The Great Smurf Debate feat. Awkward, Spilo & ioStux

okay we'll go what's up guys how's it going hope you're having a fantastic morning evening afternoon wherever you're coming from and I bring with you a handsome cast of guests here for a no doubt spicy discussion that's about to ensue uh so we're gonna get right into it for the great Smurf debate where we'll be talking about smurfing unranked GM's competitive ego mindsets needed for climbing and just the general competitive mode of OverWatch because I have with me three coaches of all different backgrounds so let me introduce them starting in the bottom right my man long time collaborator but first time on the podcast uh former coach of the London Spitfire it is Milo spylos what's going man go on appreciate you having me great to have you on uh people have been begging me to get you on for a while so I'm glad we could finally make it happen appreciate it in the bottom left we have frequent rank one uh support and frequently handsome fellow awkward awkward what's up I'm doing good thank you for having me appreciate it awesome and in the top left another coach the man who wrote the manifesto on goats uh we have IO stocks iOS Ducks what's up man yes my my finest work I'm really happy to be here great awesome I'm happy to have all you guys here I would say I'm just changing a title I realize I effed up on but yeah I mean there's been some uh the inspiration for this podcast came from uh awkward in the bottom left there who's been dropping some interesting interesting takes on Twitter so I saw IO stocks disagreeing and I was like you know what this would make a great discussion point because two people whose opinions I really respect are having a disagreement and that's uh not a place for Twitter to be that's a place for some conversation to come in uh so that's where we're gonna come in I'm gonna read out awkwards tweet that sparked this whole thing we've got a couple other takes as well uh and then I'm gonna have awkward uh kind of discuss and elaborate on that stance and then we'll go from there so the tweet that started this all the tweet that launched a thousand ships and a thousand replies in my Twitter mentions uh awkward says wait not this one let's start with this one the average player will complain when there's a Smurf on enemy team while a great player will be excited to play against someone who is better challenges are necessity for Learning and self-improvement accept them and climb the ladder or complain and stay in Platt so awkward word what do you think expand on that and and kind of give us your thoughts behind that original tweet well okay I believe that in order to be better at anything you have to face challenges you have to play against better players at whatever you're trying to do if you're swimming uh you'd like to practice harder drills to get better if you're playing video games you'd like to play against players that are higher rank than you if you're boxing you would like to face people in the ring that are better than user can learn that's what sparring is for now a lot of people complain is why they lose is because of Smurfs and I argue that you can learn a lot about players that you play against you might get [ __ ] stomped sure but there's a lot that you can learn from it that's the main point now this can go a lot of ways where I can speak four hours about this but if you'd like me to argue a point you have to be specific at what it is that you disagree okay so there's there's our initial setup that you know okay you got a spar against someone who's better than you to learn that's how Improvement comes now uh yeah I O stuck's out there in the top left was uh disagreeing in the Twitter in the Twitter quote retweets and the reply so I sucks what kind of did you disagree with fundamentally on this take so first of all I 100 agree that if you want to get better you you have to challenge yourself right the perspective that I'm taking I'm kind of trying to find like the the other side to things is that for some people right um they're not necessarily complaining that like like if someone is saying oh the reason why I'm in Platinum and I can't climb the Smurfs that's obviously not true right um but if someone is saying oh the reason I am not having as much fun is because I'm playing against the Smurf I think that's like a very valid opinion to have to be able to say I just don't enjoy getting stomped on by a Smurf um and to kind of accept that maybe some people who play ranked they you know kind of want to balance improving on one side but also just having fun at the game right and of course I mean I for me personally when I played the game and I got a chance to play against a high level player or a Smurf I I cherish that I I really like that um but for example recently with OverWatch 2 I've started playing with my friends again um and and sometimes you know the number one complaint that they have is that sometimes it just feels like there's one person on the other team uh who goes like you know 50 and three and it just doesn't feel as much fun and you know of course I can tell them well you can try to learn from it but that doesn't really change the fact that they you know they're just going to end up closing the game and then play League of Legends or something okay I'm gonna let all could respond I will I will let Spiro handsomely listen and take in and then come in with a profound take in a moment but awkward uh kind of go ahead and rip off what what was iosx said there okay that's a very fair point you know the fun aspect if you want to have fun in my opinion you shouldn't queue up to competitive mode if you play unranked at Mr Heroes you have a bunch of other games that you play when you queue up into competitive mode you have to understand that people want to win and therefore they also want to improve right that is the reason why people don't enjoy when people are throwing because inherently the game is just boring that way and nobody improves nobody has nobody has fun because there's just it's just a waste of time everybody's time now if you'd like to if you'd like to improve at the game you actually have to try your best to win and try to learn from it so I don't exactly see competitive a competitive setting is fun because when I step in the ring I don't also enjoy having a punch like fun having punches thrown my face right it's not very fun but it's a very good learning experience and oh what I don't enjoy particularly is is let's say sparring and someone significantly worse than me because there's nothing that I can learn from it and you might say it might you know boost my self-esteem and ego but that's not why you should do any competitive let's say sports or any competitive modes in any video video games if you just like to play against people that are lowering you it just makes no sense to me just through my experience everything I've done in my life or in video games just to be better I don't my ego is not struck by farming some goals for example okay very interesting I I kind of I have something I want to riffle but I'm going to let spylo chime in first so spilo anything anything said by awkward or iOS Ducks there which is you know I I think it's very interesting philosophical idea there that what awkward's getting at which is like well look that's not what the comp mode is for I'm here to kind of try hard and Challenge and go go the hardest I can and that's that's the implicit contract you sign when you're when you're playing competitive sure so so I have two things I think one is I think it's really you have to be really careful about when we describe something as competitive that we're the only thing that we're trying to do is to win um I think even awkward sayings like we're trying to improve we're trying to get better but I think the idea is that competitive Ventures should still be fun when at all costs or playing to win is what's fun for a lot of people for example if I'm competing in a pickup basketball game if nobody's trying and we're just screwing around I people aren't going to have fun right maybe it's fun for some people but I'm the type of guy like awkward who like I want to compete to win right that being said there's a really important aspect I brought my receipts here so there's a really important study we have here uh This was done in 1908 and it basically it talks about the York's Dodson law and with the York's Dodson law talks about is the challenge skill balance and what that means is when we're trying to enter Flow State which is the optimal state for learning for having fun for improving there has to be a very careful line between where we have this is where my current skill is and this is where the challenge is so it's above where my current skill set is so like awkward niostick said for us to actually improve if we play at the same skill level it's actually really hard to get better or like awkward say if you're beating up on gold players it's almost impossible to get better right um I mean I've done this many times when we were scrimmaging uh a tier two team for example like London Spitfire we get a cancellation we got a contenders team the hardest thing that you can do as a coach is keep the players focused and trying to get something out of that scrimmage sometimes it's better to just do nothing but then the opposite is true as well where when you break that line when the flow goes from The Challenge is beyond my current skill set significantly and obviously what's significantly right is it a player in a gold Lobby is it a diamond player in a gold Lobby it's it's a really kind of it's a spectrum right um but when it gets to these two significant it gets to be so overwhelming that we know it's no longer a learning process now my stance on unranked GM thing is that I think people playing in the unranked GM Lobby don't get anything out of it uh depending on the rank if it's a gym in a master's Lobby there's something that you can learn from that Beyond just mechanics certainly um but if we have GM plot Lobby there's just simply too much um I think awkward is in an interesting position because he and a couple of the unranked James I've seen I think A10 is another one who does a really good job for when you're in the Stream he does an excellent job elaborating exactly what he's doing so it's not just I'm beating up on you know plot Diamond whatever players I'm repeating Concepts over and over and over again that if you're watching the stream I can then go translate and practice in my games awkward's always talking about um the damage on it the damage support mindset right that's a really good thing to practice right now we're not going to have his level of mechanics but even a plot player should be practicing that mentality same thing with A10 when A10 goes and it dominates people in Arissa yes it's frustrating for the people in the lobby and maybe there's not a whole lot to take for them because it's way above their skill level however if you're in his stream or watching the YouTube video what's he talking about he's talking about positioning cover cover cover cover cover look at this guys I'm waiting to fight for cover from cover so I see the benefit from it from if you're watching it because what's being said what's being coached because awkward and A10 aren't just players they're also coaches as well and they do a good job explaining what they're doing as they're doing and making it applicable for the average player that being said when I'm in a Lobby uh with awkward and he's two three ranks above me the return on investment there just isn't there it's simply above your skill level um and there's too many things too many factors and this isn't even considering the fun Factor even if you're looking to improve generally there's too many things going on for you in the moment to be able to learn from that process you're probably going to get overwhelmed dominated and make the experience a negative thing rather than a positive thing interesting lots of thoughts they're very eloquently put if backed up with a 1900 study from uh spylo as well so appreciate the homework being done the coach is doing their homework there you go guys inspirational leaders so awkward there's quite a few strands for that for that you potentially respond of obviously the undercurrent all this for anyone who's maybe lacking context awkward has done many Fantastic unranked GMS and they are sometimes the source of complaint and ire amongst the community but also clearly very popular content very informative content I would say so as anything in particular you want to respond to what has been said by spylo well there's a very good point that he's making said the learning curve from players uh in with a big disparity and skill level it's really hard to learn like a gold will not necessarily be able to learn a lot from the GM player like facing him right um my educational content are for people that are watching rather than people that are in the game itself but I do not believe that I generally ruin their entire game experience by being in one game and destroying them also you could argue the point that even though you don't learn a lot you can still learn something okay so why did the Zen kill me he flanked me okay can I did I did I not hear him maybe my awareness just sucks maybe my headphones are broken you can learn something you can point a finger at least on one thing maybe it's a different 50 thing sure I'll agree on that but a gold player can point on one thing why did I [ __ ] up here and he can fix that doesn't have to be 500 points now also I want to drift to um to another point the previous point where you know a lot of people in the comments were saying something like you know what am I going to learn from a gym without shooting me that it's like getting in the ring with Mike Tyson would you do it well the first thing I risk injury and possibly death when I get in a ring with my side yeah but anyone who's slightly competitive if he had to CH at the chance to spar with Mike Tyson with no risk of injury every single person who is slightly competitive with an innate just wants to win or or something like wants to improve he will take that chance it's not something that it's giving to you something that is earned but a lot of people would take that opportunity including myself I would get in a ring with Mike Tyson if I if I I didn't risk getting my head smoked against the canvas and literally just go to the hospital later but if you're just sparring sure no problem even if it's significantly better than me yeah okay okay so I I think it's a good analogy right so the idea of getting into ring with Mike Tyson and you said that you risk um you know getting injured there so the analogy isn't really applicable but um I think you'll have a very good like mindset for yourself right that's helped you improve that's gotten you you to where you are um but what what I do what what spylo does right we talk to these metal ranked players we kind of you know it's part of our job to understand how they think and of course if you uh do an unrank to GM and you play against them you stomping on them isn't going to physically hurt them right but the reality is that not everyone um has kind of adopted that mindset that you have and I have you know by far the number one biggest kind of mindset related issues that that people have is just you know when they get stomped on by a Smurf it just Crushers their self-esteem it's it's not fun it just kind of makes them want to quit for the game and the problem that I have is that ultimately um I don't think anyone should should feel entitled to the the privilege of being able to stomp on others so of course if someone wants to play against the Smurf I would I'm gonna be honest I would love to I want to just grind not ranked you know honestly if I had the money I would pay people to just scrim with me and just stomp me all day but the reality is that a lot of people don't want that and when someone goes into on a Smurf account and they play in low ELO they didn't ask those players if if they were okay with that right because um if if we say that the reason we do unrank to GM is because it's great educational content and because it's a learning opportunity for the people that we play with why not just you know create a custom game Adobe and invite some stream viewers you know because then you know those people want to get the experience to play against a really high level player and you know you play against players of a lower skill level and you can kind of showcase because that's something that that I also think is very valuable you playing in a top 500 Lobby is very different from you playing in a lower Lobby because in a low ELO Lobby you can specifically explain hey these are the mistakes that these metal ranked players do that I'm abusing this is what you can do in your games as well right so the main issue that I have isn't the idea of stomping on worse players uh for the sake of Education I just think it's important that those players should have a say in whether they're okay with that whether they want you know to use their time that way because of course some people really appreciate the opportunity and those people should be brought in into a custom game Lobby and you know you can use them to kind of showcase those points I just think that if I you know I had a long work day I want a queue for ranked I just want you know the reason ranked was created in the first place in games is just to create balanced matches right um I should be able to just queue for the game and feel like I have a very close game because I think you agree here the best OverWatch experience by far is when you have a super close nail biter game like there's no huge dips on either team it's just super close right down to the wire that's I think what OverWatch is all about and when you go into a game and within two minutes you kind of know okay sure I could learn a thing or two from this but I kind of know that I'm just wasting my time here this is not going to be a win I can't improve you know enough to beat this Smurf within the next five minutes I think that's just you know also perspective worth considering and yeah I think it's a very good perspective I'm actually going to chime in here because rather than make it a cast versus awkward debate I actually have two two points that I think would potentially work in favor of awkward's argument here one is this idea of like what is comp because I think we've kind of alluded to two two different ideas here at the start IO sucks was like uh actually awkward you were like well you play calm because it's like you you agree to try as hard as you can and win you're here to learn and win um and then ISS kind of alluded to well I came for balance matches that's what I came for I actually am going to throw in an agent of chaos point which is like there there is no implicit contract when you sign up for comp there's nothing that when you when you click the competitive mode there's nothing that it says this is what it is some people treat comp like quick play plus some people are like I don't care I'm just playing I don't really care that much more about winning some people play it like awkward where they're like I will try super hard I'm gonna you know call my brains out like it's OverWatch they give you what samido plays like calms like a sort of watch the Grand Final every single time and you know other people are like well I'm gonna I feel like one tricking Zenyatta today I'm gonna win chig Zenyatta today some other guys like well you know I heard this guy is good now so I've never played a two minutes of Wrecking Ball but I'm gonna try playing wrecking ball today and I think that you could use that argument to say that for the same reason there's no like Baseline that you can all agree and therefore it is within the ground for someone to come in and say well I'm here to to do what I want to do which is make this unranked GM content as long as I guess the technicality would be not breaking the terms of service right because that's where some people say well you're if you're let's say the bronze smurfing the bronze to GM version of this would be against terms of service right would be you're you're manipulating your Sr to buy an account that shouldn't be where it is but if you have a fresh account the argument could quite easily be made well it's not my fault that blizzard put me in a gold Lobby to start with I'm simply playing on this fresh account and as I go I'm demonstrating an educational form of content and again this is not breaking the implicit contract of comp which is it's different things to different people and for me it's it's a chance for educational content so I'm gonna let that that idea flow in the air for a second before the other idea that I kind of want to respond to so if any of you have anything you want to you were Riff Off go for it it's law versus ethics that's the way I look at it anyway and it's it's to be to be very clear it's not like I'm not even necessarily implying that it's super super black and white here's here's a good question for you awkward so you made a tweet which I really thought was great which is like making fun of an overweight person who are generally trying or making fun of an overweight person in the gym as opposed to making fun of a lower rated player who's generally genuinely trying to improve right I think that's something that everybody can agree on but to me I think the unranked GM is like the equivalent of going up to somebody randomly in the street overweight yelling you're overweight and walking away is that maybe advice that they maybe need to hear maybe that if they want or in a position to hear maybe it like clicks and they do something productive with it yes but more often than not you're just going to take somebody off and to me that's where it's like you talk about it's it's just one game most of the players are gonna be playing against who play once and then you're done but it's like it's the ethics of going up to a random stranger and slapping them in the face saying you're overweight and then walking away you know it's how much do we really get out of that what are the chances of the odds of somebody that is actively looking oh sick I got a Smurf hey look at that just my luck I got a Smurf that I can learn from versus the odds that that person is somebody who's just playing for fun or playing even playing to improve and goes what is this you know I mean how many times have we like had games or had complaints from from people in our chat or people that were trying to coach how do I deal with Smurfs you know what do I do in a Smurf game and there just isn't a lot of you can learn from it but people really get frustrated at that and I think when it comes