Andy, on the discussion of feedback. Can you say if it is still the philosophy of the dev team that they take into account these three factors when determine balance changes overall:
I know this was something former Game Director Jeff Kaplan discussed at length on the old forums. (I really need to finish the old forum archives…)
But, it has been leaked before that quite a few balance changes are made solely for OWL players. Remember Zen’s right click getting nerfed because of JJonak?
Overwatch is an OWL player’s job. They will do anything it takes to maintain the status quo of what strategies should be meta as they have the most time invested in it.
I hope however way brigitte will be reworked will reflect this because right now, outside of if the player has reflex memories with her she isn’t exactly at her best state and the last buff she remotely got was reverted insanely quickly.
Difference here is the regular playbase dont have their paychecks on the line.
It would be nice to know much feedback is weighted. It is frustrating to be a lower ranked player that loves a certain hero (and where metas don’t really exist) and have your favorite nerfed because it was overperforming in OWL/GM. A few of my favorite characters in OW became far more difficult to play, if not unusable due to changes like this.
Can confirm.
Geoff: Add stats to that list as well (sic; metrics, analytics, etc…)
Well, my usual concern on this issue, is that I’m completely stumped on how they make Hammond balanced such that
Pros obviously have a good idea how to solve #1. But I can guess that most don’t even comprehend that #2 would be a problem.
Since unlike Healing, or Damage, other teammates aren’t going to be able to supplement a lack of Tanking. Especially since there’s no second tank player to Fill if the tank player picks “the wrong tank.”
Since 32859987 people are probably going to ask you a question, I just have a quick one for you, are you looking at making balance patches shifted towards fun rather than balance? It’s been nice having a balanced game, but I’d really love it if there were some more fun changes added for specific heroes to lighten up the game a little bit.
Thank you very much!
And now I’m hungry for fast food.
In my personal experience, the answer is “it depends”.
I’ll fall back on what I said about having an understanding of the bigger picture. Because live operations are very dynamic in nature, feedback can be weighted differently in different scenarios.
Fair enough for me.
Perhaps wont fully answer the question but i would assume potentially 5-6 new heroes will alone shake up the game quite a bit to begin with.
I just want to know whether dva is going to get hard nerfed or not yet again into an unplayable state because OWL pros love to play dva and it bleeds into dev balance decisions, where they balance heroes around owl so much that the hero becomes unplayable outside of owl.
Aka, if we stopped balancing around unreasonable pro player gameplay expectations for rest of the game, that would be great.
But seeing as they get to play the game first and give their feedback on it… I don’t have much hopes for that happening.
YourOverwatch during OWL presentation gave the Greatest Idea ever • Tournament Mode for everyone to play NOT in the OWL
I hope one of the Devs paid attention cuz that’s one of the best ideas I ever heard suggested
Not to mention the ratio of new heroes relative to their role. (3 new tanks and supports, 2 new tank/dps/sup, etc…)
True! I mean for OW1 tho, (I am extremely excited about OW2 though). Just some changes in general to make the game more fun. Even through buffs, or changes to specific heroes. I’m glad this game is balanced, but I really wish we could get some more changes directed more towards the fun department.
Nah, Zarya will get her area bubble from the 1-3-2 experiment.
It was a long time ago in a galaxy far far away…
can you tell geoff to delete tracer