Listening is different from acknowledging and responding to feedback. I believe they do see feedback from many sources, but they just don’t act on it. It’s unfortunate, because transparency is the one thing a company can do to breed trust among their customer base, and Blizzard’s always been as opaque as a brick wall.
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He does bring up valid points. But part of what is wrong with the game and to an extent the community is that player skill is often equated to what that player is able to do completely on their own which isn’t in the spirit of OW. Player’s skill should be in what they do for their team and how well they are able to work with them. For example: a McCree that can stay within his team and manage his abilities well enough to fend off divers and get key picks will be infinitely more valuable than the one always off on his own chasing 1v1s, sure he’s winning them because his mechanical skill is better but his team may have lost the bigger fight while he was away due to them not having the resources he brings available. Problem is most of the player-base has rejected this notion.
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honestly to an extent that is a certain reason as to why I think the public opinion of Blizzard and other big dev names is so low while companies like Digital Extremes are almost completely interactive with their community and are held in such high esteem
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Ding ding ding! Ladies and Gents, WE HAVE A WINNER.
That is the crux of the prob. People have forgotten that beyond solo play… That this is a team game, for better or worse, and try(and often fail because most of us are mortal scrubs, lets face it) to get that big solo play.
In practice =/= in theory. On paper or in lessons =/= the ease it is to actually apply or utilize.
So to reword your statement in another way (using my type of profession that also deals with people in a different way) :
I have successfully studied ways regarding how to subdue others physically without causing harm. As well well ways to treat them during sessions, to ensure I am being as sensible and sensitive as possible during the consversation with a person and/or group. I know so much about dealing with abusive people, violent people, or traumatized people. I know about abuse, violence, and trauma in general.
So. People I see - applying all I learned in real ways yet failing soooomehoooow - are pretty dumb and reckless. All people are 100% able to be dealt with safely if you know how to do it. All situations are 100% the same. All discussions should 100% go the same way. They should listen to me and people like me if they want to be 100% successful next time. Like. Seeeeriously.
HunTy, please sit down before you stumble into a mess. Not as a threat or a way to cause a fight, but, for, like, your own safety if someone with a more volatile form of sass decides to throw hands/words at you.
1 Like
After listening to the rest of Seagull’s rant, I think it’s just a matter of the fact that this is now an old game. People get better. They get smarter. Easier strategies develop that people flock to. I don’t think there was any one event that caused it. They may have been catalysts that helped it along, but these ‘cheesier’ strats people use would have come up eventually.
We’re going on towards three years. The game hasn’t changed all that much, and competitive games thrive on change. There are people who would clamor for “vanilla OW,” but people would have found these lousy strats that people don’t enjoy. It’s just such a stagnant game, and Blizzard hasn’t seemed to make any strides to make it different.
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Our job is also to play the game but at the same time we demand answers to threads and balance changes to be done according to our tastes.
What’s more to say, when they don’t write in the forums they suddenly become “uncaring devs”.
I am originally a Quakeplayer. I love skilled aim-based fast gameplay and Overwatch just developed into a direction through the implementation of, seagull calls them “nonfps characters”, where the gameplay got more and more trivial which is bad for long time motivation in my case. Today I played 6 games and every single one was a stomp or get stomped just like seagull said… and when my team gets stomped I have no chance to do anything about it (3700SR) even if I would theoretically hit everything. The feeling of being powerless which he describes is so accurate. I dont know if blizzard thinks they must make their game more newbfriendly or what the thought process behind it is but they destroy the fun of the game for alot of people. to save overwatch: 1. ADD VISIBLE STATS (often I play sombra and I have like 50% acc, golddmg etc and I get flamed for being useless) 2. NERF OR REMOVE CC ABILITIES (make complete workovers like they did with mercy) 3. REDUCE THE AMOUNT OF 1 SHOT ABILITIES AND ULTS
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We don’t have enough heroes for it in all categories right now but a pick ban system seems to be on order. Its the best way to change a meta without making heroes OP or trash with each season.
#deletewidowmaker
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HIs points are valid but incomplete.
