sweaty spaghetti

It's important to be objective in moments like this. And being objective means being able to admit that OW is definitely losing a lot of players to MR and that MR is doing a lot of things correctly that is resonating with its player base. But being objective also means being able to admit that OW still does a lot of things well and that a lot of the hate it gets isn't reasonable and is often done in bad faith. As one of the only rare people on the planet that is seemingly capable of enjoying multiple games at the same time and who still genuinely likes both games for their own merits - I've seen over the past week, far too many people eager to sling crap towards OW in often the most unreasonable bad faith way possible. That has now caused a pissing contest in the opposite direction from fervant OW defenders eager to do the same in what basically amounts to a race to the bottom to see who can be the most toxic gaming community on the planet. I'll say for the record, I don't think Salt is necessary in either of these categories. But with respect to Salt's tweet, balancing should not be used as a critique against OW any longer considering how many people use the lack of balancing as a positive critique for MR. No one should be complaining about bad balance in OW if you're currently enjoying MR's lack of balance where people willingly admit that it is balanced poorly. That is absolute textbook hypocrisy and no amount of mental gymnastics will justify it. Can't speak to quality of the communities but I've encountered plenty of toxicity in both games as well as many other multiplayer games. Haven't encountered cheaters yet in either game but there definitely have been notable complaints from other people who have run into cheaters in MR. Can't speak to the community service in either game. The maps in MR are (in mine and Spilo's opinion) not good. Overly reliant on destructible environment gimmicks to create playable space. A lot of wasted design space, useless areas, and dead ends. I'm not at all saying OW has the best map design ever, and they've had plenty of misses as well in Clash and Push. But there are some iconic designs in OW that are almost unanimously well regarded like Kings Row and Lijiang Tower. In general I think people who especially left the game before or during the early years of OW2 don't realise how much effort the devs have actually put in and how much change has been applied to the game since then. There's so much outdated criticism and equal amounts of hand waving and turning a blind eye to things in MR that would be complaints in OW. Balance is one of those things, and yes while hero bans are good they're only available to 3% of the player base so let's stop pretending it's a catch all solution. Monetisation is another one, pretty bad but still within f2p standards at launch OW2. Massively improved since then with heroes back to fully being free and much more consumer friendly in how much currency and free skins they give away. MR objectively has a very similar if not basically identical monetisation and yet no complaints. Let's also not be dishonest and endlessly shift goalposts about it being different because of 3rd person or keeping battlepasses. If OW2 was 3rd person and let you keep BP's you would still complain about it because you just don't like the prices. MR also charges you $20+ for skins. Endless people complained in OW about the price, MR players are hand waving it because they enjoy the game more, which is fair enough but let's not pretend MR has a different model. If people we're being completely honest, the negative reaction to OW2's monetisation was always around the fact that OW1 mostly gave you everything for free as long as you were willing to grind while OW2 suddenly locked things behind a shop. MR has everything behind a shop day 1 so the expectations were set completely differently. OW took away something you used to get for free. MR never gave you that thing in the first place.