(roughly 3 pages, no tldr provided)
Seriously, I have to ask it by this point. What happened to this game?
I’ve only begun playing since late December and just looked forward the whole time, though recently I’ve begun looking back.
As far back to the Beta in fact.
Before I get to that, I’d like to point out where we are currently and how I think it all came to this.
Currently, we are on the eve of a forced 2-2-2 role lock across both Quick and Competitive Play. As it stands as of today, 2-2-2 is only enforced in Competitive Play.
Not only this, but new hero Sigma is out, a new tank utilizing a deployable barrier that can be called and recalled on command.
Now that that’s wrapped up, let’s talk about how we got here.
Reworkings
Somewhere along the line, the developers failed to account sheer human nature and didn’t expect people to main heroes. I mean, this game has taken massive inspiration from tf2 and it shows through the Original 21.
To say, or even believe, maining in hero/class-based shooters isn’t a thing is just nonsense. Every character is unique, if someone grows attracted to their personality or their skill set, they’re gonna want to play that hero more.
If the developers didn’t want this to happen, they may as well have just made one hero and have them all play the same.
After all, you can’t main if there’s only one hero.
https://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/selectall/2017/02/09/09-roll-safe.w700.h700.jpg
(to save time and space, im reducing this particular image to a link rather than an actual image)
Now to get back on topic, I feel like because of this belief, is why we have a merged DPS roster from both offensive and defensive ones. While defensive characters were meant to be used in a certain way, people didn’t use them like that and they had to be “adjusted” or better put, Reworked to be viable on both Defense and Attack. Or in the case of Mercy, not give her an ultimate that has the power to invalidate the entirety of the enemy’s work.
Moving on to the next point:
You do You Buu
And what I mean with this is that the developers didn’t really put any emphasis on just how we’re supposed to play the game “properly.” Heck, I can’t even say properly simply because that never quite existed since day 1.
Sure the hero selection menu tells you that you don’t have X hero or Y Hero but it doesn’t say you need them. Not even in the game’s tutorial does it give any sort of example as to how teams function. Like seriously, you don’t even have AI allies in the tutorial. Nor do you have any understanding of how every other hero aside from Soldier: 76 works.
Fun fact, when I first started playing, I thought every hero had a run button.
The tutorial also never goes in-depth about synergy. and I don’t just mean things like Roadhog + Orisa. I mean team synergy. Like how well a Zenyatta would work in a team of 4 DPS and 1 tank.
While we’re on this topic, the tutorial could’ve explained team strengths and weaknesses such as how 4-1-1 leaves little support, little tanking, but a ton of damage.
Would’ve even been nice to explain what to do in a situation if you’re being hard countered. Take Reaper vs Pharah as an example of this. Reaper could swap off and go to a Hitscan, a Pharah’s weakness.
I understand part of this argument would be common sense, or the developer spoonfeeding or forcing people how to play the game when they could learn it all themselves, but at the same time, look where we are now.
We’re being forced on how to play the game now because they never made an effort to teach or regulate before. The whole game was just figured out by the community and everyone just kinda rolled with it.
oh yeah, let’s not forget how compositions back then were viable and worked most of the time.
All these shots are from different videos dating back to the closed/open beta.
Notice how the team with 5 DPS and 1 Lucio win? lol.
Spoiler alert, the Mercy on Route 66 loses to a 5 DPS team as well.
I’ve watched a ton of these matches from back then and a majority of them had like 1 solo healer and 5 DPS, 4-1-1, and even 3-2-1. I never saw 2-2-2 once.
note im not completely against 2-2-2, but I do see it as a failure on the devs part if it came to such a point where we needed to be locked in what we play after 3 years.
I had other points to make but since I’ve been writing this for a good hour I forgot most of them so I’ll summarize the rest in the last point
When Things Get Worse
after 10 new heroes, an esports league, inconsistent cries for nerfs coming from outlets blizzard notices, mainly this one or through streamers, things just feel like they’ve spiraled to a whole new level of chaos.
GOATS meta completely did away with the DPS role and could’ve been countered rather easily if people picked up Pharah and Sombra earlier.
Those Stage 3 finals were the stuff of legends.
We’re sitting in Power Creep at the moment and stepping outside the shield will most likely get you sniped. Just being Tracer will make you die pretty fast. Soldier got a buff on his primary back to 20 dmg per bullet and he’s still deemed mediocre and outclassed by every other hitscan simply because they take fewer shots to be more effective. Also, with the inclusion of Sigma, the sniper meta might die-off since he can cover their sightlines better than Reinhardt or Orisa if he’s acting as an off-tank.
And lastly, the cries for hero nerfs which led to Sombra getting nerfed into the spot she’s in now. Symmetra’s teleporter nerf which renders her to taxi status, Torb’s nerf that weakened his secondary fire, and Brig’s shield nerf. The list goes on.
I don’t really have any more points to make here and I think the commenters can add more insight especially if they’re veteran players.
Before I go, here’s some other stuff like how the Play menu got reduced to minimalism or how some UI changes got ugly and even some old features the game had before such as sunrise Numbani