PSA: How To Deal With Fallacious Arguments About Sym's Rework

General Discussion
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Why would it need to change her accessibility?

I believe she is very close to being balanced, and her biggest issue right now is her reputation with the community, not the strength of her kit.

Currently, her beam is not even her most useful feature, its an emergency tool like Mercy’s pistol. What makes her accessible is not “oh, she have autolock”, because we have a bunch of other heroes that don’t require aim (Mercy, Reinhardt, Winston, Moira…), and they are considered balanced, and are not accessible the way Symmetra is.

What make Symmetra accessible is a combination on how her whole kit works. That’s why you don’t mess with it carelessly. And when the rework hit PTR, I actually expect the devs to send alongside it a very carefully written response regarding those worries. Not doing so means the dev team stopped caring about accessibility as an objective, and that is a much more problematic issue than an unnecessary full rework.

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119

Can you cite a source for this?

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you are using emotions instead of reason. If there is a hero that is not viable in higher ranks and is considered a throw pick it means the hero isn’t accessible. It promotes bad design and encourages bullying and prejudice against certain type of players. Unfortunately symmetra’s kit needed HUGE changes and that’s what she’s getting. This is for the greater good and i feel bad for the OG sym players but this is honestly what had to be done.

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122

This is not how you define if a hero is accessible.

Also, highest winrate amongst all heroes since launch. She isn’t a throw pick, only seem as one. And that is a community issue, not a nerf/buff issue.

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jeff has explained why symmetra has a ridiculous winrate and why they don’t take it into account. This information is very accessible and you can google it if you’d like.

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Yes, when they were talking about doing her first rework. Symmetra 1.0 was terrible, and deserved every buff she received. Her winrates at that time were even more ridiculously high literally because people were only using her on defense. Nowadays they are high, but not high enough to point out for a “defense-only-and-swap” like previously.

After the rework, other than “we are keeping an eye on her”, there were no word about Symmetra rework before this post. And after that, it was the Geoff bomb that a lot of people are complaining about.

We got 15 months of silence, after a 6-month long thread of suggestions and feedback, and were greeted with a rework out of the blue.

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125

let me ask you a fair question… Do you think that OW devs who have made this game from scratch and have statistics we the common folk will NEVER have access to, SOMEHOW have less of an idea about which hero is not good and can’t keep up with the rest of the cast?

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Because you seem to have a hard-on for logic, i’ll just say…

"She’s more impactful with three turrets than with six, because the turrets do more damage." -
“This argument is fallacious because it assumes that the only way to contribute to a fight is through direct damage, not via strategic manipulation of the situation”

False. Saying something is “more impactful” doesn’t imply that this is the only element at play.

"You actually have to be more strategic now, not less, because she has fewer turrets."
“With this definition, reducing Reinhardt’s shield health to 500 would make him more “strategic” because he now can only block critical shots on reaction or on a read, rather than using his ample barrier to create situations that your team can benefit from. You can see how this doesn’t actually promote strategic play.”

False analogy. The turrets, while half the number, are far stronger. The impression i’ve had is that the damage at play will be around the same. Considering this, it is like Rein having two shields, both half the size he presently has, each independently positionable, vs his present single shield. As the two could do just the same job as the one, but also could do more, like block a side and a front attack simultaneously, the level of strategic potential increases exponentially with how many times you divide the shield. Likewise the turrets.

"There are plenty of other characters disabled players can use."
“This argument is fallacious because it assumes incorrectly (a) that other characters are as accessible as Symmetra”

False. It doesn’t assume they’re “as accessible”, it only assumes that they’re accessible to disabled players. Like the first point, this is you exchanging analog for digital. Someone is talking of degrees, while you are talking about on/off. (or vice versa).

“it also, incredibly, makes normative statements about the experiences of the disabled players of this game. Think about how insane that is, to tell another person what is or isn’t accessible for them.”

You’ve done precisely this. You declared her accessible, without consideration for anyone’s specific disability. You didn’t define ‘disability’. Is she accessible to people with no arms? No, so when you’ve declared “Symmetra… …is accessible”, you’ve made " normative statements about the experiences of the disabled players of this game. "

"It’s more important that Symmetra be viable/meta/not niche." -
“This argument is fallacious because it assumes that Symmetra’s “viability” (how? at what level of play? to what group of players?) is more important than her accessibility”

Something is only fallacious when it is logically flawed. The statement might not be logically flawed. You’ve not argued that it is. You claim accessibility matters, but you’ve not shown that it matters more than viability. You can’t scream fallacy because you can’t show it.

