Inside Overwatch: Balance Design and the Experimental Card

[GreyFalcon-11737]

Let’s take a look…

And just because, here’s one of my more harsh recent balance takes.

As well as a list of specific balance implementation posts.
Exp Card ideas to Fix Tanks
Balancing to solve "Rein or Lose"
Ending the Hanzo Hypocrisy
Pick system, instead of Bans
ImmoField HealthGating rework
OW2 PVP, Low Barrier problems

@GreyFalcon-11737

The problem is that the existence of “basically an offtank but not a Tank” heroes makes it so that the only way to avoid high durability compositions is to nerf Tanks into the ground.

Making it so nobody wants to play Tank, and prevents the kinds of buffs needed to make people want to play Tank.

If you can’t get enough people to play Tank, it’s nearly impossible to fix queue times.

And not fixing queue times could easily lead to losing 5-20% of the playerbase, worse matchmaking, poor player retention for OW2 launch, and the problem gets worse as Tank player retention slowly bleeds out Tank players.

At this point, Anything, literally anything, that is getting in the way of fixing queue times and tank desirability, needs to get out of the way. We can deal with the collateral damage caused by that later.

By comparison, all Brig players at or above Masters ELO, account for maybe 0.1% of the total playerbase. And they could all quit the game, and it wouldn’t even begin to compare to how freakishly important it is to fix queue times.

Do you think Jeff Kaplan or Geoff Goodman, could justify to their Chief Financial Officers at Activision, the act of deliberately losing 5-20% of their playerbase, because it might upset 0.1% of their playerbase?

And I’ve also been meaning to make a post detailing how of Rein has an 800hp barrier, we’re right back into dealing with DoubleBarrier.

Since two AnchorTanks would be objectively stronger raw barrierhp, barrier breaking, and barrier regen.

It’s basically unavoidable for devs to solve DoubleBarrier either through balance, by getting rid of the close range peel options.
Ie. Frontline brawler Brig with no peel, tank Mei, ImmoField with a weakness to Dive, Accretion with a weakness to Dive, and doing something about those GOATs knockback changes (I.e. Treating ranged-knockbacks differently than pointblank-knockbacks).

Or some sort of 1x Tank, 1x Barrier, or Debuff if 2x Barrier gimmick.

2018 vs 2019 Knockbacks compared - By Itsjiyang