why are you bringing up Rust? Every multiplayer game is different. People go into a survival game expecting different things from a character-focused shooter. For a character focused shooter, people want appealing characters. This isn't hard.
I'm bringing up Rust, as well as a bunch of other uber successful PvP games to illustrate the point that character design doesn't matter at nearly the degree for PvP gamers as it does to single player gamers. PUBG is another good example of a PvP game taking off with generic, aesthetically displeasing characters.
When I play basketball, I don't care what shoes I'm wearing. I don't care what shoes my opponent is wearing. All I care about is strategy and positioning and strengths vs weaknesses. It's the PvP mechanic oriented mindset.
I've been banned from threads at the almighty NeoGAF for being too "anti woke". I can't stand that stuff. My most played characters are tank Lizzo, a gender confused alien, and Daw, a male that I thought was a woman during the lead up to the beta.
I don't play with these characters because I've cooled on wokeness. I play these characters because I feel like I'm most effective with them. I never think about the characters identity during gameplay only what strategic abilities that can help my team win.
Overwatch came out at the same time as Battleborn. Battleborn also would have felt fresh compared to TF2. HHow did it do? OW's characters were a HUGE part of the game's initial success.
It wasn't. Battleborne failed because it wasn't fun to play. It had nothing to do with the characte design. Overwatch succeeded because Blizzard made a game that feels great to play. I've heard this repeatedly echoed in the media this week and it's just flat out wrong. The media is SP oriented. Blizzard leveraged the medias SP orientation to spread the word about Overwatch. PvP gamers heard the word and tried the game out.
The hidden stories, the wide variety, the coomshit for the degenerates, it all played a factor. Unfortunately, it's virtally impossible to find anything on the internet older than 6 months, but here is one example of an article talking about the characters and how they were made.
Overwatches characters are so important they force you to look up their stories on YouTube rather than in the client. PvP players don't care about story because "WE" are playing the game. Multiplayer is our story, not DVAs or Winston's or Reinhardt.
This is going to sound mean, and I'm not trying to sound mean, but you don't seem to have a good grasp on why people play these games and how people behave. Gameplay is one factor, but not the only factor. People go into different games with different expectations. Im not even convinced you necessarily need good gameplay (Again, Modern Warfare 2 sucked ass).
I'm more likely to take your word on things pertaining to single player.
Multiplayer is my zone.