Every time major changes are made to appease the average player, the game gets worse for everyone. Here are the top times that listening to the community made the game worse:
1. Role Queue
This is where the top skill in the game, adaptability, took a huge hit and players were instead encouraged to never leave their comfort zone. Now, if you want gameplay variety in a competitive environment, you have to balance three separate rankings, which severely limits the experience for flexible players. With RQ, we’re more easily held hostage by our teammates hero picks instead of being able to swap to cover weaknesses ourselves like we used to.
2. Removal of Assault maps
We lost some of the most beautiful and iconic maps, maps that were arguably the defining mode of OW since payload was directly ported from other games. It would’ve been one thing if there was a problem with the mode, but there wasn’t, only a problem with the community. The community’s least favorite thing is having to try or coordinate in this competitive, team-based game they’ve chosen to play for some reason, so they attacked the mode they felt most required them to do that. The removal of 2CP shouldn’t have been forced on good players; the complainers should have gotten their own arcade mode instead where they didn’t have play the whole game.
3. Hero Bans and Map Voting
For the same reason they think they hated 2CP, the community decided they wanted tools to further restrict available content to only what was most comfortable for them at the expense of good players. They’ll say the numbers speak for themselves, but literally all of history and human nature has shown that something being popular doesn’t make it right. There’s a reason NASA doesn’t take community feedback when designing a new spaceship.
The community has consistently shown that it doesn’t really understand what it wants, doesn’t consider the consequences of getting it, and can’t be trusted to provide valuable or thoughtful feedback. Listening to them is the best way to quickly turn this game into just another basic shooter but with cute characters they like. Please have some faith in yourselves, devs, and have the courage to stick to the game’s vision. If it’s unpopular, it’ll still be a better game for it.
Video games design is subjective and the goal is literally to cater to the broadest audience possible and give customers what they want. Building a space shuttle is not.
Like I know the point you’re trying to make with this post, but this analogy makes quite literally no sense. This is most definitely a product that should be designed based on feedback from its users.
Role queue is the one thing saving this game. The one thing Overwatch has over Marvel Rivals.
You could be complete garbage at the game and climb with no role queue just from having more tanks, supports. It’s almost as if tanks/ supports are broken. GOATS killed the game as well as double shield, 5v5 is still better just from that.
Role queue is not inherently bad. It’s just that it was poorly implemented.
Adaptability isn’t necessarily a must-have trait. One-tricking is fine as a concept. Many popular games are about one-tricking.
Assault maps had real issues, depending on the rank.
The walking time was too long. It was probably the most unforgiving mode for the average player. Then you had the many 4-4 and 6-6 incidents at high ranks.
The mode needed a rework, and I think Clash is the end-product of that rework.
Clash is a step in the right direction imo, but it felt half-baked.
Hero bans exists in most games. You can argue it should be a high-rank-only feature. But at least it was exclusive to Ranked and it didn’t contain RNG, which made it less controversial
Map voting as a concept is also not bad. But again, a poor implementation. It should’ve been exclusive to Ranked, similar to hero bans, with no RNG after voting.
Overall, it’s Blizzard the one to blame for not doing a good job.
User feedback is very important and Blizzard has to listen more to the community if they ever want their game to be successful and thriving.
Do you really think that NASA ignores all input from astronauts or paid volunteers?
That they hear an astronaut say “this suit restricts my movement too much”, “the seats cut off circulation and are a safety hazard”, or any other potential input that would be learned from using their creations, and immediately ignore it?
Ridiculous.
It’s almost like these paid volunteers (think NASA sleep studies and other similar studies), and Astronauts (people who use their spaceships), other scientists who likely use a wide range of astronomical research equipment, without a doubt provide plenty of valuable feedback, to such a degree that in the case of those paid volunteers, NASA actually pays quite handsomely for that information and feedback.
You clearly didn’t think about this, though, because you failed to realise the “community” for NASA, are the people who engage with the products of NASA, just as we, the “community” here, are the ones who engage with the products of Blizzard.
So yes, they ACTUALLY DO listen to their community, it’s just not the general public, just as the community here isn’t the general public.
No one at Blizzard is asking rando coked out Bob from 7th St what rework Mercy needs.
RQ was vastly more popular than OQ in OW1 by hard stats and numbers
Assault was removed because people were deserting the maps, nonstop. Horizon Leaver Colony was the nickname for good reason.
Hero Bans are a band-aid fix.
OW has tried them in the past, and they have failed in the past. They offer temporary relief for a certain segment of the playerbase, but ultimately aren’t healthy the way they’ve been implemented (and the system needs tuning). May they rot in Comp (which I don’t play). They need to be iterated upon, or better yet, the dev team should actually balance heroes wisely instead of tinkering around with Stadium so much. That said, some players are just annoyed by certain heroes for completely irrational (but popular) reasons, and bans cater to them in an unhealthy way.
Sometimes I cannot tell if they actually do because people have been asking about fixes to problem characters but nope nothing, only buffs. Like they ignore more then they listen, it’s a mix of them being not great at their jobs and the community giving mixed signals constantly. Like they are to scared to do major changes to certain characters because community backlash and because I think a part of them knows they can’t get it right.
There was a problem with paris. The other 2cp maps were fine with several routes.
You could only win paris on attack if you got an aggressive team that immediately pushed through the choke, instead of poking and giving defenders ult charge.
Anyway, looking forward to the next post talking about the ethical implications of Overwatch development analogous to the political struggles of 1976 Cambodia. That ought to be an absolute banger.
