Some heroes are just stright up bad while others are good some take skill to play some dont if you master a certain hero then its only fair that you should be able to kill other players that use so called “easy” heroes otherwise why would anyone pick the hero that takes months and months to master when they can pick a hero they can master in a week
2 Likes
This comes up a lot in these types of games. Any hero that is “easy” to play, is by definition better than the hero with the “same” strength but harder to play, because in practice the harder hero will be less consistent.
Basically, it’s why Moira’s auto-aim gun doesn’t have the same kill potential as Roadhogs shotgun. You can’t just let a gun that can never miss do the same damage as one that can.
4 Likes
Power levels are not what annoy people about easier to play heroes and/or the less mechanical heroes. It’s when the risk to reward issues get warped and/or there seems to be a lack of decent counter play.
Normally the balance team has been pretty good about keeping counter play options in game and some times it gets a bit off like when D.va was busted and Junkrat was over tuned. People also hated moth meta being most players don’t want to play Mercy, at all. Yet we hung in there as a player base.
IMO it’s really just Brigitte that broke the good will of the player base. Up until that point we would work around balance and at least for the bulk of the SR range and game modes there wasn’t any real issue with playing any hero you wanted, not really. Then her comes Brigitte and now all the all broken team fights and scramble like plays become stun fest and almost all the high rate of fire heroes get trash cann’ed by her armor. You dive, you get stun’ed. You don’t dive she walks up to your tank front line and stuns them anyways.
Then goats meta takes over and all DPS heroes (the most popular of all the classes) are almost seen like a throw pick, being Brigitte, the lowest skilled hero/item/weapon like thing I have ever seen in a FPS game in my entire life of gaming (going back to quake) is now in the game.
The backlash has been very warranted, I just hope we have not seen permanent damage to player numbers and maybe OWL S2 or some new game changes will charge up the player base again.
6 Likes
the weird thing about “hard heroes” is that people assume there shouldn’t be a hard counter to them, only soft ones.
but for every “easy hero” there should only be hard counters and soft counters.
makes sense? idk, i’m not a game dev.
10 Likes
Ease of use is part if a hero’s power, so easy heroes need to be weaker elsewhere to allow skill heroes to exist
3 Likes
It does. It’s supposed to be a competitive game, and as such the better player(s) should win.
So if you pick hard heroes, then you can have a fair fight.
But if you pick gimmicky heroes, and don’t want to participate in a game if skill, you deserve to get countered by other gimmicks.
2 Likes
You act like consistency isn’t a factor.
‘Consistency’ is what separates high ranked players from those who occasionally pop off; low skill heroes are by nature more consistent, because they don’t require as much to do well on them.
This is why there were so many over-ranked Brigittes, D.vas, Mercys and Junkrats (lesser extent) at certain points; the skill required to play them well in their power-days was not where it needed to be due to the cushioning they had.
That said, it shouldn’t be an impossible gap, but I think high-skill heroes should have a bit more potential when played really well.
3 Likes
16 Likes
so you mean to say if my team only picks hard heroes, and the enemy doesn’t we lost because of gimmicks or because we weren’t good enough?
1 Like
There is correlation between risk and reward. If something is harder to use it should have a higher reward. If something is easier it’s reward shouldn’t be too high.
Why use you a pistol when you have a assault rifle that shoots rockets?
4 Likes
well thats not entirely true
more difficult weapons, heroes/champs and classes in games are historically more powerful when mastered then the easier options. its only when a game butchers balance that this is swapped but at the start
thats how there made. now do i think that difficult heroes should steam roll teams? no i dont
if i did, id say they need to revert the s1 genji changes. but you clearly dont want lower skill heroes getting that same value. as it makes all of the time and effort to ‘git gud’ meaningless
and for an esport, thats kind of the main thing.
4 Likes
You are correct. I 100% agree that hard heroes shouldn’t be more powerful.
But they should be more rewarding. No hero should be better than the others damage/health/ability wise, but the more practice and time and dedication to heroes you put into them, that should be rewarding. Hard heroes are difficult to play well, but if you can, they should be better than easy to play heroes. They shouldn’t be stronger, but they should perform better.
Take Ana v.s Mercy, for example.
They both take a lot of game sense, timing, conversation, etc. but when you compare the difficulties to the rewards, it makes sense why Ana is used more. Mercy has huge mobility, a Resurrection ability that activates at the touch of a button, an ultimate that grants flight and perm-regen, but it’s not hard to do her job. It takes skill to use the hero, as they all do, but not as much as other heroes. Ana, for example, has to aim all of her abilities, has to reload every so often, has no escape if she gets cornered without her abilities, has little self heal other than her grenade, etc.
Ana takes a lot more practice and gameplay to master, while Mercy still requires it, but not near as much to perform well in a game. If you take two equally skilled players and check out how they perform in a game as each hero, Mercy would do better, because she’s easy to master. Ana would do fine, but not near as well as Mercy can. If you pit a god tier Ana against a god tier Mercy, Ana would win, because their is a line (or ceiling) where you can’t do any better as Mercy with practice, but Ana, who needs more practice and time to master, would outperform Mercy, because her line is higher than Mercy’s.
It is not that the heroes are more powerful than others, it’s that some are more rewarding than others, based on how much you are willing to put into the game. If you just want a quick and fun game you can do well in, easy heroes are the choice for you. But if you want to take the time to learn and truly understand how to play a hard hero, you should be rewarded for doing so. It’s not fair for an easy hero and hard hero to be the same in terms of potential. It should be about how far you’re willing to go to unlock it.
11 Likes
You may or may not have been better than the enemy team, but you’ll never know, because they cheesed the game.
Abd like the point of ranked is to decide who is better, so it’s not compatible…
1 Like
what about pharahs rockets or junkrats balls? if they removed the splash and gave them a headshot, should they be able to instantly kill?
there’s other games where projectile explosives have a headshot crit.
speaking of which they lessened the pharah splash, should she get rewarded with more damage for direct hits?
2 Likes
No, that’s the point. Which you seem to have entirely missed. If explosives can headshot why use McCree?
2 Likes
so let’s say they use goats, it’s a gimmick win?
1 Like
mccree is hitscan, it’s easier to shoot with hitscan than projectiles, that’s why splash damage is on them, shouldn’t that be the reason why hanzo can headshot kill a 200 hp hero and mccree can’t?
3 Likes
Hard heroes aren’t supposed to be more powerful? Sweet, hook me up with that auto aim widow then. Screw trying to aim. Aim is a liability amirite?
1 Like
McCree can’t stand behind a wall and shoot to get headshots without looking. The skill floor on projectiles is lower.
1 Like
If playing widowmaker is such a pain for you, then why you play her?
2 Likes