Overwatch was THE hero shooter back then. It gave us an idea of what Team Fortress 2 could have been. It gave us the illusion of a very fast paced first person shooter. But recently, Blizzard just shot themselves on the foot with the updates they rolled off paired with the release of Valorant. Truly a wombo-combo.

The Catalyst for Disaster: 2-2-2 role lock

For those not familiar with what 2-2-2- role lock is, it's basically a hard lock of a team composition in a game of Overwatch. The game currently has 3 roles which are DPS, Tanks, and Support. Back then, Overwatch didn't have a role lock system. Which means that you can play the game where you can go 5 supports and a tank or any combination of those three roles you wanted in your team of six heroes. This gave the players the option to be creative with their team compositions.

But all of that came to a halt when Blizzard introduced the role lock in on August 13, 2019. The feature in concept, was something players looked forward to. They actually thought that it could be a healthy addition to the game. But soon after, they realized that they were wrong.

2-2-2 Queue time

The biggest problem for the 2-2-2 patch was queue times. I remember playing on that patch as a DPS player and it would take me 40+ minutes just to join a game. Yes, 40 minutes just to play a game that can end in about 10-15 minutes if your team knows what they’re doing. This means that you're literally waiting more than you're playing. This only affected DPS players but most of Overwatch players are DPS players anyway, so a large portion of the player base was affected.

Stale Meta? Hero bans.

Blizzard didn't have the answer yet for the queue times and another problem has emerged. The meta has become very stale with people playing the same champions over and over every game. Blizzard's solution? Hero bans. Players rejoiced when they heard these two words. "Finally! A banning phase in champion select!"

And again, the player base was wrong. It wasn't them who's going to ban the champion, it was the developers. Basically, the devs will take a look at what champions were too powerful during the week and they'll ban it during the next so that people will be forced to play another champion. You're a one-trick Widowmaker? Goodbye, your hero is banned this week.

But apparently, this wouldn't last very long as Blizzard is already planning on disabling Hero Bans in ranks below Master.

The Harbinger of Death: Valorant

Valorant, a first-person shooter game from Riot Games has swept the professional FPS scene when it first entered close beta testing with various professional FPS players leaving their game for Valorant. The thing is, Valorant doesn't even have an official esports scene yet! Meaning, they left their game to compete in a non-existent esport as of now.

But with all the fuss Valorant has made, it's pretty sure that they'll have a healthy esports scene in the future.

Sinatraa has found his way to Valorant

Jay "Sinatraa" Won announced that he's leaving his team, the San Francisco Shock to compete in Valorant. Why does this matter? It's because he's currently at the top of the Overwatch League, he's the Faker of Overwatch and he just suddenly decided to leave the game for Valorant.

He said in a twitlonger that he "just straight up lost passion for the game" and "I just know it was hard for me to log on to play and i didnt have fun in scrims/ranked at all anymore." he also pointed out that he didn't know what it was exactly that made him feel that way, but he alluded to it either being the 2-2-2 role lock or the hero bans.

The Future of Overwatch League is very shaky.

At the end of the day, it's up to Blizzard to save this franchise. I have no solutions for this but I'm guessing that they're already talking about how to revive their dying scene. Maybe make it Free to Play to repopulate the playerbase? Maybe revert everything and go back to what was working? I'm not entirely sure. But one thing's set-in stone. The Overwatch League is in danger.

Ichika Rika