The developers need to go back to balancing the game from top to bottom, or for High Elo strictly.
A perfect example of why they shouldn’t balance around low elo is the upcoming “turret nerfs.” My opinion on this has changed dramatically in the last few days. At first, I was like, “Ok, yeah, well, if this is a problem and turrets are really oppressive to low-elo players, then they probably should be nerfed and looked into.” That’s kind of where I was at and what my thought process was like until I came to the realization that Characters like Genji and Moira are oppressive to low-elo players. Does that mean they should receive nerfs too?
Yeah, after coming to that realization, trying to balance the game around low-elo players is just going to end up resulting in a complete disaster, and I don’t want to see the developers getting into bad habits where they’re trying to balance around low-elo players when that’s just a completely flawed and failed balancing philosophy.
I’m aware it’s an extremely difficult task to try and balance the game for all players to be satisfied in all elo’s, but the developers Striving to do this is just synonymous with the idea of perfection, and that realistically just doesn’t exist. There’s no world where every player in every elo can be satisfied, so please, for the love of all things, just strictly balance around high elo.
Since Overwatch 2 is a live service game focused on making money in the long term. Most, if not all, choices will be targeted toward lower Elo players because they make up most of the player base.
Let’s just say what you’re saying here is true: when or if those low-elo players get better and improve at the game, the balancing that was done for them when they were still in their low-elo is going to heavily affect their overall experience in their new mid- to high-elo.
Edit: “I’m not denying what you’re saying is false, but I’m just saying it for the sake of argument.”
Even with the reasoning that you gave, it’s a lose-lose situation; they’ve essentially created a live service game with a failed balancing philosophy and a short-term profit margin.
Every time they make a small, minute change for the lower levels of play, it causes severe imbalances in the higher levels of play, hence the reasoning as to why they never balanced around low elo in Overwatch 1. It’s just overall very unhealthy for the game.
Give me an example of when/how it happened, I’m not getting what types of balance changes they did that caused imbalances at higher ranks you are talking about.
We literally had to deal with 50% lifesteal reaper for a year or 2 because of this idodic mindset… Then when higher elo players finally figured out he was good they had to nerf him remember y’all have team work to deal with stuff like that (and you still failed) we don’t… (Well I say we even tho Im masters now lol).
Here’s the problem if I have to deal with 50% lifesteal reaper again for years me and many others are probably quitting this game… Especially if there lower ranked.
I’m not exactly sure what time frame you’re referring to.
Was this before 2-2-2? When they were buffing him for goats? That’s arguably another conversation entirely if that’s what you’re referring to, but then again, I’m not really sure what you’re talking about?
Yes this was during 2-2-2 I doubt it being in 5v5 would make it any better but this is usually how they buff repeaer to make him viable in higher elos.
If your talking about balancing from the top down its not a different conversation this was a prime example of why that dosen’t work all the time.
For a seriously competitive game, some heroes have very casual friendly mechanics.
Although you gave me concrete nerf examples, I still don’t think they will strictly balance for high elos, as you say, cause of those casual friendly mechanics. It wouldn’t have made sense to design and release Moira for example.
I mean, actually, It didn’t make Sense to design characters with mechanics like Brig and Moira, and they shouldn’t have ever made them the way they did in Overwatch.
They need to go with one or the other; we can’t have both. Either it’s a casual, friendly game where they’re just balancing for the sake of the entirety of the playerbase’s experience, or it’s an actual competitive game that needs to be balanced around the highest levels of play for the sake of competitive integrity.
I’m kind of getting off topic here, but Overwatch needs to stop striving to be both of the things I mentioned because it simply doesn’t work and never will work.
The game can’t be competitive while also holding the casual player base’s hands, and the reasoning as to why Blizzard continues to push Overwatch in this forever failing direction is because Blizzard never actually had a real vision for how they wanted to make their game, and they still don’t to this day.
Nah, they should balance around what makes the game the most fun for the most people. Games that only balance around the highest level of play become boring and stale fast. Remember, most of the player base would be considered “low Elo”. Pandering to the top 1% sounds like financial suicide.
It was 2 months. After that it was reduced to 40. Then further reduced to 30% 9 months later. When he was meta along with doom and mei since double barrier meta made most other dps garbage.
It happened in jan 2019 buffed to 50, March 2019 nerfed to 40. Jan 2020 nerfed to 30.
I would agree with that if Overwatch wasn’t built on a competitive foundation and was meant to be a casual, friendly game where you could just hop on and have some fun, but that’s just not the case.
