I am not a PC player. I did not own a computer until 2 years after I started playing Overwatch on my Xbox and shamelessly am a console player. If you’re too biased and honestly, too ignorant to care about the playerbase as a whole, please leave now. If you’re smart enough to care about the playerbase as a whole, even those who play on console, please continue. I think voicing opinions from several perspectives is infinitely more important than the same people repeating the same thing(s).
I am not inherently against the idea of a 1-3-2 comp, but I am rather worried about balance and how it would feel as a primarily support player. My personal proposal is: introduce new game balance ideas as arcade modes first, just to measure how popular certain ideas are across platforms and ranks. If I’m honest I imagine this could take several months with a sample size as large as the current playerbase. However, as only the PC version has a PTR, I think this is an incentive loophole.that allows Overwatch to be played in different ways, though overall the same, across different platforms.
While I don’t expect any particular kind of response, I simply hope this post generates discussion both from players and from developers from a perspective not often seen or heard from. Be it support for the ideas presented, flaws with them, and anything I’m between
We’ve wanted the devs to talk to us for so long, amd now they’ve given the community the opportunity to discuss. So please, do so here. This is a place to be open minded.
I mean, pc players paid for the ptr by buying a pc, console players are essentially on a budget and cant get everything for 300 bucks, console gaming is casual gaming not for serious players.
I take Overwatch on my main account (Xbox) very seriously; I strive to improve and perform well enough to deem myself worthy of competitive
My PC account is simply to get drunk and play with friends.
You are not correct in every situation. There are console mains, and we should not be treated as “lesser” players.
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I did the solo tanking thing, not by my choice, prior to 2-2-2. Force solo tanking, I’m gone. It’s not fun to be the target of everyone else while your team expects you to carry every fight while they go play Deathmatch. Playing your favorite tank would essentially vanish for anyone who wasn’t thrilled to play a shield not before, but hey, at least there will be an extra DPS blasting off to nowhere, I guess.
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Personally I feel like the balance would shift to one of the two:
A main tank capable of so much bulk that they’d eliminate the effectiveness of 3 opposing DPS
Or an off tank capable of so much impact that they remove the relative impact of a third DPS
Or neither and tank players suffer
Personally I feel like this would be a redesign so major I wouldn’t task anyone with it
They’d have to undo the months of patches that they’ve done to make tanks work in 2-2-2.
Overall, I agree that there should be a way for console players to also experiment with forthcoming patches as OW pc does not equal OW Console and is not representative of what goes on in either community
I feel like the meta is somewhat different from platform to platform. PC makes dive hard, but without cheaters carrying with Winston in plat/diamond isn’t really a challenge imo
Really the game has so many variables I imagine balancing is pretty hard if you want to create an equal, fair experience between all players
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IMO a big problem with 1-3-2 is that tanks are just sturdy damage dealers, in Overwatch in particular.
At least most of them. D.Va, Roadhog, Wrecking Ball, Zarya and to a degree Winston and Sigma are what’d be called bruiser in MOBAs.
They’re already DPS. Even Orisa spends most of her time attacking. Only Reinhardt actively centers his gameplay on defense for a significant portion of the match.
That is to say, 1-3-2 wouild have two core issues:
- One, the 1 would have to be an actual tank - Orisa, Sigma, Reinhardt and in rare cases Wrecking Ball - in all cases or the whole team would fall apart, lacking an anchor. At least outside of top-500 ranked.
- Second, the 1 moved from tank to DPS would… do what exactly? Do damage? Well that’s what they’re doing already, so nothing would change, other than forcing the remaining tank to play shield.
A better approach to the issue would be this:
- Rebalance tanks to actually be about tanking, even for the non-shield tanks. Their CC, displacement and shielding should be the majority of their gameplay. Not dealing damage.
- Separate the two tankslots into main-tank and off-tank. Off-tanks are good at supporting another tank, but not at protecting their team. Main-tanks are good at creating space and protecting, but even off-tanks are DPS compared to them.
- Likewise, separate the two DPS slots into “saturation” and “assassination”. Flankers and snipers are assassins, characters such as Symmetra, Torbjörn, Bastion or Soldier or Junkrat are saturation. Balance assassins to have about 50%-60% of the damage output of a saturation character but with ~25%-50% higher burst. In other words, shields stop assassins, flat out. They lack the damage to penetrate it because being unable to stack 2 shields, such a rebalance where shield gameplay is about shielding would require very strong shields. Saturation characters breach them. Assassins don’t. No exceptions.
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Tbh I think the problem is that main and off tanks, utility and DPS damage heroes interpret their jobs very different and rely on separate roles to make things easier. But the solution is difficult; main tanks protect with their battlers
Humans battle with weird kinds of gods