📋 A Manuscript of Changes I want to see added to Improve the Overall Health of the Game and it's Community

[TheoneSombra-1311]

I don’t like any of the Sombra changes but the Mercy changes are very nice👍

[DrClan-1789]

I actually disagree with more stuff than I agree on here, but well written post.

[TheoneSombra-1311]

I agree with a lot of this stuff except for 2.

[Terotrous-1397]

A couple specific points:

For assists, obviously your damage ranges don’t work. If you need to do 100 damage to a 200hp character to get an assist, then getting an assist is impossible unless you both do exactly 100 damage.

Also, this doesn’t properly reward good play. The most important thing in Overwatch is killing characters dead. Any character that isn’t dead will be quickly healed to full, which suggests that final blows are very important here. If I do 190 damage to a 200hp hero, then die, I will happily give assist credit to a teammate who finishes that character off, because I know all of my work is moot otherwise. The current system is not perfect in this regard but it does better than your suggestion.

Also, just in general, I think this change is pointless once we have a proper scoreboard. The only possible exception in Genji, but if you really think Genji’s dash reset is so problematic we should probably just remove it entirely and reduce the CD on the move to compensate.

Also, while I do think some kind of scoreboard is very needed, the implementation you’ve suggested heavily punishes switching. If I was just Brigitte and I switched to Mercy, it’ll look like I have way too many elims / damage and not enough healing, which will cause people to say “oh great it’s a stupid battle mercy”. You might be able to fix this by showing only the stats over the last couple minutes or so, but then this doesn’t give the full picture. This one is tricky. I kind of wonder if a revamp / improvement to the fire system so that being on fire very consistently represents playing well is the answer.

I also think the hero changes are almost entirely nonsense, there’s far too many big changes for a game that is currently mostly balanced, we’ve already seen how tiny tweaks like having soldier do 1 more damage per bullet can have a huge impact, if changes are needed they are likely to be minor.

[Gray-12411]

Put your foot down on One Tricking.

They already have. They explicitly said it’s not bannable, but that you should try more heroes. (they still said its not bannable.)

[SoonMoon-11287]

• Blinks:
  • .7s CD between uses.
• Recall:
  • CD decreased to 10s from 12s.

While Tracer is in a weird spot due to Brig, many fear she will become unstoppable again. I feel she is in an overall balanced spot, however one huge problem with her is that she can consistently outplay her counters for minimal effort. This is why I want to target double blinking, as this means she can’t bait out CC that would otherwise kill her, but she can still play around it. Since her primary way of baiting attacks is being nerfed, I feel lowering recall CD gives her more sustain as well as a better chance of escaping if the enemy messes up their attempts of countering her.

No. The entire point of Tracer is to be a duelist. Tracers who can use double blink to trick their enemies are good Tracers. Not everyone is just gonna do that. Changing her blinks like that would make them feel like Reapers teleport. Slow and clunky, even though they’re supposed to be fast. The only thing Tracer needs is, Armor doesn’t effect her as heavily. Same with Reaper.

[TheFaceOfBoe-11866]

Assists in this game are… flawed. Genji can get his dash reset by simply grazing an enemy, meanwhile people are making memes out of Moira having gold elims when simple she is just tickling the enemy to recharge her healing, and an ally does more damage while then kills the enemy.

Are you sure you edited this?

[Nandalee-2753]

Guardian Angel:

• CD increased from 2s to 3s.

Overall your Mercy changes seem solid but this doubles her CD for GA. The current one is at 1,5 seconds and doubling that is very harsh for Mercy. Otherwise nice and detailed thread you made.

[Kaedi-11739]

Dang this list is huge… oh well, here are my counter-arguments to your points.

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@BastionBabǝ-1672

1-A: An ult autobalance system to prevent steamrolls.

Far too often do I see steamrolls where the team that is performing better will have access to their ults faster than the enemy team. Takes a WHOLE LOT of counterplay OUT of the game.

That’s why I strongly suggest adding an autobalance system for ults, but is not the sole factor behind ult charge (in other words, performance based ult gain will not be taken away).

I haven’t settled on a definitive solution, but essentially a way that the NanoBlade that keeps wiping you would eventually have Trance, or other counterplay ults activate when Genji gets his blade. This makes steamrolling much harder, and I feel is necessary since Ults should not be the biggest thing that changes the outcome of the game.

The one problem with such a proposal is that it can be debated if such an auto-balance system is considered fair. Tell me, have you ever watched the game show Family Feud? In that show two teams of 5 work to guess popular answers to a survey question in a series of rounds earning points based on how many people out of 100 surveyed answered each question. First team to score 300 points wins and goes onto the bonus round. Now in the first two rounds, point values are at face value so in most cases, a team earns 50 to 70 points if they win that round. Third round, points are at double value, so a team could earn as much as 150 points. Fourth round, points are triple. I have seen way too many episodes where one team will win rounds 1 through 3, and just be a few points below the 300 mark, then team 2 wins the fourth round, which in a sense ties up the score, and then the game goes on to a sudden death round, where if team 2 wins, they will beat the first team who won the first three rounds by only winning two. It doesn’t make a very fair game in my opinion.

