Overwatch esports

About

History

Overwatch (sometimes abbriviated as OW) is a first-person shooter game, in which two teams of 6 players each compete to achieve a stated game objective, such as attacking their opponent’s control points whilst defending their own. Presented in a comic-book/cartoon graphic style, it’s just as much fun to watch OW matches as it is to participate in them and it’s one of the factors why the game has become a popular title in the esports scene.

Gameplay

Each player selects one character from an available group of heroes. The heroes belong to one of three categories known as Damage, Support and Tank, each of which serves a primary role of inflicting damage, supporting the team or defend/take damage from opponents.

Tournament History

The lengthy and fairly public pre-launch of Overwatch helped the game to establish itself as an early popular esports event, with the first Overwatch esports competitions taking place in 2016. Blizzard Entertainment itself organised the Overwatch World Cup, and the first tournament in that series was held at BlizzCon in 2016.

That first Overwatch World Cup tournament featured 16 teams and attracted around 100,000 viewers. Just one year later at BlizzCon in 2017, there were 32 participating teams and Twitch streams of the events notched up more than five million views.

The number of teams was reduced to 24 for the 2018 Overwatch World Cup but the excitement didn’t decline one bit, and a standalone Overwatch viewer application was released to allow people to watch OW matches in an interactive spectator mode.

A new Overwatch League was announced by Blizzard Entertainment in 2016, and the first season started in January 2018, offering more than $3.5 million in prize money. The prize pool for the 2019 season is even larger $5 million.

Overwatch tournaments have had an exciting past and look certain to deliver even more excitement in the future. Stay tuned at Esportsguide to keep up to date with all live and upcoming matches.

Guide

A Basic Introduction to Overwatch

A Brief Background

Overwatch is a team-based first person shooter published and developed by Blizzard Entertainment. The two teams compete against each other to finish different kinds of objectives within a certain amount of time whilst also fighting each other.

The game is often described as a “hero shooter” due to the fact that each player individually selects a hero to play in every match, from a roster of 30 characters. All of which are divided into three different categories that suit their playstyle (tank, damage and support). The game features a very bright and cartoon-like theme, something that makes it unique compared to other shooters.

The game was released on May 24, 2016 for both Windows, Playstation 4 and Xbox One. The idea for the game came about after Blizzard cancelled their secret project “Titan” which was supposed to be a massive multiplayer online role-playing game within the same universe as Overwatch is taking place. So some of the game’s assets and parts of the lore was borrowed from project Titan.

The release of the game was promoted with a couple of short animated videos that introduced its characters in a really amazing way that managed to build up huge hype, and they received a lot of good critics for their art style and interesting collection of characters . Since its release, the game has gathered a big fan base and also managed to maintain a presence on the esport scene. As of may 2018, Overwatch had around 40 million monthly players.

How to Play

In Overwatch there’s two teams of six players each. Every player also picks a hero out of the roster, and these heroes are divided into three different categories. If you want to play a hero that’s focused on dealing high damage to the opponents you should play a hero from the “Damage” category. The heroes from the damage category often lacks a big pool of health, so they need to be played with some caution. If you would rather like to support your team with healing abilities, crowd control or even resurrect your fallen teammates, you should go for a hero from the “Support” category.

The last category “Tank” includes heroes that can soak up a lot of damage from the opponents before dying, whilst still dealing a good amount of damage. The setup of your team can be the key to victory, as a good synergy is very important.

For example, a team full of support characters would have a very hard time dealing enough damage to put any pressure on the enemies to control or push the objective. You would preferably have 1-2 tanks, 1-2 supports and the rest damage, depending on your team’s playstyle and what setup of heroes your enemies are playing with.

Each hero has a unique set of skills that can be used to either attack enemies, or support/enhance yourself or your teammates. All skills have different cooldowns, this means that after a skill is used you have to wait a short moment before you can use it again.

During this cooldown you also have access to different kind of weapons depending on which character you play that can be used to deal damage to your enemies. All heroes also have an “Ultimate” ability, a much stronger ability with an even longer cooldown that can really turn the tables in the middle of an intense fight.

All of these Ultimate abilities have pretty clear sound cues that can be heard when they are activated, so keep your ears open! It’s really important to have a good knowledge and understanding of how each hero work, since this can give you an edge on how to counter their abilities.

You also need to make sure that you have a good knowledge of what kind of setup your team should play to counter the enemies. It’s recommended that you learn to play efficiently with more than one hero, since your first pick might not always be the best choice for the current situation.

There are different kind of game modes, with some being seasonal and only available for a certain amount of time. But the most popular mode is the competitive mode in which two teams are either escorting a payload between different points on the map, or securing control points.

