“Dead game”, that is a statement many are claiming at this moment, but why? It’s true Overwatch has the same event on Halloween without any changes, however, Overwatch is at a very good moment right now! Not only for its balance, but for its community (and amazing skins too!)
But why the players used to say that Overwatch is a dead game? Well, the main guilty is the long queue, but this is a misperception, why so? Simple. The higher the elo is, the higher the wait time will be, it’s logical that in top 500 the queues will take its time to find a good match, image matching top 50 against top 2000, that’s simply not good for anyone! That’s directly unbalanced, waiting is the main tool to avoid this. Blizzard is, always, of course, trying to make this even better and better, but it’s difficult, matchmaking is not a simple as “bronze with and against bronze lol”. There are many factors and math behind it.
When Brigitte was released it was a huge change for the game, healers stopped being only healers, they could be tank too, and Brigitte was the healer tank that could frontlane, push and heal at the same time, that was, in fact, unbalanced and unfair. After a while Blizzard realized this and nerfed her. The meta of 3 tanks – 3 healers was also antifun for everyone, they kinda fixed it with the role queue. But the wait times were longer, much longer, that was one of the main reasons people claimed it was a dead game.
Overwatch now has “role queue” and “open queue”, on role queue it’s, well, for role. And open queue is like very old times, you can pick whenever you want without restrictions, 6 DPS? No problem. You can do it. But many players knows that healers and tanks are necessary on almost every game, so even with that they don’t miss the opportunity to pick any of those to help their team and themselves. The queues don’t take an eternity and that’s something very good.
Heroes has better balance than in the past, the game is at its best moment in years, and with Overwatch 2, it will be even better.