Core HP and hitboxes were changed, mauga was added, raid tank bosses started and we got fake rank reset, taking your rank down while still playing against same people.
Everything was fine before, even 5v5 wasnt big issue until S8, ow had good times and some bad times since 2016 but nothing ruined it like S8. After that people really started leaving, from 10+ people online there is none from me when i played some ow classic today, even Iam playing Warframe instead last 4 months.
But i miss ow before s8, i really do, it used to best pvp experience ever but now it completely lost its magic.
From hero action pvp shooter i used to love it became some random mess of pvp sandbox.
Are we talking about season 9? I genuinely cannot tell. Because some of those changes happened in season 8, but some of them happened in season 9. Heck, I believe the tank update happened in season 10 if I am not mistaken. So I am not sure if this is a creative complaint or just another brick in the wall.
But, like, yeah, screw all of those seasons. Baby game.
since sombra rework of minecraft cube was the alpha beta test for the infamous s9 i say it started going down from s8 not to mention mooga mooga and the first hacked disaster.
that said we have started recovery albeit slow.
i dont think juno or hazzo are a problem and actually a good evolution and some of the funnest heroes in those roles in a long while, they do need some degree of tweaks especially hazzo wrt to him face palming to kill secure. etc
but a proper full on s9 aimbox and hp revert along with most passives reverted would help making it feel better.
Quite the opposite really.
S8 started Dec 2023 with only 20.7k avg players on steam charts.
S9 started Feb 2023 with only 24.7k avg players on steam charts.
Its only gone up since up to 34k avg players.
Avg player count has gone up 60% since this exact time one year ago.
I don’t really think it did. The change was made to address burst dmg and too much healing. Problem is they didn’t go all the way. They could have kept hanzo from being able to one shot and balanced him properly but they never even tried. Rather than rework widow away from one shot they’d rather rework entire maps and Sombra lol.
it seriously boggles my mind that they have no rolled back the disgusting changes from season 9, mainly HP changes and hitbox changes as you pointed ou.
Tanks were already raid bosses before, but everything just got worse. 5v5 had somewhat of a faster pace before, but that season slowed everything to a massive crawl.
I never liked 5v5 but it was far more tolerable before that trash patch.
If you look at the actual chart it’s very obvious that S9 was the catalyst and led to a sustained increase in Steam players. I don’t like it, but facts are facts.
https://i.imgur.com/Hz4eDMj.png
(C is the exact date of S9’s release)
I’d argue that the increase happening in such a spike more shows that all of the hype, advertising, streamer involvement, rank reset etc worked and that it had less to do with the patch itself. Note how following the initial spike there was little to no increase in player count. If the patch was such an upgrade on the previous experience you’d expect the increase to continue at a decent pace as new players get the game, yet it didn’t.
