Theoretical ceilings needs to be a balance consideration

General Discussion
2

Not really.

Widow isn’t a Balance Issue, or a Tierlisting Issue.

Widow is just has a frustrating Counterplay issue.

The problem is that most people don’t know formal game design concepts.

Here’s my interpretation of Cadwell/Walker’s work. (I.e. Riot and Valve)

“After you make your Choice, your Opponent should have the capability, to respond with their Choice, which includes the awareness that a Choice exists, and enough time to understand and react with their Choice”.

But you can take your pick:

Like are we violating Tom Cadwell’s principle that counterplay should not just have the capability to counter, but the time and obviousness that a counter should be used.

  • https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/User_blog:JAlbor/GDC_2013:_Teamplay_and_Counterplay_in_League_of_Legends
  • https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1018273/Counterplay-and-Teamplay-in-Multiplayer

Or are we violating the Sid Meier and Soren Johnson, style “Optimizing Fun out of Games” design issue? Where “Technically possible to defeat” was absolutely not sufficient by itself.

Or Robin Walker’s “We literally designed the character Widow is based on, and we empirically measured that onesided counterplay lost significant amounts of players”

And, my post, where I detail how every other modern PVP FPS game in existence follows the above rules.
But not Overwatch.