The Problem with Overwatch

And Other Multiplayer Only Games

This will be a casual piece (see: rant) based on personal opinion.

Overwatch is a fun game. I often play it with one friend to catch up on each other’s lives. I have another in which we can talk to each other despite living hundreds of miles away. It’s a simple and easy conversation piece with one of my coworkers. The game contains excessive amounts of flavor and style. The mechanics are good for new players and old players alike. Blizzard has done everything in their power and spent millions to make Overwatch accessible. However, Overwatch stops being fun after a while.

This isn’t an attempt to talk about why Overwatch is a terrible game. My goal is to bring up an issue prevalent in many multiplayer games that may have been brought up before, but has been on my mind for a while. Games centered around only the online multiplayer aspect become tiresome after a while.
The major problem can be brought back to a single aspect — a severe lack of content. I first experienced this with League of Legends. I began playing LoL in Season 2 and played through Season 4. After the Journal of Justice was discontinued and the Institute of War was retconned out, I found that LoL began to lose a lot of flavor and story. The game became centered around the competitive scene offering very little for the casual player or the player who wanted more to offer. It became a game I only played with my friends who are far more competitive than I am.
The game lacked true PvE and any casual modes were just distilled and/or alternative versions of the already existing system. Unless one is an already competitive person, this game offers less and less over time. I now find myself watching the competitive scene more than actually playing.

I recently found myself going through these same motions with Overwatch. After procuring the game, I played for hours and hours both alone and with friends. I went out of my way to play events so I could get skins like Jazzy Lucio. Eventually, new games were released, or I just went back and finally purchased games I’d been putting off, and put the game down. When coming back, I found that I didn’t care as much as I used to about the events. The lootboxes became grating rather than exciting. Skins are nice, but I found myself not caring.
Overwatch lacks content in the same way League of Legends does. There is no PvE, leveling does nothing, all the characters play the same, and gameplay modes are fairly static. The game offers nothing but a good time with friends. But, the same thing can be obtained with Netflix and a 12-pack of soda.