Why balancing around proplay is fine

General Discussion
1

pros are the best
if a hero on ladder is underperforming but is great on the high end spectrum, then he’s fine because you’ll eventually learn to play him and get better
if a hero is great on ladder but is underperforming on the high end spectrum, then he’s broken because when you learn to play them at max power they’ve already run out of value compared to other picks (need a rework)

if a hero is doing both bad at both ends, then the hero is underpowered because even if you get good, value will never be

if a hero is doing amazing on both, then the hero is either too easy, or overpowered, gives away value with or without performance (needs a nerf or rework)

the logic is simple, the top tier know the game better then anyone, they know who’s the strong hero and who’s the weak one, and thus when you compare the ladder performance to high end one you gotta make sure the heros allow players to play the game while leaving the hero in a state that allows him to be stronger the better the player and keep a ranking aspect to it

i know it’s fun to push around people and destroy them with minimal efforts, and then i know how frustrating it is to the otherside, so keep that in mind when you feel like ranting about a nerf to your fav hero who got nerfed because he’s op
if he’s op he needs a nerf for the health of the game, weather you find him op or fun is not relevant when stats show that he’s overpowered

at the end of the day the nerf is there to make you play at the level of your skill rating, and no, fun doesnt matter more, because you’re fun would make the game less balanced and leave ranking system not working

SKILL
if a hero requires no skill, he will make player boost themselves and the ranking wouldnt work generating more unbalanced matchs, underpowerforming and overall less quality matches

2 Likes
2

Bu bu but pros only make up less than 1% of the playerbase! We need to balance for the casuals! :joy:

3

You should always balance for the top i agree. But the reaper buff makes no sense at all :smiley:

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4

Unless your name is Sombra :roll_eyes:

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5

and i agree it makes NO SENSE

6

Sombra player is sad

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7

devs need to provide a sort of safety net for the wider community or else the floor under the pro’s feet will simply vanish

ideally, game balance ought to be true to its name and pursue a fair competition on all levels of play

2 Likes
8

If the goal is to improve competition, then ‘gitting gud’ should create as much impact as possible. Thus, pro play should almost entirely be balanced around.
But at the same time, gitting gud is an investment. Not everyone can play 30+ hours a week. Because of this, always keep casuals in mind, aiming for a split of 80/20, ± 15-20.

It’s that simple. Applies to any competitive pvp game, like, ever.

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9

They aren’t really balancing for pro play, otherwise Torb’s turret would have double the health and damage, Moira would do twice as much damage, etc.

They are balancing around what they think would be nice mirror matches to watch. Problem is that Blizz is very bad at predicting lately.

They realize very well that, whatever they do, a strict meta will emerge immediately simply due to the game’s design. So they have to adjust it artificially from time to time. Meanwhile, the playerbase only gets more frustrated.

10

nope that would be op
also yes
they are trying to keep some heros not CANCER
and btw
moira destroys even at top500
you can find footage of taimou raging over a moira destroying him as mccree

11

I mean hey if they can get a few hundred pros to make them the same money as millions of other players, fair enough.

But they can’t.

If the game isn’t fun for the rest of us, we’ll stop playing. And if we’re not playing we’ll have no interest in watching OWL either.

Balancing purely around the pros with no care or regard for the rest of us is actual suicide for the game. They should care about both, and they clearly do not.

1 Like
12

if by fun you mean
i can bully with x hero
or i can rank up fast with x hero
then your fun and the people on the enemy team’s fun are colliding

13

the league’s first 12 teams were sold for a reported $20 million each

but the reported asking price during this round of expansion has been between $30 million and $60 million, according to ESPN.

Full article here
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/sports/wp/2018/08/02/overwatch-league-expansion-wave-begins-in-atlanta-guangzhou/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.f51745cea517

So 12 teams at 20 million dollars is 240,000,000 and that doesn’t factor in expansion prices. So pretty sure at this point if it flops they won’t lose any sleep over it

14

I agree. They can’t balance around both. Pick one. The only obvious solution is to go top down. Things don’t trickle up. For example, they nerfed DF to the point where he will never be used in pro play. It could’ve been possible for the player base to adapt to the hero after a few nerfs. But no, they needed him in the gutter. I think the balance team is just a group of monkeys.

1 Like