Proof why roles are never the issue

Competitive Discussion
45

You guys don’t realize you are actually in agreement right?

He is saying that this is true. However, balance is out of wack that the pros and cons for each scenerio isn’t balanced, so that say when DVA was strong… she had a near 100% pick rate. Let that sink in for a minute. There are other heroes that are even worse. If the game was balanced properly, and with all the data points that eliminate skill from the equation, pick rates and win rates would equal out.

This is again, exactly what the OP and myself is saying. If Mccree and soldier were balanced meaning over the entire course of all maps and scenerios gave the same value, then those differences are taken into account.

For example, mccree’s high damage that jumps over damage thresholds balances out with a soldier with the same accuracy because solider has higher mobility and sustainability, plus the ability to heal his teammates. Just because “most” people don’t use solider as a stationary AOE heal, doesn’t mean that someone couldn’t come up with a way to use him in a bunker comp as a healer in the kind as lucio or baptiste. McCree doesn’t have that utility. He is the definition like widow of pure damage sources.

But see, isn’t that the kind of balancing that the OP is talking about? If you want to talk about how widow IS balanced, then you talk about her utility being drastically less in different scenerios… such as her inability to hold an area, or do close up damage, or getting zero usage when there is cover (barrier/geometry).

What I think you are confusing when speaking about headshots is that if say widow was balanced… then her effectiveness over the course of a game would be the same as a jumping winston. This is exactly what the OP is saying.

Numbers mean everything when the goal of the game is to let SKILL win. It is also the main reason a lot of people argue about balancing from and for the top of the skill ladder. It is the one place where skill separation can be most assured to be at the lowest point.

This isn’t pros I’m talking about, but actual comp… and more specifically the best one-tricks. One tricks play their hero in all situations, so with enough data, you can pretty much know where there are strengths and weaknesses and be able to even out the heroes accordingly WITH numbers.

As the OP says, if the numbers are even, then the only thing you have left is skill to determine who wins.

Skill takes on a number of factors, it isn’t all about clicking heads, but also positioning, game awareness, and flexibility.

So the question I have when reading this and the opposition to the OP is are you arguing that the game is actually balanced? If it is, then how do you explain win percentage differences at the top of the ladder? If the top people play the hero only in their best situations, you should have massive win rates well above 50% and they should all be around the same with the huge data pool they have.

This has never been the case.i

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46

No limits comp is stupid. Mathematically, spiritually, actually, mentally, obviously, and so forth. there is no way to balance a game when you can choose any number of characters all at once.

and what we have now (pre 2/2/2 that is) is no better its been a herculean task up till this point. look in football someone has to throw the ball and someone has to catch it. what we have is the bare minimum of restrictions.

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47

I’ve played my placements and some more for each role on the PTR and the game quality have overall been higher and more consistent.

No one in their right mind have claimed something like role queue will solve everything either but it seems like a step in the right direction in order to bring some stability to the ladder. Nothing is set in stone either so if it would turn out to be a über fail they could just revert the change or address potential issues to make it good.

Also it’s silly to compare a none-turn based game with a turn-based game. Especially in a team-game where coordination and executing plays together is key. Your entire way of thinking is flawed but even if you had a flawless argumen and could present a very logical theorycraft it still very very unlikely that it would work out in practice the way you imagined it to.

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48

People said the exact same thing when LFG was introduced.

Then they realized how flawed having role queue was…

Role Queue has been in the game since LFG. Problem is no one wanted to use it for a large number of reasons that they actually have now FORCED on everyone.

Role queue is not necessary. It isn’t truly wanted by the player base.

What the player base really wants is the ability to force others to play with their own opinion on how to play the game.

They found LFG to be lacking because for whatever reason it didn’t work… because everyone has the same idea. They play a team game like a single player game. They play comp to see how good THEY are… not how good their team is… they put meaning behind their SR thinking it proves they are better… individually.

Mark my words and you can bookmark them. In 4 months people will be just as bitter about comp as they are now. They will be calling for hero locks, map queue, more hero bans (to get rid of the increased amount of one-tricks that will enter the game), etc… to solve the same gripes.

They should have fixed LFG instead of force everyone into 2-2-2. They should have made people WANT to play LFG, instead of forcing people to play with a role lock.

It really was a simple fix. Get rid of the grouping part of the matchmaker. Make solo q people have to face full teams. If the solo q person can be an effective teammate, facing groups won’t be an issue when matched at the same SR (in theory, if SR actually measured skill at the game).