Seagull only has the benefit of seeing things at top500 tier or as a pro.
There are far bigger problems in the other tiers that cause more frustration.
Comp at the upper tiers is far less broken than at the lower ones.
Top 500 doesn’t have trolls and smurfs.
Hard counters like Brig also aren’t as hard in the lower tiers. A good genji/tracer can play around a gold brig. Probably not as easy with a GM Brig.
Ult’s being too strong is relative to how good the team play is, I believe he implied that.
I 100% agree with the need for a scoreboard. I think long term stats are irrelevant but what is going on in the current game is VERY relevant. It would actually reduce a lot of the inner team toxicity.
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I believe that, to me, Overwatch is beginning to have more and more issues of trying to be a “jack of all trades, master of none” in terms of it’s appeal.
- Pro players are frustrated with the game because of the more inclusion of hard counters, and lower skill-floored heroes having some advantages over higher skilled ones.
- Casuals are frustrated with the game because of the nerfs/gutting to those more accessible heroes, making them less rewarding, engaging, or impactful to play.
- Those in between who have the unfortunate experience of liking heroes with high pickrates or winrates, end up getting their heroes completely gutted regardless of whether their hero is considered to be a “high skilled or low skilled” hero, or completely reworked into something they never asked for.
- Things like the competitive matchmaking still seem to be very unforgiving - where you either steamroll the enemy, or get steamrolled yourself, and the social features to avoid problematic players are still extremely simplified and watered down, coupled with the fact that there is very little incentive to even want to play competitively, outside of gold weapons and an SR system of imaginary importance.
- All the while, feedback on any of these heroes are either largely ignored, or rarely taken into consideration with balancing of heroes, with favors towards pro players over everyone else, taking precedence. With very little interaction from the staff or devs.
There’s probably a deeper explanation there, but from what I’ve seen, these seem to be one of the most common causes I can think of in terms of the frustration. While things like the endorsement system and LFG are certainly a great step towards making the game a better playing experience, I’m not surprised that the cons are still outweighing the pros for a lot of people. Overall, since OWL was announced, the game just seemed a lot less “fun” to me, and more about being competitive and surrounding e-sports and cash grabs. I miss how back then, this game was prioritizing having fun and doing good in your team, above all else. Times have certainly changed.
~Sincerely Yours xoxo,
a Lover of True, Fair, and Fun Balance.
xavvypls 
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This reminds me: Splattoon has a map rotation that takes one or two away for a while to rework them. And that map rotation between quickplay/ranked/high rank is also different.
Maybe they should do something like this?
PS: I miss Manta Maria SO MUCH
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Its interesting how this all falls back to tracer, if tracer was nerfed Brig probs wouldn’t have existed or wont be this powerful.
Honestly unsure how to feel about that, but it is a good point. In order for tracer to be countered the rest of the roster will be affected due to how powerful tracer. is
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blizzard needs to start listening to the community why ranked is so bad … especially for solo-players… people are leaving right and left. the enjoyment of playing the game is sinking … i do not agree with seagulls opinion completely… i dont think ults are too powerful in overwatch on lower elos… it makes the game more interesting… but people on lower elos do not use them to their full potential… on higher elos you get insta deleted so i see his frustration.
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I have question in reponce, if hard counter that force you to swich or hope for teammates for help is bad why reinhardt vs phara didnt bother him at all? Its two old heroes and we all know that if phara have brain reinhardt cant do anything to her alone.
blizzard said they didnt want to nerf tracer, they rather made this hard counter to dive…
the job of a game developer after release is to take community feedback and try to make improvements on the game based off of said feedback, the job of the player is to play and if something in the game is un-fun then they should tell the devs so they can work on improvements. At no point does any game developer have the excuse to just ignore their community and run away with a game post-release, my instructor is on the dev team for Horizon and he couldn’t emphasize that enough
Most of the player base has rejected this notion because SR measures all the other things, individual stats over good teamplay and wins. Yes I know NOW above diamond that has changed, but this is what is was from the beginning.
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It seems like the solution is there but seems not to be the one Blizzard wants.
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