I am scapegoating him because his crying was the thing that set it off. He is, undoubtedly one of the main reasons why it happened. He even admitted that on one of his streams when he was wondering why Mercy mains hate him so much. If the devs had cared about what the forums said and wanted changed, again, the rework would have happened sooner and would have been different. But they didn’t, all they cared about was how to eliminate Hide and Rez. There were enough ideas how to do it better but they heard one popular complaint and wanted to get rid of it.
2 Likes
the same thread for 2 years with a different title and new way to TRY and get changes. Nothing new
1 Like
I’ve never heard so much dribble, everyone except Mercy mains were traumatised? There’s still hate towards any Mercy main daring to discuss improvements or another rework of her kit, even if it doesn’t include any mention of mass resurrect. On the opposite side though, there’s generally a welcoming atmosphere for any ideas to still nerf Mercy, such as removing superjump which would’ve been another nerf to her potential mobility no matter how one chooses to try and justify the removal of superjump.
Sorry but pretty much everyone was traumatised. The devs were warned when this went on PTR, but they chose to ignore the warning and let it cause havoc for several months. Don’t blame those unsatisfied with Mercy’s current state for what is not their fault in the first place, I understand that it’s easier to do this but that’s not an excuse.
‘Disheartening to play against’, another way of saying unfun, was one of the two officially stated reasons for her damaging rework, if ‘fun is subjective’ then the rework was subjective too. I’m not an advocate for wanting mass resurrect but there are still potential ways to raise Mercy’s skill ceiling and make her feel more engaging and impactful with risk without changing her kit’s current functionality and also without potentially damaging her like she was and still is to a degree ‘damaged goods’ from the rework.
For example, resurrect could become an earned ability with some kind of charge meter. This would prevent it being available at the start of a round and Mercy staying alive and healing/damage boosting the right teammates could make a huge difference to how fast she gains access to casting the ability. Resurrect’s ‘on fire’ points could also be changed to 100, like a full solo elimination gives, so to make it a bit easier to gain fire points with Mercy. Perhaps allow Mercy to use her pistol during the cast time. A failed resurrection could also result in full charge lost on the ability.
Then there’s Valkyrie, chain beams only at best negate the equivalent of Winston’s tickle gun and there’s no guarantee your teammates will stay reasonably within range of the chain beams. Why not reduce or remove chain beams and instead make her primary single target beam, at least for healing, slightly more powerful during Valkyrie so that it can actually outheal Winston’s tickle gun and potentially save a teammate from a light to moderate amount of bursty damage. This would bring back some decision making potential, further raising the skill ceiling. You could also remove infinite ammo if need be, since she’s meant to be a pacifist anyway, as a form of compensation.
6 Likes
It takes them weeks to edit a developer update video, let alone decide upon a balance change.
Seagull was and is the streamer Blizzard chooses to have as a way for them to " communicate " with the fanbase through twitch.
Of course he will wonder why would someone hate him as he is working as " Blizzard’s favorite family friendly streamer ", he wasn’t the one who pressed buttons. It is like as if the postman is at fault because he delivers bad news.
Everyone has an opinion and expressed it back then, streamers and players alike. Claiming that devs did as " told " within the span of days not only makes zero sense but also is an insult to their intelligence.
Why people put “engaging” and “fun” together, as if both are equal? There are people, who find it more fun not having to deal with situation directly.
Basically, rework was attempt to make players, that usually don’t play Mercy, play her, even at the expense of her previous playerbase.
3 Likes
Indeed, unfortunately it didn’t seem to work out that way. Ana has almost twice the pick rate of Mercy. Ana is the highest picked main healer overall by far at the moment, although at the same time I can understand why she’s the highest picked main healer at the moment too. Same in OWL too, well, worse actually, 42.5% Ana against 11.6% Mercy for current week at time of writing this reply.
I want to believe that you are aware as why people react immediately the moment someone brings up Mercy changes, unless you want us two to spend the day here with me listing every single thing that lead to the " bad blood ".
No side is innocent and I want to believe that you know it.
The PTR warnings you mention also had plenty of " Mercy is trash now " that ended up with her having 90% pick rate across all ranks, just a small reminder. Devs had every reason to ignore feedback and came out correct. Every time she was called trash, she was a must pick, until they grabbed the Nerf bat with serious changes.
The forums until the last Nerf was calling for changes to Mercy, wrongfully called her trash during her broken state even. If I was in their shoes, I wouldn’t even bother to open a tab here.
Those who were truly traumatized are those who were forced to play Mercy. That is what I am saying in my first comment and I stand by it.
There was indeed a portion of Mercy mains who didn’t like the changes but no balance change prevented them from picking her in Moth meta. They could still play her and did so. Those who suffered are those who were forced into the role.
how do you know theyre not the same?
I understand but I also still stand by what I said in that everyone was traumatised, not just those who didn’t main Mercy. There’s still damage today, the past is a constant reminder for some. Even worse is that some continue to think any thread discussing potential improvements to Mercy is simply ‘mass resurrect’ without actually taking any time to try and read some of it.
