Well streamers didn’t quit Overwatch because of 2/2/2. If the game is good and bring in viewers, they will gladly wait 10 min to get into a game. The main reason why the majority of streamers and players quit Overwatch, is because it lacks new content. OW2 will bring in a lot of new players because you have everything that Overwatch is, but optimized, with a lot of new heroes, PvE on the side, and regular events that will actually be new this time. That’s what’s going to bring streamers back and more new players into the game.
It’s not like Overwatch is competing with anyone for their spot, it’s a completely unique game that’s made by one of the biggest gaming companies in the world. The only way I see Overwatch being threatened is if Valve decided to make Team Fortress 3. That’s why Jeff can officially say there won’t be any new heroes in 2020 after Echo; they aren’t worried of losing their core players, and they know they’re going to get a lot of their players back when OW2 is released.
What they need to do is get the Paladins concept of talents, but take it further. Make it so everyone can at least contribute to one of the other roles even if they can’t do it directly. The heroes feel more versatile over there, and that makes it so even when you get a five DPS squad you feel like you have a decent chance even against a more “balanced” composition.
No they didn’t. They intentionally balanced the game towards players expecting only one tank or support on the team at any given time. They weren’t expecting a 2/2/2 or 3/3 setup. We wouldn’t’ve gotten the problems we had with GOATS or double barrier or triple tank had the balanced the hero classes equally.
This is a common misperception, but the thing is, Tanks and Supports ARE competitive with Damage. In fact, most Tanks and Supports (thanks to intentional design choices, like forgiving aim), will out damage their damage-based counterparts. This is not unusual. Again, this has to do with the fact that they had intentionally designed Tanks and Supports to be more powerful by themselves than their Damage-based heroes.
Partially true, but the same argument could also apply to 2/2/2. The compositions haven’t been quite balanced yet, there are still issues that probably won’t be addressed until OW2.
You can introduced 100 new Tank and Support heroes, but it’s fallacy to think that everyone will want to play them.
The game already puts up block and healing numbers and has done so since the start of late beta. In fact, it’s easier to get those numbers up on the results screen than getting damage up there, thanks to the ease of healing and damage negation.
New players will come with new games. Established games like Overwatch now, won’t see new populations.
I would agree if it weren’t for so many characters that simply don’t work outside of having 2 healers and 2 tanks (or more). Early on, sure, they didn’t anticipate that. There was a lot they didn’t anticipate. But it didn’t take long for it to become apparent what worked and what didn’t, and that’s specifically what I mean by “they balanced the game towards 2-2-2” - I don’t mean it started that way, I mean it was a progression over time. Examples are DVa, Zarya, Roadhog, Zenyatta, Brig, they simply don’t work in those situations. If they weren’t balancing it around expecting a second healer or second tank, these characters would have been changed to be solo-viable long ago.
All four heroes were performing exceptionally well in a solo-setting. D.va was seeing pick rates on nearly 100% prior to the addition of her missiles, where they let her go off for months at a time at being far too strong. Zenyatta, originally didn’t need line of sight for his healing orb to be maintained and Discord used to be far more debilitating.
Roadhog himself was problematic to such a degree that they needed to rework him and Zarya was also performing so well that they had to reduce how much charge and how much damage barriers absorbed.
The problem with all the mentioned heroes is that when you added another Tank or Support or both to the composition things start becoming more unbalanced. Moira’s healing wasn’t a problem until she started started getting paired up with Lucio and Mercy. Ana enabled the triple tank meta by herself, because it was better to nano-boost Tanks than it was to boost damage. GOATS happened for a reason, to ignore it or disregard it, is to ignore the underlying causes of why it was so effective.
Brigitte was a problem the moment she was released. With burst damage greater than Soldier, and more than twice their effective health and the ability to supply armor, stun, burst damage and healing. She worked extremely well solo, and become a key player in the formation of GOATS. Once it was discoveed that you could play GOATS without her, it became apparent just how powerful Supports and Tanks were own their own, and how well they played to the objective.
It’s pretty clear, even when you follow the interviews about their design intentions, they initially never thought that players would start building teams consisting solely of Tanks or Supports at the competitive level. Let alone more than one or two (at the most) in general play.