to finding an overall quality game experience it can be very helpful for somebody who's looking for that but somebody who's not looking for that I don't see it it doesn't provide as much value as it as it could I guess well the first thing that he said like it's like walking to an open person calling me okay can I actually just just interject can we change the metaphor uh just let's just say someone is out of shape okay let's just saying you know overweight let's just say someone is out of shape fair enough someone who is out of shape and you go and say that if it takes him off all it probably because he's already happy with himself uh from my experience everything that I've done great is because people were quote unquote bullying me a little bit I think that it's kind of necessary to be slightly bully bullied about certain topics in order to change them because if somebody says hey well you're weak you can't fight well if it takes me awful it might as well just go to the martial arts gym and learn how to fight right or if I'm out of shape and people laugh at me right and I feel uncomfortable people laughing at me I think the best change you can make is actually hit the gym sure maybe they're saying it harshly but it's the truth at the end of the day it doesn't matter how you say it there's it's it's pretty black and white it's either truth or false or either you are out of shape or you're in shape and it doesn't matter if people are mean about it sure that life is me nobody said uh that somebody with like a fairy with with some rainbows gonna say hey you're you know you might as well hit the gym you'll be stronger no people will say well we'll talk [ __ ] about you and if it takes you off it's maybe it's time for self-reflection and go for it like make a change about it okay I I this this analogy hits hits close to him so I quickly want to to address this um so when I when I first joined um appraising Academy I actually weighed 243 pounds and over the course of a year I went down to 180 and that's not because I suddenly realized like oh being overweight is not as cool as I thought it was it's that um a lot of people kind of tried to give me advice you know on like what what I can do and they gave me like these diets where I need to shift my entire diet around some people like took me to the gym and or like they took me running and they were running it like a super a fast pace and it was just like too much for me right like it was completely overwhelming I couldn't stick to that I I couldn't do anything right and I think it's kind of the the same thing here where only once I started kind of adding small lifestyle changes you know like substituting you know this type of food with it with a different type of food right just small changes and kind of easing into it that really helped me mentally with that change and I think it's the same in in OverWatch where like you know if if one of my friends was overweight for example you know I wouldn't I wouldn't just put them on keto from one day to the next I would tell them well you know um you can try using like a smaller bowl for breakfast you know like kind of a small start and then you keep progressing and you keep progressing um and I think that with with you know honoring to gym and kind of playing against a Smurf that is like such a dramatic dramatic skill disparity that sure some person are going to uh experience that and they're going to say wow that really put into perspective how much more I can improve like that person is so good he just single-handedly carried the game but I'd argue that there's a lot more people to experience that and you know they're discouraged by it and they say wow okay you know I I knew that I wasn't amazing at the game but apparently I'm really bad you know like do I even do I even want to bother anymore right there's a simple solution it don't bother just just don't bother it's like what you're describing is like okay they they feel overwhelmed and and they can handle the heat and whatever they can't learn they just give up it's like saying okay I want to be rich let me start my business I start my business it fails okay give up let's go back let's go back to you know minimum wage that's going to be rich anymore well don't be rich to your problem you know you have a weak mentality that's all I'm saying right no I'm I'm of course so I agree that you know it's not the best mentality to have but from my experience some people you know like me personally I managed to reach you know my personal fitness goal you know one step at a time that approach just suited me better I didn't have that mental fortitude right and I think there's so many players out there you know who also think that or you know that approach also suits them better right I'm saying that some people they're just getting smacked in the face you know with reality is the best approach for them but I'm saying that some people they just improve faster when they have that balance of like you know having a fun motivational experience while also being challenged you know having those nail biter games and just improving one step at a time I have I have two things to chime in with here I kind of want to one four and one against awkward so it balances out nicely one you know I think initially you said awkward like well it's it's black and white you're either out of shape or you're not I actually think that's that's the stance I would disagree with because I think that's your perspective on that person let's say if we go back to the OverWatch kind of drifting drifting a little bit from the top picker but let's say we're talking about OverWatch and you're you're looking at someone who's gold and in your POV it's very obvious like that person's either either good and improving or bad and and stagnating but from that person's perspective they might be exactly where they want to be they might be that actually gold is where they strive to be for ages like they were bronze for ages and gold is success and gold is a rank they're happy being they don't feel the need to improve even though again I understand you will say well why you sign up for Content why did you play comp if you didn't want to improve why are you playing comp and gold but for them they're like I enjoyed climbing from bronze to Gold here I am and I'm happy with this state and I'm happy to just to play in Gold so I think for them that's like a you're almost putting your ideology on that person and expecting them to kind of match that but on the flip side I would argue that the analogy wasn't quite accurate in the sense that if you were doing an unranked GM you're not necessarily slapping that person in the face of like you are you know you're out of shape you're kind of existing in a Peak form and potentially yes you're competing against them and then you're kind of moving on unless you sit there and voice chat to be like your dog kid I rolled you in Gold get [ __ ] you know like that's that's obviously the rubbing it in their face but I think it's more of like there's a competition it's open one guy comes in he's clearly way better dominates everyone and leaves without necessarily saying anything and at that situation we might argue it's unethical but is the feelings of the other people in the lobby something that the unranked GM or let's say awkward should have to worry about is that their problem considering everyone else does all kinds of BS in their ranked games anyways that other people may disagree with how's the content I think it's con the ethics of how many people that also benefit from watching an awkwards unranked the GM versus the people that may have their games messed up that was gonna be my other point yeah a lot of unranked GMS I think are done is just like casual Flex modes won't name any names but I think some of the GM's awkwards is definitely one of them where it's like if you watch awkwards underneath the gym there's a lot of people that are going to learn a lot from that um so you know like I said it's definitely not black and white for me right I just I just think of course it's like educational content but the main issue like 100 is just that ultimately it is at the expense of other people and ultimately you know if awkward wouldn't be hurt by the fact that you know he was playing with a Smurf that doesn't mean that other people can't disagree right there's like a lot of people they play with a Smurf they just don't enjoy that and um so I had my my there used to be a time where I played like a lot of valorent and there's this content creator uh eggwig and he makes these videos where you know he has like a full iron Lobby and he puts like one high level player and then if he wins he goes up and you know takes people from chat to wear silver and then gold so I think that like this entire situation can just be avoided by you know finding people who voluntarily want to get smurfed on by you which I personally don't think is that difficult to organize rather than just forcing random people in ranked to you know get [ __ ] on to put it bluntly I would actually disagree with that before I give all quick awkward click and I see it I actually disagree with that because I think the whole because I've seen this happen a lot where people want to see the reason unranked GMS are popular I I think is that people want to see when people play in a game let's say they play they're like gold and they play in a very like mismatched Lobby or just a very wild game they sit there and they're like ah dude there's nothing I could have done to win that game I defy someone else to come in my position and win that game on instead of me and you see that is I think that is truly what the unranked GM provides it isn't like we know awkward could beat up on a bunch of gold like that's obviously enough for them any any GM player should in theory be able to beat up a bunch of Volunteers in a Go lobby that's not what people watched in rank to gem for I think I think people watching because they want to see how would you have navigated the wildness of my ranking not a bunch of volunteers who care enough to come with you and care enough to sign up and play in this game I want you to play with the absolute [ __ ] that I get in my game and still win that game so I actually disagree I don't think I think if he did that plus people would be like oh you you know you rigged it there's so many ways people can undermine a volunteer organized like Smurf exercise compared to I made an account I played in your games and I [ __ ] them that's how you do it so I'm gonna let awkward chime in as well oh yeah sorry just one sentence then I'd like to speak just one sentence um yes but then you know another question is is unranked GM educational or is it trying to prove that people can climb out of Loyola right you can be both okay but yeah okay I'm sorry I'm gonna let okra talk no I'm super sorry yeah I said I think you're very correct this movie I think that's exactly my thoughts people want authenticity people always say you know I have [ __ ] on my team my tank is feeding my other support is throwing you wouldn't win my games that's why I originally started to prove it doesn't matter what team you give me I'll win it doesn't matter who I play against cheaters Smurfs I'll win well granted I am better but I'm going to show you what steps you can do even though you're lower rank than me you don't have the same mechanics a step-by-step solution where you could be better now in terms of organizing it might not be complicated but people might be nervous people might be trying harder nobody is going to be throwing so it's not very authentic as to the experience of players in comp or ladder where they claim they have Smurfs all the time and people are throwing every game and everything bad happens only to them yeah no no okay that that I I think that's that's a good point yes no no I I do yeah I think that's a fair point I think the other and obviously this is tied very deeply with philosophy and I know spiral smile if you've got anything to chime in by the way no no I don't think anything else you've been kind of you know you've been is doing on the philosophy as well it's like sorry go ahead I text you no sorry yeah no I just remembered one one thing I wanted to respond to that so you said that one of the main advantages of unrank to GM is its authenticity because it kind of just definitively proves to people that it is possible I kind of have two counter arguments the first one is and this might sound a little brutal but from my experience people who cope are going to keep coping like I've actually watched um quite a few of your under and ranked two GMS um and even then like people in the comments are like oh you know you know his his enemies are just like stupid or he always gets like the good teammates you know like oh wow his DPS players actually kill stuff might never do so I do think that you know some people who cope are always going to find a reason um to cope uh and I forgot the second part but for that I say they can stay in Gold that's exactly yes I agree yes what the content that I'm making are for people that are interested in improving not people that are coping for me it doesn't matter what they don't like it's it's just simple you cope stay in Gold don't care right right person is listening want to improve listen Implement improve right right so that's that's the thing and then also like if it if it's supposed to kind of prove that you can climb out of luilo um I feel like at a certain point you know there's just enough unranked two GMS out to kind of prove the point like if a friend of mine says he's hard stock I'm not going to send him a list of 52 different unranked GMS by the third one he's he's probably understood what's going on um so that's also I just personally dislike the argument that unranked two GM's main purpose is to you know prove to copers that you know they are the reason they're hard stuck and like a good player like awkward can just you know climb out of there super easily it depends on who's making him it's like there are many there are many the teachers not not a lot not Everyone likes this specific type of teacher he likes that guy so if people if I get a lot of positive feedback on one rank to jail well I make more because people like the way that I talk about the game the way that I teach they're more inclined to watch the stuff that I do I mean that's why I agree that not a lot of need to exist and most actually are not even educational it's some guy just smurfing saying I called the photo well because I'm good well and she sucks oh great but how right and here's the spice there's a little bit of conflict of interest because especially people that spam them over and over again and are not as good Educators as say awkward you get a lot of views well this is the point I was going to bring up which as awkward did you want to chime in first I said that yes the whole thing of me doing it just to Smurf on Lola players I could have just done in regular around the gym and just shipped on every lower rank without explaining anything and I would even go out and double the views nobody cares about educational people like to see that no the drama the [ __ ] on Lower yellow players that's what people like to see right I made my educational with a purpose the reason I want to teach players right I've always been complaining on my rank letter I always said you know the people here in high evil top 500 pretty [ __ ] at the game even though they're like objectively good they're pretty not good so I be the change you want to see in the world I'd like to teach people a GM player to be in a top 500 level that with the level of Competency they'll be happy to have him on my team now these are the players that I make it for not the people who really you know my team sucks and then you know you just [ __ ] on them because your gym well no [ __ ] that I can [ __ ] on them on GM but how they think I got to GM dummy by implementing what I get what the advice I give you yeah I think I think it's very important there's a couple of strands that we can still take it shows you how fascinating discussion is the view now the view subject has been broached I think uh we can go there as well because again in that philosophical vein it's that almost it reminds me of the trolley car of like you know like you you have the choice that this Charlie card is going to run over three people would you pull the lever and it runs over two people where you know I think someone mentioned earlier well okay some games are being ruined by awkward well but how many more people is he educating with his with his content like so is the does the good of the many outweigh the good of the few but on top of that it's the idea that why are if if unranked GMS are so unethical if if the community so clearly considers them to be unethical why are they Far and Away the most consistent reliable content to make for a country code that is that gets views which you might argue the silent vote is are the people who like watching them and they may be the vocal minority who complain a lot that Smurfs are ruining my games Smurfs are why I'm hard stuck or Smurfs are just enjoying ruining my fun even if they don't think it's why their heart attack all Smurfs are ruining my fun while the silent majority is voting with their clicks and they continue to watch unranked GMS over and over and over and as a content creator who is a person who must look after their money and feed themselves why would you not if you had the competency and ability to make an unranked GM make an unranked GM get hundreds of thousands of views and feed yourself for that month you know so uh I think there's that aspect too as well I'm curious if any of you have any thoughts on that so you're right and I think that's like a very pragmatic way to look at it um but ultimately to me like the main reason why I responded to that is because I think the number one argument that just cannot be denied is that every single game you play in an unranked GM is just a miserable experience for at least the five people on the other team and more often than not the four people on your team as well right like just I mean maybe they'll enjoy it maybe they don't it kind of depends right but you know at least five people are going to go out of that game just feeling kind of like garbage and for me personally I just don't feel good knowing that I've just wasted those you know their time um even if one could say oh well they had it coming because they have a garbage mindset if they just had a good mindset then they would have appreciated that opportunity but I don't think that matters because every single person should have the right to say what hurts them and what they dislike right and even if their mindset isn't great and it's a little plebby to say oh you know I don't like playing like of course you know it would be better if they said oh great learning opportunity but aside from the argument that as the skill Gap you know what what what Spyro said earlier with With the Flow State I know that everyone's eyes just lit up when he said Flow State it's like the such an amazing buzzword but um it you know it is just scientifically proven that at a certain skill disparity level it education from an educational perspective just stops being as valuable and I think just unranked to GM from an ethical standpoint destroying other people's game from from an uh educational standpoint because the skill disparity is just so so big I personally feel that while it does bring some positives it's educational like I'm gonna admit it watching watching awkward [ __ ] on gold players like that's that's really fun to watch right but there's a lot of stuff that's fun to watch that comes at the expense of of other people you know and it's kind of like saying oh well uh watching like prank videos on YouTube is fun you know but I think they're just you know if the other person isn't laughing at the end of the prank that's kind of the only thing that matters to say though that in my I have been playing this game for six years now I think every time I've done ranked GMS more for anything like that all of the negative comments was exclusively from the enemy team I've never in my life encountered a really negative experience people saying on my team when they're on my team and they're saying ah you're smurfing go play at your original ranked usually either flamey for thinking I'm doing that because like I'm dpsing as Anna for example right or they'll say something like oh bro you're a God thank you for the carry never in my life not a single time anybody said they get something negatively about me being the Smurf on dirty I mean they're getting free wins so I feel like you're kind of if like you know if I throw a banana at a kid but then I give the guy next to me 500 bucks he's going to think that banana throw was really lit you know so I mean it's a fair analogy but the point all I'm seeing all of these people and replies yeah I'm not having fun when there's a s'more for my team never I've never actually heard someone being vocal about it if you're having fun why don't you leave the game when there's a Smurf on your team why don't you throw on purpose to [ __ ] with the Smurf it never happens when they're when you get the you know the long end of this thing it always happens to the shorter I think that's a slightly different uh because that's I think that that more speaks to like everyone's or the majority of orange players entitlement to like I deserve a high rank so like when I win this game also I think it's harder for you to know that yours that your Smurf is is doing a lot like it's harder to it's better for the easier for the enemy team to know what each player is doing on the enemy team rather than for you to know how much impact your own teammates are having so I think they feel your presence more your teammates were like yeah my honors carrying because I'm a [ __ ] God on Reinhardt that's why right so like I think there's that I would I want to kind of respond to iostux's point earlier which is like well you're you're kind of giving everyone else a lobbyist [ __ ] experience right you're kind of they're gonna They're Gonna Come Away I think again I'm gonna go to my I think you could argue it's a bit of a facetious point or a bit of a uh arbitrary point but what's to say that the other person who would have come in for awkward would have made a better experience for them like I think I think inherently that that posits that the matchmaking is so good and accurate in OverWatch that like had awkward not been there that would have been a really great and balanced game but like in my mind it's almost to the point now where it's like the variants go so high in OverWatch what can you really point the finger at