While I think making Supports more dps-like would appeal to a new playerbase, I also think that OW2 shouldn’t dismiss the current playerbase in hopes that the new one will be better, even if just “20%”. Mercy’s unparalleled popularity before the reworks proves that there is an audience. I think it would be a wasteful direction to abandon that selling point completely.
I think a lot of your suggestions would be good additions, but more-so for new heroes. There’s not as much reason to change old heroes, especially ones with proven appeal.
Well if anything, that becomes less about speed at which they implement changes, and whether they do it through buffs and nerfs, or almost entirely just buffs.
Like if all Supports got 10% more firepower with no nerfs. There would only be a tiny minority of Support players that would hate that.
I think this assumption is inherently flawed. By making a game with the broadest appeal, you cease to appeal to anyone at all. You have to decide what your game is, and then design around that. If you’re going to change Overwatch into a class based shooter, then the changes need to be so great that it will basically be a new game. I’m pretty doubtful about the actual game direction regarding hard counters as well. Not because you can’t design bloated kits to let people do everything, but simply because each character only gets one weapon and has infinite ammo. To eliminate hard counters, you would have to simultaneously have a map that benefits both Widowmaker and Tracer at the same time. That’s setting aside that Mercy would then need to be able to beat flankers, etc etc.
Yer, I agree with that but it also means from a dev perspective the #1 priority is keeping the DPS players happy. It is just the sad truth of the game and effects all balancing decisions.
If DPS players are really happy, queue times are down. Then the devs are 70-80% there to making Overwatch a super great game to play for the majority of players.
I’d disagree. I’m not trying to appeal to everybody.
I’m suggesting they double-down on making the playerbase they have (or are likely to get) be happy.
i.e. The vast majority of the players they have or are likely to get, would prefer the game had low queue times, and moved in the Class Based Shooter direction.
Which is going to make a good amount of “MOBA/RPG preferenced” players be upset or quit.
I’m suggesting that it’s dumb to try to make everybody happy, and instead to aim at the largest amount of players happy. Even if that means deliberately alienating some of them by having a more targeted audience group.
But I like being a healer as support… I’m not a DPS player (no good at it) and I’m interested to see how much more concentrated/intense healing may be having to work on 1 tank only with the others still needing support
If people want to do more damage … Don’t play support?
It’s what keeps me with overwatch, other similar games just don’t really use the healer role which is a shame
If they are trying to recruit new players out of F2P FPS Games or Pre-Role-Queue OW players, where queue times are 1-2 minutes long. Then “bad” is pretty much anything above 3 minute long queues.
And as mentioned above, while Kiriko might give some queue times benefit, that benefit is going to disappear after a few weeks.
3 mins wont happen, at least not imo. They can be 4-5 and it will be fine
They dont have to make them OP or wildly change the role in an attempt to hit 3 mins.
I really think Lucio, Ana, Zen, Moira and Bap are all fine and shouldnt be messed with. Brig is niche but she pairs well with JQ and she was niche in ow1 anyway
Mercy is popular and if shes bad that might show up in queue times