The precarious balance of... Well, everything?

General Discussion
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It is balanced… As all things should be…

Is what nobody has ever said about Overwatch, and to a different degree it’s inbred cousin Marvel Rivals. But people hate this in OW, and love it in Rivals.

What I want to talk about concerning this is kinda… Well… What’s a fix? Because there’s no obvious solution to this issue in Overwatch (or Rivals, but again, it’s more fun because of its imbalanced mess) and why that’s difficult.

In OW specifically, when talking about balance, most people want things to work a specific way. I.e, someone wants Widowmaker to have actual fall off damage and not what she has now where she can be parked halfway across the map with no bullet drop and one tap you. Of course, if she misses there’s a tracer, but c’mon.

While we all have differing opinions about Widowmaker in specific (making this a poor example) this is an exhibit of one of many balance posts an Overwatch player might make. The “it’s annoying, gut it” balance post. And this is where the whole point of everything stems from, and where the OW team might have failed? But also might not have. Again, it’s difficult.

When making a hero in a shooter like Overwatch, I reckon there’s a few different things you have to think about.

  1. Is the hero unique?
  2. Is this hero fun to play as?
  3. Is this hero fun to play with?
  4. Is this hero fun to play against?
  5. Does this hero fill a player niche?

One and two are the most obvious. In straight MOBAs like League, they have very similar characters (so the individual uniqueness of one’s kit isn’t what matters) but Overwatch likes having different unique heroes. And those heroes need to be fun to play as. It would be like promising Tracer with high speed high octane gameplay and giving us Reinhardt. Sure, we love Reinhardt, but he’s slow. That’s not fun to play as if you’re an Adderall addicted Tracer main.

The next two seem obvious but are what a lot of people ignore. Is this hero fun to have on your team? Do they fill that team-niche? Is this hero fun to fight against? Does it feel fair to fight them? These are difficult questions to find answers to, at least the latter is.

A hero in a team is an easier one. Tanks like Reinhardt are fun in a team, because Reinhardt fulfills the fantasy of “I AM YOUR SHIELD!” And covering for your teammates, and your teammates being able to shoot from behind your shield, or from behind your big giant armor. A tank like Hammond feels less fun to play with in a team, because he’s off doing his own thing, so you never get a sense of him, right? That kind of thing.

The point about “is it fun to play against” is the trickiest part. Because obviously? Obviously not. No. It won’t be fun to die to someone else. Obviously even if it’s Soldier v Soldier, it’s not fun. But, let’s think about how fun it is overall. How much annoyance does a specific character bring? This is hard to quantify, which I think is part of why Blizzard struggles. Also because they’re inept. But this one is very difficult to answer correctly, because nobody will agree. Some people think x is fair and balanced and others think x is broken and needs to be gutted.

The last one is perhaps the one that is like “huh”? But makes perfect sense. Does the hero you’re designing fulfill a niche that players want? Let’s go back to Reinhardt. He fulfills the niche of “big burly PROTECTOR!” A true man’s man tank. Mauga is “HAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH GO BRRRRRR” which tickles my neurons personally, and I’m so happy he exists. What needs to happen (and is something I think Blizzard personally excels at-at least in the past-) is designing heroes that fulfill specific player niches. Illari and Hazzy are two that don’t make much sense to me personally like this, even if I do enjoy them on a personal level.

Basically, long and short of it, is that the overall balance of Overwatch is difficult to do, specifically because the playerbase is so divided on what is and what isn’t great.

And I’d like y’all’s thoughts on balance for the game. How do you all think it works? What system of balance would you guys like to see? I know I’m opening a can of worms - let’s not bring up matchmaker here guys - but I am genuinely interested.

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Anything relating to Dva buffs and more Dva buffs

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I guess you knew that but This is all subjective.
I Personally hate Reinhardt on my team with a burning passion (maybe unless I am on juno speeding him around)

But it makes sense, as a I like to play tracer and ball is just so much more useful to me.

