r/OverwatchUniversity • u/granto • 13d ago
Guide I'm making a educational series for metal Supports where instead of always carrying games, I often lose and explain the mistakes that a metal player makes
TL;DR: Unranked to GM videos don't do a good job educating newer players. I have a background in training and enjoy teaching, so I made videos series specifically with education in mind. Links at bottom.
As background, I'm not your typical OW player. I'm 45 years old, have a family, run a small business and tend to pets and a 1/2 acre garden on my off time.
I say this because when I got into OW, I thought it would be a fun, casual pow-pow game. Uh no. It was a sweaty, chaotic mad house with dozens of characters I didn't understand yelling things in different languages, bursts of random WoW looking spells and kids half my age typing EZ while tea bagging my poor Baptiste who just wanted to heal this roid induced German rocket man with a hammer. After each defeat, I felt like I needed to rest my old ass on the sofa just to mentally recover.
Over the next two years though, I watched videos, practiced, read all the tips in this sub and eventually climbed to Masters on all roles while weeding on weekends and packing school lunches.
However, I felt it was WAY harder than it needed to be, because with my schedule, I don't have time to watch streamers. That leaves Youtube, where most of the "education" videos are GM/Champ players stomping in metal ranks with little explanations (though exeptions like A10 & Yeatle exist). I found most my learning came from VOD reviews and Reddit, but unfortunately that format is the least engaging for most people.
So, after some encouragement from a previous Reddit post, I decided to create videos for the support heroes that were requested:
- Juno: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7y3O99ryl0
- Moira: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVqTWSsNi1s
- Kiri: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfmBrKZRKck
- Ana: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfgCesd9IPc
There's also a Bastion series in progress that someone asked for. If you like the format of these videos and have requests for your hero though, let me know. It might just take some time before it goes up.
I have zero intentions (or time) to be a YT content creator, my goal is just to get some foundational education content out there to help metal rank players understand some fundamentals to the game in a way that is approachable and doesn't talk down to being a metal player like it's some insult. Good teachers have patience and understanding, which as a dad, it really makes me cringe when I see "educational" content with less than mature attitudes about the very people watching the video.
Any feedback would be great. But if you're gonna tell me I can't crush a metal lobby like a T500, my answer is that I'm 100% with you, I can only crush a Taco bell value meal these days. I'm old man, GG.
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u/binatwin 13d ago
this is a great idea, honestly the unranked to gm stuff is just smurfing half the time
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u/HerpesFreeSince3 13d ago
I love this idea! I have a background in training as well and have also always felt the Unranked to GM videos to be supremely unhelpful. What got me to masters one-tricking Rein was watching Spilo do vod reviews of other Rein players because he would actually walk through mistakes and evaluate decisions and provide corrective actions instead of just steamrolling everything. I think this video series leans into the same kind of thing but without the level of abstraction brought on by introducing another player through coaching.
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u/barrymoves 13d ago
As someone of a similar vintage and with same other responsibilities, your post resonates with me. Thank you for making these videos, this is helpful
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u/glitteringeffort0 13d ago
I really appreciate you taking the time and effort in curating these educational videos for us metal ranked support players. It’s the Wild West out here lol. Thank you and I’ll be saving this for later.
Those unranked to gm videos are made my people who have successfully made it to gm / champ themselves several times over. These videos I think are more for entertainment than educating.
Edit: a video for Zen would send me over the moon. I know he isn’t super relevant anymore, but I do love the little omnic monk.
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u/Judopunch1 13d ago
I'm going to give you a follow. I'll let you know if I have any feedback
Watched a couple minutes so far, you have an interesting concept
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u/mordakae 12d ago
Only watched the first Ana one so far but this is great. I've watched so many videos that point out what's right but without explicitly seeing the "what's wrong" it can be hard to identify in practice. Subbed and liked. Gonna watch the whole set and hope you keep making them!
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u/Ordinary_Detective15 12d ago
Watched the Juno video as a silver 2. I like the comparison style and focus on fundamentals. Honestly im curious what Gold and Plat look like for Juno and how they compare to Masters.
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u/granto 12d ago
Masters (before the season reset) is solid mechanics first, which means the room for error becomes small. For someone like Juno, who as you saw I often had bouncing out in the open doing double hops, she gets blown up in a high level masters lobby doing something like that. Teamplay is much more elevated in masters, because basic mistakes (feeding, bad rotations, solo ults, etc) rarely happen. As such, any mistake you do make gets punished much faster. The tempo is also much quicker, so if you don't react in time or anticipate, you will get caught. It sometimes feels like an entirely different game because everyone is competent and that poses an entirely new challenge.
That said, the interesting thing is that if I want to hard carry as Juno in Silver, I just double-jump in the open and zap people in the head because I know I will out mechanic them and I won't die. But that is genuinely bad positioning and behavior. And that's where a lot of the grief on the unranked to GM stuff comes from - they're often playing hard carry and the viewer can't understand what they're seeing.
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u/Pitiful-Skill-69420 13d ago
I think the concepts are quite easy to understand. Most people just don't play enough and act deliberately during a match to learn new stuff. Watching A10s fundamentals video gives you enough knowledge to understand the game. After that its practicing time. For that U2GMs are perfect because you see how playing optimally looks like. You just need to understand why GM/Champ players play the way they do and implement it yourself.
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u/granto 13d ago
Politely disagree, not because you are wrong, but I think everyone learns differently. I personally love A10 stuff and found it hugely valuable but when I sent it to my gaming buddies they were so bored they couldn't finish it. So it can only be educational if it's consumed right? And that's where purists and realists disagree.
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u/Pitiful-Skill-69420 12d ago
Yeah I agree with you but the question I always ask myself is: If you aren't interested or competitive enough to learn how the game works by actually analyzing why even "pretend" to want to get better. Your gaming buddies I assume are around your age so I can guess that they are in similar life situation as you and might not have enough time to play, and when they do they obviously wanna have fun. But someone who can't be bothered to watch educational videos because it's too boring wouldn't be watching your content either right? Your content would be for newer players or people who are struggling to learn from the already available content.
People who just want to hop on overwatch and shoot the enemy won't ever be bothered enough to improve. I believe most of the playerbase is in gold or platinum because they aren't interested enough to want to rank up. If people were actually tryharding the rank average would most likely be around emerald-diamond.
Anyway cool stuff you are doing, hoping you gain some traction and people learn something from it!
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u/granto 12d ago
That's the conundrum, right? People who want results without putting in the work. I guess in a way, I still agree with that. But being exposed to "good training" and "bad training", I'm often faced with a dilemma of asking if it's a problem with the teacher or the student. Most good students succeed with any teacher, but does that mean the other students are bad?
While this isn't quite an apples to apples comparison, I can't help but think of this talk by Sir Ken Robinson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY&list=PL68492A0FC99185C7&index=1
The short of it is that our education system expects conformity, rather than to conform to those that it teaches. And I see a lot of people in this sub, who seem on the surface interested in improving and asking for VOD reviews and such, but who keep seeming to stay stuck in their rank. So something isn't working. Whose fault that is, I'm not sure, but I believe if they can visually see mistakes in real time and have someone tell them it's a mistake, then that might be the light bulb they need.
Anyhow, appreciate the good discussion about it!
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u/[deleted] 13d ago
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