Only reason of why there’s something that you call a ‘power creep’ is that supports and tanks are in fact overtuned. Why then we should nerf something other than them? How is that logical? I know people refuse to see this.
Well ttk went down a lot and that is not only because of tanks and sups.
OW needs a major rebalance
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It should be noted that these “fun facts” are thrown out devoid of the context that would show the situation to be exactly as the one players are complaining about. Like D.Va being the “most picked tank” back in the day, and Reinhardt being the least, however this was taking into account quick play where people play whatever they want, and a character like D.Va has more appeal due to her design and kit, even when weak.
This is some very nuance heavy handwaving. He may point at winrates, but the truth is that effectiveness or ability of a hero has only a cursory relationship to winning. This has been known since the Sym/Torb balance work.
Looking at a character like Soldier’s changelog since release in conjunction with pickrates tells the story in a more comprehensive way. Soldier used to do 17 points a shot; that was changed to 20 per shot with a small increase in spread in the 1.5.0.2 patch. Since then his minimum damage at max range was increased, the time it took to get his maximum spread penalty went from 6 shots to 9, and his pick rate went through the floor - because he didn’t provide enough damage for the goats meta or the double shield meta.
It gets even worse when you consider that there is now a support in game whose left click ability is as strong as Soldier’s left click ability, with the addition of AoE heals AND better mobility AND Immortality Field. Soldier’s pick rate is coming back up as a result of shield nerfs, but it’s easy to see why Bap is the number one pick and Soldier isn’t. Ability creep and power creep has made him superfluous. And that’s the part they don’t wish to talk about when they obfuscate power creep discussions with handwaving about winrates .
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I feel like this is because players have no access to the statistics you do and so are forced to trust in each other’s perception of the game instead.
Statistics like play rates, win rates based on rank are available for most other competitive games, so why is that still not the case with Overwatch after more than three years.
Maybe if players did have easy access to this information, player’s perceptions about the game might change completely alongside keeping the state of balance in a more transparent state.
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Here’s another “fun fact” to go along with your statement above: Genji’s current pick rate for GMs is a whopping 1.26%, what does that tell you?
Reference: overbuff
To me one might look at that win% / pick rate and assume that only 1% of all of the GMs are able to pull a 54% win… That’s not exactly reassuring, not when heros like Doomfist are rocking 55% win with a pick rate of 23% or Hanzo with 54% win with a pick rate of… get this… 49% !!! <-----
That is a fun fact, because if I go to Overbuff right now, search GM stats, and sort by win-rate I get Soldier:76 in 3rd place for DPS (4th overall), and genji in 9th place for DPS (16th overall).
Now, here’s the thing. When you say that they’re actually 6th and 7th place, I believe you. Not Overbuff.
The stats players have are garbage. They’re very, very inaccurate and this hamstrings us.
Josh, can we please get actual aggregate performance data through the blizzard API? We cannot have a good conversation when our base assumptions are completely wrong. With our current data it is impossible for us to even tell how good we are doing compared to any kind of average, which makes figuring out what we need to do in order to improve as players very, very difficult.
It also means that any and all balance conversation we have is invalid because we’re not able to approach the conversation itself with any kind of correct assumptions.
All we can do is tell you when we don’t personally like something. And that is very limited conversation from our end.
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I really appreciate the communication, but I’m also gonna give a hard disagree here. I think power creep is a problem with the game right now, and it has been ever since the Mercy rework. I don’t think it’s a huge problem right now, but if the current trend of constant buffs continues it won’t be long before it is a big problem.
I’m really hoping this PTR patch has more nerfs than buffs. Mei and Baptiste especially, I think those two heroes getting nerfs would open the meta up a lot - for now anyway.
It’s because developers sincerely believe, that answer to damage is damage. It’s unreliable response. Reliable response to damage are shields and massive healing.
Thank you for your transparency. We really appreciate hearing back on even small matters.
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Power cap creep is different then skill cap creep and i will explain how they are different and the same.
Starting off with power cap creep is just making something/ability more OP without making the skill cap go up.
Skill cap is making something/ability have more power but the ability also goes under a nerf to make the skill cap go up.
Take for say 76s rockest.
A raw power cap creep would be to make the rockets do 170 and nothing els to that ability.
A skill cap creep would be to make the rockets 170 damage and at the same time make them much much smaller so that it is harder to hit the ability for lower skilled players but for high skilled players the ability rewords them for being better at the game.
Also making buffs for 1% of the player base most of the time is made in the power creep line and in turn makes the heroes skill cap go down so now we have a hero that is OP in the rest of the ranks.
Example: when reaper had the 50% life steal for a week or so that buff was made to make the heroes power cap go up but in turn the skill cap of the hero for the rest of the game was lowered and he became a pain and still is with 40%.
A good skill cap change would have been to give him something like range and his shots do more damage at range but less up in his face. That is a skill cap change and not a power cap change.
But to much skill cap creep can also hurt the hero and players because to much skill cap creep on a hero would make the hero useless because there is not the right amount of power creep in the hero for the hero to get value in a lower skilled players hands.
More or less to much raw power creep is bad and to much raw skill cap creep is bad because the hero should still be usable for lower skilled players but the hero should be OP and have a massive power creep.
It is a messy problem but Bilz has also done stuff with power creep and only have they does skill cap creep on some heroes aka Torb and pharah on Xbox.
Hope this helps people understand the difference.
It’s just how it always was: we either have hero entirely useless in rest of the ranks(because no one there is skilled enough) or entirely OP(because no one there is skilled enough to counter them).
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is there a way you guys could like, have your own website for us to look at stats or something like that
since all we have is overbuff and that has some form of wrong information (even if it shows a general representation)
like overbuff shows soldier as #8 in winrate and genji at #12
I just want some accurate stats
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Thank you for the insight in the development process.
I think the approach you take is the best option possible.
I know many people will tell you that you do a poor job at it but looking at the game as a whole I think you did a really good job in making every Hero viable.
When I look back at 2017 or even 16 Sym, Torb, Junkrat and even Hanzo where often considered throw picks and One-Tricks of these Characters where especially despised. But now One-Tricks are barely even mentioned thanks in large part to the balance of the game where you don’t have characters anymore who you almost cannot win with. The game, especially in the lower Ranks became a lot more flexible.
And though I think that especially healing got a bit out of hand over the years I think the powercreep is still very bearable.
Keep up the good work.
“this is where things went south”
The devs: “Well, this is what our own stuff says”
This forum: “no ur wrong”
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This is due to smurfs and alt accts ruining low elos and stacking wr to be able to play off meta and group w friends.
This post was wayyy out of touch with the balance of the game.
Gengi is fun to play but is dead to comp play
Pros have been asking for Orisa halt nerfs for months. While they did nerf Orisa and Sigma at popular request, they left halt the way it was which got heavily criticized by the pros.
Also, the consensus of a huge part of the community right now is that we don’t need any buffs right now and only nerfs. Yet, one of the first things they do is buff D.Va’s boosters.
This mindset is the exact reason why 24/31 heroes are better than they were at launch and only 4/31 heroes are noticeably worse than at launch, including Brig and Sigma who launched too op and Widow who is still incredibly strong.
If they came here saying “Yes, Hanzo and Widow are a problem and we’re looking into it.” they’d be serenaded in flowers right now.
If one can’t face criticism, some of which appears to be fairly on point too, then why have a place where such feedback can be posted? Listening mainly to the pros and high levels of play isn’t where the majority of players are who have an interest in playing Overwatch and wanting the game to actually continue to improve for the majority.
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