This isn’t just a problem for low-skill players or the people playing against them. High-skill players are also incentivized to use the low-skill builds because they are too strong. This makes the game less fun for everyone.
Preface: I’m the owner of the OW1v1 discord server. I am friends with most of the best soldier players in the game (e.g. Sestroyed: rank 1 EU peak. Lolztehtroll: currently Champ 4. Dawgamer: rank 2 NA peak.) I am also personally pretty decent at the game, having been rank 150 a couple seasons back, and one of the best 1v1ers in the game.
This is relevant because I’m going to focus on the soldier build, but the same argument applies to most of the other heroes too. I talk to these people and other extremely high skill players (of all roles) every day, and every single one of them would agree (more or less) with what I’m saying here.
Stadium is awesome and I understand the motivation to put in low skill builds, but some of them are overtuned such that even high skill players feel the need to use the low skill builds. The really obvious examples are Juno’s torpedo build and DVA’s defense matrix build (both of which are simply overpowered and low skill), but I think an even better example is Soldier’s “0.75s visor after helix” power because of how it changes how you have to play the game as the user and as the opponent.
People play soldier to aim and dodge. Aimbot entirely removes the aim aspect of his kit while active. So it directly mitigates the fun of playing the hero. For every second of the game you’re using aimbot, you’re not having fun. It’s just straightforwardly bad in that way.
Furthermore, as the opponent, we’re forced to start every duel with the enemy soldier by baiting helix and then LoSing for at least half a second before attempting to fight him because you autolose otherwise. What’s more, the enemy soldier is then incentivized to LoS you after their minivisor has run out, because they’re at a comparative disadvantage. So basically the whole dueling aspect of the game is ruined for that hero.
Furthermore, every other hero, who previously had the option of using good dodge to avoid dying to the soldier, loses that option.
Basically, it creates huge constraints on how the game must be played around that power, all in negative ways.
It’s fine that the power exists for low level players who don’t play the hero for the mechanics, but then you should make the power weak enough that good players don’t feel the need to take it. Personally, I don’t take it, because it would literally defeat the purpose of playing the game for me, but almost every other soldier player does take it.
This is just one example. Almost every hero has some version of this.
There’s a very simple principle to follow: Make low skill stuff weaker than high skill stuff. I get that it can sometimes be subjective what is low or high skill, but in some cases it’s completely uncontroversial, as in the builds I’ve mentioned so far.
Thank you for reading.