Now that they’ve pretty much proven that the pros don’t have much of a clue about balance, how about we get a few of the regulars in the forums together (GreyFalcon, etc) to build an ExC to try out some of their ideas? I know the forums are all over the place, but there are a few people making reasonable suggestions, certainly better than those the pros came up with, and some of them might actually make a positive difference to the game.
Perhaps they need a second experimental - one of the devs and another which is even more experimental where they have guest balancers once a month.
Why would nominated forum posters be any better than OW pros
Look just because the pros can’t do it, doesn’t mean people on the forums automatically can.
If you’re telling me people on the forums aren’t biased, or have some pretty crappy ideas, then you’re in for an awakening - and it will be a lot like the pro exc
I wouldn’t say they were that bad. They just had a different ideas from the very beginning. Like the fact that the exc is mainly for some goofy tournament, when the forums thought they were going to super balance the game and it would come straight from the heavens
Only problem is, how many people here could actually be likely nominations?
We have maybe 2 GM mercy players, 1-2 GM doom players, a GM lucio, a masters D.va player, etc, zero sym, mei, bastion, etc mains in higher ranks.
I mean you’d want a lot of variety, and a lot of people presenting changes.
The people on the panel seemed to also be under the impression that they were attempting to balance the game. They were talking about making changes ‘for lower ranks’, not just for OWL players in a tournament.
I’d prefer a panel of 5 nominated people who play the hero in question. They recieve feedback from the community of that hero and then they present proposed changes to the pros who recently did the Experiment card and Geoff or a member of the dev team that is responsible for balance.
This way ALL proposed changes can be heard and argued against, finally putting to rest any rumors and offering reasons why certain changes cannot be made from official sources.
These changes will be official so deliberations will be a must.
I agree, especially since we have different design philosophies.
For example, I have a character who can just revive her entire team one by one, with no cooldowns, if you let her. Naturally, this is a horrible idea for Overwatch, but for my game (where dying and reviving is incredibly important) it fits like a glove. I think. (it takes a minute like Mercy’s rez, but she can immediately start again if she has the magic and didn’t die trying to rez)
That’s why I never say “I’m 100% correct in my ideas. How many games have YOU made ” because that’d be stupid and wrong. Instead, I try to SUGGEST changes I THINK would work for overwatch based on what I’ve seen in overwatch, and encourage learning game design to get insight on changes that could help OW.
I’d prefer a panel of people who have extensive experience (10-15+ years) with the class/hero-based shooter genre. I don’t care what rank they are. If they’re a Platinum player who played TF2 since 2007 and Overwatch since 2016, their feedback is probably more valuable than an OWL player with a background in tactical shooters who wants this game to work more like CS:GO.
Having said that, I’d really prefer for actual game designers to design the game.
Gonna need a counter argument side against proposed changes to make it a fair process. Example being the Symmetra panel wants beam to have 300 DPS and 50m range, the counter argument side will reign in that proposal. It’s an extreme example but you do need a counter argument to prevent OP changes.
Except views from that background will also have bias. No side is infallible. It would be better to have 2 sides come to an agreement in an official capacity rather than have a 1 sided bias opinion make all the decisions.
