Love it or hate it, Overwatch‘s Play Of The Game is a pivotal point of the experience, if not to see how a team or player managed to be so successful, then to at least grant the POTG player bragging rights over their teammates and opponents.
The reality is that while the feature aims to celebrate the best and most skilled Overwatch player, it philosophically goes against what makes Overwatch so great, and that’s team-based play. Seeing a Bastion sentry notch up six consecutive kills no where near the objective probably doesn’t qualify as POTG material.
Understandably, such a system is hard to balance and perfect, but the folks over at Blizzard are working on improving it.
“We are tweaking it regularly, but not massively revamping it,” lead hero designer, Geoff Goodman, told Kotaku. However, Blizzard is looking to tweak it enough that it seems different to what we’re currently used to. Play Of The Game 2.0, as Goodman calls it, could come to Overwatch soon.
“There’s a plan to do what we’re calling Play of the Game 2.0,” he said. “It’s been on the books for a little while. It’s just a matter of prioritizing everything. We have a lot of really cool ideas. We want to do a lot with the camera work. We have ideas for cooperative Play of the Games. Because what we have right now, is Zarya could ult, and then Genji gets the credit. And that’s like, ‘Come on!’”
Goodman said the aim was to highlight the combo play itself, but that there were some “tricky things there”, such as working on the POTG intros, and deciding which players actually get credit.
To be honest, the POTG system has always been kind of a “bragging rights” feature that I felt suited the game’s casual tone and humour. Sure, it goes against the team philosophy, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy seeing myself get POTG as Torbjorn. That said, sometimes it can be frustrating when you see the same characters with the same gameplay style get the same POTG for multiple games in a row. Maybe not an overhaul, but some slight tweaks are in order.
Does Blizzard need to change-up Overwatch‘s POTG system? Vote in our poll and sound off in the comments below!
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