Just reply to a post like a normal person instead of shoehorning opposing ideas down every thread.
What you say is never
I dislike this idea because of X and this is because of Y followed by counter ideas.
It’s just
well actually here is my idea
As if yours holds any weight whatsoever.
That Sym reply is exactly that, you ignore the thread, and start talking about “what if Sym had half Moira’s beam width”. When if you actually knew what you were talking about, Moira’s beam width is actually 0 and she uses completely separate hurtboxes. So stop spamming your ideas everywhere it’s not constructive feedback or discussion, it’s just spam.
I quite liked the medic… bit of flexibility with the primary gun, melee (I swear he basically crit every second swing) and the difference uber charges (ie ultimate). He was pretty passive but also could have some serious impact on the game even though he directly didn’t do much damage to which is what made him fun to play.
That’s what Mercy had with mass res. Unfortunately valk lacks that same sort of play making feel and single res is bleh. Not to say anything about the power valk/single res have, just that long over time abilities tend not to have the same fun feel
Looking through their post it seems like they think that they’ve buffed the wrong (ie mobility). She’s already plenty mobile but lacks any big play making skills
It’s kind of like the issue with McCree being not survivable and vulnerable to flankers so they made his gun better. His gun was fine, what he needed was something survivable-y
Those are exceptionally well formatted but streams of numbers tweaks apparently are not really helpful feedback to the devs.
It seems like the most useful reply would be ideas for a playmaking type ability for mercy, but again that might just be for fun with the devs not really caring at all about our ideas
Well, I’m doing a bigger writeup on this. But on that point, I’ll just say that the numbers are usually ballparks that would always need playtesting to get proper calibration.
For instance, “If Echo copies a hero, they can only go to a maximum of 200hp”, but devs end up doing “If Echo copies a hero, they can only go to a maximum of 300hp”.
The concept is more important then the specific numbers.
The irony for me, is that even with the scoreboard the Devs created, instituted, and picked what information they wanted to display on it, they can’t see the issue with Mercy, when it is right there in their data, fight after fight after fight. Right now. The data is piling up.
She has no way to compete with the other supports in the DPS category, even if it’s with her Damage boost.
I’ll see Moiras, Lucios, Anas, Zen, etc. matching or even surpassing their own HPS numbers with their DPS. 15kHPS and 15k DPS, and that sort of thing. Mercy is never going to be able to do that.
In QP fine. She can be a throw pick. The mode is for fun. But in Comp, how can she pull her weight?
And how did giving Mercy Phara’s jump-jets help in any other way than turning her into a clay pigeon for snipers, or giving her a spammable ability that the dev’s will just lengthen her GA timer to try and tone down. Mercy’s mobility isn’t an issue. It never was. It makes me sad how they managed to turn a positive into a negative.
Right but I think the devs are more interested in feedback about what they’ve changed as opposed to a stream of patch notes sent back at them. Not to say you can’t provide ideas for fun, but if you wanted to help OP provide feedback useful to the devs on the forums, perhaps it would be better to help OP flesh out what exactly they don’t like about X character, and perhaps guide OP in describing what they like about Y and let the devs interpret that and adjust X accordingly
Linking a bunch of your own posts as a template to guide OP when Andy has specifically told you that is the least useful feedback seems like the wrong way to go…
You know, upon further reflection. AndyB is right.
The vast majority of players do not have the type of understanding of associated with with the hurdles and struggles of game development. And a lot of their proposed balance solutions aren’t going to account for things like for instance, accommodating for high tier play and mid/low tier play, simultaneously.
For example:
Or this: https://archive.gamedev.net/archive/reference/design/features/balance/
Or as this article, describes it. https://www.polygon.com/2020/2/7/21122308/gaming-feedback-complaints-positive-compliments-balance-bugs-how-to-be-heard
I guess my mistake is thinking that people typically give feedback while actually focusing on how to view things from a developer’s perspective, while understanding the struggles and hurdles a developer would go through.
For me, that’s second nature. So I guess I’m wrong in expect that’s “normal” for people. When it’s actually highly irregular. Having a deep understanding of game development processes is not “normal”.
So yeah, I guess my feedback style would not work for the vast majority of people.
That said, I’d still focus on trying to make sure your ideas have the basically of “efficient uses of limited attention spans” with above average visibility.
So good formatting, and trying to make sure your posts are more visible, and easily digestible with things like images. (Incidentally, if you crosspost to r/CompetitiveOverwatch you can basically link images back here even with User Level 2)
And that while specific implementation details is probably not useful, some vague sense of the “Direction” on how to fix it would be probably helpful. Even if dev’s have a radically different way of implementing that “Direction”.
But yeah. Instead of
Problem, Solution, Result.
For most people it should just be
Problem, Desired Outcome.
With a heavy focus on the emotional qualitative aspects of what that should feel like when it’s done right. But I’d still stress that good formatting, heightened visibility, and writing/showing in a way that’s very efficient at conveying an idea in a short time span. That would help a lot.
He also talks about methods of healing, and why eventually TF2 Medic ended up with healing lock-on beam. Even while they tested multiple ways of healing teammates - beams without lock-on, healing rifles, etc.
Here is commentary about Medic and why he is that way:
[John Morello] The Medic is the main support class. Previous support classes we’ve designed had a variety of problems. They didn’t require much skill because they stayed back and defended areas which also kept them out of the funnest parts of the game. Worst of all, this meant they weren’t even terribly useful because they generally weren’t near the players who most needed to be healed. We designed the Team Fortress 2 Medic to solve these problems primarily by focusing on keeping them right in the thick of battle. Additionally, we designed the Medi Gun to be as easy to use as possible so that the Medics can focus on survival while healing teammates. Virtually no aiming is required which lets Medics concentrate on following their heal target who has a huge incentive to keep his Medic benefactor safe.
