Beginning To Define The Chaos Of Overwatch League’s 2021 Season
With how much talent is spread thin across the twenty Overwatch League franchises, the competition looks the best it has in years. On top of that, the league format is still in question, and it’s becoming more and more likely that this year will see more teams make roster changes mid-season. Lest we forget that Overwatch 2 still is in the works. While uncertainty is apparent within regards to Overwatch and its esports league, certain expectations need to be measured.
Make no bones about it; the 2021 season will be a return to form for the Overwatch League, specifically when it comes to its competitive level. However, a recipe of chaos is being written as we speak. If the offseason was ruthless, then disorder and confusion are bright and bold on the marque for the 2021 regular season.
Hero Pools, Role Lock, And Overwatch 2
Click to enlargeIf you look at the history of Overwatch, the only thread that binds it all together is this sense of chaotic uncertain. From no hero limits, to role lock, to hero pools, systematic and foundational changes seem inherent to the game at its core, and that is not going away anytime soon. Perhaps the system gets filed down again into something slightly less invasive, but still another step farther from the original philosophy of the game.
This stands out in especially when we know that, sometime in the near future, Overwatch 2 is going to be released. Adding new heroes alongside another game mode which inherently comes with its own maps is already change enough for the game to become fresh and novel again, what’s concerning is the next round of systems that get tweaked or just outright removed that are likely to persist throughout Overwatch 2’s life-cycle.
Past the point of addition for content’s sake, the constant change the game faces is a direct contributor in the massive amount of burnout players and especially support staff face. This stands opposite a league that needs to better connect its fans to the players, but that bridge is difficult to build when you don’t know where or when you need to build it. We’ve prattled on and on about the vision of the game and how it constantly is in flux, whether it is good or not is neither here nor there, but within that does contain knock-on effects still felt today.
Midseason Madness
Click to enlargeCall this scene the Lion King because you'd all best “be prepared.”
Per the official Roster Construction Rules for 2021 Overwatch League Season article the league now will field two types of player contracts. First, you have a standard season-long contract, now with the added ability for teams to part ways with players “without cause.” On the other hand, you have 30-day contracts, which are self-explanatory. Next to that are your two-way players who are much more fluid than they once were.
With that context in mind, go ahead and sit that next to the former format discussion. This is as clear as the sky is phthalo blue; it is not only possible—we will likely see an increase in roster moves made in the mid-season. If a team happens to roll snake eyes and is out a key piece that is needed for the metagame, they can quickly trim the roster and bring on a trial or even sign a star free agent to stem the bleeding.
Pack on top of that picture, the presumed weight that this monthly or bi-monthly tournaments might incur, both socially and through more competitive channels, and it becomes even more believable. If team X loses in disappointing fashion in the first event, retooling that roster with new players has never been easier. This isn’t to say that we’ve never seen teams attempt to rebuild mid-season before, because we have seen that, what we will see is a decrease in rebuilds taking place but an increase in overall moves across the board. One driving force to that idea comes from the notion that there will be incredibly talented players left on the sidelines this season to due a number of reasons.
Fight On!
Click to enlarge2021 will be the most competitive season to date. Now, this doesn’t mean you can come running back to this article when one team inevitably has a streaky run through a perfect hero pool and claim a false bill of goods. Across the regular season as a whole, across the litany of tournaments, across the players participating, more good teams will enter this season than poor ones. More viable matches, ones that actually demand your attention rather than becoming second monitor content, is a fantastic boon for the league as a whole. However, it comes with some interesting baggage.
One explanation as to how we arrived at this circumstance is due to the budget constraints placed on teams due to COVID-19. Without the foundation of the league called into question, it seems reasonable to assume teams were pinched by their accountants. A more positive outlook is to chalk this up to an increase of good staff in the league and experience in building out and understanding team dynamics. In reality, it is probably a mixture of both. However, with how similar in strength, many of these teams feel on the outset, these make it difficult to discern the colour from the coal. There are just so many stacked rosters, ones with potential and strong staffs, that some of them are bound to slip into freefall and aren’t equipped with a parachute.
Archetypes And Identities
Click to enlargeEvery season there seems to be this breakout team that defines a feeling. While that seems needlessly vague, take, for example, take the Philadelphia Fusion of 2018. This massively international roster, that had little to no expectations put on them, never played in the pre-season, somehow managed to make a dark-horse run to the grand finals. We used that phrase to better describe teams like the Atlanta Reign in 2019 and other underdogs who might show some potential of punching above their weight.
Interested in something a bit more recent? Try the Los Angeles Valiant on for size, a team that was poked and prodded about working within their budget—who ended up concussing teams that likely spent magnitudes more money for equal or even worse results. These teams not only become colloquial definitions of how future teams might progress, but every time we refer to them as such, it furthers that teams social identity.
For example, the San Francisco Shock are known to be the best team in the world and a fantastic franchise when it comes to their programs competitive history. Why do we think of them as a winning team? Why do the players think of them as a great location that can consistently perform well? It’s largely on the staff and the players they’ve courted, but the narrative around them furthers that snowball down the hill.
These are all fantastic, and it’s no surprise that all three of these listed teams seem to be doing quite well for themselves. The Overwatch League desperately needs to avoid becoming a milquetoast product—it needs to continue to grow the base of the ecosystem, which are the players. If teams were easily identifiable through their history, their spending, perhaps even their players, then this wouldn’t be a concern, but with the state of the world and the state of the game, chaos and uncertainty does not bode well for some of these fledgeling identifiers that some of these teams have been building, intentional or not.
Click to enlargeTo summarise; rosters will likely be more in flux than ever before as the 2021 contracts have given more power to the franchises, the format still isn’t set in stone and will likely change again once Overwatch 2 inevitably comes out, and with how competitive of a season we’re projected to see team identities will likely be undermined by poor performances compared to their expectations which ties directly to the first ring of Overwatch’s inferno—and so the wheel turns.
Again, the 2021 Overwatch League season still holds all the prescriptions we’ve placed upon it previously. It looks to be the most talented dense, the most competitive and the most dynamic of any season thus far—but with that comes confusion. And it’s best to jump in front of it now than to wait until the final moments before we begin the discussion.
So, brace yourselves; 2021 is going to be a fun year, but Overwatch League’s wild ride has not even come close to reaching the insanity apex yet.
Images via Blizzard Entertainment
