether, lucio is a great team player with amazing peel capabilites, but he's also one of the greatest single squishy dive heroes in the game right up there with heroes like genji, sombra and tracer. I like to play with a lot more peel for my other support and dps, someone like fdgodlikes to dive onto the enemy squishies a lot more, those are very different playstyles that utilise the extreme movement capabilites within the same character, and they both work right up to the highest level on the ranked ladder. Of course once you're in an organised scrim or tournament setting a single target dive is less effective unless you're a mechanical wallride god.
This is exactly why PvE Skill trees was such an anticipated promise. The community had already conformed to this status quo of "conformity is rewarded, creativity is punished." How many people cheered when Symmetra got reworked into a generic hero? Now Doomfist is a Tank. But secretly, we wanted to express ourselves. We had cosmetics. Now they're locked behind a paywall. We wanted a skill tree and a decent story mode. But that was cut. Well shit.
This video brings Pip from Paladins to mind. Pip is, technically speaking, a support. However, you can actually build him as a couple different kinds of support--speccing into burst healing or sustained healing depending on your talent and loadout--or build him as a flanker by adding a damage amp to his altfire. You do have to _choose_ a playstyle--your loadout cards can make or break your ability to win a fight--but you get a choice.
i think the problem is the game modes put a CTF and lucio will no longer be the healing guy u need him to be but instead the speed demon he has to be this game doesnt have a search and destroy or any other game modes that would change how heros are played
i honeslty belive that the skill expession is there. i can tell when somone is better than me. sometimes if you dont know why maybe you should find out.
As a certified lucio main who has broken out of the box, not as far as frogger though, never as far as frogger, I can safely say, lucio has to be the best character ever when played right. His kit is wildly fun and it's honestly hard to not have fun. Lucios on top
This issue was sorta exaggerated when porting the game to 5v5. The off-tank role took on a great amount of responsibilities and allowed the other roles to have way more freedom on how they're played, you wouldn't suffer too much from having your Lucio dps when you had a dva or zarya to mitigate some of the incoming DMG and help keep the main tank on. But since 5v5 there is only one game plan, all tanks must be giga buffed characters to be able to just stay alive, the off tank role had to be distributed between dps and support and made it so everyone is unkillable and every character now has to be a jack of all trades to be viable. If you don't have high DMG, DMG mitigation and movement in your kit you're basically out of the game.
Bro even frogger only goes on the “dps Lucio” once every like 8 games If you watch his streams you can see that the majority of his games his playing the boring Lucio style.
I disagree. The idea that there is "1 true playstyle" for Lucio is pretty misleading. While DPS/Reddit Lucio is generally less optimal at a professional level, in ranked it is still viable (see Frogger). Even in pro play, you don't see Lucio's solely playing by their team, especially if it is a dive composition. Lucio's often take off-angles with a high mobility DPS (Sojourn, Tracer, Genji) to speed them onto a target and help confirm the kill. Even in less mobile dive comps that have flex supports such as Ana or Zenyatta, Lucio can focus on peeling for the other support in a similar way to Brigitte but with much more of a neutral presence due to the mobility to help other teammates. Many other characters have multiple playstyles, and for most it is integral to understand when to use them depending on enemy or ally team compositions. Genji is a good example of this. His most popular playstyle is as an opportunist. When left unchecked, (and when playing into slower support comps) he is extremely dangerous and can rip through your backline very quickly. However, when playing into a comp with a lot more movement options, he has to play much slower and methodical. Focusing on building blade, taking softer off-angles and forcing enemy CD's is how he gets the most value. I don't think this video was made in bad faith, just that it was overly misinformed. Saying that Mercy's that focus on damage boost suboptimal 10:30 shows this lack of understanding. Similarly to Lucio, when Mercy is meta it is because of utility (damage boost), not her healing capabilities. There is a reason Mercy/Lucio support comps are so garbage, as they do not have enough sustain to keep the team alive.
What i personally would love for lucio is allowing his music to be a status effect that lasts for a while. That way a lucio could stay with his team for optimal buff uptime or go out booping reinforcements off the map without completely losing out on buffing his team. Additionally his ability to strengthen his buff could also make it stay stronger longer while lucio is gone, allowing for longer periods of roaming with more protection for his team.
I think that a few characters that did have massive personality and skill expression potential are many of the 'viable but not TOO viable' tanks. Sigma and Hog are very lucioesque, but i feel as if Rein and the newer Junker Queen (my two mains) have a lot of stuff that is extremely personality driven (probably because i mained them) JQ's healing and Rein's shield both make the player weigh the second to second benefits of going in vs staying out. With both, you're constantly watching your lifebar and calculating whether you need to retreat now or if you have enough healing/shield to justify gambling another second or two in an attempt to break the enemy team. However, as we all know, being an OW tank main is akin to being the bottom of a BDSM duo with Mike Tyson with the amount of busted balls youll be left with after choosing wrong exactly one time too many (which is usually one time) so maybe the extra skill expression isnt quite worth it
Bro i am also a tf2 player and literally at my cousin's house i picked Lucio cuz he had cool skin, first life 15ks still wasnt enough to make me play overwatch and i still much rather play tf2 with overwatch like once a month or 2 when my brain decides it for no reason Definitely going to play lucio more cuz even tho anna is my wanna be main just like demo, i suck too much to play/main them cant hit a shot to save my(or my teammate's) life and i wish i was joking my hit rate is like 40%to20%(hurts my soul)so i dont pick them unless am at full focus
For how well designed the characters and gameplay is, Overwatch has easily the most shallow heroes in the Hero Shooter genre. Paladins has extensive upgrades/modifiers for each hero, as well as mid game upgrades to buy. TF2 has items and weapons to allow several subclasses and gameplay variations for its seemingly small roster. Even the PVZ Garden Warfare trilogy had class variants AND perk slots. Overwatch just has the vanilla heroes, and thats it. No upgrades, no modifiers, no variants, no nothing.
i think it's because OW2 has tens of heroes in the roster to choose, so if you want to have a specific playstyle, you pick the hero, not necessary the playstyle
What did you think of the video?! Do you agree? Disagree? Let me know in the comments below!
I disagreed
Awesome video, expresses what I love about TF2, Smash and gaming in general. I do think Smash Ultimate kind of pales compared to Melee in this sense. For me it's movement tech, and tech in general (usually unintended) that make a character fun, unique, and creative, and I think anyone can agree Melee has a lot more of that, even if Ultimate is a lot more polished in its design.
I hate overwatch
Why do you care how people think? Most people's opinions are underdeveloped.
The Lucio mafia appreciates this video. You forgot to tell the devs to buff Boop though
In my experience, overwatch is a lot like chess. There’s a ton of different moving pieces with different moving capabilities. At the pro level, a lot of the minmaxed moves are common knowledge, that’s why in chess the first moves take seconds. However with a full team of complimentary pieces allows the abilities to experiment and succeed with “off-meta” play styles. Take goats. At the time Goats implemented their new strategy, every team stuck to a more formal team composition.
That is not chess.
That is Yu-Gi-Yoh.
but if the game is only fun if you are really good at it were will the new players come from?
@@zx-dx719 I'm not "new" but I am shit at the game and I have fun... a lot of fun! I'm also a junkrat player though so in most places I've been told my opinion is void. I do think that in the cast of hero's junkrat might be one of the most diverse. that might be the issue. I don't really know what I'm yappin about tho so...?