But see, the selfish individual that plays the game like a single player game, won’t flourish in that environment… the team player would. The lack of having team players is what causes team comp to be bad. Lack of team players causes toxicity. Lack of team players causes rank disparity.

It is annoying that all these people hyping up role queue, don’t play LFG…

Its even more annoying and disappointing that Blizz catered to these people and forced role q on us instead of fixing the problems with LFG… namely the grouping penalty.

To get back to the OP so i’m not off topic; Role Q won’t solve the problem because if the game’s hero’s balance was proper, it wouldn’t matter WHAT hero you picked, because they would either have such glaring weaknesses that enemy could take advantage of and win… It wouldn’t matter what ROLES you had on your team… because the lack of healers mean you’d have less sustain, but you would have more burst damage and would be able to overpower the other team’s sustain. It would be balanced so that the winner would be based on how well you performed… not which hero you selected.

Role Q does nothing to solve the “what hero you selected” problem. All it does it produce a limited 2-2-2 and restrict swapping.

This actually amplifies problems when determining team comp because these poorly balanced heroes will not have a counter that was odd compositions.

There is a reason 2-2-2 hasn’t been meta for so long. The game’s balance has been so far out of wack that the it wasn’t possible to win with a 2-2-2 when playing some heroes.

You’ll see now that triple support and tank are gone, just how badly balanced some of these heroes are.

49

Your scenario is nowhere even comparable to overwatch. It lacks things such as shields which reduce damage, ultimates, focus fire etc… Also, your scenario doesn’t always end in a draw…

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51

oh yeah? which combination beats the other? Why say it won’t end in a draw, and then not explain?

I’m speechless, I don’t know how you think this wouldn’t balance the game

it’s not silly, it’s silly to think it’s silly. just turn the rounds into six seconds and the damage per round in dps. it the same exact thing.

my post is meant to say the 222 is the third best solution. proper balance and No Limits being better than 222

here’s all the QoL I need for the LFG. If I had this QoL, I would never use matchmaker again.

52

You are saying the one and only factor regarding balance is HP, not damage dealing, cooldowns, ultimates, abilities, or shields.

Hypothetically, Rein could have a 2,000 HP shield and as long as he loses, he could have 2,000 HP, too. But that may only be for one match because the updates come every 5-minutes.

I’m sure trolls and throwers would have a field day with that system.

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53

because it’s so easy to manipulate the stock market?

absolutely. imagine any hero with awesome or poor abilities. now imagine that hero with 1 hp, now imagine that hero with 1 million hp. ones too high ones too low. there is someplace in the middle that is perfectly balance, so yes, solely by increasing and decreasing HP, you can perfectly balance the game

54

I see what you’re going for, but I don’t think you quite hit it.

I have a hard time believing you really think that, but I don’t really know you.

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55

I’m really interested to hear how it wouldn’t work.

56

Overwatch isn’t just about damage per round. It’s also about utility. Like, a tank can do 0.25 damage per round, but if they shatter your entire group… that kind of doesn’t matter when the D.Va bomb comes in and one shots everyone…

Balance is a problem. Damage output is also a problem. Heroes that blur the lines between the roles too much also pose their own specific issues (i.e. Zarya, Roadhog, Moira and Ana before some nerfs/changes, Brigitte on release, etc.).

IMO, Ultimates are one of this game’s biggest issues.

No Limit was awful, as it results in any imbalance being blatantly abused… which leads to constant seesawing of extreme nerf/buff cycles.

1 Like
57

sure it is, 1 million dps is too much 1 dps is too little, somewhere in the middle is the correct amount. The great thing about my system is you can do anything you want to a hero’s abilities. all you have to is micro manage the HP pool and all heroes could achieve perfect balance.

until you start considering rock/paper/scissors. but in reality rock/paper/scissors/lizard/spock etc etc etc… but we’re assuming that aspect is already in perfect balance (not so much in perfect balance, but a different topic all together)(I’ll write an all encompassing “balance” post soon enough and it will explain everything :slight_smile:

I’m calling out dps and hp pools for the sake of simplicity

58

That’s a really bad argument. This applies to anything. If you have a toon with imbalanced damage output, you can balance it out by increasing everyone’s HP.

But then you have to start boosting the damage of other classes that were not out of balance - since merely increasing the HP doesn’t fix the actual problem, it just [probably] lower the impact of it. The hero still does out of balance damage, using your example, and everyone else is even weaker - in comparison to them - as a result…

Then the healing must be nerfed or boosted… and the skills themselves must be adjusted to be as impactful as intended. How useful is D.Va bomb going to be if it can’t even one shot Tracer when it lands on top of her, because you’ve boosted HP pools to compensate for Doomfist doing to much DPS (for example)?

