The "balance" updates have made this game unfun

General Discussion
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NOTE: BEFORE YOU READ THIS, TAKE INTO NOTE THAT THE HEROES I MENTION WERE AT A TIME WHERE I FELT THEY WERE UNDERPOWERED/OVERPOWERED. THIS DOES NOT APPLY TO TODAYS HEROES, BUT RATHER THE STATE OF BALANCE ITSELF.

Depending on how this goes, this will either be massively downvoted, or upvoted. Either way, I just want to share my feelings regarding the game and the updates from beta to now.

Ever since the Beta of the game, Overwatch has been through multiple updates that have been through the good and the bad, but mostly the bad in my opinion. Why do I think that? Because I feel like the changes to the game are being catered towards whiners.

Now, why do I think this? Most updates regarding heroes haven’t been QOL, or have been as a result of nerfs, but rather straight up “balancing” to the characters we’ve come to know and love.

Starting right off at the beginning, I want to look at the least played category of heroes since they’ve all been incredibly nerfed or balanced in ways that make them near un-usable against their intended counters.

Back in the beta, bastion could only move 180 degrees once he sat in turret form. Though, due to his negative of being held in place for anyone to shoot at him, he had a 1000 HP shield that protected him from damage. Of course that might seem OP if you look at it at first, but a Tracer/Genji/Sombra, and even Doomfist would be able to take care of that. Heck, even a Hanzo with Scatter (before it gets removed…) could take care of Bastion. Instead of giving him much needed protection where he needs to rely on others to shield him, hes left in a vulnerable state upon the games release even though 90% of POTGS featured him. Thats before people started to figure out what countered him, and thats when he started to show his massive weaknesses. Then he got “buffed”, which in my case is a big nerf, by removing his headshots from turret form and increasing the spread, but instead got a stupidly broken passive that broke the game for a few weeks since he could literally survive anything. I feel like his Iron-clad passive was more or less just a band-aid patch, and the return of his shield with mobile limitations would have made him usable.

Torby was an interesting case, as he could make his level 3 turret in the beta utilizing scrap (Keep in mind that scrap didn’t generate automatically for him. He had to go out on the field and collect it.). The turret was powerful, and it could easily take out certain flankers such as Genji and Tracer…who have little to no counters today. See the pattern here? It will become clear as I go along. Molten core gave him infinite scrap, but he couldn’t spam armor since it was on a 4-5 second cool down. Honestly, beta Torbjorn was interesting since you either used his scrap for DPS, or for support to keep your teammates alive. Now Torb is in an awkward spot alongside Bastion upon release.

Mei used to be able to shoot icicles at a much faster rate, but for some reason was nerfed to be much slower later on. I’m honestly not sure why that change was implemented since, ironically, Mei lacks in DPS compared to others, which allows nearly every hero in the offense class to outclass her.

Roadhogs scrap gun nerf infuriates me since the vocal minority caused the change to go through, and because of the fact that “one shotting” wasn’t okay despite nearly 6-7 other heroes being able to one shot. Now his gun just feels like a confetti blaster, and its especially infuriating when you’re trying to get the last killing shot on a 1 hp hero, but unable to since they’re slowly getting healed by a Zen orb…which outheals his damage if they’re far away enough.

Mercy is possibly one of the biggest ones considering major changes that have changed. Mercys thing was always heal up your team, building up that big, dramatic resurrection that felt like a true ultimate. Now? When you press Q, all that happens is you can fly and healer faster. When you compare the two ultimates, its like comparing store brand bread while comparing it to a fresh markets home-baked bread, fresh out of the oven. Its not fun, nor is it engaging. I’m not a Mercy player, but I have several friends who are, and I can imagine that pressing q and gaining the ability to fly around and heal more isn’t as fun as getting off a big rez.

Doomfist, I’ll admit, had a absurd punch hitbox, but its what allowed him to stay alive since it was critical part of his kit to actually hit something. If you miss a punch, which almost always happens, you’re more than likely dead. His hitbox nerf, alongside the several nerfs he got in the ptr, quickly made him a unfun hero to play, especially when they added the final nail to his coffin that was the rocket punch nerf. Why? Because of whiners.

Theres a ton more I can mention, but I only mentioned the major ones since these are examples I want to show. I could mention Zaryas energy nerf, or D.VAs matrix change, the ludicrous amount of changes to Ana, or even McCrees damage distance nerf, but there are tons of updates relating that would clog this long post.

