Overview
I think the devs know what they are doing, and the changes they are putting in are somewhere between “good” and “okay I guess technically that’s going on the right direction”. Their balancing takes (Aside from Sojourn stuff) have been pretty good.
But here’s the main flaw with the current way they do balancing, Devs appear to be in a mindset of:
- “We’ll withhold any balance changes until we can schedule in an ideal level of changes, that’s been fully playtested”.
When the community would overall prefer:
- Placeholder number tweak changes now/ASAP, and comprehensive changes later.
And yes, Devs got their eyes on the upcoming Christmas/NewYears holidays, where 2/3rds of the dev team going on vacation in 2 weeks, for about 2 weeks. I get that.
But with the “hotfix balance changes” system supposedly being active on this current patch. And OWL being on hiatus until at least 4 months from now until sometime after 3/13. I think it’s a mistake to be this cautious/slow with balance changes. And that there’s a ton less risk with relatively simple, and reduced playtesting “number tweak” balance changes.
And the only really risky thing is just seeing how far and how long they can stretch the community goodwill for
“Seriously, we’ll address this issue soon, well maybe not soon, maybe months from now, dunno, whenever, but we’re gonna get your expectations/hopes/hype up, then drop the ball when it comes to delivering good-enough and on-time.”
As if you loaned a friend some money, and they keep coming up with excuses with how they will pay you back soon but later, then later comes due, and they keep stalling. Where at least consistent large-fraction installment repayments would be better than months and months of nothing or next to nothing.
And tbh, usually the complex re-balancing change method, usually misses the mark anyways, and needs number tweaking to get it into the right spot.
To use a golf analogy, you want to cover big distances in large chunks, get onto the putting green, then putt the rest of the way to the goal. Not be constantly aiming for hole-in-ones.
Explaining “placeholder” changes
Where I’m going with “placeholder” balance changes.
The “placeholder” doesn’t need to solve root-cause issues.
All you need to do with it is just alleviate the pain points, give some novelty, and the feeling like things are headed on the right direction in a timely manner.
But the “root cause fix” could end up being entirely different from the “placeholder”.
It’s the bandage and pain-killers, not the surgury.
The overall “problem” with the devs design approach is that are using
- “Root cause balancing, but entirely too late”
When they should be using
- “Rough simple balancing, promptly on-time ASAP. And root-cause balancing eventually.”
For example, the changes they did this patch with Sojourn and Doom are relatively complicated. But they could have just thrown some relatively haphazard number tweaks on to the characters 3 months ago, with some rapid adjustments if it ends up being a problem.
And then eventually get to the design approach they are on now with the current patch. And replace all the “placeholder” number tweaks with the more complicated redesign.
Criticism by Role
That said, a majority of this criticism is in regards to Supports. Support are not even “in the right ballpark” yet to get closer to that ideal 1-2-2 Role population ratio. So they aren’t even in the “polished fine tuning” phase yet. So the slowness doesn’t make any sense.
When it comes to Tank, it is still out-of-alignment enough that it would benefit from fast number-tweak changes. Doom, for example, is probably going to want to be dialed back a bit, sooner than later. And even Hog could probably benefit by trying out 650hp, and 325selfheal.
DPS, is probably pretty close to the fine tuning stages. For example, they probably missed the mark with Sojourn changes, and that a few number changes, even in the next week, would make sense.
Time before OWL starts up, and before PVE
Also, they got this 4 month time period for BIG CHANGES to the game, without messing with OWL balancing. This is the last time period they will have for this sort of thing before either OWL starts and PVE get launched. After OWL starts up, I could see them returning to conservative fine-tuning-only changes. So they should be using this time wisely.
Experimental Card for extra Playtesting
Also if they feel like they need more playtesting, they could just throw their intended changes onto the Experimental for 2 weeks, then 2 weeks later put a revised version into Quickplay/Comp.
It’s a mistake to only be using in-house playtesting.
