Overwatch vs Team Fortress 2

[seth]

Well I guess I'm the odd one out then. Still a great game, I will play some more soon to see if my experience changes.

 

[Tuaam]

As long as there's a level editor, I'm in.

 

[seth]

As long as there's a level editor, I'm in.

There's not and there never will be.

 

[CommodoreKong]

I don't know what server you guys have been playing on for the last 9 years, but the vast majority of the time when I play TF2 the community has been pretty nice. Sure there are some assholes here and there but most people seem to be pretty cool.

 

[Viemärirotta]

Back in 2013 I spent my autumn playing on a achievement idle server (pls don't judge), I met a few friends which I ended up removing since we never talked. In 2014 I stopped playing TF2 and started playing Payday 2 (when it's community wasn't toxic) and met a good bunch of good friends to this day. 2015 I joined a friend into a friendly server. It was a great summer, met good friends.

My point is you can't really find friends in a game based on matchmaking compared to games that have communities.

 

[LeSwordfish]

The TF2 community seems divided into those that create things that are fucking dumb and awful (either intentionally because lulz memes or unintentionally because they're young and just not really practiced at making things yet) and the decent young artists making good art (oh and SFM'ers who occupy the mid-to-good range mostly) and the overwatch community is like nothing but profesh artists and cartoonists creating amazing art. There is, of course, the full range of shit to god tier stuff happening on both sides but what I see is TF2 is waaaaaaaaay skewed to the shit tier and Overwatch is waaaaaaaay skewed to the god tier.

I'm not as certain as you that this is a good thing. Sure, it's better for content consumers, but for creators Overwatch is much more unfriendly. Without the easy tools for mucking about with tf2 - SFM, GMod, Hammer* - and the potential reward hanging in the distance like the star of bethlehem, you have to already be dedicated and skilled to make Overwatch stuff. The barrier for entry is way higher, and in the long term that's going to suck. Those enthusiastic kids making bad things are, several years down the line, winning Saxxys and making official maps, and the overwatch fanart/creation scene is a great place to be an expert but a bad place to be bad.

So, sure, if you want stuff of Zameed quality on your twitter feed only, then sure, Overwatch. But i'd like all those people who aren't profesh artists to have fun too, even if it makes it a bit harder to find the good stuff.

*Compared to no level editor at all, that is.

 

[MacD11]

To me, comparing Overwatch and TF2 is like comparing apples and oranges. They're both fruit, but aside from being sweet they're both pretty different.

 

[seth]

To me, comparing Overwatch and TF2 is like comparing apples and oranges. They're both fruit, but aside from being sweet they're both pretty different.

Really just sounds like you wanted to make an apple to oranges analogy. TF2 and Overwatch have many, many similarities.

 

[MacD11]

Really just sounds like you wanted to make an apple to oranges analogy. TF2 and Overwatch have many, many similarities.

Not really, to my mind one is very "character" driven with each character being really good at a very specific thing and being horrible at other things, while TF2's classes are good at a variety of things, even if it requires weapon switching for doing such a thing. Im not trying to make an apples to oranges analogy for the sake of it, but its truly how I feel about both games.

 

[Powerlord]

Not really, to my mind one is very "character" driven with each character being really good at a very specific thing and being horrible at other things, while TF2's classes are good at a variety of things, even if it requires weapon switching for doing such a thing. Im not trying to make an apples to oranges analogy for the sake of it, but its truly how I feel about both games.

Changing heroes in Overwatch is very much like switching loadouts in TF2 but with two caveats:

1. Your loadouts are restricted to specific sets.
2. People can tell exactly which loadout you have.

One of TF2's core design philosophies was being able to tell what class you were seeing from their silhouette.

Arguably, Valve has been devaluing this concept for the last 9 years. Not because of cosmetics, but starting with the Sniper vs. Spy update, items can change how the classes work.

Like it or not, in Overwatch, when I see Widowmaker I know she can fire exactly 5 tracer rounds (with a 1 sec charge time) while zoomed in before having to reload. I don't have to worry about her shooting arrows, remaining zoomed while reloading, shooting through multiple people in one shot, having extra hitpoints and bullet resistance, etc...

 

[Yrr]

when i see widowmaker i have to stop and figure out if its widowmaker, tracer, dva or symmetra, cause they all have the same silhouette while moving :T

they have different poses and firing methods but if i just glimpse them in the dark i straight up cant tell

 

[Zurby]

I prefer TF2 over Overwatch.