Now, if you haven’t gotten the point yet, its whiners that make these updates happen. I’ve seen people in mass complain about a heroes gimmicky kit, saying its unfair despite there being several counters against it. People hated getting killed by Roadhog despite the fact that he also had positives, including killing flankers that would kill Mercys. Well, now that he got nerfed, guess whos complaining? The Mercys who get killed by flankers since Road can’t effectively do his job as efficient. And since the whines grew out, Mercy got an update that made her incredibly strong. Then the flankers whined, stating that it was unfair. And I’ll give you 20$ if you can figure out what happened next. Mercy got nerfed, hard. Now they’re calling for nerfs to Junkrat, which made him strong against Dps…and, well, kinda everything. Junkrat got nerfed, and now they’re all looking at Moira to get a nerf.

You see where this is going? This game is being catered to people who whine and moan about heroes they dislike, and its causing the game to be an entire no fun zone as a result. Instead of nerfing a hero into the ground, create buffs that would help against the strong things!

In short, whiners should not be the reason behind a heros nerf. Nerfs should be looked at more carefully so that it doesn’t result them being near obsolete, or a choir to play. Its that reason why so many people choose DPS nowadays since it feels rewarding to play them. Every other character feels like a chore just to hold up the team, or be called a thrower if you choose a hero that doesn’t fit in with the meta.

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Blizzard nerfs and buffs based on a mixture of community feedback and actual statistics they collect. It’s why even though everyone complains about Genji, he hasn’t received a nerf because Blizzard actually has the stats to show he isn’t overpowered. Thus, he isn’t in need of a change. The community can be a good indicator of what’s fun to play and to play against, but the statistics tell what’s over or underpowered. Good balance happens when you use a combination of the two sources.

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I’m tired of them playing russian roulette with the healers every few months just for the sake of “meta” or a vocal minority. I want to expand my character pool and learn to play healers ( Reaper main) but the thing is why bother learning them when you know they’re either going to get nerfed to crap and then forgotten for months on end or reworked every month. If they don’t figure out how to fix their healers without making such drastic changes and start stabilizing them I’m moving on.

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I agree with OP. I used to love playing tank, but that and the support category are constantly getting reworked and nerfed every time a DPS main whines on the forums so I gave up and I’m more or less a filthy, insta lock DPS main now. It seems to me that Blizzard got every single DPS character right on their first go (besides DF), but got every tank and support wrong. But… that’s very improbable… it’s really just that DPS mains think Overwatch should be call of duty instead of a moba… so they don’t want to have to deal with their damage being blocked or healed.

I have to confess though that I did make a lot of posts about nerfing Roadhog. Such a low effort one shot was completely out of line, but this was only after hook 2.0. He does lack the teeth he once had though, and I miss that.

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blizzard does not know how to balance well. They also know how to take the fun out of a champ.

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Elaborate. You can’t say a post is bad unless you have a reason why its bad, otherwise you come off as arrogant.

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Bump.
Glad i’m not the only one… The update has been unfun and all everyone replies with is “LOL BAD BECAUSE SILVER.” That’s just quickplay. The changes in Total Mayhem has pretty much made it even more unfun with doomfist running around. The fun in overwatch has been dropping drastically for me in past year.

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Never thought I’d see the day where people are asking for Vanilla Overwatch.

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As strange as it is, I think the game may have actually been more fun back in its vanilla state. A couple of the tweaks I can get behind, but a lot of what has been done has genuinely diminished the fun factor. Now people just play to get heavily tilted in comp, eventually give up and make a smurf account, and run around QP and Arcade to further lessen the experience for those learning, climbing, or that simply play infrequently by playing try hard as a heavy weight against a bunch of feather weights. It doesn’t help that each balance tweak has led to new whining about what the next balance tweak now has to be.

Appealing to the whining has probably been a contributing factor to the overwhelming toxicity that has become so pervasive as well. The Overwatch community has gone absolutely spiraling downhill since launch almost two years ago, and looking at the trends of changes, it seems to be because those having fun get shafted, while the whiners spam until they get their way. Eventually those that were having fun stop having fun, and the whiners with toxic attitudes stick around and become the dominant sector of the community.

In an effort to balance, a lot of heroes just feel blah to play now. I almost hate playing tanks anymore since everyone except D.Va feels like a chore to play as, support is literally just playing someone until they get nerfed and lose utility, defense has been a crap shoot of snipers and otherwise easily countered heroes except for Junkrat basically, while all the DPS have been carefully nurtured unless their name is Doomfist. This game is one balance update off of everyone just rolling DPS and playing the game like CoD.

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I agree with you . most changes are terrible

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Hmm, and it isn’t like that because Mei is not an offense hero?

