There’s a major issue with the game, by its design if we’re to believe word from the horse’s mouth.
Some heroes were designed to be very rarely picked while others were designed to be constantly picked. Each hero was designed with a personality and play style that will appeal to a wide audience. There are a lot of heroes with a lot of play styles and mechanics. Mastering every hero is an impossible task. Meaning you have to pick a few to be good at to get value for your time spent.
This creates a system where to be good, you have to only play a few heroes. But most the heroes aren’t designed to be played but rarely. How is this huge contradiction getting the green light for a AAA game? All the frustration I’ve felt, all the times people are toxic to me for wanting to play Tracer or Widowmaker, or Sombra, or Mei, was BY DESIGN? You DESIGNED heroes to not be played? What the heck.
So we’re all supposed to play Rein, D.VA and Lucio? Is that really the grand Blizzard vision of OW? Because it sucks the big one. A lot. Why even have other heroes if they’re going to be “niche” uses and, in reality, niche means you are only good in very specific circumstances while other heroes are good in all circumstances.
Hero teams get stale. How TIRED I am of seeing Winston, D.Va and Rein. Where’s the diversity? Where’s the creativity? Where’s love for people who like heroes that aren’t played or shunned if they are?
Then you should tune it so that it IS fun and IS balanced because otherwise we end up in a situation where we are today, DPS pick rates are terrible, yet they have the largest roster size. So if you like junkrat, spent time to get good with him, the value of that is basically nothing. So you might as well never play him. That’s the best way to play the game, niche heroes aren’t worth the time to get good with if you can do everything with another hero and more. Just think if someone could tune the game so it was viable and fun.
Fun I might add, is extremely subjective. I enjoy QP with 5 DPS more than I enjoy toxic Reinhardts telling their team to switch.
Well your expectation wasn’t met with reality, and that’s fine, iteration is a key thing in any endeavor. But I feel it’s more like you don’t care that’s how it went, or care that there’s all this toxicity based around people not being able to play heroes they spent time to get good with or enjoy.
Don’t you put this on maining or one tricks, or you better equally criticize your OWL players that specialize in playing certain heroes because that’s how you GET GOOD at something, you specialize. You designed a game with heroes that are basically better off never being played, and wonder why it creates issues? Sorry but this just seems incredibly myopic.
Switching comes with a lot of downsides, you lose all ult charge in a game where ults are very powerful. You have to die, or leave your team, in a game where missing a single person during a fight can wipe your team or lose an objective. You have to switch often to someone you can’t play at all at the same level because you can’t because that’s how games with heroes work. You get really good at a very few of them to succeed.
If you were not going to fight against instincts, you would make people’s instincts the correct choice rather than sold as some morally selfish view. You would make quickplay, where people’s instincts are toward a more balanced pick rate, or fun characters to play as, the most viable way to play the game. Instead you shake hands with people that have created these stagnate metas involving insane pick rates on a few tanks and few healers in every meta. With DPS an after thought or revolving door at best when again THEY MAKE UP MOST THE ROSTER.
The only way to fix this is make 3-4 DPS, 1-2 Tanks and 1-2 Healer the way the game is “tuned” to be viable. Only then will people’s instincts in gravitating toward different heroes and balancing out pick rate, and finally having a breath of fresh air rather than seeing the same heroes every game be made reality.
I played APEX recently and all I can say is, it feels nice to not be hated for just playing a character I enjoy. And if the uncaring tone and deaf ears to the fact you are hated for chars you enjoy to play isn’t resolved and carries on as is I will likely look back less and less until OW is a bitter memory where I felt in a constant struggle to simply get good at a few characters I enjoy and play them. You know, PLAYING THE GAME. Instead we have these people trying to force others to play certain heroes all the time. Choice is an illusion, or you are fighting against a hoard of toxic man children to even be able to enjoy what was created for the sake of enjoyment. Not everyone can enjoy playing Rein, in fact few do. His play style is godawful boring. Holding right click, almost no aiming involved. Waiting till you ult to have action go on. Some of the healers are fun but not every game. And most the cast of OW is locked behind, you pick this, I report/troll you. It’s awful. And your comments just made me realize that it seems it will never be fixed which was the hope I held out keeping my love of OW alive.
TF2 Has niche loadouts, Apex has niche weapons. But when you make heroes with personalities and play styles locked to being monolithic, and design some of them to rarely if ever be used, you create constant conflict in the community. Someone who loves engineer and mastered it can switch to a different loadout if things aren’t working. Someone who loves tracer, has no options. Play someone you suck with or don’t enjoy? Not even primary fires are standardized, switching a hero means having an entirely different understanding of how to be accurate with them.
I’m so sick of this communities expectations and constant pressure to do as the other players desire, even if 9 out of 10 times they’re wrong. Trying to force square pegs in round holes because that’s “the meta”. This is all wrong and it seems like you guys don’t care. Mind you this entire experience is no different if you are a tank main or support main, the popular thing to do then is just blame the DPS as selfish morally vacant people. It saddens me that’s the rhetoric you seem more sold on than anything else. The frustration however, is shared among all players and seemingly was as intended, and as designed.