@@zx-dx719 the game is more fun as a new player because you get to learn all the interactions and discover what works best for you. Every game gets a bit stale once you learn everything there is to know. That’s why a lot of the long term players (like myself) switch between characters or focus on mastering one. The now-constant balance changes help keep the game feeling fresh too
@@2close2sun ngl it’s fun to shit on characters, and some have pretty low skill ceilings and high skill floors. But every character is fucking annoying if the player knows what they’re doing
So Lucids fav hero is Lucio... Why is it not surprising at all
Hmmmmmm....
oh hey simply
@@LucidMakesVideoswill you talk about Paladins soon?
he is simply peak character design for any game ever but he’s surrounded by pure garbage. idk how ow can make a character so perfectly designed then you just have bap, kiriko, and orisa. i don’t understand
YO I KNOW THAT GUY
I would like to note that from my personal perspective, OW characters are designed with a specific playstyle in mind, not as generalist.
Trying to create the feel TF2 does with 30+ characters creates an insane amount of overlap.
then make less characters (also somehow most (if not all) fighting games get away with large yet deep character rosters)
@@zx-dx719that’s because fighting games are intended for it to ne competitive unlike ow that can’t decide it’s identity
Even with fighting games, characters are created with archetypes in mind. They all fit into a certain niche. Lucio here also fits a niche and is considered a pretty lackluster support in the current meta unlike previously
I'll be honest, i think ever since ow2 the characters are more generalist than specific
tf2 characters are so well designed with a solid playstyle in their original loadout, but when custom loadouts come into play they can have a lot more diversity, which is completely different than overwatch, where characters are meant to do only that one role that same way and you have to keep switching.
Being able to switch heroes to counter every time is somehow bad to overwatch because you have no incentive to learn to play any hero in different ways, if it comes to that it is easier to just switch, and that is not entirelly the case for tf2, i think OW would get a lot better if they started to take more inspiration from paladins, if someone on the other team counters your character, you can't switch, you can at most chose different cards and talent at the start of the match, maybe change the items you buy, but not the character, if it is to overwhelming yo will also have to switch positions and work with your team to eliminate whatever is making your life harder, while overwatch you just switch, and then the other team switches to counter you again... and you switch again...
I actually disagree a lot. Lucio is extremely adaptable and flexible in his playstyle, especially compared to other heroes in the game. You can play him to int into the enemy backline if you have the mechanics, you can be a team leader if youre a brainiac, you can be a flanker control duelist if you are against tracer, sombra, genji, or soldier. You can passively sit back and farm beat if you want to counter enemy ultimates as much as possible. His flexibility is why hes so good, not just his speed
And especially do NOT listen to the "reddit Lucio" hate wave, there have been t1 professional Lucio players who have that play style and some have even won championships.
ALSO also, the optimal mercy play style is absolutely damage boosting and looking for opportunities to Glock an enemy down in valk, healbotting on mercy is a quick way to do nothing (could just be on Moira, kiriko, ana, or bap and you would get a thousand times more value.)
yes bro exactly. I was watching this video scratching my head thinking the exact same thing. Pros and high ranks use lucio because he doesnt just have one playstyle, and its switching between and micromanaging the best playstyle when opportunities present themselves is why he is used. Hes not just an aura-bot, hes a backline defender, enabler, and a duelist at a moments notice. Understanding which to do is why hes good.
Hard agree people underestimate how deep a lot of the characters in overwatch are tbh
I was also thinking the same thing. Like I don’t stay around my team unless there’s a reason to be there
I feel like the problem here is that you see gameplay as either being Conforming to what the hero should do and being creative, when in reality the best players in the game are able to do both constantly
"the best players in the game"
Gonna have to disagree on this one. I'm far from the best Lucio player (mid Diamond after playing him for over 4 years), but what keeps bringing me back to him are how many different ways there are to play him and the insane skill expression with his movement.
You can brawl with your tank. You can dive with your tank. You can protect your backline from flankers. You can be the flanker. You can poke at the enemy Widow to keep her on her toes. You can B-line and frag the enemy Widow when she's not paying attention. You can parkour to get back from spawn faster. You can parkour to jump over a Rein shatter. You can parkour to dive the backline. You can parkour to go protect your backline. You can amp heals to help your team outlive a dive. You can amp speed to disengage completely from an enemy ult and speed your team right back in. You can beat to hold W with your team and go ape shit. You can save your beat to counter an enemy ult. You can boop someone off the map. You can boop someone away from your backline. You can go over the enemy tank and boop them into your team. The possibilities are endless.
What differentiates average Lucios from good Lucios from godly Lucios is much less about what they do, but when they do it. The best Lucios do all of this at the same time.
YOU CAN PARKOUR BB
- brawl with your tank
- dive with your tank (same as brawling with your tank)
- you can protect your backline from flankers.
- You can be the flanker.
- You can poke at the enemy Widow to keep her on her toes. (has nothing to do with Lucio's kit, literally every hero except brig can do this, that doesn't make it a new playstyle)
- You can B-line and frag the enemy Widow when she's not paying attention. (and what if she is paying attention? or if they don't have a widow?)
- You can parkour to get back from spawn faster. (not a playstyle. there is never a time where parkouring from spawn isn't beneficial.)
- You can parkour to jump over a Rein shatter. (not a playstyle)
- You can parkour to dive the backline. (this is just being the flanker like you've previously mentioned)
- You can parkour to go protect your backline. (this is just protecting your backline like you've previously mentioned)
- You can amp heals to help your team outlive a dive. (usually not worth it, like how he mentioned experimentation isn't rewarded)
- You can amp speed to disengage completely from an enemy ult and speed your team right back in. (you should do this, otherwise you're not utilizing his kit to it's max potential)
- You can beat to hold W with your team and go ape shit.
- You can save your beat to counter an enemy ult. (these are the only two ways to use beat, but you should save it to counter unless they don't have a specific win condition)
- You can boop someone off the map. (not variety)
- You can boop someone away from your backline. (this is again protecting your backline from flankers)
- You can go over the enemy tank and boop them into your team. (just brawling with your tank)
The possibilities are endless. Except they aren't.
- Play with your frontline / tank
- Play with your backline / support (Except other heroes do this much better. Lucio's value scales the more people are in range, and the backline usually never needs speed.)
- Flank (very difficult unless you're extremely talented, unviable for most ranks)
- You can use your ult offensively or defensively (hitting tab and depending on the team comp will tell you the optimal way to use it.)
That's it.
@@notfunnyperson3496 wrong + skill issue but keep coping
@@Bidniss. I at least made an argument and explained my reasoning
@@notfunnyperson3496 Ok here you go :
- Play with your frontline/tank : Brawling and diving with your tank are different. In a brawl, you're playing much less aggressive as it's very easy to get stacked out if you try to jump on someone in the enemy death ball. You can pounce on someone that's very low and get back to your team fast, but you're usually playing more of a sheep herder using your speed to help your tank weave in and out of the enemy close range characters. In a dive, you're coordinating with your tank to nuke a specific target or force defensive cooldowns to go for a kill on a subsequent dive instead of winning a war of attrition like in brawl. Brawl switches between the aggressive and defensive playstyle very fast and very often. Dive usually goes all in on offense for a bit, then full retreat for a bit.
- Play with your backline/support : Lucio's value doesn't only come from how many people are in his aura (in a game where everyone is playing perfectly grouped it does, but that's about it) but also how from quickly you can peel for different teammates. You also don't only peel for your support. Sure, Brig is better at babysitting a single person, but Lucio can quickly go from helping your dps on an off-angle fight off an enemy dps on an off-angle to helping your support live a flanker's engagement. One is a lot more aggressive than the other. Also, your supports do need speed to get back to the rest of the team after dealing with or going on their own flank or off-angle. Your ana will really appreciate getting back in los of your tank to do her job after she's been stuck in a closed room with an enemy tracer for 10 seconds while your tank didn't look behind them are took a more aggressive position. Reaper tp'ed in to your other support? Speeding them away from him after hitting a boop will do more than healing them since you can't outheal a point blank reaper doing reaper things.