like an awkward who's like I'm on a fresh account and I'm playing to be like you are the one throwing the throwing the game out of whack here when without you the game would have been perfectly balanced where it's like some again like I said some guy decides this game I'm gonna run Reinhardt on Gibraltar because for reasons and there's no matchmaking to count for it right so that is actually also a fallacy so that's a little bit like saying oh you know like my my okay I'm not gonna use that analogy but let me it's it's kind of like saying please do the banana again I just don't know banana man okay I'm gonna okay so it's a little bit like people saying oh my my aunt got got the vaccine but she died anyway anyways you know like of course when when awkward isn't in the game if we replace awkward with another player there's no guarantee that the experience is going to be more enjoyable but what we can say is if we take a normal Lobby and we replace one of the players with awkward that is definitely going to make the experience worse right so I'm not saying that every single game in in comp is like super amazing as long as the Smurf isn't in it right not having a Smurf doesn't automatically make the game amazing but I think that what blizzard is trying to do and what I think you know the player base wants is that they can queue for a comp game and no going into it that they have a shot at winning it you know as close to a 50 win rate as as possible and as long as Smurfs exist that is just not a reasonable expectation to have no matter what what blizzard does about the system unless they make it super volatile and awkward just gets GM after like one win you know yeah that's fair all quick I think they're closing in on it I don't know I don't a lot of people say yeah you're you're playing in gold all the time I think the blizzard matchmaking is doing a great job honestly after after gold after the placements I immediately putting top 500 lobbies So Max have maybe ruined 10 games ruined maybe 10 games and so I still don't understand the point also there are throwers in the game yeah maybe there are no Smurfs if there are still people that are throwing so it's not really a 50 50 anymore and yes I think throwers are also really bad for the game I also think Smurfs are really bad for the game I think people who have you know play on the Himalayas with satellite internet and disconnect every five seconds that's probably also bad for the game right just because something else is bad doesn't make this less bad yeah I think that's a fair point and I do think okay I don't understand they agree with that because personally jumping off the map every two seconds there's nothing to learn from it yeah and that's and that's and that's really bad right yeah it's pretty bad yeah I agree so now what I think smurfing is also bad yeah yes and no it depends on what what perspective you're looking at I don't agree with smurfing I don't know why people think I am Pro smurfing it's actually contradicts my tweet completely because I always say challenge yourself play against better players and when you're smurfing you're really not doing that because you're just playing in slow rated players so just counterproductive to what I say it's just it's just by large one for the team yeah but I never advise people people come to me and ask me should I should I learn this character on this one should I play on this more I say no play on your main always play against the best players can play against always my best advice Yes actually that's something that I don't know Spidey probably heard this a lot as well there's so many people I coach who have like three alt accounts and they say oh whenever I'm on a lost streak on my main I just go on my alt account that's like a rank lower you know and I tell them the same thing why it's such a waste of time is going to add it because the the terminology can sometimes get muddled obviously smurfing in its explicit sense means arbitrarily lowering your Sr to to you know Force you force yourself into lobbies you shouldn't be in whereas again unranked GMS as long as they're just unranked GMS are not technically smurfing you could argue again that you're just leveling a fresh account and it's it's on blizzard to find your MMR as they as the placement should of course there will be again the counter player will be well at least some games are going to get ruined because they're not going to instantly put you in GM so at least one two three whatever games there are are going to be ruined when they're trying to find your your MMR but I do think what awkward mention is an interesting point to bring up which is the blizzard have done a really good job I think of uh there's been a lot of criticism of the MMR based matchmaking that they've kind of been public about which is that you know we're matching you basically MMR not the number we show you which causes its own problems but one benefit of it is that when you do have a new account and I saw this because I was I was you know of course chat that day when awkward the things you were doing Zen and I came in and you were like you know 10 games in and you were like yeah I'm getting top 500 lobbies dude like I I bet you know my Sr still says like plat or gold but like everybody in the lobby is top 500 and even though I experienced this because I made like a fresh account to play romantro when he came out and I was like I'm just gonna play ramatra and within like two placements I was getting like Master GM lobbies so they have done a good job of of curving the this whole Smurf phenomenon which is that now when you do make a fresh account it's it quite quickly tries to push you even even farther than before out of those lobbies that you could be in so the prevalence of unranked GMS and and the effect that they would have detrimentally to an average metal rank player I think is significantly curved with with the match the mmr-based system I'm curious if this has been your experience as well awkward yeah I mean it's doing a great job what can I say I've ten ten games in top 500 I play against top 10 players 10 games and I really don't know how they do it honestly just very mind-blowing to me um uh I don't think that that's what it is because because I've done it from multiple locations before I actually don't think it's the IP thing but then they said that it your individual performance has no bearing on your MMR but then how can the game recognize with this top 500 player pretty pretty early so to me it makes no sense I I maybe not sharing as much as they would like to um or we would like to sorry I I can actually chime in there so it's pretty simple right so when when you have a matchmaking like an MMR based system right it looks at the odds of you know let's say you're in gold right and it puts you into a gold match and then it calculates the odds of a gold player you know ultimately winning that much and then if the odds are stacked against you and you you end up winning it you get a really really big MMR boost so when you go on a Smurf account and you start winning a lot right even though it's only 10 games right the MMR growth here is is is compounds upon itself right so you win a game that you shouldn't have won that really boosts your MMR so your MMR and your displayed skill rating to start to grow even like further and further apart right so by the ninth game the amount of MMR that you gain with a single win is is something that another player would need to win like 20 games in a row for to to even get there um which ultimately I think just points to how good MMR is system like they've been around for decades now you know back then when people were playing chess um so I do think the system is very effective but that also raises the point if a 10 hour unranked to GM stream you know after like 10 games how long how long do do 10 games take like I'd say like you'd be done with those within the three first three hours like easily if you stomp those games probably even sooner so wouldn't that just mean that like the final seven hours of an unranked to GM stream are basically just the same thing as if you were playing on your main um you could say yeah yeah I mean this is where the like obscure of the of obscuring of the rank system is is yeah it kind of makes for a very weird experience where you you're basically yeah you're basically playing GM games going 50 50 slowly climbing though but you have you rather than let's say if you were in master and you would just win most of those games and get it you're kind of winning 50 50 having to play a lot more games so then see the rank up just to because just to put you where you already actually are just to show the symbol of where you actually already are so it's a little bit odd and certainly makes for an odd content experience but um hello guys SUV here just want to quickly interrupt this episode of the group up Podcast to say that if you've been enjoying this content then please do consider supporting me directly via patreon it really does help since patreon only takes about 10 of your money where YouTube and twitch take 40 and 50 respectively so supports me and allows me to keep making videos no matter how many views they do or don't get also if you are really enjoying this discussion then why not consider watching some of my other content first and foremost my twitch stream where this podcast is hosted live and I stream five days a week doing a bunch of other things as well if you're not much of a twitch here then you can check out the svb side Channel where all the best bits from the stream go straight to Youtube in highlight format including Vlog reviews gameplay and streamer formats such as the fantasy OverWatch or rang Gauntlet that you may have seen other streamers participate in and finally if you're sick of OverWatch then you could check out my other channel the soak which is where I do movie and TV breakdowns and I've done videos on things like avatar The Last Airbender Pixar's Up an anime like high Q so if any of that sounds up your street then all the links are in the description but now back to the discussion I'm actually curious since we broached that subject there's been a lot of uh discussion on the comp system but uh certainly I have sex you seem a fan of the new revamped comp system with with the five placements and oh no no no no no no no no no no no no no I think it I think it sucks I think having to play game after game without seeing any change in rank is is the most demotivating thing ever what I like is like the math behind it like I think it's getting better it's still not perfect there's still way too many one-sided games and whatnot um in terms of presentation and like the structure of climbing up the tears they that sucks so bad I just hope that they changed that honestly I thought the previous system in OverWatch one was was fine like I don't know where they needed to change it um I just think that the matchmaking itself like how good blizzard is at detecting you know players who aren't quite at the rank that they are and then getting them to their proper rank as quickly as possible I think that has gone strides from where it used to be um spylo do you have any thoughts on the new system I mean I haven't played tons and tons and tons but I I agree with stocks I think the fact that you don't get reward immediately for knowing where you're at and there's even I've even seen a lot of cases of where you know you technically have a positive win percentage and yet you either de-rank or state exactly the same this I still feel like there's some gears behind the scenes that we don't fully understand uh one thing I I wanted to talk about a little bit is with the matchmaking that I I don't really like is the variance I think I'm not exactly in the minority here uh but you know when I'm a platinum or a diamond or a masters player being thrown in top 500 lobbies remember we used to complain about oh we've got the Masters player the top 500 Lobby oh no now you're like oh we have a masters player great no diamonds awesome no place awesome and we've even seen the screenshots of like these oh this guy was gold this what and I think the problem with that is technically it's balanced and maybe I'm getting a little off topic here so let me but no no actually I was gonna ask about this anyway so go ahead sure okay technically it's balanced but I I think one thing that um is really really really important to remember is that when you're playing in a higher ranked lobby as a lower ranked player you get punished for playing uh you will get punished for doing the right thing as you just didn't have the Mechanics for it um whereas a top 500 player playing in a let's let's say you get thrown into a diamond Lobby right you have to play in a way or to a level you don't even play like you would in top 500 Lobby you have to play totally differently you're expected to carry essentially whereas in a gold lob gold in the top 500 Lobby you're expected to just survive and feed as low as you possibly can and that's that's where I I really hate the matchmaking because that's not good competitive integrity where I might get these questions all the time with like oh do players and silver and players and golden players and Platt have to play differently any drink the answer used to be no never you never had to play differently but now the answer is well it's not so much as the rank that you're in so much as the lobby that you're in because if I'm a gold on a player and let's say I'm working on my cover usage but every single time I even walk an inch away from cover the Widowmaker blows my head off because she's top 500 and I'm trying to look for offensive nade value so what do I do I go into my plot Lobby next and now I'm never looking for any offensive made value I'm never peaking never doing damage never doing anything because I'm getting I'm scared to get mechanic dipped well now I've taken negative feedback on a positive trait and I'm Translating that into an even worse Habit For What should be at my rank and I think that's what really ticks me off it's really really bad competitive Integrity like if I'm trying to dribble uh and practicing dribbling and I'm playing versus Michael Jordan he steals a ball for me every single time I don't want the ball don't give it to me anymore right you can't learn like that and that that really ticks me up that's a very fair point I mean is that something you found in your games awkward like uh the sort of variance of of the players in the lobby is is is higher than inner watch one almost I I don't play often in High ELO at this point like in my main account so I I don't have enough data for me to just say something I don't want to say something that I don't know about so I'd rather it's not common because I don't know that's very fair air sucks um no honestly I'm just kind of echo what what spiders you're so outspoken it's disgusting you know he's talking he sets the bar too high but no I I 100 agree so I actually little self plug I recently made a video about this kind of about the concept of valid environments and ecological validity where if your practice environment so if ranked just starts to get too volatile you know in one game you're playing against the Smurf and then you have a thrower and then this and then that it makes it very difficult to kind of make small adjustments to your play style and to then see how that affects your gameplay right the way that you get better is saying okay I feel like I'm not getting enough value out of my needs you know maybe I need to be a little bit more greedy with them but then you go into a game and all of a sudden the entire circumstances have just completely changed and all of a sudden the play doesn't work or it does work and you get so many it's kind of you know I call it the red herring effect where you drop false conclusions thinking that you're doing the right thing and okay the number one reason why players are hardstick from my experience the number one reason is that they develop a certain playstyle in lower ranks that only works at those lower ranks so the classical example here is DPS Moira players who just don't hit at all they just flank and sort of kill the backline so they're like in bronze they DPS Mora they climb to gold and then because they've won so many games with their playstyle that kind of embeds that play store in their heads and then when they review themselves when the games all of a sudden aren't working as well they're not going to question their playstyle because they've seen results they've seen oh I've climbed like two tiers being a DPS Moira clearly at least I've understood this part about playing Moira that's like the number one reason in my opinion where people are hardstark and I think the ranked system right now makes it too easy for people to go down that rabbit hole yeah that's interesting point actually it vividly reminds me of like the video that actually got me into congregation that I first made was uh what I learned is the GM in Gold where I specific this is when when I was good at the game and I did a soft version of unranked gmr I just made an ALT account to play DPS and I got put in gold and I remember talking about the exact thing where I was like you know Moira is like the perfect trap hero for this where you know people go off and they do this and they think it's working and actually to your to your point uh that you made earlier about like you know well why don't you organize specific lobbies to to to test people smurfing or you know test like one person invariance I've actually been doing that for a while as well and the point you made is is very true where what we do is we get players who think they they deserve it to be at higher rank and we put them in that Lobby so I've taken many many times I've taken players who are like gold who are platinum and they're like yeah I could hack it in the GM Lobby and you know 9 out of 10 times the people lose and they get stomped and they kind of realize oh damn that was yeah that was a whole other experience the times when people win almost always other times when they just like AF okay and there was a very large number of people who want like disproportionately people won playing Moira or Mercy as as like in the GM Lobby and just sitting and like just healing and just surviving and I think that and often you talk to them afterwards They Come Away real high because it's like fresh out from the battlefield right they're like oh yeah I felt so good as you be like oh man I popped off and I won super hard and you know we're me and the rest of the chat were watching and we're just like damn this guy's like he never has Moria juice left this is Guardian Angel into Narnia like what's going on like this is not this is not good gameplay but it kind of speaks to the point that spylo made as well like there's this negative feedback where actually when you're the weak player in the higher Lobby is like the best thing to do is AFK and don't die which is hard to do on some rolls like it's hard to do on tank if you just tank and you're AFK well you're tossing the game for the team Now you kind of actually need to feed a little bit and then the reverse is also equally frustrating which is when because I've I have felt in these positions myself is sometimes you get put in the lobby and the matchmaker is like you should deadlift this game by the way like you you're expected to like make up for your teammates here and that's like a really horrifically frustrating experience because then you're like who you're going to be mad but like who should you be mad at like because you're gonna be like man my teammates are feeding their brains out like am I supposed to what am I supposed to do here but you can't be mad at them because they're just doing their thing they're just playing with the game they play and you're stuck railing the gods of Blizzard to be like why did you put me in this game and expect me to like deadlift like that's not a fair Assumption of a player like what I shouldn't be expected to carry the lobby to to to win the game that seems very harsh go ahead it's it's easy to not be the reason your team lost it's hard to be the reason your team won 100 when I hear what awkward has to say because I think the reason why one of the reasons why this is so bad is in this percentage of games where you are the lower ranked player it encourages that passive play style which is I'm sure awkward is reaches over and over and over again is not what you want to be doing when you're trying to improve even something that like support you need to be actively limit testing stress testing find out when I could be damaging when I can go on the offensive when I should be going into defensive but that's that's the real trick so awkward have you ever I'm curious to like do you run into support players that have that mindset often ah yeah I run around a lot of them I think he said it really good beforehand I think you mentioned that you doesn't matter what rank or your play style doesn't need to be changed you just need to play Anna does damage across O-rings bronze to the GM OverWatch League it doesn't matter what level just why they can get away with what he can't is different across the ranks but it's the same thing but I I do I do see a lot of um people who think oh you know they have a widow they have this they have this I can't play this and this and also I think that the Matchmaker should put you in games where you have to carry because that's how you learn you know sometimes when you ask for strength and gov God gives you adversity you should have taken an Open Arms all right I'll remember that next time I'm in that situation I'm gonna I'm gonna think of my man awkward and I'm gonna be like God giveth and God take us away it's really true if you want to become better why why would you want easy matchmaking where you just have to exist rather than really deadlift the game it's counterproductive it yeah it doesn't make sense right right that's a fair POV I think that's a fair POV um yeah I mean and that actually brings up nicely as well another another little awkward tweet before we move on to more broad pastures which is one more thing I want to touch on about uh mentality and ego because I think this is another relevant Point especially when I ask you guys since you've dealt with so many different types of players players a different skill so I'm quickly going to read the Tweet again and then again awkward if you want to uh elaborate feel free which is that my ego is why I have been ranked one in the world numerous times my ego is why I went from gold to top 500 in less than a month when I started my ego is why I'm competent I don't want to lose and be average at best I want to be better for myself your ego can be your fuel