The Mercy Community Problem

General Discussion
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This can be applied to any “Main” community. It just seems to be more relevant right now to the Mercy community. Who knows, seems like this bug may hit the sym community soon. The signs are there.

Well, to start this post off, I have occasionally come to the forums from time to time, but have never actively read posts until recently. I was scrolling on my Youtube, and I came across a video by a youtuber, whom I will not name, but many of you will know of whom I speak of. This video made me take a look at the forums a little more closely at the mercy main community. This community is very vocal as many who will read this are already aware of. I am going to take the time to describe what I have seen and why it’s a problem. Understand, I am not addressing every Mercy main. This is specifically talking about those who engage in the behavior that is about to be described. If you are someone who is a mercy main who is respectful, this does not apply to you. I have a habit of being abrasive and hyperbolic, for this topic, I am going to attempt to refrain from engaging in such behavior. Let’s begin.

-Constant topics spamming the general thread about how mercy is being ignored.*@

-Frequent attacks against developers and Jeff, usually in accusations of neglect.*

-Attacking other communities for getting a rework before Mercy.*

-Vitriolic responses to those who disagree with the state of Mercy.*

-Attempting to be a gatekeeper of who and who can not criticize Mercy by claiming they do not have the appropriate amount of hours on Mercy to have an opinion. I have seen more often than not, if you don’t have most of your hours on Mercy, you will be disregarded.* #

-Using weak arguments usually claiming that Mercy is not “fun” or “impactful”.#

Now, one of the overarching problems you are going to notice here, is the constant lashing out at developers and the overall community at large through the interactions they have on the forums (I have marked these with a *). This is by far the worst part. It’s the story as old as time. That one kid, that no other kids want to want to be friends with, and you almost feel bad for the kid, until you see the kid hurling rocks at the other children. These sort of behaviors are going to lessen the community push for a mercy rework, because these sort of actions are constantly making people hostile towards you AND your cause. And frankly, as a dev, I wouldn’t be all that excited to help a community or be very receptive with constant hostility coming from the group asking me for my time.

@ .With the constant Mercy posts in general, not only are you essentially spamming the forums, annoying most of the forum users, but you are hurting yourself in another way. While I make fun of the sheer amount of Mercy Mega threads, I just find it absurd, They do serve in fact 2 purposes. They consolidate any ideas when it comes to ideas for a possible rework, and it keeps the constant mercy spam over general down to a minimum. You should seek out the mercy mega threads to voice your complaints. It makes it easier for your concerns to be seen by the developers instead of them having to go over the too many to count mercy topics. And… the growing amount of disdain you get from fellow forum users will diminish.

#. These are some of the worst responses in the posts. Trying to tell people they can not have an opinion because they do not have enough hours on mercy is absolutely absurd. Someone honestly may just have inherent knowledge with mechanics to have a very good understanding without maining that character. Also, we all payed for this game. And while some of us do not play Mercy, or very little, we all have to interact with mercy in our games. The change of a character changes the game for every single person. This dismissive behavior is not constructive and makes it hard for people to sympathize with you.
“Fun and Impactful” Now I understand the devs have used this as a reason to change a character. HOWEVER. When addressing your fellow forum users, this argument is not going to go over well with someone you are trying to convince. Fun is subjective. I like playing Mercy as she is right now (Maybe knock her heals up to 55/s) But overall, I enjoy her. For someone like me, telling me that she isn’t fun or impactful falls flat. I enjoy her in her current state. Fun isn’t even quantifiable. I can’t grab my trusty FUN-o-meter from my cabinet and put it next to my PC while playing Mercy on OW to get the fun rating. You need to be concise with your problem with Mercy and be ready for disagreement.

All right, so there it is, and chances are this is the last thing I will post about Mercy or its community. I apologize to all the grammar and spelling dictators whom, I am sure, I have affected with this post. I corrected problems as I saw them, but I know I did not catch them all. All feedback is welcome.

And one last thing directed at “that youtuber” In case you come across this topic. I had some friends who responded to you in the comment section of one of your recent videos. They were respectful, but critical of the things you said in your video. And you muted them. Which is very strange, considering how concerned you seem to be about people being suspended in OW forums. (If you know about the youtuber that I am speaking of, I ask that you refrain from any sort of harassment.)

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The big problem with mercy and considering myself a Mercy main, is that we got unsolicited reworks. Before Valk gone live, an avg 80% of Mercy claim to not accept this changes, isn’t suppose Jeff makes decisions based on data tho? There he could get some data.

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Again. This argument has been addressed.

Mercy mains are not the sole player base. Other people are affected by mercy, and their opinion matters just as much. Everyone is affected by Mercy’s state. This is not a single player game. It’s FPS MOBA. Changing characters is par for the course for every single moba. Sometimes your favorite character changes.

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My main concern with Mercy mains is that they say making Mercy Fun and Worthwhile, as their top priority.

But 99% of the posts are asking for multi-Rez or removing Rez, which devs are 100% not going to do.

You’d think they’d focus on finding the path of least dev resistance to achieve their supposed top priority.

Tldr; It’s been a year guys. Why not focus on doing it the easy way?

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I’ve never met a disrespectful Mercy main … but they do get very frustrated at the team for being rude. I don’t think it’s their fault, I also completely agree with you 100%.

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Yeah, I would agree. I get why you would want to remove the whole rez mechanic, it would certainly make her easier to balance. I mean its the power to essentially “undue” a pick. But I mean, then her whole valkyrie theme she has wouldn’t really make sense. Its a hard problem to fix. And it seems like some people think Dev’s have a magic wand where they can just touch something and its good to go.