- Flank : much easier than you claim it to be. Even if you can't 100-0 someone on a whim (the "assassin Lucio" playstyle), you can absolutely disrupt the enemy team by being an annoying fly on the wall and pulling aggro from as many enemies as possible for as long as possible (the "distraction Lucio" playstyle). It might take you 10 seconds to kill an enemy backliner by yourself, but assuming they have more awareness than a newborn, they're going to look at you, and those are 10 seconds the enemy tank isn't getting their main source of healing, or 10 seconds where your dps aren't contested by a long range enemy dps or both at the same time. Assassin Lucio is much more viable the higher you climb since you should have better mechanics and pull off the assassinations more reliably. Distraction Lucio works wonders in lower ranks where the enemy won't shoot back at you (in which case you turn into a mini assassin) or where the enemy also can't just burn you down (in which case you can consistently pull aggro from half the enemy team for entire team fights). Both are flanky playstyles, but both play very differently.
- Depending on the map, the environmental kill Lucio playstyle also opens up, where you're taking the weirdest off angles, feeding your brains out to get behind the enemy tank and boop them into the deathpit or rolling out into the enemy spawn to spawncamp someone by booping them off the Illios spawn room into the crack between it and the actual map. This is very close to the assassin playstyle, but still different enough since your micro-positionning matters WAY more and you need to be at specific angles at specific times to throw someone into the abyss.
So really, there's dive Lucio, Brawl Lucio, aggressive-protective Lucio, full-protective Lucio, assassin Lucio, distraction Lucio and environmental kill Lucio. Again, as I said in my original comment, the beauty of Lucio is that his mobility allows him to switch between these playstyles at a moment's notice and your overall playstyle shifts from game to game. Some games, you're playing a dive/assassin/distraction combo. Some games, you're playing a distraction/aggressive-protective combo. Other games, you're playing a brawl/environmental kill/full-protective combo.
There's definitely points to be made about how some characters are very one dimensional, like how most tanks devolve into different flavors of "I stand there shooting the enemy frontline rotating my cooldowns to survive" or "I engage the backline and try to get a kill or two before I explode" or how a lot of dps characters fall into either the "I stay back and poke until I get a kill" or the "I harass the backline until something dies on either team" category, but Lucio is just about the worst example to use to make the "every character has a set playstyle" argument. You can group playstyles together all you want, but at some point you're just making overgeneralizations because you don't understand the nuances between them. If all you can notice is which role the teammate you're helping out is on or if you're protecting/attacking, then that's a you problem.
I have to say I disagree.
I've mained Lucio ever since last Summer when one of my school teammates invited me to a team that needed a main support. I picked up him and Brig, and instantly I started noticing how much more I could do in a team with full communication as the funny frog boi. Every single scrim I'd find my movement becoming a little bit smoother or my aim a bit sharper. Once my mechanics were up to snuff, I started learning how you can aid your team on a macro level as well. First it was being able to "mark", or duel the enemy flankers on an off angle with my high survivability. Then it was getting comfortable enough to be able to wallride above my enemies and boop valuable targets into my team. When you're passionate about the character you play and how comfortable you feel in your gameplay, I'd say it's actually really rewarding and even natural to find avenues to implement your own individuality.
I love Lucio a lot and I'm a firm believer that you don't have to play passive or overaggro to be effective. Maybe I'm just seeing his super high mechanical skill ceiling as a counter argument against yours, but this is just my belief.
I agree with this, lucio is very well designed, miles better than ana or bap or illiari
Im not reading All that 😬
@@iloveferrets5859 I think ana is relatively well designed. A lot of the designs do be one-note as fuck but i think ana would be a great character if damage and healing were lower and the game was slower and more proactive. Right now the "without sustain everyone dies immediately" and the "when the enemy does a play, use this to counter it" environment shoves ana into a box but i remember a time when (ana on rein-zarya back in the day) the game was more lenient and i felt like i had a lot of stuff i could do on ana.
@AluRooftop hopefully the new patch will slow things down and allow ana to be more of a playmaker for the team, rather than someone who just slows the game down even further
this is how Lucio should be played tho more or less, and with 1 tank only flanking and letting only 1 supp heal the tank is soooo risky. You have not disproven anything the video said.
Not to the “tf2 better durr” guy but I think this is why loadouts are such an effective design for a hero shooter. Since the mercenaries are allowed to switch their weapons around while still maintaining their class roll for the most part it allows you to get creative with their tools more easily, in contrast to the more rigid design of overwatch hero’s that generally do one specific thing only.
I would argue that the Overwatch equivalent of changing loadout is swapping to a similar hero. TF2 have few characters, so each one must have lots of variety to keep players engaged. In OW, Engie and Gunslinger Engie would be two heroes, Sniper and Lucksman Sniper would be two heroes.
class based shooter. Call it a class based shooter.
@@mistermiles3271 TF2 loadouts were largely inspired directly from how people played the classes. Gunslinger engineer was born because you did genuinely have some engies who would plop down a level one sentry hyper-aggressively and forget a lot of that "defense" stuff. The direct hit was born from landing direct rockets on specifically airborne targets being so damn satisfying, the market gardener from a similarly silly way to get kills. Most loadouts and most playstyles came from direct inspiration of what people were already able to do with the classes. OW characters were made in relative vacuums, their complexities self-contained and overlap as minimal as possible. If anything, that fact is the most damaging for designing classes with depth, as none of it directly builds off of anything else.
TF2 is a mix of a class shooter and a hero shooter; idk what you'd call it I guess a class hero shooter?
@@mistermiles3271In TF2 you have a range of Engie and Gunslinger engine loadouts than something like OV to keep in mind.
Overwatch is designed this way. You're not meant to find varying playstyles in one hero. You're meant to find varying playstyles across the hero roster. TF2 has 9 heroes with slight variations of playstyle. Overwatch has 30+ heroes with varying playstyles.
This, exactly. You have a few general hero archetypes, and then tons of variants with unique playstyles. For example, Doomfist and Winston are both high-mobility dive tanks, but Winston is more defensive with his barrier and armor, while Doomfist is more offensive with his stuns and burst damage. Lucio and Brigitte are both AOE healing main supports with low-average damage, but Brigitte plays to keep her team alive and deny offensive pushes, while Lucio is more about speeding your team quickly into a fight and exploiting weaknesses with headshots and his boop.
I suppose. But sometimes there's one playstyle that I _want_ to play as. And when counterpicking and team comp means that one playstyle will result in a definite loss... Well, it's not fun. I understand that any sort of composition-based FPS is going to have compositions with upsides and downsides, but the downsides here are too severe.
@@Chameleonred5 That's okay. Not every game can appeal to every person. If a game isn't fun, it means that you may be prioritizing things that the game itself doesn't prioritize, and would be better suited to find a game more in-line with what you find fun. For example, a game less about strategy and coordination with a team, and instead allows a variety of playstyles at any given time.
underrated comment
I'm confused. Did this video just complain about how healers are designed in a way that they do not encourage players to disregard their low hp teammates? Man, imagine picking a role and not doing what you're supposed to do.
I gotta say, starting the video with saying "stolen mechanics" while referring to a something that didn't even invent the mechanic is a really solid way to make you sound levelheaded.
