Players : “We don’t like playing against broken easy value hitscans (especially on maps that heavily favor them), so we’ll ban them! This will communicate to the devs that they should be changed to not be so oppressive and braindead!”
Devs : “OK gotcha, so just keep trickle-buffing them to the point where they dominate Clash maps and KOTH just as hard as they dominate Circuit Royale / Havana without removing the problematic parts of their kits, got it.”
“hero bans [are] restricting her usefulness” is a WILD reason to KEEP buffing an already broken hero lmao.
This is full mask-off player retention /monetisation balancing.
It’s impressive, really, that they managed to draw this conclusion. I’ll pour one out for all the people who had their hopes up that bans would get problem heroes changed at last.
The problem is Widow’s “niche” is too good. If they gave her these buffs and more while also addressing her problems it would be fine, but they just buff her and buff her for seemingly no legitimate balance reason which is especially frustrating as someone who doesn’t particularly enjoy playing into her (and heroes like her).
They are right in saying that Widow is more map dependant than other heroes (she’s horrible on something like Lijang Control Center), but “making her viable in more situations” will just get her banned even more.
I remember a content creator asking Alec what they would do if they see certain heroes banned on certain maps, like Widow on Havana, and Alec just responded, “well that’s good data to have!”
And this is what they do with it? This is how they interpret it?
What good is that data??? We’re saying we don’t want that hero. We ban her on maps where she dictates the match. Why are they trying to force her on us in more situations???
They interpret Sombra’s as, “we must nerf” and they interpret Widow’s as “we should buff so she’s in more games”.
I can’t with this balance team anymore. Get 'em out.
If anyone somehow still needed more proof to realise they balamce around their own biases over balancing around data, this should really be the nail in the coffin.
They don’t care about heros like Sombra, Junkrat, etc. and even if we ever do get to be good again, we’ll grt nerfed far faster than any of the hitscan and hitscan adjacent(Freja and Sojourn) who’ve reigned supreme for years
Maybe its their twisted way to get her ban more to add to their data before they truly do anything. Or they using this to change who people ban instead the high picked 3… Move the meta.
If you make her more well-rounded then she can’t have as many power spikes in her kit like her perfectly accurate negligible falloff no spread 0 screenshake perfect stability hitscan true oneshot on a ~1.5s cooldown. That’s how balance works when you have sane competent developers who don’t balance for player retention / monetization.
because they just released a premium skin for her and they need it to sell to make the shareholders happy and to show other investors/collaboration partners that overwatch is lucrative and they can share their IP in a crossover event for mutual gain
If widow is nerfed then no one will be wanting to play her and no one will want to buy the skin which completely destroys their whole business model
She objectively has a lower skill ceiling than pretty much every other hitscan when it comes to aim skill because she requires fewer shots landed to achieve the same results with less restriction on the positioning required to hit those shots than pretty much every other hero in the game due to her extreme range and lack of reverse damage falloff.
She requires less positional skill than pretty much every other hero as well because in order to be effective you just sit uncontestably on highground on top of your broken 5v5-augumented supports so that the only way she will be displaced is a dive that includes at least 1 tank or her losing the sniper duel.
She is the best space-denier in the whole game preventing 2/3rds of the roster from even peeking her, let alone entering her LoS for any amount of time all for the extremely high resource cost of 15% of her magazine with the laboriously long cooldown of about 1.5 seconds.
Her grapple is a frustrating “get out of jail free” ability that takes almost 0 skill to use and has no counterplay other than killing her before she can use it for the vast majority of heroes.
Her ultimate is also incredibly powerful and just straight up disables the ability for flankers to play the game, along with having one of the lowest ultimate costs in the game.
She also got her health buffed to 225.
There is probably more that I can’t think of off the top of my head, but you get the idea. Effort - Reward ratio is extremely low at high levels of play (which is what should be balanced around).
If it wasn’t for what they did during Widowmaker’s season, where they "reworked’ maps for her that did nothing and left her untouched during the season and then buffed her after…I would say you’re probably wrong.
But…nah, this is twice now. Random Widowmaker buff. It’s starting to feel like that’s why they’re doing it, to sell skins.
