Yeah so I thought the best way to get a grasp on the perk system would be to play 1 game as each hero. I mostly went for whatever perk sounded more interesting even if I didn’t think it’d be very good. It was a fun ‘challenge’ of sorts I recommend it
pacing
The pace at which you unlock perks seems pretty consistent from hero to hero, with some of the most egregious stat spammers getting them only a little bit faster than everyone else. And the catch up mechanic is strong enough that it didn’t really feel like a win more mechanic. My one complaint in this regard is that on the quickplay format for Push (which is 2 minutes shorter) it feels like you get the level 2 perks way too late in the match
Swapping
I definitely have noticed swapping is less common, and it has made playing tank much more enjoyable. Since I was deliberately not swapping for the past 41 games it’s hard to say for sure, but I feel like my teammates who swapped got their perks back in what felt like a reasonable amount of times. I do have a feeling that as perks become less novel people will start swapping more again, especially in ranked. I started to feel it near the end of the first week when I got quadruple counterswapped in my hog game
One thing that did upset me was that they didn’t really use any of the perks as an opportunity to give heroes more resistance to or options to deal with their hard counters. There are a few exceptions, like doom has a perk for blocking sleep dart
Of course one issue with swapping now is that if you do get counterswapped you can’t defend yourself without throwing all of your perks away which feels really bad, and you may be stuck with a perk choice that isn’t very useful against counters, but at the very least if you make at least 2 people swap they lost more perks than you so you’re sort of winning. I anticipate overall that counterswapping will be mildly improved by perks in the long run but will still be a large problem with the game
Choices - Dynamic choices
I’d say this type of system is only compelling if there’s a compelling case to make for choosing either perk. Ideally, the same player would make different choices from match to match. I got a taste of this on sigma. I was going to pick the rock scaling with distance minor perk, but then I changed my mind since most of my rocks were going into a doomfist from close range, but then I changed my mind again since they swapped to brigitte and between her, doom, and mei my grasp wasn’t getting much value to begin with. And then I was also going to try the melee one since it was intriguing, but since we were still on second point hollywood when I unlocked it and there’s a lot of highground there I choose the floating one instead. Another clear example of this is echo’s minor perk where you’ll 100% be checking what duplicate targets are on both teams before choosing it
Choices - Personal Preference
I’d say the next best thing would be perks that appeal to different sorts of players, but each individual player will usually take the same one, whether it be for playstyle or skill level. For instance on the playstyle front, I am 100% always picking Illari’s pylon minor perk, because I very heavily micromanage Illari’s pylon, but there are some very good Illari players who do not micro much at all and who will always go with the other option.
On the skill front, I think symmetra’s extra turret perk is entirely a noob trap, you can get so much value out of that long range teleporter it’s crazy, but for some of the sym player’s I’ve encountered who hardly use her teleporter, I think it’ll be a nice little bonus for them. In the opposite direction, I am not the best sojourn player, and I whiff her ult all the time, so I’ll probably stick to the bonus ammo
Choices - No choice
The worst outcome would be for a perk where there is no conceivable reason why any player would chose a certain option. Are there any perks like this in the game? There are a handful of perks that I feel may be this way, and also a few that I think you’d only pick because they’re more fun (winston chain lightning, definitely the worst major perk I’ve tried).
