Maybe not. I typically like RPGs and third person shooters, but I have nothing against FPSes (I’m making one right now).
Unless you’re counting each game in a franchise, which I’m not. If Modern Warfare 1 has shields, then of course MW 2 and 3 are going to have them too.
Thing is most people like MOBILITY to SNIPE or FLANK.
Problem is if barriers are constantly in the way.
Barriers should be strong to hold an angle, so you can stay out in the open for a bit against all the spam damage there is.
Bubbles have to be weaker or more momentary because they block all angles.
When barriers are strong to hold an angle you can use mobility to flank or snipe around.
Rein can only hold an angle, but he can turn around, move around, he cannot attack with it up though.
Winston’s and Zarya’s bubbles have less HP and are more temporary.
Orisa’s barrier is stationary, you can hold an angle, you can attack, but you can’t move it around. You can flank or snipe around while it can’t be moved.
The major problem to me was Sigma’s barrier.
As a second one it had a high HP and could constantly be repositioned while he can attack in a certain range. That’s just constantly putting a barrier in the way of sniping and flanking blocking more angles as a second barrier.
IDK, maybe Sigma’s barrier that should get reworked or rebalanced, but when it had no 1 sec CD it was more fun.
Even if that isn’t the solution, it could just as easily be something else. As someone who plays a lot of Orisa, how would you feel about losing the barrier and gaining an entirely new ability (assuming the other ability was strong)?
Thanks for your input btw! 
i personally believe the game would be a lot better if all tanks and supports were all ‘off’. its too late to do such a drastic change however.
Perhaps reworking Sigma would be a decent starting point. Then see how the game feels from there.
I don’t feel it’s too late for anything. Especially not with OW2 around the corner.
i think barriers are fine and that we can easily fix current orisa and sigma with some barrier buffs, but without straight HP,
if i may quote myself for the 50th time:
the barriers are still weaksauce and paper but they are more reliable at protecting in a different way, orisa gets to relocate and place her barrier more often and so does sigma,
I really think Overwatch without barriers just wouldn’t be Overwatch. Already over the past several months we’ve seen a lot of changes that push Overwatch hard towards being much more of a standard FPS game. The problem here is that Overwatch is not a good FPS game–it is (or, rather, was in my opinion) a good hero shooter. It lacks many of the fundamentals that make for a great FPS game. Removing barriers would probably constitute the single largest push in that direction, and I truly believe it would be to the game’s detriment.
Moreover, removing barriers is pushing toward the “casualification” of the game that many people gripe about, because it makes things just easier to kill and de-emphasizes the need to actually work with other people. Instead of having a slower, strategic game, it’s just fast-paced-kill-everything. That’s… not Overwatch, and despite what some folks may try to claim, never has been Overwatch. Overwatch has always been more about objective and team play than individual fragging, and it’s only been in the past year or so that people have started insisting that Overwatch needs to cater to easy frags and reduced teamplay. Even during Dive, one of the big defenses of the meta when people wanted it nerfed was that it required a lot of teamplay. If you’re fine with the game being casualified, then I don’t think there’s necessarily a problem here–but if you want the game to remain a more hardcore, competitive experience, then really removing barriers would be one of the worst possible options (alongside removing healing).
I honestly think the game would’ve been much better if the last 8 months of balance or so (basically every balance change since RoleQ dropped, excluding the addition of Sigma and a few other exceptions) never happened, and they just instituted some kind of rule to specifically prevent the usage of double barrier until such a time that they could add in appropriate counterplay–which, they honestly have had bits and pieces of (like Symmetra) but then removed for… reasons. The problem, as you say, wasn’t these heroes in vacuum, it was their synergy (as has been the case for pretty much every meta)–so why, over the entire course of Overwatch history but especially in the past eight months, have we treated these heroes like they’re issues in a vacuum (barriers included)?
So… to close up on a roundabout answer, barriers are good for the game. They’re one of the main things that actually distinguish Overwatch from just being a milquetoast TF2 from a big publisher. I think most of the perception that they’re “bad” comes from people who think that this game should be about scoring kills and fragging out, but honestly, that’s… not really what has defined Overwatch for most of its lifecycle, instead favoring focus on objectives and coordinating teams. It’s the mindset here that’s bad for Overwatch, if anything. Barriers are part of what defines Overwatch. If people don’t want to play with and around barriers, then why even buy this game in favor one of the numerous other FPS games (even hero shooters) that don’t have them? It seems to me that movements like these (not you specifically Fragehart, but the general motion to remove barriers/healing/CC) are just trying to transform Overwatch into another iteration of the myriad games that these people have already played and gotten bored of–and that’s exactly the danger. They got bored of that kind of game before, and they will again. Overwatch won’t survive by pandering to the people who insist it must resemble one of the dozen games or more that they played then discarded.