so presumably that's a statement you stand by of course I stand by everything that I say the best example is the people that are sitting over here one is a very very famous coach one was an OverWatch league coach and I think both of them were driven by deserving like some sense of self where they deserve to be better I don't want to be this open division coach I want to be an OverWatch League I don't want to be some guy that nobody knows I'm gonna do some you know YouTube videos I'm gonna be I become become a famous coach I'm gonna get a lot of clients you have a famous podcast right you didn't want to be that guy who just you know has two viewers on the stream when he walks a podcast so there's some sense of ego that you want better for yourself and everything you ask any professional sports player and it doesn't matter NBA soccer As Americans would like to call it video games all the top level all the elites have a sense of ego they want it better for themselves and they made it happen they work for it and they did it okay now that's that's a statement I'm curious to unpack I'm gonna take it to spylo because uh you've dealt with lots of different teams spylo different abilities has there been like a consistent theme and you you know that's both in Esports and out and outside of Esports is the ego a team oh yeah I mean it's a big thing I mean I don't think I agree with awkward I don't think you're ever going to be great at anything without some form of ego um I think ego is something that gets cut in a really bad light but I think it's always when we see the toxic uh I wouldn't even say in extreme ego but I'd say misdirected ego uh my ego has always been even personally not even talking about players I've worked with has been a confidence that when I really apply myself to something I know I'm not really great at it now I don't even really care if I'm great at it right now but at the confidence that the process the mentality that I have when it comes to Improvement will mean that I will be great at it now I'm a great loser because I Know You Gotta Lose to Win right and I've always been I've tried to like adapt that mindset with my coaching and with even just games or anything else today Sports whatever and to me that's where uh at least I think that's where a productive variation of ego is where it's like I'm not really concerned about I have to defend my own great I'm great I'm great I'm the best and the best but I know that I'm just focused on the process and that eventually I will be great um I think a lot of younger players especially uh I think this is a big big prom especially in Esports because you have a lot of players that kind of come in and they don't really have a lot of Dynamics to their personality or who they are as people they are just an over great OverWatch player they don't have a great social life they don't have a lot of other life skills they don't have a lot of friends so if you take their skill or you can test their skills in OverWatch player there's nothing else there and so when you look at ego there I think there's only two ways that you can look at that one is hey let's not worry about how good you are right now because that's just distracting yourself right because if you're if you think I'm great right now you're not putting the attention on what you need to do to get even better and so then if I if I'm trying to give you feedback or assist you and like well I think you should be trying this then there's a confrontation of oh no no I'm already great I'm already great there's a wall there right and that can prevent you from being an even better player so the ego is ironic because it makes you worse than you are and the other way that I would approach that is um when you have players that have their entire identity tied up into one specific thing um then it can be very destructive so I think one player that I consistently and constantly bring up is Hottie with London this past season who actually developed himself as a player in game by developing his identity out of the game so when things went badly in scrim so we had a couple of tough losses or there was a lot of like internal conflict in the team uh if he's not playing well right it's not the end of the world it's not he's able to cope with those uh negative experiences a lot better because he knows that I'm not just an OverWatch player I'm also a weightlifter and a friend and you know and a mentor to other people and ironically that makes him a better player in game because he's able to cope with those negative experiences so much better than a player who's only an OverWatch player and nothing but an OverWatch player so to agree with awkward there you have to have the ego you have to think that if I'm not the best now I will be the best I trust the process I really want this I love this but it can't be it has to be productively directed otherwise it will hurt your ego it will actually prevent you from being what you want to be I feel like you disagreed with this a little bit at least on Twitter um okay so so first of all there's there's two parts to this um can we Define ego because I feel like ego is like everyone kind of has a different perspective so my personal definition of ego is is a different word um that also comes from psychology called self-efficacy and basically the idea behind self-efficacy the topic um really came up when they started to look at uh you know women in the workplace and why a lot of management positions kind of favor men over women and one thing you know not conclusive but one thing they found is that self-efficacy for some reason uh was was bigger in men and the idea behind self-efficacy is that if you have self-efficacy you believe that if you invest time and effort into an Endeavor that you can better yourself and you can reach your goals so for example if I say I've never played the guitar before but if I spend an hour every day for the next year I'm going to be pretty decent at it right that's self-efficacy whereas the the opposite would be saying oh it doesn't matter how many hours I aim train or practice the guitar or practice drawing I'm never going to be one of the greats that's that's a lack of self-efficacy um and self-efficacy is 100 crucial if you don't believe that you can be the best player in the world you're not going to be the best player in the world there's so many people who come to me and they say oh you know my biggest issue is confidence you know the main reason I want to improve is so that I can be more confident but that's not really how it works like first you need confidence in yourself in order to improve right you can't just magically get good and then all of a sudden you know feel feel you know that that sense of self-efficacy and to kind of go back to the the tweet that awkward posted so fundamentally from a mindset perspective I do agree because I think that's what you meant by ego like that you know aspiring for greatness knowing that you can become the best support in the world you know that's kind of I'm assuming what you what you meant by ego and that is 100 super important the main part that I disliked about that tweet is you mentioned that or you said quote my ego is why I went from gold to top 500 in less than a month when I started and I kind of tried to look at that from the perspective of you know someone who's kind of in a metal Rank and they're trying to improve and you know to them it kind of reads like oh you know all I need to do is develop an ego and you know then I can get to top 500 in a month like he managed to do it in a month but you know ultimately the main reason that you manage to climb that quickly in OverWatch is because you have a very significant amount of FPS experience you know before you even played OverWatch right and I think ego is important but I've I just think that with the way you phrased things um it can be misinterpreted and you know people might kind of overvalue it you know and and feel bad about their lack of progress well the first thing everybody can disappear everything well it's not my fault that's the first thing and the second thing is that yes I because I had a lot of experience I went from gold top 500 but how did I get to a position where I can be very very good player since day one I believed in myself I had ego I got small every first day first first name day that I log into OverWatch I get smoke I'm in Gold I don't remember I'm in Gold I play against Diamond play I get smoke I'm like [ __ ] you know what who is this guy how is he beating me okay let's uh you know let's let's get to work let's be better they get the diamond getting smoked by Masters all right let's see let's see how it is getting smoked again my got my ass whooped and I said I deserve better I have to be better than this guy and eventually just goes on and on right and I was always happy by the way this again Cycles back to the Smurf thing I was always happy to play against players that are better than me because I was like okay let's see what this guy does that I don't I'm Gonna Get Smoked by him but one day one day I know I'm going to be better why because I I trust myself to learn and I do everything I care I can and I'm a hard worker et cetera Etc so yes you're not gonna get there in a month but if you truly don't believe that you can get better you're never gonna get better it's not about a month a year it doesn't matter you'll never get get there yes that's exactly that's what I what I agree with right the idea of self-efficacy if you don't believe that you have what it takes or that for some reason you're just not born with the right genes to beat up 500 or something then yes you're not going to to reach that and I think that's that's very interesting because it's it's it's it's it's really funny when I was kind of mad at OverWatch one um my my friends uh kind of gas led me into playing League of Legends with them and you know it was a very interesting experience because I'm I'm really really bad at that game um and even though I got absolutely dunked on in every single game like it didn't really matter to me because I always knew that the other person is like better than me but if I had invested the same amount of time that they have I would just absolutely stump them right so it's kind of being better at improving even if the current skill level isn't quite there so basically what I'm saying is that I I agree with you at this point I must point out go ahead I'll go ahead sorry as you say at this point we must point out that we have four people born in four different countries potentially speaking multiple languages here in this call so if there's ambiguity of the definition of a word that particularly is loaded even amongst native English speakers uh then I think that can be forgiven that uh people interpreted it slightly differently but go ahead spylo I have a question for awkward or I have sex here so I think the definition of self-efficacy by having the confidence that you will be able to develop a skill if you put the time into it is obviously crucial right uh and and then having that prior to picking up a skill is what oftentimes allows you to develop the skill faster at a better rate than anybody else right I think everybody in this call could probably if you get to GM with one game you're gonna get the G you're going to be able to get to a higher rank with another game like almost guaranteed if you put the hours and my problem here is this is how do you say because we're all coaches to some degree even SVP you've got a big lot of experience as a coach as well so how do you improve somebody who doesn't have that self-efficacy now obviously I'm dipping into like psychology couch level here because that might be a big lifelong problem it usually is right but in my experience what I've tried to do with people like that is I've tried to okay you don't have self-help because you don't have a lot of confidence right now let's try and get you started on accomplishing small things one step at a time and then build confidence through accomplishing things um even when I was back working with with the kids a lot of kids that weren't very confident once they reached a certain build or learned a couple of strikes or learned a grappling move or wrestling move that would slowly build confidence so is that the only way or is there some sort of like psychological motivation is it just saying hey you're going to be you're gonna be trash until you actually fake it till you make it with the confidence I mean I mean I know that worked for me in high school I had to fake it till you make it out of mentality when it came to my personality for a little while and eventually developed real confidence but how do you do that I guess I'm curious to see what what you two think well I can I can speak for uh for people that I coach I agree that your confidence comes through your experience you cannot be a confident person if you hasn't succeeded through adversity so the way that I personally approach this is that you have to you have to practice you have to work through so let's say you want to work on Anna and you're not confident that you hit your shots right I'm not a lot of people say that I can DPS like you because my aim sucks I can can improve no confidence so what I tell them well how's the only way to improve how is the only way for you to become confident talking to girls it's pretty simple you go talk to a lot of girls same thing with aim same thing with OverWatch how do you become better DPS and more confident or start shooting you'll miss a bunch of times that eventually it will be better and better and then when you will see with your own two eyes that it becomes better you will be more confident like oh hey I killed this guy let's try again let's try again and slowly and gradually builds up I can't I don't know what the psychological thing behind it because well I'm not a psychologist but this just from my experience Aztecs yeah no I I completely agree with that so my personal definition of confidence is that ultimately what confidence is is just a lack of fear of failure right so if I'm at a bar and a friend of mine you know he just randomly walks up to a girl and he just you know he gets rejected or something right he would say that was a really confident move right but what made that move confident isn't that he thinks that he's hot [ __ ] and every single girl is going to love him and he's so amazing what makes him confident is that he could walk there and he knew that even the most negative outcome here you know she could just spill her drink over me like even the most negative outcome I'm fine with that and I think that's confidence and it's it's the same when you want to improve at OverWatch so many people they are so focused on winning that they just stop limit testing and they stop you know trying stuff out sometimes you do have to go on a weird flank as kiriko and try to 1v1 their Widow you know because I mean sure maybe that's not the best thing to do but how are you going to figure that out if you don't try and that's kind of a big you know internal a conflict that people have because on one hand they want to go into their ranked games and they want to try hard and they don't want to feed and they want to play safe and consistent but then on the other hand they have to like do things that they haven't done before they have to maybe pick up a new character or try out a new play style or just do something that they haven't done before in order to learn from it but obviously that's going to have a negative effect on their on on their skill right and ultimately the way that confidence really helps people climb is saying you know it's okay for me to to try these things out and maybe I'm going to get flamed by my team and I'm going to embarrass myself and maybe I'm going to drop down a rank or so but I don't care about that I don't care about those failures I'm okay with that I'm okay if my teammates just flame me because I know that I'm going to learn something from that and I know that in the long run when we start to look at at multiple months I'm going to be higher than where I am right now right like the stock market it goes up it goes down it goes up it goes down but if you look back 30 years you know it goes up more than it goes down and it's kind of the same thing with skill levels sometimes you're on lost streak sometimes you're on a win streak but as long as you focus on Improvement you'll end up higher than where you were at the at the start no I I think those are all very well said points from all you guys and I pretty much agree with them I think it's that the idea of dissonance that is usually where pain comes from is usually like your Rea when your reality conflicts with what something is reflecting back to you that's usually when people feel pain right so people when you know a question I get a lot is how do I get over comp anxiety and that's like the I think the first thing I would say is like well why do you care if you lose because it's like I think people have that like dissonance of like if I lose it must be comp telling me that I'm bad and it's like you're you're letting that kind of it's like that external versus internal mindset like letting your sense of self be defined by external factors versus internal factors so letting the calm system tell you whether you're a worthwhile human or not is is generally a bad idea I think it's interesting because you guys have coached probably one person for longer than than I have like I've I might I've only a few times coached like one individual for a lengthy period of time most of the time it's like a one and done and I always try to like so my Approach is a little bit different and I I haven't really dedicated myself to coaching for quite a while so you guys definitely the experts on this but I try to take a more wide and holistic approach of like understood like I always say I can't tell you how how you know yourself best like I can't tell you you like you have to understand for yourself and I I truly do believe that like understanding yourself is the most rewarding thing any human being can do is like understanding what makes them tick and what makes them sad and what makes them happy and that's what I always try to encourage people to do so if I had someone who was like lacking confidence I would just kind of like try and try and really unpack where that lack of confidence comes from like why like firstly what do you care about what are your priorities so do you really want to be good at OverWatch because like not everyone has to be good at everything people sometimes come and they're like I really want to be good or watch but I don't want to spend more than like two hours doing it like per week like that's that's that's me and I'm like well your desires conflict with like your what you're actually willing to put in and like what your mentality and approach is right like you're you want to be going to watch but not enough not bad enough right you don't want to actually be good like you don't want to be good bite enough so that's a weird sentence to say but hopefully it makes sense and I think that's something that can be helpful to make people understand is like you may want to you may really think you want this but you don't in the classic blizzard fashion like you don't actually your priorities are elsewhere and that's fine it's fine to have other priorities it's fine to say actually my like social life is more important to me and I wouldn't want to give it up for an extra 100 Sr and OverWatch and that's okay that's okay to believe I think so I think you really have to assess like is this because you can't be the amazing at everything and as much as I agree as well what your initial point spylo about I do think people who tend to get good at one game can often transfer that that's usually I think because of like the ability to understand patterns I think is like a very important I I've been I've been wanting for the longest time to write a book about this actually about like how to how to spot patterns in like different video games so that you can kind of almost you know Skip a lot of the learning curve but again that's not a skill set everyone values or has so you gotta you gotta figure out what is my skill set what is the area that I'm good at and it's okay to not be what you think you want to be good at which is OverWatch so hopefully that answers your questions follow there's a little bit of ego involved in there too even with your example when it comes to like the two hours when people come in there and like well I want to be good at OverWatch but I'm only willing to give it two hours to me that comes almost sometimes I I get those the sessions as well and it's usually there's a little bit of ego involved tour I can't handle being bad at a game but I'm only willing to put in two hours and I'm like well you have some issues to sort out because if you're only putting two hours into something you're not gonna be good at that and you just need to live with that it just needs to be a casual thing for you and that's totally fine but some people don't handle that super well um I want to add as well when it comes to the pattern thing I also think learning how to learn something is really helpful as well yes like learning just how to master something that that is you you ubiquitous Universal whatever term you want to use I think 100 um to kind of add to that so very very interesting that's something that I actually experienced very often sometimes I get people and um whenever they book an appointment with me they need to fill out a form with some baseline information and I always ask them how many hours a week can you put them and you know I sometimes I have appointments for the day and I open up that form to kind of prepare for them and then it just says like four hours a week you know and then they also need to answer what is your goal and they write like GM or top 500. and the first thing that I tell them in in the session is you don't want to do this because with every single session you will have your your knowledge is going to increase increase increase you're going to learn more about the game more about macro Concepts more about interaction you're going to learn a lot I can promise you that you're going to learn a lot but your skill is going to gonna be down here because you just don't have enough time to practice it right so the more knowledgeable you get the more I coach you the more frustrated you'll be and like how bad you actually are at the right so you know after like three or four sessions of that like skill wise in game they're the exact same except now they're no longer oblivious to how bad they are and that is just so depressing it's a coach curse that's why I hate it what am I doing what am I doing