Sign: Expectation Setting for the Upcoming OWL Tournament Experimental Mode
Seeing a loooot of y’all missing the fact that those changes are, in fact, NOT intended for live.
Tape it ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Well, they would have been if they were not trash.
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That thread still doesn’t stop the criticism that they had the chance to try some new and innovative ideas and instead they chose to give Tracer 25 more HP
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The word “intended” is doing a lot of work there.
We’re not getting another balance patch this month because of this…
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Most people realize that now but this also means we won’t get another balance patch this month, because of a joke. Not worth it at all
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That’s the worst part, with a company like Blizzard that only funds so much into employee wages, they’re wasting limited employee spendings doing tech work for this “fun” tournament idea, it’s basically a lose lose situation for us who don’t care about a tournament
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That’s not the problem.
The communication beforehand was the problem and kinda bad.
They did never clearly say “ok guys, this will be just for fun and and will never make it live”
And that’s a fact, since other streamers/proplayers were also kinda surprised, by some of the weird desicions.
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Yeah that’s what I’ve spoken about in other threads
If it was meant to be for fun then actually make fun decisions, Torb getting two turrets was on this track
But then there’s changes that are actually serious ones like Ana getting her ammo reverted back to 14
Clearly either there was miscommunication or the board of people they chose weren’t listening to what Blizzard said and Blizzard just went along with it
But yeah, I don’t find it fun or entertaining seeing a tournament where characters like Ana and Tracer who are already everywhere, get buffs so they’re gonna be even more prominent
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It’s not about whether or not they are going live. We knew they weren’t. It’s about whether or not they did a good job at what they were meant to do - create a fun tournament environment and give us a snapshot as to how pros think the game should be balanced.
We realize that this whole thing was made for fun, but it was handled so poorly that it sucked the fun out of it. There was no rhyme or reason to it. There was no underlying attempt at thinking what they want to do. Did they want to showcase certain underused heroes? Did they want to implement wacky changes for everyone? Did they want to address problematic heroes? Did they want to force a meta they enjoyed for the tournament?
Unfortunately, the answer to all of these is NO. They simply flailed about randomly without any plan. They voted haphazardly on changes that were often biased, often pointless, and sometimes indicated that the person suggesting them had never played the hero before. The voting was poorly handled as well. The panelists themselves were not particularly inclined to thought and analysis.
The end result was a very bad patch that doesn’t try to solve any problems and also doesn’t try to create any particularly fun meta. Heroes that don’t need buffs got massive ones anyway. Heroes that need help were ignored. Some heroes got nonsensical changes that will never pan out in the game. One example is Mercy’s change. It doesn’t address any balance problems, and it’s not a fun change because it will literally not matter a single time in the whole tournament.
Personally, I was looking forward to this. I would have been happy with any direction they took it in, as long as they thought things through and picked a direction. I was sorely disappointed with how shoddy and slapdash it turned out.
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Not necessarily (though probably)…they could still use the ptr (that thing still exists?)
Pretty sure they only use it for testing new features, heroes, and maps to ensure they don’t break the game
Hero balance changes are only done on the Experimental nowadays (well, kit reworks are probably going to be a PTR thing, assuming another ever happens)
How dare you post facts.
My whole issue is this EXC is a waste of time, EXC should be only for serious balance changes for the game as a whole not fun time changes for pro play, it is a waste of time and effort on the balance teams at Blizz