People said this about 2-2-2 as well. If they add 1-3-2, it will be basically what you saw on Experimental and nothing more. Any further balance changes will take months to deliver, just like always.
Do you really want to destroy the game for Tank and Support players just to fix DPS queue times?
I might be making this unclear but what I mean when I say “solo viable” I mean that the hero - with no other help from its category - stands a fair chance against an enemy team that does have two heroes from that category. So for example, a team with only zenyatta for healing versus a team with zenyatta and mercy for healing. I’m not talking about the heroes kit being viable when looking at them individually.
In that regard, those heroes definitely weren’t performing exceptionally well when ran alone in a team environment. I struggle to remember a time anybody ever wanted to run solo zen, solo dva, or solo zarya at any point after season 1. The closest you have to that is running two zenyattas before limits - which is still not the same as what I’m talking about. Running those heroes alone, only one of them with no other help? That was not a thing. Even Brigitte, the most broken and powerful hero of the bunch at her release, was not accepted as a solo healer during her peak. You might have had games where you had one of those heroes as your only support or tank, but I wouldn’t even hesitate on betting money that it wasn’t because people thought it was stronger.
Honestly, role queue and hero bans are probably going to see hefty revision and/or removal with the launch of OW2, as much as the people defending role queue/hero bans want to tell us otherwise…and they know who they are.
If you don’t have ten minutes to spare you shouldn’t be trying to play competitively.
And if you don’t have the patience to wait ten minutes, you won’t have the patience to climb the ranks either.
Don’t wanna wait?
Swap roles, game modes or find a group.
Otherwise stop complaining.
This is pretty much “Improvise. Adapt. Overcome.” psychology.
This behaviour is not tolerated in Overwatch community, because 2-2-2 WAS CAUSED BY LACK OF PLAYERS COMMUNICATION. Otherwise, 5 dps wouldn’t be a problem.
Still, 2/2/2 is by far the most balanced version of Overwatch, and the game didn’t require any major change for 2/2/2 to be implemented, as Overwatch was designed to be played with all three roles in a match.
Mercy is proof that players will pick and main a hero based on aesthetics alone. PvE is all about highlighting heroes and bringing them into cool scenarios, this can be used to make more players main Tank and Support heroes. On top of this you also have short stories and events, so there’s a lot of sentiment to push players towards Tank and Support heroes.
Jeff was referring to numbers on screen as you’re playing the game. Currently the only thing you see is “Eliminated ‘name’ 100” and your K/D information to the right, while the only audio cue is your kill streaks. The idea is that when you play Reinhardt and use your shield, your screen will say “Blocked ‘name’ 184” similarly to eliminations, and when blocking a Shatter you will hear an audio cue saying something like “ultimate blocked!”.
OW2 will be a new game, we’ve only seen the Alpha version so far. I imagine everything we have now in Overwatch will be improved in OW2, while also introducing a lot of new features on top. Remember, everything we’ve gotten for Overwatch during the last couple of years was build by a minority of the Overwatch team, so imagine what they can do with the full force of the development team. I think a lot of players are going to be surprised by OW2.
The issue with the supports was that HEALING became a problem, not supporting.
IF you nerfed DPS damage / barrier recharge rate, but gave supports more of a boost DPS / Barrier recharges, altering cooldowns, etc, role - then you can have the supports have impact, WITHOUT it turning into “who has the most one shots” game.
Currently the supports heal, and do a little of other things, and THAT is how we got to here.
Tanks SHOULD feel somewhat oppressive to play against, old D’va was fun, but she was turned into a DPS because she COULD tank.
Sure, that’s agreeable. I tend to look at the limits of one hero per team. 6 Mei’s was not very fun at times.
No arguments here, but personaly preferences aside, not everyone is going to play Tank or Support, and it’s pretty clear what’s more enjoyable to them.
I was a support players, who got pretty far in the game (pro account, etc). I’m DPS now.
It was the lack of impact from the supports, they are POWERFUL, but they are not impactful.
As a DPS if I play well, we win. If I play badly, we lose.
As a support, if I play adequately we have a chance to win, but playing better doesn’t really change much. I can play some of the best overwatch in my life, but, it doesn’t MEAN much to the victory / defeat screen unlike when I DPS.