I never played Overwatch, but logged over 1000 hours in TF2 2007-2012.
Everything about Overwatch seems like a downgrade. It all seems like it is over design in response to the chaos of dedicated servers and custom map/skins. I'd rather have the chaos of TF2 and I'd rather have the games where we won as like 8 scouts vs a balanced team rather than being forced by the algorithm to play a healing spec. Even the aesthetics, there's way too much color and visual stimulation in overwatch. TF2's palate reigned in the visual chaos. Everything has to incentivize sweat cause being sweaty incentivizes higher brand engagement and higher chance to buy skins etc just capitalism over-insisting itself into the baking of the game., too annoying to deal with in my 30s! You cannot finance a pre-polycount-pack TF2 style game anymore and that's not progress to me.
Overwatch when it launched was basically "what if TF2 was a MOBA?" and it did a lot of things right from a design standpoint, while also just completely breaking the formula in other places. Folding class kits into abilities with their own keys and cooldowns was a usability improvement over TF2's solution of just using different weapon slots for everything, for example, while the way teams held and lost map presence always felt off to me relative to TF2.
I haven't kept up with it too much since then but generally disliked a lot of the big changes they did, and everything about Overwatch-but-we-stuck-a-2-on-it-for-marketing-reasons seems objectively worse than even those changes.
Crazy how TF2 fixed the "nobody wants to play healer" in fucking 2007 by simply adding healing kits onto the map, and 15 years later a massive company can't figure it out.
Nah, TF2 still has nobody wants to play the healer. Any team with a halfway-competent medic usually dominates the other one. You fix nobody being healer via healthpacks and having literally no healer available, á la Quake.
Doctor was pretty cool though with the invincibility ray. It was a cool twist on healing characters that would make you feel like a god for like 30s while you and the heavy mowed down everything in front of you.
Overwatch has health packs around the map, the same way TF2 does. And the healers in Overwatch are actually fun to play as and interesting because you don't have to just stand behind some guy with your proton pack thingy. TF2 is the game you make if you're trying to get tryhard players who want to waste their life honing their skills on a game. Overwatch is what you make if you want people to actually have fun lmao. TF2 is insanely boring compared to Overwatch. Standing around in the spawn area in Overwatch is more interesting than playing TF2.
There are a ton of Overwatch players who main playing healers. Like people who are Mercy mains probably enjoyed Overwatch a lot more than any other competitive shooter
There are custom maps and open queue! You can still play a match with 5 tanks if you wish.
And the custom maps have custom game modes. Last night I played one where everyone starts off with one character. When you get a kill you advance to the next character in the roster, when you die twice in a row you go back one. With the first one to complete the roster winning.
I never played Overwatch, but logged over 1000 hours in TF2 2007-2012.
Everything about Overwatch seems like a downgrade. It all seems like it is over design in response to the chaos of dedicated servers and custom map/skins. I'd rather have the chaos of TF2 and I'd rather have the games where we won as like 8 scouts vs a balanced team rather than being forced by the algorithm to play a healing spec. Even the aesthetics, there's way too much color and visual stimulation in overwatch. TF2's palate reigned in the visual chaos. Everything has to incentivize sweat cause being sweaty incentivizes higher brand engagement and higher chance to buy skins etc just capitalism over-insisting itself into the baking of the game., too annoying to deal with in my 30s! You cannot finance a pre-polycount-pack TF2 style game anymore and that's not progress to me.
Overwatch when it launched was basically "what if TF2 was a MOBA?" and it did a lot of things right from a design standpoint, while also just completely breaking the formula in other places. Folding class kits into abilities with their own keys and cooldowns was a usability improvement over TF2's solution of just using different weapon slots for everything, for example, while the way teams held and lost map presence always felt off to me relative to TF2.
I haven't kept up with it too much since then but generally disliked a lot of the big changes they did, and everything about Overwatch-but-we-stuck-a-2-on-it-for-marketing-reasons seems objectively worse than even those changes.
Crazy how TF2 fixed the "nobody wants to play healer" in fucking 2007 by simply adding healing kits onto the map, and 15 years later a massive company can't figure it out.
Nah, TF2 still has nobody wants to play the healer. Any team with a halfway-competent medic usually dominates the other one. You fix nobody being healer via healthpacks and having literally no healer available, á la Quake.
Doctor was pretty cool though with the invincibility ray. It was a cool twist on healing characters that would make you feel like a god for like 30s while you and the heavy mowed down everything in front of you.
Overwatch has health packs around the map, the same way TF2 does. And the healers in Overwatch are actually fun to play as and interesting because you don't have to just stand behind some guy with your proton pack thingy. TF2 is the game you make if you're trying to get tryhard players who want to waste their life honing their skills on a game. Overwatch is what you make if you want people to actually have fun lmao. TF2 is insanely boring compared to Overwatch. Standing around in the spawn area in Overwatch is more interesting than playing TF2.
There are a ton of Overwatch players who main playing healers. Like people who are Mercy mains probably enjoyed Overwatch a lot more than any other competitive shooter
TF2 is really a work of art. Each character has a role, they're all fun to play, they all synergize with each other.
There are custom maps and open queue! You can still play a match with 5 tanks if you wish.
And the custom maps have custom game modes. Last night I played one where everyone starts off with one character. When you get a kill you advance to the next character in the roster, when you die twice in a row you go back one. With the first one to complete the roster winning.