I keep hearing statements such as:
“X hero has a low pick rate in Top 500, so stop complaining about them.”
“OWL players are saying the meta is X, so I don’t think Y hero is as big a problem as you say they are.”
“Just get good; X hero is totally useless at high tiers so they’re obviously easy to counter.”
Why are we using the top 1% of players to justify decisions that detract from the experience of the rest of the player-base? I recognize the competitive aspect of this, but many players don’t really care about “getting good,” they just want to have fun playing a game for a few hours.
Having OWL and ranked competitive playlists is fine, but I think the hardline focus on keeping the game balanced for the highest tier players by definition imbalances it for the rest of us. Making a character stronger so they can be viable at high ranks can absolutely overpower them in lower ones (i.e. Roadhog).
I know there needs to be some baseline population for the balance team to reference, but I just don’t understand why they focus on the 1% playing at the absolutely highest level rather than the vast majority just looking for a good time.
46 Likes
The T500 will only be mentioned when that stat supports their argument.
Never gonna be solved in every competitive games
4 Likes
their vision was the e-sport route/world (owl). so they wanted to tailor the game to the 1 percent. nothing wrong with that but it would have been better with a mirror type game then a hero shooter where balance is whacked across all levels of play lol
6 Likes
Because that is how Blizzard has decided their balancing strategy is. So, if that is how the game is going to be balanced, then that is the framework people use to talk about balance.
If you want people to stop talking about balance in top 500, then you have to get blizzard to stop balancing around top 500.
I think the hardline focus on keeping the game balanced for the highest tier players by definition imbalances it for the rest of us.
It totally does.
7 Likes
Who wants to play unbalanced trash that shifts balance based on which baddie got dunked that day?
Pro players are the only metric you can reasonably use to balance a game, because they have consistency (most players don’t, or they’d be pro players), and they’re trying to abuse any broken/unbalanced feature in the game (because their checks depend on it).
“I just want to rip a bowl and play, man” doesn’t have the same understanding or drive to play the game in a way that lends itself to balance. You’re already in a position of “who cares what the game is, I just wanna play”, so what does it matter if your favorite hero is suboptimal? Just press H, pick your waifu, and one trick away.
7 Likes
You can’t design a competitive shooter around the most mediocre players.
If you want balance for everyone, go roll some dice.
11 Likes
Fair point, and I guess that’s what I’m trying to get at here. I recognize that OWL players and high-tier streamers are important to Overwatch’s success, but ultimately it’s the thousands of us “average” users that provide the life blood to this product. It’s weird that the company chalks up the opinions of the majority of its customer base to, “you just need to be better, like these guys, who play the game for 15 hours a day.”
4 Likes
Blizzard - “I’m going to make a fun and quirky looking hero shooter inspired by a casual fun hero shooter called TF2”
Also Blizzard - “I’m going to market my new game as Accessible for everyone of all skill levels from all genres of games with the tag line of Fun for Everyone”
Also blizzard - “I’m going to balance the game for the top 1% of my player base because i want to shoe horn it into an e-sports frame work it wasn’t designed for because money?”
Also Blizzard - “Why does the majority complain about my game?”
20 Likes
And yet, you could do just that back in the first year or two of the game. And man, that was FUN. Ridiculous? Yes. Broken? Hell yeah. But hot jeebus it was a damn good time.
I miss that. It’s fine if this was always marketed as a competitive shooter, but it wasn’t; that marketing strategy is new and is arguably the cause of most of this game’s current issues.
3 Likes
How do you balance a competitive game around average players? It just makes no sense from a game theory perspective.
Imagine even something as simple as chess being balanced around average players. It’s not fair to the average players that there are so many possible board states.
3 Likes
it is not, nor never was designed to be a “Competitive” game
that came later… much much later… which is why balance is so very difficult
7 Likes
As a competitive game, you can’t. I’ll openly admit that.
But I miss the days when Overwatch wasn’t labeled as a competitive shooter. It was unbalanced as hell, but infinitely more enjoyable and less stressful.
3 Likes
As a competitive game, you can’t. I’ll openly admit that.
But I miss the days when Overwatch wasn’t labeled as a competitive shooter. It was unbalanced as hell, but infinitely more enjoyable and less stressful.
Aren’t there a bunch of game modes like that already? Arcade and custom are full of them. Why can’t there be a competitive mode?
there can, there is for tf2, but the core of the game is balanced around casual drop in and out fun times… not hardcore b4lls to the walls sweat festing
the point being the game was designed to be casual, it should be balanced for casual, and those who want to play it competitively should just put up with that kind of balancing
3 Likes
I never said there couldn’t be; in fact I straight up said I support a competitive playlist in my original post.
However, when you focus so heavily on balancing said competitive mode, referencing only the best players to make changes, that directly impacts the playability of the other modes. Arcade hasn’t been fun in 3 years, and QP is not much better.
1 Like
If I can provide an example, Valorant appears to be doing a pretty good job at coming to balance: almost every agent is playable (barring Phoenix, who should be getting a buff or rework, eventually); maps are relatively fair on both Attacker and Defender side; guns are well-adjusted; leaver penalty is enforced in a way that isn’t light nor oppressive.
I think how they got this was by looking at both aspects of the game. Looking at how agents fair in both the pro scene AND the player scene, and trying to find a “middle ground” for both. So far, this appears to be working, and both their playerbase and esports is flourishing.
5 Likes
That’s how most comp games work. You can’t really balance around bronze because they aren’t playing the game right.
3 Likes
They focus on balancing from the top down, because they want overwatch to be a competitive shooter. You absolutely cannot balance a competitive game around people who don’t play the game at a high level. Otherwise you’ll have people climbing the ranks on low skill floor heroes (As was the case with brig), only to get stomped if they play something else.
Overwatch League was absolutely planned from the start. They always wanted it to be an esport, and so, it is, and that’s how balance is done.
I think it’s also important to remember that overwatch is an extremely hard game to balance no matter what level of play you’re looking at, purely because every hero plays so differently.
1 Like
Games always should be balanced around the best players, because you need to design games around playing correctly. Even if you create the most broken character ever capable of one shotting people on body shot, it could still be bad in low ranks simply because people have bad aim there. The same goes to the Junkrat and other simple heroes to just play - they are strong in ranks where people stand in choke, don’t actively dodge projectiles aka play into his strengths for no other reason than not enough skill/experience. So should Junk be nerfed into even more unusable state for people who actually can play around this hero? Or should people in lower ranks learn how to play around it if they want to climb?
It only makes sense to balance strengths of heroes for people who can use them and who can play around their weaknesses. If someone doesn’t choose to play around weaknesses of the hero, that doesn’t mean it’s a strong hero. Reaper may be strong in low ranks, but it’s garbage past diamond, simply because people are looking for him more and can out range him.
3 Likes
then why did they develop so many “Noobish” heros…
they should have just made slight variations on Soldier 76, some with a heal pack, some with a shield, some with the ability to climb walls, etc, and be done with it
4 Likes