5v5 is primarily about balancing Tanks and the synergy and incredible defensive power they create when paired.
Not necessarily true.
Largely because the developers came from an MMO-background and tried to create a situation where there was plenty of flexibility for players without considering the competitive aspects of the game. Simply put; Tanks are an anomaly in game-design. They don’t exist outside the MMO-sphere and they can largely break the game if their sole-purpose is to mitigate damage and/or be sponges for damage. Everything ends up having to be tweaked around them. Too high, and the rest of the roles suffer. Too low, and Tanks end up excelling where they shouldn’t be.
Now consider doubling up on the number of tanks allowed per team.
Symmetra is not a close-ranged character.
This is false.
Anecdotal.
Blizzard is more likely to know where the meta is going to shift than much of the playerbase does. Jeff Kaplan even predicted Brigitte was going to have a monumental shift in the metagame even before her release.
It’s clear that you’re not quite aware of how long and how much time it takes for patches and character design work to be done. And how much testing goes into that. And even should something break, they always have some back up solutions to try.
This is still anecdotal.
Folks, the 5v5 switch is not to address queue times. It specifically about balancing the game, not for any other reason.
What Blizzard plans to do about queue times is not entirely clear at the moment. Currently, OW1 has largely addressed the best they can with increasing population from console and introducing incentives.
With OW2, PvE will be a component to the game, and will very likely have a multiplayer-component. It also completely possible that much of the incoming population for OW2 will only play PvE. And it also completely within the realm of possibility that wait times for PvE will exist unless Blizzard does something like introducing bots to the gameplay.
Most of you are making rash judgments without an inch of evidence. I understand the concerns and I’m sure Blizzard does too. But you’re going to have to wait until Blizzard addresses those concerns.
LOL you saying it doesn’t make it “false” - its been shown that it just generates demand whether you like it or not. The same principle holds. Give people roads, water, free medical care, whatever people are more apt to use it frivolously and just expect more because there was no perceived price for it to start. This is not an argument against socialized medicine btw, its just been proven over and over.
Its pretty damn clear - 5 v 5 in the hopes this will fix the times. Getting a bit tired of these retreats into “we don’t know” as an argument when the evidence is clear.
Hopefully you already know that tanks will be under higher pressure to perform than they are now and will also experience significantly more toxicity.
I assure you that if you do not support the team in any way, because you are not a good tank player, because you do not play a meta tank, because you flank instead of protecting your team etc. you will experience enormous toxicity. And because of this toxicity, along with the pressure to perform, many players will turn their backs on tanks.
Tank could also (depends on the balance) become a respawn simulator. Tanks were just melted in the live stream.
I very much doubt tanks get any real buffs.
Zarya with two bubbles is just more flexible.
Winston has a ranged attack on CD.
Reinhardt has two firestrikes and a more flexible charge but only 1200 shield hp.
Looks like small adjustments to me instead of strong buffs.
In addition, if tanks should be really strong, the screaming will start again that tanks are too strong and then tanks will end up in a nerf spiral and the tankplayers are leaving again.
She has medium range capabilities, but she’s focused on close range to get good damage.
Also, this holds true for every close range character except Reaper. Every character has a distance attack of some sort, mobility, or an attack with mobility. Reaper is the only one who can’t really use his mobility for range-extension purposes.
Also, there’s a lot more “emotional leighway” to buff Tanks, if there’s only 1 player representing the entire role.
And to the extent that you still get people complaining about Tanks being too strong. There would be less DPS quitting over “OP Tanks”, than those quitting over “Bad queue times”.
We don’t agree on much, but I can tell you tell you for certain at least 30% of the tank players will call it quits and go Support and/or DPS. Most likely DPS.
For things to be induced there has to be an existence of that supply. If argue that roads is a social service, then yes, increasing the number of roads induces demand for more roads (or lanes).
For social services beyond that, though, inducement would depend on the service. For the most part - and what history has shown - usually there has been a demand first for that service and then supplied afterward. For example, building a second elementary school in the neighborhood where there’s only overcrowded school, increases the supply of schools to meet the demand and reduce overcrowding.
It gets a little tricky, but it’s not a blanket statement that every social service is inducing demand.
For a general service, it holds true. Accept it. As we said, the point in the first place is of course “existence” or we wouldn’t have a discussion on it.
Unlike your traffic example that is quite broad, the difference here is we only need one tank, not two.
Games will start immediately after a tank joins. It’s not as simple as saying “more dps will negate the positive effect” as each game will begin as soon as the tank joins for each side.
To be fair, the off-tank role has always been a ‘beefier-dps.’ This is proven by most off-tanks having enhanced damage potential.
This is further proven by talk ‘tanks’ will be renamed to ‘brawlers’ in OW2.
Not necessarily. This argument completely ignores an updated philosophy over map design providing more natural cover as push maps seem to have.
Existing maps may be tweaked but more likely maps made moving forward will simply cater for the solo tank.
To be fair, OW1 was designed with an attack/defense/hero swapping philosophy in mind.
It quickly became apparent people didn’t like this (attack torbs, etc), one tricks, etc.
That said, OW1 was handled poorly after all the initial events launched and they quickly fell in to a cycle of recycled events and an outdated monetization system (loot boxes) when other games used battle passes.
OW2 is clearly an attempt to ‘start fresh’ and it’s unfair to hold past failures against them when it’s quite clear what they’re doing with OW2.
People do not want to play with tanks, that are just DPS. It simply isn’t working, as tanking and performing DPS role are two different activities.
Devs are persistent at forcing players to do what they intend them to do. But instead of figuring out, why players aren’t doing expected thing, they just leave them no choice.
They need to fix queue times, and to do that they need to be convincing existing DPS players to play Tank instead.
As far as the RPG/MOBA minded definitions you got there.
I’d argue that class based shooter “Heavies” have been a thing for decades in other shooter games. And that is what Overwatch Tanks should be modeled after.
People who put more importance on accurate labeling, ahead of making sure a role is fun and sufficiently popular, can quit.
Our OW has to adopt 5v5 because OW2 is basically an overlay of OW1. It’s not a new game, according to Blizzard. So when OW2 launches it should be the only option.
So then just make it so Zarya/Hog/D.va all have the near equivalent of a barrier.
And then make Hammond into a DPS.
And on top of that, nerf/counter things that are problematic during DoubleOffTank metas. I.e. Snipers, Ult charge feeding, Earthshatter, and AntiHeal.
Generally, the goal is making it so Tanks are about 75% as lethal as DPS and 75% as Resistant/Protective as main tanks.
And overall the main mental hurdle to get over is that Tanks will probably be getting almost as many kills as a DPS, in addition to Tanking.
Tanks would have more overall value to the team than an individual DPS player. Which is fine, if you view equalizing queue times, as more important than balancing the game as if role limits isn’t a thing