Why Doomfist Won't Bring Me Back to 'Overwatch'

A couple months ago I wrote a column that explained where I was with Overwatch. I had reached the limit of my natural ability, and getting better without daily training was out of the question, so I just accepted that I wasn't going to get better. Part of the reason for that (which I didn't realize at the time) is that I don't know what the reason for getting better at the game would be.

Overwatch doesn't reward you for being better. There are no extrinsic motivators for getting above Gold ranking (which is where I stalled out). Instead, there's just a slow grind upward that has to be based completely around intrinsic motivation. I just didn't have it.

Now the Overwatch team has officially announced the impending release of Doomfist, the newest character added to the roster of playable characters in the game. He's a melee-focused character who seems to be based around giving players the ability to control the position of the enemy: He can pull opposing players toward him and then uppercut them into the air. All-told, he looks neat.

That's all I feel about it, though. I think there is neat design space there, but he isn't very exciting. I don't want to reinstall the game to play with him, and there's nothing about the design of the character that demands that I jump back into the game to give it a shot. It doesn't look like Doomfist shakes the game up, and the parts that I found stale still look about as appetizing as a week-old hotdog.

Let me be clear: I want to enjoy Overwatch again. I would like to play and enjoy that game, and the recent introduction of Orisa brought me back to it for a few weeks. However, at this point, I think that the only thing that would really bring me back to the game would be a big mix up like Blizzard's recent-ish launch of Heroes of the Storm 2.0.

New characters should, I think, make lapsed players want to take another chance on a game. If character creation is just focused on pleasing people who are already invested in the game, then I don't know where a game like Overwatch can go as far as I am concerned.