[Jakob Jungels] Invulnerability adds an element of pacing to the multiplayer experience. Which otherwise tends to have few emotional highs and lows as in a well crafted single player game. When an invulnerable Medic and his friends come running in, it’s an extreme high point for them. It’s also a rush for the defenders when they just gotta hold on for ten seconds until invulnerability fades. Invulnerability also sharpens pacing by helping your team push through a defensive stalemate when an enemy team turtles up and refuses to come out of their base. Without a lack a defensive scrimmagers it’s easier for the offense to build up the invulnerability charge without interruption. In addition, invulnerability is a great goal for the Medic and awards him for being an effective healer. We encourage the behavior by adding more charge when the Medic is healing injured teammates than when he’s healing the ones who are already at full health.
[Aaron Halifax] Our main goal in designing the Medi Gun was to build a strong relationship between the Medic and his healing target. We wanted to see what we would get if we focused on creating a tight loop between two players, instead of just thinking about getting the larger team to cooperate. The Medi Gun’s design ensures that the Medic and his target are extremely conscious of each other, watching their health and relative positions, and making tactical choices carefully. We wanted there to be skill involved in being a good healing target, so that Medics would seek out and latch onto skilled targets. This helps foster the relationship we were after.
Kind of? Think of it this way; if there’s a hole in my roof and the repair guy comes, I’m probably not going to say ‘well, we could block the hole by putting towels or drywall in it, or just throw a few buckets down’ to the roof repair guy.
I don’t know anything about roofs. Sure, I live under one and could probably spit ball ideas on how to fix it, but explaining how the hole got there and how it’s a problem, is a lot more helpful to the roof guy than trying to offer fixes to him.
This probably isn’t the place but it reminded me of a suggestion I had heard before!
She absolutely needs to lose Rez as a basic ability for something else… I genuinely feel like it’s the main issue with her kit.
The idea was to give her an ultimate that’s basically the exact opposite of Genji’s. She can only use Rez during her ultimate, but can only Rez one at a time. I think I had stopped really playing the game whenever that was suggested and hadn’t gotten to see what anyone’s reactions to it were.
Your mistake is trying to be both developer and consumer.
The devs can make that distinction/interpretation themselves. That’s their job. What they can’t do is be a million people and play the game from the perspective of a gold/bronze/masters player in damage/tank/support as a one trick/flex/etc.
Yeh being on the consumer side of things, this is where we should be coming from. Sometimes it’s not easy creating a new ability from scratch however (ie impactful mercy play making ability) and rather than saying something about phone books perhaps you could just fill in their gaps instead
On the one hand, there’s nothing wrong with a beautiful set of margins, type faces and indentations… however, when you distil it down to a patch note you kinda lose the players feedback/perspective, which is the main thing they can offer the devs. Instead you end up with a bunch of patch notes/numbers/dot points that at best leave the devs scratching their heads wondering what issue they’re trying to fix, and at worst/most likely they’ll just ignore it cos they’re busy and cbf translating math to perspective
Kinda, I’m saying my mistake is acting like it’s normal for people be obsessed about anticipating what sorts of ideas the developers would go for, by trying to anticipate the design constraints and design principles they are working around.
Having thousands of hours trying to reverse engineer the design decisions of game developers, is far beyond normal.
Sure, putting forward a ton of ideas is fine but that doesn’t seem to be what they’re most interested in. This is the job for the game developer. What they’re more interested in is what they think of the changes they’ve made which is the perspective that only we can give. As it’s their job I’d wager they’ve considered most of everything we’ve ever put down however they may have already dismissed these, plan to implement it in someone else, etcetcetc. We don’t know their over arching plan, hence why Andy said that such things are the least useful.
It’s not unusual, everyone likes tossing out ideas and discussing them. However if you’re specifically trying to provide feedback to the devs this isn’t helpful, and telling people to do it like you do isn’t helping either
It wasn’t the problem, but now it is. Classic Blizzard balance. Watch them try to fix it for like 6 patches, until they just leave it in some terrible state
If anything, I’m mostly just thinking AndyB is saying that the qualitative feedback is more useful. Not that the structural mechanics feedback isn’t useful.
And if you’ve taken a look at my posting style it usually has both the qualitative and technical feedback.
Well that, or he’s just telling me not to give my own experience as advice for normal consumer focused people, and to them focus on industry standard best practices.
I’ve honestly always wondered why 6, bothered people so much. 6.1 or so being the average number of resurrections she manages, which also doesn’t count all the repeated deaths for herself or her rez target which just benefit the other team. 6.1.
I’ve never met a DPS worth their salt that couldn’t double, triple or more, that number in elims all by themselves. And team wide, 6 is almost embarrassing in comparison.
It seems even less impactful in OW2, where the total eliminations in a match can break 200. Two…Hundred. Yet 6 throws some people into an apoplectic fit.
So sticking it on her ult would only lower that number down even more, to the point IMHO of why bother.
I don’t really think it is… in 50,000 posts I’d wager you could find all the updates for everything… I’ve never seen any evidence that anyone has had any significant influence on here.
Didn’t he say least useful? I guess you could take that away from it, but I kinda figured he was just being polite and that as a general rule of thumb they’re not interested. But I guess to each their own
I dunno, I think you may be reading too much into it and your influence… I’m not gonna try to convince you to stop, but I guess perhaps you (and indeed all of us on the forums) could spend our energy on something better…
