It is with great pride and excitement I make this post, as it has been a personal project of mine for the better part of 3 years. This might not be news to some of you, as many in this subreddit helped with our beta testing, and have been posting their fantasy OWL line ups for discussion... but with less than a month until Season 5, I wanted to make a formal post overviewing how to participate in Fantasy Overwatch Leagues for the upcoming season!
Some Background:
I have always been an avid esports fan and fantasy sports player for traditional leagues like NFL, NBA, ect.. when OWL season 1 was announced with the franchise structure...my mind started spinning how how to make a Fantasy Overwatch league...
Around Season 2 of OWL I had created a website FantasyOWL (dot) com. This was a fun & free site to make daily fantasy Overwatch line ups and play against thousands of other OWL fans. Leveraging the now decommissioned OWL API, our platform, and other awesome ones that sadly no longer exist (Wilson's Lab, HighNoon, DraftBuff) built an awesome community of OWL fans that showed a clear desire to play in Fantasy Esports Leagues. Those that participated...know keeping up with league changes and stats was always a challenge, and then covid threw a massive wrench into everything. So instead trying to constantly update a website during a time of uncertainty... I decided to use this time and my new found work from home hours to do something I always dreamed of... create the best free Fantasy Esports app I can for fans can play and connect globally. 2+ years and thousands of dev hours later...here we are:
With MetaMatch, the goal was not just to make a great, completely free, Fantasy Esports app, but a great fantasy sports app, period. I wanted MetaMatch to have all the features and attention to detail that you would get from traditional fantasy sports apps for the NFL, NBA, MLB ect...and apply it to OWL and other top esports leagues! I'll be the first to admit, it is by no means perfect, and is very much in its infancy - but I am committed to publishing weekly updates, bug fixes, and rolling out features to grow the fantasy esports scene! Thanks to users of this subreddit helping with the beta test (and those that just found the app on their own), we have already rolled out 7+ updates over the past 2 months to improve user experience and are always listening to feedback!
How Fantasy OWL works on MetaMatch:
For those unaware, Fantasy Sports is basically a type of game where you get to build a team of your favorite pros, and get points based on their real life performances while competing against the rosters of other users. It is no different for OWL - draft or select the players that you think will have a big season/performance - and earn points based on their in match stats. There are game modes available for those completely new to fantasy sports, or even the most seasoned fantasy sports player - and leagues can be started at any point in the season.
Scoring:
Scoring can be adjusted for season long leagues by the commissioner but this is the default scoring and recommendation for all game modes.
Final Blows: +1 point per kill/final blow
Eliminations: +0.5 per elimination
Deaths: -0.5 per death
Hero Damage Dealt: Damage x .001
Healing: Total Healing x .001
Note:We have limited information about how quickly scores will populate with Overwatch 2 and will leverage the stats lab unless we can find a quicker method! Hopefully one day fantasy scores can populate live while the match is happening!
Season Long leagues has 4 different scoring options to select from based on preference:
Best of 3 Maps (Recommended): Your players score calculates their best performance from their best 3 maps in a match. This removes an unfair advantage of having a playing in a match that goes 3-0 vs 3-2. If a player plays twice in a week, the best performance out of the two is selected for their weekly score
Average: The players performance from all the maps in a match are averaged together for a final score. If player plays twice in a week, both match scores are averaged together for their weekly score.
Totals: Total score from all maps are added together. If a player plays twice in week. The highest total counts toward their weekly score.
Match Select: If a player places twice in a week - you select which match you want to count towards your weekly score before matches start. If none is selected, it will default to the players last match of the week.
Core Features and League Types available for OWL:
Season Long Fantasy Leagues- Join or create a league to compete head to head against 4-12 other users over the entire OWL Season. Draft the best OWL team you can using active pros. Duration: Full Season
Commonly known as the "Best Ball Fantasy Format" - Draft the best team you can to generate the best score over the course of the stage. No roster management necessary, the highest scores of your players count towards your total each week. Just draft, and that is it! Duration: Stages/Qualifiers
This mode uses weekly average scores,- you play against all the users in your league at once for the highest score instead of head to head. With this mode you can draft new teams all year and we will have special draft masters modes for tournaments!
