Quake3 is still one of my fav games. I could literally play the same map all day even.

I think it may be more that the content is getting stale too quickly. Like place once and done.

Maps get stale when they lack depth and an evolving meta. Map size, assets, etc are almost completely irrelevant.

Over watch gameplay and especially movement is largely the issue here.

The meta is almost completely dependent on the hero balance at the time IME though, outside of Havana always having snipers at the top levels.

StarCraft I meta evolved for decades even though blizzard stopped updating the game. It’s hard to get that kind of depth from a FPS game, but CSGO’s Dust II is iconic in part due to it’s constant refinement but also near perfect balance adds strategic depth when players explore subtle interactions.

I think you could revert Overwatch to the launch day build, and people would play it a lot differently now than they did back then. The community learning to play the game will happen no matter what balance changes show up on the backend; balance changes just force people out of their local maximum towards a new higher local maximum. But, you could do that without balance changes. Just try something new. There is probably a better strategy out there.

Not really. Blizzard's balance team is shockingly bad. Metas usually exist for huge periods of time (GOATS lasted over a year, as did moth, as did dive). It is repetitive to play the same maps, with the same heroes, for a year.

I hear that a lot. Why keep playing? Why play the meta? The onetricks seem to do well no matter what the meta is.

A lot of players feel forced to play the meta. Then a few don't, and the meta changes.

> I hear that a lot. Why keep playing? Why play the meta? The onetricks seem to do well no matter what the meta is.

To compete at anything means making the decisions that put a contestant in the best position to win. A "meta" is the most optimal team composition for a given map. To play off meta is uncompetitive.

> Then a few don't, and the meta changes.

This is not how metas change.

So why did the Orisa buff result in a Rein/Zarya meta? She wasn't in the meta before, she was changed, she wasn't in the meta afterwards -- but the meta changed. What's going on there exactly?

Sorry, if you can expand on which Orisa change you're describing I'd be happy to explain what happened in that meta. Nonmeta heroes get changed all the time and do not change the meta (unless they get changed enough to become meta heroes).

The no-crits-while-in-fortify change. Probably just a couple patches ago at this point.

Ah yeah. The Orisa change was actually mostly irrelevant to the meta at the time. The change that actually had an impact was the 2nd of 2 big Hammond nerfs.

At the time, teams were running Hammond/Sigma/Tracer/Echo mostly. Depending on the map, Rush (Rein/Dva/Mei/McCree/Lucio) was also viable. After the change in the patch you referenced, Hammond was no longer optimal so Sigma/Ball stopped being played in favor of almost fulltime Rush.

More recently Double Bubble has become popular (Zarya/Winston), but Rush is still played a ton and the dominant meta.

The patch notes for that patch can be found here: https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/overwatch/t/overwatch-reta...