skill compression
I keep seeing this word being thrown around. What the hell are you talking about?
The existence of higher tier gameplay implies that everything that is “op” at the lower tiers is not actually OP. If something isn’t good or is really OP at the highest tier of gameplay, that implies that those things actually need changes. If we balance at the diamond level (which is a tier that isn’t skilled at all lmao) then it is not reflective of what is actually good and what isn’t.
This was taken late January, a month after the shield nerfs. Orisa doesn’t become the lead tank until Masters, which is 3% of the playerbase.
That’s still enough to get Orisa nerfed a second time. Which caused the entire ladder to be locked into Rein/Zar afterwards. And note that the whole time, Rein/Zar had winrates that outpaced everyone else by a mile.
This is balanced according to the top 1%. Taken in March just before the hero bans.
Skill compression describes the relative difference in skill between two players randomly chosen in a given bracket. For example, GM covers about 1% of the playerbase, while Gold covers around 32% IIRC. The players in GM are playing within a much narrow band of skill variation than players in Gold, and they’re relatively more equally skilled then players in Gold. Hence, it leads them to rely more heavily on differences in power discrepancies in heroes–the problem here being that if you push skill compression too far, those power discrepancies can become extremely small yet have large effects on the meta, resulting in apparently blown out viability/power/usage (to apply arbitrary units, a rank with a skill compression factor of 80% might derive viability from a delta down to 15 “viability units,” but a skill compression factor of 99% might derive viability from a delta down to 0.65 “viability units.”)
This leads ranks under heavy skill compression to develop phenomenon not seen in other ranks with lower skill compression, even those which encompass highly skilled players–for example, even in GM, which itself demonstrates skill compression, Sombra was never truly a viable choice, yet she was a strong pick in OWL. Was it because Sombra is actually this super powerful pick? Well… no. Even GM couldn’t make her work effectively. It’s because every team in OWL is so relatively close in skill and exhibits such adequately high teamwork (largely because they train together multiple hours a day) that they were able to exploit the tiny difference in viability to make the strategy and hero work.
But, realistically, nobody on ladder plays with that level of teamwork or under such closely competitive circumstances–no, not even GM. So, if we then balance Sombra based on OWL, she’s going to be underpowered in everywhere but OWL because nobody has the necessary level of teamwork/skill/training to make her feasibly work. This is ultimately the failure of top down balancing when you use a highly compressed reference point–it makes the usability of many heroes not rewarded but contingent on having that level of skill. This is fine for players in top ranks, but for players not in the elite, it creates an extremely unfun and unbalanced experience like what Hajile shows, where “balance” (very loosely using this term because, again, Blizzard doesn’t actually “balance” around top ranks) for the top ranks actually made balance across the board considerably worse–even in “skilled” ranks.
This… is not true. Something OP at low ranks is OP… at low ranks. Just because it’s not also OP at high ranks doesn’t make it not OP in the low ranks… There are mechanics, for example, that can excessively punish errors. At high ranks, this isn’t a big deal, because people are less prone to making errors, so it’s relatively balanced. At low ranks, it’s atrociously oppressive and makes improvement more difficult, because people tend to make a lot of errors, making it very OP in those ranks.
FYI, Diamond covers the 85th through 95th percentile of players. If that “isn’t skilled at all,” then you’re engaging in massive gatekeeping on who is good at the game, and it becomes very difficult to take your opinion seriously. I agree that we shouldn’t balance the game around Bronze or Silver or Gold, but calling objectively skilled players “not skilled at all” in an attempt to justify a bad balance model is dishonest.
uh no. each team in OWL paid 20 million to be there. It has been a massive failure but that’s besides the point. in any comp game, you balance around the top tier, not the casuals, if you want to have any longevity in your game as an esport. esports exists and generate billions of dollars across the globe. casuals destroy games with dumb comments like this one and spend their time whining on forums on how their SJW shooter needs to be easier for them rather than make the effort to improve. there isn’t an esport game out there that doesnt balance around the top tier for the longevity of their game. if you think there is, i’ll wait to hear it.
No, it shows you how to play PERFECTLY, which all but the .00000`% are incapable of doing even if they played 24/7. Why make it suck for the rest of us?
I think it’s important for competitive integrity that game IS balanced around the best players. I’d have little interest in a game that was balanced around average players. Anybody can get better at the game but nobody could play a game competitively that wasn’t balanced around the most competitive setting. It’d be functional around gold/plat and miserable everywhere else. The high-SR scene would be a nightmare once they figured out how to exploit everything that the mid-level players couldn’t do.
OWL players aren’t playing a different game; They’re playing the game right. By right I mean with teams, with everyone in voice chat, and using each tool (hero) to its full potential. We have access to tools to build our own teams and work out strategies, too, but most people don’t. Then they want to blame the game and pro players for their inability to rank up.
You can absolutely learn from OWL. I’ve watched most of the matches since it started and I’ve learned a ton from it. OWL very much shapes ladder play as it is anyway. There are a lot of OWL strategies that appear on ladder. Most of them don’t require pro-level skills, just coordination, which isn’t unrealistic in much of the ladder. Even diamond-level players do things OWL pros popularized.
How exactly is it ruining the game?
If the game is balanced for the players that will break it the easiest, then it’s balanced.
Just because you suck at countering a character doesn’t make the game sucK XD
Yes please. I’m in the “get rid of OWL” camp, and I believe this is the only way it could be manageable.
They don’t play a vastly different game from us, it’s just the raw incompetence from a good majority of players. I wouldn’t cry if OWL got their own server with it’s own buffs and nerfs, but at the end of the day, are the good players in the community actually playing a vastly different game? No, the community is more of a problem, their incompetence to work together.
I mean they did say that they’re not exclusively balancing the game around only the highest levels of play (and rightfully so), as they’re also very careful about the impact of every single change to all other lower ranks as well, but really we will never know if a non - OWL balance philosophy will ever work until we try it.
That would be extra tiring, it’s hard to patch heroes at all ranks let alone patch them per tier.
Exacly!! Allllllllllll these balance changes are for the OWL players and the Grand Masters and above = the 5-10 % of the OW population.
Since they are incappable to do proper balance changes for ALL the population… they should do different changes for the OWL and top 500 players and different for the rest.
It takes more time… but hey! its their job to fix the game and be objective.
The problem is that “playing the game correctly” is Physically impossible even for the best players on ladder
If anything TOP500 shows you how to play OW Correctly
OWL is a non existent utopian enviroment of play
actually not balancing around OWL and listening to bad players saying genji tracer is op when they were enabled by other factors ruined the game.
20 mill is nothing compared to the money the casuals paid.
Noone said the game should be easier.
When you make every hero strong at the highest level is when you end up with 1.0 briggs playing 1500sr over where they belong.
Make sure everything is viable on ladder and that nothing is to busted at the highest level. Everything does not need to be equally viable at the highest level.
something at low ranks is OP… at low ranks
and thus, the existence of higher tier play implies that it is very much beatable, thus not being reflective of what is actually OP.
20 mill per team. Do the math.
Everyone is saying the game should be easier. That’s what balancing for plebs does. Makes the game easier. No one said make the heroes stronger at the higher levels. They said balance the heroes for high elo. There’s a massive difference. You didn’t even understand what was being said.
When was the last time you could play a sport without 40$ in fees in one way or another. Next point
I think you misunderstood what I said. I meant it the opposite way around.
Yeah do the math on well above 50 million copys sold to casuals.
No now your just making stuff up.