would suggest that you know nothing of the balance of a complicated game like overwatch after a few hours playing

You're right. Balance isn't the right term for what I meant.

I guess more accurately I'd say that I'm not fond of how overtuned some abilities seem to be and the speed kills are recorded with them - but if there's lots of them it can still be "balanced."

It's just too much Rocket Tag for my liking.

But it could be the "I'm new so not understanding wtf is happening" effect.

I picked Soldier to start with and never really stopped. I have about 40 hours on him now and don't think he's that easy to play, he's middle of the pack. Bastion, Roadhog, Winston, Reinhardt, Mercy, McRee, Reaper and D.Va all easier I think.

Most of the reason he's harder than those is that aiming with him is harder, and he has to avoid certain kinds of situations in a way that other classes don't. Other classes tend to have heroes that have a hard counter, but Soldier mostly doesn't. Sure, he's pretty weak against some heroes, but mostly it's about not getting into spots where some heroes can reach you at short ranges and others at long ranges.

I think the former is mostly good. You're meant to die often.

I don't think it's rocket tag though, you don't die to one rocket hit. All the one hits are from sniper headshots, ultimates that you can generally see coming, Mei (effectively one shots), flashbangs, and Roadhog. Most of those are very short range and the last two are relatively hard to pull off. Then there're some hero hard counters - Bastion just can't do anything about Genji really.

I had a game yesterday where my team was bad and we were trapped in the short run from our spaceship to the objective doors. McRee killed me 4 times in a row instantly via flashbang + 3 shots to the head. It's pretty frustrating, but it was because I was forced to play in a situation that plays to his advantage and my disadvantage due to the very short range he could engage at. The best plan would've been to just switch to a tank or even Bastion and cover the way in until we're past the chokepoint.

Anyway, I've clearly thought about this game too much. On the other hand, my average hit percentage with Soldier is 40% now, which makes me happy.

Soldier 76 is good against pretty much all the tanky heroes and bad against really fast movers (Tracer, Genji) and slightly poor against sniper types, and about average against the rest

I think it's all about engagement range for most of those. You lose every time to Roadhog or Winston up close (though not D.Va as it's easy to hit headshots), but destroy them all from range. Tracer is fine if you see her coming from medium range, but when she's close you just die.

I have a meta-whine. Last time round some guy just kept saying "why is nobody on the obj" then the team went to 3 tanks and he whined "why do we have no damage" then he switched from lucio to junkrat and whined "where is everyone" (dead). He also did absolutely nothing, I had 4 gold medals with reinhardt and 5 eliminations...

New gripe: Match making putting you up against pre-made teams. I don't even think pre-made teams should be allowed in casual mode.

Edit: Or putting you into a game that has 1s to go, and you just get 0 XP and a loss. That's trivial to check against.

I just played a game where one player on the other team was really good, but my team won. That player bitched out his team, saying, "learn how to play the game."

Um, that's what everybody is doing, considering the game has been in open beta for a few days.

I still really like it. I've been sticking mostly to easy characters and dabbling with some tougher-to-learn ones when my team is good. Reaper is my go-to on offense, Bastion on defense.

As easy as Bastion is to play (but whatever, he's fun), I had a game today where the other team was quite good and fast, which made it really hard to find a place to anchor down as a turret. My easiest spots as Bastion are between the final checkpoint and the goal in payload, since the offense can't get behind me easily. If I can anchor down near the goal and lay cover fire, the rest of my team can usually hold them back.

Mei is pretty fun, too, though I don't generate much in the way of stats with her.

Yeh, I'd like to learn Mei. The wall placement looks difficult, but her alt weapon (the finisher) seems pretty strong if you have good aim.

On my last match enemy got to 99% on the objective while we were at maybe 25-30%ish, ended up coming back and winning. I used to dwarf-looking guy with the turrets and had by far my best game...feel like I may just go out on top and never play again.

Wall placement is actually pretty easy. Sometimes I accidentally put it behind the enemy, though.

I'm not good with sniper weapons in these fast-paced FPS games. I was much better in games like COD 1 and 2, which weren't quite as frenetic. Thus, I miss a lot as Mei or the snipers.

