"Just give the rework a try before complaining" is a bad argument

General Discussion
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Disclaimer: This pattern has been visibly repeated before with Mercy, and I doubt it will stop with Symmetra only, Thus, I’m making the title generic for the future.

After Geoff give us a tasty and meaty update on Blizzard’s plans to Symmetra 3.0, a lot of Symmetra players are expressing their criticism on those plans, and a few forumites are getting tired of all the Symmetra talk, and usually resort to the phrase in the title.

“Just wait and give it a try before saying she is ruined”

While I agree with the spirit behind it, there is three major issues with this argument.

First one is that we are giving feedback by talking about those changes. Sure, we don’t have the full picture like the devs, and we might end up making faulty assumptions because of a lack of more precise data (eg, we don’t know how long the new teleporter will last, or its cooldown). But even when we don’t have the full numbers, the devs can still read the feedback, and see what we like and don’t like about the idea.

Remember last year, when Moira was revealed in Blizzcon, and the devs then said they found funny when we asked for a new healer, and they already had one in development? Maybe we might be complaining about a problem they already solved internally, and the feedback is helping by pointing that they are in the right track. Or maybe we might provide a new point of view they had not considered before and will fix before throwing the rework in the PTR.

Tl;dr: Feedback is good, and there is never “too much” feedback.

Second, is that if Roadhog, D.va, Mercy and Hanzo reworks are any indication, once things are on PTR they are just slightly adjusted in the future, not reverted back. #RevertMercy has been going since the first iteration of Valkyrie in the PTR, and is still going strong. So if we have a problem with the future design, but only express it when they already wasted hours on new art assets and coding, the chance of us being heard and have things reverted to the previous, more loved (even if underpowered) versions is minimal. So, we have to express our dissatisfaction as early as possible.

Third, that its a bad thing to try to shut down discussion on topics that visibly matters to other people. That is not OW-specific, but if you have people discussing, eg, if blue shirts are easier to wash than red shirts, you jumping into that discussion saying “who cares” is rude, regardless if you think this is a good discussion, or if it matters in the Grand Scheme of the Universe©. If people are discussing it, it clearly matter to them. If you don’t like the discussion, move along, and go read another thread. We have hundreds of them every day in the forums, leave the discussions you don’t like for the people who care about them.

I hope this helps everyone in the long term, and that this can make the forums a better place for everyone, and lead to healthier discussions.

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I disagree that all feedback is useful. There has been a TON of doomsaying about the changes to her kit, especially her weapon.

The argument is that more it’s harder to judge the specifics of her kit, when we’ve only got an outline of what she can do. We don’t know the full scope of her changes, especially to her LMB, and that asking for changes to it, when it hasn’t even hit PTR, is silly.

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Just make a megathread with Sym and Ana, because that’s all I see.

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Seeing the “feedback” that have been ongoing, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Devs were to just stop giving people details on balance changes they’re planning. Because if players are just gonna assume and overreact, what would even be the point of revealing the details in the first place? Might as well just silently push it to the PTR and then start answering questions, and gather actual data and feedback

Remember Sombra? Remember how the forums were flooded with threads saying that she’s gonna ruin the game, or that she’s OP, when she was revealed or released to the PTR? See how that ended up when she hit Live.

This forum does not give valuable feedback. And when it does, it’s drowned out by the spam of people whining and making chickens out of feathers, going on about how the game is ruined etc etc

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What valuable feedback is in people complaining about the change to her primary weapon, which increases it’s power, when the current weapon is the reason she’s a troll pick?

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I agree more with the “wait-and-see” mentality then what I just read, tbh.

No offense, but not all feedback is good or useful just from word-of-mouth changes that haven’t even been applied to the hero yet. Once they hit PTR, then our feedback would be more useful. Before though? Not so much, respectively :expressionless:

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pls make a symm megathread

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I find it laughable that there are actually players out there who are already complaining that a troll pick hero, no no, the trolliest pick of all, is about to be…wait for it…“ruined”.

It;s absurd and just shows there will always be a fraction of this community who pounces on any opportunity to whine and complain about anything and everything.

We should be rejoicing that Sym is being reworked.

https://media1.tenor.com/images/5ffaf5a317621b1d8b98dc3ef60629d7/tenor.gif?itemid=9819451

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Saying that we should give something a chance isn’t shutting down an argument, it’s reasonably saying “Hey, let’s not jump to conclusions here.”

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“xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx is a bad argument” does not invalidate that argument btw. i still stand by that argument. people should try giving the rework a try before complaining. whats on paper may seem very different to the actual thing

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Symmetra and Mercy players are louder than those who wanted Scatter removed (which I’m glad for tbh).

Wait for the PTR.

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All feedback is definitely not useful, especially when it’s based on almost nothing. We got a courtesy update through text and it’s clear that the rework is still in development.

Also, the reworks you mentioned were are sorely needed and have made the characters MUCH better. A vocal minority on the forums doesn’t change that.

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Making assumptions before actually seeing how the new kit works is a bit too hasty, isn’t it?

I’d say we should give new Symmetra a chance.

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I just want to remind that the intention on the thread is not to discuss the specifics on Symmetra changes. There is a ton of topics on that already. I’m talking specifically about the dismissive attitude of the usual reply I quoted in the OP.

Some feedback are more valuable than others. The Extra Credits video I linked in the OP point that out very loudly. My point is that feedback volume is good, as long as you (as a dev) know how to interpret that data.

Yeah, that is basically my entire second point in the argument.

Plus, Sombra didn’t got a rework, all her tools still function the same way it worked before. Compare that to Valkyrie, Micromissiles, or the mobile Hog Breather. Those are reworks.

It is when history shows us that once things are on PTR, they are set on drying concrete. It can change, but not by much. We have no ETA when those changes will arrive on PTR, and giving feedback now may save the devs a lot of coding/art work. Those things are expensive.

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Not really. Remember when everyone whined Orisa would be OP? Lmao how did that go. Remember when Doomfist would ruined the game? uhhh yeah…rofl. etc.

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Brigitte was rolled back a ton on her PTR launch, and Lúcio’s speed nerf was reverted. I think there is room for change once it hits the PTR.

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AFAIK, they fixed the animation cancel problem that allowed her to hit three times per second (something that Reinhardt also had at beta and was removed), and it was that. What else changed?

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I’m slightly surprised that the community manager hasn’t made a megathread for Symmetra at least. If they don’t then I guess that just further reinforces the fact that the Overwatch team are using Mercy’s megathread as a form of silencing act on Mercy discussion on the main forum currently, not just to keep the main forum tidy (as there’s tons of Sym discussions last I checked). We already know they don’t actually really read it daily like they claim (based on forum profiles ‘read posts’ counters).

I agree with what some of the OP says, I fear however that Symmetra could follow the same path that some other reworks have taken (particularly Mercy’s). By that I mean… possibly too powerful at first, megathreads, feedback mostly ignored, nerf, nerf, and nerfed into the ground, then finally a continuation of megathreads that are ignored for a long time. I hope not and I wish the Symmetra rework the best of luck to go reasonably fine compared to some other reworks/significant changes like D.Va, Roadhog or Mercy.

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Reworks however…

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If Roadhog, D.Va, Junk, and Mercy are any indication, all of the theory crafting is just going to be wrong anyways.

Everyone said they’ll be trash tier with their respective PTR nerfs. None of them are even remotely in a bad place nowadays.

Make all the arguments you want, the devs are just going to take it with a grain of salt as they realize that even when we do have access to the rework, we’ll be completely wrong about how it’ll perform on live anyways.

1 Like