Do we want tags for specific heroes or roles in Overwatch?

Question

As per Should we allow tags for a specific class in RPG games?, we consider adding sub-tags for games on a case-by-case basis.

Some of the games we have done this for include Team Fortress 2, Diablo 3 and Starcraft. This is because they feature heroes / classes / characters / races / whatever that differ in style and gameplay from one another. In fact, they differ so much that:

• Someone who is a good tf2-soldier might not be a good tf2-spy and only wants to browse tf2-soldier questions to provide answers
• A Diablo player might want to look at specific questions to improve their diablo-3-monk whilst avoiding diablo-3-barbarian questions
• An expert zerg player might want to browse all Zerg questions whilst avoiding all terran or protoss questions.

Overwatch is no different in that regard, with many of it's heroes already having gameplay & ability-based questions here on Arqade. But are there too many heroes to justify hero-based tags? An alternative raised by Dragonrage is to have sub tags specific to the classes/roles these heroes are broken into. The roles are how Blizzard has defined them, they play a large part in organising team composition, and are how players define their gameplay style or their place on the team.

So, Do we want to have hero or role specific tags for Overwatch?.

If so, here are a few examples of tags that would be created:

Either Hero-based:

• overwatch-mercy
• overwatch-roadhog
• overwatch-winston
• overwatch-soldier-76

or Role-Based

• overwatch-offense
• overwatch-defense
• overwatch-tank
• overwatch-support

And just so we're clear: all Overwatch questions would still have the overwatch tag. As an example, questions about the hero Mercy would be tagged [ overwatchoverwatch-mercy ] (or [ overwatchoverwatch-support ] in the case of the role-based tags)

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At camelCase's request, here is the current question breakdown, updated as of 3rd June 2016. I have also separated the heroes into classes as per the conversation on Dragonrage's answer:

140/140 Total Questions

58/140 Character specific questions (41.4%)

(down 0.5% from last count)

8/140 Offense (5.7%)

• Genjii x 2
• Mcree x 2
• Soldier 76 x 3
• Tracer x 1

16/140 Defense (11.4%)

• Bastion x 1
• Hanzo x 2
• Junkrat x 3
• Mei x 3
• Torbjorn x 6
• Widowmaker x 1

15/140 Tank (10.7%)

• D.Va x 1
• Reinhardt x 8
• Roadhog x 2
• Winston x 1
• Zarya x 3

19/140 Support (13.5%)

• Mercy x 7
• Lucio x 4
• Symmetra x 6
• Zenyatta x 2

_{Note that numbers may be slightly off as I was counting new questions only as of last count on May 25th 2016}

Answer 1

Firstly, I don't know the game. I know Team Fortress 2 and Starcraft 2, and can see how the sub-group tags are useful for these games. Overwatch has heroes, and there is a case for questions being specific to some, if not each, of these heroes.

According to the current opinion on this matter, there is a consensus somewhere between "no" and "not yet". As I have already stated, I have no experience in this game so cannot really challenge this. It appears that there may be some truth in that the heroes are not as diverse as the classes in Team Fortress 2, or the races in Starcraft 2.

However, I would say that we should break away from "well, if Game A has sub-tags, then this game should have sub-tags" mentality. If Overwatch follows a trend whereby a significant number of questions are concerning specific heroes, then we should seriously consider sub-tags. This will in turn allow experts in specific heroes to watch for questions regarding the heroes for which they excel (and of course, ignore the heroes they do not know). It also allows for a specialised categorising system as opposed to lumping all questions into one large group.

In fact, this should go for any game. We already do this where clear expertise develops for a game. Minecraft has many specific tags (commands, redstone etc all being fields of expertise).

Robotnik has provided a sum of the questions that would potentially use hero specific tags. 31/76 questions are about specific heroes (42%). I believe there are early signs for using hero-specific tags, but it is too early to say for certain. We need more questions to really say if this would be useful. The highest number of questions for any given hero is currently 5, and I don't think that warrants an independent tag. zerg has 121 and tf2-spy has 40, for example.

I'm sure the questions will continue to come in quickly over the next couple of weeks. We should monitor the questions per heroes. Once we have a bigger sample we can make a better decision.

Answer 2

I personally believe that, until Overwatch heroes get more depth in terms of gameplay, specific hero tags are completely unneeded for now.

