OWL Pros Give Thoughts On Exclusive Overwatch 2 Gameplay
As the OWL 2021 Season came to the greatest climax imaginable, a selection of professionals have been gifted the chance to play on an early build of Overwatch 2, and even played in a showcase exhibition match.
Shanghai Dragons played their Uno reverse card, four years in the making, during the Overwatch League Grand Finals to go from 0-40 to become World Champions with a 4-0 sweep.
During the halfway stage of the Grand Finals, an early showcase of Overwatch 2 was put on for fans, featuring two teams of five professionals and giving us all an insight into what can be expected next season.
Members from the Los Angeles Gladiators and Washington Justice were mixed and matched into the new team sizes, taking to a new and exclusive map and game mode. The ten players jostled on the sequel's Rome map and brand-new mode 'Push', which features a cute little robot who attempts to move a barricade through the map with each team either attacking or defending it.
With an onslaught of action, centring around the lack of beefiness to the revamped Tanks, the game seemed to be changing for a more explosive nature.
Some professionals, who have also been gifted the chance to play the early build in other instances, have now begun to voice their opinions on the sequel, and how Overwatch 2 will differ from its predecessor.
Houston Outlaws player and coach Jake "JAKE" Lyon has now taken to Twitter to discuss his takes on Overwatch 2, who believes that the hero pool will lose its importance in order to bridge the gap between competitive Overwatch and the casuals.
Jake continued: "In the end, I think the best case future for OW2 (and I mean the way 99.9% of ppl play in online matchmaking, not pro play) is one in which hero picks just don't matter like they used to. There will always be people who want to one trick and people who want to play the meta.
"The only way to harmonise those two ways of playing is to weaken 'the meta' and make hero picking a less impactful part of the game. To make hero picks less impactful, you must necessarily make heroes more similar to each other (every hero is closer to a dps)."
The established Overwatch veteran has eyed the hero pool and meta as the main bridge between pros and casuals, which will need to be reduced if the developers intend to make a healthy and recurring fan base.
He said: "In pro play, there will ALWAYS be optimized comps. The key is making those optimisations small enough that the 'pro comps' are not SO much better than just picking whatever heroes seem good in ranked.
"In the end, pro play can only survive if the game is popular."
With the conclusion of the OWL season, players are now expected to practice on the early Overwatch 2 build ahead of the 2021 Season in spring.
