Tl:Dr, I am against the implementation of the character but I like the concepts. They have a lot of potential to make the game more diverse, fun, and overall interesting. However the implementation of Life Grip specifically is sorely lacking. I am looking at this from the perspective of a masters tank, that now is going to main support and dps because I actually can’t play the game (will cover later but in short, motion sickness) as a tank anymore.
If you’d like to skip ahead, look for the bold And finally, onto Life Grip, as that marks that particular segment beginning. Rework is a pseudo hybrid of Zarya bubbles and current Grip.
If any devs are reading this, I’ve tried to be as unbiased as I can be where relevant, and cater to both Live Weaver, and everyone who isn’t Life Weaver. I hope you read what I’ve written and consider it. Not that I think I’m 100% right or anything of the sort oh no, but that I would hope you consider all viewpoints in your future work.
I want this game to be as fun as it can be, for everyone.
Tl:Dr Over
This is going to be split into sections, you do not have to agree with me on any specific point here, but all of this is an explanation for why the character has tradeoffs. Aka they may improve the game for you, but not for me. You do not get to tell me that I am wrong for not enjoying the character being there, but you absolutely can tell me why you think a tradeoff is worth it.
Nonetheless, let’s go through the character.
Life Weaver, or Wife Leaver depending on your preference, is a utility support specialising in positioning and game sense. Their numbers are bad but if your game sense and positioning is great, you can legitimately do great things on him. But you have to be fantastic there. Misreads will ruin fights, both for the chances of winning, and for your teammates enjoyment. The risk reward of Life Weaver ruining a fight in either way, is just as high as Mei, in fact higher (will cover later hold on).
I won’t cover all of his kit here because I simply don’t have a reason to care much about it. His healing is low but he’s a utility support so it never was going to be that high, his damage isn’t the absolute best either but I’m not here to really discuss that. I would like to see an option for people to change click and hold for charging to click first to charge, click second to fire, since some people have reported fatigue over matches clicking and holding. Should be a toggleable control scheme if implemented.
His flower. His flower by nature is an interesting ability. I’m personally a big fan of it. Your team can choose to step/stay on it or get off essentially immediately, there’s definitely some trolling potential for it but not nearly as high as Life Grip which will be covered next.
It’s immensely cool to me in how it can be used to provide counterplay to some ultimates that simply didn’t exist before. Especially Zarya grav. Though it’s unfortunate since Zarya hasn’t had a chance to really be the most viable, it is cool to see the game evolve.
It also allows new and interesting plays, such as getting Soldier to a temporary high ground for a visor. It allows characters like Rein, Orisa, Hog or whatever to actually reach snipers on maps like Kings Row easily. Etc. etc.
It’s really cool to me and I’m happy to see it expanding how the game is played. I think it has potential to troll, but in the same way as Mei wall, and I’ve only had it troll me once, where I got lifted as I shattered, wasting it, but it happened once and I’ve shattered into wall before. If Mei Wall is worth being in the game, so is the petal.
Finally onto Life Grip:
Life Grip is entirely different from any ability in the game before now. It is worth establishing this now before I move on. With every single other ability from a teammate, they’ve never taken control of your character away midfight. Our closest analogues are Mercy Rez (in which you’re already dead), or Mei Wall.
Mercy Rez is an ability specifically designed to restore your agency without compromising much unless you were planning to switch. A potential change I could see improving this at a cost to Mercy, would be to make it so that people who have already swapped heroes but haven’t yet respawned lose their res spark thing.
But honestly that is incredibly rare for Mercy, and it can’t really subsume control beyond a single thing which is changing your hero. It delays a single choice to happen after the fight, or on next death. And even if we’re denied one choice, we are now brought back with the entire kit to then make more choices. This is important to note.
Mei Wall is like Petal, it does not take away your control, it alters the environment. It adds in a literal wall. Can it be trolled with? Yes. It can. However Wall does not take away your ability to use your keyboard. It doesn’t take away your ability to press your abilities. It doesn’t change your position (Besides vertically, but that’s what Petal does, and if you want to tell me Petal is the same as Life Grip, I question your honesty).
Life Grip has some absurdly cool uses. It enables extreme aggression from teammates, it enables kamikaze attacks, such as your Life Weaver positioning behind the enemy team (On many maps this can be done via petal to cross a gap), your Orisa ulting, and your Life Weaver pulling them into where the enemy is fleeing to.
Etc Etc. It’s amazing what it opens up, but the implementation is honestly terrible.
The first. It actually made me vomit. It turns out that I get motion sickness. And you’d think that Hog would elicit the exact same feelings with Hook but no.
I have a few thoughts on why I think that might be.
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Life Grip goes much further than Hog Hook. I am moved further than I would be by Hog Hook, and for longer.
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Hog Hook hitting you has audible sfx and the stun is just the slightest bit longer maybe, which gives me more time to mentally process that I am about to be moved.
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I am constantly keeping the Hog in mind in fights and always tracking hook. I am always braced for it. I think this is honestly the biggest cause of Hog Hook not being nauseous, I have an incredible tolerance for motion in VR games like Gorilla Tag, and Echo VR (Rip in advance). But in those I am always in control, or, everything that can take away my ability to move, has an audible and visual warning that I can use to brace.
