Yes, I need information and facts to based an opinion on atop my individual experience. More people should.
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So it would all go to feeling and blindly spouting stuff?
Actually, many people don’t. I’m not in Diamond+, so I don’t know what works there without stats because I don’t play there, and a lot of people aren’t even above Plat, so the same can be said for them.
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Since one of my posts has been referenced in this thread, I feel the need to clarify the intent of that post:
My post was not written as an attack on the reliability and usefulness of statistics. Statistics are incredibly useful and can create a very accurate depiction of the game’s current balance state from a purely objective standpoint. Statistics are amazing, and they serve as a much-needed anchor to reality. I had to select one element of the developer balancing triangle (community feedback, developer opinions, statistics) to dominate the balance of Overwatch, I would select statistics without hesitation. I’ll go even further and wager that Overwatch would be in a much better state than it is today if the game was balanced purely around statistics from the start.
With all of that in mind, I said this in the aforementioned thread:
And I explain why this is the case:
Because while statistics are amazing, you also need to know which statistics to look for, and which statistics contribute no value based upon the game’s mechanics. In Overwatch, heroes can appear on both teams. Because of this, any hero that is picked enough to ever appear on both teams simultaneously will naturally have a winrate that gravitates towards 50%. When you combine this with random variation and other factors such as one-tricks and “niche” picks, it becomes incredibly difficult to get a steady measurement of how good a hero is through winrates. As mentioned in the post above, we have seen heroes known to be underperforming reach incredibly high winrates.
Winrates, in general, are very poor at illustrating the actual state of the game. When a winrate aligns with an argument, it is often coincidental rather than causational.
In that same post, I go from refuting winrates as an effective measure to using pickrates not just as evidence, but as the very backbone of my argument. Not just pickrates in general either, but specifically the Grandmaster pickrates. I explain my reasoning for this when someone mentioned it in the replies to that post:
The take-away from my post isn’t that statistics are bad or inherently misleading; they most certainly are not. Take-away is that you, as someone looking at the statistics, need to know what metric you are trying to measure and what statistics provide the most clear and unimpeded depiction of that metric. You need to identify what confounding variables there are, if any, when interpreting that statistic.
Statistics are not bad; the problem is that not enough people know how to use them.
I mean I like pointing out that Bastion is the 2nd least played character with the highest winrate in GM this week, but thats just my opinion. (72% with 0.11 usage)
Metas will exist with or without overbuff and statistics dude
What do you have against arguing that certain characters are stronger or not
Clearly we don’t because 99% of you ‘general feel’ of the game is based entirely off bias and personal matchups whether you realize it or not
You can already do that, if you let webpages determine who you play then you’re a loser
They don’t have anything, and if they do, then they don’t have anything that they actively show the public. Both of these things are BAD.
I don’t know why you made this post honestly…
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the numbers need not be “fact” and often dont tell the whole tale
i would be 100% behind you on that if it wasnt for how often people mistake what they see in the data as evidence of the fact…you can do a lot with numbers…
usually what happens is people just confirm their own biasis on a matter
What people usually do is not my problem.
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Better idea, integrate overbuff with Blizzard, so whether or not the profile is private, the hero data can still be extracted instead of just those with public profiles
It will give a far bigger picture and really concrete a valuable source of evidence to predict trends or pin point problems
Plus I can finally see whether or not Mercy’s pickrate jumps when private profiles are take into account
overbuff isnt a “say all-tell all” stat source for overwatch, i am sure blizzard has its own internal statistics that are more accurate since it accounts for everyone. i just dont think their decisions on who to buff/nerf is good tho lol
first of all yes i quoted it as i thought its as good an explanation of how data is handled (here and elsewhere) as any other ive seen…
in light of the above quote how then would you respond to the question of whether you think a site that is so very often misused by its community is or isnt helpful to said community
cause like i said above (on several occasions)…i think that sort of stuff does more harm than good in long run…and frankly in the case of OW and its community i dont think that its a stretch to say its been the case here
People would still post about it except they would be even more baseless and uninformed ideas.
cant argue with that…though i would add that i would like to see more in depth statistics tracked…the 2 things that people typically dial in on are pick/win rates…and those two things are far more complex and nuanced than we seem to be able to understand
OK. Since you want to question the validity of the stats. This is for you and anyone else who questions the stat tracking accuracy per player. Yes, the stats are tracked accurately. Just because the UI isn’t updated doesn’t mean it’s not accurate. In fact, I will prove this right now using me as an example.
My profile is open so you can look at it on these forums. When you look, go to my Xbox account because that is what I play on. Go to competitive obviously and you will see that Blizzard has a handful of stats the track live on this website. I’ve been awful so far this season so I’m about to expose myself but it doesn’t matter because I’m proving my point.
Before I go any further, here is my Overbuff info for my Xbox account: https://www.overbuff.com/players/xbl/Deprece?mode=competitive
OK. Now we have to decide on what stat to use. Wins/Losses aren’t the best because how it is calculated is different. Lets use something that is simple to calculate and universal. Weapon accuracy.
Go to my Hanzo Weapon Accuracy on the forums. Compare that to it on Overbuff. You can do this for Critical Hit accuracy. Go compare. Do it for multiple characters too. Just don’t confuse Scope accuracy with regular accuracy.
See? 100% on point compared to Blizzard. You can do this for anyone with an open profile that has played recently and it was updated recently.
The stats are accurate. Period. Don’t throw out BS accusations about them being inaccurate when you can literally test them to confirm.
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Stupid decision. You don’t just “get rid of” something you don’t like. If you don’t like it, don’t go there.
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There is a large segment of the OW community that believes stats are only accurate if it conforms to the preconceived narratives they have formed in their head already. If it does not match, either the stats are inaccurate or they don’t matter.
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Because the people who do know how to use the site properly can explain why the people who do not are misusing it and provide a claim that is actually supported by the statistics. Objectivity still has the upper hand in the presence of statistics. Without those statistics, it’s a level playing field of equally useless and subjective anecdotes. You can’t argue against what someone says happened to them three days ago; you can argue against statistics that are being misused.
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Winrates indeed aren’t a measurement we can get very granular with because of the numerous issues with them…
But there are actually some guidelines one can follow when using them and they shouldn’t be disregarded entirely
High pick and winrate combinations are bad
Low pick and winrate combinations are bad
Character with similar pickrates that aren’t particularly high or low should fall into an average range with heroes that are more flexible having slightly lower Winrates and heroes that are more specialized (especially if they are bettee on defense) slightly higher ones. So you can actually compare the winrates of similar heroes
When looking at GM stats, a hero should not regularly fall below rank maintenance
Bingo
Overbuff is seldom misused by the community. Making mistakes is not misuse. Using data to strengthen their opinions is not misuse. Using it to determine what they play is not misuse.
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Why would that be good?
I still don’t get how they haven’t updated sum into damage role. It’s been like 2 year’s.
Forgive the non-relevant conversation, but is your tag (Baja) pronounced:
- Ba-HA?
- Ba-ZHA?
- Ba-DJA?
- or Ba-YA?