If yout in plat or below you are still learning the game.
I think the problem is that the pros are the ones whose opinions reach the most people, and influence peoples opinions, and thus blizzard listens to those opinions. And this is bad because they’re the best of the best, not just highly ranked players. It’s not a black and white “GM players know how to play, and anything below does not”.
I understand balancing based on Diamond play, for example, but not GM. Diamond players know the game, and anything higher is either unnatural mechanical skill or above and beyond simple mastery. You want to meet in the middle of the best and the average, not meeting at the average, and certainly not meeting at the best
Bingo. The example used is specious–it might be comparable if everyone progressed from Bronze to GM then “graduated” to some higher plane of existence, but they don’t. School isn’t inherently intended to be competitive, but gaming is.
Balancing should focus on where the bulk of players are–that is, Gold and Platinum, but we should also be considering the extremes in any balance decisions we make. If a balance change in Gold would cause a hero to become utterly broken in Bronze or GM, then maybe we should consider a different change. Reason being, at the extremes, you will almost always find that inability to play correctly, or tiny discrepancies in power, (at Bronze and GM, respectively) will produce phenomenon that, if the developers attempt to correct, tend to have cascading effects that adversely affect the majority of the playerbase without generally fixing the problems of poor coordination/gameplay or stagnant and difficult-to-oust metas.
This is why stuff like the Reaper and McCree buffs were bad moves. Obviously these heroes were weak at the high and even mid tier of play, but the changes made them rather oppressive in lower ranks and even into mid ranks, without significantly helping them in high ranks.
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The goal of playing a game is having fun.
If getting better is fun for you than great by all means strive to be better!
But, that doesn’t mean everyone else should have to do so to actually have fun.
When a game is new and people are likely to improve it may make sense to aim a bit higher anticipating that players will rise but, once the game gets older the rate of advancement will drop.
Overwatch is also designed in a way that is somewhat hindering to advancement. Skill based matchmaking dumps you in with players of similar skill level. Generally, in games you learn better when you are mixed with people significantly better than you are.
If I was trying to get better at Overwatch, I don’t think I’d be going for QP or Comp matches at all. I’d be watching matches/analysis of matches and doing various custom matches. (I’d also buy new hardware 
I get 30 FPS max and with the latest patches it’s dropped one or two)
Balancing at the top is also harder than balancing for the bottom. Your staff may not have as many top level players and thus may run into more instances where you miss things or are stuck relying on theory craft. Players at the top are far more likely to attempt to break the existing balance and find exploits. They try as hard as possible to break things then they complain about them.
An Overwatch tournament was ran testing hero bans which people thought would get rid of GOATS.
It turns out that for all the complaints about GOATS people would actually work to protect it and ban things that threatened it.
Players at the top also don’t necessarily care all that much about balance. Oh, they care if a character they like to play is having issues but, if it someone else they literally could not care less. Moira is at 0.68% pick rate in GM. When is the last time you saw a GM complain on forums about Moira being under-powered or that the other supports were overpowered? The #1 target at the moment for them is Brig who’s never even had an 8% pick rate for one day in GM.
I cam from TF2 to Overwatch. In TF2 you also had a competitive scene where it was 6 vs 6. Several of the characters were under-powered and didn’t make much of an appearance and the competitive players didn’t care. They even went so far as banning items that would make some of the characters competitive.
Ideally, one should be balancing across the entire spectrum. Design characters so that if they are really easy or really hard in one area that other areas will even it out at least somewhat and make the methods public. Some of Mercy’s movement stuff is semi- advanced but, you probably wouldn’t know about it if you just played the game because it’s got no documentation in game.
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I agree. And I have to add one more thing. As time goes by so does the skills of OW players. And the overall balance shift accordingly. Now how do you balance the game? You will have to balance every time according to the meta of high-level players.
I agree with balancing around high-level players. But I think they have to have a vision of what it can be. You have to balance around statistics and consistency. But there are more things affecting the game that cannot be express by data alone.
i think it’s a bad idea, balancing around the lowest common denominator makes it super easy for anyone who is just a bit better than bottom tier to exploit imbalances on higher tiers
just think about widowmaker being balanced around bronze aim and reaction speeds
people in gold would dominate with widowmakers and in gm you wouldn’t even need an aimbot to be a god
or winston, he would be able to hold a point alone in gm and be unkillable, just so a bronze winston who goes in 1v6 doesn’t instantly die, like he should
in the end it’s, if not rewarding misplays, at least ignoring them.
that means people never get better because there are no consequences to bad play
and the ones who are better are instantly smurfing the moment they get a little bit better than everyone else around them
you should ALWAYS balance around making the right plays, because wrong plays can be changed by the players, balance can not. and you’d climb by doing less wrong instead of picking the best scaling hero
same in school to reference your teacher examples, in school a tests needs you to get almost everything right to get you the best results, you don’t get the highest grades for 50% and pass with the bare minimum of 1%
and yes playing overwatch is the equivalent of taking a test, not of sitting in class learning. that’s what everyone needs to do in between games for themselves to get better
of course no analogy ever fits 100% perfectly.
thats the nature of analogies, otherwise you wouldnt use an
analogy in the first place.
leaving that aside, i understand what OP means.
the game is designed to work best in a certain way.
examples:
- being balanced around teamwork. it is a fundamental necessity, so when you neglect teamwork, your results become worse.
