Criticism Over the Balance Philosophy

General Discussion
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I want to start this by saying… I am NOT attacking Blizzard, their staff, or any part of the community. The only thing I’m criticizing is what I believe is a bad balancing method.

Okay, so my first problem is WHO they listen to when they balance. Yes, I understand they’ve stated before that they balance off feedback and numbers to back up said feedback. BUT, it really doesn’t seem like they use numbers for somethings. They seem to take feedback from those who cry the loudest, for example, over a 100 people survey, 80 could say a hero is fine, but 20 say the hero is OP. Not only do they say it, they scream it, they cry to the mountaintops. Doing this makes them believe that ‘most’ of their community wants a change.

A lot of people would appreciate if you took serious, well constructed feedback from balance idea, decisions that have already happened, and future changes. Yes, I know people constructing well written arguments, or information threads about a hero is rare. People throw their emotions into it instead of using statistics, personal experience, and how they would solve it in a nice, concise, easy to understand post.

They also seem to sometimes balance the WRONG HEROES. Here are some tweaks that happened recently that I’m talking about. Zen’s RMB was nerfed… Why? That’s not going to change anything, they should’ve nerfed the stronger parts of his kit. Tracer’s pulse bomb being nerfed was the biggest oof in my opinion recently… WHY? It’s not the part of the kit that needed to be nerfed, if any of it. Another one is Genji, who really shouldn’t have been touched.

My biggest, most confusing part of the argument is it’s balance DIRECTION. Obviously they are trying to make the game into an E-Sport, which is always a good thing, but one thing really pushes me the wrong way… WHY do you try to appease every single living person in the community? It just DOESN’T WORK. You need to think about listening to ONE part of the audience, trying to buff/nerf/release around every rank/scene is impossible. I believe the right route to take is to balance around the OWL, or just pro scene in general, since they are trying to make it an E-Sport.

All in all, I just believe that if you listen to the loudest, instead of the statistics, it leads to very poor balance. After watching videos recently of people who also share this belief, I wanted to come out and say this. As Cliff Terios very wisely slipped into his video, Rainbow Six Siege does a fantastic job of this “Pro Scene” balance. They make sure no operator has too high of a pickrate, and if they do, they find the source. For example just recently, Ela and Lion were both OP to the community, but never had pickrates to quite back it up, but people still complained. They didn’t do anything until Ela became such a high pickrate, she was in almost every round. Same with Lion, he had a 99.8% (Meaning he wasn’t played in ONE round.) out of their entire pro league season. They recently nerfed him, ONLY after he became a super big problem for the league. He was just annoying to deal with for the community.

I have friends who say “Yeah, I played OW for awhile, but after awhile update became worse and worse with balancing.” And they still haven’t come back, occasionally I get them to try the current build, but it doesn’t work. Not only my friends though, I hear people say it all the time, everywhere. There’s just a lack of direction for balancing, one day it’s over the masses, one day it’s over the loudest croud, and somedays it’s from pro scenes… We need a straight direction.

Okay, here’s the end of the rant. I just want to thank people for reading the entire thing, and to remember that MANY different opinions exist on balance specifically, so it’s okay to think differently. I also want to say again that I’m attacking no one from this thread, I just want the game to thrive for a long time, and poor balance decisions is a quick way to end that dream.

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It seems to me that the developers lost the plot somewhere.
The last two heroes (Moira, Brigitte) are not very mechanically intensive while being able to 1v1 better than any other heroes - and they are support! Another low-skill hero like Junkrat got buffed so hard, that he has been dominating the game for a far, far too long time, causing an incredible amount of frustration due to the nature of his kit. Mercy, maybe the least mechanically challenging hero in the game, got a similar treatment and was bar none the strongest hero in the game for a long, long time.
At the same time, a very high-skill hero (probably top-3 of skill requirements) like Ana got nerfed into the ground to not yet resurface, a small eternity later.

And now nerfs to Genji and Tracer? I fear the nerf to Genji will destroy him, as he was already suffering, while Tracer will probably survive this one.
These are two of the most skill-requiring heroes. What is left? McCree, who will be sent to the bottom by the new Hanzo? Widowmaker? Will she be able to compete against Hanzo? Not so sure.
Only Soldier76 of the fairly high skill-requiring heroes is left if Genji, Tracer and possibly Widowmaker get bumped out.
IMO this is too little to keep the game interesting.

One could ask what is the goal of this game? Is it going to be dumbed down mechanically to a degree where you may as well play it as a card game?

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Lucio also got dumbed down a whooole lot.

Now, this is just a theory, but since the people who usually cry the loudest are underneath platinum, or at plat… I believe they are catering to THOSE people a lot more than they should, making every hero easy so every single level of play can grasp. Which is NOT how this game should be, and it certainly looks like that’s where they’re going… Doing this makes every hero have the same skill ceiling, and allows a diamond player to fight a GM player, if a Master Brig, and a diamond brig fight, I’m convinced it’s a fair matchup. The only bit of skill that’ll be remaining in this game is ult management, teamwork and map knowledge.

I’m sure we can agree we don’t want heroes to be so mechanically dull that they aren’t fun to play/master at high levels.

BUT, there’s the other side of the spectrum. They just made Hanzo require MORE skill, which is a welcomed change, I love a little more depth. But it’s confusing as they’re also dumbing down characters at the same time… Why not keep all heroes at their skill ceilings? Leaving them to be mastered by the great players, and still playable by lower skilled players is the way it SHOULD be. That’s how I view Genji and Pharah, they have balance between super hard to master, but good pickups. Now, since Genji can be played at almost every rank, the people who have no trigger discipline whine about deflect, leading to a domino effect of a hero becoming so hard to play he’s useless, or just plain BAD to play.