Ahhh yess Devs listening to us and making changes
S8
Players :“Can you nerf kiriko/Ana/Baptiste they do too much healing and damage, nothing dies with the included sustain tanks like mauga”
DEVs : “Hey I’ll do you one better I’ll Give you guys a DPS passive which reduces healing received”
Players : “oh cooking?”
DEVS : “We will also increase bullet sizes to make things easier to hit, increase the HP so breakpoints don’t exist for some characters,
And best of all we will monitor the DPS passive and increase the healing to supports further down the line and repeat this when the buffs get too much”
Players : “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO”
Nah. I think most people are extremely grateful that they can ban Sombra. Meanwhile, if map voting shows anything, it’s that people enjoy escort modes a lot. They’re not clamouring to play failed modes like Clash and 2CP.
I’m sorry that you don’t like these changes, but let’s not pretend that they’ve made the game a worse one for everybody.
Firstestly this is an insane comparison.
Moving on
Removal of Assault maps
We lost some of the most beautiful and iconic maps, maps that were arguably the defining mode of OW
I played those in overwatch classic patches and the maps are nothing more than spam fest and hold the gate.
It’s a worst control map,tho i will give credit to the limited roaster. It made the gameplay feel smother.
Be careful you fall into the “my way of playing is always right” category.
The IRONY to ask them this when they gave up and implemented role que lmao.
I disagree. There are some games where this is the case like Fortnite or Candy Crush, but OW has been as good as it is by sticking to its vision of being a highly competitive game even in its unranked mode.
There are plenty of easy ways to broaden the audience, but they’d all make the game worse. The average player has no idea how to design a competitive game, and they shouldn’t be consulted on it.
They are, though, because that’s half our user base on the forums. That’s the problem.
I loved Paris. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with designing some maps to be played differently. If people want to win, they can’t just rely on the same old thing. Paris was great at reinforcing that.
It did, though. I’m sure many players are happy, but that’s because they don’t know it’s worse, mostly because they never understood in the first place what the game is supposed to be. They genuinely want Call of Duty but cute, and they’ll see any change they takes us in that direction as a good thing. It’d be like Dark Souls making the game easy. It would undermine the whole experience and make the game worse, but it would appeal to more people.
I honestly don’t understand these posts and that analogy??
I can only speak for myself but aside from the progression and monetisation (reckon there’s still a lot they can do here), the game itself is in possibly the best state it’s been - and I’ve played since 2016. I get to hop between MH, 6v6 and Stadium all whilst shaping the experience within these modes.
I’m a big fan of Stadium and the general polish and quality of the game, but those are great examples of things that are good without the community interfering. Nobody asked for Stadium, so the devs were able to make it good. Like unranked Stadium next season, which the community asked for, is going to be totally pointless, and the people playing it will have no idea why it doesn’t feel right. They’d have a better time if they just played competitive Stadium, which is already very forgiving as a competitive mode, but they’d rather split the player base and play something worse instead.
I also love Mystery Heroes, but it was better before changes were made based on the community’s complaints about hero stacking. Eventually, they’ll move to guaranteeing at least one of each role, at which point I’ll have to quit playing the mode. Players that don’t understand the point of things shouldn’t be allowed to wreck good modes.
A bit off your original topic but related, listening to the constant spreading of negative takes and opinions from the community and creators also negatively affects the players as well with how they personally enjoy the game. I don’t like to interact with the forums or Twitter due to all the hate that people tend to spew about little things, it genuinely just ruins the experience cause it feels like I am the one looking for these things they complain about and trying to find more stuff to be upset over.
I agree. Streamers and the like get more views and articles written about them by being negative and overly critical. I think a lot of the popular opinions held by this community started with them, and perception became reality for many even if the perception had no merit.
A good example of the perception issue was back in early days of the game when the forums were convinced that 2CP heavily favored the defender ls. Everyone just knew it for certain, and they frequently flamed the devs for not fixing this obvious problem. Then Jeff Kaplan responded to some of those posts with stats showing that the victory margin on almost every map was within 1% toward either side, not at all the absolute truth the forums had accepted.
Firstly, it’s crazy that the devs used to be able to post here and interact with us, but the ridiculous and negative community has made sure that won’t happen again.
But I think about that Jeff post a lot when I see things from the community. They run with bad ideas so quickly, and the hate feels manufactured and illegitimate, which is still the case fir many popular ideas today. I’d love for them to get annihilated with facts again, but now I’m worried the devs will just listen to them instead.
6v6 was a direct response to player feedback though.
MH is better than it was. They took feedback about 5 tanks and took action - they tried MH RQ and realised that community feedback was mostly against it so reversed it.
They are listening to feedback about stadium (Freja nerfs a good example).
I’m not saying they are perfect but how you think this game would be better without listening to any player feedback is baffling.
You mean “trying to please ALL players that give feedback”? Because listening to the right players is only for the betterment of the game.
I think you are mistaking this for a hivemind.
No matter what happens, no matter what they do or not, something will always be hated and someone’s suggestion will be disliked by some people.
RQ was adopted because players were too lazy to use the LFG , so yeah thats really a player’s L mostly.
Assault maps were something that statistically speaking, either dragged matches way too long, or were super stompy. The "fun " was clearly lesser than others so they took the “Lesser of 2 evils” route.
Those 2, bans and map voting, give player agency. Anyone annoyed by that should not be listened to when talking about game balance/improvements. Period.