Now that analogy is a little stretched, but I think your proposal would have serious repercussions in a similar manner. Overwatch in its current state is a game can snowball quite easily, but regardless of ultimate economy, any team fight can go either way and can begin a reverse snowball. I have had many games where I have salvaged out of really bad situations, and I have had many games where my team loses after banking a 6+ minute time bank on a starting round. In reality, I do not see a need for this proposal, and if the “winning” team is maintaining the ultimate advantage, then I see that as fairly earned. The team at the disadvantage needs to prove themselves by finding ways to force the other team to squander their ultimate advantage.

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@BastionBabǝ-1672

1-B: Pick/ban system above 3000 SR

If Diamond is the start of SR decay, then that should be the entry level for a pick/ban system.

While a pick/ban system won’t stop any meta, Goats meta, or future metas, it provides enough room to wiggle around the must-picks, and promotes variety for what top-tier plays AS and AGAINST . This neglecting to switch up playstyles is why Pirate Ship is so strong in lower ranks, where it rarely gets played, but when it does no one has enough practice to stop it, and thus it feels oppressive.

This is how I would want the pick-ban system to work:

• Pick/ban only applies to 3050+ team SR matches.
  • Both teams have to be above 3050 for the banning to take effect.
  • Diamonds below 3050 will be matched with other 3050-sub players and plats.
  • Diamonds at and above 3050 will be matched with other players above 3050.
• Pick/ban phase lasts 40 seconds (same at setup time)
  • Enemy players’s names will NOT show up in Tab, P (team mute screen), or recent players.
  • You cannot see the enemy teams profiles, even if you get matched against a friend (so no banning torb if you can’t see Fuey500 get matched against you).
• Each team bans 1 hero, for both sides.
  • This means you can’t ban Widow, then play Widow yourself to have an advantage against the enemy team since they don’t have a Widow to contest yours.
• After 35 seconds, it will reveal what the enemy banned.
  • Both teams can ban the same hero, so if both teams ban Hanzo, then Hanzo is the only hero banned that match.
  • This means banning the most meta hero will potentially only grant 1 banned hero between 2 teams. This prevents “just ban S meta hero” as the ban meta because between the 2 teams, you are also sacrificing a ban slot for the meta hero. This means mind games, and weather or not the enemy team will ban the most meta hero.
  • Instead, you try and focus on what you don’t like playing against, or what might hurt your team the most. I.E. ban Widow because I play Pharah.
• In game, a forfeit ban picks vote will be available, where 4 players from both teams have to agree to lift the ban on the banned heros. That way if both teams need a certain hero, they can agree to lift the ban, but at the cost of lifting the ban on the hero they chose too. It’s both bans or neither.
  • This is called a barter. If the enemy team bans Tracer, and we have a Tracer OT, but we banned Dva and the enemy has a Dva OT, and both teams are suffering, they can agree to lift the ban.
• Before Queuing for comp at the start of each day, you get a pop up acknowledging that OTing a hero can result in you losing if the hero you OT gets banned.
  • As someone who mains 3 heros and can flex onto multiple other heros, OTing a hero is not healthy nor beneficial. “But I know how to play the hero” is an extremely dull point, since I’ve played 700 hours so far in this game, and I’ve been at consistent Diamond rank, and I’ve improved on all 3 heros I’ve mained, and more.

Why is Pick/Bans a good idea? Because this game suffers from a stale meta. Balance moves too slowly, and thus 1 meta lasts a long time. Meanwhile a meta dies, another one takes it’s place. HOWEVER, with bans the meta is a secondary factor. If you are a godly Tracer player, you work with your team to ban Brig which means you can play Tracer. If you really really really hate GOATS, then ban one of the GOATS heros and you could run a more effective comp.

Common arguments against it:

“It’ll solve nothing, a new meta will just take it’s place.”
Yes/no. If Rein gets banned, then you play Dive, GOATS with a Winston, or a bunker comp like Orisa and Hog. Banning doesn’t solve the meta, I agree, but it opens up possibilities . That’s far better than a stagnant comp, imo.

“Jayne already did this, they just ban the #1 meta comp and play the #2 meta comp.”
This is a side effect. If you have everyone meta slave and Meta is #1 over picking heros that you’re good at, then yes. Jayne only tested this with pro and semi-pro players. These players typically practice the meta, and slight variations of the meta, per map. They don’t factor in individual skill in the same way ladder does. But this is also where we can see a slightly different pick/ban system for esports, since you know what team you’re going against.

I am personally not a fan of a pick/ban system on either the Competitive Play mode or in Pro Play. Nor is the Overwatch Team.

@Game Director Jeff Kaplan

As for picks and bans, I am personally not a fan of this type of system. If the meta settles down into static picks always, we have other solutions. But picks and bans cause a lot of issues that we’d like to avoid. Plus pick and ban phases add a lot of time to the rounds. I’m not saying we’ll never do picks and bans, but what I am saying is that we would rather explore other options first.

