Or will people always just find something else to complain about? Honestly, if people on this and other forums spent as much time working on their skill as they do complaining, everyone would be a grand master.
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Nope never will, be it differences in power level between ranks. Player bias to certain heroes, thus having their own personal tier list based on match ups. Devs internal tests not holding up when released to people that are significantly more and less coordinated then they are.
Conflicts in regard to how fun a hero is play vs playing against. (look at the recent mercy changes.)
Devs personal preferences, and or data showing a completely different reality to player perception. (Like mei has a near 50% winrate a the moment, even tho she is considered weak.)
And more.
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No, perfect balance will never exist. However, you can have good balance if you know what youâre doing. Blizzard has zero clue what theyâre doing, and theyâve had 6 whole years to figure it out.
As long as you balance based on a medium you can get really close. Its when you start introducing arbitrary changes and weights, thats where things get out of hand.
âWe heard your complaints about Sojourn, but we really should focus on Mercy and her impact on the gameâ
Some people call it shaking up the meta
There no such thing as a perfectly balanced hero shooter. Itâll never happen. Weâve experienced good balance a few times throughout the years, but perfection is unattainable.
Of course the devs should strive to make it as balanced as reasonably possible, but that still wonât last as we figure out new ways to utilize hero abilities.
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Already is, when you regard characters as cards.
Nope. Even something like Starcraft, which is one of the most balanced non-mirrored games ever, still needs constant update. Throw in 30+ unique heroes, and it will never happen.
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Pong. Thatâs about it.
When it comes to a game like thisâŚthere are a multitude of factors to consider / most of which many players donât see, or wonât fully understand.
For example, during season 2 of ow2, many top players were saying that dive back in OW1 was the best meta and it should come back and that the devs were balancing the game wrong.
Meanwhile, the Korean servers have been still running a dive meta in OW2âŚand for them the game balance and problems are very different.
For many players the idea of balance is âall things are relatively equalâ or âeverything should be viable with the right skillâ.
However, that isnât how a game like this (or many multiplayer games with layered builds) are balanced. They are BS lanced around âbounds of performanceâ. An upper bound and lower bound. And the metrics of performance can also vary.
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No, you can never have perfect balance. Itâs literally impossible. Even if you achieved it at one rank, it would be unbalanced at a different rank.
But, it can be good sometimes. Right now is one of those rare times actually.
No one will ever agree on what perfect balance is so itâs impossible. For example, one player can struggle against any Pharah they encounter. Another player can eat Pharah alive. The player who canât kill her will say she should be deleted. The player who wrecks her will laugh at that notion.
Thereâs always going to be an ever changing meta in a game like this. The only thing you can do is learn to adapt and play multiple heroes well, or wait until your favorite hero is meta again.
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Perfect balance is impossible.
Generally, when it comes to games like this, all that can be done is watching for and buffing/nerfing clear outliers. Sort of like playing Whac-A-Mole. See something thatâs clearly off? Whack. Next thing comes along, whack.
The problem this game has is Blizzard themselves, they are seemingly determined in creating their own moles. Sometimes they whack them (Roadhog/Doomfist/Genji) sometimes they ignore them (Sojourn.)
Ultimately youâll never be able to whack all of those moles, because they just keep popping up.
By definition, I would say no.
Yes, but itâll require them restarting over from scratch and deleting over 4/5 of the roster.
Then you start the practice of balancing around a character that is the medium, letâs say âhero Aâ
If âhero Aâ does 20 damage per shot, at a firing rate of 0.5s, that would equate to 40 dps. Now you scale everyoneâs primary to do 40 dps.
âhero bâ will now do 10 damage per shot, at a firing rate of 0.25s, should be slightly harder to hit shots since faster firing rate.
âhero câ will now do 40 damage per shot, at a firing rate of 1s, but it will be spread, with fall off starting at 20m, compensate âhero câ by giving them +50 HP since they will have to engage within 20m to deal significant damage.
Also their weapon should be easier to hit since it has a short falloff range and slow firing rate.
And so forth and so on.
Yes, overwatch did it. Right after double shield got itâs final nerfs in like 2021 the game was perfect. Then they gigga buffed CassidyâŚ
It is not possible but a better-than-a-dumpstefire balance surely is.
OW1 seemed like perfect balance in comparacing to OW2.
Explain how it would be possible to balance a game for casual 12 years olds and also pro gamers.
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tbh I donât mind the game never being perfectly balanced. It allows the meta to change and keeps the game from going completely stale (edit: grammar)
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You can get close to perfection maybe, but never perfection itself. Especially with the 5v5 balancing, tanks like Doomfist and Junker Queen will never be equal in viability to Orisa or Reinhardt, even if Doomfist is harder than both of those characters and should logically yield higher rewards.
It will never be possible, but striving for it is of course the goal. Adding new heroes to the game that function differently from any other hero in the game will always shake up the meta and require changes. Plus new strategies arise and cause things that were possibly once extremely niche or underpowered to become hard meta. Thatâs what a balance team is for. To keep watch on these exact things and change the game accordingly.
This will be true until the end of time. Youâll never make everyone happy, especially not forum users.
Multiplayer games are inherently hard to balance because there is one variable not in their control - the player themselves.
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