This is very true.
One may infer that when Jeff mentioned “the way the game was being played” referencing players doing things like playing Torb on offense and one tricking and so on, that he was implying that these weren’t edge cases.
If they were the risk of enforcing ancidion by supporting the majority of players would have caused minimal push back.
But if the majority of players are playing the game differently than intended, than it makes it a wise business decision to support those players and adapt the game to the way the majority players are engaging with it.
Which means that the general sentiment of the vocal forum posters about how “bad” one tricking is, and how “the game should be played” are, most likely, the vocal minority.
To be fair, Jeff has said in the past that it’s a very difficult obstacle because the forums are far from a united voice on even a single topic, let alone overall. He mentioned how a single topic of discussion can be found in pocket groups in the thousands, and that alone makes listening to ‘us’ the forums with such varying opinions a monumental task.
Never mind that discussion of the game exists outside of these forums too - with YouTube content and Twitch streamers having their own pocket ‘forums’/voices. There are some overlaps of these content creators speaking here on the forums, but even their own followings will have varying opinions and so on. You see where I’m going with this?
So when singular groups among these thousands start criticising Blizzard or accusing them of not listening, I wonder if they’ve considered how difficult a task accounting for our opinions is to do just in and of itself?
This is something that continues to eat away at me. Overwatch has lost their integrity in their own game a long time ago. In most games, if a player doesn’t adapt to the game and learn how to play the game the way it was intended, they don’t succeed in their games and don’t last very long as a dedicated player base. Instead of letting those players fizzle out, Overwatch ended up changing their whole identity to cater to these players. This is why counters have been problematic, this is why kit changes are drastic, nerf and buffs all over the place, etc. Overwatch is having an identity crisis. I hope they come to their senses, stick to their guns, and back up their original creation.
I’m saddened by this. The idea that you could switch heroes/characters mid game was what attracted so many people to Overwatch and I think it serves a great purpose. I agree that one-tricking and maining is a bit off (again why counters are so opposed). Other games like LoL is where it’s absolutely fine to one-trick and pick a champ no matter the situation but Overwatch is different and I wish the devs would save this novelty.
Yes, I totally understand that. I don’t think I understand how divided the community is tho. But most ideas require literal debate to weigh the pros and cons, and that’s almost impossible to achieve
When I see big generic youtubers throwing objectively bad ideas with wrong arguments, and people supporting them, I get that we can’t decide anything for the game. It wouldn’t be good, because designing a game is way too difficult from the point of view of a player, and you can’t do it in a fair way without taking everything in account, and even that alone seems impossible
Poor balancing goes beyond just the addition or changes to the characters. Its been a thing since launch. You’ll have heroes who have their intended weaknesses minimized by their skillsets to the point where they’re non existant, and other heroes who are so specialized that their weaknesses are massive, but don’t really have much as a trade off. Its bizarre and backwards. Its also strange that to this day, Blizz is still taking a generalized approach to balancing. Rather than tweaking things to compartmentalize things like damage, they’re buffing it across the board. Like take for example the numerous times they’ve tried to make Tank buster chars by increasing damage, which in turn makes said characters WAY too good against the rest of the cast? If they would just make it so damage could be in categories that apply to different health pool types, it’d make things SO much easier to balance. That way you can make damage which specifically targets things like Armor, Shields, or what have you.
Yeah they are out of touch, maybe the piles of money makes jeff think he knows better than everyone else but the common consensus is that the dev team is way out of touch and htis game has been a heaping pile of burning trash since moira/brig came out. Although I still like some of the iconic characters like Lucio keeps me playing. Sad that every new character has to arrive on steroids, just another example of them screwing up their own game balance.
The thing is that the community isn’t a hive mind, the reason why there are different opinions is because that there are people who enjoy the game in different ways and they are trying to keep everyone happy which IMHO leaves no one truely happy. It’s like they toss each part a bone every now and then and hope it will calm them down for a bit while they figure out who to through which bone next.
THe main dev said that it’s our fault brig was created? Nope its your fault big boi. Don’t blame usfor your crap character creation that only a few people like. Make skill important again ffs.
On the contrary… Skill is important, now more than ever. Brigitte is now the new gatekeeper similar to how Sym 2.0 helped separate the good players from the bad.
I would disagree with OP… the game is Evolving. the term “mistake” is debatable. I for one am glad they’re trying out things to help shake things up.
The playerbase def has to foot some (significant) part of the blame. The devs don’t have an easy job catering to such a chaotic bunch.
A gatekeeper even for pros? Brig used to be broken to the point where some people actually went from Plat to GM within a season or two. She has now been nerfed to the point where she doesn’t really make sense outside of the 3-3 meta.
I think the reasonable people asked for better ways to deal with it, not outright delete Dive and also nearly the entire damage role.
She needed some fine tuning at the start (like how they like to release heroes to be a little more OP to inspire ppl to try them, before tweaking it down). I personally don’t agree with all the nerfs given to her, but trust that the devs have the statistics to back up the reason for her changes.
Brig was meant to be game-changing. Some people just didn’t adapt well to that change and wished to go back to how OW was before…
IDK about you… i kinda enjoyed that time when a meta was still being formed when Brig was released… people were experimenting wildly with Doomfists, Bastions, Meis, Pharahs, Sombras etc… united to fight the Brig menace.
