‘Chiu on This’ is a short and regular opinion blast

Today Dogman tweeted an interesting thread about about the dynamic of being picked up as a flex support player. In it he noted that the first thing people notice is when the flex support pops off and gets frags like crazy, but he also points out how some teams (mostly mixed/western) are looking for more role players.

If you look at the chain of reasoning that has happened here from the scout’s point of view, it doesn’t make sense. They want a role playing flex support player, but are noticing players based on their aggressive mechanically skill.

While this seems counterintuitive, it does make sense because of how Overwatch currently is. Overwatch is a game where you cannot gain all of the information of how a single person plays from the context of any VOD. While the same can be said of any other esports games, the difference is larger in Overwatch compared to games like Dota2 or CS:GO. On top of that, the systems and guiding principles are different. In Dota2, you can generally tell a 5 player understands map vision and his team’s winning conditions based on their roaming and warding pattern. If that player coordinates well with the lanes, you can also tell they have some level of good comms. In CS:GO, you can figure out who is a smart player or who is a player that depends on their mechanical skill depending on how they position themselves across the map relative to their team and the enemy.

In Overwatch, it’s hard to tell any of that and as far as I know, even experts admit that even the most knowledgeable person in the world cannot break down all aspects of the game from a single VOD. This problem is exacerbated by a lack of a replay system or any kind of pick up group system. Both bring incredible value in understanding what a player is thinking and doing, but neither of those exist in the Overwatch scene.

So when I consider the scouting problem, I actually understand and think it’s completely logical to scout for an aggressive mechanical player and try to mold them into a role player as that is the most obvious category that people can grasp when trying to scout players.

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