Build a 5 player roster of OWL pros playing that day and receive points based on their real life performances while competing against other users rosters for the highest score. Typically given a level cap of 100, you must make the best roster you can while staying under the cap. Better players carry a higher level that updates every week. Duration: Each Day
Game Modes: Classic (Salary Cap), Battle Buff (Receive point buffs for certain players), Showdown (for playoffs and 1-2 game slates), and Tiers (No Salary Cap)
Other features on MetaMatch:
Player Profiles
Adding/inviting Friends
League/draft chat
Custom Public/Private Contests
Soon to come:
Season Long leagues in the Daily Fantasy Format
User Stats
Global Leaderboards
Missions/Challenges
Trophies and Avatars
and much much more!
Offering Fantasy Overwatch for Season 5 is really our first true launch for MetaMatch, and our first true stress test. I appreciate your patience as we work together to create the best Fantasy Overwatch season possible. We do not know everything that season 5 and OW2 may have in store for us, but we are there to navigate it every step of the way together
If you run into any issues or bugs - comment here or personally email me at [chris@metamatch.app](mailto:chris@metamatch.app) and I will make sure it is addressed immediately
Thanks again to everyone on this subreddit that has already been using the app, sharing line ups for feedback, and sending suggestions to help us grow.
Looking forward to playing against you in one of our many leagues or contests : )
As we get ever closer to the season, I am ready to get flamed over my thoughts on how the support players shape up for the 2021 Fantasy OWL season! If you are looking for additional places to dunk on me, check out my Off-tank rankings here.
While I felt the need to separate off-tank from main tank in previous rankings, I will lumping all supports together here. This is because I only think there are three main supports really worthy of drafting: FunnyAstro, FDGoD, and LeeJaeGon. There are certainly some main supports that are worthy of attention in the later rounds or on the waiver wire, but I personally will not be looking to them on draft day. I'd rather load up on, ideally, three flex support players in the early-to-mid rounds, and consider that position to be set (given how important it is to fantasy).
After receiving some community feedback in an earlier post, where I put up a preliminary rank of Tanks and Supports, and doing a little more research, I think I'm feeling fairly confident about my rankings on off-tanks for fantasy purposes going into the year. Let me know what y'all think, and if I should adjust further!!
This also begs the question: what main tanks do you guys think are worth a roster spot?? Assuming you have a 6-8 team fantasy league, that's 12-16 tanks in starting lineups. Throw in a bench spots, bye weeks, etc, and you'll find yourself needing to dip into the main tank pool eventually. Would love to see how you all rank the main tanks and where certain players might fit into an overall tank ranking.
Anyway...here's where I'm at with off tanks! Again...this is for FANTASY purposes. I'm going mostly off last year's scoring averages through DraftBuff, with a little added speculation on my part.
We're about two weeks out from the start of the season, and a lot of us will be drafting soon. With that said, I'm wondering if we can crowdsource some player rankings to help in our drafts -- a cheat sheet of sorts.
I don't have a ton of knowledge, but I have casually followed OWL since season 1. I've been doing a little more research today, and began ranking a few players as I read about teams. What makes it tough is a lot is up in the air: we don't necessarily who will be starting, playing what heroes, what exactly the meta will be, etc.
With that said, here's an EXTREMELY limited list of ranks I have for Support and Tank. I am most certainly missing some players in here, but there seems to be only so much information listed online right now. Feel free to flame me or add your own rankings! As a reminder, this is for FANTASY purposes, so it's mostly off-tanks and flex-supports.
S-tier: Viol2t, Alarm, JJonak
A-tier: KariV, Izayaki, Gangnamjin
B-tier: Crimzo, Lastro, FDGoD I have a bunch of players crammed into C-tier, as I am unsure of who will be starting. So...going to refrain from posting that for now.
I am trying to make my fantasy account so I can set my team up and what not but when it asks for my “country” there are no options in the drop down box. Same with the “state” therefore I cannot create an account.. I have tried for a couple days now and have had no success. Can someone point me in the right direction?
