Thank you for the detailed response Jeff, I and everyone here greatly appreciates it.
If possible please bring this in some way to live, perhaps as an arcade mode or just a PTR test period for all players.
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Iād love to see the comp switch to 1/3/2 but Tanks would need to be actually tanky, all tanks. so an HP/armor boost across the board. Right now a double barrier is obviously broken, but a single barrier is now too weak a lot of times. Honestly, there are more positives than negatives,
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Holy crap, and you think people were complaining about Widow/Hanzo/Mei before?
Instead of 3-2-1, how about expanding the total # of heroes per team to 7 and going 2-3-2?
That way youād have the extra DPS in a match but not at the expense of one of the tanks.
The DPS wouldnāt feel as much pressure with 2 other DPS on their team; the tanks wouldnāt feel as much pressure because theyāre not having to solo queue; and the supports wouldnāt feel as much pressure because theyāre not having to focus on keeping just 1 tank alive at all times.
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Iām highly appreciative of the fact that youāve come to the forums, and information like this is a great way to show how hard your team works on the game out of sight. Itās great that youāre willing to experiment with enormous changes like this.
That said: Iād personally like to throw my vote against 1-3-2.
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Iād rather play as a solo tank than play with another tank. One of the reasons tanking is so boring is because if you have a more aggressive play-style and the other tank has a defensive play-style there is no synergy and you end up losing, so you are forced to play more defensive or meet somewhere in the middle. Having 2 tanks is like having 2 leaders on a team.
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Love the long detailed post Jeff, glad you responded to this.
I am pretty sure the answer is no, but do you guys EVER consider reverting the 2-2-2 change?
You made so many comments about how not enforcing 2 tanks made the game feel āmore like an FPSā and āmore like oldschool OWā it just reinforces in my mind that 2-2-2 did more harm than good.
Why not go back to letting players build their own comps, even if they werenāt always optimal?
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Were the tanks buffed at all for this experiment?
I have to say that this probably describes me to a T. Iām a tank/support and I havenāt been playing a lot of tank lately due to the feeling of helplessness and frustration that I experience having to put up with all the tank busting thatās been left in the game in the aftermath of the GOATS meta.
I do miss tanking though so I still do it from time to time, (even still) but for the most part Iāve gravitated towards primarily playing support.
What I can say though is that I never enjoyed solo tanking before 2/2/2 and I probably wouldnāt enjoy it after. So if 1/3/2 became the new house rules, I would probably end up avoiding the role and possibly the game altogether.
I tank in OW for the same reason I tanked in WoW, because I enjoy protecting my team, not because Iām some kind of a glory hound. I feel like the Reinhardt short addressed this. Itās why DM Dva was my favorite incarnation of her and itās why when I would play DVa, I was the Dva that peeled. The reason I ultimately quit playing her was the feeling of utter failure that trying to DM that hooked Mercy only to watch her crumple up dead in front of Hog created. I couldnāt protect my team. For me, thatās where my enjoyment of tanking comes from.
I feel like if this change were implemented, it would be for the benefit of DPS players at the cost to tanks. Less pressure for them, more for us.
I would like to say, that if you were looking for a way to improve que times for DPS, fix some of the anti-goats changes to dps characters that are just oppressive to tanks in a 2-2-2 composition. There are still going to be more dps players than tanks, but right now I wouldnāt be surprised if I wasnāt the only one feeling frustrated when I play one and avoiding the role because of it. A big part of why Iām still around is that Iām hoping there will be changes and I can tank again, and this has not been an easy thing to endure. It has been 6 months of the game being balanced like this.
Thanks for letting us know what you guys have been up to though.
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Best thing for ow, i just want an fps game and not only breaking shield with too much team play, i just want funā¦
hi Jeff, you probably wonāt read this but I just wanted to give you some feedback
I donāt think 1-2-3 is the way to go, the reason being pretty much all you just explained, player agency would be far too focused on tanks and youād need to decreased the tank pool even further in order to balance the game around that setup
I love āofftanksā and tanks but I honestly donāt see the divide aside from player personal gameplay style. I think you guys have done a terrific job with the current tank roster but Iād be lying if I said itās a perfect setup.
First we need more tanks and second we need to make tanks defenses more prominent while lowering their dmg potential of a few, moving Roadhog to dps would be a miostake in my opinion but keeping him as he is is also a mistakeā¦
Just my two cents
We need 1 tank slot 1 utility slot 2 dps and 2 support.
So we have tank, support, and dps categories rn which isnāt the best definition for heroās.
For example Mei + sigma = 1 tank 1 dps
Mei is mostly a tank due to her area denial and her focus on enabling her team instead of raw dps. Nothing can approach the orisa bc sheās there the threat of being stunlocked and defenseless us just too high.
Oppositely ā¦
Sigma is kinda a dps with a sheild. Nobody really respects his space that much and he really has nothing that intimidates or stops a rein from walking right up to him and smacking him in the face.