(I agree with you consider the regular average player, like your ashe, cassidy, soldier, bastion enjoyers.)

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Balance has particularly been off (especially within the DPS role) since S9.
Messing with HP and projectile sizes was the worst possible thing they could have done to “mix things up”.

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the game is balanced…as in it gets regular changes based on how characters/players perform…but that doesnt mean its “balanced”…nor will it ever be “balanced”…but people dont get that and instead we get “this game is unbalanced”…any suggestions on how it SHOULD be balanced is not going to get us anywhere closer to actually being balanced…it would just be placating someones personal ideals of what balance means to them

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Because everyone is unbalanced in Rivals to the point where nobody can complain about X character because the character that they are playing is also stupidly unbalanced in their own way.

This is not the case with OW, everyone’s kit is underpowered or just right. Which makes the game feel unbalanced for most characters who have such a normal balance to their kit whenever there are buffs to an already strong and present character.

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I would submit that Illari’s niche is very well defined: she’s a Support intended to be able to provide healing while spending most of her active attention attacking. She’s an example of a design that exists to give something to people who would usually queue for DPS (other factors being equal) but are instead playing Support.

The only issue I have with her design is that I believe her primary fire was made a little too forgiving as a justification for giving her poor damage characteristics (she can look okay on the scoreboard for damage because of high uptime, not because her raw damage is high). It wouldn’t be a hard issue for them to fix if they were sufficiently inclined.

As much as people also complain about balancing around data (pickrates, winrates, other metrics), that kind of bulk information is still one of the best ways for devs to see things across (or in spite of) disparate player opinions and perceptions.

TL;DR- I think for the most part they’re actually doing a reasonable job with balancing, and probably have been most of OW2’s duration. It’s never “perfect”, but few things ever are.

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Thanks everyone! Happy to hear from y’all.

Hmmm… Only if I get a Mauga minibuff or a Junkrat buff.

Oh yeah of course. Just in my personal experience, the majority tend to think like that.

Yeah. It does depend for everyone, which is why talking about it outside of ragebait or purposefully biased opinions is difficult. Because everyone likes a certain play style. And when each play style gels together, it’s hard to run things that aren’t one of them, or have a combination of things on your team. Maybe it’s easier, but I’m a small brain.

Honestly this is interesting to me. I do think in retrospect that it was weird, but I don’t think catering towards casuals is a bad thing. I think that removing all of the stupidity from the game is bad, because then it just becomes a watered down version of Apex Legends set in an objective styled map. It would be great if we could marry everything together, but… I can’t see a way.

Yeah. I knew that last part, but I am genuinely interested in how people think. Because it’s a really difficult idea. How does x work against y, but what about z? It’s hard to even wrap my brain around, and it’s likely three times as difficult if you’re not looking in from the outside, but in the room trying to do it. Personally speaking, I reckon that “fun” is the most important thing, but I also reckon that since fun is subjective, each hero is differently cancer to play against, which is part of what the design team should theoretically think about when making a hero. Not that this would stop people from complaining, but perhaps it would be neat…

In my personal defense, I don’t play a lot of Rivals. I’ve played a little bit, and I like Rocket Raccoon.

Also, true from what I’ve seen… Here…

This make sense in a way. I can see it. If everyone is a sea bass, of course we’ll freak out if a giant freaking snapping turtle comes along.

My one thing is… Ain’t that Bappers? I get where you’re coming from, and it makes sense - I agree with you - but doesn’t Bappers hit the same note? Eh, maybe I’m just tired. Grandpa’s yelling at clouds again…

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Balancing heroes in OW2 sounds like an unsolvable puzzle! Im not even going to pretend I know how to do it…

However, my rules for general balancing would be:

Ultimates should only be cancelled by other Ultimates. Stalling/temporary delaying Ults with normal abilities is fine.

Damage abilities should be balanced with healing abilities for Supports (Mercy for example)

Damage abilities/rates should be about the same for all Tanks.

