'Overwatch' deathmatch was a mistake

Overwatch was not made for deathmatch. It's a fact made immediately apparent by the game's new free-for-all mode.

Overwatch recently added two new deathmatch modes to the public test region (coming soon to all platforms): team deathmatch and free-for-all (FFA) deathmatch. Both game modes are a race to get to a certain amount of kills, except team deathmatch is a 4v4 team effort and FFA pits eight individuals against each other in one small space.

Free-for-all deathmatch doesn't work in Overwatch. It's a mess, and renders half the heroes in the game useless.

Do you like tank characters? Useless.

Do you like defensive characters? Mostly useless.

Are you not very good with characters who excel in close quarters? You'll be useless.

Overwatch excels because there's a different hero for different play preferences. FFA deathmatch abandons that ethos in Overwatch, forcing players to pick primarily offensive heroes if they want to win.

Overwatch is meant to be tactical, with players using their respective abilities in conjunction with one other to get an advantage over enemies. FFA deathmatch throws that all aside. It favors players who are good at constantly jumping and shooting people at close-to-medium distances.

In my time with FFA deathmatch, I only saw three characters ever win matches: Doomfist, Genji, and Reaper. Doomfist and Genji are both extremely mobile and hard to hit, and can deal quite a lot of damage quickly. Reaper is great at taking people out up close and getting out of sticky situations with Wraith Form.

Normal Overwatch matches have medium-to-long-range characters take care of these enemies from a distance, but the tight quarters of the new map, Château Guillard, force people to play in closer proximity of each other. Even if you do find a perch to snipe enemies from in FFA, an enemy could spawn behind you and take you out up close.

Team deathmatch at least makes it useful to have a healer and a tank in some situations. One of the toughest teams I went up against was an Orisa, a Bastion, a Mercy, and a Symmetra.

Meanwhile, I tried every different character in FFA and only found success with McCree, Reaper, and Doomfist (admittedly, I'm just not very good with Genji).

I watched Reinhardts get destroyed as they spun around with their shields up while half-a-dozen enemies attacked from different angles. Anas were decimated. Pharahs were shot out of the sky as soon as they started launching rockets. Torbjörns fruitlessly set up turrets that people easily avoided. Hanzos shot arrows at Doomfists and Genjis that came crashing in with death blows.

FFA deathmatch takes everything that's good about Overwatch and squashes it, pounds it into dust, and throws it out the window.