Source: Overwatch Forums

@Game Director Jeff Kaplan

Lastly, a game can force a meta shift through mechanics. The MOBA genre has huge hero pools yet without pick and ban systems teams would inevitably play the same comps over and over. The game – through the mechanics of picking and banning – is forcing variety. We could do this in Overwatch. We could prevent certain heroes from being played some or all of the time or we could let your opponent prevent you from playing your desired hero. We could also force you or allow your opponent to force you to play a hero you don’t want to play. Personally, I am not a believer in these systems for OW (while I understand and respect why they use them in MOBA). I prefer to think that OW allows you to be creative which is different than forces you to be creative. I don’t want to watch the best Genji player in the world play Zarya – I want to see him/her play Genji. And also, seeing how many of you “main” heroes because you love them, I don’t want the game – or your opponent – telling you you’re not allowed to play that hero.

Source: Overwatch Forums

Also your proposed rules are INSANELY COMPLEX and would drain the initial fun out of a Competitive Match, regardless of rank, we want to start playing Overwatch, not setup a lengthy campaign of Dungeons and Dragons. Even at top level Competitive Ladder play, team comps are not dictated by “pro meta”. I will agree GOATS has been dominating the pro scene a little too much, but I do believe balance changes are still the key to keeping the game fresh. Adding complicated rules like this destroys the fun of what Overwatch is. Sorry but this is a really bad idea.

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@BastionBabǝ-1672

1-C: A Rework to Assists

Assists in this game are… flawed. Genji can get his dash reset by simply grazing an enemy, meanwhile people are making memes out of Moira having gold elims when simple she is just tickling the enemy to recharge her healing, and an ally does more damage while then kills the enemy.

I believe that Assists should only happen when you do 50% of the damage to 100 HP heros (which would be 100 damage), 40% of the damage on 250 HP heros (also 100 damage), and 30% on tanks (180 damage on 600 HP tanks, 150 damage on 500 HP tanks, and 120 on 400 HP tanks). Then add another medal stat for assists, so you can still track how much you’ve helped on stuff like securing kills.

Assists would also include stuff that amplify fights, like Orisa using her B0ngo, Mercy Damage Boost, Zen discord, even some ults.

Even though it directly impacts Genji’s easy to ability-reset his dash, it helps reduce the inflation that players get when they simply help damage an enemy, which is unsubstantial, and thus gets credit for the kill when they did basically nothing.

This also seems like a very bad idea. To take the example of the Genji Dash Reset, complaints would start pouring in on whether they should have it or not. The game is too fast pace and it would lead to situations where players would make a mistake because they “miscalculated” because of silly rules like this.

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@BastionBabǝ-1672

1-D: Rework/Buff Projectiles Netcode:

Mei’s ult entering the 4th dimension, Tracer and Zarya’s ult joining snowball, and those weird situations where other projectiles randomly disappear too. Something is wrong with the netcode of projectiles, because far too many times do my projectiles disappear, which is especially frustrating when it’s an ult.

“Favor the shooter” needs to be carried over to projectiles and projectile ultimates. It seems like the game doesn’t favor them, but favors everything else.

As a Pharah main, I feel this is not really in a bad place. I think you are think too much on one-off instances where there are too many questions in play, such as whether there was a D.Va defense matrix in play or not. Again the game is too fast paced for us as players to properly track things like whether a projectile makes contact or not. Please if something doesn’t look right, video record it, document it, and report it in the bug report forum. They don’t respond to most reports there but they are always reading them.

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@BastionBabǝ-1672

1-F: Add a scoreboard to competitive

Yes, it does have potential to be toxic, but as an avid Siege player, the environment there is far less toxic because you really cannot trash talk or call others out on their mistakes if you are playing FAR worse than them.

Essentially, rework Tab in competitive. QP doesn’t need it because otherwise it’ll just breed toxicity between those who take QP seriously and those who just want to practice or have fun.

Rework Tab so it shows:

Hero		Kills	Healing	Objective Time	Assists	Objective Kills	Damage Dealt	Damage Blocked	Deaths
Moira	BastionBabe	2	1079	0	6	0	350	0	10
Genji	DrGenjo	12	0	34s	5	3	2000	320	2
Rein	ReinMainBTW	1	0	10s	6	0	600	1023	12

This scoreboard shows what matters via each hero. I am CLEARLY not doing enough healing, so thus it shows red because I am doing less healing than the average healing at my rank. It also shows that I am not playing on the objective and my high amount of deaths means I am probably feeding.

My teammates have the right to call me out for that, since I am not playing towards winning.

Looking at our Genji, he has above average kills, has all of the objective time, is dealing great damage, and even has low deaths. HOWEVER he has low damage blocked because he’s not using deflect enough.

But do you want to know WHY I’m feeding as Moira? I’m TRYING to heal our Rein that keeps charging in too deep into the enemy team. He has SO MANY DEATHS, all while having below damage blocked.

These kinds of stats are to give feedback on how you play and how your team plays. You have every right to respectfully call out a teammate if they are not performing well. This kind of system is to get those people to play better.

Heck, you can even integrate this system into the reporting feature so you can easily tell if someone is throwing or not.

This is also not a saving grace for OTs. If you are getting less kills as Torb vs the average Torbs in your rank, then your team will look to you as being the weakest link. HOWEVER, IF YOUR ARE PULLING YOUR WEIGHT AS A OT THEN YOUR TEAM HAS NO REASON TO FLAME YOU.