You’re not fixing anything. You’re just creating more problems while trying to cover up one- creating a situation where you’re forced to implement extreme measures of power creep.

This is why characters in WoW ended up with hundreds of thousands of HP, and doing millions of DPS.

You’re just doing the same thing in an FPS :stuck_out_tongue:

Awful system. Fix the problem, don’t placate the symptoms.

2 Likes
59

quite paying attention to numbers and start paying attention to ratios

How to perfectly balance the game

take note of which heroes win and loose on each map. only take date from mid-high diamond and up

every time a hero wins a match their total HP pool is reduced by 1
every time a hero loses a match their total HP pool is increased by 1

keep a stock chart/spread sheet published on line with up to date HP pools and win rates

the chart updates every 5 minutes

this would perfectly balance the game

if this causes 6 must picks in OWL, then you could balance them separately

and if it causes 6 must picks in bronze, so be it

this system would balance the game perfectly

60

The ratios don’t matter. The numbers matter, because that’s how it actually plays out in game.

Ratios are pretty useless in a game like OW, where you have other factors throwing that out of balance anyways… which is what my point is (Brig Armor, Zarya Shields, Armor Damage Reduction, Mercy Damage Boost, Orb of Discord, etc.).

This is not D&D - and even MMORPGs based on D&D had to innovate because its ruleset was completely insufficient for those types of games.

Your idea is dumb. Tracer has 150 HP and her kit is designed around her relative surviveability comparative to other DPS heroes in the game. You cannot have a system where Tracer becomes a hero with 250 HP simply because tons of people are losing on her, and then start ruining everyone else’s game because she’s almost a Tank with some of the highest DPS in the game barring snipers.

3 Likes
61

the ratios do matter. 10 dps against a 10hp shield is the same as 1000dps against a 1000hp shield

ratios not numbers!!

it is D&D

these are all rock paper scissor things, however, nothing is insurmountable as HP. you give a hero that only has melee but also has 1 million hp…he’ll be a must pick everygame

62

That’s why the ratios don’t matter.

The numbers matter, because the game is a balance of relative power across a diverse pool of heroes. You can’t look at it that way. Utility is also a huge factor, and it often does no damage, and adds no HP to a hero.

Your idea is bad, plain and simple.

This game is not D&D. Maybe you misunderstand what I mean with that statement. D&D rulesets don’t even work for the MMORPGs based on the D&D rulesets. They have to go WAY out of the box, to the point that they barely resembles D&D themselves. Did you know EQ was based loosely on the D&D ruleset?

HP is surmountable. You do enough damage, the target dies. What isn’t surmountable are skills like Wraith, which completely stop a character from taking damage, which completely stops a target from taking damage.

Reaper has 200 HP, but his effective HP in combat is higher, unless you Nade him and stop his self-heals (or always put a shield between he and his intended target).

Even a 1M HP target will eventually die if they cannot do damage to the enemy, but must take damage from them. It just takes longer to kill him.

This is how the GOATS comp functioned… by winning the war of attrition with amazing sustain and high HP pools - and Zaria’s (IMO, of course) broken damage output.

How amazing is 1M HP if there is a Hero that does 370k DPS?

Your system manufactures imbalance and masquerades it as balance. It’s dumb.

Sometimes people lose because they are not good on that hero, or in the comp they’re playing; not simply because that hero is underpowered… or whatever you want to call it.

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63

wraith does not have an infinite duration or a minuscule cooldown

why would you bring someone’s damage up to 370k, you must only fool with HP

I’ve read all you’ve wrote, I disagree with you. And I don’t think you understand the system. I have to leave now, but I will post a new thread talking about how to perfectly balance the game. We can continue talking about it over there. Unless you’d like to talk over in game comms right now, you’ll have to wait until tomorrow when I post the mega thread

64

Can you tell me why? I think that’s kind of my point. It would be completely out of balance…

Because we’re trying to Balance the game, not OP certain heroes on a cycle simply because a bunch of idiots who don’t know how to play him decided to lose tons of matches failing to do so.

A 400HP Tank is balanced around having 400 HP. The solution to balance issues is not to boost his HP to ridiculous levels like 1K or 1M simply because people fail to play him correctly. If he is that broken, he shouldn’t even be in the game, FFS.

I understand the system. You just don’t understand how awful it is.

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65

and you’ve provided no proof to the contrary

you’re one of the people who thinks cornering the stock market is possible