More buffs to Tank survivability.
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Played a few matches, chose for different roles.
In the end, since the game looks like it was always designed to be 2-2-2, some hero’s are just not made for this mode. They are either overpowered or useless. There is no balance and trying to get that will take alot of time and effort and will in the end result in a big loss in the playerbase of this game.
A support hero like Ana actually has no chance in this game mode. There are alot of very good ana’s out there but 95% of the ana’s can not deal with 3 dps trying to kill them.
Long story short, great effort for trying this. As a DPS main i love the Q times but everything else about 1-3-2 is just not right. The game was simply not designed for this and this is definately not what made us love this game.
Please do not give up in fixing the q times for DPS though. My suggestion would be something like this:
Remove the 3 different SR’s, make it 1 SR for all roles again. Give extra SR for tank/support players. Introduce hero pools which contain more DPS than other roles.
Just make the life of DPS players harder i guess.
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I LOVE IT.
Huge courage for trying this.
Honestly given the balance bombs dropped its amazing how well and overwatchy the game still feels.
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TANKS
Im dps main, but I loved having the power the few times I got to play tank.
I guess im the “loves pressure and playmaking” type tank jeff was talking about.
Its also easier for 1x tank to swap than it is to coordinate 2x tanks to a meta comp.
Also MORE VARIETY, 7 or 8 MAIN tanks now compared to previous 3x. -
DPS
My main role.
LOVE the que times. I think it will even out later, but 3:1 sounds more realistic ratio than 1:1…If most popele want to play DPS then dont make a game where 4/6 players are expected NOT to play DPS.
As for the gameplay
LOOVE IT.
Less shields. More action. Less oppressive tank combos. More opportunities. Love deathmatch , hated GOATS. Just my personality. -
SUPPORT
Probably same or slightly worse.
More poeple hunt you and less slow bodyguards around you.
So either you play mercy and run away faster or you make big plays yourself. If you just wanna chill slow - you wont like it.
But im dps by nature so I did enjoy seeing less shields when I played ana.
TLDR
Its polarizing, but I think it does A LOT more good than bad.
If no aim was future of overwatch, then GOATS year shouldve helped, yet game declined. So accept that failure and move back to whats fun.
3 Likes
So, who was it that forgot to rebalance damage heroes when making a triple damage mode?
Seems like a weird oversight.
5 Likes
I really like this mode. It’s not better than 2-2-2 yet, but it has a higher ceiling than 2-2-2 simply because it reflects the actual makeup of the playerbase better.
I played it all day yesterday on support since it had the shortest queue times, and the most important thing for me was to see what the mode was like as much as possible.
I’m disappointed that you didn’t test any DPS balance changes. You talked about how the game got too lethal at 1-3-2 and how you could address that by tweaking damage, but then you just went ahead and put the “lethal” version out for feedback. I mean, what did you expect people to say about that?
I’m disappointed there were no support changes. That meant that people weren’t interested in trying that queue at all, and thus people got 10+ minute queues on tank for a game that nobody knows how to play anymore (1-3-2 Overwatch). Bad first impression there.
I’m disappointed you’re only leaving this up for a week with no attempt to make it a better experience and see if it’s improvable. You’re not going to try this again, obviously, so if you’re not going to do the experiment earnestly this seems like a waste of time tbh. I mean, you’ll learn about how the Experimental Card works with the playerbase, and maybe that’s all you really were trying to do here. But I don’t think you gave 1-3-2 a fair shot.
In the future if you’re going to run experiments, you need to give ALL THREE roles a real reason to queue. Otherwise you’re going to end up with rough situations like yesterday’s Tank & DPS queue times. These sorts of things make people like the mode less, and they make it so that people don’t have patience to keep trying it more than once or twice. So all you end up with from most people (who even tried the game) are reactionary first or second impressions.
2 Likes
Still feel the ‘right’ answer is 2-3-2 even though it will cost $$$$.
DPS queue times are a problem because, guess what, more people want to play the ‘fun’ damage-doing heroes in a psuedo-FPS. Not surprisingly…
Going to solo tank just shifts the queue time problem to the tank slot … and given how important the tank slot is, discouraging the best tank players from even trying to play tank doesn’t seem like a long term viable solution.
All balance up to now has been based on a 2-2-2 format with tank synergy, etc. 2-3-2 supports all that MUCH better than 1-3-2.
So, ultimately, Jeff needs to decide how important Overwatch is to Blizzard (or maybe Blizzard needs to decide how important Jeff et al. are important to their bottom line). Is it a game system that they hope to keep alive and ‘relevant’ for many years to come? Or is it just another in a long line of FPS-type games and if it stagnates or goes into decline, then so be it.
