I think there’s a misinterpretation of the effect of “balancing around the top.” (Blizz has stated that they balance around OWL, GM and Masters.) People think that this is going to be detrimental to the mid and low ranked experience. Honestly, I think they could not be more wrong. Balancing around, say plat, would be awful, especially for plat players. How does that make sense? Well:
Balancing around the top of the ladder means you’re more balanced towards the potential output of a hero played well. This means that if you make a good play, through some combination of mechanical skill, prediction, capitalizing on mistakes etc. you are rewarded for it. If the game was balanced otherwise, you lose outplay potential. The game would be in a state of “press H to win” and playing better would not yield better results.
What is the difference between a plat player and a GM player? Generally, the GM player is more consistent. If you don’t balance towards the top, then those burst moments where the plat player “plays like a GM” so to speak won’t have as much value and games will feel more frustrating as your own skill and improvement won’t be rewarded which brings me to my next point…
If game balance becomes worse as you climb, what does improvement actually mean? Really, it just doesn’t make sense. What does improvement entail and what is the incentive to improve? Keep in mind, if you’re playing competitive your goal is to win, one way or another. Your goal is to climb. Why does it make sense to be rewarded for winning and improving with a game that becomes worse? As you climb in ELO and players begin to maximize their skill, if the game is not balanced for it you’ll get extremely strict meta compositions to an absurdly exaggerated degree. It will quite literally be “press H to win.”
The moral is that anything that is “unbalanced” in lower ranks can be outplayed. Anything imbalanced at the top is just imbalanced.
I had some trouble articulating this thought but hopefully that makes sense.
EDIT: A lot of people are somehow misinterpreting by thinking I’m saying to balance around OWL. No. I’m literally just quoting the devs. According to my title and literally everything I wrote in the post, I’m saying to balance around GM. I very well understand that the ranked ladder is not the same as coordinated pro play.
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Top down balancing is the only method that uses a shred of logic imo
You either play to play and accept balance for what it is (warts and all, the balance team is a loose cannon at times) or you play to improve. Those who genuinely want to climb probably will to some extent with the right effort, because top down balance rewards actually learning the game and how to play it. Nobody deserves Diamond+ because of the hero they play, it should be for how well they play and how consistently they play well.
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Of course I want this game to be balanced around people who have proven that they are capable of playing the game, imagine if this game was balanced around people who thought “since I died to it, it must be overpowered”? It’d become an unplayable game in that case.
It’s like the people who complain that the devs don’t look at the forums. Of course they don’t, why would they when topics such as “a new exp card and no genji nerfs” is one of the most replied things on here? I can’t blame them for using Reddit more than they’d ever use this place, on Reddit you can actually receive downvotes so your bad takes will be hidden from the general public.
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Reaper with 50% Lifesteal.
Sure, things do at least somewhat need to be balanced around what happens at peak performance, but that doesn’t mean you can turn your brain off and give flat buffs to heroes who are already pubstompers to try to get them viable at the top.
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why write a whole essay, ima just skim and tldr
because the top of ladder is consistent and value is maxed value comes more from inherently hero/team comps therefore giving a better picture for balance
which is true but
humans are humans, some people lean towards some comps rather then others, and even the devs design way too many characters for specific type of comp
for instance most of the games heroes are poked based
brawl and dive heroes are about even
so naturally the devs would want to have the heroes with the most total players strong
That’s fine and I don’t mean to say that lower ranks shouldn’t be considered. The ideal world is where something is balanced for all ranks, of course. But since this isn’t usually possible it has to be biased for the top. And of course just make sure it doesn’t break the rest of the game.
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they aren’t though, if they did they would give buffs to the pubstompers, usually brawl and dive comp heroes
No I don’t.
We all saw where balancing around the top got us.
I want balancing around my own elo.
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And I want a balanced game :]
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Here’s the thing though. The devs for this game have proved time and time again that they can’t pull that off. They can’t seem to balance high level play without ruining things for literally everyone else.
Reaper is hardly the only example of this. Brigitte and Mercy were/are good for high level but hot garbage at every other level. If you used to like them… well sucks to be you I guess because they got run over by both rework and nerf trains.
If they can’t seem to get it even remotely right, they’d be better off focusing on making the game fairly playable for the majority of the playerbase instead of the top 1% or whatever tiny % of players are in GM.
There’s absolutely no shame in having a game that’s fun but not suited to being a competitive ESport. I mean… the game I currently play the most is an absolute mess when people try to play tournaments of it. Do I care? Nope. Because it is fun.
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We shouldn’t balance for less than 1% of the playerbase. We should balance around Masters. Period
We’ve seen how balancing around GM literally destroys characters that are useless in every other rank. GM balance doesn’t work, it doesn’t. It just ruins the game for 97% of the playerbase
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It is not like the balance is any good in GM alone either.
This game need some radical changes in its core gameplay or it will stay unbalanced forever.
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It’s not GM’s fault that they play the character as perfectly as it can get.
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Here’s a different take. Yes, the game should be balanced around GM. No, the game currently isn’t balanced around GM.
It’s balanced around OWL, where team work is expected to be well beyond what’s considered reasonable for GM.
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And I agree that balancing around OWL is wrong. It should be balanced around GM ladder.
OWL = optimized, pre-practiced 6-man strategies with literal player swaps and hyper synergy
GM = you can’t even 3 stack
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They really don’t. They just play whatever works in a given moment. Considering the heroes plays way too different from each other, there is usually only 1 option. It doesn’t help that the tank and healer hero pools are laughably small.
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And how does that affect all the ELO above and below you? What happens when you climb out of your ELO? Still want that balance?
I’d like a compelling counterargument to the points I listed or else it’s kind of just whining
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I am just saying what I want. I don’t care how it will be achieved.
The fact is, balancing in this game right now doesn’t work in any elo.
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Well that’s not really a realistic or productive viewpoint then imo
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Top down balancing makes sense when you only want to look at ranks in isolation. But that isn’t how the ladder works.
Note that when owl is in season, top down balancing takes a backseat and that’s because consistency isn’t the only thing relevant in high level play.
This is why things don’t make sense for ladder and why playstyle can shift from rank to rank. Blue beam mercy is virtually useless in bronze but an incredible asset in gm. But less so on certain owl plays.
Brig wasn’t an issue for nearly a year on ladder and for months in gm but owl could not shake her.
Imo, a large matter of balance is that the competitive philosophy is just flawed as it is now without either individual rank balancing or by having ranks at all.
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