In TF2, needing class tags were obvious. Besides the basic abilities for all of the classes, the different weapons allowed for greater customization and greater gameplay depth. In OW, there is nothing to change the gameplay. What you get is what you get, the kits stay the same no matter what skin you pick, and there is no weapon swapping unlike TF2 and other class based games.

Answer 3

No, and here's why.

It establishes precedent.

I know I'm arguing the consequent, but if we let Overwatch heroes have their own tags, there's no reason not to allow every LoL and DotA champion their own tag. Not that Overwatch is a MOBA, but the idea is generally the same. Whereas each character in TF2 had a fairly unique playstyle, the Overwatch heros can be broadly lumped together into categories, much the same way the rolls of the two big MOBAs are. TF2 and Overwatch are comparable, yes, but the class/hero/character/what-have-you systems may be their biggest differences.

The usage cases are vanishingly small.

I just think any questions utilizing the tags would either be too broad to use them correctly, or too narrow for the scope of the site. Unless I’ve COMPLETELY misinterpreted something, we aren’t a FAQ or guide site. We answer specific questions as they arise, not teach people how to play. So if someone wants to know how to play Mercy in general terms, this isn’t the site for that. I can’t fathom there will be enough questions that aren’t candidates for ‘too broad’ closure to justify having a tag for each hero. Each “class”, maybe, but not each character. They’d be limited to things like “What is the range/damage/cooldown/AoE of [ability]?”

The only other thing I can think of are “How do I deal with X as Y?” which just aren’t good questions IMO. MAYBE lore questions, but they fit better under the main Overwatch tag anyway, because an expert on Roadhog’s mechanics isn’t necessarily an expert on Roadhog’s lore.

TF2 and Diablo are false comparisons.

Now yes, if someone who had never played Overwatch before asked me if the game was like TF2, I’d say yes. But the biggest thing to remember is the only choice an Overwatch player makes about his/her character is who they’re playing. There are no alternative load outs, no different weapons, no global passives that effect gameplay. You can choose cosmetics, but that’s where the choice ends. Every game, every Reaper is exactly the same.

Contrast that with TF2, which has an assortment of weapon load outs for each class, opening up a ton of valid questions about how to decide which to choose, when, and why.

Ditto Diablo III (which I contend should NOT have class tags), where your character has over 20 skills with 5 runes each to choose from, along with a mountain of possible weapon and gear choices, a double handful of legendary gems, and that’s all before you consider how to play any given build, or deal with any of the dozens of monster types. If anything, class tags are so broad they’re practically useless in regards to Diablo. Despite what the rose-tinted glasses-wearing D2 fans would have us believe, any two given Monks are likely very different (certainly more different than any two WoW monks with the same spec.)

And race tags from an RTS? Please. Reinhardt has 5 abilities total. How many different units are the Zerg up to now? Do we have a SC2-zerg-roach tag? Does anyone seriously think we should? Overwatch heroes somewhere fall in between, but they’re closer to the single unit tag than they are to the race tag.

The explicit comparisons aren’t seeing much use

And even if we went to the trouble of making and using the tags, the comparisons put forth aren’t seeing much use. Diablo has 2529 questions at writing. Wizard is the top class tag at 110. Total class tag question are 428, so almost 85% of the Diablo questions aren’t tagged with a specific class, in a game where the class fundamentally defines how you play. TF2 has 772 question, with spy as the top class with 38. Total class tags are 165, (most classes have less than 15 questions), for ~80% questions going without class tags.

So no, I don’t think we should have specific hero tags for Overwatch. It could potentially open the floodgates, they form a disproportionately small number of questions in the games that can be most closely compared to them, which aren’t stellar comparisons in the first place, and there’s no reason to suspect they’ll see greater use in this game. There is, in fact, reason to believe the contrary.

Answer 4

I think having tags for each hero is a little much, especially since a number have similar roles and play styles, also there is currently 21 heroes with more to possibly come. 22 tags for a single game seems a little much (Minecraft has 36, but Minecraft is a beast of its own). I propose instead of this to have tags for each class of hero instead, which would be as following:
overwatch-offense
overwatch-defense
overwatch-tank
overwatch-support
or some variation of that. This way we have a way of distinguishing heroes by role which would help with sorting/searching for anyone looking for tips for a specific role as heroes within roles have quite a number of similarities, but are still pretty different compared to other heroes from a different role.

This seems to me like a good compromise to either having/not having hero specific tags.

Answer 5

People are starting to ask a lot more character specific questions. I see no problem with this.