Nobody in GM, which is less than 1% of the playerbase, is playing anything like the game OWL does, let alone low gold where the majority of the playerbase is.
While there is no chance, any measurable possibility for Blizzard Activision to give up on pushing this game as an Esport, it is beyond unfair, just flat out wrong that OWL bare influence over the state of the game beyond cosmetics. Let alone more influence than the actual playerbase.
I’m begging you Blizzard. I know it sounds dumb to make things like bans, balance and even role lock specific to OWL level of play when that’s how you’re professionally presenting your game.
But the game that we play and what OWL plays are already far different from one another. It’s something that none of us will ever be able to mimic, let alone actually experience
It’s simply wrong to force mechanics like map pools, (which yes I know are gone once we became vocal enough), because of .001% of people considered part of the Overwatch “playerbase”…that is, if one could even consider their “play” anything less of a job.
Outside of Role Queue, which I believe was rushed before the matchmaker was ready, hence long queues and tanks in matches that aren’t anywhere near their personal SR, OWL’s influence seems to be negative.
Map pools instead of map voting
Hero pools instead of bans (the worst part is that despite the large testing with them, the devs didn’t seem to actually do much balancing with the data they collected)
Poor resource priorities. OWL always 6 stacks so after 4 years, absolutely not a thing has been done to address leavers or smurfs because it will never affect pros. Backfilling is awful in qp, but as far as comp matches go, you get a leaver and the match is basically over.
Do I even need to mention balance? They power crept the entire damage roster, I mean my stars, they gave us 50% lifesteal Reaper instead of giving him an actual engagement tool and 140 mine Junkrat but increased his ult cost? Trashing Mei, mercy/sym reworks, trashing tanks, etc. There are countless more examples of me not understanding what the devs were even trying to do as they messed up ladder’s balance but I’m too lazy to list it.
Please tell me someone else thinks good can come from the devs acknowledging the gap between the game we play and the game their pros represent it as.
if you’re asking for hero balance to be adjusted separately from that of pro play, you will find it to be only making the game far worse. If hero balance is accommodated to lower skill levels, that would provide more incentive for group-related tactics and would further stale the meta at higher ranks.
I believe the Overwatch team has been doing a brilliant job testing different features in 2020 from trying different ways to keep the game diverse for all of us. Some of it has not worked out: such as map pools as you’ve pointed out. But we should not take for granted the fact that they are trying to deliver an even better and more diverse game for everybody.
I am in favor of balance reflecting the highest level of play, but OWL pros do not represent Overwatch in any practical state.
They know their teammates by voice, practice hours a day, play with and against the best players in the world, I mean in a team-dependent game like this one that difference is too wide and too important.
I honestly don’t even agree with this statement anymore. They want to please the crowd who enjoy more standard fps but with a twist, not more casual players or those who enjoy more moba-like elements.
So forgive me for asking, what do YOU exactly want out of Overwatch. Please be specific. Because honestly I have no idea from what you have written what you exactly want if not hero balance.
This is what you said. Highest levels of play is the Overwatch League (and for the most part grandmasters). Yes those teams play to an extreme level and practice the most practical meta team comps, but that is going to be true of any game.
Also in the past, there was a short time where the meta game for Overwatch League and the live game was different (due to patch issues in late spring 2018). Overwatch League played with a very significantly different meta game and the community left like it was a totally different game.
Based on all developer statements I have seen hero balance is still considered for the whole of the game. Now they did shift their development philosophy to be more metagame targeted, and not so much toward “what heroes feel good and what don’t at certain ranks”, but in the end, hero balancing is still focused on the game as a whole, not just Overwatch League.
And I still believe OWL has too great of an influence and deserves to be recognized as an at least partially separate entity. The rules they slap on the game for OWL should be slapped on OWL alone
Personally I think it should be mostly balanced around GM, and just tourney ban any hero that is impossible to balance for pros without harming ladder.
If I had pro play aspirations, I’d hate to think that I’d have to re-learn the game when I got there. For example, I played a brass instrument in high school that I was quite good at. When I got to college and was trying out for the that band, I found that band used a slightly different version of the instrument I’d been playing for years. It used a different mouthpiece and fingerings. I basically had to re-learn the instrument before the audition. It was beyond nerve wracking.
I think he’s not so much asking for separate patches as he’s saying they should stop concerning themselves with things that only effect league and not ladder.
I think your comparison is a slight stretch but yes I see where you’re coming from.
However, the way I see it, pros already shape this game more than the playerbase as a whole. The game they want could be totally theirs without as much punishment for us.
Map pools have been in use for Overwatch League and earlier Overwatch esports for ages and are still used. They tried them within this year for only a short time in the Ranked ladder, but only ranked.
Hero pools as it was originally pitched actually more geared toward player and open ladder than that of Ovewratch. The community for years now have vouched for a pick and ban system and will still likely continue to ask for one despite the developer feedback on that idea. Its why hero pools were introduced for the game as a whole and not so much for just esports.
Hero balance changes for the most part have been based on what we have seen as a game as a whole. Very little from what has been seen in the league alone.
Rock lock has nothing to do with the league. The league simply followed it. Jeff Kaplan has stated the metagame has nothing to do with the reason why the feature has been introduced, but more or less delivering a quick and less disruptive experience in the open game.