I know those days are past and gone, but i really enjoyed having the “DPS” heroes classified as “defense” and “offense”, for several reasons.
First off, it gave newer/less knowledgeable players an idea on which heroes are generally favorable in certain maps, points, etc. Even the symbols made it very clear.
Offense heroes were good at attacking the enemies, getting kills, entering a point. Defense heroes were either zoners (like widow, hanzo) or utility defenders that had less raw damage but ways to hinder enemies taking a point (mei, old torb) or a mix.
I feel like a lot of balancing problems in the DPS class today are basically that they tried to break up that division and created heroes that simply dont work because theyre forced to be versatile (sym, mei, junkrat especially). I never found it problematic that some heroes were better on defense than offense or the other way around. It meant fewer mirror matches and made the game feel more dynamic.
Plus, it was a great accomplishment when you made those heroes work in their less favored position (Quickplay mainly).
Looking at rainbow six siege for comparison, you have operators that are not only split up into offense and defense, but they are limited to those roles. you actually cant even play them in the other role. that would be too extreme for overwatch, but it means the hero designs can be very unique and still powerful.
Im not sure where im going with this now, but i felt like i wanted to adress this. to whomever it may concern.
Thing is, half of them weren’t any better and sometimes worse in their designated class, you usually would want to play widow more on attack as the enemy couldn’t just counterpick you, and soldier on hanamura attack Vs defence wouldn’t be a fun time, maps are too dynamic to say this guy attacks and she defends
yea of course it wasnt perfect.
for example i think sombra shouldve been defense, and some heroes could be either (like widow) but i liked the general idea of it all. the execution? debatable. but i wouldve rather wanted to see the defense heroes buffed in their defense role, instead of watering them down to semi-attackers that arent good at anything anymore.
All i remember from that is people being mad at teammates picking defence category heroes on attack and trying to bully them to swap off making part of that playerbase leave voice chat by default at start of the game.
So many hanzo/widow players who refused to communicate… good old times.
Besides bastion most of the defence class is better now than they were before, plus attacking is inherently better as they were typically more versatile
For dva players i have different memoriable moments, as i was plaing zen back in the day a lot. I didnt liked supporting dva’s, they always runned away, and i could not so i was dead every time i forget to not push with dva.
I was on pc tho, not sure how xbox looked like.
Do you think it wouldve been easier, or required less changes, if they hadnt thrown the categories together but instead simply buffed the defense heroes to be good at defending?
Just asking for your opinion on this.
A big issue with that is koth, if you make defence very good you end up just being whoever wins first always wins as you’d pick defence first, then have to switch to offence if you lose that fight and be at an ult disadvantage, plus maps like junkertown where there isn’t as much of a traditional defenders advantage
I’m convinced they really only combined the two roles for two reasons: the playerbase not wanting to differentiate them, and the devs not wanting to figure out how to make a new Defense hero.
And then they made Ashe after a while. I think she’d be Defense if we still had it.
And Widow being good at both, personally I believe that speaks to how she was always a bit too strong.
I’m also sad about it, Defense was my favorite role and those characters still are. I’d have preferred they had renamed the class to something less of a misnomer, like “Zoning” or “Control”, rather than just merge the two classes.
I’d also like to see an experimental card where they implement the idea that Jeff mentioned on the AMA a while back; Defense heroes only on defend and Offense heroes only on attack. I wouldn’t want it brought live because I don’t think it would work quite as well in the current environment, but it would be nice to see what could have been.
Tank, Damage, Utility and Support maybe? Any better ideas? Utility would be for heroes with mixed abilities but weaker offense. That sort of thing. So Sombra would fall into that category really well. You could even add heroes that have support capacities into there like Torbjorn’s armor packs, Shield gen, etc. Since role queue is a thing categories don’t really matter anymore but it could be nice since it would give them more creative freedom instead of just making a offense heroes.
gotta admit i really miss the defensive category cause ever since it was removed, it feels like all dps heroes that got added are offensive/flanker heroes and as someone that enjoyed defensive chars it really sucks
every time i forget to not push with dva.
