At this point they are trying anything to make 5v5 and a single tank per team “work”. The main problem is, this issue can’t be solved by constantly buffing tanks, and buffing tanks that don’t need it. No matter how powerful the tanks are, it will always be the least player role in the game no matter what.
Today’s patch will only introduce even more power creep and make some of the tanks totally unfun to play against. This doesn’t solve anything, it only makes things worse. The core of the problem is not being solved.
“Power creep: the situation where successive updates or expansions to a game introduce more powerful units or abilities, leaving the older ones underpowered.”
Based on that definition ripped from Google, there is no power creep in OW. You can’t compare power level across roles since they each do different things, and since old heroes are still very much viable (some even got nerfed from their OW1 versions like Soldier and Widow) they aren’t getting outmoded by new heroes. Of the heroes introduced in OW2, only Kiriko can currently be considered overtuned, and that’s debatable. They always nerf overperforming heroes. Buffing heroes to where other heroes in their roles are isn’t power creep, it’s bringing them closer to the intended power level of the game. The power level of the game isn’t getting higher, it’s just different with one tank per team versus two. If anything, the game’s power level is lower than when open queue no limits was the default.
While I agree with the sentiment, the patch gigabuffing ANY tanks, once again over the protests of a lot of the player base is just kind of endemic of the problem.
They’ll do anything to salvage this format, even crazy junk like that.
The devs are still refusing to accept that the issue isn’t how strong tanks are. It’s how much responsibility is on them which leads to them eating all cooldowns and being the targets of endless rock paper scissors.
The issue is 5v5 and how that exacerbates counterpicking. Until at least one of those are addressed tank will continue to be miserable.
Well if they keep buffing tanks it’ll just make the counterpicking worse since nobody on the team will be able to help if your tank is getting constantly counterpicked by their tank.
This is the first time in Overwatch history where the devs has to balance the role that only has 1 on each team. So it must be very difficult for them. Which is funny because the original idea was that single tanking would make tank balancing easier to do and allow them to be stronger then before. They got the second part right (sort of), but not so much the first part.
Before in OW1, devs had to worry about potentially oppressive tank synergies. They thought removing second tank and not having to worry about tank synergy = easier time balancing tanks.
I guess they didn’t foresee how challenging it can be to make Hog/Mauga fair to play against Doomfist/Winston, Zarya fair to play against Sigma/D.va, Orisa fair to play against Reinhardt etc. (tbf Orisa seems less annoying against rein players now).
Hell, queue times are already on the rise again. I had a friend who’s gold saying she was in a 12 minute queue just last night. And gold is the most populated rank in the game.
It’s hilarious they’d rather beat their head against a wall instead of seriously considering reverting
I think 5v5 can be fixed with balancing…except that the entire roster needs to be rebalanced now, not just tanks. Before, we only needed to look into tank synergies (and supports to some extent, but only brig/bap). Now in 5v5, we need to look into reworking tank, DPS, and support heroes…
But it’s also possible that no amount of balancing will make tanking feel as good as OW1. And OW1 tanking is the bare minimum, since even back then tanking wasn’t that amazing. But OW2 is somehow even worse (at least for me).
Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t figure why people seriously prefer one raid boss tank to two tanks that yes, could work together well, but were a lot more killable.
‘This format makes OW2 more of a shooter’
Yeah, a shooter where it’s crazy more difficult to get kills. And they wonder why even casuals are starting to hop ship.
The issues are tanks being so important that the enemy team puts all of their cooldowns into them and they get endlessly counterpicked. It doesn’t matter how much you buff tanks because all of that still applies and if anything it makes the counterpicking worse because your own team won’t be able to help with the other teams gigabuffed tank if they insist on playing rock paper scissors.
The role isn’t fun. It’s extremely strong but just not fun to play.
