Custom games in general needs a lot of improvements, and while what we currently have is fun, its very limited and still needs improvement,
Hero configuration options
There are a lot of options to config the heroes, but i feel this can be done a lot better
the sliders should not be % based, Theres no reason for why i have to do some quick calculations to get the appropiate amount of health i want for my hero, or how much damage i want them to do, maybe leave it as % for certain exceptions, But mostly it should be actual numbers to make it easier to balance
add or remove different types of healths, if i want to add armor to pharah, remove shields from sym, or remove half the armor from reinhart and make it HP, i should be able to, it would also help people balance the game for their own little communities if they want to,
Manage the health of the different parts of the hero separately, Theres simply no reason for why if i want to give extra hp to torb, i have to give it to his turret and vice versa, same for syms construct and other deployables in general
Manage the damage of the different parts of the hero separately, It would help a lot if i could increase the heros damage for a specific ability, inestead of for the entire hero, its simply not necesary, same for barriers
Manage the effectiveness of certain abilities of the heroes, If i want lucios crossfade to increase speed by 100%, inrease the healing of brigs repair pack, or the armor it gives, or something like that, i should be able to,
Manage projectile speed below 100%, The projectile speed can go up but not down, i dont know why this is a thing but it is
Manage attack / fire speed, Just because it would also help in balancing our custom games a bit more,
Manage the Cast time of abilities, Like genjis ult, mercys rez, etc
Put the seasonal events IN Custom games and let us edit it, i dont see why you no longer do this, It was a thing before, but now we cant even do that,
modify shield regen rates separe from healing
Modify spread
Modify reload speed
[further edits if i forgot any may be done]
AI
the AI leaves a lot to be desired in general, improvements that could be made
General AI improvements, Better pathfinding, and actually them using their characters correctly, Theres no need for ana ai to be running w + m1 into the point,
Let the AI switch heroes, This would be especially good for VS AI, maybe have them even switch to X hero if killed Y times by Z hero
Stats specific for AI, It would be fun if you could edit the hero stats for AI controlled heroes specifically, if this is possible,
Add more than 6+ ais per team, This feature was actually a bug that let us do this, and blizzard said that they would investigate it to see if they could replicate it, i havent forgotten blizzard! but of course give it a limit so the game doesnt explode on lag,
AI specific Slots, Dont have AI take the actual player slots, have them be on separate slots that can be configured to be disabled as soon as a player joins, so the host does not have to do it manually
add AI for more heroes, out of almost 30 heroes, only 12 are AI, and there are some that blizzard for some reason has their AI for events and refuses to put it in custom games
Map maker
While bllizzard admmited that it would take a long time, i think it would be really good for the games longevity to open the doors for user generated content
Hero maker
Just like with the map maker, we could have a overwatch workshop where people upload their own heroes, and people download them, i dont exepct this to be real but it would go a long way to help, COmmunity generated content is what has kept TF2 Alive This long
Custom Games browser
the custom game browser has its own problems i would like to adress
Save the configs i set it to, Its annoying to have to set the custom game browser to see all servers, every time i want to play a custom game,
Possibly add a ability to set a “message” that would be displayed in front of peoples screen as soon as they join the server, this could display the rules of the game mode your playing, or something of the sorts, it would really help a lot
Suggestions from other people
Thats all i got, if you have any other ideas tell me and ill add them on the thread
Remove the XP cap. Its not the player bases fault there are more interesting matches in custom games than in arcade. Dont punish your players cause your 2 lazy 2 make new game modes.
Was playing custom games today…its so hard to balance the game properly without beeing able to modify values individually…pls i wamt this to be seem
We should be able to create different variations of the same hero. For example 1 Torb on a team could have more health and less damage. The second Torb can have increased speed and less health. The third Torb can have higher damage but less speed.
Edit: Also can we please give Mercy her infinite Valkyrie back. We had it in the PTR and it was taken away.
Does this mean I should finally finish my big ol’ custom game essay? I mean-- I still don’t think they’re going to listen, but I have 49 unique problems listen and 14 paragraphs on them so far. I’m hyped
Could I get the option to play as heroes from their past patches? Like, any major variation of each hero? Could I choose that please? Wouldn’t ever play QP again, but oh well.
another easy fix is remove xp gain for no timing out
dunno why its so strict considering you need to spend 10 minutes for 1000 max just seems like an excuse to make sure you don’t have fun unless it’s an actual blizzard game mode
I love all of these and would die for them to be add these.
The hero maker would be so much fun because then you’d see things like Genji Cat, Jetpack Cat, playable Talon Assassin and other things. It would be a blast. It most likely will never happen though.
My personal suggestion would be to add things where you can swap hero’s passives and abilities. So like Mercy with Reaper abilities but her pistol. Would be a blast. And Bastion with wall climb. The animations would be broken but fun.
I would pay 20$ a month to make a always up custom game server (So possibly a community around it could form) where I can change any damn thing I want, use any patch iterations in any combination I like, add custom hero’s or even add custom maps. Like the freedom TF2 game us.
To be honest it would probably Pyro dodgeball with lucio.
Those two things would never be possible it would be impossible to do this if they did people would make bad/innapropriate things or the Hero maker would be terrible as there would be a lack of weapons and designs. I’m not saying its Overwatch’s fault I’m just saying that its hard for Overwatch to do that. The reason TF2 could is because it wasn’t so high graphic. Your post is still very interesting I love it!
20$ cad is the regular price for a 12 person server rental at external sites.telling them i will pay for it means I am more likely to get said feature also
I think that all of these ideas are pretty great and some of them like the slider changes and customizing what kind of health you want should really have just been there from the start.
As for what I would like to see. You have said all the basic changes like better ability customization and spread changes so I cant make those ideas but what I haven’t seen yet is stuff like better healthpack customization. You should be able to change how much they heal, how fast they spawn, if only certain teams or even heroes can use them, and where on the map they spawn or at least being able to remove some of the spots where they spawn.
Another thing I would like to see is changing the size of heroes and their abilities. and while this one is a pretty big stretch and I don’t think that Blizz would do it I think that it would be pretty fun to see something like a twice as big Winston chasing after half size Genjis or Tracers or Torbs.
Overall I think that all of the ideas you mentioned are great ones and that Blizz should really consider adding a lot of these to help improve the custom game experience. Great post Magy!