"Symmetra is no-skill, these changes just make it so that you have to have skill to play her."
“…fallacious because… Overwatch was presented as a game where that wasn’t the only way to contribute”

The fallacy is yours. You are equivocating skill with contribution.

"The only reason you like this character is because she doesn’t take aim to be good with." Yup, that is about the size of it."
“Yup, that is about the size of it… …This argument is fallacious because it assumes, again, that only mechanical aiming skill matters in judging a character’s contributions to a match.”

It isn’t fallacious. You’ve agreed with it. What is implied is a bias towards skill vs no skill in their enjoyment of a game, or the assumption that you have the contradictory bias. There is no reason at all to think they are blind to the effectiveness of a character (“contributions”).

"Maybe you should try another game if you can’t handle Overwatch."
“This argument is fallacious because it sets as normative the speaker’s preferences for the game, without considering whether accessibility matters (Premise 5) or whether other players’ experiences matter as well.”

Bias =/= fallacious. It’s a mere suggestion and you’ve no idea what else they’ve considered.

"Just adapt and move on."
" This comment is fallacious…"

Just stop. Using this word is adding nothing to your arguments. If you don’t think you can adapt, say you don’t think you can adapt, or not everyone can adapt. Drop this pretense, it makes you sound like an edgy 13 year old.

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127

All I can say is that when that rework hits live she’s gonna be actually viable unlike her 2 current and previous versions. Her current version is NOT gonna be made viable with number tweaks mainly due to the fact her kits is just poorly done to, the point where she’ll be either OP or extra UP.

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Okay, I hear you. I think these are not totally unfair comments. Let me try to address them.

Two comments on this. One, the argument I presented does indicate that the speaker thinks the “because she does more damage” justifies calling the turrets more impactful. So I feel confident in my logic there. Two, this is an actual argument used by dev Geoff Goodman, it was said in response to someone worrying that fewer turrets would have less impact, and it defined impact in exactly the terms presented here.

I hear what you’re saying here. You’re right, the Reinhardt analogy is not perfect and malleable to all situations. I don’t buy that this is equivalent to giving Reinhardt two barriers though – this literally, numerically reduces the number of options for how Symmetra can deploy turrets. What you’re arguing here would actually be an argument for MORE turrets, not fewer.

Okay, this is fair, and I’ll change the original post. It doesn’t logically follow that the person is claiming other characters are AS accessible as Symmetra. The argument I was trying to frame was “it’s fine that they’re changing Symmetra because there are other characters you can play as a disabled person” – but if you read other comments on this thread, you’ll see a number of comments detailing why that argument isn’t compelling for disabled players. You’ll also see an analogy with stairs and a wheelchair ramp – I guess this is more like shortening the ramp and giving it a steeper incline: in principle still usable by people with chairs, but not in a friendly way.

I think I understand what you’re getting at here. It’s not my intention to speak for disabled people as a uniform class of person, and I can make that clear if it’s confusing. Describing accessibility for some disabled people isn’t any more normative than describing a wheelchair ramp for some disabled people though, I think? Unless we’re not operating on the same definition of “normative.”

The rest of your comments dealing with usage of the word “fallacious” are also fair – as described in the post, the word is defined as “not based on logical inference,” but actually I used it in the more broad “not based on proper belief or understanding” sense. That’s fair. I’ll update the original post.

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Well, I respect that you’ve not taken to ‘firing back’.
This word is a bugbear for me. The most common function of the word “fallacious” or “fallacy” is to identify the 13 year old atheists who think it distinguishes them as intellectual.

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LOL no argument here.

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Reworks should never be done just for the people playing one hero, that is selfish and goes against the nature of Overwatch. And if you think this rework is only for the players who hate Symmetra, then you are misguided. Reworks are done based around the state of the game as a whole, to make the whole game experience better, and for the future state of Overwatch.

You may have suggestions on how to change the hero without undergoing a total rework, but your problem is you are only looking at and caring about Symmetra. You fail to look at Overwatch as a whole, and Overwatch in five years from now.

