I think its at the point that nothing significant CAN be done.
With more and more high burst damage/1 shot characters, the supports can not do anything.
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Because the CEO, Bobby kotick, is leaving. He gets his golden parachute whether blizzard Burns or not.
He’s checked out and is interested in stuffing his pocket with as much ill-gotten gains as he can.
She is boring, yes. She’s as simple as they get, and that’s the way she was designed. But the way they redesigned her Guardian Angel was ingenious and goofy as heck. She’s got powerful pocketing potential and ridiculous mobility to boot. tbh she’s my favorite support rn.
Hey if you like her, play her. At least that means I don’t have to do it.
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Actually, they said they wanted to keep a stable meta throughout the season, only doing balance updates if absolutely necessary, so they deliberately chose to do fewer changes to heroes.
The Genji and Sombra nerfs were lowkey huge support buffs. Just saying.
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Jeff promised more aggressive balance and more communication shortly before he left. Personally, I think he was asked to leave or forced out by Bobby.
Nope. That was just Aaron.
In fact, Jeff’s philosophy was completely opposite if I do believe. He was very much willing to go dark for as long as it took to get the game right, leaving Overwatch 1 in the dust. Impatient, single-minded players like yourself and almost definitely corporate ensured that that couldn’t happen.
Yes because theres not tons of brainstorming, implementation and balance to take into consideration…
If blizzard just rushed to fix every problem with haste, they would just be wasting time reverting and changing things… and woukd ultimately take even more time to get right.
In addition to we the players having to suffer with the ebbs and flows of the process
I have more fun when I’m taking part in getting some kills when I play support. I personally love playing zenyatta above all supports. There is nothing more satisfying than wiping a whole team with zen or saving your whole team with transcendence. I cant stand playing ana, shooting at my own teammates is just so boring. Bap is cool too but people get their feelings hurt when the bap has more elims and damage than their dps even if he has a good amount of heals. Moira is chill too but you gotta inflate your numbers a bit to give the illusion to your team that you actually want to heal them when you really want to chase a genji across the map and beam him to death lol.
Mercy is straight up the most boring hero to play with (FOR ME!) I just don’t enjoy relying on other people to get anything done but I respect others that do. Kiriko is really cool but cheese with her suzu, that thing needs to be removed and replaced with a high heal burst grenade instead that cleanses.
Anyways my point is, supports (to me) are more fun when you actually get to engage and fight the enemy team instead of having to pocket your team doing your very best to keep them alive. Blizzard said they don’t want to create a scenario where supports are just dps with heals but honestly if thats what could actually make the role popular then whats the harm? I would gladly play more support if we had more characters like zenyatta and moira but thats just me, to each their own.
I personally feel support has never been better. I feel like I have much more impact now, there’s nothing about common complaints about support that can’t be fixed by simply getting better or changing your playstyle. You have to take matters into your own hands now as support, you can’t just hide behind shields and pump heals into your tanks now.
You can tell who the OW1 healbots were if they say things like “support sucks rn” or “support feels so less impactful” because simply existing doesn’t give you pure value any more.
Obviously there’s some issues that are actually valid, like Moira’s lack of purpose or Mercy’s lack of agency, but other than that, support is in a good place I feel.
This really. I’m having a blast, far more than as any DPS not to mention tanks. That’s not to say that some support don’t have issues with the hyper mobility and lack of CC of the game. But Kiriko and Ana at least are still very fun.
But personally I too believe that the fundamental issue is just that most people don’t enjoy a healing/support role. Look at literally any MMO and barring a few exceptions chances are that DPS is the most popular by far, followed far behind by tanks, and lastly healers. Exceptions being something like WoW with its M+ where tanking is actually an extremely challenging role.
If supports need a buff, something minor like say +20-25% damage resistance for a few seconds following a heal / not taking damage for 10 seconds. Or +30% dmg resistance to the next attack received with a CD of say 10 seconds. Should suffice in both motivating the Moiras to do healing as well as increase the immediate survivability for active supports from flankers, without changing the heroes themselves. This might also enable the Genjis and Sombras to be buffed back up to their previous levels.
Honestly, I am not sure what more people want. I find I have plenty of options in support role and the ability to impart change.
In regards to RQ times for QP, I have seen absolutely no issues whatsoever. Tanks are frequently 4-6min. DPS 1-3min. And support has probably always been <2min, but has at times been harder to fill than DPS.
As far as I can tell, supports having a rough time is now just a fallacy. A made up issue that’s no longer a problem. People find justification in the occasional comment that support their rhetoric. I just dont’ see what issues people are complaining about that are any different than they have always been.
People whining that their teammates spam healing too much, won’t wait up, leave LoS, etc. etc. Its all been there since OW1, but tanks was still the defacto bottleneck. Support is the ‘new’ bottle neck’, but its not anywhere even close to how bad tank bottle neck was.
DPS was consistently 8-10min, support 4-7min, and tank was frequently <2min. RQ times in OW were way worse than they are now.