This removes medals completely, since the Moira who has gold kills is ONLY getting gold kills because the current assist system gives her credit for a kill, when all she did was tickle them to refill her healing.

Show positive reinforcement for those who are doing good, and give players who are underperforming a reason to step up their game.

Also, side note: I’d even include # of ults and ult kills in the scoreboard, I’m just too lazy to add more HTML onto the current example. This should be an idea, not the verdict.

No. I am very against this. Players in a team of a game of Overwatch CANNOT be constructively compared in statistics alone. Yes, statistics will help you work to improve your own game but to compare it with your teammates which have different roles is an extremely bad idea. It is my observation that when one player is over performing, it can have a direct result in other players underperforming in that match.

I much rather see the tab screen be reworked where it removes all comparisons to other players on your team, and instead show whether your stats are out performing your own career averages, so that you can improve your own game on your own heroes overtime.

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@BastionBabǝ-1672

1-G: Add in a Custom Map Maker

Honestly, that’s the reason behind TF2 being a classic, heck, even L4D2.

Adding a map maker adds a WHOLE NEW dimension for this game, as it gives the community the opportunity to add maps that are lore-friendly, but not cannon. Or they can make cool new modes, or vise versa where maps are made for existing modes, like Ana paintball.

New maps take a while to develop, I get that, but with a map maker we can at least have maps released at a faster pace without straining the dev team.

You could even add highly acclaimed maps to the QP rotation, Arcade/Game Browser options, or even add it to the full game where it gets played in Comp, even as high as OWL.

A game browser should be the next focus after the Game Review system that we all know is coming via the feedback from the OWL viewer.

I will note the devs would live to share the ability to do this because remember this is a brand new game engine. Here are dev posts to reference to:

@Game Director Jeff Kaplan

We would like to continue to explore ways of allowing the community to contribute content to Overwatch. Overwatch is a brand new engine so it’s going to take awhile for us to achieve that vision.

Blizzard has a rich history of supporting community made content. From the Warcraft and Starcraft editors to World of Warcraft’s thriving UI mod community, we have some really great examples of our passion for community made content. The whole MOBA genre exists because of our support for the mod community!

Source: Overwatch Forums

@Game Director Jeff Kaplan

Yes. We would love to make more of our tools available to the community. Our main issue has been that we made a brand new engine for OW. The tools and tech are not in a state where it is easy to make them public-facing. We keep talking about ways to get a roadmap to get us there someday. Both our design and tools team are very invested in trying to make this happen someday. But this concept would not happen anytime soon.

Source: Overwatch Forums

@Game Director Jeff Kaplan

We are extremely open-minded about releasing a map editor for Overwatch someday. But because Overwatch was made with a brand new engine, this is not a small task or one which can happen any time soon. We have this on our long-term road map and believe heavily in user-made content. But there are many challenges ahead of us and it will be a very long road before our editor can be made available to the public.

Source: Overwatch Forums

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@BastionBabǝ-1672

1-H: Rework to Temporary Armor/Shield Interactions

The current problem I have with armor is that temporary armor gets put before shields and temporary shields. As nice as it looks, it becomes a problem when a Zen or Zarya get Rally armor, and become 300 and 500 HP targets. This then becomes a problem because it’s unreasonably hard to deal enough damage to remove the armor.

Temporary armor should be put before shields, so it gets destroyed first.

This would reduce the tankiness of GOATS, since Zen and Zarya can’t be stacked with HP that is inflated with Temporary armor that isn’t so temporary.

I see the logic in trying to counter Goats, but I think this would have long term implications in the long term. Not going to say it’s a bad idea, but right now only Brigitte is the only hero can that provide external armor. (Torbjorn no longer does.) Right now I feel they are making good strides with removing Goats from being 100% viable by boosting overall damage to certain heroes like McCree (with his Flashbang). So I don’t think this balance change to Brigitte is needed right now.

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@BastionBabǝ-1672

1-I: Add a Faction System (Guilds) so people can formulate communities.

Originally I was against guilds, since it seems more like a MMO/RPG type of feature. However… LFG bombed. Endorsements really aren’t accurate. If I’m going to promote a Custom Map Maker, then I would like a community that can playtest my maps I make with me, so I can see what works or doesn’t work, as well as fix stuff if it needs fixing.

I like the sound of Factions much more than Guilds, because OW is a team, but Blackwatch was a faction of OW. This can cohere to the lore since people can create sub-factions of OW, Blackwatch, or even Talon. Heck, give people the ability to side with MEKA, Omnics, and Junkers.

There is so much potential behind a Faction system, just make sure you integrate a lot a features with it, like a better LFG system, moderator and overall permissions, so you can host custom games and it’s not just the Faction Owner who can create and host games.

I too want to see a Guild System and I do believe this is the third “social feature” that was postponed from last fall based on recent dev interviews from BlizzCon. Overall a Guild System needs to promote ways to get players to stay together and play together in that guild, otherwise, it will bomb like LFG. Unfortunately, that leads into the argument of how the matchmaker works in terms of grouping groups together in matches.

