Because who else would do it lol? For the average player to get to test OW2, Blizz would need to apply significant resources to launch a beta. Do you really not understand the difference between a small showcase likely featuring 20 players at most, and a beta open to the public of thousands of players?
It’s a showcase of the game, and who would you choose to publicly showcase your new game: a group of professionals under contract that use your product for a living, or some random players that your company has zero background information on?
What I don’t understand is why they announced it to the public. You had to have realized by now that players who have been patiently awaiting the game’s release for years would be envious.
Do you remember the experimental patch the pros designed? The one they actually said was a legit attempt at them balancing the game?
People don’t want OW2 to end up anything like that fiasco.
Who else would do it? Grab 100 random players from every single rank. Prioritize long-term players who are consistent in their rank (I.E.a 1k game bronze who has always been bronze.)
Then get all their feedback so you can see how all levels of the game are playing.
Simple, not logistically that hard, and FAR superior to just getting OWL players to give feedback.
The one that consisted of only 4 pros (3 of whom were DPS and 1 who was a tank), 1 non-pro Support player, a silver caster, a gold translator, and another low ranked caster? The one that half of them thought was meant to be for funsies/a joke? Space literally said he thought it was meant to be a joke experimental after they had finished.
Y’all LOVE to hate on that card but anyone who watched the panel create it could see that it did not represent “the pros” opinions in the slightest. In fact, every time a Pro like Super or Moth gave their suggestions in a sent-in video, they were discarded and ignored by Soe, the SILVER caster who was orchestrating it.
Such as when Super suggested that they nerf Rein’s damage back down and revert his shatter nerf, which the community/forums literally wanted too, and Soe goes “Nah let’s not even vote on that”.
It’s not about “giving feedback”, it’s a SHOWCASE. Why even go through the process of selecting random people when you have a group of capable players under contract right at your fingertips. They’re going to play a couple maps, that won’t be enough for pros to offer genuine constructive feedback on the game. Maybe a few suggestions but nothing about balance.
With randoms you have to coordinate it all, worry about no shows, worry about their internet connection, and worry about time constraints. Again, this exhibition match isn’t about playtesting or balancing. It’s about showing off the game. Who better to show off your game than the people who literally do it for a living?
A time will come for the public to play it and offer their opinions, now is not that time
It’s a showcase event, not a beta test. It’s for people to watch the gameplay, see what’s new/changed, and provide impressions on it. The players are just vehicles for demonstration.
It’s frankly stupid to say “that was the pros chance”.
It was set up to be a crazy card for a single tournament and it was heavily influenced by a gold player.
It’s like picking 5 random forum posts - implementing suggested balance changes in them and saying the entire community is stupid if the game isn’t perfectly balanced.
They are not just testing it out tomorrow, it’s accessible for them to practice/learn to get ready for next season as it has implications on whether they have a job or not.
It’s probably a control issue to be honest. Doing it your way involves a lot of NDAs and their way means that they have absolute control over what gets touched, played, shown etc.
Coming up with balance ideas and testing the living science out of them are two extremely different things. The professional players are the most qualified people in the world to do the latter, but that doesn’t automatically make them, nor should it, good at the former.
That experimental patch was a PR disaster. Blizzard really has no one to blame but themselves on that one. The expectations and disappointment largely come from the way that Blizzard hyped up and advertised the event to players.
Simple explanation is Blizz would have had pressure from team owners that last meeting they had (sponsors running for the hills and OW1 being on the decline) so they shoved the alpha version into OWL to keep this dumb esport on life support for a little while longer.
The cynical person in me thinks deep down that Blizz did it in purpose because they were tired of everyone hating on them and telling them to just let the Pros balance the game for them