If I had to estimate I’d say maybe 35% of perks fall into the first category, 60% the second, and 5% this last one, which I’d say is pretty good for a first patch
Role differences
I’d say dps definitely has the highest quantity of really interesting complete playstyle swap perks. Support had a lot of set and forget style raw stat boost perks. And I’d say tank probably had the most underwhelming perks overall. Still I feel like the differences from role to role weren’t too drastic and where they existed they made sense
steamroll matches
One drawback of perks is they make steamroll matches sting even harder, like not only did I just play the most miserable match of my life but I didn’t even get to unlock my major perk, lame. The system really does rub in how big of a problem the matchmaker is
Fun perks vs good perks
One worry is that some heroes may put you in a conundrum where you have to decide between the perk that is good and the one that is fun. For example Juno’s minor perks, anyone whose played much juno knows how many teammates they could’ve saved if only the torpedo locked on a tad bit faster, but it’s still an underwhelming change compared to getting sonic speed boost rings. I don’t think this is a major problem with the system but it is something to look out for. Like I don’t think you’ll be losing comp matches because someone took a hard throw perk or anything like that
Community perception
It seems like at least 30 of the 40ish heroes in the game have mains catastrophizing how bad their perks are when most of them are just fine. Pretty standard reactions to Overwatch balancing tbh. Definitely are some kinks in the system, but give them a few patches to figure it out
Ultimate perks
Having perks tied to ults is concerning since you don’t want ults to be too strong and also it’s harder to make a case for boosting the thing you only get to use a handful of times per match. I noticed most of these are only on minor perks and often on fast charging ults which is good. None of them buffed the ults too much and when they did it was usually by giving a new usecase to the ult (e.g. self-defense on ana) rather than making the ult itself stronger. So yeah I think they mostly handled this well. My one gripe is it annoys me how both of echo’s minor perks are ult related, though it is an interesting choice
Controls
So some of the perks added some new abilities or functionality to already complete kits. Did it feel up to standards? I’d say mostly yeah, but there are only two that felt awkward to me, Cassidy’s manual fan the hammer and Reaper’s 2 shot blast, but I think that could just be a learning curve. Another problem is with the perk’s for echo and sombra which allow their abilities to target teammates. It is waaaay easier to mistarget these when there are 9 valid targets on the battlefield instead of 5, and this doesn’t feel like an intended drawback. I don’t know a good solution though
Micromanagement
One concern is perks that require too much micromanagement to get value of. There are a few of these, but not too many for me to think it’s a serious problem with the system. One example of this is Orisa’s headshots reduce weapon heat perk, since you are used to naturally feeling out when you are about to overheat, but with this perk you gotta start either watching the meter on the UI or keeping note of how many headshots you are landing and at that point it just feels more of a pain than it’s worth. I’m sure eventually I’d build the intuition for it, but I’d rather just chose her other perk. There are some others that seemed like they’d have this problem, especially ones involving ammo management or cooldown reductions, but I mostly avoided these (some are good though, I like hog’s failsafe where he gets ammo after hooking)
Muscle Memory
Another concern would be that perks could mess with muscle memory. I felt this was much more noticeable on heroes that I played a lot of. Like Venture’s range perk, I could 100% tell some shots I only missed them because I aimed as though it still had its default range. Even with echo I played this hero so much and have such a strong sense of the timing she shoots stickies at that adding more to the volley honestly threw me off just a little bit. Another one that threw me off a lot was pharah’s concussion vacuum, I still attempted to repel from walls quite a few times after unlocking this.
Tradeoffs
Some perks have direct tradeoffs, like Junkrat’s one major perk reduces his clip size, which I think is fair given the power level of basically giving him the tf2 loch-n-load. Some have natural tradeoffs, like bastion’s explosive shells are a lot worse at shredding through high high hp things. I don’t mind this since it allows for more radical changes through perks, and none of the heroes seem to have any cases where both perks have downsides, other than perhaps symmetra due to the targetting issue with her healing one, though that is unintentional
boring heroes
Do perks make me want to play any of my lesser used heroes more often? There are 2 where I’d say certainly. Bastion, where I like being able to use his ult as a panic button and having his minigun be projectile, and Soldier, I like the stim packs and the design of them is cool how they are powerful but also synergize poorly with his also strong health field minor perk. I also want to play some more high jump moira, heavy slam ball, and floating zen.
Power consistency
I feel the heroes with the worst perks are typically pretty strong to begin with or characters who nobody wants to be strong. A lot of stealth-buffing and stealth-nerfing going on here, like some heroes have very strong minor perks but they were usually weaker to begin with. The only heroes who really had me baffled thinking are their perks really this underwhelming were Brigitte and hanzo, and even then they were far from useless. So I think they did an okay job with powerscaling these, but some adjustments are still needed there are some heroes whose perks are both weaker and less interesting than other heroes of a similar tier
Tracking
Did I have good track of what perks my allies and enemies were taking? No not really. Some were unmissable, like you know what just happened when a sombra just healed the guy you were about to kill. There are a handful I conditioned myself to look out for. When I’m diving ana I’m in the habit of making sure she can’t self nano to escape, when I’m a grounded tank against Mei I check whether she has the longer ice walls, and when I’m against junkrat I usually check for nitro tire. There’s clearly still a lot more to get used to, but in the meantime I never felt too punished for not tracking the perks.
Respecing
You can’t respec perks once you’ve bought them. This makes sense since some perks are for ults and you wouldn’t want people shuffling them around based on their current ult charge. I could also see it being way to confusing for the other players in the lobby. Only once or twice did this feel like an issue, so it’s annoying but understandable and not a big deal.
Variety
Will these add much freshness to the game? In the short term definitely, I feel I already played this season close to half as much as last one. I think these will keep people logging in for at least a few months. A year from now? It depends on how significant these “perk refreshes” they mention are. If they’re changing around what perks each hero has that’d be crazy, but even if they didn’t I still think perks are a net positive