@BastionBabǝ-1672

1-J: For my friends in Europe to my friends in South America and Australia, a way to select your primary region languages, so you can actually communicate with your team.

Please, for the love of god, give everybody the option to select what regions they want to play on as well as what language they want to play with.

A UK player cannot communicate with a German player, unless either knows the other’s language.

As for South America, I don’t know if they got servers and thus don’t know if the Brazillians who speak Portuguese can play separately from everyone else who speaks either Spanish, English, or any other language.

As for Australians, did the Oceana servers ever cut ties with West-Coast-US servers?

Either way, a way to lock in primary launguages and regions would help toxicity in EU and elsewhere greatly, as communication can be more open and inviting.

I see your logic here, but such a feature would have a SERIOUS negative impact on matchmaking overall. If the matchmaker seperated by langauge (even to just individual teams so that a English team faces against a German team), it would still dramataically impact matchmaking times on smaller populations of certain languages. Statistically, I do not see this proposal working. Instead this is what a guild system should help take care of instead.

@BastionBabǝ-1672

1-K: Rework the Reporting System

The current report system still feels problematic. I don’t know if there will ever be an ideal system in place, but there are flaws still exposed in the current system.

Put your foot down on One Tricking. Either say it’s acceptable to play what you want, or that OTing can get you suspended for being uncooperative with your team.

Trying to appease BOTH sides clearly isn’t working since OTs are still getting -falsely- reported and banned.

Meanwhile XQC has moved onto other games since he himself is toxic, but stream sniping goes unchecked.

There should be more options available too, as well as more transparent actions.

They have stated their stance on one-tricking:

@Game Director Jeff Kaplan

Let’s be clear here and not confuse policy:

One Tricking is not bannable and should not be reported (it even says so in the text)

Throwing is bannable and should be reported. We appreciate your help here.

False reporting is bannable. Don’t misuse the report system.

Quote: Overwatch Forums

ANYONE who claims they are being banned for One-Tricking is actually being actioned for being toxic. Too many instances has this been proven the case.

I, myself have been reported for various reasons including a specific hero-choice (though I am not a full fledge one-trick), but I have NEVER been actioned or even warned. This is because I try my best and I am cooperative and respectful in communication. Again, if you are actioned for violations of the Blizzard Code-of-Conduct, appeal it with Blizzard.

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I am going to forgo commenting on your Hero Balance and Map balance changes. I don’t think that you are approaching hero balance with making sure any proposed change impacts each of the 29+ heroes and the overall game balance. Map changes, yeah there are some decent ideas, but right now there really is not a really bad map with impassable chokeholds at any point. Most of your proposed changes are for situations where a team has lost a team fight and now find themselves in a pickle.

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@BastionBabǝ-1672

4-A: Lore:

Out of everything released, lore has been at the bottom of the priority list it feels like. When was the last comic? Do we even know if they canceled the Comic line?

How many characters are leaked but not in the game? Junkertown Queen, Echo, Liao, Dva’s Mech Squad, and SEVERAL OTHERS are all added into the universe but we know N O T H I N G about them. At this point, they have the hero-character concepts lined up for the next 10 years, That is very disheartening when so many people are hoping for one hero over another, or how about Ashe that teased Echo when she herself was new to the universe?

This ties in with the next point: Hero releases.

My advice is this… patience… Brigitte was introduced at the launch of the game but is a new hero in 2018. Lore is slowly being leaked. Yes I want to see more comics and stories, but with recent hires to their writing staff, I have a feeling 2019 will be a good year for lore.

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@BastionBabǝ-1672

4-B: Hero Releases:

Since launch we’ve gotten 1 new hero every 3 months or so, which equates to a total of 8 heros in the past 2.5 years of this game being released.

This trickle of new heros now becomes a problem because so many players want so many different things. We want more supports, but also an alternative to Dva. We want more DPS, but we have enough DPS heros.

When you combine this trickle system with the fact that there are more teased heros than heros added, it makes me dread the next hero release. I was so moot about the release of Ashe and Hammond. Either Speed up hero released, or make Lore a higher priority so this playerbase can dabble in lore outside of playing, because even balance is so slow that it causes flame wars and witch hunting.

Dropping hero released down from 3 months to 2 would help keep this game and metagame fresh.

Jayne himself said that THEE best time to play OW is when a new patch (especially a hero release) because there is no definitive meta yet, so everyone is throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks.

I’d especially like to see a dual-release of 2 heros, that way the gameplay can progress more. Trust me, polish is something I care about, but at the same time Siege can pump out 8 Ops a year for a set $30. It is very possible.

You are trying to compare hero launches for MOBAs to Overwatch? Sorry but that is a oranges to apples argument. Here are key comments made by Kaplan in a website interview on why Hero launches are at the pace they are:

@Gamespot.com with Game Director Jeff Kaplan

Do you have an upper limit for how many heroes you want in the game? At some point balancing is going to become an impossible task, right?

I don’t have a number in my head. It’s funny because when we first came up with the game concept we had a really huge number in mind. And then we kept shrinking that number and now we’re more evaluating things almost like an evolving process. Each hero that comes out makes us evaluate how much time it should take for the next hero to come out. I really do feel that we should not be in a mode where we’re shooting to have one hero a month or something like that. MoBAs need to do that because of the type of gameplay they have and the business model. I think we need to take a step back from hero development in Overwatch and really evaluate what it does to the meta–but also there’s some other factors.