While there are some common misconceptions in this video, you are correct in identifying that the game punishes creativity statistically.... however, if you are good enough at what you do, you can overcome this. Having been one of these Top 500 "Funny Lucio's" myself back in Overwatch 1
and indeed, Lucio isn't the only one suffering from this.
The optimal way to play should also be the most fun way to play, In Overwatch AND ESPECIALLY OVERWATCH 2, that is not the case.... you do what you are designed to do, or lose....
I don't play Overwatch anymore, I have no friends that want to play it anymore and while that didn't stop me from enjoying Overwatch 1 even in the late stages I can't say playing Solo is any fun in Overwatch 2.
Also blizzard is a shi-tscum company that I no longer feel right supporting after knowing what it has done
Thank you! I appreciate the feedback. Some of those misconceptions may come from my perspective as a casual player. While I did do a lot of comp research for the video (and I feel most of my arguments apply regardless), I think my point is most valid when looking at Overwatch's heroes from the perspective of a casual who will never be able to put in the time or effort to overcome the natural walls that have been placed by Blizzard's game design.
@@LucidMakesVideos Well with your point, If you're a casual player why care? Yeah winning feels good but I'd rather have fun and lose then not have fun and win. In casual you're not losing rank or making anyone else lose their rank so I don't get why the issue is that big.
@@2close2sun some people can enjoy a game casually and still enjoy winning. I may not want or feel the need to learn the best rollouts and positions for the roster, but I can still want to win and feel bad when we dont
@@2close2sun I feel like this comment perfectly illustrates the real problem plaguing overwatch imo: The game isn't fun to lose. It is made to be the least fun experience imaginable in most games. "Winning" is TOO MUCH of an objective in every match.
@@m4stermodder spontaneous name change, but still sebbo, I'm a casual player myself and I do agree with you fully. No, it doesnt feel good to lose and yes, winning feels god. but HIS logic is that you either
A) Not have fun, get the most use out of the character
B) Have a lot of fun, but throw
and while that's simply not the case (he might just not be good enough to play his prefered playstyle). my point is that given those 2 options that HE'S saying are the only 2, I'm picking B over A any day.
Yeah man, Lucid feels right for you. The new color scheme is much more eye catching too! I have tried to play Overwatch (and I mean really comepetitive) about twice now. Once in 2016, once in 2022. You get burnt out fast with how limited it is just like you said. Well put!
Overwatch's variety comes with its many characters, not with variety in Playstile in someone's "main"
Yes cause they want people to buy more stuff to use instead of actually enjoying the game how they want to play. No wonder TF2 is more popular with no updates.
@@Lawlz4Dayzzme when i lie
40 hours is definitely very little to work with relative to Overwatch. There are people with hundreds of hours in this game that still don't understand certain ability interactions or how to position properly on particular maps. There's just a lot to learn in OW, much like other ability focused games.
That said I agree that there is a lack of skill expression on some heroes and I think older supports like Mercy and Lucio in particular feel a bit stale in OW2.
I like playing mercy to try to be a slippery little bastard who evades everyone’s attempts to kill me. I feel like supports with good movement have more expression in how they avoid or dance around enemies than in how they interact with them directly
really? If I had to choose two heroes that feel stale, Mercy and Lucio would literally be my last two choices.
disagree, as a mercy player (i know, that whole mercy mains yappertron train :( ). I think maybe lucio if you were an ow1 player as his base playstyle hasnt changed, but mercy herself has experienced multiple waves of changes even within ow2 which involved even t500 having to relearn muscle memory and figuring out how to reimplement old mechanics and create new ones with the improved flexibility. i thought she was mid and boring until i really starting putting in the hours. even now im still learning, picking up weird tech that comes in surprisingly useful and improving my decision making (and at times, glocking lol). her ceiling is definitely much higher than people give credit for, but unlike lucio OTPs you can really only know a good mercy if you ARE a main due to her low but consistent impact level. that kind of improvement was pretty visible personally as i look back on old footage for review, which i think does put some weight on the "not stale" category. as the previous comment said, there is tons of expression in understanding the dangers to you and knowing how to avoid them (e.g. how would you GA against a winton? you have to exactly position that your GA will send you in the direction he came from preferably, timed to leave right before he lands and starts any damage. and against DVa it gets even more micromanaged and complicated).
Varying playstyles in OW are meant to be split into different heroes, not single heroes with varying playstyle. If you don't like the playstyle of one hero you move to another. I understand the desire for people to play heroes they think are cool, but they only do so if they really really like that hero. I often find I select heroes based off playstyle and not who I like personally or not. It also creates consistency in what to expect from said hero when they are picked on your or the enemies team.
The Widow example is pretty much on the money imo. Looking at tf2, it also has snipers that just hang in the back and don't do anything but snipe. But you can absolutely be a sniper who goes up front and quickscopes people if you're good enough.
And ironically this is the one time where a more aggressive play style is infuriating to play against.
you just have to be way way better at the game than your enemies, and at that point you could do the same with widow
I remember when the real variance of Day One was the lack of limits on role or character count. You could have 5 winstons and 1 lucio because it was funnily torn down by 5 torb and a mercy.
Lucio more like lucid fucking gottem
“The fastest movement of any hero in the game”
Wrecking Ball: “Am I a joke to you?”
To be fair, most of Wrecking Ball momentum relies on his hook, which has a cooldown. If he messes up, he'll have to wait a while
Lucio can just jump near a wall and get an easy momentum-foward, his speed boost gives him an advantage too
Ball is faster in short bursts not overall.
I could totally beat Ball in a race
The thing I find rather funny is that they HAD a solution in the form of the Talent Trees, which where something probably based of off HotS' system. HotS has so much more skill expression due to the large amount of talents per hero. Unlike other MOBAs HotS does not have the base item system , an antiquated system but that's just my personal bias, HotS allows for so many different builds which fundamentally change how a character is played. Anyway I just wanted to add my two cents before it sinks into the void of the internet.
but god a talent tree in Overwatch just sounds like a recipe for a hot broken mess of a comp game lol. Blizzard is already struggling enough trying to balance the game, if they had to balance every possible iteration of every single hero I'm pretty sure they would just give up.
Im gonna be honest this is one of the reasons i still adore paladins, you really can shape your character into diffrent playstyles with card and talents
It's honeslty disapointing to see the lack of ressources evil mojo has. The game has so much potential to become really great. The caracters are so much fun and all have so many different and unique playstyle. Every game feel so much different from one a other. There is so much diversity and depth to be explore. But there is a lot of bugs, the game is really unpolished, the game is , most of the time, unbalanced, the gameplay can feel clonky and lot of talents, champions and cards are simply unplayable. I wish that evil mojo is, on day, going to get the ressources they rightly deserve.
I'd say there is a note to point out which doesn't apply to pvp
so, the pve bits where he is included and usable (my only example and experience of that being the temporarily available free underworld mission)
where lucio gets addiotion to his kit, his speedboost also increasing the attack speed of himself and everyone else in range, 20% default and 40% durring amp
doesn't add too much but, those who actually know this is a thing can help out when needed a ton, cuz if you kill targets faster, there is less time to take damage, compared to those who just stick to staying on heal even at close to full health
I'd be lying if I said that most of the lucios in those modes that I saw knew about speed boost increasing the fire rate
I fukin knew about it, it was very helpful cause my teammates don't scream at me to stay on healing in the PvE.
