Although Overwatch now has the “Role Lock” restriction, it does not help the league fans. They are already bored again – a rescue seems hardly possible.
In regular Overwatch, there has only been the “Role Lock” since last night in the ranked mode, but in the league, it has been played for a while. It means that players must play with a “2-2-2” setup, so 2 tanks, 2 healers, and 2 DPS. This guarantees that a few heroes of each type participate in the fight.
The End of GOATS: The Role Lock has completely eliminated the popular “GOATS” strategy. Here, the professionals simply played with 3 healers and 3 tanks, creating an almost insurmountable wall. Almost every match in the league played out similarly, and the audience was extremely bored by it. Nothing exciting happened; it was the same heroes in the same situations.
Role Lock briefly brought salvation: Once the roles in the Overwatch League were established, there was a transformation. Suddenly, heroes that hardly anyone had played started to reappear. Especially Reaper and Mei experienced a significant boost in popularity and were regularly selected again, which initially brought joy among fans, as it was a change. For example, the previously worst team, Washington Justice, managed to defeat the best team of the season, the Vancouver Titans, 4-0 – they had never lost so clearly before. That was exciting and interesting, unusual, and a blessing for viewers.
Fans want constant action: The viewers of the Overwatch League long for sustained action and new, exciting combinations of heroes. And as quickly as Mei and Reaper became popular, the heroes also fell out of favor with the viewers. They prefer to see Genji jumping around the map with his sword, slicing enemies, rather than Mei, who slows down foes with her freeze gun before finishing them off with a simple headshot. Over and over again, the comments on the streams say, “The Mei meta is trash” or “Please remove Reaper from the game.”
However, this ongoing desire for constant new action can hardly be satisfied by the professionals and Overwatch itself. The professionals will always look for the most effective way to secure a match victory.
Are more patches the solution? To meet the fans’ wishes, Overwatch would actually need to release extensive balance changes every few weeks. This would ensure that the meta changes more frequently, with once-unpopular heroes becoming stronger and long-standing favorites losing power. This would be “healthy” for viewer interest in the Overwatch League, but unhealthy for Overwatch or esports in general.
After all, sports are characterized by a constancy in tasks rather than constantly changing conditions. When that is gone, chance increasingly determines who is ahead, not ongoing training or tactics.
Already, for example, former Overwatch professional Seagull says that players can hardly keep up and increasingly copy strategies from other teams. There are too many changes in too short a time – at least from the perspective of the actual players in the league.
In the end, it seems that there is no satisfying solution to keep the Overwatch League exciting. Either fans get bored with a stagnant meta, or professionals have to constantly “guess” what the best combination might be.
Do you see a solution to this dilemma? Does Overwatch need more consistency or more changes?
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