As someone who mostly only plays interaction/community driven games, because im pretty shit at gaming I find Overwatch less fun, although it's gameplay is surprisingly simple and easy, often having me end up with 4-5 gold medals, it's just not a lay back kinda game. Whenever I go in casual mode or w/e they call it and team up with my friend to go double bastion our entire teams scolds us. (note: we usually still win the game and end up top scoring). Where as in TF2, if I had a rough day, and just want to play my favorite game do something silly like being a spy and trying to taunt kill people, no one will yell at me, they'll even laugh when you get a cool taunt kill.

So, for my kind of playstyle Overwatch just doesn't work. It's too serious and the community usually is very unforgiving for mistakes or bad class picking.

 

[Powerlord]

when i see widowmaker i have to stop and figure out if its widowmaker, tracer, dva or symmetra, cause they all have the same silhouette while moving :T

they have different poses and firing methods but if i just glimpse them in the dark i straight up cant tell

They do have unique silhouettes, it's just something you learn over time. I could include descriptions, but it's really more of a visual thing and I don't have any screenshots of them.

Fun fact: When I started playing TF2, I couldn't tell Soldier from DemoMan just by silhouette.

 

[SignificantOtter]

The community outside of overwatch is waaaaay better than what I've seen from TF2. The TF2 community seems divided into those that create things that are fucking dumb and awful (either intentionally because lulz memes or unintentionally because they're young and just not really practiced at making things yet) and the decent young artists making good art (oh and SFM'ers who occupy the mid-to-good range mostly) and the overwatch community is like nothing but profesh artists and cartoonists creating amazing art. There is, of course, the full range of shit to god tier stuff happening on both sides but what I see is TF2 is waaaaaaaaay skewed to the shit tier and Overwatch is waaaaaaaay skewed to the god tier.

As somebody who spends more time on Tumblr than I'd like to admit (mostly video game art and fandom stuff), I can personally vouch there is a ton of horrible OW fanart, generally coupled with awful headcanons about the characters. Which I guess makes it no different from any other fan community in this day and age.

I've never played Overwatch so I can't speak about the playerbase, but my impression of the art, fanfic and headcanon "community" isn't very good. I think there probably is a greater volume of bad TF2 fanart, but the bad OW stuff seems oddly ... spiteful and willfully edgy compared to TF2's.

On a related note, my biggest non-gameplay complaint about OW is that I don't feel particularly strongly for any of the characters and the story doesn't really strike me as particularly interesting. Maybe I haven't given it enough of a chance or maybe it just isn't my cup of tea, but the slapped together assemblage of TF2 character development and canon is just so much more interesting to me. But I'm probably biased toward Valve's sense of humor.

 

[Necrσ]

I have to agree with Tuaam, unless there is a way to make some kind of content for the game I cant see myself switching to overwatch anytime soon.

 

[EArkham]

He makes some good points, and I think I agree with quite a lot of it, but he doesn't really mention some of the important mechanical differences. Specifically, the hit reg.

One thing I notice is that the hit registration in Overwatch is massively better than TF2. If a shot looks like it hits, it actually hits, and if it looks like it misses, it actually misses.

In TF2, you'll get a headshot on someone when by all visual feedback it looked like a huge miss. Being shot around a corner by a heavy is practically a stereotype by now. And don't get me started on flamethrowers and melee, which are pretty much just entirely broken before you even get into issues of ping.

I'd been taking that for granted in Overwatch... in TF2, whether or not I'm hitting and whether that's due to someone else's ping or my ping or because the particles don't match the hitboxes or whatever feels like a major focus of my gameplay... in OW, it simply isn't. I feel like if I'm not landing shots in OW, it's because I'm missing not because the hit reg is screwing with me.

 

[Yrr]

There's an entire video about how you can hit people around corners in overwatch because the hitboxes are so oversized.

 

[Powerlord]

There's an entire video about how you can hit people around corners in overwatch because the hitboxes are so oversized.

When was this video made? Overwatch reduced the hitbox sizes in the last major update that was released on July 20th.

 

[Yrr]

Ah, they probably took note of it then.

 

[Powerlord]

Ah, they probably took note of it then.

The downside of this is that it makes the archer character, Hanzo, much harder to play. He used to have Huntsman-sized head hitboxes (all characters did) and now he doesn't.