Yes, it is clearly in the best interests of any goal based software plan to set standards, and ensure that the big picture is achieved first, and then focus on the details.
I actally agree that people often misuse the term “creep”, but that does not mean that everyone invoking it does, or that sometimes the general consensus isn’t right, but that it must be taken on a case by case basis.
You make the claim that this wasn’t done for supports, and I would argue that it actually was, but that the standard used was impossibly flawed.
It is pretty clear based on a number of oversights that the OW2 project was not given adequate resources or a consistent roadmap to follow. They poached personnel from the live OW team, they used way too many OW1 resources, the condition of the UX is abysmal, with disorganized menus and selection methods, completely amateur creation of challenge reporting (no definition of a challenge on the completion notification for example), horrid accessability (no ability to resize tiny text in the UI as an example) gross negligence in the practice range and tutorial, where it was just used over again, and so on.
What Im getting at is that the evidence suggests strongly to anyone who has been involved with complex software project management that standards were not followed, and a commitment from upper management to product quality is not present, and that some folks in middle management are in way over their heads and the exec staff either cannot recognize and address struggling projects or simply doesn’t care, as they have a stronger commitment to numbers for the next board meeting than to long term profitability.
One of those errors is in the “macro calibration” of the play experience, which used assumptions that were not well fleshed out. The “supertank” concept is one of those things. It wasn’t planned out, and failed to factor human behavior into the decisions, and human behavior is the problem. The person factor is their blind spot, and is what leads to horrid design decisions time and time again.
It’s pretty straightforward if they balance DiffRoleVSDiffRole for popularity, proportional to 1-2-2, or 20%, 40%, 40%.
While avoiding more obvious downsides like
- Compositions are too durable, or Team Fight Durations are too long
- Supports aren’t better overall duelists than DPS
- Tanks don’t die too quickly under focus fire with additional Support firepower
Especially when they got “deliberately making a role less popular” as an option.
- I.e. Nerfing Flankers and Dive Tanks
- Just lowering Tank health overall
Where as the selection of hero choices a DPS has does not include switching to the strongest Support hero midgame. So raising the upper limit on the power of SupportVsSupport choices is almost entirely unrelated to DPSvDPS choices.
And to the extent that DPSvsDPS rankings are affected by SupportsvsSupport ranking. It’s better to solve that with direct DPSvsDPS balancing.
But yeah, you are right. If they balance 1-2-2 like Role Limits don’t exist. Then it’s not a fixable problem. But it’s very fixable if you design like Role Limits do exist.
I don’t know what game you’re playing but the support issue has been widely known since the first beta, even the dev acknowledge this problem. Pros, streamers, even returning players said the same. The removal of 1 tank and CCs across the board were major nerfs to support roles. With less peel and no reworks, most support who lack mobility are having a bad time. Especially when flankers are rampant and dominated on season 1.
Do you know the reason why Moira suddenly gained such rapid popularity, not only in metal rank but also in top 500? Because she is one of the few supports with decent survivability in their kits. Kiriko also a viable pick because she was designed to fit the 5v5 playstyle from the get go. I wish i could say the same about the rest.
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This is a very bad, actually that isn’t a strong enough term, that is a disastrous reactive programming methodology, bordering closely on suicidal.
You never, ever, ever under any circumstance, ever…try to juggle popularity. You find the principle that should intrinsically result in a certain level of popularity, based on many factors across the board. If you haven’t stuck the landing, you have miscalibrated.
The only problem is that this is very difficult to achieve without too much homogeneity making pllay bland and predictable. This is why you stretch each role into a unique, interdependent direction.
The current problems are: Tanks are encroaching on the DPS role and abandoning the protective, control role, which causes the entire dam to break, as they choose not to peel, yet because that role was removed from all others specifically to benefit tanks, the importance of them doing so is much higher, which is literally what leads to the current support problems.
In other words, everyone needs tanks, but tanks don’t need anyone.
The other component they have failed miserably at, for super long periods of time is the basic human desire to be on even footing. Every single complaint in the past 4 years in this game were caused by design ignoring this principle. Every single player, be it chess, checkers, rock/paper/scissors or anything else wants to feel as though they have the ability to face their opponent under similar conditions.
Once someone has an overwhelming disadvantage which isn’t due to skill, or if they feel like they have been thrown to the wolves because the game was made that way, you have revolts, toxicity, etc. Brigitte caused this, Sombra caused this, Moira still causes it, Hog has always caused it, only now, all tanks are causing it.
The double whammy of matchmaking woes and massive class imbalances leads to more toxicity, angst and lashing out than any other factor, and instead of recognizing that, they double down with “enforcement mechanisms”, forced compliance, voice monitoring, etc, oblivious to the fact that they are creating the problem in the first place.
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omg can we stop with the buffs please… there is nothing, zero, zilch, nada, that isn’t just an eye roll anymore.
It is alright for people to have to earn their keep…
Well, they could do sledgehammer nerfs on Flankers and Dive Tanks.
they dont have to do that either, really supports arnt that far behind. some slight targeted nerfs would really help more than some buffs.