“we listen to everyone’s feedback. it’s all important. when it comes to balance, we primarily balance the game around owl, gm/masters”
An actual Jeff quote from a week ago. It says they PRIMARILY balance with owl and gm in mind. The obvious implication is that they balance with owl and gm with MORE weightage than mid to low ranks, not completely exclude them.
What does this have to do with balance?
Everyone argues about balancing about ranks and player skills and etc etc. There’s one thing this game is built around.
Unrealistic expectations. And that’s it.
This game is built around this utopian society where everyone compliments each other, is supportive, all has mics, all groups up with friends, and plays a great competitive match, where we all walk down the row and shake hands at the end. This game is not a game made for reality.
When you load this game, you get people of all backgrounds, with mics or no mics, some not in ANY form of comms, some people blasting music and can’t hear the game sounds, some people just negative in nature and will like to argue, some people are trolls who just tilt people for fun, etc. This is the realistic game.
They need to balance the game around real world public, not this utopian society they have in their minds.
i counter with 1 example that shows the actual skill dif between the top and bottom players.
widow 1 shots.
GM = carry
bronze = useless.
… but Brigitte was specifically designed in order to counter high - level Dive comp lmao.
Actually… what they said was:
Jeff
well there are about 200 pros and 50 million casuals… but we both know you’re not asking for that percentage breakdown =]
we listen to everyone’s feedback. it’s all important. when it comes to balance, we primarily balance the game around owl, gm/masters.
After being asked:
if you were to give percentages, how much do you listen to pros feedback vs the casuals?
so… No.
source:
Of course they’re balancing for GM – the most impactful change recently are Genji buffs that coincided with a campaign to bring back streamers who used to stream OW back into the fold. During that time, the likes of Seagull, Kephrii and Gale Adelaide went back to streaming OW for a couple of weeks. This was also the time when tons of feedback about balance came from Discord discussions between Blizzard and streamers.
It brought a huge uptick in streamer interest at the expense of the OWL. Blizzard marketing people made the recent debacle where the team with the best Genji won the last tournament into a positive by having their commentators and analyst gush over exciting Genji plays.
So, yeah, Blizzard are doing a lot of things (and that includes balance changes) for OWL and streamer views. And imho Blizzard balancing doesn’t feel fair and balanced for ordinary casual players.
It’s balanced around OWL,because there’s no other way to explain why we have characters like Sombra Sym Reaper Mei and why 99% of feedback from ladder always ignored
Another lost sheep i see,
What was said in the reddit AMA as far as i know from what people have said in this thread specifically, is;
“We balance the game while keeping the higher ranks in mind” Or something along those lines
And if you read the post, i say “The game isnt only balanced for GM”
As in its not balanced to gm in its extreme entirety.
not directly balanced, but if you read the entire comment i posted i explained updates weve gotten that prove that the devs are not just trying to cater the game to skill elitists and pro players.
Yes, i actually made a comment about that in this thread
THank you for the actual quote! This helps me now more than anyone else since now i have the unedited quote
But i had the same argument with Tempest before, just “primarily” is enough to say its not “in its entirety” so they dont “only” balance it for GM, which is what the post is about.
Its not, the forums are though, because 99% of the forums dont give actual balance suggestions but “NERF THIS NOW THEYRE BAD >:(” so theyve tuned out the forums.
wrong those heroes were asked by everyone pro included , because dive was too OP and boring after a while , pros only started to get mad at them after they needed something new to complain about , so why not complain about the heroes that legit saved the game from dive dominance
moira and brig were never added for casual they were design the way they are because the way they are its the only way to counter hypermobility
the only hero who was ever design for casual players was mercy
So your claim is that a game that’s primarily balanced around OWL, Masters and GM isn’t balanced for GM aka top-down? Okay. You’re entitled to your own opinion.
But keep your insults to yourself. All they do is motivate me not to take you seriously, which is the total opposite of what you’re trying to accomplish with this thread. Have a nice day.
It’s balanced around the devs lord and savior…OWL.
