Specifically, the team behind Overwatch wanted to address a criticism they have received from users over the last few months: It can be challenging to follow what’s going on when watching Overwatch eSports. They’ve taken the following steps that will hopefully make things a little better.
Viewing improvements. Let me get this straight: Overwatch players themselves are having a hard time to decipher what is going on between 25 very different heroes that rotate on 4 different roles while using several abilities in blazing fast action.
That’s a huge amount of data to process while watching a game. People watching sports are chilling. They can process data but it needs to be simpler, a lot simpler than 25 very different players doing a billion different things in a very fast-paced fashion. Nobody got time for that, even regular Overwatch players don’t apparently.
Overwatch’s esport watching issue is a game design issue. The game needs to have a mode where things are a lot slower or simpler.
After being all the rage around 2000, the arena shooter is back. But there’s a problem: people watch people play now, and it’s a big deal.
I watched Overwatch’s 16 “heroes” and you have to appreciate Blizzard’s surgery at work, how things are readable in a chaos of green, blue bullets, force shields, particles and so forth. It’s amazing how good they are at manipulating color palette.
It is also super fast. It’s pretty much unwatchable for 90% of people if not more.
I wrote that two years ago and I guess I wasn’t wrong.