Except nobody has bought the game yet…
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OW2 isn’t even for sale yet, none of us have purchased any right to beta access.
Honestly, beyond the astounding amounts of entitlement, I don’t get how many people here don’t see this is in the community’s best interests.
Pros teams testing first will get the worst balance issues out the way. A situation like launch Brig will be figured out in no time, fixing that early will prevent the wider community from getting attached to broken heroes. They’re also the best people to show us exactly how 5v5 is going to play once the dust settles and therefore allow us to pressure for change quicker if necessary.
Betas always start small anyway, no doubt Blizzard will expand in time. This is already a huge step towards getting OW2 launched.
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Yes we did. The PvP is going to be accessible for OW1 owners.
You are very naïve to rely on pros for that. They will be defending their mains no matter what.
Nobody of the pros was maining Brigitte before she came so obviously all of them woudl be against her.
I really don’t understand why ppl think pros cares about balance. The ones who exploits every possible thing in the game to gain a win.
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Blizzard grandfathering current OW1 players into OW2 is not the same as us having paid for OW2, and certainly not for closed beta access.
And this is different from the regular player-base, how exactly?
Pros have biases same as everyone, yes. At the same time, they’re also just as diverse as the rest of us, there’s just as many Tank players, just as many Supports, plenty of them adore the very heroes they get blamed for having been nerfed. But biased as they still may be, two major distinctions in feedback quality remain - teamwork and the skill to push heroes to their limits.
Though, I’d actually say they’ve generally embraced new heroes quicker the general player-base, as like you said, they’re trying to win at any cost. Even if already top-preforming teams want to stay stagnant, the lower brackets are always looking for a leg up.
Also, the most important thing Blizzard is going to be getting from any testing group is the cold hard data, not the verbal feedback.
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I agree w/ OP but this makes perfect sense too & it’s a common Theme w/ Blizzard to generate issues like coming forth telling us you are Renaming McCree 6mths in advance instead of just DOING IT w/o the Drama. 
- Half of the panel wasn’t even trying to balance the game. They were taking it as a funny joke
- Over half the panel weren’t even pros
- The half that wasn’t pros had more power than the actual pros, including the gold/silver players
- The pros were poorly picked (2 hitscan DPS and 1 tank, really?)
And with that aside, I doubt it’s about feedback. It’s a showcase; they are showing how the game will look at its skill ceiling. Closed betas have existed before. And I’m glad pros are finally getting to play it. They’re the ones who will be practicing on OW2 for next season, so they could at least get a feel for what its like.
And besides, 80% of pros don’t even care about balance. A lot of them just don’t care and adapt unless it’s borderline unacceptable balance. And it’s not like the forums/community on average are any better at balancing
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Because OWL viewers. That’s about it. Knowing that the OWL is gonna be playing on a build of OW2 (by April) will bring a lot of attention to it. Not only will there be feedback from the players, but also Youtubers and stuff will probably watch the matches to make videos about how OW2 plays and what changes and what not.
Overall this can create hype for OW2 while bringing eyes to the OWL.
Honestly, I think this is why heroes like Tracer never fall out of meta or when they do they’re still viable.
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they weren’t listening to the community when they were testing brig out, it doesn’t even matter
It just a showcase, to keep players engaged through the fiasco of workforce exploitation, shredded documents, and protests of designers. It’s all about money, and with the huge decrease in population, now they fear losing sales and hype regarding Overwatch 2.
I protest. I will not buy Overwatch 2 because I hate companies who do workforce exploitation.
Besides the balance of this game was destroyed by Overwatch League. They sucked the fun out of this game with their balance and recommendations. Let them have Overwatch 2 all for themselves anyway, and hopefully get paid for playing it.
Hey folks,
Since we’re talking about feedback, and why we would have OWL pros playing the game, this is an area where I can speak as a CM first, rather than as a proxy for Team 4.
Every designer I’ve worked with has understood that any player feedback (whether Bronze, Grand Master, or professional) is laced with personal biases and assumptions. Game designers are like artists in many ways: both disciplines take in feedback from many diverse sources, and apply that feedback with a central vision guiding their decision making.
A large part of what community managers do is to try to remove the personal biases from player feedback, and then communicate what’s the root cause of player friction to designers. The designers have an understanding of how that feedback fits into the bigger picture, and have analytical tools that they can use to evaluate what’s reported via community sentiment. Most importantly, according to Lead Hero Designer, Geoff Goodman,
Geoff: It’s part of our job to respect the context of the feedback.
Your concerns about player biases are completely understandable. We agree, and it’s something we always account for, even when we’re providing feedback on our internal playtests.
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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:
- Player feedback across all ranks
- Statistical performance of heroes at pro level and grandmaster play
- Developer team insights
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…)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Can confirm.
Geoff: Add stats to that list as well (sic; metrics, analytics, etc…)
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Well, my usual concern on this issue, is that I’m completely stumped on how they make Hammond balanced such that
- He’s not godtier overpowered in the top 3% of players, with the lack of CC in the game. (Especially dependant on how harsh this Hack nerf is).
- While also making sure he’s not an automatic defeat within the first 5 seconds of the game for the bottom 95%.
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.”
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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.
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Thank you very much!
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And now I’m hungry for fast food.
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