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bump, fix yourself blizz

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yes i hate the direction this game is going to. its almost as if mechanical aim doesnt matter anymore. i can have baby fingers and still 1v1 someone else as moira or brigitte. why do we need to practice our aim again? why is this game called a First Person Shooter on the blizzard website? Might as well call this a moba game now.

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blizzard y u do dis?? Genji was balanced other than the reflect hitbox.

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He hasn’t been changed otherwise, I was just using him as an example.

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Unfortunately, for now, this is the only game of its kind of a decent quality (no Paladins, just no), so I will stick around for now. But my patience is really wearing thin.

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Honestly, I don’t think Blizzard have a balance philosophy. They make piecemeal changes lest people complain that the game is too stale, then they have to tinker with these changes. Rinse and repeat. Some changes are extremely odd like the Pulse Bomb which I have never seen anyone demand or Junkrat’s second mine which came out of the blue or the genius idea of making rez a normal ability rather than an ult.

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Overwatch was never sold as a traditional fps since launch. Took you only two years to realize this or are you new in the game ?

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Overall I think the balancing is working, the game is more balanced than at launch, the problem is the missteps along the way and how long so much of it is taking. I think sometimes Blizzard like to make really minor fixes (generally a good policy) to wider problems that need more extensive repair. For example Zen’s dmg is a bit too high for a support, nerfing his alt fire rate doesn’t really fix the problem as well as a slight overall dmg nerf would so if they really wanted to fix the problems with Zen this isn’t the way to do it.

Another one is drastic efforts that maybe go too far. If we take Sym they reworked so much of her, and it did nothing as all their changes did not fix the problem, she cannot work as a support and they just made her weirder, not better. Now they are fixing their fix by making her a defense hero, not really a bad idea but a bit of a shame as it breaks away from her orignal design, just because they failed to fix it. If the original rework rather than giving her a barrier and this weird double ult just made her more of a support (that doesn’t necessarily mean healing) it would have give us a hero that worked much sooner at fit her original design, but instead they went too far. Blizzard seem to overthink some areas and underthink others, and that is where I feel the balance problems come from (as well as not being sure who they are balancing for but that is a whole extra issue).

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If their goal is to piss off people who play the game into leaving, then I guess it’s working…

I’ve clocked over 2k hours across all my accounts. I’ve had to take breaks, the recent summer games being one, because of how disgusting D.Va was. They waited too long.

I’m super loyal to this game, and will probably play it during it’s hardships, but others won’t. Even the most loyal fans like me, are seriously tired of it.

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I is confused.

You champion bringing in line characters with higher pick rates, then, complain about them nerfing Zen and Tracer, two heroes with very high pick rates in OWL.

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Yea the question sums up to… Who would buy a game to play heroes like brigitte or moira for more than a week or a month everyday. Not many. Casually, sure why not, you don’t care much about balance eitherwise. The main reason lots of core people stick around is the time already invested and the lack of a better title in the market. I mean there’s a reason that certain heroes despite being nerfed or low win% have high use in qplay. The fun factor is high.

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I would say Overwatch at its best is one of if not the best multiplayer experiences I’ve ever had and when you get that team that works well together in a close match or amazing recovery result or whatever it fun factor is insane. The problem is that is not the majority of your in game experience and there are a lot of long term issues and many horrid games for each perfect one. I stay because I love the game and the community at it’s best, but sometimes it does feel pretty unpleasant and I wonder why I stay.

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Considering that Mercy and Moira have ridiculously high pick rates - apparently lots of people. Not to mention that playing for a week is still 40 bucks for Blizzard. The game is aimed mostly at casual players and since its a gold mine because of that this is probably always going to be the case.

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Yes but look at ana, hanzo, widow for example. Even genji and tracer, mcree. People use them in qplay way more than in competitive.

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For the past year blizzards “balance philosophy” has been listen to people whining then sloppily apply change and move on without looking back. I mean they did it to mercy for lets see… Half a year 1 force an unneeded rework 2 leave it op for 6 months 3 overnerf it and then move on.

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I stopped reading here.

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This paragraph is extremely untrue.

Zenyatta was one of the most picked supports in tournaments and in top 500s for a VERY long time. I don’t like the nerf considering I use Zenyatta in Deathmatches, but when someone as crappy as me can easily burst down any offense heroes, there IS possibly a problem there.

Tracer’s nerf was probably the best thing that could have happened to her, and this is from someone who is against nerfing Tracer.

The fact is, Tracer is by far the MOST picked dps in top 500s and OWL. By YOUR definition she is in need of looking at if not nerfing.
Keep in mind there are people who are proposing to lower Tracer’s dps by 30% or remove headshots or increase blink cooldown to 5 seconds. THESE are some of the examples that, in your own words, are “the loudest but the minority”.

Here, Blizzard has in fact demonstrated a good balancing effort–they reduce the effectiveness of a hero that is considered OP by many pros and top level players, while also completely retaining her ability to perform in her role. Her pistols, her ability to assassinate, one of her most skill-defining aspects, is RETAINED. Blizzard is not simply “dumbing down” heroes.

Genji’s nerf had it coming for ages. People have been showing how ridiculously huge Genji’s deflect hitbox is. Granted, right now it is too small, but this is certainly the correct direction to head in.

And I feel like you are forgetting other hero buffs, like the ones to Reaper and Mei. Those are certainly healthy for the hero and the game overall. Blizzard is heading in the direction where no hero is always useful and every hero is sometimes useful in certain scenarios. There’s still some distance to that, but that is not a bad thing.

The only thing I am against is the Lucio changes, but keep in mind NOBODY has been complaining about wallriding. Not even plats. Not even silvers. This was a change that NOBODY warranted, so don’t pin it on the plats

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