On the Reddit AMA, Geoff stated this in regards to TTK power creep:
Interestingly, on our list of experiments to try is to make the game significantly more lethal than it is right now. I’m not sure how it will play out (we haven’t tried it yet), but the goal would be to allow for more ‘carry’ potential, as a great player would be able to more easily 1v2 or 1v3 enemies. Again this would just be an experiment, but its interesting to think about and potentially try.
I can’t help but say I’m worried about this and hope this doesn’t push to live if it hits EXP. Burst damage is already getting so high that you can barely react to some things that kill you now. I don’t think getting one-shot as a tank the moment you turn the corner is a solution.
I would much rather sustain and damage both get toned down and have the game in turn feel much more open, slow-paced, and each action feels more impactful. In fact, I’d argue both lowering damage and healing increases the carry potential because the enemy can’t really hard counter your actions with one press of a button, or existing on a certain hero.
I agree. I think it’s the wrong direction for the game, particularly because of the impact it’ll have on the Support and Tank class. I’ve long held the position that part of the reason I like this game is because how the presence of Supports and Tanks slows encounters down and promotes effective strategy and teamwork over plain gunplay, and many of the changes that Overwatch has made in the past year has detracted from this appeal. The kind of changes Geoff is describing are just the pinnacle of that, and that’s a very unfortunate and bad direction IMO.
Frankly, I don’t think they can really ever achieve the kind of “carry” potential they’re talking about without either A) endorsing the philosophy that every hero should be OP (which could be a mess for its own reasons and would involve considerable power creep), or B) fundamentally restructuring the game to be less-objective-focused and likely completely shifting the identity of tanks and supports, if retaining them at all. It’d be a complete transformation from the game that launched in 2016 and captured the attention of tens of millions, and I really don’t think it’d be for the better.
They also said they’re looking to globally reduce tank sustain but buff their damage, and try to to make every one off tanks in a way.
I would probably quit the tank role entirely, and possibly even the game if that happened. Main tank skill curves are fun, unique, and very interactive with the player and it’s something that most other games don’t have. Knowing where to take fights and how to create space was always one of my favorite things in this game and I don’t see the role being fun without that.
I also really don’t think they should buff damage because Reinhardt constantly goes from 400 to 50 HP when going for a fire strike, and now he may well go from 500 to 0 in half a second. Especially if they’re making it to where tanks block less damage.
The only thing that mitigates carry potential in this game is the power of sustain. But maybe they’re afraid to nerf sustain further so they’re experimenting with buffing damage instead to try to achieve the same result. Not sure how I feel about this.
Why not just leave burst damage alone and allow sustained damage to interrupt enemy healing similar to how burst damage already does? Then damage heroes can be tweaked from there. Maybe you could even buff barriers back up.
Hmmmm it’s almost like adding in moira and brig into the game literally made carry that much harder since they have a hero they can swap to to easily counter the popular carry hero’s. Now they are trying to back track by ramping up dps lol.
What exactly in Jeff’s mind defines a great player? Because even a great player has the help of great teammates. If skill level is equal no fight is ever a 1v2 or 1v3 and if it is it should never be winnable by the single person. The fact that he doesn’t see this makes me really question his knowledge of his own game. Now if he’s talking about smurfs then that makes this comment even more shady as that’s the only situation this would even be a talking point.
The answer to powercreep is not loading the game with more of it. That’s just a sure fire way of losing the remaining tank and support population you have.
You need to look at it more objectively than you currently are.
You say sustained damage, and you’d probably argue (wrongly) than Soldier is the de-facto sustained damage dealer. At 100% accuracy, 180 damage is outputed and that’s pretty high, sure. But you don’t factor in the average accuracy that a player playing Soldier would do. If you look at the top rankings, most Soldiers are hitting around 40% accuracy, so that damage per second of 180 shrinks down to around 70 damage per second. That means that Soldier would take an average 3 seconds to kill a target of 200 health or almost 4 seconds to kill a target at 250.
The above are also very simplified; it doesn’t take into the account that Soldier might miss a bunch of shots, or get a string of headshots. It doesn’t take into account that it’s possible for Helix Rocket to finish off the target. It doesn’t take into account the possibility of healing (at current rates of 55 or more), barriers getting in the way or the possibility that Soldier will die before he kills his target.
More importantly, the vast majority of players aren’t in the top-end, so the 40% average accuracy is likely to be lower for a bulk of the playerbase, putting Soldier’s average damage even lower. It’s not unfeasible for some players in the middle ranks to take more than 10 seconds to kill a single target. And it’s not unfeasible to have games lasting over 10 minutes to have the top eliminations under 20. (putting average eliminations less than 5 per minute).
You argue that burst damage is so high and getting higher, but no hero introduced nor existing can do more than 125 damage per shot, or more than 300 damage from a critical headshot or ability. In fact, most abilities tend to do less than 300, many not even reaching 150 per shot. Those that have higher potentials (such as Storm Arrow, or Fan the Hammer), still have to contend with possible misses. or a lack of critical hits.
When you start factoring everything else in Overwatch, damage really isn’t all that high. Blizzard has been very good at keeping damage numbers static, unlike healing output (in the past), it’s more tightly controlled and most outliers are brought down pretty quickly.
The Game Director’s inclination is that OW has less shields, CC, and moves towards more of an FPS than a MOBA in pacing, but Overwatch is too slow for that.
Gravity is too floaty (giving hitscan a massive advantage), run speed is too slow, and LOTS of heroes have been designed for Vanilla Overwatch, meaning they simply won’t fit into Jeff’s vision for the game without big overhauls or being left in F-tier.
If all heroes have ‘high carry potential’, then damage has to be so high that healing is going to be a nightmare–especially with QP and Arcade matchmaking being as liberal as it is.
That’s not any better, buffing damage is still buffing damage.
Besides I don’t really know which supports/tanks need dmg buffs. Lucio is really the only one I can think of that could use one but even then he isn’t supposed to be good for dmg.
This is true, partially. The physics engine in general allows for a lot of weird mechanical air time.
Disagree here. Overwatch is extremely fast compared to some other FPSes like Halo and even Call of Duty. There’s also no movement acceleration, everyone moves at their top speed at all times, and some can go even faster.
Most of the launch heroes are still the top-end damage dealers, Widow, Tracer and Bastion in particular.
Not necessarily.
Lucio fires 4 shots for 20 damage each shot, a total of 80 damage per round. McCree gets 70 damage and Genji gets 84. Lucio also fires just slightly faster than Genji, but slower than McCree. Lucio also has larger projectiles than Genji’s and both travel at roughly the same speed (Lucio’s just 10 meters slower).
Anyway, he wasn’t speaking about simply buffing damage, but that Tank damage in general would go up since they aren’t protecting anymore or playing defensively anymore and could “go all out”. Imagine, for example, Reinhardt no longer had the use of his barrier. Or that Sigma didn’t need to Kinetic Grasp so often. Naturally their damage would go up, especially if the defensive tools were replaced with abilities that did damage (Reinhardt wouldn’t see any major changes, but someone like Winston, Sigma or Orisa would).