Blizzards decision making baffles me

General Discussion
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These are in no paticular order

~ Released 222 without even attempting to prepare for long que times. No multi-tank release, Refusal to revert GOATs nerfs and a simple loot box as an incentive to play other roles. Dont get me wrong, i love 222 personally but the implementation method has been woeful.

~ Angers 90% of the community by balancing around high level/Pro-play so often but then makes the game unplayable/boring above GM due to que times and horrific new high damage shield tank making over half the roster unplayable…

~ Makes role-based SR for more accurate/balanced comp games but then widens SR margin so much that the team-balance is just as unpredictable as before but in a different way. They obviously did this to lower que times but fail to realise that decent balance and more fun tanks would help lower que times without lowering match quality.

~ Lets awfully stale metas and OP heroes ruin games for long af before actually pushing through a half assed patch that sits on PTR for almost a month (this meta and patch is a great example).

~ Nerfs heroes that arent really much of an issue like dva, sym, torb and often ignores the ones that may actually need slight nerfs like hanzo, reaper, doomfist etc

~ Same old recycled events with nothing but a few skins to be excited about. I think events are great but i wish more focus was placed on the actual gameplay experience

~ Map design gets worse and worse imo

~ No roadmap to know what we can look forward to. Just silence and expectations.

~ Refusal to do anything to discourage smurfing, throwing or leaving games even though it ruins the gameplay experience for so many.

~ Released a game based around teamwork, synergies, combos etc but with no guilds/clans so most people dont experience overwatch at its highest potential.

Probs forgot lots of stuff but yeah, this isnt to bash overwatch. I still enjoy it as it is BUT i just feel like blizzard could’ve made it so much bigger and more enjoyable if they did things differently over the years. Lately i feel like im just playing til something similar comes along with better dev support…

edit:

Although there has been some very positive changes lately like faster balance patches, while you wait function, hero bans and experimental card… i still have a few more things to add that have baffled me since writing this.

~ Nerfed Moira during double shield even though she was just enabled by lack of dva and double shield and was never an issue before she became meta. She was even being considered a crazy buff before double shield meta.

~ Nerfed orisa and sigmas shields during double shield which just made them more dependant.

~ Nerfed all shields and shifted power into base kits (good change) but then didnt (did eventually) nerf any of the powercrept heroes that would benefit from paper shields.

~ Gave us a map pool instead of just letting the lobby vote between 2 maps + 1 random one so now there’s possiblity of being stuck playing bad maps for a season and not ever getting certain good ones.

~ Added 222 which created more team oriented gameplay and enabled all roles to be effective but then toyed with the idea of a 1-3-2 which reduces team oriented gameplay massively and only benefits dps players (and mercy mains). This imo is an extemely bad way to alleviate dps que times and they should instead spend their time creating more balanced/engaging tanks and supports as well as making the role feel more fun and rewarding to play.

~ Stopped releasing heroes and maps due to putting all resourses into OW2. I can agree with slowing it down slightly but i feel like absolutely nothing is hindering their ever decreasing playerbase more and more. Hopefully it will be worth it when OW2 releases.

~ Released Echo as a dps even though dps que times are currently the biggest issue for the game and tank/supports need more engaging hero options to encourage people onto them roles… mind blown. Also she melts tanks. Brilliant

  • DPS get longer que times
  • supports and tanks get same small pool of heroes

(Also The ult is stupid imo)

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Honestly, I don’t really see that Blizzard foresaw these problems at all. In fact, they got pushed by both pros and the player base. It’s only after it’s been rolled out that the problems have become more obvious.

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It is Blizzard’s MO.

Step 1: release an awesome game

Step 2: get players invested with regular updates, content, wonderful characters + artwork.

Step 3: be unable to balance the game and make balancing decisions based on arbitrary reasons that indicates nobody on the team plays the game at a serious level.

Step 4: slowly put out less and less content.

Step 5: rinse / repeat.

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Step 3 doesn’t really apply here at all though, because all the people who played this game at a serious level, the pros, were basically pushing 2/2/2 as the Holy Grail.

The problem in this case is that the pros are not the player base. People coming to play a game for entertainment, no matter how hard they want to play, are not interested in waiting either 9+ minutes for a game or switching to what they perceive is a boring role (I can say that, I play tanks. They are for sure boring as all get out)

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well this is false from the off. they definitely worked on the queue times in advance of launching 2-2-2.