One of the factors is our time and attention. The more heroes we add, the less attention we’re giving to the existing 24 heroes that are already out there. Then also I think there’s something that’s really valuable in player affinity for a hero. That has to do with how the hero looks, the backstory, their relationships with other heroes in the game, and I feel like the more heroes we add the less we can invest in each hero that already exists.

So, I would like to see hero development not go any faster than it currently is and maybe over time even slow down somewhat. I want each hero to feel like a really special event where you’re just so excited, they fit in, and once they’re added, it feels like they were always meant to be there. [I don’t want] to get into a mode where we’re like, “What’s the hero of the week” and they start to homogenize with each other or take away from each other.

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Okay I am done here, anything else is more or less hyperbole that is not worth discussion. Honestly, you made your wish list with a lack of consideration to what has been done in the past, and without knowledge how Overwatch is developed. Also, do you seriously expect all of this to be made overnight? That won’t happen I promise you.

In reality, Overwatch is in a really good spot overall, NOT perfect, but good. Yes there is GOATS, yes there are issues with Competitive, but really, what you propose won’t solve itself overnight.

[Haze33E-1329]

@BastionBabǝ-1672

1-E: PTR hybridization (lolwut. Basically make an arcade mode where Blizzard can test balance ideas)

So MANY PLAYERS, including me, want the PTR to be used in a fashion where Blizzard attempts buffs and nerfs on certain heros. HOWEVER, the logistic of this is hard, and it’s abundantly clear that Blizzard does NOT want to use the PTR in this way. Instead, it’s basically free QA testing to make sure the game doesn’t break, like that 1 week where Dva’s bombs would nuke the game and thus she had to be disabled.

This is why I want to hybridize the PTR. I believe that there should be a new, and permanent mode in the Arcade where balance changes can be tested*. HOWEVER, I do realize that you can’t just inject code into the game like that, which means you couldn’t do very much, outside of number crunching.

BUT THIS IS WHY I WANT IT. To crunch and test numbers.

This is because most of the balance should come from numbers being adjusted and changed, like how Soldier’s 17 -> 20 and 20 -> 19 buff and nerf were overall positive for the game. Or the spread adjustment. Balance should not be based around some weird mechanics like Bastion turning into a gundam where he gets a new mode that has infinite HP. From toning back Hanzo’s storm arrows damage to McCree’s roll CD, number changes are what can make this game feel much healthier.

I want this new Arcade mode to be a preview and testing grounds for number changed between heros, this way we all can test what works and what doesn’t.

This way it encourages feedback aside from the forums, which Kaplan seems to make a meme out of, as well as not diversify the playebase onto 2 versions of the game.

The game browser allows you to create games where you can adjust almost everything in the game, and this mode would basically be that same concept, only testing out changes to see if they are good or not.

This could easily be achieved with the release of the game editor. Which would allow players to create custom games and modify heroes the same way the devs can barring anything that would require animation/artwork changes.

One my past posts about it.

Hey devs when can we get the game editor

You talked in the past about continuously adding on to the custom games options. Well I’m requesting the editor the devs use for Hero customization. Custom games are nice but they don’t offer anywhere near the level of customization I want to experiment with. I want an editor with Warcraft 3 & Starcraft 2 levels of customization. It would also be great if abilities that were removed from the game were available in the editor as well. Bastion’s frontal barrier Reaper’s soul globes Symmetra’s …

I remember them talking about releasing the editor in the past but it was so long ago I can’t remember the source. But instead we got the custom games settings which were supposed to be temporary. But given the state of the game and rate of content being released the release of the game editor may never happen.

[viggo-22995]

Pick/ban system above 3000 SR

If Diamond is the start of SR decay, then that should be the entry level for a pick/ban system.

Useless… The game have many counters, so uses it. Don’t be OTP, or play in fortnite or call of, or CS:Go, you’re welcome here

For my friends in Europe to my friends in South America and Australia, a way to select your primary region languages, so you can actually communicate with your team.

I suggest play with only european teams, not with KSA and African players…

For any heroes, a lots of your suggestions are jokes… There’s good as they are.

Translocator:

• Removed

Delete the core of Sombra ? Are you smoking ?

Mines:

• Removed second mine.

No thanks, it’s better like this. Besides, he’s not OP like you think

Orb of Discord:

• DI reduced from 30% to 20%

Discord can be cancelled, so he’s fine

Only 3 changes for heroes are necessary :
-Brigitte about have to change 5HP for everyone, Hanzo storm arrows (50 damages)
-Genji : Just to increase deflect hitbox
-Reaper : up to speed his shadowstep

Every map are fine (even if it’s hard to have any second point of 2CP). Any ideas to rework second point are welcome.

DO I want to dismantle Pirate Ship for this map? Yes. The attackers spawn A needs to be moved back a little to make it farther away. Think of Route 66 payload distance from attackers spawn.

You can negate this comp by focus Bastion. that’s all

My thoughts, of course

[zippity-21556]

Brace yourselves, this is a long one.

