Every gamer is a temporarily embarrassed pro?

I wonder if that same analogy applies.

No; Overwatch 1 was unique in that a single player trying to do something "off-meta" meant all 5 other players had to play around that one player, and if you were losing it was very frustrating. The game's design and balance IMO was inherently toxic. Everyone "practiced" the "pro" meta so there was unspoken rule book on how people understood how to play the game. One person being off meta was almost like demanding the entire team play rugby when you thought you were playing football. The game wasn't flexible enough to allow individual experimentation.

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Blaming 5 other people for not understanding to play around 21 other wildly different heroes isn't flexibility in game design. Your are asking 5 other people to play a fundamentally different game than the one they have learned.

You couldn't "individually experiment" because fundamentally you needed team experimentation; you can't play Reinhardt in isolation, and subjecting your team to experimentation on your own whims leads to toxicity.

I think many people who go down the "I should be able to play what I want and people should adapt to me" don't realize they are being selfish in play style in a game like Overwatch.

I mean, it sounds like they were just bad at the game that Overwatch was. I learned to adapt around them, after all. I won't deny it was hard. But it was also very fun and rewarding.

Overwatch is a different, less flexible game now, closer to what I think most people thought Overwatch was, and apparently wanted. It is what it is.

> No; Overwatch 1 was unique in that a single player trying to do something "off-meta" meant all 5 other players had to play around that one player, and if you were losing it was very frustrating. The game's design and balance IMO was inherently toxic.

To put it another way, the game was unique in combining meaningful teamplay and meaningfully distinct characters. I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong to say that's an inherently toxic point in the design space, but it's pretty tragic if that's true, because those both seem like good things that you want a game to have.

Early on it was great. Anything went. Play 6 Torbjorn? Sure, why not. Come back a couple years later and some dude is complaining I'm not taking Quick Play seriously enough by not playing the meta and that this was "practice" for competitive.