Challenges also incentivize deviant play, which creates a negative game experience. In team games, this means pursuing goals that are different from the rest of your team. The stated objective of the game - get the most kills, score the most goals, capture the most objectives, ect. - may not align with the goals of each individual player. We’ve all seen (and been) the player ignoring the objective while trying to sniper headshots because we had a challenge for it. Both teams suffer when players are asked to do something different than the game’s objective, but the person messing up the game for everyone else is getting rewarded for

What I love most of all, though, is Junkrat’s ultimate ability: the RIP-Tire. At first, I thought this ability turned him into the explosive tire that goes screeching at the opposing team before blowing them into teeny tiny pieces. A friend very kindly pointed out that Junkrat is still very much on the map, so it’s important I make sure he’s safe before I trigger it. You can’t just run in the open and whip it out - positioning is key. Driving it up a wall and sending it crashing down on unexpecting foes pushing the objective, wiping them all out was my crowning achievement during my first day playing, and hearing my teammates shout "that was huge!" is a memory of the game that will stick with me for a long t

It's soon going to be a month since Overwatch 2 launched, and like with any class based multiplayer shooter, balancing is always being worked on. However, even though it's not been too long since launch, players are already starting to complain that regardless of updates, certain Heroes are still imbalanced and waiting periods are too long. It has also already had its fair amount of controversy, and that's rarely ever a good th

But it’s a problem in single-player games too. If I’m losing a game in Marvel Snap I can retreat and I won’t lose as much rank, but if I have a challenge to play cards in the last turn, I have to see it through to the end, even when I know I’m going to lose. In these instances I have two competing objectives - win the game or play a six-cost card. When you’re playing as though you’re trying to do something other than win, you’re engaging in deviant play. Games should not encourage this, yet almost all of them

Support and DPS players now slip into the role of tank, whether consciously or not. Brigitte often helps with pushing by using her much-weaker shield when there’s an offensive tank in play, while Lucio relies on his ultimate to essentially turn everyone into a tank, making that the way to push in losing games. There’s clearly a void that people are scrambling to fill, and it’s only made Overwatch even less intuitive to get into. New tanks now have to play the role completely solo, leaving little room for error, and if they do fail, it’s up to the DPS and support to try and fill their sh

Patches are par for the course in gaming these days. While your live-service behemoths are always tinkering with the meta, keeping gameplay fresh, and fixing all the bugs those first two fixes cause, even the smallest single-player titles come with constant post-launch care these days. Day one patch is now the norm, and while games like Cyberpunk 2077 which launch in historically unacceptable states benefit greatly from devs now being able to fix things in the wild, it’s unlikely Cyberpunk would have launched at all if the studio knew it would be stuck with what it had. On the whole, patches offer a safety net that’s good to the industry, but it sometimes feels like they take away a game’s personal

I also finally understand why people give a shit about these characters beyond their battle abilities . I feel a kinship with Junkrat. He’s a wildcard, like Charlie in Always Sunny. He’s just a silly little guy, and I love him for it. I’m going to read up on his story before I dive back in tonight - I never thought I’d do that for any hero shooter. I couldn’t even count how many heroes there were, and Junkrat has made me hopeful I’ll find more I love, but if I don’t, I’ll happily main this wacky pyromaniac until he runs out of li

We’re a mix of PC and console players, so having to play in the PC pool means half of us are going to get outclassed in a one on one fight. I tried the new hero Kiriko but couldn’t get the necessary precision down . I did decently with Soldier 76 but found him to be a little bland. I was horrified at the mere sight of Zenyata and Sigma, so steered well clear of them. Seriously, I thought Overwatch was about quirky gay people fighting it out, not hamsters in robotic balls and dudes that can hear the very unive

Overwatch 2 esports|https://overwatch2tactics.com/ 2, however, is facing a unique issue, where the queue times for DPS and Tank are over ten minutes , but only around two minutes if you pick Support. It seems that nobody wants to help their team out from the sideli