Balancing Vs Fun

So we all know that balance changes occur every single patch, where some characters are buffed, nerfed or even reworked. But there seems to be confusion between Balance and Fun. First of all Buffs: No denying that they feel amazing, they restore the fun in a character and make them more viable in a game. Nerfs however… do the exact opposite. They make a character feel worse, less fun and reduces the fluency that they once had. So far, characters are being nerfed so much that the game feels less fun than it should be.

So, if people want to play a game that’s balanced, Team 4 needs to make it fun first. They need to focus more on making fun content such as expanding seasonal events (the brawls/gamemodes themselves), creating new permanent content for Arcade and releasing new things thay completely change how the game plays (like a new core gamemode).

It might sound like I’m going off-track but I needed to get that out of the way, so I can state what is fun in terms of non-balancing. But now, we get onto balancing. Remeber when I said that buffs make a character feel better? Well, that’s what should happen. There should always be more buffing than nerfing because it would help bring back the fun in the game.

Let’s set up a scenario. Pharah is OP and people complain. Well before going into detsail you’ll need to find out why she is OP. Is it because a part of her kit is too strong? Or, is is that the counters aren’t effective enough. If so, the best thing to do is try buffing the counters before thinking about nerfing the character. “But soldier will then become too OP against Mei” (as another example) well try buffing Mei and make her more viable against him. Because you’re buffing these heroes, it starts a chain reaction where more buffs come in thus restoring the fun in playing that specific character and when people find out they’re favourite character has been buffed, they’re more likely to come back to the game.

So therefore Balance and fun can only be mixed in the form of buffs, not nerfs. As well as making more permanent and fun game-changing content.

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Tldr. as far as the title gos balance is important but if I’m not having fun I’m not playing the game.

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There is absolutely nothing “fun” about Overwatch. It’s just one steamroll after another because that’s what matchmaking is designed explicitly to produce.

this reminded me of this video, probably because the dude said something similar in the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsC8io4w1sY

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Cerburus437, That just coincidence I swear :joy::joy:

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Also on the topic of balancing vs fun:

If stats say a character is balanced, ignore the whiners.

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You cant balance the game by only buffing. If 1 hero is OP, but everyone else is okay, then you buff one or more counters to that 1 OP hero to make them balanced, then you make in turn the buffed heroes OP and all the other heroes countered by them UP.

You just swap places for who is in the OP spot. It furthers power creep and you end up in a neverending circle of everyone needs a buff to keep up.

Buffs make sense for heroes who are underperforming relative to the entirety of the rest of the cast even though they seem fine and balanced.

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I do understand that some nerfs are needed, however they should only be used as a last resort. If the hero really is OP and the counters are fine, then there should be an exception. However, there’s no denying that buffing should occur more frequently than nerfing.:blush::blush:

That’s what they all say!!! Lock him up boys! This Fart’s going to plagiarism jail!

Balance = Fun

What blizz is doing is not balancing, it’s gutting heroes and making others OP, kinda the opposite of balance, that’s why this game is not fun.

While i do agree that they handle some particular heroes poorly, overall the balance is pretty good at the moment. Its better than it has ever been.

I disagree. Someone can have plenty of fun playing an unbalanced character.

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Sounds like Diablo 3, they don’t nerf any class or strong sets but only buff the other ones.

I’ve never heard of the channel until you linked me the video. I wasn’t commiting plagiarism. I mean, what you’re saying might be a joke but because of how text works, I have no clue how you intended to portray your message.

I was assuming plagiarism jail would give away the joke :confused:

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My bad. My brain reads differently and I didn’t see it the way you intended. I considered it a joke anyway. But when other encounters said other toxic and jokey statements, they really mean it. :joy::joy:

No it isn’t. The matchmaker is designed to try to create teams of roughly the same skill level. And usually it does. It’s leavers and throwers that cause problems.

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Thank you for linking that video. At one point I wanted to find it… and I just could not remember what it was called.

On topic, OP you are absolutely right. The game needs to be fun first. Balance doesn’t matter if no one finds the game fun.

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Diablo is also a purely PvE game and one that revels in power creep. It’s basically “absurd numbers, the game”.

Definitely not a winning strategy when it comes to balancing a purely PvP game.

What you are describing there is called a “power creep” and that’s never good for a game.