In a recent interview with Lex Fridman, former Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan shared his regrets about the game that defined the gold standard for hero shooters. He bluntly stated that if a hero shooting game was re-developed today, he would weaken the team element and place more emphasis on individual contribution, because players are essentially "selfish."
Kaplan believes that "Overwatch" places too much emphasis on teamwork, ultimate skill linkage, and lineup composition. Although this was the right choice at the time, it also brought about a problem: the outcome of the game is often determined by the worst player in the team, rather than the best player. When there is a "lone wolf" in the team who refuses to change heroes for the benefit of the team, or an incompetent tank or healer, the entire team experience can become very frustrating.
He explained that in order to cover up this problem and strengthen the sense of teamwork, the individual data display was even deliberately weakened in the early stages of the game, and the traditional scoreboard was replaced with a "medal system". But in Kaplan's view, this system was not successful "because the losing team could also get the medal, and the losing team would use it to attack their teammates."
Kaplan made it clear that his regret was not a denial of Overwatch's achievements, but rather an observation about human nature. He said: "If I were to redo it today, or give advice to any hero shooter game maker, I would suggest actually weakening the team factor and focusing more on individual contribution. Because that's how players play, they are very 'selfish'. I don't say this in a derogatory sense, it's just the uncontrollable nature of human beings."
He believes that later developers could use this hindsight to avoid this "trap" in the first place. Interestingly, this point of view he mentioned may also explain why "Overwatch" itself later shifted to a 5v5 mode, which did alleviate the absolute impact of a single player on the team to a certain extent.