@@aguyontheinternet8436 yea...people just don't read patch notes
As a support main for the last 3 years I must say that this video perfectly described my problem with Overwatch. OW usually feels like doing the same thing over and over again even though I try to play every hero not the intended way. But since counter-picking is so strong and common in OW it's almost impossible to have fun because whenever I try to flank as Zen or DPS Lucio and actually get some picks the enemy team always counter-picks. Anyways this video was amazing keep up the good work!
Overwatch prides itself on these characters with high skill ceilings, Like Lucio, Tracer, Winston, purely because they have such a high allowance on the different ways you can play the characters, And it feels like you can’t “master” them
Imo one of the games many strengths that the average eye struggles to see
PS: Great Video man, criticisms of Overwatch to me are exceptionally dull and boring because they all sound the same, but yours stands out and you make some really good points
The way you described playing lucio is how lucio is played in a 5 man in voice team play. Where you as the lucio have to shot call, identify what ults you have to counter with your ult and make plays with your speed as a team. In solo ranked, you HAVE TO REDDIT LUCIO but only sometimes, identify situations where you can get away with playing aggressive. The way I see it is to multitask as much as possibe, don't over commit on anyone except your other support and sometimes the tank. Never over commit on the enemy team. Always try to keep a mental note of where everyone in the lobby is and act with the tools you have, with lucio's speed and wallride you can be in most parts of the map and be involved in everything.
Balancing between peeling for your team and Reddit Lucio is 100% the ideal playstyle and I can’t be convinced otherwise
I feel like Overwatch could have benefited from having hero "variants" that slightly alter their gameplay, similar to what Garden Warfare does. It would probably be absolute hell to implement though.
Btw, you only scratched the surface of what you can do with the Marksman in Ultrakill. You can also punch the coins to juggle them and boost the ricochet damage or use them to reflect hitscan attacks from enemies.
I mean, the Mirrorwatch gamemode is kinda a taste of “hero variants”. What do you think?
The variation usually comes from cooldown and ult usage. For a typical game the neutral fight might look similar from both sides, but you'll find big differences in how cooldowns are spent.
Tbh I’ve always found playing creatively and experimenting to find something that works is one of the most rewarding parts of the game, because when characters are shoved in a box like that everyone expects them to play a certain way, other team included. Back when bastion was immobile with infinite turret mode in OW1 I spent hours and hours perfecting the “flanking bastion” strategy and NOBODY expected it. It is SIGNIFICANTLY harder to be creative in this game, but I think that also makes it SIGNIFICANTLY more fun and rewarding when you are
personally, even though i've played tf2 and overwatch, i always come back to paladins. i love how i can change to multiple playstyles with every caracter
as someone with 100s of hours in both Overwatch and TF2, I can say that I definitely enjoy each game for different reasons. TF2 for its mechanical depth and high speed gameplay, and Overwatch for its teamwork aspects and playing with friends. I would quite literally never play Overwatch without queuing up with one of my friends, because then I'd be missing out on the sole reason I enjoy the game in the first place, while TF2 is much more of a solo endeavour for me
As always, the production and recording of the video are immaculate, great video!
Overall I agree with one of the conclusions being that the design team has leant to a more lenient, straight forward design with their heroes. All three of the newest heroes (Lifeweaver, Illari and Mauga) lack nuance or variety in their gameplay, and thus, character expression and as a result they all have been a nightmare to balance. However, I think the character expression you portrayed in this video is either misaligned or maybe misunderstood with the way I see it in OW.
OW has an inherent focus on team play (as you mention in the video), and as a result, teams are bound to have similar purposes overall, and it's the better game knowledge and proper execution of those ideas that eventually snowball into the better team winning. I'll admit ignorance in most of the games you mention here since I haven't really played them myself, but I think the reason why they are able to have such focus on personal skill expression is because good play in those seems to be a lot more selfish than OW because they focus more in your individual (and frankly, mostly mechanic) gameplay. In OW, being good at an individual character inherently means that you're also good at understanding how your character helps your team, and it doesn't always mean that you always gotta play right next and for your team all game, sometimes it means that you gotta play more selfishly (like how usually flankers play), but in the end, they do it because it's the most selfless thing they could be doing.
The thing is, we've actually had a hero that was not just selfish, but if you actually didn't master how to play completely on your own, you were actively throwing, and that is OW1 Doomfist. While not considered to be very good overall, he had a massive skill expression and high skill ceiling he had almost a cult following player base that mastered every single detail of his kit and grinded his rollouts for hours that ultimately end up in you one shotting at least one person on the enemy team. What was the problem? Well, the developers ultimately decided this is just not how the game "should be played". A Doomfist that mastered all these techniques essentially appeared out of thin air and just kill a person for free, and that is nothing that has a ton of of counterplay if any, and the tricky thing about him is that even with all that, he was still not very good, if any step of his plan failed, he's dead 90% of the time, so it's not like it was very fair against the Doom players either. As a result, he had to be reworked as a tank where his purpose could be a lot more defined and aligned with how an OW game usually plays.
While OW doesn't have that raw character expression in those games that you mention, I think what makes the game so fun is actually how the different characters interact with all the many set mechanics in the game and how they can use them to their own advantage, and that is nuanced enough that makes the game extremely hard to master. Lucio is actually one of the most beloved characters across all ranks, and extremely valuable even at top play because he can actually do so many of these things. He can peel, he can hold an off angle on his own, he can enable the tank, soft the burden of your fellow support with the amp heals while he can do other stuff, you can actually (and should imo) play like a Reddit Lucio and flank and 1v1 the character, it's just that understanding how, when, against who and on top of that executing it successfully is incredibly hard, and in the end, if you're able to understand these things, you are overall better at the game, and how transferable the skills you gain in one hero to another despite how different they might actually play in practice is a beautiful thing about OW.
So I don't think Lucio is a character that doesn't do much actually, but rather, he has to play bound to certain rules that the game puts for him, and at that, I think he's one of the best, since he can do pretty much everything (this is all if winning game is a priority of yours anyway, if you're just playing for fun you can just play Lucio like you don't give a fuck, move around the map and 1v1 everyone in their team).
P.D: I actually believe a better candidate for a video like this would have been Mercy. When having such high mobility actually doesn't correlate to expression, since her whole identity as a character is being an elusive DPS pocket that lacks all the nuance and different things Lucio can do.
Let's pipe down on the coffee there buddy, you're clearly to focused.
That's why I liked the old doomfirst so much, he was the only hero in the game who had some kind of ability expression, but the new doomfirst became a puch bot and whenever someone discovers a new movement tech blizzard simply bugfix, instead of embracing the bugs that made the hero so fun in the first place
This is why I found myself enjoying Paladins much more. The heroes you pick can be customized rather nicely; with Talents that determine a base playstyle, decks that emphasize certain aspects of that playstyle, and items you purchase over the game to tweak to the specific match.
When I choose Pip (A character that shoots bursting projectiles, lobs a AOE heal projectile, and can do Big Bounce) I can choose to play a talent that makes the AOE heal biger and burstier with a shield applied. Or I can choose to make it so that his weapon shots do bonus damage with slow and life-rip. Or make it so those weapon shots deal precision healing, sort of like a crossbow medic in TF2.
Ultrakill mentioned
Good comment, I chuckled while reading it.
This is why I loved Overwatch 1 Doomfist. He had 3 play styles not just 2. He had Slam, shoot, uppercut, shoot, punch style. Brain dead charge your fist around corners then leave immediately. Or rollout style. Most players did the first two, but his "reddit" doomfist at its peak was insane
I feel like the dive tanks also kind of reveal Overwatch's biggest problem as well. A lot of the dive tanks kind of do the same thing. Chipsa made a video talking about this, but a lot of characters have been really samey lately. D.V.A., Ball, Winston, and Doomfist have the same playstyle, Torbjorn kind of lost his identity, they babied Roadhog's kit too much, etc.
