There are plenty of things that digital sports and traditional sports have in common, but nothing is easier to relate between the two than stats nerds. If you talk to any fan of any sport, either they are or they know a stat nerd. Esports is no different.
Unlike esports like League of Legends and plain stat games, Overwatch has been something that fans have been trying to get more used to. Who is doing what, and to what extent when it comes to the bigger picture? It’s kind of hard to tell.
Well, yesterday Blizzard and the Overwatch League revealed their traditional “Player Impact Rating” that has been honed and tweaked to best represent a single player’s impact to their given team over the course of their matches.
“Impact Points are produced by applying individual weights to a suite of statistics that heroes generate in teamfights. Overwatch is an objective-based game, but final blows and deaths are the currency that teams spend to achieve those objectives, so the stats I’ve used are centered around final blows and the things teams do to accumulate or prevent them. The list includes—but is not limited to—raw damage and healing, crowd-control abilities like hacks or hooks, and even teamfight-winning plays like ult negation,” reads the Overwatch League blog.
It works a lot like a Quarterback Rating, for those American Football fans out there. The stats team takes into consideration a whole mountain of stats, and comes to a sincere and reflective single number that represents all of those things.
Top 10 by Player Impact Rating
*after three complete stages in 2019*
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While not many statistics--especially ones like the Player Impact Rating--are more or less large vague impressions based on hero stats, it’s nice to be able to look at a list and figure out which players are the biggest impact on their games.
Should the Overwatch League double down on something like OWL fantasy, we’d wager that Player Impact Rating will play a huge part in the assessment of players and their worth. Overwatch is, much to the chagrin of my solo-queue party, a team-based game. So, take Player Impact Ratings in stride, because this is an impact ranking relying completely on individual performance.
For more on the league news, results, or events, bookmark our OWL hub.