If the decision is that OW is meant to be a long-running flagship program for Blizzard then they should take a long hard look at biting the bullet and converting to 2-3-2 for OW2. Yes, it will increase cost as things will have to be reworked to account for the extra slot (some maps will need rework, sound issues need to be looked at, etc.), but going to 2-3-2 is the easiest solution to the dps queue time problem with the minimal impact on everything else, IMO. Sometimes the hardest decisions are also the most obvious…
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I played roughly 10 games yesterday queuing for all three roles, got Damage once and support the rest of the time. I absolutely loved the mode! I honestly expected to dread it given more sources of damage and less damage mitigation but having played each support across those games, it surprisingly almost felt easier to heal. Smaller health pools for the majority of the cast allows for faster healing to full leaving extra time to support the team with utility and damage. I didn’t get to play tank; I’m assuming the tank queues are artificially inflated for now since that’s the role everyone wants to test out, but I plan on queuing up as tank later today to try those changes for myself. It’s disheartening to hear that Jeff has seen mostly negative criticism. I can agree that it feels less structured so it may not be the best for competitive play, but I’m hoping it stays in the game in some form, possibly as an arcade card or custom preset.
3 Likes
Yeah, if you’re a healer with conservative positioning that can keep yourself alive, this is ez mode. You get to do so much more than just “Keep the Tanks alive!”
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Maybe this was said somewhere already, but when the announcement was made about Experimental games counting towards your levels etc, I assumed this meant your playing time as well.
For some reason there is no Experimental game mode in the career profile though, unless it’s just counted as quick play or something.
If I spend ages playing in a mode I want those hours to be reflected in my play time, so I’m hoping this will be added eventually?
1-3-2 is amazing as a quickplay mode. Have it be an arcade mode, and it will be a hit, especially with more tuning with Zarya and Roadhog. However, in competitive, it’s not really healthy for people’s mindsets. They will blame the tank, and put too much pressure on eachother, often blaming the 3rd “stepchild” DPS for losing.
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This only works well when you’re grouped up with 4 or more people, but solo play is AWFUL.
yeah I had a few games and I liked that I could actually play dps with a normal wait time.
Although tbh I couldn’t be bothered with the mode, so I just went back to normal QP and a few ranked games, but even regular QP had a short wait time for dps for me, I was getting games every couple of mins for a while, so that’s nice.
You’re misinterpreting the queue times. Tank queues are longer because right now everyone is trying to test out the new tanks. Over time you will see people fall back into their natural roles.
2 Likes
It means “no one will play this”
at least for me on ps4, tank queues recently have been about the same as dps even without this mode
“if you only make one tank viable you only have to balance one tank!” - blizzard
rein is so much better than every other tank it’s a complete joke.
I wouldn’t play tank no matter how interesting they are. The function of that role is uninteresting to me.
I think that’s the point that blizzard and many players are too dumb to understand. The character fun factor isn’t the problem. The role isn’t fun for a lot of people, so the characters are non-factor.
Tanking in this game is just not fun to a lot of players. Only a subset of players get well with that role.
The players who don’t want to play tank avoid tank because they don’t like the role function or responsibilities of that roles.
Regardless of the character, it’s overall function in a match is fairly similar.
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It seems one step short of what the game needs I think.
There are multiple “tankbuster” dps heroes that function like off-tanks currently. The ironic part of this is they are still unpatched. They are a must pick in 1/3/2 against a big portion of the tanks. Not only that, but they function with the strength of a two tank busting tank buster.
The majority of the tanks aren’t exactly fair fights with each other. You end up with some that can counter others, and some that function like ALL COUNTER tanks. The mode doesn’t really fit with the characters currently.
The healers seem very vulnerable to the DPS characters. It’s a very tricky and problematic problem here as well. Most players don’t seem to recognize the threats the dps players present to the healers, so I end up being the one to babysit them as Sigma or Orisa. Sigma being INCREDIBLY weak in this mode, by the way.
I can think of a few ways to solve this problem with less work than a large redesign.
My primary concept, resolve the problems directly. This has the adverse effect of additional problems that crop up, but it would effectively save the problems of the immediate from becoming too pungent.
- Nerf the tank and barrier busters. They shouldn’t be able to burn through barriers and the only tank as quickly as they can burn through a squishy.
- Effectively buff the tanks in a way that allows them to fight eachother. Sigma’s grasp can eat beams. Winston’s tesla deals pure damage to armor. D.Va’s pellets deal additional damage to shields. This sort of stuff.
- Provide each support a stronger survival tool. They need to either survive longer or be given some sort of mobility tool for all of them. They can’t deal with three flanker dps. That’s too much.
2 Likes
Personally I don’t think these changes should go onto the live server.
Games feel like deathmatch and everyone dies really quickly. But I think the bigger issue is that it doesn’t help dps queue times as much as I thought. Its still a long time for a game and tanks have it WAY WORSE. Honestly just prefer 2-2-2.
He means, “Over time you will see people fall back into their natural roles.”
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