This is why i loved the loadout mechanic in Paladins. You play the same hero but with different perks and loadouts they would turn almost into a new hero. Just look at the many ways you were able to play Androxus. Although i will say that in turn it makes it much more difficult to know what the enemy hero uses. Yes you can read their perks while tabbing etc but youd have to know most of them for every hero and then also know the benefits of those combinations. Thats probably why ow will never add smth like that.
I love the new editing changes man! Really makes the vid pop!
Thank you homie!
Personally, I think you can switch between the two playstyles on the fly depending on what's happening in the match. Is your team firmly pushed up and dominating? You can be more aggressive and go for riskier plays. Is your team trying to break through a choke or tough hold? Maybe help them out at least until they get past the stalemate. I find myself doing this in most matches, I almost never exclusively play one way or the other.
You could not possibly be more wrong. The real issue is that you aren't good at his mechanics. Lucio can climb walls faster, jump higher, move faster, and even fly like echo,phara, and mercy if you know how to actually play him.
The problem is, you didn't take any time to understand the depth of the game as a whole and thus can't play Lucio. You listened to other people instead of just playing the game and figuring it out.
Weirdly this is the same way how I got into a game a friend screams at me to play and took time for to start but then started to love even also maiming Lucio
A great video. As a Lucio main, I was frustrated that you didn’t bring up his boop. I also feel that there are more winning playstles that are worth discussing.
I disagree with your perception of Lucio’s style being put into a box. I feel that lucio has a high level of effective skill expression. For instance, it’s rewarding booping an enemy away from cover or off high ground. Or booping away flankers in your team’s backline. There’s also a notable amount of crowd control that allows Lucio to control angles by positioning the enemy between him and the edge granted by his boop.
Another viable playstyle is thriving off distraction. With the goal to take attention away from the fight you take off angles, trying to control space and bait enemy cooldowns.
Anyway, thanks for adding thoughtful analysis into the discourse regarding Lucio.
Lucio is an incredibly powerful flanker due to his mobility. A lot of people dismiss this playstyle as trolling, but dps lucio is very popular and successful in high-level games. A lot of overwatch's heroes are specialists, but lucio (alongside most supports) is very diverse in available playstyles.
Having played a total two matches of Overwatch years ago when the game first released, and now seeing this video about Lúcio... I am left wondering.
They designed a Jet Set Radio/DJ/Support-type character whose optimal way to play is by being... boring?
Why the hell isn't there a sort of "style meter" and a "rythm game" associated with Lúcio's gameplay?
How about having to stay on the move, wallriding, jumping over enemies, killing them and shooting your gun in specific timings to match the rythm of your tunes to get buffs to your abilities, cooldowns and gun damage?
The Style meter would boost the range and effectivess of your healing as well as the intensity of your speed buff, maybe even overcharging it so that it lingers for a few seconds after your teammates leave its radius?
At the same time, your gun would get improved shot speed, penetration, and damage, whenever you timed them with the tunes you are playing?
that sounds really fun actually. Unfortunately it would directly go against everything it seems Blizzard wants support, and as a consequence Lucio, to be, so chances are low.
I got into overwatch the same way, except I wasn’t a fan of how different it was from other shooters. Now I play every day and I wish I stayed during its golden days
i kinda do both, speed boost and wall ride to get in their faces trying to get head-shots and punching, spamming boop, then wall ride backwards to my team. my percentage of cross-fade is usually around 50 to 60 percent leaning more towards speed. i would say boop is maybe his strongest part of kit, as you can boop enimeis off map, and off cart/point on the last tick. imo lucio is the most fun to play, i really get into the flow with him more than any other hero at the moment.
i play like a dps lucio but i dont forget my team, i go for a kill or 2 and go back to my team, i dont heal too much but i do good amount of damage or kills, the you dont get a reward when you play how the game wants to, its when you can combine it with your play style
well, Lúcio and many other OW heroes are design that way cuz... its a Team based shooter. You can't go wacky like TF2 or Super Smash. TF2 is an the same genre but its mayhem all the time, 24 players shoting with 9 different characters with hundrerds of different weapons, walking in an big map. And smash is an fighting game, its you against the world. In OW you are punish for playing out of the box cuz if you have no idea what you are doing, you are punishing your team. Yes you can play outside of the box, and this require time and practice and not all heroes can achive that.
I 100% agree overwatch core identity was the fact that each hero had a very distinguishable play style and that’s what made playing them and playing against them very dynamic and made each round feel unique
I would argue most characters have varying play styles if you know them well enough.
You could play doom fist as a front line pusher or a back line assassin.
Hanzo as a long range sniper or up close sniper.
Or even Moira as a dps more then a healer.
It all depends of how in depth you the know the characters, and usually once you learn characters like that you can play them in all situations.
Lucio should be in a platfomer. Like imagine Splatoon's campaign but you play as Lucio. So cool!
In over watch 1 My main was zenyatta, I loved how he could passively heal but also had a high skill ceiling with his damage potential. I often played zen in the arcade modes and loved fighting with him, but as more hero’s got released, my golden zen balls became obsolete because I need a specific team build that sticks together constantly to help me not die in two seconds and basically if the tanks or dps like a roadhog or a solder who could heal himself because zen is not famous for his actual healing ability
I loved Zen as a character but simply put, I couldn’t play him the way I wanted to, if I could play him at all, most often than not I found myself playing mercy or Ana because my teammates didn’t want to pick up the slack of healing left by Zen’s low healing out out.
But yeah, I loved overwatch, but without friends and/or really good consistent and well designed game updates, it’s just become a chore for me to keep up with. I’ve found more enjoyment in playing games that allows and rewards player creativity.
all of you sayin that "ow isnt supposed to have multiple playstyles for one character, it has multiple playstyles across 20+ heroes" are so conditioned that you dk that it'd be more, idk, FUN to have DIFFERENT WAYS of playing a character.
I had the exact same experience as you, always played Tf2, friend got me into OW where I mained Lucio. Quite a coincidence
Wait until you are flying through the air as Rein after being slingshotted by a lifeweaver, smiting people from the sky
i still remember a period of summer when i had a rein/lucio duo queued against me every game who would just rush backline and roam the map like sime hivemind pacman ready to pick us appart while their snipers stood a 100 miles away having us choose which way to look
A few things you can improve on as lucio if you feel you arnt getting better. You said that its hard to hit shots as lucio but your able to make it easier by knocking them into corners with boop you dont have to preidict where theyre going. Another thing dps lucio can actually be really good cause lucio can 1v1 almost any non-tank character so if you see someone low by themseles in the backline you can easily dive them and 1 burst them.
also reddit lucio is viable as long you dont spend the whole game hunting for kills and only go for them if you get a chance or theyre playing widow cause you canny easly 1 tap them since they stand still and are really tunnel visioned
Well said! Nobody else has been able to explain better why exactly I stopped playing Overwatch and switched to other games, like TF2 and Paladins.
After running the same song and dance for years it gets really tiring. Sure, you can improve at what you're doing to climb the ranks, but you can never really do something new with the same Overwatch characters unless you're willing to get yelled at by your team and probably reported for throwing.
That's why you play all the characters
Pretty easy to understand why you feel like this. Going from TF2 to Overwatch will have you confused about why heroes dont have alternative playstyles. For example:
- When you see a Soldier, it can be anything from roamer to trolldier
- When you see a Demoman, its anything from sticky spammer to demoknight
- When you see an Engie its anything from turtle engie to battle engie
- But when you see a lucio theyre probably going to speed boost in and heal their team.
