Yes of course, but if the lower ranks are being repeatedly destroyed to the point it’s demotivating and making them not want to play then that becomes an overall game problem. Overwatch has a problem with losing its playerbase at the moment.
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Yeah the whole point of competitive is to rank up, to get better. Normal to balance around the best players so when you try to improve your gameplay, you’re actually getting closer to how the best players do it.
If we balanced around gold, we’d stop improving once we hit plat.
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Lower ranked players getting destroyed by people of similar skill? something doesnt add up here, is it the people getting destroyed deserve to be lower than they currently are or something else?
Blizzard is not even balancing for the high level.
If they balanced for high level hitscan would be seeing nerfs, not reaper and moira who are the worst heroes in their categories in GM. What they are doing is balancing the game the way high elo players want the game to be balanced in favour of their characters. Where are the buffs to poorly performing characters, where is the Nerf to Ashe who has been dominating for 4 months? This isn’t high elo balancing, this is just blatant favouritism
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More than likely they deserve to be lower. A lot of Overwatch is skill, timing and outsmarting the enemy. I’ve been flamed as Mercy for killing Genji, Soldier, Tracer etc and called no-skill when they were the ones at fault.
tbh we dont even know how they are balancing for OWL, are they taking the team synergies into account or are they taking the individual carry potential of each individual hero in the team fights coz if its the individual carry potential aspect then balancing around OWL is fine at least in my opinion.
I don’t think there is stigma against it, certainly if it was clear and directed towards the top of the ladder.
The issue is that it expressly is not balance, and it is not directed at ladder play. Balance implies evenness and fairness.
The latest changes are clearly marked as ‘targeting the meta’, that isn’t about a balance, or evenness, it’s about making the current meta - the OWL meta at that - worse, to enable something else, another uneven, unbalanced meta to dominate.
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How many times do I have to teach you this lesson old man
Balancing differently is a nope. What other game with a competitive scene has different balancing for casuals and pros? I can’t think of a single one, except maybe TF2 as the third-party competitive scene has different rulesets and weapon bans.
Probably because Overwatch is a lot bigger and more casual friendly than any FG out there.
Honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if OW’s casual player base is bigger than the FGC. With that big of a casual playerbase opinions are bound to sway to one side.
Destroyed by what though? Any issue in the lower ranks During top down balancing can legitimately be solved by them learning the game and playing better.
It’s a player problem that can be improved. Balance from gold and nothing stays balanced because you decided to balance from a pool of people with the most fluctuating levels of skill and who don’t play the game enough to learn.
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Except you don’t please the 99% by balancing around the 99%.
You can be bronze and be hungry for competition and skill expression.
Every game with a competitive scene is balanced around the top.
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I’m sure it is bigger but game design would be a horrible decision to balance from people who are lacking in the skills to get the most potential out of a hero.
How do you possibly balance a single hero when you’re balancing them around the most inconsistent group? You will never have anything solid.
Why would the 0.01% care about the 99% when they’re never going to face them ? Minorities are imporant.
You can do all this when the game is balanced around the higher ranks.
OK then, follow up question: Why should they give a flying duck about the game being balanced around guy who just spends an hour or two just killing some dudes? Why balance around people with no interest in getting better or optimizing their play?
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When I learned to race cars nobody would ever consider putting a casual lapper in a twitchy tweaked out 550 hp racecar-- they would lift-throttle oversteer and spin it off the track the first corner and take a couple people with them. We all started with something slower and more forgiving that let people recover easier from a screw up and slowly dialed up the vehicles as we learned to control them and push their limits.
The devs really should consider a “pro-league” mode where the hero’s are tweaked out, a “contenders” mode for those that are really advanced competitive players and “everyone else” mode with more forgiving stats so that its balanced to the level of play.
Why are the Devs making us play with heros tweaked out to the point that only 1% of the top 1% will be able to utilize fully?
Balancing should be based around both top levels and medium level.
Overwatch is not a normal fps, it’s not all about skill ,it’s about strategy and brain as well.
If a character is considered to be too strong it can be from couple of reasons and can be fixed by couple of solutions.
For example lets take widow, a very strong hero in high levels but a really average one in lower ranks.
You can’t nerf her because she’s too strong in high levels because then she’s too weak in lower levels, and in this game because of the parts of both brain and strategy you NEED all characters to be playable in order to make the most out of this aspect.
So instead of touching her damage they decided to add Hammond to the game. he’s a new hero that makes it so with the high enough skill you can deny a high skill widow without any problem.
That way players will still get the value from widow in lower ranks while also nerfing her for the pros.
But you have to take in mind each hero and each problem requires different solution.
You need all characters to be good for medium ranks while also making sure the top players don’t experience the problems too hard.
Most of the times it’s not a big problem really. if one rank is good the others will just need small tweaksp- the problem right now starts with the tanks who are bad in all ranks, but only the pros realized the strength, not by skill or good strategy but just because of thinking and using the right tools.
…because there are 40 million regular/casual OW players and only 199 pros.
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I wonder if mediocore players really want the consequences of balancing around them. It would mean massive Moira nerfs and buffing heroes like Widowmaker and Sombra.
Balancing for the top makes sense and should be done
Balancing for OWL, where even GM players can’t play like that due to only being allowed to play in duos, is stupid
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The balancing doesnt exist solely around pros. It applies to pretty much anyone diamond and above which is a large chunk of players.
Let’s not forget that everyone already complains about the smurfs in their game. This will make it unimaginably worse.