So in this example we have a Mei(dps) controlling space and a sigma (tank) unable to control much space but lay down incredibly good damage.
We should have a tank slot category consisting of heroās like idkā¦
Orisa, rein, Hammond, sigma, Winston (these 5 will give players enough flexibility to adjust to all situations)
And a utility slot (I want to enable my team) focused in enabling the team not damage)
Heroās here should be
Dva, zarya, roadhog, Mei, sombraā¦ Heroās with team abilities that set up their team mates
It could be good for the game to have some heroās moved aroundā¦
This would have some effects like the suggested 1/3/2 withoutā¦ letting players go all in on heavy heavy damageā¦ and still enforce the teamwork aspectā¦
At the same time we could solve situations like we have right now where people use a dps that is really a tank to stack 2-4 tanks in what is supposed to be a role locked game.
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Jeff go for it. Tanks would need major buffs and you would have to really crank out more tank options but overall it would be a better place for the game. I think it solves way more issuse than it causes.
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Have you considered making a new role class to divide Main and Off tanks? The role lock could be 1-1-2-2. I know the tank pool is small to begin with but Iām sure with new heroes and perhaps re-purposing some DPS to tank you could fill it. You could alleviate the pressure on tanks a bit, guarantee a single shield and it might be easier to balance.
DPS heroes that I think could be off or main tanks would be Mei and Bastion. Meiās endothermic blaster could be reduced in effectiveness, eliminate the hard-stuck freeze and make it just a slow. She would be a great asset to teammate DPSā who have trouble lining up their shots. She has damage mitigation already to help the team as well. Bastion could have his damage dropped significantly, make him a little bit bigger.
Personally, I donāt like the more āfps-yā feel. Itās one of the reason āclassic quickplayā was so frustrating to play and very rarely fun. Overwatch is about more than deathmatch. It should not devolve into a bunch of dps running around having a series of 1v1s at different areas of the map.
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I love Overwatch, i love the work you guys put into this game to make it what it is. I would play, unlimited, 6v6, 222, 132, 232 and enjoy my time regardless. I do agree that 132 would feel a lot more like year one Overwatch where most comps had a Rein+Mercy+Zen and the rest dps, which was rly common, so i donāt think its as scary as a lot of people might think. It was the natural state of the game for a long time. Ofc i canāt speak for others but as a tank main i have no negative feelings about this. If you guys decided this change was for the best i would happily support you. Thanks for everything, for 3+ years of a great game and many more to come <3
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Thanks for being so open and transparent about your testing. It really helps the players appreciate the time you put into the game. Especially for putting effort into an experiment like this. I think that a trial server is something a lot of people would be open to especially since most people who have the PTR are following updates closely and would understand that it was temporary if you stated that. The main issue would come if the community were at all divided or there was a toxic backlash about how it would solve everything if you put it to live. If there were negatives to the internal test and you donāt think you would gain anything extra from wider testing then that should be that.
Iām an off-tank who became more of a main tank recently and I canāt say I would be looking forward to losing my tank duo in scrims since itās such a fun synergy that you donāt really get in comp matches. And back in the old days of solo tank, I mostly remember just feeling super vulnerable and hoping that the dps were doing things. I canāt really see this working without major buffs to the main tanks to replace the support an off-tank usually provides and a more flexible approach to meta so you donāt get flamed for not playing the one tank everyone wants. That said, I agree that Overwatch has lost a lot of mechanical and individual play to abilities and while adopting more teamwork has been the best thing Iāve learned in the game, I get needing to step back from it. Itās fine in full team 6v6 but coordinating with strangers in solo queue is tiring. Being a super buff solo tank sounds like a really fun challenge too just a bit isolating.
I think that this game becomes so much better when youāre coordinating with friends and if 3-2-1 keeps the hero synergy and combos at the heart of things then I could be very much for it but itās not worth it just to refresh the game.
Iām highly against the idea because of the tanks like Zarya, D.va, Hog.
Youāve already stated you would be moving Hog to a completely different category to make this idea work, and I would rather not rework half the tank roster into wanna be DPS.
I like playing Zarya, sheās the only tank I genuinely enjoy, how would that work out for her? Will I get flamed every time I pick her, or be forced to swap to a shield tank? Will I have to relearn yet another hero because you guys have changed her to be a DPS?
Because realistically, with snipers, shields are important. Hammond is great because he can actively disrupt them, but how will a Zarya deal with any type of ranged pressure on her team if this is implemented?
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Off tank main here. Please no. The reason I play overwatch is for the team play, even though Iām in bottom gold. If I wanted to play a skirmishy classic fps game I wouldnāt play overwatch.
2-3-2 is the only other thing Iād be ok with. Besides a little more network usage, I canāt see a downside. Makes it more like classic shooters, reduces queue times, doesnāt screw over tanks and heals. Win win.
You should just get dps players to stop playing dps so much though. Make a quota or something idk.
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Are you guys going to revert the Doomfist uppercut nerf or give him a buff after this.
Was the ideia of going 1/2/2 (5 players then) ever considered?