As a player who actively plays both games, I believe that there are a few things that the OW dev team can learn from its “copycat” Paladins, especially as they enter a new era with OW2 and can make sweeping changes to the game.
Note: I don’t want OW to be paladins or vice versa. I also will recognize that Paladins has its own issues, however I still believe that it would be worth the OW devs looking at its competition
The Major Areas
- Heros
- Cosmetics
- Esports
- Community Interaction
Heros
Paladins succeeded in 3 major areas when it come to heros that the OW team does this being; Hero/Class Purpose, Hero Personilzation and Release Schedule.
1 Hero/Class Purpose. IMO one of the best things that Paladins does over OW is how they treat different classes More importantly how they make healing and tanking feel meaningful and active.
Starting with supports, like OW every support is a healer however, unlike OW supports are more than just heals. Yes ana has sleep and brig bash but for the most part in OW support means YOU HEAL. In paladins healers aren’t able to constantly heal, this is due to all heals being linked to a cooldown, as such when heals are on CD it is expected that the support does something else to contribute to the fight. In Paladins this means 1 of 2 things, either basic attack damage or CC the enemy. Yes, CC the enemy. In paladins supports for the most part are responsible for Hard CC including stuns, slows, immovables (other characters in the game besides supports have cc but it is something that is most common with supports). What this creates are supports as punishers (not finishers, but punishers) if you are out of position you will get CC by a support then, get finished by the support’s ally. I makes supporting active and makes team communication/game sense even more important.
Now tanking. Tanking in Paladins is in its most simplest sense is objective brawling. As a tank you are there to capture the objective, and takedown anyone who tries to stop you. Tanks in paladins are high health, high damage brawlers (and which was brought to my attention after posting) have movement abilities so they feel active rather than stationary, more over the movement abilities aren’t necessarily for damage dealing ie… Rein’s Charge and Wrecking Balls fireball mode. What this creates is a “living boss” in which your team tries to take out the enemy boss as they take out yours. Tanks however, if they go uncontested can and will deal a ton of damage easily taking out enemy champions. The main difference between the 2 games is in OW tanks are there to stop allies from taking damage were as in Paladins tanks are there to stop the enemy from capping point. That change in motivation results in tanks that don’t feel like slaves to dps.
Dps aren’t without there improvements in Paladins dps simply do damage there are a multitude of ways this can happen but the dps just need to do damage. this can be done through the a damage champion or flanker champion (in paladins these are separate categories). Damage champions use not only basic attacks but abilities to deal high amounts of damage to the enemy usually focused on the tank and enemy dps. Inverse flank champions have extreme amounts of mobility and use their ability to get in burst/kill and get out. The biggest thing that elevates the paladins dps are their tech (think genji short dash/dash cancelation). Many of the paladins dps and champions overall have tech making them easily to learn, hard to master. Take Imani after you use her frostfire glide (basically a 3-D omni directional surf) ability to gain height then can quickly cancel into inferno cannon a beam attack which allows you to maintain the height you gained from before. Another example of tech (not done by a dps) is Inara’s wall/ult combo. This tank has a wall like mei but can if placed below you knock you upward, you can then alt in air to gain extra distance on her ultimate ( a spear that stuns in an area around it) Tech is actively taken out of OW but in paladins it creates another level of skill.
2 Hero Personalization aka what makes each hero feel unique. OW heroes are good, they look cool, have good personalities even some unique abilities designed around them however, while OW heros are good Paladins heroes are fantastic. Each hero in Paladins pushes the limit of the game and stands out in their own right. IMO any hero from paladins could be added to OW and immediately become iconic but few to none of the heroes from OW could be added into paladins and do the same. Take Sigma his story and concept were cool but IMO his abilities don’t relefect that (except his basic attack) according to lore he basically has split personality disorder (or whatever the real name is) the ability to control gravity and has basically seen the fabric of the universe. All of this and the best the OW team could do was a shield, another Defense Matrix and a rock throw. Instead Sigma could have the ability to lower the gravity of an ally (or self) for a short period allowing for cool flanks/repositions. Its that next level I believe the Paladins devs have been able to achieve in their character design.
