The game feels more and more like its being catered solely towards a competitive playerbase, such as esports instead of the diverse, casual and mixed playerbase that originally attracted people to Overwatch in the first place.
It was easy to pick up heroes that had more or less skill than some and still able to perform well alongside others(Rein, old Mercy, etc).
Now its just “skill skill skill”, and no variation between balance updates for those players. Junkrats nade nerf, Syms entire rework, Mercys rework, Torb, Roadhog…etc. It feels like a lot of these nerfs are just so that competitive players dont feel like they’re getting cheesed by someone with less skill than them, even though the skilled player will always perform better, despite what others have said.
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I get where you’re coming from but its easy to generalize changes as being made for a general stereotype of certain players. I also disagree a lot with the examples you gave.
Take Junkrat’s nade nerf: it was an undeniable problem that Junkrat was too oppressive in low ranks, and that also upset me as a bronze Junkrat because i’d rather have a challenging time than make the enemy think they need to mirror my rat or lose. Did the nerf fix anything? No. Has it had the effect high ranked junkrat haters would desire? Definitely. Should we put on some tinfoil hats and claim Blizz would rather cater to platinum players who just hate Junkrat than balance their own game? Probably not.
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It is a competitive game by definition: You play against other players. Improving balance for a competitive game naturally leads to more varied and interesting gameplay. I don’t see a difference between “casual” and “competitive” players in this regard, as both benefit from better game balance.
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Interestingly, I’d argue the exact opposite.
When the game came out, players with good aim and positioning could almost solo carry. There was a lot less healing and less than half as much CC. Apart from flankers, fights were somewhat static (when compared to OW now, in comparison to other shooters OW fights have always been very mobile). Meaning that static, aim based heroes could outplay pretty much everything.
Now it often feels like aim doesn’t matter, when the enemy team rolls in it’s one CC after another with a bunch of high HP targets and insane aoe heals behind them. It feels like as long as you go in as a team, the skill required to do well has been drastically lowered over the last 1-2 years. Mostly because of the new heroes.
And with the new heroes, you can’t argue that brig, moira or orisa are hard to pick up. You can argue about their skill ceiling, but their skill floor is inarguably very low.
Because the only game mode that’s somewhat consistent is competitive.
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