I'm so bad at this game yeah yeah yeah I have so many Auto Body moments for that where I literally like because I I try to talk about my like solid process a lot on stream so sometimes I'm literally like I will do something in like literally a second I'm like man why did I just do that like that was the dumbest thing I've ever done I was completely fed my brains out like what's going on yeah I think that's why a lot of coaches honestly don't play the game because it's just so frustrating you know you're washed up like you can look at your gameplay and you can just absolutely tear it apart and you know there's nothing you can do about it unless you're going to just spend [ __ ] 30 hours a week on the game again yeah I mean awkward sitting there smiling because he's been able to juggle both he's a great coach and a great player I have that problem you know but I do it don't happen that I make a very dumb mistake and I'm like I completely recognize that yeah but I I do pretty well for myself and ranked letter true yeah that that brings me to an interesting point actually it's been a very fascinating discussion on like sort of mentality and stuff but uh kind of bringing you back to OverWatch I was curious as well just to see how you guys have felt the shift to just everything about World War II not just 5v5 but a lot of the changes that have come through like CC CC has been tuned down and Shields and tanks are kind of being looked at a lot and all these Concepts I mean actually let me just get your general feelings if you could summarize for me like in a couple sentences how you like how you view or what she was having shifted and what your opinion on that shift is like is it good for the game bad for the game um and like yeah just kind of broader Concepts then we'll kind of dive deeper into it so let's start with spylo Spyro like how have you viewed the shift OverWatch 2 in general all right good I think 5v5 is a lot more space to pay attention it's easier to track what's going on there's more I guess I hate using this Worm but this more carry potential with each player in the team uh playing one-dimensionally there's is harder you get to play more dynamically uh even the hero design I think mirror is that there's there's people are moving we're moving away from archetypes when it comes to Hero design for better or worse so I think for the most part I think it's a good game nice uh awkward I would agree it's a better game I don't particularly think it's a good game I think it's better five on five is something that I've been an advocate for even yeah years years before it came out I always suggested that yeah funny story actually so quickly in the jack mean awkward I remember vividly we spoke about 5v5 like you know a long good time before it was ever announced we were both like I think this is I think this would be better I think this would be better so yeah go ahead yeah I think that there's a fundamental misunderstanding from the blizzard team I really don't know what's happening behind the scenes but there's the balance patches are not great I think that the philosophy is not the best I think they're a little bit out of touch with the not only the player base but how what makes a game fun to play for me half like they did the recent balance match let's talk about it for a second is that I just don't I it seems out of touch it seems no there's no reason for for it you know some of the some of the changes um but yeah it is way better than OverWatch one but it's still has room for improvement I will definitely get into that but first I O sucks yeah no I agree um 5v5 is is is brilliant I know that it was a little bit controversial at first um especially you know the impact that it had on the Esports scene because it sure shook things up a little um from a roster perspective but 5v5 is is brilliant honestly the main thing that I really like about OverWatch 2 is that we like have things to look forward to again like in OverWatch one at the end it was just so hard to get friends like back into the game because you're like oh what's changed and I'm like well you know you remember you remember Echo you know she released like two years ago you could play her again um but now there's like actual you know whenever there's a new season like there's something to kind of look forward to and there's a new map and there's a new new character um I think the biggest issue that I have with the game right now is that because OverWatch has been out for so long it's kind of reached a point now where newer characters in terms of like kit and complexity and design are just at a very very different level than characters that were released initially so I think the best example of this in my opinion is Cassidy's ultimate I genuinely have no idea what that ability even like why that is is still in the game you know and I think it's good that you know for example Bastion got reworked I think since his his rear he's much better but I I personally hope that blizzard is not just looking at adding new characters I think that a lot of the old characters you know at least certain parts of their kids in are a little bit outdated and just don't fit you know 5v5 and and kind of the the new characters and kind of the new environment they're in as well as as they used to it's the Dynamics like I think you look at like a hero like or like erisa you're looking to hear like kiriko uh sojourn everything has a little bit of Mobility uh everything has a little bit of range has some cooldowns to juggle there's a lot of there's not a Spam hero brawl hero speed hero junkrat even like even like the original Reinhardt design but how do you balance junkrat you know how do you the hero design is almost flawed inherently how do you balance uh like we said they're still trying with Bastion But ultimately even where he is now I still it still doesn't feel good losing to a Bastion I feel like he's putting in infinitely lower value um and then you look at Heroes like Reinhardt who I think have had largely successful reworks well what they've done I feel is they've added Dynamics they've given him two fire strikes there's more range they've reduced the charge gold and they've allowed you to cancel charge so you can actually use it for Mobility now right it's not just an I'm dead button um but obviously there's some characters that still have not aged so well and and need a lot of work I think Mercy's one of them as well whose initial design feels like it was more of a flying heel bot and obviously people don't like that anymore it's not a big surprise but we still don't know what we want to do with it and then even coming from the newer character side of things they do tend to be a little bit overtuned because Dynamics is great I I personally enjoy the more Dynamic approach but they do have a tendency to be overtuned like sojourn was high damage in close range the best sniper in the game one of the best mobility cooldowns in the game one of the best AOE abilities in the game kiriko is the best TP best defensive cooldown best Ultimate uh immortality uh uh uh the highest healing per second I believe output for a long period of time as well and so obviously when we introduce characters with a lot of these Dynamics I think we need to also keep in mind that the Dynamics in of itself is a huge strength and you need to balance accordingly and I don't think the OverWatch to Dev team I know inevitably it's got to come up every one of svb's discussions we're gonna it we're great we it was and not inevitable um but uh I do think that that's something that's not recognized fast enough and that leads to situations where we have people that are just like oh gee this hero is continually strong continually strong continually strong and I had a discussion last week with Boger uh and he was saying another problem with the Dynamics is that a lot of times simply existing with some of the newer uh hero designs um provides too much value so the kirikou doesn't need to utilize a lot of her your Dynamic and utility to get value and do more than an honor at least in the past right uh same thing with erisa right it is infinitely harder to play Winston into erisa and vice versa or erisa into Reinhardt than vice versa and I think that's kind of where like there is a lot of dynamic and skill ceiling to narissa but you don't need to do that to be good at the hero to get value out of the hero and I think that's where um we have flaws in the old design but even the new design while they're fun to play they don't there's we got this going on a lot it doesn't work out super well yeah I think it's a very very good point I think both of you kind of made me think of something actually which is that you know recently Apex Legends had a had a big overhaul they almost had like an OverWatch 2 kind of moment I don't know if all of you have been keeping up but they basically have had to have like a bit of a reckoning because over over I think this is the nature of a multiplayer live service game over time people get bored they get angry and their frustrations pile up and things that are frustrating like things that are like fresh at the start of the game's release suddenly start become frustrating slowly slowly slowly oh you know this character is busted you never address this character you never address this problem like these this weapon is a problem that is it and these things are slowly build and then eventually you get to like Dead game Dead game devs don't care there's a clueless and actually Apex Legends are decided to do is like actually take almost like a year to rethink everything and they've said we're not going to release any more new Heroes for like a whole year basically instead we're gonna rework our old Heroes and like really look at like holistic changes to like how the game feels and plays and they're gonna change Rank and they're gonna change they're gonna add like a weapon that they haven't done for a long time and like I guess in a way if someone will say well isn't that what she was supposed to be well yes but mostly in the PVE side like mostly it was like we're adding a PVE we did shift to 5v5 into Watch Two and and largely I I still am amazed at how largely successful it was that they just kind of removed a hero and didn't do too many other changes like big picture and it's still kind of like yeah it actually works what the hell they actually played really well but I wonder if at some point they will need to do a similar thing of just actually we need to pause hero releases for a bit and actually just go back and make sure every previous hero reward like realigns themselves with the new philosophies we've shifted because otherwise what ends up happening is like this is something I spoke about in the podcast a few times there's like a lot of Forgotten Heroes like Sombra I think is another one that stands out it's like they were like that was one of the two things alongside Bastion they were like we're gonna look we did a Sombra and a Bastion rework aren't they great now and then one season into the game everyone's like that's dog we hate it change that and now they've had to like basically Nerf her to the point where no one ever played her and now they're like we're gonna rework you know we're gonna do something to her again Brig is another example since release no one's ever been happy at no point have people been like yeah okay that she's good now and we've been talking about this rally rework for what feels like you know a year that oh there's a new rally coming there's a new rally coming so I wonder if like at some point they'll have to actually stop and and address like the sort of backfill of Heroes that have coasted along without actually being adapted to a norwatch 2 playstyle I wonder I'm curious to you guys thoughts on like any of that otherwise we'll also I'm also curious to talk about like some of this balance changes that awkward is alluding to so any any thoughts on any of what we've been mentioning so far I think that a lot of things fundamentally should be changed I think Maps need to be changed fundamentally like the new maps that they put they just put an extra box here and there like some rock it's not what it's needed there so let's talk about 2cp for a second I'll quickly drift away the reason why 2cp was very very hard is because everyone had to put push through one shock to in the game just one joke you had one big door one big game everybody had to push through as a team and all the team efforts went to pushing through the choke and it became almost impossible for the attacker's side to push through that's why a lot of the maps have multiple openings you know they can go from the left side you can go from the right side but usually there's one main choke JCP exclusively one choke that's why it was so hard that's why everybody picked simulator just DP on point so now what the problem is is a defender's side is way way too strong compared to the attacker side in most of the maps because you the defender side has the advantage of having controlling a big portion of the map all the rest are stuck in a small box so adding a small a box or a rock here and there doesn't really change it now another thing that I'd like to drift back is the heroes I think some Heroes as you guys said and I completely agree need to be either reworked or get or get kicked to the PVE section Moira Brig all of this stuff PV no they don't they're not necessarily simply because they value they provide don't require a lot of skill and it seems to be it seems very frustrating for people who would like to be rewarded for the play to be for for a good play it's hard to be rewarded when there's a hero that counters you with significant less skill required um so Maps Heroes changes like balance changes but we'll talk about a little bit later no I like those points and I also applaud your ability to shrug off the The Inevitable hatred that you know that comment would would bring and just be like [ __ ] it throw that out in The Ether let's go uh IO stocks what do you think about any of that um so obviously a bit of a hot take from from Awkward to remove those characters but I I think your rate is a very good point um and that is that is skill expression so in my opinion there are certain characters in the game that just make it very very difficult for players to like really you know stick their teeth into them because they're just not you know like their depth is a little bit more like ephemeral I guess um and Brigitte and Mora definitely kind of fall into that into that category where there's obviously a very big difference between an amazing Warrior player and a really bad Moira player but the question is you know how fun is is that to watch how fun is it that to play how fun is that to play against um and and I think that you know some characters they just don't quite have that depth like for example I personally I think junker Queen like out of the new characters we've we've had in the game so far um just from a raw design perspective is the best OverWatch 2 character that they've made so far because the depth of just checking multiple dots and now the cooldown reset on her ax and and and everything and and the knife is just super difficult to hit um I think she just offers so much you know where if you look at a really really good Jungle Queen player you can really just get like hyped up and like oh I want to do that too but then you have characters you know with with the mercy for example where you know they're kind of unsure what they want to do because I think certain characters like Mercy or a Moira their identity is to be simple and I just don't know in the long run how compatible that is going to be when new characters presumably are only going to get more fleshy and and more complex you know um there's a character like Mercy even fit into the game still still then or do they need to kind of kind of change things one thing that League of Legends for example does is um or that's kind of a meme a lot of characters back then uh had like point and click abilities you know like Terex old old style fun um and you know whenever they would rework a character they would just take those point-and-click abilities and they would turn them into skill shots that that need to be aimed you know and maybe blizzard is going to do something similar you know maybe Mercy's beam is going to turn into like a symmetra beam that heals people you know so that Mercy players need to aim I don't know but you know that's kind of my main concern that I have you know with the game that you know I think some characters can afford to be more interesting than they are right now I want to just preface that uh we started that discussion by iostoc saying you know I applaud awkward for uh for just throwing out there that may be brigging where I should go and then he finishes his and he's like maybe Mercy needs to go I don't know what's up go ahead all right so I'll throw I'll throw my name on the the hate mail you know thank you bomb list as well I think I do think I've talked about there needs to be I think uh for lack of a better term a no list either these are heroes that need reworks or these are heroes that we are open and honest with Moira is just not a top 500 hero she's a hero that can you can get started in the game but there's a limited ceiling with how good she's going to get and if we're honest with that then we don't have to have any complaints from the GM top 500 more community that this hero isn't viable in high ranks well sorry that's what the hero is limited that's what the hero ceiling is or I'm also totally fine if we were to make adjustments here to make it more interesting again not even mechanically right it doesn't look at it here like Winston right obviously there's absolute mechanics with Winston but outside of Primal and a little bit of the right click now a lot of most the Winston point is not mechanics it's decision making and positioning and things like that well Moira doesn't have that right Moira uh there's a lot of complexity to the hero but proportionately no no and I think we either need to shift Heroes into okay this these are basic Heroes or we need to rework those areas to make them more interesting and the problem is is Blizzard doesn't seem to have the guts to do that to decide that we look at something like the mercy changes that seems like they're really trying to make the hero difficult and nuanced and interesting and I applaud that good for them but then where it gets water they get an old buff charge but it's still Moira and people are like well more is so trash here well good she should she should remain trashed here roadhog should remain trashed here he doesn't belong in the game roadhuck should never be meta in Grand Master never not once and that's a hero who's very mechanically difficult why because there's no there's almost no Nuance to his hero same thing goes with more and I think like there needs to be some honesty here like guys we don't have the resources to rework every single hero right now so we're just gonna leave that hero to be in a not great state you know kind of like what they do with roadhog and then we'll get back to it later but we we don't have that communication we don't have that Clarity consistently enough and I think that leads to frustration from both the community playing up against Moira roadhog whatever players and the Moira roadhog Community themselves because they don't know what to expect am I am I supposed to be a competitive class or am I not supposed to speak in middle class nobody knows just just a question to you um would you agree or like what is your perspective on the fact that certain characters can only really kind of show their depth in a more coordinated environment so for example with the with the road hook changes what I what I think blizzard is doing I have no idea what they're doing but what I think they're doing is they want to kind of turn him like his hook less into a solo flank One-Shot people ability and the idea to be more like I'm going to hook someone into my team and then my team is going to mess them up but that's something that you're not really going to get in rank that's something that the majority of the player base is not really going to experience or if you look at symmetra STP or maywall May and scrims is a like a different character they might as well just rename her you know compared to what what you would do to her in in solo queue um so I I'm kind of interested to hear just not just from you but kind of from the group um you know should characters have kits that you know can't really be fully expressed outside of a very coordinated environment I think I think there's definitely abilities I think teleport is a big one where you know it there have been situations that have even been met as what was at the end of season two where we had the symmetric Bastion meta anti-goats briefly uh things and obviously these big TP strats on two CP like awkward was saying it required coordination to do that um but I don't think that even heroes like for example you could make a very good argument that oh Winston it gets a lot lower value and lower Rings because there's not as much coordination but a good Winston's still going to climb a good Winston can turn around hey my teammates are there if I jump in they're probably going to shoot the enemies in some way shape or form so there'll probably be some form of follow-up so I don't think we have too often too many abilities or too many Heroes that demand team follow-up as opposed to increase the odds like there's like there's a decent chance if I'm roadhog right now and I hook somebody that there will be some form of follow-up or some form of enemy response that allows my team to win the fight so I agree with that there's definitely like abilities and heroes that benefit more from some coordination but I even like a Sombra for example but the number one problem as you and I both know and we coach a summer player oh my team never follows up coach the summer player turns out they're hacking the enemy while the team's in spawn or they're hacking the enemy when they're on The High Ground and their teammates can't follow up and it's usually a problem with the player itself with a lack of follow-up not with a hero if that makes sense yeah my perspective would probably be that there can be abilities like that that are like this is pretty much only valuable in in coordinated play but then there has to be an honest conversation about it and I don't think we'll ever get that because it's at odds with the fantasy of what or watch the experience of playing or watch solo queue is which is the number one consumption of the game the num like the target audience is someone solo queuing OverWatch or playing with a couple friends for fun and