Challenges do not make games better, and the designers know that just as well as we do. When a game asks you to get three kills with a sniper rifle or win matches with a specific character, it isn’t trying to increase your enjoyment or help you improve. Challenges are nothing by hollow engagement boosters designed to increase player retention. Someone at the top of the ladder needs to see an increase in hours played month-over-month, and the fastest and dirtiest way to do that is to coerce players to complete daily challen

Think about how you engage with daily challenges. If they can be accomplished without any additional effort, then there’s no point in having them. But, if they make you do something you don’t want to do, then they’re having a negative impact on your experience. So either they’re nothing or they’re bad, but they’re never g

As the first seasonal event released for Overwatch, Summer Games was the benchmark created on what to even expect from such events, featuring many exclusive skins and a unique game mode for itself. Most skins here are great as well, and it has a very fun mode called Lúcio Ball. The Summer Games tend to happen in August, sometimes starting at the end of J

Of course, the problem is ours as much as theirs. When I was a kid I tried to move the truck to get Mew. I can’t remember where I heard it. These days though, our access to the internet and sprawling growth of online communities means myths are never formed and secrets are always shared. The Mei bug is not just a gimmick a few kids found that slowly makes its way through groups of friends, but is instantly broadcast by the biggest Overwatch accounts, leading to everyone knowing it, everyone spamming Mei, and Blizzard feeling it has to step

Challenges also incentivize deviant play, which creates a negative game experience. In team games, read this post from Overwatch2Tactics.com 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

Mei has recently been pulled from Overwatch 2 for two weeks because players were using her wall to reach places they weren’t meant to. Maybe this is too much to tolerate at the highest competitive levels, but mostly I just think ‘who cares?’. Didn’t they just nerf Mei out of existence anyway? Is it really that big a deal that you can mess around on some m

Part of the tinkering feels like vanity too. In Horizon Forbidden West , Aloy was too chatty when she was alone , remarking that items will be sent back to storage (somehow?) and repeating the same few lines over and over. People said it was annoying, so it was taken out. But surely they knew it was annoying? Surely part of the point was to make Aloy endearing in this way? I’m sure people think Aloy shutting the hell up is an improvement, but mostly it just feels like fixing something for the sake of it. It doesn’t feel like developers have the license to be creative and eccentric if a few people joking around online is enough for the studio to mandate changing the game. Gaming is becoming more risk averse, not less, in the presence of a constant safety

This event was created to celebrate, you guessed it, Halloween. It was the first event to introduce PvE in the game, which made it unique, at least for a time. You and three more players fight together against hoards of Zomnics and a few overpowered versions of characters who function as bosses. This event also brings some of the best skins in the game . Halloween Terror happens in October, sometimes getting the beginning of November (aka around Hallowe

Luckily, however, it seems that fans will be getting their wish soon. The next big update is coming November 15, and will nerf Zarya in several different ways. For starters, the Barrier's duration is going back down to two seconds, as it was in the first Overwatch. On top of that, it will now have an eleven-second cooldown, stopping you from spamming it so much in bat

This comes from one of the most active threads on the Overwatch subreddit, asking players what Heroes they think are most in need of a buff or nerf. While there are a few mentions of nerfing Mercy and Moira's DPS abilities, the conversation quickly turned to Zarya, probably the most-played Tank in Competitive right

Imagine Rocket League, but the cars are Lúcios, and you get the idea. You have to boop your way through the stadium and push the ball with your gun (or fist), and score a goal against the enemy team with the gigantic ball. It's a nice change of pace, being rather different compared to most game mo