I think that’s why I like Reinhardt the most out of the other tanks; he either attacks or tanks. To a lesser extent, that’s why I enjoy going against Roadhog - he either attacks or he retreats with Take a Breather (even more so when he created a little “cloud” that reduced damage for his team on the Experimental Card…that was actually neat).
I think moving these two away from, “sit behind shield and shoot, because we’re able to do both” would make them not only more engaging to go against, but also fun to play as. That’s my issue with playing tank half the time; it’s plopping a shield down and just…sitting there.
I think barriers are good for the game overall. Without them, I’m picturing a world of just Hanzo + Widowmaker…nonstop. And I’d rather shoot at a wall than that being the rampant comp you go against.
That is a good point, though I feel we shouldn’t be afraid to make changes because it makes specific heroes strong. Those heroes could always be balanced in other ways.
Exactly how I feel. Look at Sigma’s Kinetic Grasp: like sigma’s grasp is a great ability. Allows him to absorb/tank damage, makes him even tankier, and he can’t do other actions while doing it. He can cancel with rock, but that removes the payoff of getting the extra hp. Decisions like these make the game more fun and interesting, in my opinion.
I disagree emphatically as that only reinforces Rein because he would have the least path of resistance to his win condition, especially against other tank compositions.
The problem is the maps need to be reworked. OW as a game uses the crutch of numerous map chokepoints to force engagements, because of this you always need a barrier to help funnel your team through chokes filled with damage to either get to the objective or to avoid being pushed back to spawn.
Devs need to rethink how they want us to engage the team. We need more maps that push the engagement from different angles so we are not always needing a barrier tank to make it through glorified damage funnels.
just about every shooter has a shield in it
riot shields in cod
tactical shields in CS
titan shields in Destiny
Blackbeards shield in Siege
halo portable shield
they aren’t really a new thing
I failed to see the inherent problems of barriers.
Players don’t dislike barriers. They dislike how Orisa and Sigma had free barriers that allow them to do everything while shielding. That’s it.
Overwatch has much larger problems in need of more urgent reworks, such as excessive CC.
Furthermore this is annoying. Tanks already went through a shield revamp patch, let us play the game for once, we don’t need to re-learn everything every 6 months. If people were so eager to rework some of the problematic DPS from like they are tanks and sups maybe queue times wouldn’t be so bad.
We revamped every shield tank in a single patch but took 6 months to adjust Reaper, Hanzo and Mei. Stop it.
That is 100% okay.
I do respectfully disagree with this, though. There was a time that Reinhardt was considered bad (during the dive era) at the top level, because mobility heroes could kite him forever. It was not until Crowd Control got out of hand that this became no longer the case. With an anti-cc patch in the works, I feel this could go back to being how things work. Even in the game’s current state, barriers are not required to win, contrary to popular belief.
We can agree to disagree, however. I want to genuinely thank you for taking the time to read and respond to my post. Have a great night!
You really think other people are going to not rage at not having a barrier tank to herd them through all the chokepoints? That’s the problem and I elaborated one it later on
Like it or not, it is the Barriers that help squishes to stay out in the open under its cover, tanks can be in the open too, but they wouldn’t last too long under focus fire.
It’s not all bad. Problem is when you get barriers that just disappears in seconds, so it’s better not to have them and get something more useful instead. At least Brig has a shield bash and it’s not her role to mitigate a lot of damage on her self barrier, but weak barriers on tanks just feel unnecessary.
I imagine the point of the topic, and the message, is to give people tanking abilities that do not revolve around having a barrier.
Such as mechanics that allow you and your team to get through chokes without needing a barrier, like Roadhog in the 1-3-2: damage reduction cloud was a different take on helping tank for your team without having a barrier.
Hm. Fair point.
Well, 50% was just an example. If we’re forced to use a stupidly high value like 90%, then I’m not sure it’s Damp Matrix that’s at fault, but rather a crazy amount of damage flying around.
While I was a bit narked that they didn’t give Orisa a full revert in 132, I will say one thing: it felt really, really good to have barrier back on an eight second cooldown.
Yeah, Barriers are the crux of the issue.
Luckily there is an easy solution.
And if Sigma’s barrier still gets to be strong this way, just increase the cooldown for the regen of his barrier to start, like 3 secs instead of 2?
Or just lower the regen rate.