that is at odds with having an ability that like like teleporter which requires inherent coordination and also saying anyone can play whatever they want to you want a main symmetric go main symmetra like have fun play as much as you want climb as much as you want that is OverWatch play your hero but then that's at odds with like a hero that I think this is where like whenever I see Heroes like this when when people are frustrated it's usually this and tanks have this a lot because people play like Reinhardt and they'll be like well I do all this space making for my team and then they never follow up like what is the point man and of course like the answer is well actually you should just YOLO like you should just forget about your team go straight into the back Lane and go YOLO with the Reinhardt like that is the way but then they're also not wrong to say well that's not that's kind of dishonest isn't it is that not what that's not what the hero is supposed to be you you advertise this as a big Shield protector man you're telling me to just like YOLO throw my hammer like I'm [ __ ] Thor in the back line like what's going on so it's difficult I think OverWatch has a lot to balance it always does like not not literally balance like a lot to juggle and and the audience expectations of like your average person tuning in for the weekend versus an esport is always going to cross these like problems to crop up like these odd scenarios to crop up where these heroes are left in the dust because how do you make May both viable for Joe blogs and for a watch League or not even viable but let that that part of her kid to be applicable almost in the same way I'm curious awkward if you have any any thoughts on this I personally think that blizzard is OverWatch as a whole is a false advertisement they advertise is a five on five Team game the first thing you when you when you queue up to a game the last thing you have to think about is your team what they're picking what they're playing who is this guy who is that guy you shouldn't care you play on your own so in that sense it's really false advertisement another point that I'd like to make about characters like Moira is that the problem with characters like Homer is because it doesn't teach you anything fundamental about the game it doesn't teach you any positioning it doesn't teach you any ability to play make so people get stuck in a trap because ah I keep dying on Anna so I'll swap tomorrow I'll have a get out of jail free card and then they learn nothing about the game and then they get stuck and then they feel frustrated so the character inherently is trapping people in a very low rank and even if you do good and then you swap he's still gonna suck at the other characters a good a good Anna player will be a good Moira player a good warrior player will be a very bad Anna player so I think in that sense that's why the character design is really really poor um and yeah that's my point I'm gonna get so many bombs from more players in the comment section I promise there's so many more episodes can be upset but I think it's an interesting point I kind of want to let any of you guys vibe off that but before we kind of move on to actually discussions of some of the recent changes they've made actually specifically uh and Reviving or reacting to recent changes sure sure okay so yeah I think you made an interesting point and you're the guy to talk to about it because you've talked about the rock paper scissors tank matchup the ultimate swaps and things like that going back to what awkward was saying with the team game environment it's a game that says oh it's about swapping and then but isn't and then even if it is do we really like that you know do we really enjoy again a conversation I had last week at Boger and it's like there's nothing worse than going oh I play Winston oh they go Reaper diva okay you know we're gonna go those Heroes all right they're putting in you know half the effort that I'm that I'm gonna inevitably end up on Orissa or whatever else and and I think that's where it's like I guess it's I don't know the answer do we really like the rock paper scissors of tank swapping a DPS swapping um I think definitely the importance of swapping is a little bit overblown I think you just need to get good at the hero that you're playing however advertising that as an aspect of the game and then also realizing that that's actually not that much fun you know I don't I don't like being bullied off of Winston when he's a very high school hero you know or I don't like picking Zenyatta oh now they go Sombra now they're spawn camping me and I'm in Platte I don't know what to do like that that's not you know that's not exactly fun so it's it's hard it's hard to know and even like you were saying the Reinhardt example like how do you play Reinhardt well there's this idea that you protect your team and to be honest that's not necessarily the bronze or Silvers player's fault that's a lot of how the heroes described or even demonstrated in in the shorts and how even back in OverWatch one there were a lot of but that's that's even I would even argue back in OverWatch one that's not how you was ever played you you took space You took your Shield was for you not for your team so but but then who's going to tell them that you know obviously that's that's why I that's my job right that's why it's like this job that's what awkward's job is but but it shouldn't have to be that way I mean this goes into the training range and the practice and the onboarding for new players is horrible but I think overall sometimes it's like OverWatch does do a lot of false advertising we it isn't really a super great team game where I think the majority of the team play is more of awareness of what your team is doing and trying to synchronize it but not necessarily really helping them just doing your own thing at the same time and then also even the way that a lot of the heroes of the weight game functions uh isn't really exactly what we want do we want rock paper scissors tank we want a Reinhardt shielding this back Lane no I don't know that we necessarily want that so I don't anyway that's my thought I think a quick hot take Maybe but I I genuinely believe that OverWatch is impossible to balance there are so many diodes and new characters and new there's just so many you know things interacting with each other that it really doesn't matter what blizzard does no human being honestly I think even in terms of like Ai and machine learning it's gonna take decades to even you know get to a point where a game is as complex as OverWatch can really be balanced you know if you take a look at chess you know like chess engines that that figure out what the most optimal plays are are still evolving and that game is very very old right so I I guess a question that I have is you know is is creating a balanced game even you know possible is that even kind of the goal that blizzard should go for or should the goal just be to make sure that every character is like at least viable and to make changes frequently enough that by the time that people discover a meta the patch you know basically gets rid of that matter you know and basically saying oh well it doesn't matter if there are overpowered characters if by the time people discover them and and how to abuse that we'll have changed the game already I'm gonna let awkward respond I have a response but I'm gonna respond to that I do agree with the number right it's a very very hard game to uh balance I I put some thought into myself but then you have to consider what would this change how would this lead up to me needing to change this guy and this guy and this character and this Hero whatever um I don't know if it's impossible but if you look at MOBA games there's significantly more characters uh than OverWatch and they do a pretty good job so I do think and also I do think there's a thin line between you know the game is not so balanced and this character has been op for months oh across all ranks and I think that's a line that needs to be considered the patch balances and general balances you're really not fast enough and that approach of balancing more often I do think it's a better better solution than what we have now I I 100 agree I think really the best thing to kind of tackle balance issues in OverWatch is to worry less about like each individual patch and just being more responsive and responding to op characters quicker and just you know where's the experimental tab why does that not exist anymore you know just blizzard being more communicative about their changes like for example in the um in in in in the recent patch notes right they they made a change to uh I think it was Cassidy um and they made two changes right they changed his damage falloff so that it starts at 25 meters instead of 20 and they changed that he can now combat roll through enemies like it doesn't get blocked by their hitbox anymore right and they they left a comment uh you know and it explained that you know oh combat rolling into enemies wasn't fun but they didn't even talk about the damage fall of change which like that's the main who cares that you can combat drill through enemies like nice I guess but like those five meters are huge you know and they didn't elaborate on that change at all you know we're saying oh we want him to be more competitive with Azure or something like that would have been enough but I think we need more frequent balance changes and I I would personally like it if blizzard was you know went a little bit more in depth you know explaining why they are making certain changes I think I have the answer and the answer is that the the truth would not be popular and that's that's the answer is that if they were fully transparent about why they were making certain decisions people would Riot which is that there are considerations Beyond balance that are the reasons they make certain changes and that again goes back to like why My Philosophy under watches shifted so much because I I kind of learned to internalize that rather than look at a change and kind of be like this is inexplicable like this doesn't make any sense like it is this is weird but then you kind of have to remember oh wait maybe it's not about balance actually maybe it's just about like play rate you know like like play percentage like how many people are playing this hero like oh we want more people to play this or we want less people to we want this here to be less popular because it's being played so much or stuff like that right so it's one of those situations and I think this leads nicely on to the mercy discussion which I'm I'm curious a little bit I don't want to Wade too deep in the mercy Waters when before accusations come that you know none of you guys are Mercy players you've we've [ __ ] talking thus far but I think that's a good example of like it's confusing I actually feel bad for Mercy players because I'm like this is a really confusing change because they said we want to start like I think this is like one area where actually this large agreement and somehow this change has come and [ __ ] all of it which is that I feel I and I spoke you know we had a specific podcast for this we had the great Mercy debate I spoke to Mercy players and they were like yeah what we really like is the movement the movement is what the fun part of Mercy is the movement is why we play mercy yeah the res like some of us don't like the res some of us don't like the blue beam we're all okay with potentially losing the res potentially losing the blue beam if it comes that they cause something else but the movement that's us bro that's us in comes blues and and everyone knows the worst scenario of it is the pocket play style everyone hates the pocket Place tell everyone do dislikes going up against someone and they have a mercy attached to them the mercies around the corner you can never kill that guy that guy blows your head off what am I supposed to do especially concerning everything we spoke about about being a solo game where your your job is like you're in the game you're like I want to win this game for myself all of a sudden you're in a 2V1 because that's just how Mercy operates and now you can't even use even if you were way better than that guy you can't overcome that skill like you can't overcome that disadvantage so we have all this is the context and then blizzard comes along they're like here are these changes dog like this is going to really prevent mercy pocketing and it's like actually so you removed her ability to move around which means she's not going to move around as much and now you made it so that one person she's pocketing is harder to kill if she's pocketing that person and now because the healing kicks in harder at half HP your incentivized to damage boost them for longer because like the benefit of healing them from half HP is better so like every part of that change makes it harder to do what they said they were gonna do so it feels very confusing and I don't know if that's a case of like that is one area where I don't think it's like oh they actually want like there's a nefarious deeper purpose I feel like that one is just it makes it misses the mark but I'm curious to you guys POV I know spylo you kind of had some thoughts on this yeah I think this is something that I I I think I'm I try to avoid being the Negative Nancy I think it's really easy to especially to farm views and just you know blizzard sucks are trash you know and we don't always fully understand the context and I think you know you know be healthy skeptical but be respectful but I will say that the one thing that I think blizzard is showing a really great really poor or great depending on your point of view track record on is pulling what I call the blizzard classic which is seeing a problem and misdiagnosing why the problem actually exists uh and I'm not sure why that's the case but that has been the case with them for some time and I mean going back to goats meta goats meta over sustain objective pressure is too long the stacking of all these things and what did they do well they kept buffing Reaper in May and anybody who played anywhere near the promo new Reaper and may weren't going to break goats but it was just never going to happen and then what happens is they finally go okay fine we give up we two two and God that's what are the oppressively strong DPS that everybody's playing Reaper in May um this was even back this as soon as this year with the junker Queen meta and OverWatch league and everybody panic because we don't want OverWatch 2 going live with this brawly fun fun nobody taking angles DPS duels meta so what we're going to do is we're gonna take junker Queen Lucio sojourn Genji like the four heroes are in flight and then we've got Brig who's the weakest hero uh and we're gonna Nerf Brig Inspire and everyone's like wait what why Brig is not the reason why that composition was played it was strictly junker Queen shout and only junker Queen shot and obviously sojourn's overtuned things like that um but that's supposed to Classic and then we look at these Mercy changes right here right the the uh I mean uh uh the mercy like oh mercy is a problem and like you said we're gonna address we're gonna make it here with less fun we're gonna make the hero maybe even weak but we never actually addressed the core issues of why she's frustrating to play against and there's a lot of changes in and these that I think don't do a great job of that for example the wrecking ball changes I love the the I think the the shields was a great thing for increasing uptime I think the reduction on the slam is also good for increasing uptime things that ball had issues with especially OverWatch 2 without giving him the ability to one shot um but I don't understand the the Mind stuff I don't I don't think mines was ever a weak part of his kit it did its job it wasn't exactly a fight winner every time but it was fine so it's like we're constantly looking at things and saying oh this here is too strong so we're going to Nerf it but we're gonna Nerf the part so that the hero is still frustrating to play against and the people playing the hero are upset we've made nobody happy um I think that that's that's the blizzard classic and that's what I would like to see changed I don't know why that's the issue but that happens a lot oh another one another one the erisa ability to kill at range was definitely a problem so I get the 25 to 15 meter range but are you gonna do that over her survivability I I don't understand that because the guy gun range is what made her more interesting to play me having fortifying being never headshot never killed well I bet that I don't understand it's it's like singing Hero is strong and then nerfing the fun part of her kit I don't I don't understand that yeah that's fine that's my that's my rant no I think it's a good one and awkward I'm curious to your thoughts again you're you know your support veteran uh you've probably seen some of these changes as well and what are your thoughts been well the first thing I'd like to address is that you know spotless says keep it respectful and I agree you have to keep it respect your feedback has to be respectful but at the end of the day you're paying for a product let's say I came uh to get a coach by svb for example and he tells me awkward you're [ __ ] at the game takes my money and leaves I have all the rights to be mad I have all the rights to be I'm just describing an SUV coaching session right there thank you very much thanks for your patronage and I have all the rights to criticize him being horrible for example right so but I do think that uh blizzard lack of understanding the game is just due to lack of being competent in general um you say that there's a lot of things behind the scene and I I surely agree but I think there is a spot where you can make everyone happy and still gain what you're trying to gain I think it's just being there just being lazy they just don't know what they're doing I feel like blizzard are just a bunch of gold players who have no no idea what like what makes a hero good what makes a hero bad um it's it's almost like the the person who makes spin pretends to be the painter it's uh I think they just need to let the people who know what they're talking about give actual feedback about the game and all of these gold players are saying but you don't understand the gold experience so the first of all I do that what I'm suggesting to be change it's not and for top 500 the characters should be changed fundamentally so you and I both gold and and top five only can enjoy it I think that it doesn't it's not always gold against good player like the best elite players you know uh it could be a mutual handshake you hit all the Bingo cards there awkward so I'm glad to hear it I'm curious yeah go ahead guys really fast okay so I will say this that um sometimes Pro Player feedback sucks really really sucks so I wanna I'm gonna take awkwards feedback in iosx's feedback and just say we need to bring the experimental patch back bring it back we could do excessive crazy maybe over the top egregious we can actually take Pro players advice and just plug it right in people will play it reward with loot boxes run the numbers I feel like that was always like the most healthy way of testing things because it wasn't just about what was actually balanced it was also what was actually fun you know and like I think especially in a casual Pro game but mostly casual game that is OverWatch you also have to find out what's actually fine and like wow this is actually a really cool change I never would have thought of that and there's no downside to it right we're not ruining the game for three or four weeks because we overtuned this hero that's me anyway I'll I'll just feedback off that which is obviously I had the chance to talk to uh Jared and John recently and I did ask them about the experimental and it wasn't on their radar for the time being so I wouldn't expect uh because because I asked about the workshop experimental Workshop hope she came back season three but experimental is not currently on their party list and that is obviously this is Again The Balancing Act Right it's not I I understand where awkward's coming from but it's also like you know we say lazy I think that's a that's a dangerous term to use because most often it's usually a resource issue right it's like how many people have the the time to be able to dedicate to the thing that we we think is essential but they the you know maybe some guy higher up the chain is saying is not essential and I imagine experimental is one of those where it's like might be lots of people in the dev team who think yeah actually the experiment will be a good thing to bring back but then when you look at the priority list it might be quite low down and they're like no you know I don't think experimental is gonna is gonna do all that for the game and that's like the reality of it but yeah I'm curious iOS talks uh any thoughts on what's been discussed there okay we're gonna go full circle here so we talked uh about this earlier if you want to improve you need to be willing to like try stuff out and kind of push the limits a little and you can't be afraid of messing messing things up and I think experimental was just brilliant because it allowed blizzard to put in these super wacky changes and they were just immune because they didn't need to worry about them breaking ranked or or breaking the game or anything it was just experimental it was just for feedback and then if it passed that test then they could you know actually do things so I think that they need to be like unnecessarily conservative in their balancing because every like there is no iteration on on the patches it's not like they actively communicate as awkward said like they actively communicate with Pros or with coaches or whatever they just make the changes they push them to live and then they need to hope that their game is still alive a week later and and you know people just haven't left um so you know I don't know if a blizzard employee is ever going to see this but I think that experimental is just such a great way to experiment experiment with changes that otherwise just wouldn't be wouldn't be possible and maybe a certain character just needs a very dramatic change that you know just can't be pushed to life immediately and needs to be experimented on so there's those are kind of my thoughts on experimental and then the second thing is kind of going back to the mercy changes so my my personal interpretation of the mercy changes um is actually a little bit different so the way that I personally interpret the the change where you heal more when the target is below 50 HP is that Mercy's identity is this