I understand not everyone’s innocent and there’s been problems on both sides. However, that doesn’t justify the general punitive and dimissive attitude that there still is today regarding discussion of any potential improvement ideas to Mercy, especially ideas which shouldn’t damage her or cause more trauma unlike the rework which did for several months.
EDIT: Well I guess we can agree to disagree, nothing more to say since we have a huge disagreement on who was actually traumatised.
1 Like
And rightly so. I can’t imagine Blizzard ever releasing anything good again…
1 Like
Forums gave the reason more than once that plenty of threads produce ideas that could bring crazy results in action. Hell, even devs who have the testing platform also end up making mistakes, we saw it.
So no matter how harmless an idea or two may look in theory, it could be bad in action. Results come only through real test on live servers.
Again, what makes people against on such ideas is probably,
- Because devs said she is fine at the moment.
- Because we already lost a year working on Mercy.
- Other mains waiting in the line still for changes and are fed up.
- Bad incidents with forum raids in the past.
These four reasons create negative reactions towards Mercy threads. I mean, creating discussions shouldn’t be something bad even if Mercy is the topic, but people have reasons to react.
What personally I refused to accept above, is the other blaming others and not Mercy players. All sides are at fault and asked for changes. The deliver was the choice of devs. Mercy players had no issue playing Mercy though, nobody asked them to switch. Let’s say the least traumatized group was them.
It’s ok, most Mercy mains already got used to rudeness and insults, such as “you main no skill hero” and “you just wanted her to be OP again!”
Guess you can’t expect politeness from skill-obsessed crowd, that labels any hero without high mechanical aim requirements as “braindead” and “no skill” and other similar words.
3 Likes
I know that one of Dodo’s arguments is that “Valkyrie is a great and balanced ability” for no reason that I know of.
Well, I disagree with that, but I can tell you why.
Valkyrie’s design ends up taking away more control out of the player’s hands in favour of giving her things that remove some of her greatest weaknesses and therefore the need to use her kit to overcome them and take away from what fun challenges there are in playing Mercy’s kit.
- Beam Juggling: whilst using the beam is not hard, understanding who and when to juggle between targets is an important skill set and spreading out your healing in a way that everyone lives is a challenge such as letting a tank remain on half health to patch a squishy and go back.
This is negated by chain beams from Valkyrie.
- Positioning, Game Sense and Awareness: Obviously Mercy has always been a mobile hero, but her mobility used to be far worse. The improvements to GA have been great and IMO perhaps BHop/Slingshot is too strong to not have a cooldown on it’s usage but that is another topic issue. Mercy is still relatively close to the fight most times due to range of GA, it is always restricted to a team mate and therefore utilizing her mobility to evade a Genji chasing you with Blade, or using it to weave past various kinds of damage, it is a sign of a player who has gotten good at mastering her fairly predictable mobility in ways that confuse their opponent.
This is negated by free flight and the extended ranges from Valkyrie.
Valkyrie removes the weaknesses/vulnerabilities/challenges that made Mercy a more engaging hero to play. By removing all of these things from her for the duration of Valkyrie, it limits how much power she can have on the ultimate. Currently the ultimate is press Q to do exactly what you were doing, except made easier because you are doing less of the work.
This is just my analysis on the issues of Valkyrie.
I have yet to see Dodo have anything to say about these comments, instead when I have responded to them with these points, they never respond to it and keep responding to other people with the usual “Mercy is fine, super fun and engaging, Valkyrie is amazing.”
Like, I don’t mind if someone likes the abilities or likes things the way they are now, that is totally fine, but I don’t like when people make claims about a character being fine when there are lots of blatantly obvious flaws in design that are easy to pick up that just show that really isn’t the case.
8 Likes
For someone playing on console, of course it is.
3 Likes
Oh look, it’s the daily mercy thread by the same person.
I’m so sick of this and every thread about every hero I see here.
Your mains aren’t you. None of the heroes are you. You are a player, and the heroes are tools you’re supposed to use to accomplish a task. If one of the tools isn’t working well, fine, complain about it here, but stop dramatizing it like it’s an affront to you personally. You are not the hero you play.
If one of the knives in your drawer is dulled, or another knife you don’t usually use is sharpened, you don’t have to act out like children and go “YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT BREAD KNIFE MAINS HOW MUCH DO WE HAVE TO SUFFER CARVING KNIFE MAINS GET THE WHOLE TRAY”. Well maybe you should learn carving in the meantime. It’s just a tool.
2 Likes
Before “console shaming” argument is brought up. Even while it’s objective, that console and PC versions are played in different ways.
1 Like
They changed them from a state they thought was problematic to one that isn’t.
Mercy is not in a problematic state, she’s good when used under the right circumstances. The thing is that people aren’t because thr meta doesn’t favor her.
If mercy ins’t getting buff i will just flag posts that are asking for dps buffs.
healers are getting nerfs while dps getting buffs i get tired of this…
I read his post three times and still have no idea what they are saying
Because it’s FPS game, and people get really upset, when something refuses to die, because they were unable to kill that support hero near their target.