This was always my main contention with Overwatch throughout all my years of playing it. The fact that every person should be able to play every character in their own unique way but can't because "teamwork" demands that everybody plays in limited and strict manners that ultimately satisfy only a few, all for the sake of getting wins when the point of a game is to have fun for yourself. This got so bad that people were (and still are) actively policing how other people play and it became a divisive issue back when Overwatch was pay-to-play. That's why PvE was the exact perfect announcement Overwatch needed to make because of the customization and freer ways to play characters. Lo and behold though, right?
My gaming history involves fighting games, RPGs, and stylish action games (like Devil May Cry and Bayonetta) so to play a game where I can't put my own unique spin on a character eventually ends up gathering dust in my library. No one believes me when I say that the games that stand the test of time are the ones where players, of every skill level, can be the best in their own niche.
In Lucio's Defense about the fact that it deals damage... It probably is less that his music is really bad and more that he's blasting Bass Boosted Brazilian PHONK directly into his enemies' eardrums.
I WAS NOT EXPECTING ULTRAKILL TO BE MENTIONED
after 10000 hours in tf2, i played overwatch and noticed the difference within minutes. it's so weird that so few people can notice the fundamental issue with not just overwatch, but most of these simplified shooters... in tf2, there will generally always be a "default" in any scenario, or a specific play that is generally just better or the "norm" over others. But you can absolutely just go your own way and do whatever the hell you feel like, because the movement in tf2 is just so much crazier and allows for SO much more skill expression. The shit you can accomplish with a lot of practice in tf2 is incredible and is the entire reason why tf2 is such a fun game to play. In overwatch if you understand basic positioning and gamesense and aim you can basically play any hero immediately without much effort, because every character is only really designed to be played the Default Way or the Lose The Game Instantly Way. as someone that loves aiming, overwatch is a guilty pleasure because characters like soldier 76 are really fun for aiming. But the game itself reeks of same-ness, in the sense that there is barely any difference between how the #1 player in the world might play X character vs how the #395832098 player plays the same character. obviously the #1 player will have better positioning, gamesense, and of course aim, but to what end? they are both attempting to do the same things in the same ways with the same character. in tf2 there was such a depth in how people responded to stimuli and how people played the game that it was genuinely a fascinating experience to just look at people and try to read their minds. what is this person thinking? what will they try to do? by simply looking at their movement, reading how they played the game before they interacted with you, etc., you could get a feel for what they were going to do in the near future, sometimes generally based on the class they were playing, but more so based on what YOU figured out about how THEY play the game (the person behind the character). in overwatch, if you are shooting an X, you know that they will most likely move like Y because Y is the only correct choice for X. If X moves like Z instead of Y, they lose. meaning whether you are shooting at the best X in the universe or just some joe shmoe, you can generally predict gameplay loops just based on the character you see on your screen (X) instead of the person controlling them. to me, that is the real essence of what makes a game good or bad, and is the fundamental "how" for implementing skill expression (greater movement and aim depth) -- railroading character interactions with such simple movement means that there is no real opportunity to do anything creative without just throwing
wonderful video essays, great game taste, delightful editing AND scripting, hell yeah I'm in
He was my main in Overwatch, I want a whole game built around his movement mechanics
Lucio surf
i feel like the probem where flexibility was killed was with role queue then after with 5v5 heroes like dva lost their identity from a defender to a offensive tank to a defender again to a nothing heroe all balance chanced has made her a different heroe and it feels like the game lost its spark when role queue happened
One thing that I think blizzard could do to make lucio feel more enjoyable and flexible, would be to add some sort of slider or multiple settings to his crossfade, in which players could choose to use a combination of speed and healing, which would allow for much more micro decisions and flexibility surrounding the character. Another way they could adress the issue of lucio's playability would be to buff his projectile speed, allowing players at a lower skill level to join the #luciomafia
Healers that can crank out good damage are frustrating to go against in general, especially lucio as he has tons of mobility and passive heal so fighting him feels like a chore.
As a Lucio you have to hold yourself back so much, don’t do the worlds fastest roll out your team can’t catch up. Yes their is a environmental kill possibility don’t attempt every boop. Yes he has a heal but if your just going to be healing swap off after first point cause you lose all reason to play him if it isn’t aggressive
My problem with Lucio is unless your team is really good or the enemy team is really bad, its difficult to carry with him. He’s an enabler and not many non-Lucio players really know how to use his kit to their advantage. Also the new update for Season 9’s DPS passive makes his healing genuinely much worse, ignoring the boop buffs. Theres sadly just so many other supports that can support their team better.
A way to fix this would have been those funny little hero load outs that ow2 was supposed to ship with. 3 years of dev time btw.
As a lucio player i almost exclusively play as a dps and it's the most fun playstyle in my opinion and punching is really powerful for no reason
9:15 that's an interesting point about game design overall. to me it seems like the same difference between smash bros top tiers and bottom tiers. even though it's a different genre what determines viability in these kind of games is versatility and options. steve will always be able to do more than little mac simply because he has more tools to utilize. also mentioning that to make a mechanically deep and fun character they must either be able to have the tools to be adaptable and versatile for many scenarios or have many tools that synergize well, I would define this metric coverage vs combo. the biggest issue is when you have games like pokemon where you have the options to both do coverage and combo but never the resources to accomplish either, also doesn't help that the strongest moves are also the most situationally out of the player's control. random can be good but it needs to always be worth it and not just the potential to be devastating. no thanks on a 1/500 chance I win immediately I would prefer a 1/10 that gives me the advantage if succeeds and only wastes my time or has no effect if failed. alternatively just 2/3 chance you succeed but 1/3 chance you risk detriments.
Part of the reason for the constrained design is the sheer number of heroes combined with Blizzards desire to *force* OW to be an e-sport.
All heroes *MUST* be distinct, which is fine.
All heroes *MUST* be balanced, which is a fair ideal.
But then, for the sake of an audience which is almost never there,
All heroes *MUST* be immediately recognizable, both in character and in play, and having varying play styles goes against this.
I originally thought that this also applied to medic, but medic has a different way of playing than Lucio. Lucio has aoe healing, meaning that he has less choices giving him a less diverse playstyle. By giving medic a single-target weapon, he has to figure out who to heal and when. Medic doesn't have as much fancy tech or strategies like the soldier or spy, but he does have variety in how he's played because Medic is all about making choices.
I remember playing overwatch during 2016-2017, i was a bastion and symmetra main (they were over powered i also heard later). I quited because i had to get bored and the play style was getting stale. I don't regret quiting since both the game and story doesn't appeal to me.
I fully agree, give Lucio two guns, no reload animation, and make his projectile speed the same as Kiri.
I just got hit with a weird feeling when you said you had played some games on your friend's ps4 in middle school, the weird realization that someone I presume to be older than me is in fact a few years younger at least.
I’m also a long time tf2 player, so this all makes sense to me. You should convince that friend who got you into overwatch to play tf2 and see how fast they switch games entirely
most tf2 only player thing to say ..
Masters Lucio here. If you're playing any support without looking for kills, you're dragging your team down. Learning to balance getting kills with supports is actually the norm above metal ranks. Just like high rabk mercy players understand damage boost is vastly more valuable than heaking. These things are just very counterintuitive to outsiders.
I generally agree with the sentiment. In overwatch the variance in play style tends to be in the macro level, in how each hero of the team plays of each others abilities, rather than how how the abilities are used by the individual player. There are some dissagreements when it comes to lucio since I have put a few hundred hours into the charecter.
