I just wanted to say that there is a big part of the community (which does not belong to the vocal minority) that greatly appreciates your work and transparecy. Interacting with the forums can be… challenging. Keep it up!
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Wouldn’t that mean removing impact from Tank and Support to give DPS more impact? If damage has more impact, then healing and defensive abilities would have less, would it not?
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So your answer to the most popular role to play in the game is to make them more impactful and this in turn makes the less popular roles become less impactful. This making fewer people want to play them.
So, as a tank and support player, why would I want to play this game? What do you think will happen when you can no longer find players who wish to be target dummies for the DPS players to have their fun?
I’m not trying to just complain here Andy. But really this game that you have described and the team has shown us looks like it will be a lot of fun for the 2 DPS players and unenjoyable for the other 3 players on the team.
So please, can you give me just one thing that will make this game sound more fun or at the very least equally as fun as the game I am playing now. Because to date I have yet to see or hear anything that would make me optimistic in that regard.
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No because it’s going to be more of a power shift. My understanding is that they will move CC to the tank class, focus on damage in the DPS class, and utility for the support class.
This way every class will feel unique and have impact in their own way. Tanks/brawlers will disrupts the enemy team, DPS will do the DMG (obviously), and supports (moving away from being healers) will provide utility.
This also explains why they want to reduce in combat healing.
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A lot of the worry I am seeing from supports is that now the game is making them have little to no impact in terms of healing. A healing nerf on top of another in combat nerf is just to much and makes hero’s like Mercy or Moira seem like they are going to be useless. You acknowledge that it feels bad to spend all your resources on breaking barriers but it just feels like at the moment that frustration is being pushed onto the supports.
I’m just curious if there is going to be something added for the supports that gives them better utility?
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Utility is really hard to balance because it’s not “tangible” as blocking damage, damage or healing. It’s basically feel based on how effective it is.
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Yep, it won’t be easy and I don’t know if and how they will pull it off. However, i am pretty sure that’s the idea for OW2 and if done well, it’s a very good and healthy path for this game, imo.
no, in your blind hatred towards dps heroes you have missed the fact that most of them are incredibly lackluster when compared to a support or a tank and even those who are able to carry are simply made out of paper and things can go wrong for them very easily, so no, giving dps heroes more impact isn’t taking away from any other role, it’s giving them what they deserve after many years of having support and tanks dictating metas
Yes, my blind hatred for DPS is seething. Everyday I wake up and say “what can I do to effective absolutely no change by complaining on the forums”.
And people say supports have a victim complex >.>
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If they dont transform healers to dps, being a support wont make any sense.
" There is only 1 tank so we need less heals"
Well, yeah, then we need less dmg and you are making dmg the only useful thing on the game, so, why do you buff dmg and nerf heals? It just does not make sense. At this point nothing blizzard do has any sense.
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Personal take here, but I don’t usually conflate popularity with efficacy. While tank and support may not be the most popular roles, one could argue that they’re very impactful in any given match.
There was an article I read years ago that summed up a lot of the “why’s” for why folks play DPS roles in class based games. Not everything is applicable (the article was written about MMORPG gameplay), but the fundamental motivations remain true:
- Players love to see big numbers. The dopamine hit and instant feedback that players get from putting up big damage numbers is an immediate indication of how well you’re doing in game.
- Clear expectations around what you’re supposed to be doing: You are damage. You’re either flanking, ranged, or melee, but no matter what you know what you’re supposed to do: punch/kick/shoot/blow up the target in front of you.
Damage tends to be a more approachable role because it’s more straight forward, and appeals to a broader set of players.
Tanking and support requires you to have an appreciation for how your actions improve those around you, which is arguably one of the most impactful aspects of the game.
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What does this mean in terms of how they will play in OW2, though? For supports especially, their changes don’t seem like they’re geared towards making feel fun or impactful. Obviously the healing in combat nerf was a test and seemingly not going through, but what do changes like that do to make support players feel impactful and like they’re having fun?
It feels like a change solely made to make DPS feel better, not the supports actually doing the healing.
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Then how about making dps more team dependent or giving the other 2 roles self sustain?
Ofc ppl will prefer dps if you are making it easy only for them.
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But how does making a healer heal worse give the player a sense of pride as appose to a sense of powerlessness when they cant even keep a target they are pumping all their resources into alive?
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Andy, I’m not denying that they have more impact in the current game than DPS. I agree with it. I find it to be an objective reality. And yet the most popular role is still DPS.
What will happen to the game when the already less popular roles also become less impactful? The number of people who want to play them will virtually disappear.
The 2 most common complaints I see in Overwatch are:
1- Queue times are too long. Well it seems to me with the path being taken that problem will become worse in rather short order when nobody is having fun playing tank or support.
2-Complaints about teammates playing badly for one reason or another. With the “increased individual impact” a bad teammate will be significantly larger anchor on the team.
I asked for one thing that will make the game sound equally or more fun, not a justification for making it more DPS focused. So is that your way of telling us that it won’t be?
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thats what overwatch is about? not blatant discrimination going unpunished? weird.
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for starters support being the most impactful role in the game automatically knocks them out of getting even more impact… as for fun, I think the subtext here is that support players don’t need to be bribed into having fun, if you have fun playing support then play support and if you don’t, don’t pick support
either way the change was a preliminary one based solely on balance, which means that they probably had a very specific mindset when implementing it, IF the amount of healing felt right in general that only meant that yes, healing needs to be lowered not necessarily in that way but doing a 25% less healing in combat is a very direct way to test healing as a feeling, it doesn’t mean the change is set in stone it’s just them trying to test how OW feels when there’s less healing in general and not having the time to change ALL supports for an exhibition game
Mind you, Andy isn’t a developer, this is his personal take, don’t sit here and shoot balance questions he doesn’t have the answer to, you know very well that he doesn’t have that kind of impact on the team, instead frame your feedback succinctly and let him communicate it to the appropriate team
This game is such a tank diff, especially with double shield.
Also tanks have some of the best ultimates in the game. The amount of times my tanks switched when all I needed for them to do was press Q.
The key reason why I play and enjoy these roles the most.
This is a good example of why OW 2 needs an updated tutorial. Learning how to play tank and support comes from watching videos on YouTube or having VOD reviews done. Plus, the hero the tutorial shows off is Soldier: 76 who is basically CoD incarnate in OW. So the fact that most new players want to play dps is because that is the only role they know how to play.
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I hear you, and I want you all to know I’m registering and taking note of this sentiment.
To manage expectations: I’m not ready to discuss changes or updates to the Support role in OW2 more deeply than what we’ve already commented on. That said, I do very clearly understand that general anxiety around the expectations of every role is high right now, and ideally we can address that with future content like blogs and dev update videos.
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