I think the games balance could be better.
I also think the game should be biased towards playstyles that are generally more fun.
✅ [Game Design] Fixes before BlizCon
Heroes spend literally years either being must picks or dumpster fire fuel. The power disparity between good heroes and bad heroes is insane.
Balance patches can slow down once the game is in a passable state. I’m not even expecting good balancing anymore. Just passable.
I’ve actually recently formed a new opinion. If a hero has a difficultly level of 1 star, that hero should rarely, if ever be seen in OWL.
it’s because the most difficult to play heroes should always triumph over the least difficult to play.
I mean after all, what is the reward for playing a high skill hero?
I’d say there’s s few more variables at play, but that’s one of them.
Here’s a design document by League of Legends main balance guy on the subject.
Pretty sure its to address aimbotting and so on as they can make changes on the low down to break the apps and catch cheaters.
The answer to your question is here, in the esports pro David Sirlin’s free online book “Playing to Win”: _http://www.sirlin.net/ptw/
tl;dr: There isn’t. Use what’s effective in order to win, or you’re a scrub.
Huh, that would be even better.
Although if the way to win is boring, then it’s a good time for a rule change.
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The problem is that rules are objective, while whether or not a “way to win is boring” is entirely subjective. You can’t reconcile the subjective with the objective without providing specific limitations on the subjective component, or by introducing inconsistency into the rules.
Some people consider Bastion, no matter what, fun. Other people consider him the most boring hero to play.
That’s where it becomes a bit more like an art, then a science.
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If they added a hero that could instantly one shot any hero without aim skill and would kill all 6 members of a team in under a second it would still take them a month to “analyze data” and nerf them.
Seriously. Hotfixing needs to be a thing. Make a minor change. Make another one. Keep tweaking until it works perfectly.
Or, if they make a really dumb change, they could reverse it in minutes, instead of the better part of a month.
You forget they are on 2 - soon to be 3 consoles.
This hotfix feature works on all platforms.
Also because it’s technically not a patch, it doesn’t need to go through the slow certification process for consoles.
A good example of this imbalance is present in Starcraft with the Zerg race. Although the Zerg race units are more or less balanced by cost compared to other races, they are much easier to produce and use in terms of player time. In large part due to this characteristic, the Zerg race was the dominant race in tournaments and competitions for roughly 6 months following Starcraft’s release.
Here’s something from that article that I was talking about. Why easily executable strats/mechanics, should be “punished.” On paper “to Zerg” is balanced, but when you look at the real world implications, it all goes out the window.
That’s why, for 97.999% of balance changes should be around “win percentage.”
Does it really matter if Reinhardt has a 50000hp shield? No, not if he’s only winning 20% of his games. And I actually think they do mainly look at win percentage when balancing. It’s really the only way to do things.
Well, the ones the devs have, but the publicly available ones, because those don’t represent mirror matches that well.
I’m willing to assume that Overbuff is pretty close to accurate. Maybe not at GM though.
mirror matches are fine, because they don’t add or take away from the overall math.
I address mirror matches in my idea, but only to dislodge obscurities such as GOATs. How to Perfectly Balance the Game
Well, I’m pretty sure the devs have better winrate stats.
Heck, they have map specific, and objective specific winrates.
yeah I saw your balance post. My personal viewpoint is, “I can’t offer balance suggestions because I don’t know the win rates.”
I can offer cool and different mechanical abilities, like Sym infinite Tele. But I wouldn’t know what to do with Sym’s DPS after that was implemented.
I’d wager role queue has thrown a spanned in the works.
So what rank are you balancing around?