It’s kind of amazing that a zero-g vr game that revolves around me flinging myself constantly in some of the most spatially intensive gaming I’ve ever played, doesn’t make me nauseous but this does.
- Hog hook typically brings you forward in some manner, very rarely does it ever pull you backwards. Life Grip typically brings me backwards and that just induces nausea like nothing else.
Nonetheless, regardless of the other problems, because of this, I quite literally cannot play the game with a Life Weaver anymore, because I’ll vomit. This also probably explains why the other day I was on here I mentioned having one of the least fun games of my life. I just didn’t identify that I was nauseous at the time.
So now I cannot solo queue because I cannot guarantee that I won’t end up playing with a Life Weaver, And I’m too high ranked for too many of my friends, so I can’t group while playing tank.
The second problem is that it takes away player agency and autonomy. Now before select members of the forum call me a narcissist for liking to control my own actions. Let me support this statement and why it can feel terrible beyond being vomit inducing.
The article I’m about to quote is “You Better Hold Onto Your Head, Mate”, written by Robin Walker and published May 5th, 2009. It is specifically talking about how they designed the Sniper, and how they ended up having to redesign parts of the game because of frustration from the player base causing small exodus’ and a loss of new players.
I am specifically bringing this up because Team Fortress 2 is still an incredibly popular game. It has an active community still despite being far, far older than Overwatch as a franchise.
They are specifically talking about frustration points within the game, and what is aggravating. And I’d like to share a quote from it with you.
“The second was whether you felt you were actually engaged with the person who killed you. Dying to someone you weren’t engaged with, especially when you were already engaged with someone else, was aggravating. Even worse was dying to someone who you couldn’t have engaged with, even if you chose to. In that case, you’re very unlikely to believe you could have done anything differently to survive.”
“In particular, the second seemed to be the root cause of the hatred of Snipers. You’re often killed by them while you’re engaged with an enemy in the foreground, and most of the time the Sniper is so far away it feels like you couldn’t have dealt with him even if you didn’t have enemies nearby. In fact, the Sniper’s goal is to create that relationship:…”
They’re quoted separately because the first paragraph is a dot point, and the second is not one. They are sequential and there is no text between them.
I’d like to bring attention to some key parts of the first paragraph (aka the dot point). “Dying to someone you weren’t engaged with, especially when you were already engaged with someone else, was aggravating. Even worse was dying to someone you couldn’t have engaged with, even if you chose to.”
Life Weaver fits very well into this. They can ruin your plays, interrupt your control of the game, reposition you, and more, whilst being on your team, meaning there is nothing that you can do to engage with them. There’s plenty of clips already of people being killed by a bad pull, or of team wipes to DVA bomb from Life Weaver pulls moving the shield tank.
You can’t engage with the Life Weaver, you cannot stop that, so these cases are in essence The Sniper problem on steroids. You literally cannot interact with them.
Life Grip as an ability violates player agency, can get you killed, can ruin your plays, your positioning, your plans, your stealth. Etc (etc referring to some more niche situations). It has every frustration that Hog Hook has, but as a friendly ability. Mercy Rez can get you killed again. Nano can ruin your stealth, Trans might not save you, Suzu can potentially boop someone out of a shot you take. Etc. Wall can ruin your plays, or even your positioning.
But all of them cannot, at all, do all of those. The frustration points are simply higher, whilst also removing player agency.
What I would propose as a change is a rework of sorts.
First. It now initiates a bubble on the player when Life Grip begins to be used. This bubble has a health proportional to the max health of the character bubbled. So if we set that percentage to be 50%, for Tracer it’s 75, for Rein it is 300. This helps prevent characters like tracer from being invulnerable with her small hitbox and running without any fear whatsoever, whilst also being still useful for tanks… Whilst that bubble is active, healing on you is increased by a factor of 1.5. So sustain is a bit stronger (it’s a 20 second cooldown cmon).
They are also given a prompt. If they accept that prompt, Life Grip as it is activated, with the exception that they are not invulnerable, but if it turns out to be too weak, they can keep the whole being invulnerable. I doubt it’d end up being too weak though, but I’ve been wrong before.
What this does, is makes the ability theoretically stronger in all but very niche situations, it retains player agency for those being hit by Life Grip, it maintains player Agency for the Life Weaver (hell can even make it so non-accepted grips have a 15 second cooldown or whatever ends up being best, so if they don’t accept the grip you are compensated a bit), since they can use it like an alternate Zarya bubbles (I remind you they have a cool down of 10 seconds).
Now I don’t have to vomit. I can control my character. All of the creative uses of Life Grip are maintained, it’s now actually somewhat stronger for things like Pharah Barrage offering base value, it still saves people when used so the consent doesn’t delay it, and Life Weaver also maintains player agency. Not quite as much, but the sheer increase of agency for others is also higher.
This also prevents something I’ve seen some people complain about is where they Life Grip as someone uses a movement ability and it insta cancels because it was unlucky. Now it shields them, and lets them accept with that extra health.
I hope this has been informative even if you disagree. I wanted to explain my side as best as I personally can. Please give your thoughts in the comments, and please. Do not just reduce the whole post as narcissism. This is a forum, the intent is to have a discussion.
