Best state is certainly subjective, but I think that there are ways to make it less so. For instance, by agreeing on certain statistical measures regarding game balance or by polling the player base.
Some people think that Mercy 2.0 was her best state. Some people think it was immediately following the 50 hps nerf. These are both opinions, and are valid as opinions, but I think that there are widely agreed upon criteria that would indicate that these opinions are flawed as observations of reality.
By the way, I don’t mean to imply that your opinion on Mercy here is flawed. I think it’s a reasonable opinion. I just think that a certain measure of subjectivity is less of a hindrance to reasonable debate than people tend to claim.
This may not fix as much as you might think. Even back when she had 60 HPs on her beam without ulting, people were still complaining about Mercy non stop.
You are right about the Goats thing though.
Again, I don’t know how much (if at all) this will help. There’s a decent amount of people who actively despise Valkyrie. They won’t view having more of Valkyrie as a good thing.
I agree that the buffs I mentioned won’t mollify the entire Mercy player base. Some people want a more fundamental change, which I feel is very unlikely to come. But these buffs have many balance advantages for the game, and they will mollify a different group of Mercy players.
While that would be nice, as a designer myself I know from serveral experiences that you usually just have to let it go for while and come back with fresh thoughts because the reason a design isn’t working is because your thought process has lost focus and to keep working only makes it worse.
Critical care worries me a lot. I think it might potentially have too many game play implications that are really hard to predict. Namely, depending on how damage is distributed in the game, it might overly reward tank healing over dps healing. I don’t think that’s a direction Mercy should be pushed in.
I know that you’re trying to keep Mercy’s healing constant, and the numbers you gave end up only being a 1-2% or so healing buff when healing tanks from empty, but it’s really hard to predict how they pan out in an actual fight.
I don’t mind BigMainLittleChains, though I’m perfectly fine with Valkyrie staying as is.
In truth… I don’t think it’ll fix anything at all. In fact it might result in even more backlash… much like what happened after her healing got nerfed to 50 and then Blizzard gave her 60 HPs in Valk and faster Valk charge rate.
I don’t think we should discount small reasonable changes in the right direction. We should encourage them. Big changes can be so disruptive.
There was some backlash after the previous Valk change, but it died down. And after that change Mercy’s pick rates went up by a fair margin, as did her win rates. More people were playing her, and with better results. As a result of that, more dps were played. More people were satisfied with her as well. Not everyone, but more. That’s real progress.
If you up her hps, or improve damage boost, or give her QOL changes, some people will be upset that it’s not a revert. But the furor will subside, and in its aftermath you’ll see more Mercy in play with better results. Many people will enjoy playing her more. The heroes she enables will do better. It’s a good thing.
I started playing Overwatch in Oct 2017 right at the height of the Mercy META. I played to get the enough credits to get the Witch Mercy skin and then dropped the game for two months because there was a terrible pressure to get as many Rezzes off because if you fell behind then you wouldn’t be able to recover and if you kept pace it wouldn’t mean Victory it would still be a coin-flip as to weather it would be enough. I felt so powerless as a player despite having the OP character because it was just a mirror match always. And people assume I just want buffs, ahhhggg!
Then after said in late December “guess Blizzard won’t change the state of Mercy for a long while so better just hop in if you want to play Mercy” then Jan 30th 2018 happen and I’ve never felt so bad playing a character I like a lot in game. Nothing comes close in any other game before that or since. I felt worthlessness in the game and a community that couldn’t even remotely empathize. It sucked so much until I just became apathetic to it all. Most of my enjoyment involving Blizzard these days comes from watching the various community fires that have erupted surrounding all of Blizzard’s IPs, and that’s sad situation but from how I’ve felt burned by their choices I really don’t have much mercy for them, thou I wish I did.
See that statement assumes that that is the right direction. I am of the opinion that a fairly large portion of Mercy’s kit has dead ended into a place that is pretty terrible from a design perspective and she desperately needs at least a minor rework to fix it.
I want another Valkyrie Suit Medic like her (in terms of having something like GA) and (in terms of some other form of Rez), but maybe have a darker attitude, like a pupil who has veered off their teacher’s teachings in the years after OW’s in game lore fall from good graces.
From my point of view I’d say that it’s a step in the right direction because it makes more people play Mercy and allows people to have better success with her. From my experience, these kinds of things also allow more people to enjoy playing her.
I’m interested to know - suppose you knew for sure that there would never be another Mercy rework. Would you be in favor of changes of this sort?
Short answer, I would not care one way or the other.
Long answer, simple number changes would not fix the problems I have with her, so I would continue to not play the live version of Mercy and thinking that the devs have no idea what they are doing.
What they need to do is change her in such a way that gives her more agency and more depth.
Would it be enough if they added another pure main healer to the game that had a more clutch style ability? That is, if they learned from the process they went through with Mercy and introduced a new hero accordingly?
Do you enjoy any of the other healers currently in the game?
I definitely understand this concern and I have to some extent shared it in the past. I put some serious thought into why I still enjoyed her while being frustrated with Blizzard’s process.
The conclusion I came to was that for my part I do feel like Mercy has depth but it’s subtle, and I also feel like she has agency in the sense that her decision making matters. I feel like she could use an upward adjustment in the amount of influence she can exert, but the kit seems sound to me.
I’ve come to terms with the fact that she does not make huge plays, and personally I’m Okay with that - those huge plays were not what I was looking for. I can certainly understand why that’s not for everyone though.
Give me a TRUE Ult that is not as watered down as Valkyrie, which helps save teammates (cleanse, enough healing to prevent death [sorry, 60 hps isn’t cutting it]) an I an many others would be happier than we are now. Would we like Mass Rez back, H E double hockey sticks yes we would because that was Mercy’s Hero moment. Valkyrie, not so much.
It’s not that I don’t think I could enjoy a hero like that. Blizzard is capable of building a hero like that. The thing is, I no longer trust Blizzard to respect their initial hero designs and the players who love them enough to not break them beyond recognition. Meaning I have no desire to get super invested in any hero and kinda not Overwatch in general.
Yep. Zen is a bit too dps centered for my taste and I’ve not played Bap enough to know if I like him… but I like all the others.
It’s far too subtle, far too different than what her depth used to be, and far too difficult to tell if it is paying off.
Seriously, Mercy went from wanting the enemy team to ignore her at all times to needing to get more healing and value from her base kit and finding that value in her regen and GA… so now she wants to get shot at. It’s weird.