Between what the devs are actually saying and what we’re seeing in playtests/changes.
We keep hearing that supports are strong and impactful and that removing 1 tank makes fights last longer and tanks feel more impactful. We’re hearing that small changes to tanks make them much stronger and that it doesn’t feel more deathmatchy.
But then I watch the pro livestream (or even the dev livestream) and it just doesn’t add up at all. I see tanks blowing up even faster than on live because they can’t cycle defense with the other tank and healing is worse. I see supports looking, for everything, like much weaker versions of their live selves. And I see DPS fragging off and blowing things up almost instantly.
There’s less team fights, and more small skirmishes, with far more deaths. The teamplay element is down a lot, and individual fights are much shorter and more about “Who makes the first pick?”
And almost none of the tank changes actually show us more defense. Rein’s defense is nerfed pretty hard (losing 400 shield hp is a lot), Winston got no more defense, Zarya’s defense is nerfed (shield CD basically doubles). The only tank that got more defense was D.va who got an additional 1s on DM (but no charge speed, if I understand).
I know that it’s still being tested and they’ll make more changes. But what scares me is the comments say “this is how it IS in our internal testing” and then when we actually see it, it looks very, very different.
I don’t know if there’s an overarching point here, but I wanted to point this out. I’m worried that the Devs are saying “OW2 isn’t fast-paced deathmatchy” and then when the game is released, that’s exactly what it’ll be.
To be fair a lot of what we saw was also a product of them being inexperienced on it or maybe not taking it as seriously as they could. I saw one of the world’s best Tracers pulse bomb the wall because they weren’t used to the new blink cd and they completely beefed the blink sticky. I saw a monkey commit to a backline dive completely alone (a dead genji, a low ground tracer, and Lucio Ana afk on point with no line of sight or way to help him) and get blown up like a plat monkey on live.
As good as the players are, these exhibitions aren’t always the same quality of play as the league matches, and even then, there’s still a lot of room for misinterpretation. Not to mention if they were playing like a well oiled league match, it’s still extremely detached from how we’d play the game casually or in ranked.
Not trying to be dismissive, some things do look like they’re out of place and imbalanced. Just… don’t look at the footage from a “this is ow2 played at it’s peak” type of mindset because it certainly isn’t.
I do think it’s interesting how the dev livestream played much… I guess slower than the league one. I know the dev one was probably lower ranked players, but it was interesting I actually felt like there were more teamfights in the league stream however, they fully resolved almost every time instead of reverting to poke phases to try and regroup and push in again. So they were shorter, but per map phase it felt like they were more dense. They were also more volatile, it seemed they were more likely to commit to a teamfight and actually go in instead of waiting around poking. One thing that was mentioned was meaningful poke damage after all. There was also more willingness for people to split off and take angles, like you would in a goofy ranked game. This made it look super deathmatchy, but again… how much of that is because this wasn’t a rehearsed and practiced league game?
Would be neat to hear the team talk about some differences they noticed in how their play testing goes and how these Livestreams go!
I think the problem with determining if survivability is too high or low right now is that we’re getting opinions from opposite sides of the skill spectrum. We have pro players who make up the top percent of the top percent, and we have the devs who (and I don’t mean to be rude) play like silvers. The only way we’ll know what the true power level of supports are will be after the game releases and the playerbase can find out themselves.
See, this concerns me, because the BETTER the play, the FASTER things will die. Like, the more used to it they are, the more likely people will blow up quicker.
I don’t think them optimizing more means things will magically start dying slower…
I think the best way to balance a game out like OW2 is to do like MONTHS of a beta that is open to the public (for free or to already owners of OW) and just have the players find places that need to be improved. Leaving it to these unspecified playtesters and leaving the community in the dark on this specific subject is really not a smart way to go forward with development.
Just to expand on that a little cause maybe it’s too vague… it’s not always the case that higher skill and optimizations = faster deaths.
Higher skills involved = faster reaction (focus fire) to punish mistakes, it doesn’t imply punishable mistakes are going to occur sooner and it doesn’t always imply you can force those opportunities (case in point - monkey example).
I really encourage you to rewatch the Dorado match and notice how many deaths or early picks were because of weird positional choices(mistakes?) that just don’t make a lot of sense.
Its definitely gonna feel like a different game but I’m skeptical it’s gonna look much like what we saw, that actually seems to be a running theme with stuff we are shown
I’m cool with the playstyle change for tanks. But I am worried based on what we’ve seen that, yeah, they just insta die. If the burst damage is so high that even the fattest heros die in a split second then the whole point of the tank role is a bit shaky.
Well they did increase offense for Rein and Winston (whether it’s enough is a different matter). OP was saying that none of the tanks show more defense, which is an odd thing to bring up because it isn’t the direction the devs are going at all.
Tbf, I doubt their internal playtesting involved OWL caliber players. Also
That conclusion came from internal playtesting, specifically that healing felt overtuned. They addressed this with the healing debuff which was in effect during the showcases, hence the disconnect between what they said and what was shown.
The devs say a lot of things to sell their game, and it might be entirely different a month out. Just like Overwatch 1. They got to turning the game from a casual shooter that sold millions into a staggered embarrassment of a MOBA before long…
I cant help but listen to my cynical side telling me that the devs are trying to keep the hype going by lying about changes they know are deeply unpopular with large parts of the playerbase.
Part of the disconnect is the fact that we’re only seeing half of the game.
The devs are testing on builds of the game where the heroes that are mid-rework are not disabled and new, unannounced OW2 heroes are playable.
They have a more compete picture than we do.
That’s not to say that there isn’t potential for balance issues, of course, but it really is too early for us to say.
If you want to see what I mean, try playing modern OW1 using only the heroes that were available at launch. You’re in for a bad time. But that’s essentially what they’re currently doing in the OW2 playtests.
For those wondering, it’s a person called “Tokyo” has a comment similar to this (might be the originator) that is currently the pinned comment on Flats’ video about Tanks.
