"the game was designed around hero swapping"

– Person who plays heroes that are never forced to swap

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Meanwhile Blizzard when OW2 released:

As we build new heroes and balance the existing cast for our new 5v5 PvP experience, we have shifted our hero design approach to allow you to have an impact on your matches with a range of different heroes and strategies. This means reducing the presence of specific hard counters to heroes.

For example, in the original Overwatch—especially at higher skill levels—the strongest way to shut down a great enemy Tracer diving into your support line was to swap over to Cassidy. If that Cassidy player was effective enough, the Tracer could even feel a need to switch themselves to avoid that hard counter. While Overwatch 2 heroes will each have their own clear strengths and weaknesses, and some heroes will be more effective against others, we believe our game plays better and is more fun with fewer hard counters and a broader range of effective hero picks. A further benefit is having your personal favorite heroes be viable more often. That philosophy will be guiding us moving forward.
Source: Overwatch 2 Explained: Battle Pass, Shop, Hero Unlocks, and more - News - Overwatch

Can’t really say I think they’ve succeeded.

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I’d give Aaron more time before calling it a failure. Maybe in a few years? Looking at how long it took the developers to rework Roadhog and Sombra I think it’s still too early for any huge changes.

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Why bother mastering a hero and doing all the wacky tricks no one would normally would be able to pull off anymore? What good is it for? Are such players and their skill expression not impressive in their own right? Shouldn’t that be recognized and rewarded? Like a Junkrat one-trick who keeps blowing your Pharah out of the sky? Does he really belong n your elo? No? Just press H and, roll your face on your keyboard, and keep him where he belongs. Lost in obscurity with all the lower ranks, while you climb and laugh like a maniac at your mastery of card game counterswap mastery despite having only a basic grasp on each hero you jump to.

Best to keep propping up the rock paper scissors meta-game like it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread for a fast-paced shooter.

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some will swap multiple times which can get annoying when your attack strategy was goign well or if your defending your defense strategy…

The game literally was designed around hero swapping, though. I am not a huge fan of the design, that is no secret. But it is what it is.

Still not going to swap! :triumph:

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I am literally the first proponent of the idea and I play Symmetra. Who is forced to swap when a Pharah looks her way.

Its usually the players of popular and/or overpowered heroes the first one to clutch their pearls when counterpicking exists.

They never planned to. You cant remove counterpicking out of OW. Its like trying to make the sun cold.

This ‘‘we are removing counterpicks in OW2’’ was just a corporate lie to get popular hero players to feel good about themselves and hype the game.

Its funny that you have crafted this entire narrative about ‘‘counterpicking wins the game’’ when right now Soldier is the do-it-all DPS across all ladder. There is no reason to counterpick when you can just pick Soldier and be rewarded for one tricking a hitscan.

Also the Junkrats that can bomb Pharahs out of the sky DO climb. The issue with climbing as Junkrat isnt Pharah, its the overpowered hitscans that become the hegemony after gold.

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90% of the time people who swap all the time say that to try and explain this game to toxic one trick who come on this forum complaining.

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How could they succeed when they thought cree hard countered tracer? When if anything, she had the advantage.

To be fair, even top 500 players thought that. Wanted thought that even though Tracer would bend him over without his pocket carrying him.

I certainly don’t recall top500 players calling cree a hard counter to her. He could be a good pick against a tracer. It would be a fairly even match if they both played well, but certainly not a hard counter in the same way old hack shut down doom.

I am not sure if they used the word “hard”. It was a relatively common belief that he was a Tracer counter, for whatever reason. It is similar to those people who believe Reaper counters Hog for some reason. No idea where the hell they got that idea, but people seem to believe it in top 500 as well. Scary.

Cree was the closest thing to an active Tracer counter in the DPS role. He was just a super soft counter, who happened to be a much stronger counter to any other DPS hero.

I find this absolutely hilarious.

We went from Overwatch 1, where you could literally master your character to the point of never needing to swap because you were just good enough to play around your counters, to Overwatch 2, where now it doesn’t matter how good you are as a character; if you don’t swap, you lose.

What’s even more hilarious is that the reason they stated this in the first place was because everyone was mad about there being characters locked behind the battlepass, and the developers wanted to quell that anger.

Here we are a year later, with extreme counter-picking, opposite of their original goal, which was less hard counters, and yet they’re still in the battlepass.

What a joke… :person_facepalming:

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Actually they quite literally doubled back on the exact example they gave.

It’s almost like they intentionally designed the ability to swap and didn’t limit it

It’s almost like these people that complain about swapping characters are suffering devastating skill issues

See, the funny thing is that you don’t have to swap if you’re good. That never changed.

The number of tanks to carry people did change though, so that may have had something to do with it

Oh youve noticed that have you?

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… or who actually learned how to play 3-4 heroes out of each role.

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You learned THREE heroes per role? Dang, son. Mr. Flexible over here. I am impressed. I barely know how to play three heroes total. :skull:

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