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I wish i knew this before purchasing and putting 100s of hours in :sweat_smile:

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  1. They probably knew this was going to happen, but they didn’t have any answer or countermeasure beyond rewarding lootboxes and credits.
  2. They don’t do this. And balancing heroes is a tricky thing that takes time, feedback and patience.
  3. You’re going to need some exceptional math to prove ELO is incorrectly calculated.
  4. Players create the meta, not Blizzard. Though, Blizzard can be faulted for balancing issues and not being able to see or predict how players would handle system mechanics, it is not them that creates the meta, it’s the players.
  5. Blizzard has a number of statistical measures and data collection programs that let them see things that most players don’t see. They aren’t balancing “in-the-moment” but also trying to curb trends and balance for future changes to the game (such as the addition of new characters).
  6. This one is a legitimate complaint, but I’m not sure what you mean by focusing on the actual gameplay experience.
  7. I’m not sure if it’s getting worse, or just getting stale, but this is also a legitimate complaint.
  8. Communication with the playerbase would be helpful, but i’m guessing we’re going to see something stuff at BlizzCon that might give us some kind of clue. I do think this is also a legitimate complaint.
  9. Smurfing is not something they will enforce against. Other things that you mention can be reported for gameplay sabotage and there’s already a leaver’s penalty.
  10. This probably the biggest issue in the game right now, in that there’s no instructions, tutorials or anything regarding or remotely encouraging, teaching or developing a team-play mindset. While I understand the importance of self-discovery, Overwatch is dreadful in teaching basic information on how to play the individual heroes, much less even define them.
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They really do though (not all the time) but all tank/support nerfs and tank buster buffs were attempts (failed attempts) to kill goats. When 222 was enforced then all changes shouldve been reverted imo. Heroes like reaper, mei and doomfist were buffed to the point of making lower ranks struggle massively against them and it was all during goats. Also its obvious that Lucio speed was originally nerfed so he couldnt enable multi tank comps.

goats was only an issue at the top levels of play and lower ranks suffered due to the balance decisions around trying to end it.

So my point here is.

Before, games were uneven cus rank didnt determine whos good at what, it was random. U could get 5 dps mains or 5 healer mains which meant even though the average SR was accurate the game actually wasnt very balanced.

Now we have role based SR to make games more balanced however in pursuit of lower que times they seem to have widened SR margins dramatically. An example from 1 of my games is…

Me - Diamond tank
Team mate - Masters tank
2 DPS - Diamond
2 Healers - Masters

Enemy Tank - T500
Enemy Tank 2 - Diamond
2 DPS - Masters
2 Healers - Diamond

I personally dont see these matches as very balanced. If their gonna make the margins bigger i feel like it would be much better to keep it similar within each role.

Id like to believe this true but the addition of heroes like brig and sigma disrupted the balance of many heroes due to blizzard being unprepared for how they will impact the game/meta and attempting to rectify it.

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They already got their money from us when we bought the game, they’re trying to protect their esports baby now, we’re small fish.

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Its called Activision is rushing them so they can turn a profit. or as we’ll likely find out from blizzcon moved staff from OW to make a new OW game so they can turn out sequels like the bastards do with CoD.

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Let’s see what OW “Phase 2” brings besides the PVE mode. I am cautiously optimistic we might get one new character for each role… proportionately this helps Supports and Tanks more than DPS…

Map design is not what it once was… they feel more like afterthoughts… Havana and Paris both are meh, though I think Havana is more fun to play on personally than Paris… I just cringe when it comes up.

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Why would they revert the GOATS nerfs when tanks are still the strongest role and still define every meta? Case in point this current meta is DEFINED by Orisa/Sigma and they determine what is viable and what is not.

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I dno maybe because

Poor tank balance and oppresive dps heroes are a major reason for lack of people willing to play the role atm, and stacked tank/support comps are no longer possible.

Defining the meta is irrelevant and arguably GOATs was defined by Brig and AOE healing more so than tanks as well as previous metas being defined by supports too.

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Saying AoE healing caused GOATS is silly. It assumes people were just spreading out damage and that focusing a target is impossible.

