On May 24, 2016, Blizzard released Overwatch. Today it has over 30 million players. Dozens of questions, comments, and patches have come and go. Plenty of time has passed for people to decide their favorites.
There are some picks that might seem more obvious: things like Mercy and Reaper. But what about the newer heroes that have come out, or the ones that are talked about less?
To get a "bigger picture," eight heroes were chosen for comparison: Mercy, Soldier: 76, Hanzo, Mei, Roadhog, Zenyatta, Doomfist and Sombra (pictured above). At least one hero from each category was selected.
Image: Global Hero Popularity in "Quick Play" Mode.
Image: Global Hero Popularity in Competitive Mode.
Healers such as Mercy and Zenyatta maintain fairly consistent pick rates from casual to competitive game play. This is because most teams will have at least one healer. Shane Bennett, age 16, prefers Mercy himself. Lucio and Ana (also healers) are favorites as well, according to Jack Saban, 21, and Devon Burton, 23.
The next category of heroes that seems to have a higher popularity are the consistent ones. Heroes that work in most situations, on most maps, and don't have a particularly high skill cap. Jerry Osberg, 20, favors Soldier: 76. This hero often reminds players of a character that is typically seen in shooting games. When asked what he considered to be his least favorite character, he answered Widowmaker- a sniper with a high skill cap that can take players much more time to master.
According to the data, the heroes that struggle tend to have the high skill cap, or are less versatile across the board. Doomfist who was released on July 27, 2017, is a perfect example. As shown above, his popularity is fairly low in both casual and competitive settings. Because of his novel nature, compacted with the fact that Doomfist is essentially a fighter in a shooting game, he is a more difficult hero to master. As a result, his popularity rate is much lower, making his win rate appear much higher, as shown below.
Image: Hero Win Rate in "Quick Play" Mode.
So, what do Overwatch players want?
According to the data, players want consistent heroes, that won't take them weeks to learn, that also possess the versatility to be useful/effective on multiple types of maps with multiple types of team compositions.
More data sets for all the heroes of Overwatch can be found here.
A quick thank you to Zac Spaulding, Devon Burton, Jack Saban, Shane Bennett, Ryan Green, Michael Coppock, and Jerry Osberg. These fine gentlemen (and gamers) allowed me to interview them on their opinions about the heroes of the game.