While playing competitive, you are taking part in a ranking system that gives you a certain amount of points if you win, but if you lose the match you will also lose points which will make your account rank lower. For this mode there’s leaderboards in which the top tier players compete to reach the highest rank within each season.

If you would prefer to play the game more casually without being worried about ranking and not performing at your best all the time, there’s also a couple of casual game modes you can play. There’s “Quick play” which is a game mode that’s very similar to the competitive, but without the pressure of rankings and leaderboards.

Playing in this mode is a great way to improve and get a good understanding of all the mechanics in the game and comfortable with your heroes. There’s also an “Arcade” section, and this is where you can find the ordinary Team deathmatch, deathmatch and other modes. This is also where you can find the seasonal events that are available in the game for a limited time. For example, during the 2018 Summer Olympics, Blizzard added the game mode “Lúcioball” which were a futuristic soccer game.

While playing, you are also acquiring experience points that level up your account, and for each new level you reach, you are awarded with loot boxes that contains cosmetic items which allow you to customise your favourite heroes. These loot boxes can also be purchased for real money, but everything you unlock with loot boxes only affects how your character looks or sounds, and does not affect gameplay in any way.

How to Watch

Overwatch was released without any expectation that it would hit the esport scene, but after some internal testing they quickly realised that the game had potential to become really competitive. The first properly organised competitions in Overwatch started in August 2016, with the Electronic Sports League arranging “Overwatch Atlantic Showdown”.

Blizzard also announced the “Overwatch League” at Blizzcon in 2016 in which city-based teams backed by sponsors and team owners compete. Blizzard are also arranging Overwatch Contenders, another league where aspiring players compete to hopefully win and get moved over to the big league.

There is also Overwatch Open, another league where the top players from the competitive modes leaderboards are allowed to compete to try to get moved up into the Contenders league. The open division is played in seven different regions: Europe, North America, South America, Australia/New Zealand, Southeast Asia, South Korea and China.

https://www.twitch.tv/overwatchleague – Official Overwatch League twitch channel
https://www.twitch.tv/overwatchcontenders – Official Overwatch Contenders twitch channel

Tips and Tricks

Mechanical Skill

Although the first-person-shooter can be played on both console and PC, we’ll be focusing on where the competitive scene is primarily based, being PC. Overwatch is renowned for its incredible intensity. Accordingly, this is due to having six players on each team all rushing towards one objective.

Bearing this in mind, here are some mechanical skills for Overwatch which are similar to other PC shooters like Rainbow 6:

• Use an aim-trainer – try and take the time to make sure your aim is perfect. Just an hour every now and then can make all the difference here. Indeed, you’ll want to practice flicking and quickly changing your aim.
• Mastering movement – depending on your character, movement will vary in importance. Lightweight heroes rely heavily on movement to become a hard target. Combining fast dashes with quick aim makes yourself a very hard opponent to encounter.
• Utilizing the right abilities – managing all your abilities will take a lot of focus on a lack of hesitation while making the most of the situation
• Consider investing in a more powerful PC and other peripherals. Indeed, running the game at a higher frame rate could help you out incredibly.

In-Game Knowledge and Awareness

Besides mechanical skill, in-game knowledge and awareness is more essential in more than one way. Take note of the following to possibly take your game to the next level:

• Know the maps inside out. You’ll need to know where each objective sits for whatever game mode, including the best spots for cover and the quickest routes.
• Map awareness extends to ability usage – knowing how you can corner your opponents, where they spawn and how you can help your team best
• Knowing your roll – amongst a team of six players you need to be fully aware of what you look to accomplish. The following are some roles: healer, support, flanker, offense and tank. Damage dealers may also be frontline and non-frontline.
• Be aware of where your teammates are in order to coordinate attacks, ability usage and to strategize rotations – this can be done by observing the map more often
• Develop strategies for each game mode to help yourself and your team succeed
• Follow the Overwatch League to learn the newest strategies and peaks

Personal and Interpersonal – Overwatch Tips and Tricks

Communication is key in Overwatch unlike any other esport. Having 6 teammates on one team makes teamwork more important than any other. High pressure situations need to be handled appropriately and calmly – here are some others you can read:

• Communicate only the essentials: you’ll want to focus on enemy positions, ability availability and map positioning
• Keeping calm for difficult situations: executing a win will take some stressful situations which can shift the tides
• Following each game, you’ll want to learn from how you lost and how to overcome it.

Sitting as a Tier 2 esport potentially pushing to Tier 1, Overwatch is still growing. The Overwatch League is constantly growing and next year, some new changes will be implemented.

We hope you enjoyed those tips – make sure to try use them next time you’re playing competitively.