GOATS was very simply caused by the fact that between Rein/Zarya/Brigg you had the defensive abilitites (add in a DVA if they play DPS) to make it so focusing someone outside of an ultimate was a waste of time. The job of Lucio and Zen was to make it so that ulting someone was also a waste of time. If Lucio did all single target healing he still would have been picked because his other job was to speed boost the group in sot hat the fight could happen.

On the main point making a role go from a little overpowered to a lot of overpowered just so people will play it seems like very bad design. Turning the game into “Tanks and 4 other people who do not really matter” might lower the tank queue rate but it will make everyone else miserable and having 2/3 of the team be miserable in a game is sort of a bad recipe for people to continue playing that game.

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Correction to what i said before. It was caused by brig, AOE healing and speedboost. Without all 3 then a triple tank line-up would have much more counterplay

The role isnt OP. Orisa and Sigma are just bad designs due to high medium/long range damage, CC and shields. None of the other tanks are close to being OP and all have lots of counterplay.

Thats not what reverting goats nerfs would do. Thats close to what not-reverting goats nerfs has done since double shield is by far the best tank comp and makes half dps/support roster unplayable

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This. All the this.

Plus, actually, most of the OP post is pretty on point.

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Dont forget how balance changes go to the PTR for 3 weeks for no reason and then come to live. Making the balance changes feel incredibly slow.

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Honestly, these forums shouldnt complaint about a rushed 2-2-2 implementation after a full year of “ROLE QUEUE WHEN” threads.

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Blizzard has stated that there was never an attempt to kill GOATS, but weaken it to the point that other alternatives and team compositions were possible.

GOATS eventually refined itself to the point that strong healing wasn’t really necessary. Ana provided crowd control through disabling targets, and countering Zenyatta’s transcendence with biotic grenade. Lucio provided incidental healing and burst healing through amp and crossfade as well as speed (and soundwave on environmentally friendly maps). Zenyatta brought debuffs and burst damage output (with no falloff), and strong healing when needed.

Of the main tanks, D.va could nullify projectile Ults like Gravity Surge. Winston ignored barriers, and Reinhardt shut out a lot of damage with his massive barrier and yet could compete offensively thanks to his huge barrier, fast charging ult, fire strike and charge.

Note that all Supports had self-healing and Tanks had crowd control and damage mitigation or nullification, to say nothing about armor’s effective HP rating was equivalent to 50 per 25 armor. It is a lot of damage to tear through for an offense hero.

Brigitte wasn’t used in late-stage GOATS and could easily be switched with Ana.

The Tank role has been borderline broken since the beginning of the game, and with increasing number of Supports introduced raising the minimum levels of healing to higher numbers. Couple that with the large amount of mitigation that Tanks provide and it takes a large amount of effort to bring one tank down. This may be intentional design, after all they are large targets with three times the health of everyone else. Consider, if offense heroes are balanced around killing other offense or defense heroes (or Support), and Tanks are balanced by a united front from the opposing team to take out one tank. You can imagine the problem that creeps up when there are two or three tanks against three offense and/or support. This is where the borderline broken problem of Tanks lies. Individually, they may not be powerful against the might of a full team or a coordinated assault, but as you add more support and tanks into the mix, it gets harder and harder to individually kill one - especially when you have a limited number of slots.

The same problem creeps up when you have healing being combined and the challenges of sustained damage and aiming vs. the relative ease of healing that doesn’t require precision aiming like damage does.

You’re going to have to specify what reversions of GOATS nerfs you’re talking about, but as far back as January 2018, the only real changes to impact GOATS was a reduction in the value of armor. All other changes were done on the Support-side of the equation or an attempt to improve the viability of Offense and Defense heroes against Tanks and barriers.

As for double-barrier, there has been at least two barriers in the game since launch, rather, the addition of Sigma highlighted a problem that’s been in the game since Orisa’s introduction. Map objectives in Overwatch tend to want to support a very entrenched, bunker-down style of play, especially with Tanks.

Tanks, for the most part, are still in a really good spot, even with all the changes including the most recent.

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dont forget: pushes trendy woke issues on people and makes owl deathly boring with pc sjw stuff. bows down and worships worst human rights abusers on the planet.

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