OW is an FPS with one small group of players who only want to play support while not actually supporting their team in any other way than being healbots and blaming DPS that are actively sabotaging the game for everyone.
It is not about value. Supports already provide a ton more “value” than DPS. They keep your tanks alive which in turn keeps your team alive, which allows DPS to do their job.
You can give supports more value but it has to feel fair.
The worst feeling in the world is losing because you faced X hero. Not because they are more skilled than you but simply because by design, you are meant to lose. If the entire support category became like that for the entire of the DPS category. The game would be unplayable.
Once again, making supports that can compete with DPS in fights can be made to feel fair. As long as the fight outcome are more down to player skill than supports simply being better than DPS at everything.
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Someone is mad that Mercy didn’t pocket him.
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If the Support players are maybe 20% of the players.
And let’s imagine DPS are about 60% of players, with 20% of the players being in the Tank role (however they queue more like a 40%)
Would you expect it’s reasonable to get that 20% of Support players to queue into 300% more games?
Like from a math perspective.
Why? When you can literally let those players quit, and they will be fewer players quitting than not fixing queue times.
Yea, except I was using the idea of Power Creep to bring a shared understanding of an idea while also providing my own interpretation of the balance needs of the game contrary to the “group think” that Jeff speaks about.
Maybe I shouldn’t have used that term because it gives you a footing to dismantle my idea without actually providing a reasonable counter.
Fact is, damage is too high therefore the tools to increase survival have increased including utility and healing. When you have to spend the entire game babysitting one or two characters as a support, it doesn’t matter how much theoretical damage you can do when a widow can two shot a supercharged tank.
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Relative to what?
I think tanks are mostly in a good position come OW2. I would be hesitant to buff them because I can easily see a scenario where they mostly ignore debuffs and become unstoppable backline killers.
It’s really why I would prefer supports get tweaks to their existing kits to help their solo experience and making it feel more impactful (ie wider projectile size, slightly larger radius’s, piercing shots, etc) than just giving them a general buff to damage.
This would feel more in line with OW2’s direction
Yeah. I think the issue isn’t support power, I think it is about supports players not getting to play the support game enough.
It is like Tanks. CC meant that tank players couldn’t enjoy the game, even if their role was strong.
If supports are dragged into non support gameplay too much, then I don’t think they will queue for that.
I wouldn’t queue for it.
But, like where does that leave Blizzard? It is still a hard problem to solve.
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TBH I was looking at my numbers, and I’m thinking 20% extra firepower within 15m range, with a fallout to 25m range would be about right. To start with.
40% would end up making Zen/Bap too lethal.
At least you immediately knew which players are the main culprit. Glad you admit that I’m right.
Because the bulk of the playerbase are DPS. As a game designer, it is pretty much your job to keep them happy.
Sure you could make support players immensely happy but if it is at the cost of over 50% of your playerbase. You got your priorities wrong.
How you actually go about what you are trying to achieve is that you make supports feel offensively like DPS but you tone down the more extreme defensive abilities that would out right win fights.
This would mean DPS players would start playing supports, achieving much better queue time but still allowing DPS players to be relevant.
Although this causes other problems as well.
You’re one of those “it’s everyone’s fault but mine” types, I gotcha.
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106 damage per Ana dart and Zen one shotting Tracer. Yep, that’s a healthy game.
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I agree. Right now I just think the devs lack any vision for the game. They don’t know what the game should feel like to play in terms of TTK, how much effect on the game abilities should have, should healing be the primary form of sustain and support’s main purpose, etc. They just continue adding more heroes to this soup of randomness and struggling to maintain any form of balance while adding more restrictions (RQ, less CC, less shields) instead of adding more options.
Ignoring the FPS aspect, Overwatch probably has more in common with LoL in how fights play out than it does with TF2.
Incidentally, was looking at the TF2 Medic, and he’s got both mid-combat regen, and a stronger out-of-combat regen.
Yes. Agreed, however I could almost certainly say that
- “DPS Unfun from 15-30 minute queue times”
- “DPS Unfun because that Support can actually stand a half decent chance at winning a 1v1 duel”
Aren’t even in the same order of magnitude of how many players would quit over it.
Especially when they are recruiting players from Class Based Shooter games, where Healers are lethal.
He is built for a game where you are got 10 DPS to one medic though 
At least that is what I got when I was playing.
Neither of you are arguing that this outcome is bad.
Ryzik is on board with that. It is making them better than even that they wouldn’t be on board with. I think… if I have their position read correctly.
Well yeah, a lot of DPS might enjoy a “fair fight” instead of “basically cannon fodder”.
Clearly you don’t understand what it would take to make supports more fun for support players. I looked at your profile and none of your top played heroes are a support.
And clearly by context I was saying that it was relevant to previous iterations of OW or relative to how it should be. Both work in this situation and both are correct.
Maybe don’t see support balance from a DPS player’s lense and try to envision what it would be like to be someone who is drawn to the role that wants to protect and enable others.
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