ultimately are her wings in my opinion like when I think of Mercy I think of movement you know just flying all over the place and I think what that change was meant to do or what blizzard was was thinking is that okay um if she can heal people below 50 faster then instead of just pocketing one person and kind of staying with them forever she can kind of fly like oh someone is critical there I'm gonna top them off real quick and then I'm going to top this guy off and kind of alternating because theoretically that's going to give her the most healing per second that's going to get her ultimate the fastest but then in that same patch they say oh you know we we want to incentivize you you know to kind of alternate between players and and be a little bit more of a reactive emergency healer rather than a proactive I'm just pocketing this one person um but then we're giving you a huge cooldown on your GA you know so I think that the the changes are like I I honestly think that the balancing team just I don't think they talk enough with each other I think that they are you know maybe have different ideas of like what the different characters identities are or what direction they want to move in um which ultimately results in patches that just are kind of self-conflicting and that either go against the character's Identity or where one balance change just goes against another balance change is that some games for example let's say Counter-Strike you know valve has a workshop where everybody could make a map everybody could make a skin and sometimes the the company that chooses through throughout all the people that are making they choose something to implement in the game now I feel like the workshop right now that like OverWatch has is it's pretty not that great I feel like it could save them a lot of time and resources because I I think that a lot of people will do it even for free like create maps in the workshop and maybe blizzard can see okay look this this map of school has a lot of votes a lot of people who voted for it maybe we can implement this map some people suggest okay let's build that character some guy just decides to build a character in OverWatch maybe a blizzard will find a cool concept and see what they can work with so what I'm saying lazy I think they are not using their resource enough I think there's more reach that needs to be had there's I feel like there's zero communication and also I agree that most Low Pro players we cannot give you normal normal advice or normal like structural advice of how to make the game better how to make balance better but I'm sure that a lot of a lot of people do and that's why a lot of feedback is important that's why experimental was good in the first place so I I generally don't understand where the communication is why are they not communicating why are known not asking providing not building platforms where random people can build Maps build characters build whatever they want and maybe people will like it well I just I I'm sorry I just want to mention this real quick because I saw it in chat and I think it's so good someone wrote that the reason blizzard doesn't want a good Workshop is because of DotA and who knows maybe if the workshop was like actually really good someone is going to come up with like an amazing game mode that's just gonna steal overwatches player base why is this actually something I want to respond to anyways which is to awkward's Point again the answer is going to be the same it's it's about resource like management and firstly on the DOTA issue they actually already like they already actually solved this from their own end because when they support for context again anyone who doesn't know what we're talking about uh DOTA the whole mobile genre invented uh in a Worldcraft Warcraft 3 one of Blizzard's games in the custom custom game you could make custom games and had a map better than Warcraft 3 they made DOTA defense of the Ancients it was a popular like essentially the way you play modes in the workshop right now I don't know five mercies one Reinhardt there was DOTA back then and it became essentially more popular than the base game itself spawned the entire genre and you now have League of Legends in the DotA problem was blizzard didn't capitalize on it quickly enough they let it just sit there as part of their custom games eventually uh League of Legends you know Riot made League of Legends with the same idea and then valve made DOTA with with the developer ice Frog who made DOTA um and blizzard missed the boat by the time they made Heroes of the Storm it was too late because they didn't have any legal right over the game mode itself actually they solved this issue in when they made Warcraft 3 reforged they actually put in a clause which upset the community wildly but said anything made in Warcraft 3D Forge in the custom Game Belongs to blizzard so they already addressed like basically anything made and I'm sure this I don't know if I've read this what what the I think you've heard is in OverWatch but I would Hazard that if they were to add ever to implement a map editor they would almost certainly Implement at the same time if it doesn't already have that anything made in the map editor with OverWatch belongs to Blizzard and they reserve the right to kind of do what with that IP what they will the again I think the answer why they have not done that is from from the dead perspective you got to understand it it almost it's a really bad look to say that our way of of like putting resources into our game is to let other people make stuff right to say we're going to spend months of Dev time to enable other people to make stuff in our game instead of putting out a hero because it really is a it's like a either or situation it's like there's only so many devs working on so many things so the map editor coming out for OverWatch which would be great don't get me wrong I think it would be amazing I think it would like blow mines for how much your watch works but that again it's like the corporate ideology of it would be okay but then we're not putting out a hero for like a season maybe two seasons like they don't put out a hero Community is mad Community will then say and again the Casual Community will probably engage with the work with the uh map editor anyways they won't engage with the arcade mode probably anyways so they're gonna look and say well I came for the new Heroes I came for the new content you didn't give me that I'm out peace they're not necessarily going to be like oh but we got the map editor and look at all the fun Maps people are making now right that maybe is a long-term benefit but in the short term it hurts and if there's one thing we know about you know gigantic stock market AAA companies is that they prioritize the short term over everything else so I think that's basically your answer awkward for like why why why don't they just put out the map editor because it would come with the cost of two Heroes and some good skins or something and that's something they're not willing to do fair enough yeah yeah I just think it would be too much of like a kind of a long-term investment and I think that's blizzard has just kind of garnered so much kind of development depth at this point you know where with every patch they release they just need to think about more stuff you know and and certain things become more outdated um so I'm personally a little bit concerned about you know how sustainable um you know the the active development of OverWatch is is going to be and that's kind of one of the there's like a little devil on my shoulder um that actually really roots for overwatch's monetization to work and for people to just spend a bunch of money on like 20 Euro skins because I like I personally think that you know OverWatch in its current form needs significantly more resources than it gets right now to really catch up you know and and and kind of fix most of the issues that it has uh go ahead and elaborate on that like in in what way you just want like more devs more more time so okay so there's kind of two sides to this right so on one hand you need to create new content because ultimately that's what what brings people in right new maps new Heroes Etc right but then you know as as awkward you know mentioned earlier you know some maps you know could use a rework you know like they've brought numbani back this season um and numbani first point is still just terribly designed right but creating a patch and saying hey guys so we we changed the money first point that's not as exciting as like guys we made a map with a penguin so I think that if blizzard has more resources then they don't need to kind of compromise you know they can dedicate time to reworking old characters changing up the maps maps communicating more with the pro scene Pro coaches in terms of balancing you know investing more time into internal play testing maybe even inviting Pro players for regular internal play testing right you know those are all great things that just require a lot of time and resources um and and I feel like OverWatch one was kind of in this vicious cycle where because it was just a buy once game they just got a lot of money at the start and then they could just develop the game a lot but then over time it just wasn't as profitable and you know OverWatch League wasn't as profitable maybe as as they have liked so now with the transition to the free to play model every single piece of content they create is is money you know like I I'm gonna admit it I spent 10 euros to get that b Mercy skin you know because I just kind of I just need that in my life um and that's money that ultimately blizzard can use to pay a designer you know to maybe take a look at at the map and and move a box around or you know add an extra flank route or something um so that's kind of my my you know perspective where I think um the more resources they have the more content they can create and you know that's ultimately what we need I also like to add in the maths topic is that blizzard could get immediate feedback on what Maps they should change if they just put a voter on what map people want to play five on five get into a match okay let's vote what Maps want to play what Maps would I want to play Nobody wants to play Havana nobody wants to play Colosseo nobody wants to play new Queen Street and you'll see nobody plays those modes so why the [ __ ] did we make them in the first place time for a change you know at least it boils down to what uh Maps need to be reworked because a lot of maps have a lot of problems I can I can name you each problem on each map fairly easily which again makes me question the competence of the people that are making the map or changing the maps if I'm an individual can tell you exactly what it is that is wrong with the map what point needs to be changed and why how come a company can do it I think if we add map votes like yes that would probably give them a lot of data about which maps are most popular but I feel like you know it already like last season it kind of felt like we were just playing Colosseo over and over and over and over again I feel like if map boards come in even if only the best maps get voted we'll just kind of get sick of them after a while like I love King's Row you know I don't want to play it like 10 times in a row for three for cutting you off there but it's the reason why it felt so bad is because they were shoving these Maps down our throats but nobody wanted to try them you know so at least you can say Okay majority voted for it so we can play this nobody should feel sad about it it's a majority vote but when I play coliseo and nobody wants to play that mode everybody's in calm saying what the [ __ ] I don't know the map it's a [ __ ] map I hate this map well no [ __ ] that people are not gonna like it well there's there's sort of two points to that and I'm starting to feel like the bad guy here but I think point a would be again in the in the model of like well new content is the best in terms of just player engagement right like the best thing you can do for the game is make new stuff rather than better stuff I guess that's that's the that's the model we live in right it's like new stuff over over stuff that's better like balance stuff that's better in that scenario again it's like why would you spend ages making a map only for people to not play it and especially because you want new and Casual players to come in and play it and if that's getting banned out let's say that would be bad that your new content is now gone like people are not getting to access your new content secondly I think the devs might argue that the players don't always know what's best for them because I think the number one demonstration would be The Gaslight movement of bring back 2cp of uh a swathe of players who who've truly convinced themselves that 2cp was what we need in our lives and they missed 2cp and I wonder if like they would say well if we gave you map votes you guys would do something like that where you would like you know you'd Gaslight yourselves into just playing these Maps then you'd hate them and then you'd be like bring back those other maps that we missed and then you know you you it's all I guess the devil is it's almost better that we just we just tell you like you we just give we decide like you guys play this and we can rotate it at our Pace rather than like let you guys [ __ ] it up basically depends on like who you're trying to cater to as well you know like we we play a really awkward game for like I mean we think about a game we're talking about mobas right Age of Empires too one of the greatest games of all time arguably phenomenally balanced even to this day um has a remarkably consistent and competitive Pro scene constantly updated constantly balanced um just a great game right but if I'm talking to you know 15 year olds somebody new to gaming uh maybe somebody a little bit older my first suggestion isn't going to be to try out Age of Empires 2 right even with the PVE and Casual side of things that that's not a game that caters very well to that so the game doesn't cater to that when it's designed you know it doesn't we don't care if there's an easy sieve for you to pick up you get good or you play PVE that's those are your options OverWatch tries to do everything um I think it tries to check all the boxes it's casual it's competitive it's it's PVE it's PVP uh you know it's it's great for fun for bronze players it's great fun for top 500 players it's overwatched League it's it's bronze um and it really struggles to figure out where its identity is you know do you want do we want more if this even goes back to balance right do we want more to be a trash here well how many of the Casual Community upset I mean we have about hundreds of thousands if not millions of Mercy Mains who love the hero design and you know they make a lot of money off of every single new Mercy Skin So if you take those people off you're not making money uh if you're not releasing new I mean the part of the reason why OverWatch one died like iostex was saying is there just was nothing there was nothing for years no communication Nova and the game was actually pretty well balanced but there was nothing you know there was actually nothing so of course the game is Dead even though it was relatively well bound so to me it's about you have to find where where do we fall in that Spectrum how important is the Pro Player the top 500 GM player how fair how important is the bronze silver gold player I think you should try to balance more for the higher ranks but you can't just bounce for the higher ranks and I think that's where it becomes as uh um what am I trying to say it becomes a a goal of trying to find what are the low-hanging fruits as a casual player what do casual players love I'm an idiot I don't know I could probably guess it's probably a new hero new scan new game mode something fun they're gonna like that so that needs to be their priority it's something along the sides what the pro players well I have probably a better idea of what that is better communication and more frequent and more aggressive balance changes uh and then like awkward was saying some of these major map issues like for example Coliseum remove the glass remove the glass on the robot the map is the first fight is all of a sudden significantly better that's all just remove the glass the glass is not part of the identity of the map remove the glass and so when I'm a pro player and I that just continues to be a horrifically designed map and nothing is done and it feels like that's such an easy fix and I don't hear anything about it that's where I think people get tucked off kiriko sojourn meta for months months months months and yet now we're gonna do a little tidbit there do a little tidbit there that to me is is where the low-hanging fruit line is crossed to me I'm not angry that erisa was meta for a little period of time she was a little overtuned she she got her nurse she's probably not going to be asthmata right now okay we're good but I think a lot of pro players were right to be irritated the kiriko and sojour nurse because uh or the the lack of aggressive surgery because that was where I think the lying process from being we're being nitpicky nothing's ever gonna be perfect we have to balance between casual and pro and for crying out loud this is this is absurd if that makes any sense and I think that's where we have to find the balancer what are the most egregious issues that are affecting Pro players and casuals and try and address those first and that's where even though as a community we don't always know what we want generally most people can probably agree that those objectively are good changes and and you see it because they do eventually get changed but just at an unbelievably slow rate I think the main reason why balance changes are so irresponsive is because a lot of the consequences and effects that balance changes have um you know they affect win rate and pick rate kind of in a staggered way so if if blizzard releases a Nerf for sojourn for example um it doesn't even really matter what Nerf it is the pick rate is just going to decrease because some people think oh sojourn got nerfed I'm going to try picking up another character right um even though they didn't even put any thought into like the actual strength of the character so then you know they need to wait and see you know over the next weeks after the change how does that affect affect her win rate right and then now just imagine if it's not just one change imagine if it's multiple changes affecting one character right um because the problem is that OverWatch is trying to balance a system based on statistics that are not very responsive win rate is not super responsive pick rate is not is is you know it's not the color relation just isn't isn't always there so instead of you know quantitatively based balancing where they just look at you know getting each number as close to 50 as possible ultimately the question should be okay is there a game right now fun what is fun what is not fun oh getting one shot by sojourn is not super fun okay um you know how can we how can we remove that you know without making the character herself you know less fun to play right so not relying so much on you know statistics and kind of living in this Ideal World where you can just look at numbers and balance Again by looking at spreadsheets but you know actually understanding the players both you know talking with Pro players as well as seeing what the Casual players think and you know instead of trying to just get numbers to where they want them to be trying to aim for an experience where everyone can just say okay maybe this game isn't perfectly balanced but like I'm having fun you know this guy is having fun and you know it just needs to be balanced enough to where people do don't quit the game you know because I'm I'm gonna be honest I personally I would consider myself a pretty casual player right now balance is like important to me to a certain extent but as long as nothing is just ludicrously broken you know blizzard can get me back each season with a new map you know if there's I'm you know with a new hero I'm just going to play the game just based on that I have a friend who is a huge uh Widowmaker you know a fan and you know honestly when when the the last season came out you know the Widow skin was amazing and like that alone honestly was was just reason enough to kind of come back to the game and just have have fun um so I think it's important to you know think of balance less as just a numbers game but more so how it affects the overall gameplay experience that people have and optimizing for that I do think player perception is really important comes to balance because that seems to be sticky you know people want to play kiriko even though the Anna may be technically better so sometimes you kind of have to give the perception of guys you don't have to play kirikou anymore you know even if I don't know I agree with sucks I think the numbers only the impression that we've been getting is that they bounce strictly off of win rates and stats and I think that kind of turns people off a little bit um and and and and really quick then I'm sorry for talking so much actually I think goats was a perfect example of this because goats got so deep that it was just kind of a self you know like an oroboros just circling in on itself because goats was played so much that teams have like invested so many resources into perfecting that one comp that quite frankly like we've kind of reached a point at the end where Nerf and goats didn't even really do anything because it doesn't matter how [ __ ] goats is investing time now to like learn new characters and learning new compositions you know like it doesn't matter because playing a bad like technically badly performing comp really really well because we've practiced it for six months you know we're still going to beat those guys who've been playing dive for three days you know and I think that's also an issue with just balancing from a casual perspective where certain changes honestly they just take time you know especially bigger changes like roadhog's place then I was completely different you know and and obviously he's not in a super good spot right now but who knows you know maybe someone is going to just figure out how to make the most of that kit and then we look at this balance change completely differently yeah I think I want to hear awkward's take on all this because we've gone on for a while awkward anything you wanna I think that it's uh you need numbers and statistics they need they need context behind them so why are they people picking this much why I feel like the changes are purely off