Overwatch 2 has an onboarding problem, and it should look to Final Fantasy 14 to fix it

The stage for victory is ready. Over time, you and your allies corner the enemy against the odds, and it seems impossible for you to fail – or so you think. Suddenly, your lightly wounded healer steps back and says, “Come to me for healing!” So your tanks leave the front lines and mend their wounds. Your other therapist is somewhere around the corner, out of danger.

That leaves you and the second DPS to deal with – no, it’s over. “Well, there’s always a next time”, you tell yourself, and then the round ends in failure, as your DPS is locked into combat for the entire game, and the tank is backed by Angels.

Is it the other player’s fault?Well, technically yes, but they’re just doing what they think is best with limited knowledge Overwatch 2 give them.

Some online games have issues with players understanding objectives.The problem with Overwatch 2 is help you understand your role actually need, and how to use it.

Part of the problem comes from Overwatch 2’s slightly unsure identity. With the extra tanks removed, put as much emphasis on action as possible. Destroying everything in sight may seem more important than anything else, but in reality, it means knowing your character is more important than ever.Blizzard’s current method of teaching player characters how to function is don’t teach them anything.

This is untenable.The Blizzard team should look for better models from other character-based multiplayer games to help players understand and enjoy their games, and there are few that can compare to final fantasy 14 And its in-depth, insightful tutorials.

Blizzard’s own tutorial eases you into Overwatch 2 with practice rounds, including the most well-rounded collection of heroes–easiest to understand if you’ve played other shooters. Welcome, Soldier 76. With false confidence, you enter a match and pick someone else just to change the situation. After all, how are these heroes different?

Ash just aimed the barrel of her gun and fired back. Winston jumped into the air and jumped off the cliff. Lúcio switches from his Song of Healing to his Song of Speed, which can have some less-than-ideal effects if you do it at the wrong time. Sorry team, but at least you died well! Learning basic heroes is daunting enough, but more complex niche heroes like Sombra and Symmetra are another story entirely.

Remember skill can only take you so far. While you can (and will) eventually learn how they play, it takes hours and hours of playing against other human players and there’s no shortage of discouragement before the final click. Between work, school, and generally limited leisure time, it’s easy not to play the game — which is a shame, because there are good reasons why Overwatch 2 is one of the more fun online games to play (when it respects you time, that is).

Blizzard wants to teach you the tricks by sending you to training grounds where you can learn each hero’s abilities. The concept is solid in theory, but too basic in practice to be useful. Enemy droids are more comedic than helpful, with cartoonish screams of pain when you tickle them with Genji’s shuriken and the set path they never deviate from.

You can practice your basic goals and see how the skills work, but the training mode can never prepare you for the actual workings of combat. Robots may come in and out of Widowmaker’s range, waiting for you to kill them. Real humans hide, probe your location, and let teammates sneak up on you from behind to end your career.

I can’t help but miss the tutorial for Final Fantasy XIV. Square Enix won’t let you go anywhere near A dungeon until you pass a rigorous series of character trials that go beyond the basics of how to activate your skills. They actually teach you to play the game.

DPS is mostly about learning how to avoid drawing unwanted attention and which enemies to attack in order to make life easier for tanks. The answer is not the strongest enemy on the battlefield. The therapist learns where to settle, when to be inactive, and whom to target when problems arise. Even with an offense-oriented therapist like an astrologer, unless you have an escape plan, less is more. Over attack the enemy or get too far from the tank, and you risk derailing the entire dungeon run because you die.

The tutorials take at least half an hour to complete, but they are in-depth and show you several different scenarios. Unable to adapt, you start from scratch. So, you’ll learn how to set up combos, how to monitor the battlefield and adapt to unexpected developments, and – most importantly – what you should actually do. They help you understand and enjoy Final Fantasy 14 and all its weird little quirks.

In addition to these trial battles, you also have optional class quests that you can take on to gain a deeper understanding of how your various magicians, spearmen, and barbarians should behave in battle, and to help you master the tutorial General knowledge and applying it to more specific situations.although technically As optional items, you’ll have to complete these to unlock new classes and learn some important new skills. Square Enix essentially lets you do this – just on your own time – and you’re better off doing it.

For example, Magician is easily the slowest healer class, but since the class quests force you to deal with varying levels of threat yourself, it’s imperative that you learn how Magician is supposed to function because you have to. You’ll figure out what spell modes are best for sapping an enemy’s health, when to cast the correct restorative spell, and how to balance cooldown timers. Best of all, you can do this on your own without stepping into a dungeon and dealing with the stress of letting your team down.

Blizzard has a foundation similar to Hero Challenges, a set of quests ostensibly designed to familiarize you with a specific hero before unlocking it. For now, though, these challenges amount to taking a hero in training mode and playing them a few times in a match.

The only hero-specific help you get is a vague set of generic hints. “Separate Reinhardt from his team so it’s easier to take him down!”

Blizzard, he jumped off my back and beat me to death with a hammer. In which universe is this useful advice useful? Some kind of scenario will teach you the best time to use Kiriko’s Quick Step, the way Echo and Tracer can harass enemies without getting caught, or convince the player that if they’re at 75% health or higher, they don’t need to use it every five times Healing for a second would be more helpful.

For now, all we’re getting are suggestions, though there are some positive signs that Blizzard may be moving in a more helpful direction. Overwatch 2 season 2 is making tweaks to certain heroes, including Doomfist and Ana, ostensibly to help them fit into their roles more effectively.

Doomfist is a DPS with the “Tank” tag, while “Healer” Ana has only one healing ability. While massive changes and tutorials seem unlikely in the near future, at least Blizzard is aware that the character situation needs improvement.

Let’s just hope it fixes this before it’s too late.