With the release of Moira in Nov 2017 and then later the addition of Brig in season 10, the game was going downhill. It felt like there was no fixing OW. All the powercreep and horrendous changes that followed, made it seem more and more hopeless. 2 years of absolutely awful changes.
And then suddenly, we get RoleQ, Experimental and the Workshop. With every patch the game felt more and more balanced. All the changes in the correct direction.
Brings up the question: Did the balance team change somewhat around Dec 2019? I can’t imagine the people who are giving us all these amazing balance changes (e.g. the experimental patches) were the same team that made Moth Mercy or Brig. I can’t fathom it.
Someone must have gotten fired and I’m glad that guy lost his job. So glad. I hope he never gets his hands on another video game ever again.
No they are quite literally moving away from a more MOBA-esque casual balancing and towards more competitive FPS balancing geared towards the higher end.
They outright said this multiple times the past few months and it’s been evident in their balance changes which have restored competitive integrity to the game, reversed powercreep, and made it the most balance state it’s been in months.
Just because they nerf a hero that has to aim doesn’t mean they aren’t balancing for a more competitive FPS-type game. OP is OP regardless of aim.
Your timeline is off and not everything you listed can can be attributed to the balance team. Josh Noh started appearing on streams with Jeff? around/after Sigs launch and making forums posts and that’s when you started seeing these broken tweaks made to characters.
Maybe he took over while Geoff is working on OW2 or maybe its still 100% the same team, dunno. Just what I observed.
I hate it when people say this.
Mobas can be skill based or brainless just like any other genre.
FPS doesn’t automatically mean skillful. Moba doesn’t automatically mean noskill. And I have no idea why these words are being used interchangeably by the OW community.
McCree isn’t an “fps” character. He has to know his match ups and many ability interactions on top of the ability to aim.
Original Brig wasn’t a “moba” character. She was just a braindead character. She would be just as OP and brainless in any Moba. Besides new Mobas are becomming more and more skillbased (requiring aim, no more autoattacks, wasd movement and dodging, reaction time based dodging and ability usage, etc) It’s a real shame that games like Dota and LoL reign supreme considering all of their flaws.
Take a look at the Mei change for example. Great change. How does it fit into your hypothesis? It makes the game more complex from a Moba perspective and that’s a good thing. More ability interactions to think about (that’s a skill!)
Or consider the Widow change. She’s the embodiment of “click heads to win” and she’s getting nerfed.
Wasn’t referring to character release dates but when the game started going downhill in regards to powercreep and overall balance. I doubt we would agree on this so no point in discussing it in full I think.
What are you talking about? Brig was DEFINITELY a mess but Moira was considered one of the most balance supports upon release. She only got attention more than a year later because of power creep.
Look back at patch notes. She only had minor resource meter tweeks and stayed relatively unchanged for a longgg time.
Which were the result of never attending to the core problem of hypermobility. they didn’t come into being out of a vacuum, they were the result of the community wanting a character similar to Moira, who drained and healed, and also a counter to Dive.
