Hey, don’t remember that, it’s not fair! It’s obviously pros fault.
Nobody was raging on the forums when Symmetra became slightly useful during double barrier. And as for Junkrat, people on the forums were mostly happy with where he was before the grenade size nerf completely ruined him.
OWL is what’s keeping OW afloat in funds, attention and state.
Granted, tons of the things overwatch challenge is facing can be solved with faster and more aggressive balance patches which Blizz really needs to pump out.
However, if OWL fails, then there won’t be much of a future for OW. It’ll just lead OW to become TF2, OWL is needed in order to keep OW in a great state.
Not to mention if OWL does fail, the state of esports is gonna be worse. No one will take it seriously (Or at least, in the US or Europe side.), and it won’t be a viable career. OWL is the few that’s showing that being an esport player is a viable path.
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As a sidenote, the OWL didn’t ruined Junkrat. The pros was complaining mainly about his tire and they nerfed his mines which set him back, however, he was still in a much more manageable state.
What killed him, the 0.3 nerf hitbox, didn’t came from the OWL but from the lower SR rating players. That’s what got Junkrat in to his low period. The OWL had nothing to do with it.
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I don’t know man, as I recall I saw plenty of complaint threads about these characters being OP or broken (granted, what isn’t complained about here?). Youtubers in rank and file were churning out videos about these characters in a “next meta”, or that one time x character got used in the league, or how annoying it is to deal with. People get impressions from these types of community sources and influencers. For Junkrat, it was a long time ago, last I remember him being considerably strong was the double to triple mines and I don’t remember if it was in the same time frame but he also had the 140 damage that people whined about as well. And then yeah he got toned down to the form you mentioned.
A lot of that stuff was when the hero was really op, but then they got nerfed down to a balanced form. And then when that still didn’t kick them out of OWL, they sledgehammered.
I was getting nerfed regardless because double barrier was that powerful EVERYWHERE.
You’re making a false argument that it only got nerfed after the pros started using it, which while true, is only because patches come at such a slow rate by Blizzard. It’s not like they were buffing/nerfing other things and ignoring Orisa-Sigma until he hit OWL.
Well, orisa was very strong with hog, they didn’t react at all, and basically everybody was calling how double shield was gonna be, but it wasn’t that great (or considered that great) until pros showcased it.
What I think is also making metas so strong are ow youtubers who really give them a spot to shine and show how strong they are. But I still believe that ow devs are really trying to push owl to be a real esports. I also don’t think it’s the devs fault but more the fault of the activision blizz who are really trying to push owl on us and the ow devs don’t have another choce but to just listen and do what they’re forced to do.
They nerfed Orisa multiple times before Sigma released. She had her damage reduced, as well as Halt’s range and duration nerfed.
Orisa was a known issue before Sigma released, the balance team is just EXTREMELY slow to react with patches and balance changes.
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I don’t think thay nerfed the halt’s range, nor the damage during that time, her damage got nerfed after sigma was round for a while.
And how do you know it’s a source of funding, rather than a sinkhole? They’ve got a big budget with high production values, but they don’t seem to be getting the results they wanted out of OWL.
OWL is bad but not because it ruined Overwatch but instead due to poor management, damaging restrictions and Overwatch just not being a good esport title. Overwatch League has had a bunch of Pros leave despite only being less than 2 years old. When you have players and members regularly leaving then you have a problem. Especially when you have restrictions in place that hamper your ability to replace. Because of Blizzard’s top-down approach to Esports where they put all their resources into the Overwatch league while severely dampening community tournaments, they are severely hurting themselves in the long run.
Community tournaments are how you keep people engaged and to have a steady steam of new talent coming in. However, because of the many restrictions that Blizzard have placed on third party tournaments than Blizzard essentially has complete control over the game’s esport scene which never sat right with me.
When you take into account the accusation of OWL’s viewership being artificially inflated due to tokens and embed streams than it makes wonder just how low the actual viewers really are?
Finally, the game itself just has too much visual noise to be an esport. Seriously, how does it watch and understand what’s going on?
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Overwatch won’t become TF2 because TF2 is a very well designed game and is consistently one of the top 10 most played games on Steam even without new content for 3 years. Overwatch will likely be nowhere near as successful as TF2 and would have to be put on the same life support system HoTS is on.
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That’s just not true and I wish this obnoxious conspiracy theory would die out. No, OWL players don’t want certain heroes nerfed/buffed because it’ll boost ratings or because they want their favorite hero to be meta. They call for balance changes because they play the game for 16 hours a day and get sick of having to abuse the same 6 strongest heroes for months on end.
What updates? Surly, you’re not referring to the sequel that’s supposed to come out late this year or early next year?
8 months between new hero releases… with Echo being the last one until OW2.
The last map was released 4 days short of a full YEAR ago.
The usual asanine balance/throwing literally every tank except for Rein into the dumpster… then telling us, they’ll balance faster and then they don’t.
So. To what updates are you referring to? And don’t tell me “skins” - that’s how they monetize the game. It’s cosmetic, and not real content.
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Only mentioned it because its in their twitter bio. I’ve been tracking the ow pro scene for years and it is this bad right now.
No, Sombra’s current state is directly influenced by the pros. When she was reworked in February 2018, she was actually viable for 2 weeks. 2 weeks with a 2.5% pickrate and a 50% winrate, that was dropping by the end of those 2 weeks. She did have a problem with hacking around corners and through barriers because the Devs left a safety net designed for .8s hack on the .65s hack. Tank players on the forums complained, but more importantly OWL pros complained. This is documented.
So instead of adding a PTR patch with the bug fix, like Blizzard did with big bugs like this previously, they added a hotfix that introduced a brand new system to be Sombra’s safety net. A new system, untested and buggy, which dumpstered Sombra. The reason for this was because OWL players didn’t want to play against a Sombra who could do anything in the midfight, and a PTR patch for the bug fix would have taken too long.
This resulted in Sombra being UNPLAYABLE for months. Her bugs were documented here A list of Sombra's Many, Many Bugs (6), Now with more LOS Bugs!.
Later on, Sombra got another rework to Stealth and translocator, making both infinite with some more nerfs. This increased Sombra’s .4% pickrate at the time to a .7% pickrate. Still had an awful winrate. The devs said they had some changes coming to make her a little better.
Contenders roll around, and they run Sombra. Her most successful usage was as a security camera, to learn what the enemy team were running when the match began. But she was picked, even if she had a negative winrate on the ladder and in Contenders play. This caused the incoming changes to be canceled, and this was in August or September of 2018. She has remained awful since then.
Sombra’s balance in the last 2 years has been determined by the pro players, not by the playerbase, not by statistics. Look where it’s gotten her.
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I said this on another thread, if OWL dies out, don’t expect blizz to just sit there with their arms crossed, they probably have alternative plans to fund the game, the one that comes to mind first is simply paywalling skins, we all know the issues that loot boxes have arise as of late, changing to a paid skins model wouldn’t be too crazy and it would give them similar money to that of OWL as long as they keep them skins coming
I hate to draw this comparison but the Mercy breast cancer skin raised a LOT of money and yes there were people who wanted to donate but there were certainly people who just wanted the skin, those are hefty cows with a ton of milk that could become potential customers if skins were simply sold
Blizz will never lose money on one of their games
Not every one is like that I rly like owl. Even I never watch it. And competitive
What about the 40/50/60 million players who paid for the game?
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