- to take an objective, you need to kill enemies at the end of the day. the better you get at it, the better are your chances of winning.
- etc etc etc
so in the nature of the game, there will be people who fall short.
who are either not able, or too unexperienced to follow those rules.
in their cases, randomness becomes a bigger and bigger factor in winning.
i agree with the part that there are certain minimum requirements to rightfully win the game. like in a test, you can sometimes pass by sheer luck if you pick randomly. but its not what the test is designed for.
what i do think though is that the game should be balanced so that at least 50% of the playerbase can have decent games where randomness is a low factor.
because, in contrast to school, this is a game. its first and foremost supposed to be fun to play, and engaging.
that should always be the big priority in the design.
with that come many more aspects that i dont have the time to list now.
No that is the point exactly. This is a game not school and blizzard is a company not a teacher and we are CUSTOMERS not students. We paid for this game not to have somebody be condescending to us because they are better at playing a game but because we wanted to have fun and enjoy it when we have free time.
I paid just as much for this game as any high ranking player, therefore my enjoyment of this game matters just as much as theirs
Why does this even need to be explained? Why do people care about the game only being balanced around the higher ranks? Do any of you realize how much more broken OW would be if it wasn’t balanced around top 500s?
Again, why do casuals care anyway? Aren’t you guys casuals? You guys shouldn’t even care about balance.
Might as well try around low ranks. Balancing around upper ranks clearly doesnt work if we just end up with rigid comps like Dive and GOATS that everyone moans about but never actually plays.
Not convincing,
Do not balance the damn game around OWL.
It’s great that you posted this as a low ranked player because they would be more willing to listen to you than a Masters or GM player. The newest craze is “Nerf Reaper because we refuse to focus fire or play a CC comp.” So why exactly should Blizzard reward your lack of teamwork in a team game? If you want to improve, then working on running counters and prioritizing targets is a good place to start.
Here are a few soft and hard counters to Reaper.
Soft: Mccree, Brigitte, Sombra
They are soft counters because their stuns and hacks make Reaper uncomfortable and lead to quick deaths in the event of team focus fire, but he can still beat them all in the close range battle in 1 v 1 situations.
Hard: Widow, Hanzo, Ashe, Ana
The three snipers hard counter Reaper because they can stay out of his maximum efficiency range while dealing a lot of damage to him or Insta killing him. Ana hard counters Reaper because sleep dart completely exposes him after wraith, and anti nade prevents him from using his strong passive lifesteal ability for enough time to be focused and killed.
Run any combination of these characters that make sense for your comp, call him out, demand focus fire, and he’ll be a lot easier to deal with. Asking for nerfs because he’s a god in Gold will not help you get out of gold. Pre buff Reaper was already strong there anyway.
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I came in on august and the only thing i knew about the game was from what i watched on youtube.I didnt come in caring about your smurfs,your nerfs,i didnt even know about leveling(which why in the hell do they have it in the first place since it has no effect on a character thats green or experienced),took me long to remember names to different characters,where health packs are on maps…etc etc…I HAD NO TEACHER BUT MYSELF!
This game like many others are 1.Watch some stuff on youtube for some heads up. or 2.Dive in and play with a open mind and learn the game if you enjoy it.
All terrible heroes in 2-2-2 compositions and/or at low ranks and should expect to get destroyed by the rest of Reapers team.
All bad heroes at low ranks.
Anyway, he’s doing well in Diamond and Masters too, so it’s not just a silver issue.
“Around”?
No.
“In mind”?
Yes.
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its a simple concept that the reason we should balance around pro and high rank play, is because its the heros at there absolute best doing the most possible. I think it especially applies to pro play because heros become stronger with teamwork, and weaker against teamwork, but the ladder doesn’t care, they want the game to cater to them rather than learning to deal with something.
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Balance should be done around GM.
Pro play doesn’t really matter to any of us on ladder.
that’s the only right way to balance though
you balance around what’s possible and achievable, not that even the lowest bob can be a god
for one because in a game with humans on both sides of a match there will always be 50% loser
balancing for “everyone” only works in pve games like anthem or diablo
edit: another important aspect, if you balance for the lowest tiers the higher one will never reach a point where their game is balanced, if you balance for the higher tiers everyone can, they “just” have to get better at the game. of course you shouldn’t need to be the top 0.1%, but balancing for the top 10% is not bad
Focusing only on a single rank will not solve imbalances on all other skill levels. I don’t know where this silly notion came from that devs must balance ‘around’ one group of players at the expense of everyone else but it’s entirely missing the point.
It’s like car maintenance, only ever looking at and fixing the motor is a terrible idea. You have to make sure that everything works.
McCree and Reaper buffs are the prime example as to why you should NOT balance around lower ELOs.
Balance should be top-down, with regards to how it will effect lower ELOS. That’s why 35% IC was a mistake, as it was geared towards high-elo players and completely ruined the game for everyone.
But balance for the casuals is a joke, aren’t they only here for the skins anyways?