About 5v5, Jeff Kaplan wrote an interesting post

A while back, before 1-2-2 was a thing, Jeff Kaplan wrote an interesting post on this very forum to talk about 1-3-2.
Some stuff he said applies to 1-2-2.

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Awww you missed the unmitigated disaster that was 1/3/2 when they tried it. It was hilarious.

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I remember this thread. Seeing that interaction with Jeff was super awesome.

It’s funny to think how many people say devs are off the forums because our response is so toxic and then read through a thread like that and see how supportive and positive people are even when they didn’t like the concept. Community engagement is truly awesome from devs but I don’t think it’s coming back especially with Jeff gone.

In retrospect I wonder if they knew or were heavily leaning to going 1 tank and were just trying to gauge community response with that thread.

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i dont mind waiting as a dps gives me time to catch up on my shows

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Pretty sure this shows just how far back the the “only 1 Tank in OW2” decision goes.

It wasn’t a recent thing. It wasn’t why Jeff left. The only reason it didn’t go live was because they felt it was ‘too large’ of a change for OW1, probably.

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I think the feedback they got was “this plays like dog $#*!” and they abandon the idea ever since.

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That was definitely the feedback they got. It was the feedback I gave them, too.

Their solution is to make the game 5v5 and rebalance the a ton of heroes instead - and a change that big is too much for OW1 and now has to wait for OW2.

They clearly didn’t abandon the idea of 1 Tank per team. The advantage of shorter queue times just too good to pass up.

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then why go back to it?

Because they hadn’t put the extensive effort necessary to make 1-3-2 work. All they really did was change the tanks a bit and that was it. You can’t keep the game as is and just rework the tanks, EVERYTHING needs to change to fit.

I imagine they saw something good despite all the negative feedback, though I also imagine that it convinced them that ‘more than 2 dps is not a good thing’.

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What?

He rarely engaged.

Unless you count communicating in that little private discord of theirs.

Personally I think 5v5 is the way to go. For sure.

But having 1 healer and 1 tank isn’t a bad thing. When they tried 1 healer, they had 1 tank and 4 damage. That is insane.

1 tank, 1 healer and 3 dps would be a much more viable set up. Obviously you would buff healers in this scenario. Also, if it really was a problem that comps would fall apart as soon as the healer died, then you could have play tested other options such as allowing the team to resurrect healers only by standing on the body much like how it works in PvE modes with the drone animation.

This would allow teams to fix the mistakes and still make a come back.

They didn’t play test this. Not that we know of.

Td;lr Tanks feel garbage, whether 123 or 122 these points still apply.

Td;lr Support players aren’t amazingly happy about it, 122 or 123 these points still apply.

Td;lr DPS feels great. This doesn’t apply overall to 122 completely but they would still feel good.

And they go through with this anyways, Make tank feel even worse to play, Support somewhat worse to play, but don’t worry, DPS feels better to play than it already does! Why am I not surprised? :smiley:

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What surprises me was that they thought the problem with 1-3-2 was not that solo tanking was not fun but that there was just too much happening and that if there was less happening it would be fine so it lead to them having the idea of removing part of what made OW great (the chaos).

But that mean they’re working on it, they thought about those issues and are trying to resolve them.

OW2 will be more chaotic in its current state with only one tank and zero changes to any of the roster. It will be a disaster more or less. Doesn’t matter if there is only 2 DPS instead of 3. The results will be the same.

No it will be far far less chaotic of that I am sure. You cannot just remove 1/6 of the game and have more happening in it. This is not a good thing though. Trying to sell people on less happening and it being easier to keep track of everything is not a good sales pitch as the chaos is the main selling point of Overwatch.

Also, it is not really fair to talk about no changes to the current roster as at least 6-8 months from release they are likely not even really thinking balance so much as they are thinking “What do we ant these heroes to be able to do?” which comes first before trying to figure out how they balance that in terms of gameplay.

Oh, man, I was so concerned about dps mains. I am glad I do not need to worry.

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Because they didn’t “go back to it”

What they tested was 6v6 in a 1-3-2 format with three DPS. None of the DPS had nerfs. The tanks barely got changed. It was hell.

What they are doing for OW2 is 5v5 1-2-2 with huge changes across the game, CC nerfs/removal, nerfing mobility and sniper heroes, and reworking and buffing tanks in big ways.

That’s not at all the same as the horribly unfun 1-3-2 experiment we got to try

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Tanks felt garbage during 132 for some people. Do take note of the last sentence in that paragraph.

Besides that though, pretty sure they did actually address this in the content creator AMA, saying they’re hoping that the tank buffs (Which I don’t believe would be possible in 132 because too much damage etc.) will counteract this anxiety.

The negatives were really about there being too much damage. Given 122 doesn’t have an extra damage character I don’t think the criticisms there really apply, though I acknowledge the tank buffs could change that.

Overall team health will be much lower because you are missing 1 tank. At least 400 HP lower. There are plenty of DPS who can do more than 400 damage and both teams have 5 players. You could give yourself a refresher course in classic quickplay and judge how chaotic the teams are when you only have one tank.

I think it’s very fair to talk about the current roster and future balance.

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