[Idea] Loosening Compositions, Rebalancing Roster

[turtle-13106]

That is likely to create a mess that could be even worse than the status quo.

The Overwatch developers have certainly set the bar very low as far as balancing is concerned. On the other hand, physically speaking altering heroes shouldn’t be too labor or time consuming of a process. I’m referring to application that integrates the actual changes for testing as opposed to including the animations as well. So I think there is a big difference between what Blizzard have done in the past and what is possible. I am a 100% layman but something tells me they have the tools to get things in there remarkably quickly. Actually, let me give you an example in Jeff Kaplan’s own words:

@JeffreyKaplan

Internally, for the past two months, we changed the game to be based on 3-2-1 composition. When we queue for our playtests, we only get 1 Tank per team for each match. We decided to “live with it” for December and January because we felt like the easy and natural thing for us all to do, is just say, “hey this is different and here are all the problems with it” and dismiss the system. But by forcing the team to try it out and live with it for so long, it’s challenged us to try to solve some of the problems that have surfaced.

And there are a number of challenges.

First, there is the issue of what players have come to call “off tanks”. The biggest issues center around D.Va, Zarya and Roadhog. The current playstyle of those tanks (if you’re adhering to various metas that have existed) is to pair them with other “main tanks”. Obviously, if we were to change the distribution of roles from 2-2-2 to 3-2-1 it would require some balance changes. But possibly more than that. Roadhog is a great example. Is the correct thing to do for Roadhog under that design to try to make him more “main tanky” or is the correct thing to do to simply move him to the Damage role and balance him as a damage character? We’ve tried both in our months of testing. If you were to come and play Roadhog today with us in our 3-2-1 experiment, he’s moved from the Tank to the Damage category, he only has 400 health, Take a Breather only heals and does not do damage reduction and there were a bunch of DPS changes to his scrap gun. Now, don’t freak out. We’re not doing this for 2-2-2… I am only sharing the design experiment that’s going on here.

What they can do in the background for testing purposes should be doable at a much quicker pace, granted the ideas are there. The upcoming Experimental Card also provides an environment to involve players.