First of all the so called "reddit lucio" playstyle isn't necesarilly bad, as long as it's not the primarry objective of the player to get kills. getting an elimination is always value to your team, it's only a question of when can you leave your team to get it (lucio isn't really good at long range so getting a kill involvels closing the distance with wallriding) and when is the enemy in a position where you can kill them without getting killed by their team mates.
The other point I take issue with is wallriding having little use, when in fact it has a ton of uses. wallriding when mastered let's you basically be everywhere at once, you can start with healing your tank in the frontline, then in a split second dart to your backline to help your ana fend of a flanker, and then fly to the enemy backline to help your own flanker secure a kill.
As someone who’s played for many years I think the variance in play style for a lot of overwatch 1 supports is just limited by the game knowledge curve. Supports beyond kiri and illati can play more offensive but only if they have great positioning and skill at the hero.
Perhaps the skill level to get the most fun from these heros is too high, but I hope the focus on team empowerment outside of damage/invice isn’t lost.
I really just think the game isn’t for you man this does not seem like a good representation of the character and almost everything you seem to hate abt it I love
speaking as a high level dps and support player, there's such a big difference in lucio playstyle between me and someone like fdgod, we may as well be playing two different roles within the team altogether, lucio is a great team player with amazing peel capabilites, but he's also one of the greatest single squishy dive heroes in the game right up there with heroes like genji, sombra and tracer. I like to play with a lot more peel for my other support and dps, someone like fdgodlikes to dive onto the enemy squishies a lot more, those are very different playstyles that utilise the extreme movement capabilites within the same character, and they both work right up to the highest level on the ranked ladder. Of course once you're in an organised scrim or tournament setting a single target dive is less effective unless you're a mechanical wallride god.
This is exactly why PvE Skill trees was such an anticipated promise.
The community had already conformed to this status quo of "conformity is rewarded, creativity is punished." How many people cheered when Symmetra got reworked into a generic hero? Now Doomfist is a Tank.
But secretly, we wanted to express ourselves. We had cosmetics. Now they're locked behind a paywall. We wanted a skill tree and a decent story mode. But that was cut.
Well shit.
This video brings Pip from Paladins to mind. Pip is, technically speaking, a support. However, you can actually build him as a couple different kinds of support--speccing into burst healing or sustained healing depending on your talent and loadout--or build him as a flanker by adding a damage amp to his altfire. You do have to _choose_ a playstyle--your loadout cards can make or break your ability to win a fight--but you get a choice.
i think the problem is the game modes put a CTF and lucio will no longer be the healing guy u need him to be but instead the speed demon he has to be this game doesnt have a search and destroy or any other game modes that would change how heros are played
Jet Set Radio and Team Fortress 2 are two of my most favourite games ever!
The only thing that’s mine bending to me, is the hero they use for an example of lack of freedom IS LUICO!! I can’t
i honeslty belive that the skill expession is there. i can tell when somone is better than me. sometimes if you dont know why maybe you should find out.
As a certified lucio main who has broken out of the box, not as far as frogger though, never as far as frogger, I can safely say, lucio has to be the best character ever when played right. His kit is wildly fun and it's honestly hard to not have fun. Lucios on top
This issue was sorta exaggerated when porting the game to 5v5. The off-tank role took on a great amount of responsibilities and allowed the other roles to have way more freedom on how they're played, you wouldn't suffer too much from having your Lucio dps when you had a dva or zarya to mitigate some of the incoming DMG and help keep the main tank on. But since 5v5 there is only one game plan, all tanks must be giga buffed characters to be able to just stay alive, the off tank role had to be distributed between dps and support and made it so everyone is unkillable and every character now has to be a jack of all trades to be viable. If you don't have high DMG, DMG mitigation and movement in your kit you're basically out of the game.
Bro even frogger only goes on the “dps Lucio” once every like 8 games
If you watch his streams you can see that the majority of his games his playing the boring Lucio style.
Based on the thumbnail I thought this was a video about some weird frog creature with dreadlocks in some obscure game before mousing over it.
I disagree. The idea that there is "1 true playstyle" for Lucio is pretty misleading. While DPS/Reddit Lucio is generally less optimal at a professional level, in ranked it is still viable (see Frogger). Even in pro play, you don't see Lucio's solely playing by their team, especially if it is a dive composition. Lucio's often take off-angles with a high mobility DPS (Sojourn, Tracer, Genji) to speed them onto a target and help confirm the kill. Even in less mobile dive comps that have flex supports such as Ana or Zenyatta, Lucio can focus on peeling for the other support in a similar way to Brigitte but with much more of a neutral presence due to the mobility to help other teammates.
Many other characters have multiple playstyles, and for most it is integral to understand when to use them depending on enemy or ally team compositions. Genji is a good example of this. His most popular playstyle is as an opportunist. When left unchecked, (and when playing into slower support comps) he is extremely dangerous and can rip through your backline very quickly. However, when playing into a comp with a lot more movement options, he has to play much slower and methodical. Focusing on building blade, taking softer off-angles and forcing enemy CD's is how he gets the most value.
I don't think this video was made in bad faith, just that it was overly misinformed. Saying that Mercy's that focus on damage boost suboptimal 10:30 shows this lack of understanding. Similarly to Lucio, when Mercy is meta it is because of utility (damage boost), not her healing capabilities. There is a reason Mercy/Lucio support comps are so garbage, as they do not have enough sustain to keep the team alive.
What i personally would love for lucio is allowing his music to be a status effect that lasts for a while. That way a lucio could stay with his team for optimal buff uptime or go out booping reinforcements off the map without completely losing out on buffing his team. Additionally his ability to strengthen his buff could also make it stay stronger longer while lucio is gone, allowing for longer periods of roaming with more protection for his team.
I think that a few characters that did have massive personality and skill expression potential are many of the 'viable but not TOO viable' tanks. Sigma and Hog are very lucioesque, but i feel as if Rein and the newer Junker Queen (my two mains) have a lot of stuff that is extremely personality driven (probably because i mained them)
JQ's healing and Rein's shield both make the player weigh the second to second benefits of going in vs staying out. With both, you're constantly watching your lifebar and calculating whether you need to retreat now or if you have enough healing/shield to justify gambling another second or two in an attempt to break the enemy team.
However, as we all know, being an OW tank main is akin to being the bottom of a BDSM duo with Mike Tyson with the amount of busted balls youll be left with after choosing wrong exactly one time too many (which is usually one time) so maybe the extra skill expression isnt quite worth it
Bro i am also a tf2 player and literally at my cousin's house i picked Lucio cuz he had cool skin, first life 15ks
still wasnt enough to make me play overwatch and i still much rather play tf2 with overwatch like once a month or 2 when my brain decides it for no reason
Definitely going to play lucio more cuz even tho anna is my wanna be main just like demo, i suck too much to play/main them cant hit a shot to save my(or my teammate's) life and i wish i was joking my hit rate is like 40%to20%(hurts my soul)so i dont pick them unless am at full focus
For how well designed the characters and gameplay is, Overwatch has easily the most shallow heroes in the Hero Shooter genre.
Paladins has extensive upgrades/modifiers for each hero, as well as mid game upgrades to buy.
TF2 has items and weapons to allow several subclasses and gameplay variations for its seemingly small roster.
Even the PVZ Garden Warfare trilogy had class variants AND perk slots.
Overwatch just has the vanilla heroes, and thats it. No upgrades, no modifiers, no variants, no nothing.
i think it's because OW2 has tens of heroes in the roster to choose, so if you want to have a specific playstyle, you pick the hero, not necessary the playstyle