Sym was the beam hero for DPS. They now gave that to Mei and while it’s a much worse version, that takes away something that made Sym special. Sym also was THE shield destroyer, they removed this function. Her TP is also kinda weird now but tbf on that front that thing has changed like 95 times during the games life cycle.
As for Bastion, he’s lost his “you shall not pass” feeling. Bastion was the rock of the roster, extremely scary to be caught out by and impossible to move in sentry. He now gets booped in sentry, can only stay in it for so long, does alot less damage but still has the limitation of essentially being stuck in place because he barely moves. The undisputed sustain fire hero has been turned into soldier with 1/10th the speed, 3x larger hitbox and 1/4 the firerate with a terrible version of helix which is on a longer cooldown and is harder to hit.
Then you have his unique, skill based ultimate being turned into a point and click adventure that’s less threatening than a Cryo’d Mei. Seriously I didn’t see a single person get a kill with that ability in both BETA’s in any of my matches and I only got about 1 because it takes so long to land and is so obvious where it’s going to land alongside having terrible damage outside the dead centre that you can literally just walk out of it.
I know you tried to be facetious here, but you actually is right. All those abilities are unique in comparison with the others you listed.
Symmetra gave extra shields, while Torbjorn gives out extra armor. Torb’s armor go away after being chipped and need replenishment. Symmetra’s shields would stay on until the ally dies (1.0), moves out of range, or the Shield Generator gets destroyed (2.0).
The moving barrier was completely different from the tank’s barriers, and Orisa barrier after that was also a 4th different type of barrier.
Symmetra’s turret act completely different from Torb’s turret, regarding DPS, effects, range, placement, and match-ups.
She was a very unique hero. Thematically and mechanically.
My point is that yes, the abilities are unique, but no the mechanics of said abilities are not unique. Hardly anything in the game is mechanically unique at a fundamental level.
Yes, Symmetra is and always has been unique because abilities that share similar mechanics aren’t nearly the same when you actually use them.
Did you miss that part of OW2 where the damage is much more, and the defense is much less? The cast time is too long to stick out in front of a half-decent enemy.
In any elo people can’t shoot through walls. Soaring behind a highground is safer than standing on it. Mercy has 3D movement, why would you limit it to 2D? For balance, you can enter a penalty for a flying target without linking it itself.
I don’t understand this obsession with getting Mercy to touch the ground anyway. Is it really not enough for you how disgusting the res is in itself?
I think most of the forays in homogenization haven’t been as boring as I thought it would be. I will say that I that Magnetic Grenade is a lame ability in my opinion however.
The ease of guiding any system to a desired state is proportionate to its complexity. I didn’t feel I needed to back it up.
It makes it too difficult to be realistically achievable. Not only is overwatch an incredibly complex game on its own, it was also specifically designed to appeal to as many different kinds of people as possible.
The ‘homogenisation’ people are talking about here has been around hero design/balance, but really it’s been an ongoing trend since hero limits were implemented all those years ago.
Magnetic Grenade and new Shield Bash are the definition of zero creativity changes to abilities that probably did need to be changed. Their idea was to take away their utility/uniqueness and just add… damage… wow really? How hard is it to come up with another replacement utility/debuff?
It depends on your balancing strategy. If you have a strategy with the measurements you wish to balance with, then it isn’t that awful.
Say you wish to balance around non mirrored winrates in Masters.
Tweaking for that isn’t that hard.
Now, making it SEEM balanced to the players, that is more difficult, but that is a cursed problem, but actual balance to a metric? Not so much you know?
The problem is more a “how do we choose the metrics we wish to base our balancing on” than a hero complexity one.
Personally, I think the heroes are still unique. The effects they use to have are just not as polarizing anymore. The only transition is that the characters effects have been watered down a bit and given more granularity.
Mei will no longer freeze going from doing like no damage and a kill to suddenly having more consistent damage and a consistent slow source. Both are still helpful and you still maintain wall as she always has had.
Sombra still hacks, but its a 1sec disable not a full 5 sec one. You still maintain stealth and EMP is less feast or famine. It gets the damage in, with a disruption into abilities, but not as severe between doing nothing and destroying everyone with follow-up.
Teleporter from Symmetra was stupid overpowered or completely worthless. Moving it to a regular ability waters down its potential powerf, but there is now far more nuance in using it and flexiblitity.
Many of these heroes swaps and countering has not changed in the slightest. Only the ease with which they counter things has changed because it takes a little more effort to use stuff. Along with raw feast or famine has been replaced with finess and flexibility.
It takes away those choies, by making every kit similar.
There isn’t a real “differentiable agency” if everyone has the same fundamental tools to do all the mechanics but with different visuals.
define timelines here?
the ow2 base will have a brief surge upon release (not a metric of success by any means). followed by a signal/noise surge of fly-by-night “look at this meme f2p title on steam”, mixed in with diehard fanbois and whales. I think it will be a multi-modal experience with maybe 2-3 clusters of player “types” and a lot of gap between.
The players they are likely to “get” != “retain”; and making things homogenized with MTX to stand out cosmetically, is a total churn-n-burn model. The chronics will basically roleplay 2-3 heroes each and maybe pay up for those unlocks. There will be a flood of burners and the game will decay to “no1cares” within a few months.
not sure what audience they are going for. broadly applicable generic fps crowd that are aging out of br/cod? perhaps, but at the cost of some of the mmorpg/moba types who like to pewpew with friends in fps environment?
the ow2 we saw in beta seemed a bit too fast (dominated by iwin brawl buttons and hitscan on-demand ttk/reg) - there wasn’t a lot of “agency” for the supports, the builders, the hybrid utility and creative flex gameplay. it needs to land somewhere between ow1 clunk (222 turtles) and ow1 open (like 132) and slower than 4v4 tdm.
all in all homogenization is going to make it worse for practically all demographics except the f2p gamer bros just looking for a pump-n-dump game.
EMP is way more feast or famine now, before you could guarantee the Zen/Lucio couldn’t ult and deny all your value. You could guarantee the enemy tank couldn’t shield/DM your follow-up.
EMP went from an S-tier ult to F-tier. Sorry, you are beyond wrong.
You played straight into everything I literally said. EMP only disrupts in OW1. Which means its powerful in blocking potential counter-play, but with no follow-up enemies are at full HP and you need a ton of damage and it didn’t do anything. It easily goes from doing nothing to being one of the most powerful team wipes available.
OW2 now does a 40% enemy hp to all enemies affected giving it a more consistent and perm effect. You can heal things off, but the effects are far longer lasting potentially due to applying to damage than only a 5sec timer of a person can’t use abilities.
Its not as powerful or nearly as weak, but now provides more consistent value at the very minimum in 40% dmg while allowing potential follow-up in having caused the 1sec disruption and the extra damage Sombra gets. You should still be able to secure a kill on each EMP, but you might not get a full team wipe.