Competitive play for Overwatch on consoles saw a surprise launch on June 30th, which was nearly a week ahead of its scheduled release. While competitive mode offers a chance for more serious players to face off against opponents of relatively equal skill, there are some features that penalize players for things that are out of their control.
Sudden Disconnects – Unfortunately, disconnects happen way to frequently in Overwatch, and if you’re playing competitive mode it can be very frustrating to suddenly de-rank for what amounts to a poor server connection. What’s even more annoying is that for a short time after getting kicked, there exists an option to rejoin the match. The only problem is that win or lose, your skill rating is going to take a beating. Now, it seems quite unfair to offer the option to rejoin a match without letting the player know that they will be penalized. If anything, there should be kudos given to the player who quickly rejoins the match so that a team is not left missing a player – which will almost always result in a loss.
Quitters – Before competitive mode was instituted, quitting in Overwatch was only mildly frustrating due to the likelihood that the quitter would be replaced. This does not happen in competitive mode. When a player leaves – that’s it, your team is down a man for the rest of the game. Now, unless your five man squad turn into gods for the remainder of the match, you’re probably going to lose without a sixth player. And though Blizzard has offered the option to quit without a “ban” penalty when it happens, the player still gets rocked with a loss. This wouldn’t be so bad if matches were shorter and quitting was less common, but as it stands, too many games end up with one team severely undercut by a missing player. I understand that competitive mode needs to have strict guidelines, but Overwatch is a team game where victory is highly dependent on having a full dynamic team. Frankly, there needs to be a rejoin option or competitive mode will remain more frustrating and unfair to players who see games through to the end.
Sudden Death – Sudden Death is determined by a coin flip where the attacking team will have 2 minutes and 15 seconds to secure the first point and win the match. That’s an extremely short amount of time considering that the Defense almost always has an advantage, particularly on maps such as Temple of Anubis and Hanamura. The attacking team essentially has time for 2 or 3 coordinated pushes towards the point if they want to win. Maybe if Blizzard forced the team who was the slowest to capture both points in the previous round to attack during sudden death, the system would at least give the advantage to the team who earned it. As it is, sudden death gives the attack team the short end of the stick.
Overwatch’s competitive play is a blast most of the time, but the frequent disconnects and rampant quitters can make playing through matches an extremely frustrating and disheartening experience. That being said, Jeff Kaplan has noted that it will take some time to get competitive play to where they want it to be. It’s a continual process that will no doubt see some evolution, and hopefully some of the issues here will be addressed or at least considered.
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