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Doing something the way the dev’s want means nothing changes because they like this rework lol

They also resisted changing scatter for 2 years. But it happens eventually.

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you’re correct, everyone’s opinions matter… as long as they’re accurate. mercy was hit by a rework that people who played her didn’t want, that was fuelled by inaccurate opinions as to the behaviours of mercy players (which was called out as being misinformation), and has slowly been getting worse because the misinformation continues to be spread.

also,

-Using weak arguments usually claiming that Mercy is not “fun” or “impactful”.#

‘unfun’ was used (by community members who hated her) to explain why mass res was bad, and is now used by those same people against the mercy community to explain why she shouldn’t be changed from the trainwreck* she currently is. why is the rest of the community allowed to use ‘unfun’ as a reason, but mercy players aren’t?

*subjective opinion. if i’m crying because a hero i used to enjoy and love – even if she stopped being impactful – is now frustrating and feels useless to me, something is wrong. i don’t cry over overwatch heroes. i don’t cry over overwatch in general.

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I get why they got rid of mass rez though, I’ve talked to one of my friends about this. The problem with mass rez is it can undo a hard earned fight. It’s too powerful for its own good. Now, could mass rez have been fixed with the LoS issues and possibly giving it the cast time single rez has now, without the invulnerability, maybe. But I mean the whole mass rez thing made it so that you were likely to lose a game if you didn’t have a mercy, and it generally made Mercys with ults hang back out of a team fight on standby to mass rez. I understand why they changed it.

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The hysteria is self perpetuating when it interacts with her actual gameplay.

Group x (the smallest) claims she’s useless, group y hears about. Group x and y play her less. Group z sees that she’s played less and joins group x in proclaiming uselessness. Group a points out some arbitrary statistic, which validates x y and z. and around and around and around it goes. This isn’t exclusive to mercy either.

Overbuff plays a large roll in this. Think social media when it comes to socio political issues. It’s presence just makes things worse.

On top of all is the brazen lack of objectivity, and overt ignorance. But I dont want to detail that and create any further animosity, it’s there and it’s glaring.

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Mkay, I already said, that I am against the words fun and impactful in an argument. I do not understand why I would defend other peoples usage of it because they are against Mercy. I not once implied this was the case. Resorting to attacking a strawman is in bad taste and incredibly dishonest.

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I don’t think this is more of a problem than just people unable to talk to each other. While some Mercy Mains can be somewhat bitter and toxic, there is just as much toxicity towards them. Mostly unjustifiable, from what I can see. And to be fair, I don’t see their arguments as weak, just badly said in a worst case scenario. The only thing that is lacking in those posts is patience, since… well, It’ll probably be a while until dev team will look at Mercy again.

Well, yes. But what are you saying? That experiences of people who don’t enjoy her current state are invalid and should be shut down? “Fun” is subjective, but that also means that everyone is right, because they’re describing their own experiences - and the Mercy player play her the most.

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I would have to say I definitely agree with there being an abundance of hysteria.

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So then, this thread is completely pointless since bad behaviour gets punished and community flagged. There are always going to be cherry-picked examples of bad people. It’s the internet. We shouldn’t be addressing it though because that’s normal and is not an issue since we have moderators.

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I hope you can find better arguments in this thread then.

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I am saying that if you are to try to convince someone to your side that Mercy needs a change, that you need to make an argument for someone who doesn’t already agree with you. If I already held your position and said “Yeah I agree, Mercy doesn’t feel fun right now.” thats fine. However, that isn’t the case most of the time. And someone who doesn’t agree with you, isn’t going to find any argument generally when someone says that a hero isn’t “fun”. I am asking that said person making this argument evaluate what makes that character not “fun” and expand on this. If you are not, you are actively choosing to not partake in the possibility of convincing someone that your argument is worthwhile.

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You’re expectations make no sense. If people find the fun aspect of Mercy as an issue, they will be suggesting things that make her fun. Whether it is likely to get implemented or not is an after-thought.

2 things. The things you suggest are more likely to be dismissed because of how ridiculous they are. Secondly, this is false. They’ve never once said that Valkyrie and Resurrect are here to stay.

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Wait a second… Hold on…

Oh snap. Right there. I understand there are people who are constructive with their criticism. I acknowledge this in the very beginning. And I have no problem with people doing this. However, maybe you were just giving this to me so I can read this mega thread, just to share. And if that is the case, then thank you, I’ll take a look at it later.

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I think you’re assuming that Mercy players want to convince you, sway your opinion, when not necessarily - they are probably just simply describing how she feels to them. Everyone’s perspective can be important, especially if someone plays said hero all the time. However, “Impactful” is much less a matter of opinion. Mercy’s current ult has little purpose, after all the nerfs it’s nothing but a slight buff to things she already does without it. I bet a single-person rez (only instant) would be much more impactful.

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I mean… her ult right now can potentially heal her entire team through a team fight if they are grouped, or increase the combined damage her team by 30%. Idk if i would call that “little purpose”. As I said earlier, fixing mercy isn’t easy. Her kit would be hard to rework, and not everyone feels that it needs one. And I would have to ask. If someone makes a topic without any real reasoning behind why they don’t find mercy fun, whats the point of making it? Hoping for a mega thread to spawn where someone has something more useful to say? I mean it’s not like there aren’t other topics with the same thing being said that could be posted there. Bogging down the forums with those sort of posts are just going to annoy people and make them less receptive to your problem.

No, these behaviors are not against the ToS (Or at least some of the are not, however these behaviors can still be witnessed before the aforementioned action by moderators and still will affect peoples perception). They are behaviors however that make people less receptive to a point of view. Your red herring is not appreciated or valid. Thanks. Have a good one.

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