lol quite lying theres only 3 tanks in the game. any other tank is a throw pick
And then they throw it all away by making another hero SO MUCH BETTER than them, that you can’t play them at all.
I’d love to play, say, Wrecking Ball. But I can’t because the balance is trash. ALL the new tanks are bad!
If unique play style was all you needed to get DPS to tank, then either Sigma or Hammond would have done that long ago, especially Hammond being the best main tank that isn’t Rein.
The truth is the majority of DPS don’t like tanks and don’t want tanks in their games. It’s why when they jump queues by picking tank, they almost always pick Hog - he’s really just a fat pew pew guy. It’s why they yell so loudly whenever anything tank related slows down time to kill. It’s why they fight for an end to role queue and celebrated so much when 1-3-2 hit experimental.
When OW 2 comes around, don’t be surprised if 1-3-2 goes live just because that’s the only way to significantly lower queue times, since even a new pew pew game didn’t do it significantly.
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The amount of rebalancing they’d have to do to make it work would functionally break the game. It would be very unwise to take such a risk especially with evidence of the consequences already out there.
lets go back to the ever famous ice cream analogy…or at least my version of it…
3 flavors of ice cream…vanilla, chocolate, strawberry…if the vast majority of the people like vanilla and hate strawberry…it doesnt matter how many different versions of strawberry you add…theyre going to stick to vanilla…its not a question of there not being enough of 1 flavor…its nobody likes the flavor to begin with…
you can add all the tanks in the world…hell you can have more tank heroes than dps…it doesnt matter if what you have are more dps players…
i 100% agree with jeff…
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That’s why I like this version of 1-3-2.
Where there would be zero balance changes besides just pumping barrier tanks full of tasty buffs.
Sometimes that is true though. I never would have touched the Tank role, but I really love Orisa as a character. Wanting to play as her got me to try the role out and then it turned out I also liked the way she played. So I went from pretty much a Moira 1 trick to an Orisa 1 trick. I still haven’t really gotten into any of the other tanks but there is much more of a potential that I’ll play others at some point than if I had never tried Orisa to begin with - all just because I like her look and backstory.
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I mean JK’s analogy was flawed to begin with as it is. A better one would be a restaurant offering Pizzas, Burgers, Hotdogs. Say you have 17 kinds of pizzas to choose from but only had 8 burgers and 7 hotdogs. Obviously one would grow bored of the same 8 kinds of burgers and 7 kinds of hotdogs being offered and would be more inclined to try one of the 17 kinds of pizzas if they don’t add more burgers and hotdogs to the menu. The restaurant owner then, without inquiring to their customers about why no one is really ordering the burgers and hotdogs outside of regulars, decides to add more pizzas to the menu under the assumption that “well hey they like pizzas to lets just give them more pizzas.” Meanwhile this restaurant sits next to a pizza place. Their appeal was a variety menu and if someone JUST wanted pizza there was a pizza place right next door. So now they have increased the line for pizza to the point where some customers are deciding that if they just want pizza they can always go next door because the kitchen can’t keep up with the demand for pizza when they have burgers and hotdogs to also make.
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yeah but what if you just dont like burgers or hotdogs? doesnt matter how many more types of them they add…you want pizza youre going to ask for pizza (people just want to pew pew)
plus theyre not saying theyre only going to add one or the other…just that theyre not going to stop making pizza
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But if there are people ordering all 3 kinds of food giving priority to one kind over the others is only going to increase the wait for them. Why wait an hour for pizza at this restaurant when I can get a pizza in 5 minutes at the pizza place next door? If all you wanted was a pizza why not just go to the pizza place instead of the restaurant serving all kinds of food and then be forced to wait a long time for the pizza? Why not try out something different while you’re there? Going to a variety restaurant just for pizza then getting mad you have to wait a while is a self made problem especially when a pizza place is right next door. Then how is it fair for the other customers to then be put to the side for impatient ones that likely don’t even tip? Why should they be cast aside when the pizza people have what they want right next door if that’s all they want? Why should the menu change to appease those people when you have loyal patrons that are accommodating?
More tank playstyle variety could make ques reasonable . They’ll never be even. But by analyzing which tanks (and supports) dps mains flex onto, theyll understand what qualities might appeal to impatient dps mains.
Observe other hero-centric games like Paladins, League, r6 siege, Smite; notice how much more tank variety there is, and how they don’t have the same popularity problem.
People always focus on tanks vs dps, but nobody asks why supports are more popular than tanks! This is crucial to understanding the core issue.
In Paladins, supports are popular, maybe more than dps. Why? All sups have a disengage/self-sustain, duel/damage potential (I’m always top 3 damage as support), and therefore more independence and flexibility. All sups escape 1v1’s fairly easily, if not hold their own in a duel. Despite having comperable kill potential as dps, they dont feel op.
tldr: here’s what I think attracts dps mains to a character: outplay & POG potential (not just multikill pogs, but also mindgames, think sombra trolling, fake-outs, etc.), rewarding skill-shots, unique mobility styles, an appealing/relatable aesthetic, play-style familiarity/simplicity, etc. If you compare abilities by role, you’ll find that DPS kits are often pick-up-and-play, but tanks/supports are unintuitive and complex.
eg. I played many games before I found out Zarya’s barriers increase her power when damaged. Dps mains hate feeling helpless or reliant on their team to do work.
Consider:
• Widow, high skill ceiling dps. all she does is charge up her weapon & click heads.
Ana on the other hand, when unscoped shoots projectiles, when ADS is hitscan (how would you know that??) does way less damage, is targeted/dove just as often as widow, but has no grapple to escape with, instead has to pray her sleepdart lands or her team is competent enough to save her. and that sleepdart cooldown is crucial for shutting down ults.