Pick/ban system above 3000 SR

Common arguments against it:

If I may add to these as well as arguments against your system specifically.

You brought up Jaynes games, which are fun but has problems (such as the whole idea of bans in OWL but lets not go into that). The biggest is these are all (at least to some extent) co-ordinated, friendly teams with fairly good game knowledge and leadership as well as speaking the same language, or in other words ideal settings. Put this system into a solo q match where people argue, don’t communicate and are not on the same wavelength and you will have trouble. The amount of players I meet saying something like “They have Brig Goats, McCree swap to Reaper” does not make me confident in peoples ability to either effectively ban heroes, or adapt to a weird meta after some bans. Then there is the 2am team with a tryhard, a kid, a casual, a stoner, a one trick and one guy who only speaks Spanish trying to make this system work, good luck with that. It will lead to more RNG games, toxic behaviour and problems in any public setting.

The simple fact is banning a hero you wanted to play is not at all fun, yeah it might be good for balance but that’s not all we play for, we also want fun. The literal USP of this game was the flexibility and hero switching being fun and dynamic, cutting that away is not great. This isn’t a deal breaking issue or the be-all-and-end-all but is still relevant.

We also have an issue with the roster being too small right now, with some roles being way too small to see restrictions. The best example is main tank where banning Rein and Orisa easily ruins a game, most comps require them and only having monkey gives very few options (all being hard countered by Brig who is not banned) or running a no main tanks comp, very weird unknown and hardly for for any main tank players in the game. Something like this maybe unlikely but shouldn’t really be possible. Also teams could abuse the hell out of this by doing something like playing with a really good lets say Orisa and perma-banning Rein, the more commonly played hero, to hurt other teams more than them and abuse the system. There is a real fear of stuff like this and it may create more problems than it solves.

It also will increase trolling/toxic behavior as people will argue over who gets banned, throw if their hero gets banned, throw if the “wrong” hero gets banned and so on. It’s the kinda of thing that makes toxic behavior more common. People will g crazy with it, Just as an example someone on your team plays Junk and Bastion, so you ban bastion because you don’t want one. People will do this stuff and it will cause problems.

None of these are total deal breakers, but all of them are real problems, hard to solve and together make many of us concerned hero bans causes more problems than it fixes.

Now to your system specifically

My god this is complicated. I’ve read it a couple of times and I’m still not sure I get all of it. It will take an age for players to get the hang of it, some will be slower and then others will get angry with them for that and people will make mistakes. You haven’t even got protecting a hero in there which is something many do want and makes sense, yet yours is still too much.

Look at LFG, you make a group of 6, they pick their role or play flex and there is an option to lock to those roles. How simple is that compared to:
We have bans in a new phase where you cannot see enemy player information and then you can vote to ban 1 hero from both teams but you can also undo this if the other team agrees and this system only exists in Diamond (well 50sr into diamond) and we have to send you popups to remind you to play lots of heroes.
That is the shortest description of your entire system I could do, and I got out of breath just reading over it That is way too much.

Then we have your whole undo the ban thing. This is a bad idea as it is a big part of why this is so complicated by adding an whole new phase and mechanic. Also no team will ever agree to doing this, if you ask for the vote the other team will see your struggling and double down and if your winning why change the rules of the game halfway through? On top of that it goes against the principles of banning being a extra tactical element to the game. If you can just undo a ban (at least in theory) then it removes the risk of banning something to hurt the enemy even if it may hurt you as well. If your doing bans do bans, don’t water it down with unneeded and poor extras.

The diamond and up thing is also a bad idea. We’ve already got people playing a very different game on different parts of the ladder, this makes it actually a different game and that hurts the game. It feels like this is a well plat and below don’t matter and will just get in our way so lets just ignore them kind of proposal, rather than this is something we need that they don’t. Rather than that it feels more needed lower down, as what is OP there is not OP higher up. One of the best selling points for bans is to allow different parts of the ladder to balance themselves without affecting other parts of the ladder, you get rid of that for no good reason.

Sorry if this comes across very harsh, some of your ideas are great like the PTR one, I’m 100% agree with you. Others I can see where your coming from even if I disagree, and your clearly a smart guy. This ban system though feels like a real misstep in what is otherwise a pretty good selection of changes. Even though I don’t like bans I see how they could work and be good, and this is not that.

[anon35826881]

Oh man! Best of luck with all that.

I’m a writer myself (which is why I said reading is kinda my job), but I stick to the more conventional route… literary fiction, experimental literary fiction, etc; no sci-fi or fantasy or anything cool like that. It’s not my forte. I guess I’ve done okay in my own way, won some mentions here and there and some competitions in lit magazines, but haven’t published yet. Currently working on my first novel, and I know how tough that can be no matter what genre one writes in.

Again, wish you look with everything, and I’ll keep that title in mind: Prize Not the Mask. Hopefully it doesn’t change or I’ll never find it.

[kilmeran-1816]

Oh man! Best of luck with all that.

I’m a writer myself (which is why I said reading is kinda my job), but I stick to the more conventional route… literary fiction, experimental literary fiction, etc; no sci-fi or fantasy or anything cool like that. It’s not my forte. I guess I’ve done okay in my own way, won some mentions here and there and some competitions in lit magazines, but haven’t published yet. Currently working on my first novel, and I know how tough that can be no matter what genre one writes in.