You don’t heal faster, it’s still default 60hp/s, but splited to max 5 beams.

Nah. The S3 changes broke her and her synergy with Ana.

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That is what balances are though. There is no game that was balanced by only changing numbers. There should always be other iterations in case they realize that the changing numbers will not do it.

And of course people are going to whine about it. There always will even if the game is perfectly balanced. But if you remember, the devs do not only look at the audience feedback. They look at the player feedback, the statistics for the heroes and their vision for that hero.

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Well matrix was an aweful ability from the start. The way people used to play around it was to just wait for it to be used and then they use ultimates.

When the first change came, it became one of, if not the best ability in the game and with the addition of ana, it makes a triple and quad tank broken. They had to change her again.

The most recent change is probably the most balanced version of the ability. Able to use it whenever it is needed with a small frame for counter play between flashes and short enough that a full barrage ultimate (like visor, blossom, and barrage) will have some effect.

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If I may add Reinhardt to your post:
For a long time, players complained about Reinhardt being in every game. Blizzard made changes that ultimately brought us Dive Comp (Winston/D.Va/Mercy rework), which countered him hard. Then they brought us Spam Comp (Hog changes/Orisa/Junkrat Chages) However, it didn’t stop there, every new hero, every new rework, every new patch just about increased his counters or added more. Not to mention his kit never saw defensive increases as the offensive power in the game was increased.

People didn’t want to see Rein in every game, and I get that, the game needs variety and counters. However the fact remains, Orisa has fewer counters than Reinhardt, and with the Sombra changes, this only continues to compound.

Crusader OFFLINE :hammer::confounded::shield:

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I definitely disagree about Roadhog, I feel that he’s a much better designed character now than he was at launch. His hook is still frequently death for a person who gets hooked if the rest of the team is focusing that person, because they’ll take shots while being pulled. However, now we don’t have weird situations where some characters live and others die due to strange hitbox interactions.

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What are you talking about? The only reason rein is not being implemented is because people just figured out that other tanks are better for certain maps. It is not because of the changes but more of the community learning.

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Oh man, I didn’t want have to type all this out but I have to make the case on how incorrect your post is.

Indeed, players understood how tanks could be utilized on different maps, but I’ve been a player since launch, and I have witnessed ALL the buffs and added heroes which have dwindled Reinhardt’s defensives (shield) but also increased his counters. So lets begin:

  • November 15, 2016 Sombra is introduced. As well as Pharah’s Minimum explosion damage has been increased by 13%. As well as 76’s gun Bullet damage increased from 17 to 20.

  • January 24, 2017: Hack Cooldown has been reduced from 12 seconds to 8 seconds. Also Time it takes to hack a target has been decreased from 1 second to 0.8 seconds.

  • February 28th, 2017: Hog’s gun Spread decreased by 20%

  • March 21st, 2017: Orisa joins the roster. But also, Junkrat’s explosions no longer hurt himself. This allowed him to use his mine at close range freely against Rein (which he will eventually have two) Also, Sombra Translocator Cooldown reduced from 6 seconds to 4 seconds. BUT THE BIG ONE THAT BROUGHT IN DIVE HAPPENED ON THIS DAY: Winston’s Shield Ability cooldown now starts when the barrier is placed, instead of when it ends

  • April 11th, 2017: Lucio damage increased by 25% (obviously not a real rein counter but more damage brought into the game, and supports often target shields to help take them down). Lucio Projectile speed increased from 40 to 50, also Alternate fire now considers vertical orientation when knocking targets back (this one directly effected Reinhardt players).

  • May 23rd, 2017: Orisa’s Barrier Cooldown reduced from 12 seconds to 8 seconds. I mentioning this because this buff right here was good for Orisa, but this is where we start to see Reinhardt’s shield becoming overshadowed, and soon even more with the next changes to come when Spam meta is introduced with Junkrat buff soon.

  • May 23rd, 2017: REINHARDT nerf to Earthshatter; Effective height has been lowered from 3 meters to 2 meters.

  • June 20th, 2017: Hog comes full circle to pump faster damage to be apart of spam meta; Bullet damage decreased by 33%; Fire rate increased by 30%; Clip size increased from 4 to 5 (this will be coupled with Junkrat soon for spam meta)

  • July 27th. Doomfist released (another direct counter to Reinhardt with Rocket punch; Orisa is the appropriate counter to him).

  • August 29th: HELLO JUNKRAT! (Spam meta is complete, and Reinhardt’s shield dies like a fart in the wind) Concussion Mine

  • Junkrat can now hold two mines; Also, Tire’s movement speed has been increased by 30%; There is no longer a time limit when wall climbing.

