Experimental Card Ideas

[JeanFrancois-1217]

@JeffreyKaplan

Design is all about tradeoffs. If the thing that the community decides is “the most egregious” is a “static meta” and they “want the dev team to do something about it”… we’re going to take steps towards change. We can’t force the meta to move and not make the game work differently. Last year was great proof that player creativity and balance changes alone weren’t enough to move people off of 3/3 fast enough for the community to feel satisfied. The meta would have moved on it’s own… just slowly.

We’ve decided to help you move it along.

@JeffreyKaplan

Historically, even when we have done consistent and dramatic balance changes, it takes the meta a long time to shift. We’d love it if balance or player creativity alone would shift the meta fast enough to meet player’s demands.

I found these recent quotes fascinating. In essence, it is entirely the players’ fault that GOATS persisted. “The meta” is not a sentient being nor an independent entity - it’s determined by player behavior and balance. The only way an essentially false meta can persist is if counter-balance isn’t there or if player behavior lags behind balance changes. It doesn’t take much to demonstrate a superior or counter composition to a meta one, which would naturally spread rather rapidly I’d say. Needless to say all the incentive in the world was there for people who play this game non-stop and have private audiences in the thousands and tournament audiences in the hundreds of thousands to crack GOATS, which few enjoyed. Likewise, the average player did not want to play GOATS an awful lot. Indeed, in the competitive mode most avoided GOATS despite it being a superior composition. I’m not sure what history Kaplan is referring to but what I recall are swift meta changes following adequate balance changes. If balance isn’t to blame, then the players have to be blamed.

But in Overwatch arguing doesn’t get far. Jeff Kaplan has found a way to blame the meta on the meta, which is so nonsensical it can’t even be called an oxymoron. According to Kaplan the meta was neither the fault of “player creativity” nor balance. The meta was its own fault - no one’s fault. How can you argue with this?

This is where the Experimental Card or whatever it is comes into play and where perhaps the community can have a more direct influence. The developers are now waving the white flag on balance:

@JeffreyKaplan

Also, something we talk about a lot in game design is the that there is often no one, correct answer. Design is all about tradeoffs. If the thing that the community decides is “the most egregious” is a “static meta” and they “want the dev team to do something about it”… we’re going to take steps towards change.

First they restricted compositions to 2-2-2, now they are restricting the hero pool itself. In other words, as opposed to achieving the community’s aims through balance the devs have decided they are going to force these aims. Reminds me a little of different types of governments, but I digress. The game being in a dynamic state where naturally multiple compositions are effective has become a pipe dream. In the process, you now sit in dramatically longer queues to play 2-2-2 under looser SR spreads/worse matchmaking due to having common preferences and soon you’ll participate in an experiment where heroes will plainly not be playable. So much for this:

@JeffreyKaplan

In regards to players wanting to ban for balance reasons, the way we plan to address this is with more frequent balance updates. The upcoming dev update will go in depth into the plan and shed light on how we’re going to accomplish this. So we agree that there are balance issues. We agree balancing needs to happen more frequently. We disagree that hero bans are a good solution to balance problems. To us, removing a hero from play because of balance reasons feels like a sledgehammer.

@JeffreyKaplan

Now, we don’t explicitly prevent you from only playing one hero. But we also don’t encourage it.

I don’t believe this is the demise of the game. For all we know the coming experiment may not last, and it could even be an enhancement. But it does signal that the developers have run out of ideas. Jeffrey Kaplan is clearly saying things that make no sense at this point. Some might now justifiably say that the developers simply can’t balance this game, thus they are now wielding the sledgehammer.

I think that the Experimental Card also signals their willingness to try different things. Hence the need for more creative ideas than those lazily reinforcing the current tendencies.