- Balance.
- Balance.
- Balance.
Do they all seem like the same reason? They’re not.
Allow me to elaborate:
1. The developers cater to what the pros and popular streamers say, rather than what they do. This inherently introduces bias into the system and often injects one-sided, skewed perceptions into balance changes. It leads to the (mis)identification of issues that have no objective evidence to substantiate their existence and motivates goals that do not need to and should not exist. Mercy’s rework is a prime example of this.
2. Because the developers are only capable of undertaking a finite set of goals, misidentified issues and pointless goals detract from valid goals that should be priority. These faux-issues draw attention away from objectively necessary changes and divide the attention of the developers such to the point that, when combined with what only be explained by downright incompetence, the developers are embarrassingly clueless to the state of their own game. Less than two months ago, Jeff Kaplan said this:
…Completely unaware of the fact that a community-made Bastion megathread detailing Bastion’s issues has been around since July of 2018, and it was locked due to reaching the maximum 20000 replies back in November of 2019:
💔 Bastion ISN’T being forgotten, he’s being ignored
On top of that, Bastion is the only hero in the history of Overwatch to obtain a 0% pickrate in Grandmaster for a month, and yet this was not enough for the developers to start “working on Bastion changes”.
Bastion is not the only character to fall victim of this, although he is the most extreme example. Pharah, Sombra, Symmetra, Torbjorn, Mei, Reaper, and Junkrat have all fallen victim to this before for extended periods or are currently victims of it now.
3. The goals that the developers do undertake, valid or otherwise, are poorly executed. This isn’t really something that needs to be elaborated on, simply because there is no shortage of examples to think of, but I’ll provide a few regardless. Every single rework except for Lucio 2.0, Torbjorn 2.0, and Symmetra 2.0 backfired in one way or another. Bastion’s rework made him a must-pick for a week, and then dumpstered him to a worse place than he was before his rework for the next three years. D.Va’s reworks each alienated a lot of her players. Symmetra mains today wish Symmetra 3.0 never happened. Mercy’s rework killed off literally half of her playerbase and coined the first and only meta to ever be named after a single character (Moth Meta). Hanzo’s and Junkrat’s reworks both made them overpowered for several months, and the subsequent changes to Junkrat made him more inconsistent than he was prior to his rework. Roadhog’s rework sent him on a roller coaster between insanely overpowered and cripplingly underpowered before finally landing him in a decent position that slowly decayed to obsolescence. The Overwatch developers, to put it plainly, just don’t know what they’re doing.