Marvel rivals & overwatch classic

General Discussion
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Marvel rivals and overwatch classic made me finally realize something.

Balance should have never been even a consideration in this game other than bugs.

Looking at marvel rivals and getting that sweet nostalgia crisp through overwatch classic, I almost feel like balancing was the start of the community being divided.

For anyone who doesn’t know, marvel rivals is an upcoming hero shooter game that features marvel characters. I have seen them talk about the roadmap, how it’s free to play, there will be lore. Much akin to what overwatch 1 was at first.

I’ve noticed that every single character in that game is overpowered, most abilities are not balanced in any way what so ever. And you know what? That’s the way it should be.

Overwatch should have never done balance to begin with, looking at overwatch classic. There were so many abilities that were so dumb but fun to use. Torbs lvl 3 turret, mercy’s 5 man Rez, syms microwave, Hanzo scatter arrow.

I honestly do not think, with a game that features over 20+ characters that balance should’ve ever been considered because how do you balance that? I would say it’s almost impossible.

It seems that Marvel rivals almost gets that, if everyone is OP no one is underpowered. You can get upset at a stupid ability but at the end of the day I think everyone is having fun because everyone has some stupid dumb fun strong abilities and weapons.

I miss that, sure there were bugs like roadhog hooking you through walls which should’ve been fixed but I miss this game when it was all dumb fun.

I think this community and many others in the gaming world have gotten so fixated on balancing that it reduces the fun people can have, cause you have to live with one character being better than the other or one gun being better than the other.

Bring back the OP abilities and make a roadmap and just allow the game to breathe, focus on the lore, allow people to laugh and make friends. Thats what I miss.

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Left my thoughts in this matter here. One of the points is indeed - I think that there should be a game mode - even though possibly not “mainstream” - that caters towards the majority of players instead of balancing around top-5% or higher.

Playing it for fun is some long forgotten, but nonetheless valuable aspect of OG that was lost a really long time ago. I really hope they learn and make some OG-like mode permanent. I don’t know a jot about Rivals - save what I saw on the videos - but I think Rivals could just be in the honeymoon period when nobody knows what they’re doing on launch and therefore everything goes → it’s fun. Later on I bet it will devolve into some meta and the usual toxicity of “why you play a throw-pick” settles in.

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Totally agree, people should adapt to environment, not force gods (devs) adapt environment for them. But this is very unpopular opinion so you shoud expect emotional criticism and flags

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Bliz wanted to make overwatch a cybersport game, systematically reducing the variability of gameplay, resulting in “RaidBoss vs RaidBoss and their minions”.
But those who came to the game for the fun wanted 6v6 and the old overwatch.
That’s the audience marvel is trying to get. They already got me.

I hope Marvel has studied the long history of overwatch and shouldn’t make the same mistakes like brigitte. Boring and weak characters should not be added.

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Marvel has me as well, and overwatch can grab me too.

Overwatch nostalgia aside just made me wish that all characters were OP. Each character was fun to play because they were fun, and not one character was better than the other

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It all started with the addition of ranked.
The game instantly stopped being about fun and ppl started demanding specific hero picks.

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For OW - arguably, it started with Ana that completely broke all the rules on the previous designs of the characters. For Rivals - it will require quite some time to see because again - launch will be “cool and new and refreshing”. It’s easier to take the spotlight than to keep it. Let’s see how they fare when time goes by.

They figured players didn’t bring them as much money as they hoped to get from e-Sports. Was it a short-sight or arrogance we’ll never know, but we know their OWL bet kissed goodbye and now here we are. Now? The only thing they are keen to push are skins and shop items. Because again - money.

Rivals already has Ranked from what I could deduce while watching CBT videos.

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I have more faith in marvel rivals since it seems like they do have a roadmap and everything planned for seasons.

Also I don’t think comp will be an issue, as if they keep their core abilities there will be no meta. Unless they start doing serious balance

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Classic showed me the game has always bin bad it just got carried by its art work. Rivals cant get here quick enough.

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It all depends. If they fall into the lure of big $$$ and decide to centralize and build their own e-Sports - it is unlikely that they will be better than OW. And I know there are already unofficial tournaments and official tiers of play there. And when there’s demand - supply will follow, especially if that demand brings in a lot of $$$.

If 95% of players don’t engage with e-Sports and bring in 20% of all the money, but the rest of the 5% are engaging or participating in e-Sports and bring in 80% of the money = for how long do you think will the benevolence of “let’s keep it fun” last?

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I think they have watched over from other games it seems like they have a year or 2 roadmap that they are sticking too

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Balance very much matters even in games intended to have power fantasy. It doesn’t stay interesting otherwise. What OW1’s mistake was isn’t that it was balanced, it was that it was forced into being a high stakes competitive piece of media to consume.

But you go have your fun with Rivals. It’ll probably get balance patches as well.

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They probably will have patches but hopefully nothing major. Small buffs or nerfs

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It’s great when everyone is stupid overpowered in their own way. Good times had by all!
Problem is, and this is unavoidable in any competitive game, one form of stupid overpowered will be better than multiple others. One character will produce more results for less effort than others.

People will gravitate to what’s effective and others that don’t will complain about it being too good. Because it will become less and less amusing to deal with that one hero that can remove 95% of your health with minimal positioning and the press of one or two buttons as the years go on.

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yes, genji is the most unrewarding hero in ow.
You train your skills half year and get winrate lower than spamtorb.

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Which characters are we talking about? I have not been in the scene for awhile. At launch these kids were crying about F tiers such as Simon Says and King K. Tool.

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Saw MKleo former best player in the world stsrt to get annoyed just talking about Mr Game and Watch. and there’s quite frankly countless number of characters.

to give you an idea how bad it is. there’s a 2HR long video talking about how broken the best character in the game is, talking about several of the unfair broken things he can do (the best character is steve from Minecraft) no im not joking
and that’s just 2 characters out of almost 100

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Games that do not have good balance will bleed players over time. Otherwise most players just join in and play for little while then immediately quit because it becomes frustrating playing against anyone who is good and also plays the broken heroes.

Bear in mind that “good balance” here just means “some semblance of not just completely neglecting the balance.” As long as you occasionally tune the character sin your game, most people will stay. They just cant feel like everything that happens is just unfair.

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i agree with your post, except for this.

you can absolutely balance a game like this, as long as you set a standard and have a creation system in place.

you have to have all characters either as easy or as hard as each other, otherwise you just have easy things getting the results of harder things, but then the harder things need to, blah blah blah

but if you had everything set around the intensity of say tracer and EVERYTHING in the game required that, you can just change a few number without much other considerations cause you don’t have to think about moira aim…

but the OW team has never done this, they build their things backwards, to fit a shape they want, instead of as a targeted value, then just making it a different flavor (if that makes sense)

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I don’t think that’s true because what happens is sure you’re also playing an stupidly OP character. but that doesn’t matter because at the end of the day im also fighting against a stupidly OP character. you can see this in games that follow that idea. that people will be fuming over certain characters depsite the fact that they almost certainly are playing a character equally OP.

because at the end of the day you’re atill fighting an OP character

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