Damage rates should be about the same for all DPS.

Other than those general rules, balancing heroes with little tweaks here and there sounds like voodoo to me.

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Just nerf hazard and I’m happy. He single handedly makes tanking a job like working on an oil rig with zero pay.

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My one complaint with this (not that it’s a bad idea) is that changing it like that (i.e, making everything uniform) turns it into more of a Valorant+, right? That’s if I’m reading you right. I might be wrong.

Personally, I like things being whacky, which is why Valorant is a better “esports” game. I get why people prefer that kind of idea though. Would be neat to see an experimental patch with this idea…

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Lol, then we even don’t need think about conditions to use ult. Just press Q after enemy ones. You’re great! The one thing which I hates that is sleep dart. Why the usual support’s ability able to FULL disable enemy?
And in the end I will pay everything for returning self-repair to Bastion. Obviously, Bastion is too niche comparing with other DPSes, pumps out too much heal, and need someone in front who will be focused instead of itself. Now I’m stopping maining Bastion, it don’t work in high ranks, solider more reliable. The turret, only one profitable thing on Bastion. Devs have seen how great was Bastion (in recon form) in community crafted mode. It was not unkillable OP machine due to self-repair. No, Bastion just was more active hero. Finally got its lost identify. But lost it again after community mode

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People dont want a balanced game, they want a fun game and thats something blizz has systematically destroyed over the years. No hero feels like a hero anymore.

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They’ve balanced the game in a way that has made playing absolutely anything not hard meta feel unbearable. Every interaction with heroes like Hazard or Sojourn feels like total bs because it is and yet other heroes have had their playmaking and identities removed despite never being blatantly overpowered.

Basically they made the game extremely unfun because the interactions between heroes feels unfair. Then add on rock paper scissors still being allowed which further exacerbates the feeling of unfairness. None of it is fun for anybody who just wants to play something they enjoy which, according to the devs from a while back, is what the vast majority do.

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OW suffers its age, thats it.

Rivals is one month old, it didn’t have time to have breakingly bad updates like RQ, broken heroes, many reworks, 5v5, etc…

Big updates split the player base. 6V6 and 5V5 is the best example but with Min1 test, one can feel OpenQueue vs RoleQueue here and there.

OW has gone through so many states, everyone has different opinion on it.

Rivals will eventually follow the same path, it’s just about time.
The Hero Ban above a certain rank is already hilarious and will feed a whole debate on their forums.

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That is what I think.
I imagine that’s why I haven’t lost hair over it like so many other people seemed to.
And when people swap? They are mad, because they did the correct thing.
I’m okay with them calling it not balanced.
And I’m more okay with it not being balanced, just like or more like, other games.

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The current state of tanks is what I have issue with, namely the headshot damage reduction. Obviously, I don’t expect a tank to die instantly to me, or another DPS. But as they are, they’re too much.

A symptom of 5v5 where 1 tank is expected to shield their team. 6v6 could fix this. An additional tank, and individual tanks could be toned down. Tanks wouldn’t need to be raid bosses to survive.

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I think that just adds to the issue. The conception of tanks as shields for teammates to hide behind, instead of beacons who draw attention to themselves, makes playing them less fun.

If either tank has to spend half the game raising a barrier or just not engaging to the same degree as the rest of their team, then it gets boring very quickly.

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I think her primary healing being high is fine because of it’s low uptime

Whatever the hps of it is can sort of be cut in half since it takes twice as long to recharge as it does to spend.

It’s like in Pokemon when you use hyper beam, the big 150 power attack. You get the big burst of damage, but then you can’t do anything next turn which makes it more like two 75 power attacks. It makes it, like Illari’s beam, have a niche in getting a big spike right now but with a somewhat crippling downtime(in Illari’s case anyway, hyper beam is straight trash because of it)

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But 2 tanks is surely better than 1 alone and offers more flexibility as to who shields the team and who makes plays/space. They can trade off.

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