Again, wish you look with everything, and I’ll keep that title in mind: Prize Not the Mask. Hopefully it doesn’t change or I’ll never find it.

Nah, that title is set in stone. I can do that since this time around, I’ve skipped the agent and publisher and am going my own way. I already have a fan base, so it’s just smarter money in the end.

I do mainly super-hero, horror, thriller, and post-apocalypse. It’s what I was known for in the table-top industry for 14 or so years, and where I built my current fan base. So, I’m sticking with what works. It’s also been my main reading genres for the past 15 years or so, as opposed to the sci-fi and fantasy I did in the 90s, so works all the better.

Whether my genres or yours, the key is to write what you enjoy. I don’t care if its kids books like Captain Underpants. A writer is a writer, as far as I’m concerned.

[Tempest-22844]

• • Damage boost nerfed from 30% to 20%.
• Guardian Angel:
• CD increased from 2s to 3s.

I would rather the gates of hell open and unleash pandemonium irl

[anon35826881]

Whether my genres or yours, the key is to write what you enjoy. I don’t care if its kids books like Captain Underpants. A writer is a writer, as far as I’m concerned.

Cheers to that.

/20 chars

[BastionBabǝ-1672]

@SpringRocker-1446

No offense, but you want to get a point across you need to type less.

I completely get what you’re saying, but that’s like saying to condense Harry Potter into 1 book. It completely negates the points behind all of the books.

The bigger picture is OW is not in a healthy state, and here are the reasons why and how I would fix them. Some are left open-ended, but that’s more or less a technicalities discussions, like how a map maker could be implemented.

You don’t give a reader an option to skip a portion of reading because you deem it unnecessary knowledge. I have condensed most everything down into a solid section. If you want a comparison for what each hero idea could look like, then go to the Bastion megathread. I could easily explain the dynamics of EACH Sombra buff and nerf, and how it has bloated her and made her an even worse hero. But instead, I stuck to the TL;DR of it, while not sacrificing my main point.

@SpringRocker-1446

Well no, it wouldn’t be a better point, it would just be easier to read and easier to get across

But at the end of the day, not all writing needs to be condensed. There are several books that are very think, but the author wrote it that way for a specific purpose. I chose that way with this thread.

@Cerburus437-1424

Yes but your goal was for her to play defensive, and yet you buffed her offensive capabilities

How does it buff her offensive capabilities if I nerf her HP, self-heal via damage, and removing whipshot outright?

The purpose of her is to hold her barrier up, give Armor to those out of range, and put herself between her and any enemy that tries to attack a certain hero on her team. That could me an Ana geting dove upon by a Winston. That could mean putting herself between a Sniper and a Zen who is low.

That’s my intent behind her changes.

@Halofreak90-2566

Then try Why I Have Yet to Not Despise Mercy’s Current State. It’s even bigger.

Which is why I’m more about substance in this thread.

@Goldenhardt-2314

Let me tell you something partner, Ana and Reinhardt doesn’t need any nerf. And the Sombra nerfs outweighs the buffs, unacceptable. The Tracer blink nerf is just an overkill, she doesn’t deserve that.

I say you keep making those awesome new ideas, but for heavens sake stay away from hero balance.

The end goal was to rework the fundamental hero interactions with these heros. Make Ana less of a Tank pocket while making it easier to heal squishies.

Rein I do believe is fine up until his charge can still kill his counters like Reaper and Bastion.

Tracers nerfs are to prevent baiting out CC via double blinking, and only by double blinking.

With sombra, it was to streamline hack as well as not sacrificing an ability, as she technically traded translocator for her second hack.

Then with Brig, she is still just as tanky as before, but the different is that it’s not in combat. This is why I emphasized her healing capabilities.

@KazTehOne-1516

You want the main healer with the lowest average heals per game to heal less?

Because her healing is based on accuracy. Higher accuracy = more heals. Her clip nerf prevents Tank from rolling forward.

Even ignoring the 14 ammo nerf, she’s only doing 70 less healing per clip. This is why the context of increasing hitboxes matters.

@KazTehOne-1516

With healing so strong it gave us that horrible one shot meta, and being in such a tank heavy meta that’s reliant on healing, you want to get rid of one of the only things that counters that?

And buff the anti-tank heros.

@Gray-12411

They already have. They explicitly said it’s not bannable, but that you should try more heroes. (they still said its not bannable.)

This is still playing it safe though. Not bannable appeases the OTs, while saying they should try more heros appeases the people against OTing.

And what exactly has this solved?

[Matalya-1788]

HOLY FU… sorry, I appeard to, hehe, lost control.
I’ll definitively read this, even if it takes me 5 years (I hope it doesn’t lol, I still have to go to college on february to finish a test lol). Cya later.

[Matalya-1788]

Whip shot:

• Removed

Straightfoward, I love it.

[ChibiFox-11511]

HOLY FU… sorry, I appeard to, hehe, lost control.

Seagull:
“Bastion mains talk a LOT”

We’re just living up to the name.