Im not exactly insulting you, i was guiding you to see what i was talking about since you misinterpreted my post.
I wasnt talking that the game isnt balanced in gm, but that the game isnt balanced for only gms.
its not a post complaining about the topic, but informing people of it, even 90%-10% ratio isnt 100% for gms
So this entire thread is nit picking about a technicality. If 1 of every 10 patch’s throws a bone to the casuals, that’s still balancing the game for the top 1%, and not the casuals.
Yes you would have. Owl complained more about five than elsewhere because they were the ones affected.
Ain’t no one in bronze using Winston . The problem is that skill supports cater to safe plays. Ana and Zen and Baptiste isn’t suited for dive beyond being the targets of dive. Which no one wants to be.
Not 100% is pretty unfair. By this measure, it’s not bad that GM has metas at all as plenty of heroes see some use
Yes it is. They have specifically admitted that it is. >_>
Name one change done in the last 8 months that had ANY focus or help to lower level play
Odd how all the easy to use tools that were made for people who aren’t as adept at the game to still play it, are the same tools that are levied against the ability of others to play something harder but more rewarding.
So yeah, this game hasn’t and never has only been balanced around Gm/masters, yet all the solutions that came for making the game more accessible are stifling accessibility of the game for the people they were meant to help - case in point - moira. Plat - 6.58% pickrate GM - 1.52% - they get played even when they’re not good. Much like Reinhardt who has basically been the meta for plat and below since the dawn of time because of guaranteed value and easy enough concepts, they get used instead to stomp out people who can’t perform above the guaranteed value heroes, this also contributes to the salt of the ranks because they are in essence easy heroes vs hard heroes at those ranks, because the aspects that ACTUALLY make those accessible heroes “Hard” are not there in lower ranks, but the difficulties the accessible heroes create is still present in the lower ranks with people less able to deal with them.
It was never balanced for GM/Masters so congrats on realizing that, but if I had to give a verdict to how that went down - backfired completely and we’ve been spending YEARS trying to balance this game for everyone because of these decisions. And it’s not even the high ranks suffering it, they can be annoying sure, but they’re not that good when you can actually play the game with decently competent teammates. And it still isn’t balanced and we have a table full of guts taken out of those heroes and they’re struggling to find a balance between them being good at low ranks still but not too good in high ranks - as exampled by Brigitte who is over 10% pickrate at GM and at plat is 2.7% - after being “gutted” she is still a heavy performer at the top- but she lost almost all her value to the common player using her as a wall of meat forcing a dps check in the time it takes for her to get from there to you, she can’t be usable in the way they intended for low ranks unless she is legitimately broken at the high rank - , called it when she was released as terrible design, called it when all the garaunteed value tools were being levied as a way to stifle creativity and limit the casual experience - which is exactly the opposite of its intention to begin with. This experiment shows that you can’t shortcut adaptability with ease of use, because casuals don’t adapt unless they need to, and the ones that want to adapt but with the skill of the casual, are less able to adapt and more salty about it. The whole thing is a MASSIVE backfire - THEY SHOULD HAVE ONLY BALANCED FOR MASTERS/GM - then we would be closer to a balanced gamestate, and you wouldn’t have so many games plat and below that are decided by someone refusing to swap off X because Moira is giving him the succ and you whole team tilts because he doesn’t want to swap. Balanced tools with equal difficulty for output it the only way to skill base your game. Anything else is just going to create angry people who can’t articulate their message because they can’t scope out enough.
Long story short - overwatch is a REALLY GOOD GAME - with GOOD INTENTIONS, but bad plans and lack of foresight on how those plans would turn out.
Too many words to just say it’s balanced for owl, gm/masters. I know it. Casuals know it. Above average players know it. Welcome to Blizzard.
It’s not balanced, period. Not even for OWL. They could balance it, but they refuse - because that would mean less plays for poster childs like genku/cree/ashe and more plays for Bastion/Mei/Sym. Controversial heroes that they most likely figure will lead to less viewers.