Feels like most of this game comes down to having a reasonable team comp. I am having some fun playing Lucio because he can at least shoot people while healing and his AoE heal + ult are probably the best for capturing points. Having at least one Reinhardt makes things a lot easier as well but he doesn't seem particularly fun to me.

How do you counter your team zerging right into a chokepoint that has an enemy bastion set up? I can take out widows fine with pharah but if bastion gets a bead on you you're dead in like half a second and it takes 3 direct hits to kill him

I need an offensive alt for pharah, but i am just way too good with her on maps that have a lot of open space. I want to be good with mcree but i'm not.

I think a real complaint in this game is that defending is easy and playing mercy is boring af

I'm going to be sad when the beta is over. Guess that means I have to buy the game.

Just got a play of the game with Mercy - someone commented it was the first one he's seen. It was a control point game - the other team had it at 99%, but we were in OT. The three teammates that were on the point, trying to take it over, had just died. I used my Ultimate to revive all of them and killed someone for good measure. We took it over and won.

Lucky.

If Bastion is setup in a way that you can't get behind him, it's tough. Probably need more than one player to take him out, not so much for damage, but to keep him busy. Someone with a shield would certainly help.

Widow is pretty good for nuking a bastion from distance. Tracer is good at getting behind one up close.

The point of Bastion is to stop people zerging an objective. Genji's reflection kills a Bastion in half a second when he's firing on you though.

I am very bad at this game. I used to play CS a long time ago at an alright level but maybe I'm just plain bad at FPS now.

Bah, all of my home cable services went down at once, just as I was having an amazing game against a load of whiners from the prior game ("I did everything!" but I have 3 gold medals?).

Oh well, that's it until the end of the month.

g-bebe, I last played an FPS seriously almost 15 years ago with RTCW. It took about 10 hours to remember how to aim etc.

Yep :-/

Very likely purchase - is great fun mostly (when it's not it's probably because I'm doing it wrong), and runs superb on the PS4. Does seem quite expensive for the available launch content however.

I like how Blizzard isn't going nuts with micro-transactions, unless it's just because it was in the beta stage. All the silly things like sprays and skins either drop from loot boxes or can be bought with in-game currency, which also seems to drop from loot boxes. Maybe things will change with the official launch, but so far, so good.

Then again, I guess I don't really care if there are micro-transactions for that sort of thing, as it's all just unnecessary stuff.

Is the beta off now or on until end of day today?

Will also lean towards getting it. Would be nice to get in at the ground level for it, and I imagine once competitive matchmaking starts it will take off.

Open until 10:00am Pacific today.

Guess that means I should take a break from work and play before it shuts down.

EDIT: Also, all progress such as leveling, rewards, skins, etc., will be reset after the beta.

Perfect example of impossible bastions to take out is on hanamura defend side. You're forced to go through the door or over the wall, he can set up in numerous places where he's practically untouchable. Even worse if they have a widow supporting him. The only way I've seen teams get through that is by reinhardt throwing up a shield and going to the entrance on the right really quickly, but good luck coordinating that in a pub.

Another game where he has a pretty untouchable perch is volskaya industries defend site B, where he can set up on the ledge in the back and cover everything. You can try to flank him but you can't get behind him.

But he's trivially easy to take out with Genji in either of those spots because Genji is generally too far away to easily identify. Bastion fires, Genji deflects, Bastion dies immediately. It takes about half a second.

It's also quite easy with Tracer if she can get through in the confusion of lots of people going in.

And I've killed the Bastion in the first scenario at least a dozen times as Soldier76 because Bastion's scatter is much higher than yours if Soldier fires in 3 shot bursts from long range. If Bastion has a sniper protecting him, you'll need one too in that scenario though.

And in any case, he's normally easy to kill when he's busy firing at one of your tanks. He has 300hp and is stationary.

I see a lot of people say Bastion is too strong, but he's hardly used at all in competitive play, and there's a reason for that. When you have more depth of experience in the game you won't worry about him.

Bastion behind a Reinhardt wall is GG.