This isn’t going to do a whole lot to quell the Team Fortress 2 comparisons, but it’s pretty interesting to see how the developers react to top players — and how the players respond in turn.
It’s also an opportunity to check out how far Blizzard has come with their spectator client for Overwatch — although the person controlling the camera could probably tweak their sensitivity a bit.
It’s a best-of-seven series with the developers across all of the maps currently available in the beta. It’s a useful primer for players and teams on what angles and combinations might be worth rolling with, although given how fresh things still are it’s hard to say whether these matches will have a great impact on the Overwatch beta.
The main utility from the videos is how it shows off Blizzard’s spectator client, which is pretty fleshed out given the closed beta only kicked off last week.
You can watch the rest of the matches here. It’s fascinating seeing how well the developers held their own; it says a lot about the decision making behind what heroes you swap to, which should give a lot of confidence to people concerned about whether Overwatch will be just another team-focused twitch shooter.
Comments
3 responses to “Get A Feel For Overwatch’s Spectator Mode As Blizzard Battles TF2 Pros”
So stoked for dis gam.
Hmmm. Only watched the first video but the spectator HUD is pretty bad; I’m a huge TF2 fan and watch their (tiny) competitive scene as much as I can and their spectator HUDs (all third party, the Valve created spec HUD is largely ignored) give you twice as much information in half of the space (for example the Uber percentage for medic is right there with the other info; ult timers isn’t even there as far as I can see in this). Otherwise, although the HUD looks nice it’s not very useful; there isn’t a kill feed and the indicators for who’s alive and who’s not disappear in first person. Even further beyond that why in hell would you put animation like that fire on players icons? For one as a newcomer I have no idea what the hell that means and two it takes up a hell of a lot of space that could otherwise be used to tell you how much health the player had. I mean really; I don’t even know how much health the players have; that’s ridiculous. No this HUD is terrible from my perspective and the more I think about it the worse it seems. The only feature I like about it (and again, not very useful for spectators, but here pretty useful for commentators) are the hotkey indicators (eg f1 f2 f3 etc.) for spectating people in first person; but considering that FP view removes all of the HUD elements no-one should ever use that view in the first place.
I’m actually looking forward to this game; it looks like a hell of a lot of fun, but it’s got a lot to learn from the competitive TF2 community when it comes to spectator HUDs (Probably MOBAs as well, but I haven’t played any of those; I still get the feeling having an indicator for how much a character/ player has charged up their ultimate would be useful). See this link as an example of what I mean; player and team info on the left, player specific info in the middle. http://i.imgur.com/8QEv88V.jpg < that’s what I want from a spectator HUD; not pretty but extremely functional, especially in first person view.
Another point; on the game itself I really hope there’s an option that makes every thing glow less; it’s damn frustrating, especially when it’s a muzzle flash etc.. Also a note to people casting games almost no-one has had the chance to play: don’t refer to the character/ player and constantly switch between the two; at least say “clockwork is using tracer’s [insert ability here] really nicely” so I can link the two; but until I’ve played the thing I have no idea who Reinhardt is and the character’s name isn’t below the player’s. Not really the commentators fault but it feels very confusing to me; even as someone who’s watched a few of Overwatch’s ads and knows who some of the TF2 players are to boot.
I could say more, but I really shouldn’t, this HUD is weak and I sincerely hope that Blizzard allow for third party HUDs.
i mean to be fair it is still in beta. And has only been out for a few weeks. Not even a month. So I’m sure they are working on it, but if they are smart they are focusing more on the gameplay itself.