Consider:
• the mechanical input and skill it takes Lucio to wall-ride, while cross-fading, and aiming his weird projectile gun accurately. Good lucios rarely touch the ground.
• Yet Echo uses one button to gracefully fling herself across the map, and another button to burn down any half health heroes in her path.
Not only are supports and tanks the most crucial roles in OW, they also tend to have the most complicated and difficult kits. Moira is the most independent support, and one of the most independent heroes in the game, and what do you know, dps mains like popping off on her!
Sure, Sigma’s got skillshots galore, but his immobility/squishiness make him very punishing; hog and ball have independent dps-y playstyles, but are also easily countered, and easier to feed with (not to mention, hog isn’t exactly visually appealing. why are most tanks animals, robots, or animal-robots??)
You might say that it’d be op for a tank/support to have high survivability/independence, kill potential, and the utility of their role, but
Consider DPS-Moira:
• Moira has low dps, even among supports, but dps flex onto her because she’s mobile, high self sustain, and secures kills. it’s not uncommon for Moira mains to get silver or gold damage, Despite having one of the lowest dps stats in the game! People complain about this but they never ask why and what the implications are for character design.
Regarding mass appeal: the most iconic game characters have no correlation to role or damage output. Eg. DVA easily sells the most OW merch, and is always a popular pick for new players. I’d wager that DVA got more non-tanks in the role than any other hero, many of whom would’ve mained her regardless of playstyle, just because of her design.
Sure, quintessential characters tend to be pretty young ladies, but contrast Dva’s fanbase size, with Orisa’s. Or the collective bewilderment of Sigma being a large-nosed older man with bare feet… Devs should make a conscious effort to design new tanks with visual appeal, with designs that aren’t so “out there”. Characters that people fall in love with. Having so many tanks without a relatable human face makes the role less appealing to newbs.
Think about the Support mains getting stoked for echo, with her clean, sleek design and fun looking flight ability, only to be let down by another dps. and the support means are left feeling like they never get anything fun/cool. can you blame them?
With all that said, I don’t think role lock would be necessary if:
• there was number parity across all roles,
• there were more “hybrid heroes” like Hog, Zar, Brig, Mei, etc in all roles, to the point where one could make a team comp of all hybrid heroes and have all their bases covered.
If there were a tank that could give the types of players who dps Moira the same satisfaction…
We need the tank equivalent of soldier 76’s simplicity/familiarity, forgiving playstyle of zarya, the passive team utility of brig, the slipperiness of Moira and kill potential of hog.
Or just take a fun dps concept, and rework them into a tank. you can do it blizzard! dont be so stubborn.
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Sure…unless you just don’t like the other options…You can’t force people to eat the other stuff…the popular stuff is going to be the one in demand
Im going to bed but I’ll just leave at at this…as long as they try to force everyone into an even distribution of tanks/heals/dps there’s going to be a giant dps wait time…regardless of how many tank and support heroes they have…cause thats just what people are looking to do…theyre not mutually exclusive…
The only way I see that ever changing is if they make the tanks themselves more appealing (not exactly a defined science)…or they change the configuration to reflect the people playing the game (which might mean sacrifices in game style that people also won’t like)
Long story short…this is not a problem that’s going away…so let’s hope that whatever it is that they do end up adding is actually fun like they say they want them to be
This ties in really nicely with what I said before with my experience of trying Tank role and then finding I liked it.
The strength and popularity of Overwatch came from the fact that it was not just an FPS. I’m someone that has never played FPS games or been interested in them, but Overwatch transcended that. I came into the game with a background (years ago) of having played Everquest for a decade and then in adulthood played stuff like Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Dragon’s Dogma.
I gravitated to Support based on my EQ experience where I was a Shaman, but because I had so little experience with any game like Overwatch, it really made all the variations and differences in play style an open door. I imagine a lot of the people that have a similar experience to mine also felt the same way - that’s why Overwatch even captured the crowd of “never FPSers” to begin with.
So yeah. By actively attempting to turn all heroes into pizzas, Overwatch is losing the people that showed up for the burgers and hot dogs while also losing the pizza lovers who were only treating this pizza joint like any other pizza joint. And now there’s more tasty pizza elsewhere…
At the same time, I understand DPS is the most popular role and so I can see why they will cater to that above anything else. It’s just too bad it’s costing them the thing that made Overwatch stand out and be a success in the first place.
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Well now I’m just hungry.
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It would sure matter if there was only one particular brand of strawberry you could actually get, and a lot of people who otherwise liked strawberry thought that particular brand was awful. That’s where we are with tanks right now; it’s Rein or bust, and if you don’t like Rein you can just GTFO. A lot of tanks have taken them up on that, emptying out the tank queue and filling the others if they haven’t left OW altogether.
Variety is actually important. More heroes don’t add variety if they’re samey, but truly different ones do.
LIterally they could add a simplified version of the heavy in the retribution mission and call it a day. That wold play nothing like any tank we have in the game right now. Plus there are multiple complete tank and support concepts made by the community that play nothing like the tanks and supports we have in the game.
Adding new tanks means there will be less boring tanks compared to not boring ones, thus lowering queue times. You think people generally like playing Zarya? Doubt it. Is she effective? With Rein, definitely. Is she boring as hell to play? Absolutely.
Well, they could start by making more of the main tanks they’ve already designed playable.
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They could do that too. The problem is that a lot of the toxic damage crowd won’t allow for it and their precious league doesn’t accept anything but Rein for whatever reason.
Well, it won’t help if they make more tanks that are just useless throw picks.