3 Release Schedule. Paladins releases a new hero about every 2-3 months. This results 5 new heros each year. What this results in is after about 5-7 weeks when the honeymoon phase of a new hero is over the Paladins team starts hitting at the next campion. So after ~8 weeks the new hero is released onto pts and after about 3-4 weeks of testing released to live. Its a tight schedule but it definitely encourages players to return multiple times a year it also encourages people who play paladins of and on to still monitor the games social media.
Cosmetics
Paladins have just nailed it with cosmetic items. Most if not all new skins in paladins have custom vfx, sfx and even voice packs. Now some might think that this gets confusing but because each characters ability are so unique even when reskin you know whos is whos. I shocks me that the OW devs aren’t doing customized vfx,sfx, etc… on legendary skins (especially now when just 4 are released per event). Take Reapers Nevermore, why not have crows swarm around him (not to many) to show the area and damage of his ult rather than a smoke cloud and guns even though that no longer works with the skins idea. Furthermore, paladins has golden skins (not just guns) which have there own custom die-ing effect where you become sparkles when you are killed. The Paladins team also created an entire set of skins based on community designs, I don’t know how many years I’ve seen the Genji magician concept art and how many times I’ve heard youtubers/streamers ask for it and we still haven’t gotten it added to the game come on OW team.
More over Paladins has animated sprays, and 3D sprays, only one of which OW has and was locked behind order Warcraft 3 so not worth it at all. Just as an example paladins has a spray that literally summons a techno party above your head there isn’t anything like that in OW. Paladins also has an option in which you can view the gun in game more in depth to see the details something I’m sure content creators would like to have. Finally Paladins also have custom announcer packs based on the different devs and now even some of the most well known streamers, and OW still has Athena
Esports
The paladins dev team make it worth having esports playing in the background unlike OW. I believe you can watch paladins on twitch or mixer and earn viewer points, unlike OWL which forces you to watch on youtube and doesn’t even award you OWL tokens anymore.
While I did like the concept and still do like having team jersey skins something paladins esports doesn’t have (instead you use viewer points to get legendary skins that have custom vfx,sfx, etc…) the skins you see in OWL are not the same ones you get in game. There isn’t any custom vfx,sfx,etc… which is what it looks like when you watch.
Moreover the esports are over produced, yes they have a good production value but unlike OW they balance breaks with actual game play. I mean at this point every 5 secs “its crunch time” when you watch OWL and its annoying.
Community Interaction
Besides the already noted community concept skins, the paladin dev team does sooo… much more when it come to interacting with its player base that its funny. First off the established a system where people from the community formed a council to rep the community and act as a bridge (an even stronger one then they already have) between the devs and players. Second of the devs will admit mistakes, an example of this was OB64 which was hated by the community and was patched out less then a month later b/c the community was so vocal about it. This also goes into how the paladins dev team is consistently tweaking numbers so that they can actively avoid something like the GOATS meta. No of this compares to the biggest difference between the teams.
The biggest difference between the dev teams are how they handle updates. Everytime there is even a semi-major update the paladins dev team have a full live stream talk show in which they talk about the changes coming up (and this is before they go to pts not after pts when they are added top the game) If its a new hero we get a dev update which is prerecorded but otherwise the OW devs will use the forums or patch notes to tell us about update. Having the devs behind paladins actively show up each patch cycle (even during the pandemic) to tell and explain their reasoning just makes it feel as though players and devs are working together not battling each other.
Also the paladins dev team literally are memes and love to skid into paladins memes, yes OW made goat brig skin but the paladins dev team have made so many comestics based on community memes it really shows they are part of the community. While the OW dev team does use some memes just look at the Tigron update live show and the Lenny the Pirate Avatar. The Paladins dev team allows for stupidity (in the fun sense) I personally believe alot of gamers love at least some stooooooopidness in their games
Like I said at the beginning i don’t want OW to become paladins and vice versa. There are definitly things the OW dev team can learn from Paladins. If donme/applied correctly would IMO greatly improve the game.