statistically there's like iosx and Spirals and but there's no context as to why people play this as to why the fit credit's so high why the pick rate solo there are a lot of things that need to be changed about the game and I want to address one character specifically now I would like to talk about Widow and because Widow is a very very common common thing that rises up I was personally a Believer and I still do that if you die to a widow it sounds like a skill issue it's a you issue you could have played it better right but when when I coach a lot of people and I watch them play against the Twitter across all ranks everybody all of a sudden play differently just because she exists in the server doesn't matter if it's a bronze Widow that is not going to hit the shot ever in her life or it's the best Widow you have seen in your life everybody just plays different so now the idealistic approach is what let's teach everybody how to play against Widow but then comes a it's like kind of a there comes in a thing where you can say you know what if everyone is having issues instead of doing the hard work and teaching them how to play against that character maybe we'll just change it to so it will be more comfortable for people to play again that's why also why Soldier was so oppressive for example soldier in the server everybody start running around like headless chicken they forget their fundamentals they don't know what they're doing they don't know what they they want to do they ever they just cry all the time and I got one shot I got one shuttle whatever but something needs to be changed about it yeah I I think it's like a really good good level of nuance as well like one one other thing I want to chime in personally was like what kind of frustrated me when they when they did you know I'm glad they they are communicating more like they did that little talk with seagull and it was it was nice to hear from them but when they showed that graph of lexan and and hog and stuff one thing that frustrated me was like them being like hey look the win rate fell and I was kind of sat there like well yeah no [ __ ] you nerfed the character like so of course all the people who play the character are gonna be worse at the character like is this not like a basic of what the win rate like should not just be basically accounted for that like you Nerf her character people who potentially farmed hundreds especially when the characters have been left for a long time like sojourn had like people have found potentially hundreds of Sr off this character now you made the character weaker people but worse at character like this is surely basic basic logic so it is a little bit frustrating when they when they and they will emphasize you we do more than just numbers guys we do more than just numbers we talk about player feel we we take all this in the count but it's frustrating I think when when you're already questioning the decision and then the the justification after that is like oh but the numbers say this and you're like well then you know you're the numbers are meaningless because they're not telling you the right thing so yeah no it doesn't yeah or not the right context right it's like stats can be misleading I think sometimes people think that like stats are objective but like any stat you selectively can lead you to a wrong conclusion right and I think being like Oh the win rate is down it means we nerfed her too much like No And and they kind of acknowledge themselves they were like oh you know sometimes it takes a while for win rates to level out after we change a character like Arisa we change her people were bad at her to start with when they watched two and then later people realize how to play her it's like yeah why why can't you see that for sojourn also that like when you Nerf her people will be bad at her for a while until they figure out okay this is how he places here now or roadhog people will figure out how to play roadhog eventually give them a little bit of time and they'll figure out okay this is how we play roadhog now that I can't permaflank in the backline in one shot squishy so easily right like okay now I got to play him different so and the one other point I want to add because before we can start I know I've taken a lot of you guys time so I'm gonna start winding down here but the one other point I wanted to add was that another reason why I don't think they balance as dynamically as before is and they've kind of alluded to this well it takes them two weeks to lock in to build right so they like and they said this themselves they're like well look I'm gonna lock in the build in advance so we put in the change then we've seen then like you know so let's say they've locked in two weeks beforehand this is the change in that two-week time period people are like actually we hate this now we hate this now blizzard change this now then the thing drops it doesn't address the thing that we said we hate now and now another two weeks later it takes them then the thing drops then after two weeks more of that they lock in a new build and that's again two weeks staggered so it's like this this long chain of catching up to like and all of it is really console's fault so let's blame the console Community for all this because mostly uh you know a sort of certification problem with with Microsoft and Sony so it's one of those unfortunate realities again the battle balancing outdoor watch we want to be a game that's cross-platform that everybody across the world plays whether it's on the Nintendo switch or on the 30 000 gaming PC that's like high-end whatever right all of those should be playing OverWatch and all of those needs should be met and that requires things like this to be a reality and you know I think sometimes we underestimate the scale of OverWatch of like just how much how big it is and what a machine it is like even even to its what we thought it was a dead game it was still really popular in in China and that's that's sad to say right now because people can't play um too soon too soon too soon too real um but you know this is the reality it's like we forget that like just how popular the game is and and and how many different kinds of people play it so I guess we're like casual players and Pros can can really focus on shoot like when I said the low hanging fruits just making that easier from like a developer standpoint but like trying to choose our battles you know what I'm saying are we gonna sit here and cry that symmetric turrets are still Ai and auto lock and like it's just not the biggest priority right now you know so it's like you have to kind of I think as a community try try and try and change your battles what's the most important thing as a casual as a professional that's really bothering you is the easy change that you can't believe that's happened it's the kiriko and soldier that have been meta for four five five six however many months that that's where we need to be putting our attention to and not screaming complaining about all these little things like this and that and it really I think choosing our battles as much as we can um I think awkward's right that you know they are professionals they need to do the job but the way that's supposed to be done however at the same time because it's more of an art we can provide as best as we possibly can uh accurate feedback by trying to really prioritize this into prioritization rather than just endlessly spewing noise which may or may not be accurate but you know what if you were to say like what are your biggest issues with OverWatch as a pro or as a casual you would need to know that answer if you were to actually give feedback I think 100 any other thoughts you guys want to chime in on that front uh all quarter IO stocks no not for me okay I think you guys hit the nail on the head yeah okay well on that in that note that I'm gonna start winding us down towards the end again it's been a fantastic talk so and I always like to kind of end these with like a a look to the Future and something potentially a little bit optimistic so I'm gonna kind of ask you guys then you know we kind of got season three now and uh it's been nice to see them experiment with a lot of things I'm actually really surprised with that being said about the two weeks I'm really surprised they dropped the mercy changes as hard as they did because like it's it's so funny to see them dance around stuff like kiriko and sojourn and then just kind of bring this really significant change to Mercy like all at once and just leave it there but I wonder if that's also part of their plan to be like you know what people said no Heroes season three Mercy's a new hero now off you go like go go nuts right so I wonder if that's part of their strategy to kind of cause this sort of large discussion point so that we're we're feeling like there's something really pressing happening um but my question to you guys would be well what do you want to see in let's say the short to midterm as changes to OverWatch like to please you personally like what do you kind of want to see them shift is it like a specific balance stuff is it more macro stuff or you're like I want them to start focusing on this more is it map design is like actually I just want them to stop think about the map design and make them you know balance the maps like the way a valorant would work it's like every angle is thought about and every like sight line is is calculated right so I'm gonna take it to IO sucks first so first of all I I honestly think OverWatch 2 just does like a lot of things right obviously we've been kind of you know crapping on them a little bit but like overall I I like especially with it with the way they've been communicating about matchmaking and map pools and whatever over the past and you know even them stating their intent to just completely get rid of maphoods for season four I I personally really like that I think map wounds are like nonsensical I just want you know variety person it's like not like CS where you need to practice specific smoke setups or something for each map so honestly you know the more variety the merrier at least for me um really the only thing that that I think is a priority is that right now the way that competitive is structured for the majority of the player base is just not a very you know motivating experience you know like they made the change to you know it's only requiring five five wins um but honestly I I think they're like still a little bit unsure you know they they're kind of stuck on this new system they just they don't just want to abandon it immediately and honestly I don't know what they need to do but you know I just want to have you know a ranked system that you know kind of works for for everyone where you have like continuous like just a sense of progress and always something to look forward to you know because right now ranked is just you know you play games every every once in a while you know you get a little little boost mentally because you're ranked up at the end you can buy your 27th Golden Gun uh which nobody even cares about it like why are there no other rewards by now you get like a title um you can't even really Flex with your rank because nobody can see your rank by default your profile is private in the loading screen there are no ranks anymore like yeah it's open yes right so honestly I just I want like when I started playing competitive games a long time ago I played leak for the first time and I saw that loading screen border of like a challenger player you know that was like so like cool to me you know but like I I personally just haven't maybe I'm getting old but I just personally don't get that sense anymore you know in OverWatch where I I look at a top 500 player and you know instead of thinking oh man I'm playing with someone really good you know like is this awkward you know it's like oh you know I guess he just abused four tanks in open queue you know um so I want rank to just kind of get that sense of prestige back yeah I think on the time on the title thing it's actually quite comical because like nine or ten times when I see someone's title I'm like that's almost certainly a lie like whatever there's they're showing right now whether it's like top 500 Challenger I'm like that's open QR it's like if their match made as the tank in the lobby I'm like yeah they got that on support like there's no yeah there's no way on the roll their ad currently so it's like I wish that I think a simple solution that would be you can only show the the title for the thing you're queued up as right so if it's like if you're showing tough under challenge that only shows for when you're actually playing the role you got the thing or not like you know you you one trick whatever he wrote to top founder then you're like flexing on everyone else and every other thing so it's a point to showing everyone's ranks not too that that would be a nice alternative as well or both why not both awkward what about you man what's what's your kind of short to midterm desires in terms of specifics there are too many to mention so I'd like to address something very general I would prefer uh OverWatch to address first of all what if the the feedback has been received we're working on this even though it might take some time and the second thing is just more frequent frequent changes adapted specifically to the feedback that is given not okay so germ is op let's nerve Mercy you know it makes no sense it's uh so a little bit more transparent a little bit faster okay short and sweet and uh on that note spylo I'm not creative at all I'll just Echo what they said basically I think I have sex is 100 right the matchmaking uh showing rank uh even the the rank rewards for the end of the season I think especially if you're trying to encourage get people to improve and play at the game uh what's what we've kind of created is like a a a the ring system has created a lot of questions about am I losing games because I'm cued with the gold tank or am I losing games because I'm actually just bad and I think like we talked about earlier the heavy discrepancy in matchmaking right now um I know the cues are probably faster but I think that there needs to be a little bit more Nuance I don't think Pros or GMS or Masters would be too unhappy if they had to wait a little bit longer so we didn't have people three ranks lower than me in the lobby I don't think that's a good experience for either player um overall ranked matchmaking all that needs to I just I don't like the current system period anything about it uh I think more communication from the devs in terms of what their plans are would be great I think we have technically more communication that we've had at times in the past but a lot of the communication feels like oh this is what we did this is why we did it and then we start you know people complain have issues this is what we don't hear anything about hearing you don't hear anything and then boom and then we release another bit okay this is why we did it and even then they're not communicating as well so I think more frequent communication with like what the plans are what we're trying to do uh like awkward was saying maybe making sure that we're prioritizing the right things um I don't know more more General stuff but I think the game itself is fun uh it's just I think a lot of the structure the way they approach balance or the way they approach the the competitive mode isn't isn't great yeah I think I think that's one area where the dads would probably be like man you guys complain about everything because like when we have long queue times you guys complain when we have short queue times you guys complain and I think that's again whereas the dev you have to kind of probably just go I have to decide what the worst thing is like they're gonna complain on both sides I guess this has been the issue with like team Q right like because this this is another issue the games always face is if you if you have like a separate team cue people will be like oh well why do I have to queue up for a separate thing I just want to play but then if you let Stacks play in your solo queue then people get upset as well where they're like oh um you know you're punishing me like because I'm a solo queue and the stacks are going up against me so it's like right whatever option you choose someone's gonna be upset but I think it's a little saying fruit like I said right we we don't it's okay to cue with Masters but we just don't want plots I don't and Platt should never be in the GM Lobby ever never not once right and we should hopefully never have a 30 25 20 minute queue right so it's like to me it's like the outliers are the ones that really stick in your head as a really negative experience that doesn't make you want to play anymore so if we can okay there's a lot of I have a lot of Masters in my James games I can live with that right I can live with a 10 12 minute Q as you know it's the outliers that really tick people off and make people not want to play anymore and to me I think that's that's it's like I said it's always a sense of priorities I think when it comes to these kind of things true I think that's that's pretty much I'm sure how the devs would say as well sums up how they have to do things it's like priority priority priority resource resource resource what can we do now right what what can we push back for later and one more time screw Bobby kadick yeah just one small thing with a bobby codic one more time yeah one more time yeah [ __ ] that guy um yeah this is when blizzard can cut me off the air so I appreciate my guess very much guys thank you so much for joining me please go show these guys some love if you watch this on YouTube as I know so many of you do or on your uh Spotify slash podcast Services yes awkward can I say one last thing I want to cycle back at the beginning of our conversation well the first main spirals seem to be on the same page uh you know iOS X was the opposition the beginning but we're seeing it seems like aristoc you agree with me and all the things that I say you just might not agree the way I phrase this right so I just want to make you know just wanted to know or if you still agree if you still disagree with what I say or just disagree with how I say because these are two different things I still think unranked 2gm is very morally questionable um and ultimately you know hurts the gameplay experience more than it helps but I do think that your mindset overall is something that a lot of people would gain you know to benefit from if they would adopt that mindset um so I'm not quite going to like change change my stance I'm still against uh unranked to GM I'm still against smurfing um but I I think you have a Winner's mindset and I think just like that alone is something that you know people can take a lot in a way away from and I think there's definitely educational value in in the content that you make and another thing that I'd like to mention is that spylo because you were speaking about Hadi and how he went to the gym you seemed like a person who really respect Endeavors outside of this video games you want people to not only be good at video games but you want them to be outside good outside of it which is something it's something that I'm trying to push to all the people that are watching in general if you're big if you can be competent in a video game it seems a little bit ridiculous to say but you can be competent at other things if you can go from let's say gold to plot it means you can probably go from 10K uh 10K a month to 15K a month at your job just because you understand the process of learning you need to improve all aspects in your life not because we as Gamers we have a really bad rep ah this guy's a nerd this guy has no social life this guy's that this guy's that it's very important to truly believe in yourself and that's why I push people to be better it seems ridiculous that I push people to build people like oh but you it's you know you're talking about OverWatch people spend hundreds and thousands of hours playing video games and they're stagnant and not moving and this is a notion that only exists in gaming nobody else no no nowhere else where you would see this kind of behavior accepted towards themselves a person that goes to the gym for three years and has no results has all the right to be upset with himself a person that is going to a boxing gym he's been training for three years and a person a new person comes in and smokes him should feel bad about themselves and if you're a person who truly wants to be better and you're stuck you really need to take you really need to rethink look inside what can I do better and if you can do better in OverWatch you can do better at other aspects in your life and that's very very important because you don't want to be that guy who's just good at video games and has nothing else going for him because you are truly truly talented because you understanding truly a smart person if you can understand how to go from goal to GM because it takes a lot of learning it's not a skill to be underestimated motivational I might have to add some like epic music in the background in the post post about that just when we put this up on YouTube yeah thank you now it's a very nice note to leave it on I think and hopefully people find uh uh you know kind of some some things here to take away that maybe make them feel more motivated or more inspired or just better about themselves and also I think always healthy to have a little bit of disagreement and a bit of uh I respect your stance but I choose to disagree with it and I think that's that's kind of why I wanted to have this uh podcast because you know it's nice to see healthy discussions had and I I like to see people who again whose opinions I respect Express those opinions and why they might disagree much better than twitter.com um so yeah again like I said thank you very much guys for joining me and their socials will always be in the description of this video so if you watch please go show these guys some love three very uh distinct coaching Styles there as well for any of you who want to get some coaching done pick your poison you know what do you like although spilos much nicer here than he is as a coach I promise you right now he's gonna yell at you uh if you actually hire him so bear that in mind maybe a little bit maybe a little bit but yeah thank you very much guys I hope you have a fantastic day thank you so much for joining me and that's that's it from us peace out

Channel: Group Up! Podcast

Views: 51,011

Keywords: overwatch, overwatch 2, group up, group up podcast, overwatch podcast, svb, the great debate

Id: nJKXnuTv0no

Length: 163min 40sec (9820 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 11 2023