Blizzard has a tendency of going back on their own balancing

I had a realisation today while playing vs Roadhog, having not played the game in a long long time due to well… Hating what Blizzard had become, I encountered the Pig Pen.

Thought nothing of it, really. Cool ability. Then I got hit by it, and it took me from max to 0 in 2 seconds from just standing in it. Wow, that’s a lot of damage.

…then Roadhog one-shot me with his hook. Well hold on now, didn’t they specifically remove Roadhog’s one-shot hook in earlier balancing?

It’s made me realise that it’s not just Roadhog they’ve done this to (though I can’t think of specific examples off my head, I would like to refer everyone to “Overwatch 2 will do away with CC” then see Brig, Ana, Cass’s arguably WORSE cc, etc etc…)

The Overwatch dev team has a consistency of saying one thing, then going back on what they said a few patches later. From Roadhog “We’ll remove his one-shot hook” then reworking him later to basically give it back to him… From Sojourn “We’ll remove her broken railgun” to all but giving it back to her a few patches later… As stated prior “We’ll remove CC” only to be steadily giving CC back to a bunch of heroes, including ones that never actually had CC before! (like Roadhog, not counting his hook).

I can get that balancing is hard, but if you’re saying you’re removing something for X reason, you can’t really add it back a few patches later. You either revert the change immediately because it didn’t work, or you don’t remove it in the first place.

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Nah, that’s the community they’re listening to.

community: “5v5 has ruined support, they are too weak without a second tank and feel horrible to play”

blizz slightly buffs supports

community: “supports are too op and own every other role!”

blizz nerfs supports harder then they were during season 1 launch

community: " “supports are too op and own every other role!”

It’s impossible…

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The only thing they are listening is their own ego. They never do what has been asked but make their own half baked “solution” that creates even more problems.

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The thing you need to realize OP is that Roadhog’s 1shot is WAY harder to pull off than before.

Shotgun does only 1.5x damage.
Hook damage has been completely gutted.
Hook puts players further away from him than point blank (aka outer pellets completely miss).

Pretty much the only way to 1shto someone yourself on Hog consistently is to hook someone into pig pen which can be destroyed AND has a 12sec cooldown and requries predeploy. You can committing two abilities when in the past you only needed to get ONE.

There are so many more steps necessary to 1shot with him than before. The CC on Cass is far less debilitating on most of the cast than flashbang. Just as slow is not universally detrimental to all defensive abilities because of freeze. Slowing Dva sucks, but its not a complete 2sec + instant freeze the moment you attempt to use defense matrix.

This is the difference. Blizzard has been doing away from feast or famine design and come more with a gradient design. Things which have a spectrum of outcomes and severities rather than simply miss or 1shot. Whiff or hard CC.

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Blizzard will rarely go back on something via a simple revert, that would mean admitting they made a mistake. They will find the most convoluted roundabout way of arriving back at something close to where they started just to avoid that.

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I doubt they are as insecure as their community that throws baby tantrums and types “gg” after first fight loss and their “it’s not me, it’s the game”

Since blizzard has done this countless times already, again, this is another case of their community projecting.

Community is reflection of the game. Why do you think some games have better/worse communities than others?

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Because those “nice communities” are not from team PVP games. I have yet to see a non-toxic community for a pvp game. Genre plays a huge part.

Which is one again an reflection of the game since pvp games creates more reasons to be toxic.

Dude, he used his Hook and his Pen - 2 abilities - also shot at you. He used his WHOLE OFFENSIVE ARSENAL 8-12 seconds COOLDOWN to kill a SQUISHY and you complain about getting “oneshot”?

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The best ones for PvP are honestly fighting game communities since its generally player vs player. A true 1v1 most of the time. The only player to blame is yourself. There is no shying away from being bad or attempting to put the blame on others.

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Yup and the ranking is also straight forward.
OW is on the opposite spectrum of that by ranking you on team performance rather than what you do in the match, which is a good reason for ppl to not be satisfied when they get matched with a crap team.