  • August 29th, 2017: Orisa receives further buffs to help seal the deal for spam and bringing down Reinhardt’s shield faster: Projectile speed increased by 20%; Barrier size increase by 20%

  • Barrier shape has been changed to allow for more coverage from enemies that are below the barrier. Also Hog can now heal while moving also giving him more reason to be in spam meta.

  • September 19th, 2017: D.Va’s Micro Missles are brought into the game, More damage creep, and now Diva and Spam meta BOTH are in the game (both are terrible for Reinhardt) Her change also is another way to spike Rein’s shield or him. She can also attack while boosting: Fusion Cannons can now be fired while flying.

  • September 19th, 2017: Mercy changes brought with Valk, making her part of Dive and Spam, and just about everything because she was so good.

  • October 10th, 2017 Ultimate lost when interrupted. This was a nerf for a lot of heroes (and not for some). Reinhardt was hit bad with this one (his counters were not). Also, Hack now interrupts Reinhardt’s Earthshatter.

  • November 16th, 2017: Moira enters the game, she is a good addition. I love her, even though Reinhardt is not the most equipped tank to deal with such a hero. D.Va is the tank that best counters her.

  • February 27th, 2018: Doomfist handcannon Ammo recovery rate increased from 0.8 seconds to 0.65 seconds per bullet. And now we have all the recent Sombra changes.

So why did I show you all this Chronologically? Because I have to paint the picture. I have seen too many people say that Reinhardt is fine. Reinhardt’s shield hasn’t suffered. This is simply wrong. I know most people these days have short term memory, but when you dig into the history of Overwatch’s changes, you see a clear pattern that Reinhardt’s kit has suffered greatly to the following:

  1. Hero Reworks (specifically to heroes that counter him)
  2. Hero buffs (specifically damage buffs that contribute/enable dive or spam metas)
  3. and Hero additions (almost all the new heroes contribute to countering Reinhardt in some way).

All the while, Orisa feels and is better to deal with these changes. She actually fits right in. Sombra change? Np, your shield is already out. Junkrat buffs? Np, you have fortifiy to survive the RIP Tire. Briggy? Np, her bash won’t bring down your shield like it will Reinhardt. Dive? Np, you can bring as much spam, Moira (and now Briggy to counter it).

Orisa simple dominates, and that’s fine. I like Orisa, but enough is enough that Reinhardt is fine. The evidence is clear:

REIN IS NOT FINE!

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Jeff said this a while ago on a Tracer nerf thread: "The perception of balance is often more powerful than balance itself."
Although Blizzard balance according to player feedback and internal statistics, it seems like they favor the statistics side. An evident example is Genji, according to his statistics he is not overpowered at all but the forums keep complaining about Genji saying that he is unfun to play against.

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I played since launch too. I know all of these nerfs. Yes rein has gotten more counters over the months but are you telling me that from all of season 3 to 5 Rein was getting picked less, especially in the high of Triple Tank? Not really.

When Sombra came out, nobody swapped rein.
When Pharah’s splash was increased, nobody swapped.
When the hack cooldown was implemented nobody swapped.
When Orisa came out, NOBODY THOUGHT SHE WAS GOOD ENOUGH TO COMPETE WITH HIM.
When Junkrat did not hurt himself nobody swapped.

It was only when dive came out that suddenly people realized that winston can shield them enough in competitive. That is the real fracture. And then later, people also realized oh wait there is another tank with a shield and they picked up Orisa, which became the tank for spam which solidified as the anti-dive.

As a side note, I think Winston and Orisa being a main tank is needed since there is a problem with a character if he is picked most of the time.

Doomfist rocket punch is not an actual counter to him (at least I did not feel like it was when I played against one since cc full counters df).

A lot of the damage buffs pre spam meta can be subsided because reins just have to play smarter with their shield management.

And ngl the new sombra buff screws rein, but it screws everyone. And if everyone is screwed, everything is the same (except for sombra being god tier in comp).

If rein was not fine, he wouldnt be the main tank for three different team compositions while Winston just has dive and Orisa has anti dive.

tl:dr half the stuff you listed did not matter to rein players since they just played around it.
It was nice to have a simpler game, but sometimes adapting to the situation is for the better.

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I think you missed the entire point of my post which was a power creep does exist, and it doesn’t favor Reinhardt. And this only continues to compound with every new patch. I’m sorry but I have to pull my head out of the sand at some point and see the clear sky. Reinhardt’s kit is being completely overshadowed and unfavored in just about every way.

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