The devs, who know better and care more than you, are thinking about every aspect of the game when undergoing reworks. They clearly do not think tweaking or reworking parts of her kit is good enough. I am sorry if you do not like the change that is happening, or the way it is happening. But change like this in a game like Overwatch was always inevitable.

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132

I have a lot of time as Symm and I commend you on your thorough write out of a lot of things that I also see. I have weird comp gaps because of going from PC to PS4 and then back to PC. My last two comp seasons on PS4 though was all done with Symm and I think I ended on 2300-something. I see lots of value for her for even higher ranks.

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Just because you created something, it don’t mean you actually understand everything about that something. There are countless examples of game devs being surprised of interactions they were not anticipating in their games, or writers that are surprised at some fan interpretations to the point they liked it and added them to canon status afterwards.

I agree the devs have data that we can only dream on analyzing, since the game don’t have a public API at all, global stats can only be presumed by voluntary data gathering websites like Overbuff. But as Jeff himself said in this video, data alone is not enough to determine if something is broken. And the part of the triangle they seem to be listening is the loud community saying that Symmetra is a terrible hero.

But the main problem is that they are not listening to the people that actually play Symmetra. I mean, a single dev post in the Symmetra megathread saying “thanks for all your feedback, we took a look at it, and will consider it when doing the Symmetra rebalance” would be more than enough to appease a lot of players.

The accessibility issue is one of the unintended victims of this rework. I don’t think the devs are purposefully laughing and thinking in ways to remove all the disabled players from the game. I think they were trying their best to make it good for the community, and the accessibility removal was an oversight possibly because of a lack of disabled devs to speak about that in their meetings (which is why representation matters in big board meetings).

So, we are screaming out loud that oversight, in the hopes the devs don’t ruin a perfectly serviceable ramp unaware of the consequences.

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134

This is entirely subjective. In my opinion, Mercy is much more accessible.

Accessibility does not inherently matter. People generally make the argument that accessibility caters to a different group of people, and expands the playerbase; however, games like Fortnite are much larger and reward mechanical skill much more. Also, Symmetra becoming more mechanically intensive would not be disingenuous of Blizzard – their statement about being accessible holds true; in fact, there are more accessible heroes now than when the game launched (cough orisa, moira, brigitte).

Because game balance, self-evidently, should work on the assumption that the players have a level of competency. It should give lower ranks the incentive to improve to a level where their desired hero is viable (if applicable). That’s why heroes such as Tracer and Widowmaker are awful at lower tiers, because they can’t aim and that’s their fault. However, there are some exceptions to this balance philosophy, such as low skill heroes like Symmetra and Torbjorn, who have AI do half the work for them. And that’s partially why Symmetra is being reworked, because she’s the only hero who has a high damage/range auto aim primary fire in the game (and AI turrets that do the work for her lol) (and a teleporter/shield gen that, once placed, do the work for her lol)

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I don’t mean to be rude, but how are you interpreting “accessible”? The context in this thread is focusing on disabled individuals being able to partake in the game.

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Mercy is an easily accesable hero.

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This is a big reason for it. I have no clue why, in this day and age, a large company like Blizzard hasn’t hired an accessibility consultant to provide a sounding board amd suggestion for all its gaming properties. Heck, even Ubisoft is trying to reach out and make their games more accessible. Ubisoft of all companies.

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The issue is that her current design may give accessibility but she also gives very little value in comparison to the majority of the roster.

Other hero’s are better at choke points then her while also having uses outside of that niche. Other hero’s have better overall value in a team fight due to higher utility, damage, and survival along with ultimates that can be used as a reaction in a team fight. Even Torb’s ultimate has mid fight value that is directly tied to the player using it.

If you sacrifice a support slot for her your sustain is low due to the low impact sym has with her shield gen. If you sacrifice a DPS for a sym you have to just hope the rest of the team can prop up the damage. If you sacrifice a tank your solo tank better have PERFECT positioning and the healer’s will be stressed to keep everyone alive.

The truth is that Sym HURTS the team right now when she is played. Which means despite her accessibility to those who lack the mechanical skill or physical ability to play other hero’s she has to change.

If a hero’s design is HURTING the game overall then the hero has to be changed. Be it from being over-tuned to the point of oppressive or under-tuned to the point of creating a disadvantage against the enemy.

Personally, I have never thought “Thank god we had a Symmetra.” after a match finished. That is how low her impact is for her team and how much more valuable other picks are in her place.