Nah it’s a case of me playing Blizzard games since Burning Crusade, but nice try. It does happen, but it only happens when the mistake is so obviously apparent they can’t BS their way around admitting it was a mistake. That’s why I said rarely, but let’s not read that and reply anyway.

The biggest reality of OW is that players generally are not as good as they believe they are. Its often very easy to ‘mask’ that feeling by blaming others.

There are enough unranked to GM to show that when the skill differential is high enough, you’ll raise in rank quickly and generally win most of your games.

The other poor reality is players thinking that they will run around with 80% WR when if the best they are is a diamond player they will probably struggle a bit in the gold/plat games because they are a bit more reliant upon allies.

Most accurate ranking comes from playing say 50+ games. A great deal of people I see end their rankings at like <10games played in competitive many times.

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I’m confused, are they supposed to write an apology essay like they are your b*****? Make a video of themselves on their knees and crying? What exactly would make you happy giving that just straight out reverting things (Pve, phone numbers, player levels, on fire, supports nerfs and buffs, removing game modes etc etc etc…) Just isn’t enough for you?

Do they have to highlight in yellow words “we were mistaken to believe” in their dev logs so that your entitled a** feels happy? What exactly do you want them to do?

I never said they didn’t make it harder to do, I was just making a realisation that they’d removed the one-shot, only to bring it back again albeit in a heavily nerfed form.

Same with Cass, although I’d argue the flashbang was way easier to deal with than hinder, mainly due to the range. Flashbang was certainly more oppressive, sure, but hinder is arguably more annoying.

First of all; I wasn’t complaining. Dunno how you took that as complaining I was simply stating what happened.

Second of all; it never feels nice to get one-shot. I HATE one-shots in ANY game.

Third of all; I never said Hog’s one-shot wasn’t gutted, I simply said that he can do it again with pig pen.

How’s about you actually read the post instead of getting all pissy because “omg I’m attacking your favourite character” or whatever.

I’ve never fooled myself into believing I’m good at Overwatch. I’m heavily critical of myself. I can’t aim for anything, my mechanics - while not as bad as some - are generally piss poor outside of the basics, etc etc.

But, regardless of my ‘skill’ at the game I like to think I have a right to complain about things and consider alternatives. Mind you, I never like touching game forums - Blizzard ones especially - because literally everyone is toxic and if you so much as say anything bad about anyone’s main they’ll rip you a new one and tell you 100 different reasons why you’re wrong.

I post anyway, because imo the “bad” players should have a voice, even if I do agree that a lot of the time I AM wrong.

I think Blizzard is realizing that overwatch now needs to have specific things to function. They said they’d tone down on CC, but now they’re actually adding CC (like Pig Pen), but why? Well, imagine Overwatch with less CC. Everyone thinks it’ll be better, but it’d be annoying to deal with the game with less slows and such. Blizzard found this out the hard way.

Personally, I would remove 95% of all CC in the game, and then collect evidence of the audience hating it. Then I’d make a blog post that says “no, we need CC” and show how people all hated what they asked for.

For Sojourn, I think they just want to artificially make a certain play style better. Your fast past COD-Like shooter gameplay. They think it’ll make overwatch more popular.

I don’t disagree. A lot of CC is pretty much required in Overwatch else certain characters will run amok, or other characters will be extremely weak. Ana sleep dart for example. They haven’t touched that in a long time, and it’s CC, but without it a lot of things just don’t function as well in the game and Ana will certainly lose a major part of her kit.

I also agree about Sojourn. Overwatch is being pushed towards a more fast-paced style, and I’m unsure how to feel about it. I just personally don’t like being one-shot without a way to counter. Never have.

Coming from another “blizzard” that is world of warcraft…i know that theme. Class balance in that game has been haywire throughout its lifespan

Still that game was FUN and so is overwatch for me. That is a personal subjective view tho

I dont think its that. its the Microsoft Gang taking this game and slowly pulling it apart.


I’ve noticed since their announcement to buy this company they are decommissioning it. This is a Microsoft ploy to sabotage it. If it isn’t. Than I guess this is a “friendly handshake”?