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As great as Overwatch is, the ‘Play of the Game' system can often seem a bit hit or miss and now we know why, as one of the game's developers has explained how this particular system actually works. The idea behind Play of the Game is to capture moments that ‘slipped by' to reward the plays you may not have noticed, the problem is the system isn't “smart” just yet.
Overwatch lead software engineer, Rowan Hamilton spoke with GameSpot recently about the play of the game system, explaining the idea behind it: “The idea then was to capture those moments which slipped by. We wanted to make it a really cool social moment at the end of the game, where it's not just your team but the other team seeing this epic thing–well, hopefully epic thing–that happened during the game and you can all chat about it and bond over how cool that Mercy res was.”
However, the play of the game system isn't always perfect and that's because it's pretty hard to make a computer figure out which moments were cool: “From a technical standpoint, it's a really hard problem to have a computer figure out what is cool. They're not very smart. They take some numbers in, they put some numbers out. It's hard to figure out what is cool there.”
The good news is, the system is constantly being improved and Blizzard are always looking at the stats that come in to make tweaks here and there: “We constantly look at Play of the Game, and we've got a whole bunch of data on Play of the Games are actually happening out there in the wild, and we can kind of see patterns about this character getting a lot of PoTG for these killstreaks, they're getting a lot of damage, or they're getting a Play of the Game for that.”
“We also have a lot of cool systems internally where we can play with the algorithm that determines Play of the Game and play the same game back again, and be like, “Okay if I tweak these numbers, what's going to be the Play of the Game that gets picked this time?”
So while Bastion and Hanzo might dominate play of the game from time to time with their ultimate moves, the balance could shift at any time based on any number of things.
KitGuru Says: I have seen some excellent Play of the Game videos while playing Overwatch but I have also seen some pretty disappointing, seemingly undeserved plays. At least Blizzard is constantly reviewing feedback and preparing to make changes as we go. How many of you are currently playing Overwatch?
It could work with simply most actions within time frame after time frame which extends from kills. Then we’d see those amazing performances very clearly I think, like fast paced assassination sprees.
Bring on more Junkrat defending rooms and spaces! I’ve seen some epic Play of the Game from this character!
I think that’s pretty close to what it does. Killing several people quickly gets most POTGs. The problem is that good plays are very reliant on a: context (what was going on before and after), and b) difficulty (which is very hard to measure). I don’t think the algorithm measures things like accuracy (getting a triple kill but only hitting 20% of shots vs. getting a triple kill with 80% accuracy) or range at which a play occurs, and it doesn’t seem to favor plays that wind up with a claimed objective or a successful defense while down teammates.
Think its right now just picking tightest window with most kills type of thing, like ultimate group kill + oneshot that last runner.
What “we” want to see is some solo struggle in crucial last moments by one player whos cleanly killing everyone one by one, right? 😀
It’s defiantly going on multiple kills in a short period of time or if that isn’t the case it’s rare you might see a mercy ult. Couple times It’s been environmental kills which make for funny ones but 99% are bastions sitting on points with high damage and high clearance.
Once in my time of playing and only once have a seen a junkrat play which was a quadra kill without his ult everything was timed well and he whole heartily deserved it.
One that annoys me is a someone getting potg with zyras ult because they are literally all immobile.
I’d like to see more game saving caps, like diving on the point knowing your going to die can be huge definitely add a higher factor in plays that are on the objective.