Played ~35 games across all roles, looking to try each passive.
Pros:
- Genuinely appreciate THINGS. I appreciate content, in any form that’s not monetized. It means they’re thinking; the wheels are turning. This game is at its peak as a live service game because it suffers from feeling stale very quickly without content.
- I suspected it was only going to allow all roles to choose other roles’ current passives (ex: supports could get reduced knockback). I was surprised to see 9 unique and simple augments that didn’t feel broken and felt well-thought out to spread through nearly 40 unique hero choices.
- As said in point 2: it didn’t feel broken. No one felt stupid OP, and it didn’t quite lead to a meta where, for example, everyone was playing Mercy with Passive choice #2.
- I loved the loadout UI. I felt it was easy to find, select, aesthetically pleasing, cool icon designs, easy to reselect (no, for example, ARE YOU SURE?! notification).
Cons:
- Felt, if anything, too weak. I mostly noticed it while playing Baptiste with reduced cooldowns and Mei with speed increase after kill. But more often than not, I really couldn’t feel a huge impact. This could be a good thing, since I didn’t want to get cheaply killed by a Tracer who just triggered a haste increase. But it’s a con for me because it felt bland and unnecessary more than “balanced”.
Feedback:
- Could benefit from a notification. I heard numerous people say “what passive” or “oops I forgot to change my passive all game aahahaa”
- Way too much to ask for two days, but if this system or similar ever became real, I’d love the math done on the F1 hero summary screen. For example, if I pick Brigitte with 20% reduced cooldown, I’d love for it to show the NORMAL cooldown and have a symbol to show what it is now with that passive chosen.
- Adding to that last point, when a passive is triggered, an onscreen notification in the UI would be awesome.
Final Notes:
- The game is already severely struggling with balance decisions; no need to add more to the mix.
- Honestly, a nice attempt but felt worthless. Didn’t quite feel the power as I had expected. It just didn’t feel like it changed much at all. I had hoped it would be like selecting a major talent in WoW. Experimenting with hero + passive choices was fun but still felt no impact. Like the idea of a loadout mode because that’s what the original idea of PVE was going to be. Play matches, get experience, level up a hero and slowly build a talent tree full of possibilities. Unfortunately, meta builds will forever be a thing and these types of decisions are so hard to implement in an FPS.