Anyone below diamond is forbidden from talking about balance in Overwatch, in any shape or form.
New patch notes:
DEV UPDATES CANCELLED FOREVER
I mean, if the only people allowed to talk about Overwatch balance are high ranking players on the competitive ladder, than not even Jeff Kaplan is qualified to talk about game balance. You know, seeing as he’s in platinum.
Being the best at playing video games isn’t a certificate of competence in game design.
Not even being a professional game designer will automatically make you the best at playing video games.
Can we stop with shouting down people’s feedback just because their profile badge isn’t sparkly?
That’s the one, officer! That’s the thread that stole my purse!
For real though, I’ve always been skeptical of claims that “only feedback from the highest ranking players is legit”. You don’t need to be some twich famous pro with an impressive K:D ratio to analyse a set of systems and reason out how to optimize them.
There’s also people like me that refused to play comp completely. If someone unranked doesn’t automatically means they aren’t qualified to give balance opinions, i think.
Yup. I’ve heard some truly harebrained stuff out of the mouths of even the pros. They made it to the very tippy top of the heap, but you can tell that it certainly wasn’t on the character they’re talking about.
I love how people who are in favor of this elitist attitude include diamonds and masters. As if either of these two ranks know how to play the game any better…
Y’all wanna hear a funny story that really drives the point home?
At one point, one of the Overwatch heroes had some pretty hefty changes being tested out in the PTR. Several of the best, most notable Overwatch players in the world were very supportive of the changes.
They were 100% certain that it would make the hero much harder to get any value with, and that anyone who played her at high elo would freefall in SR now that their main was “so much weaker.” They accused the playerbase faction that opposed the changes of being “just salty over losing their free ride to gm freelo hero.”
That hero change in question was Mercy’s original moth rework.
The one that lasted 20 seconds, had 4 instant rezzes, and made Mercy move faster than the speed of sound.
It is impossible to balance a game for both the highest and the lowest ranks, and since the public will be seeing more of the top players, they are going to balance the game for them.
You balance the power/damage of the heroes more complex skills of choice on high ranks, by making their maximum power level really cap out of their level in damage for example having Soldier’s damage per shot being based around how many shots a high rank person hits consistently and thus deciding how many shots it should take for a high rank person to kill an enemy and decide if that works consistently with how the lower ranks can perform with such a hero.
You balance their actual design on including the possibility of lower ranks wanting to utilize these heroes by making them have both easier and harder abilities. EG. Ana grenade VS sleep dart.
Characters that are easier at their core have their maximum damage/healing potential on their base skills max out faster. While giving them skills/utility to grow.
Look at Baptiste.
Grenade is fairly easy enough to aim but could be easier (IE, Mercy’s basic is mechanically easy to use) but Baptiste also has an AOE that is even easier.
High ranks aren’t the only people who can talk about balance but they should be the main priority the devs take. If something is balanced at the OWL level then it will be balanced for the rest of the ladder.
Even if you’re bronze, you paid money for the game just the same as a top 500. To not be allowed feedback because other people in the game are better than you is ridiculous.
And let’s not get started on how the vast majority of the playerbase are in gold…
Seems like devs proved you wrong on many occasions. As their attempts to balance OWL cause chaos on ladder.
How many players, who watch OWL, aren’t playing Overwatch themselves? They will see much more players, who are not at the top. Even more, they will be interacting with those players, not just being a spectator.
i hope they only listen high elo players. like gm/top 500. low elo opinions dont even matter. im saying this as a plat. low elos dont even know how to play or play against hero and only crying about it. nothing constructive.
And nothing of value was lost. He’s also stated that those updates aren’t just his opinions. They’re the team’s final decision. He can still make the videos.
tbh it’s less about rank and more about understanding the ins and outs of balancing and the game. Logical people who get how numbers work, when applied to different situations, are the ones you want to ask.
You can be a top 500 Tracer who also plays Reinhardt and Ana, but know nada about actually balancing the game properly.
You want people who see analyzing as a hobby. You want people who analyze MUs in various other games as well as this one. You want people who can recognize what’s unfair and what’s fair. You want people who realize this is a team game and that synergy is a thing to factor in. You want people who know how to apply things/numbers/etc in their proper context. You want people who realize there are different types of skill levels and that a character should be viable at most (preferably all) levels regardless.
Not the guy who knows how to 90% track targets for up to 15m or the chick who can 360noscopeboomheadshot with McCree. However, it’s still possible those types of top 500 people meet the basics for being allowed to talk about proper balance… But most of the people talking balance are not qualified. At least they’re more qualified than the low elos who think Brigitte/Sym/Torb is OP tho lmao.
What people like you fail to consider is many people can have the knowledge and understanding of how a game works but lack the mechanical skill to take advantage of it.
Meaning a low level player may have a good grasp on balance but lacks the ability to get to rankings where that balance is performed.
