Lucioball came seemingly from out of nowhere. Blizzard pushed an update to Overwatch today that not only added a ton of new cosmetics available for a limited time, but a brand new game mode called Lucioball. For those who are uninitiated Lucioball is very different from all of the other brawls and game modes Blizzard has created in Overwatch. It’s a mode that basically recreates first person Rocket League where the only character available to players is of course Lucio. The object of the game is to score as many goals as possible in a short time frame. The teams are small, only sporting three players each, and requires basic understandings of futbol strategy.
Like Rocket League the rules are easy to grasp, you don’t need to know what all the characters abilities are, or how they chain together. You don’t need to understand the complexities of the competitive meta to know why switching characters is a big deal in the middle of a game. Lucioball just is.
I’m not only writing this as a breakdown of just why Lucioball is fun and quaint, but why Blizzard should seriously consider keeping it around in the game forever. Much like previous games in the FPS genre, Overwatch’s developers toy with the games mechanics in order to create fun new modes. Fans of Halo will know the name Griffball, originally a fan created game mode later embraced by Bungie and its current caretakers 343 Industries. Griffball is not only a fan favorite game mode, it’s actually home to it’s own tournaments and community. Griffball is an excellent example of how a game played at a high competitive level can have multiple modes of play. Even the game most similar to Lucioball, Rocket League, has multiple modes of play, and more are being added by the developers all the time.
I don’t expect Lucioball to be as big as the normal Overwatch experience, or even as widely watched, but there is something special about having a more accessible and fun game mode to break up the monotony. Tournaments could run smaller side tournaments where, in between matches, organizers could run a smaller Lucioball tournament. In a way it breaks up the formula of watching normal Overwatch, gives people who are still learning Overwatch a nice entry point and gives something for more versed players to have fun with.
Blizzard please, don’t get rid of lucioball, don’t time gate it, don’t only bring it back for events, leave it in the game. I guarantee that if you left it in there, multiple communities and tournaments would crop up around it. Lucioball could be a great thing for this community, don’t drop the ball.
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