Clear to who because its not clear to me? Most of their balance patches are literally what the community asked for in some form or another. People do not like Scatter, they rework Hanzo. People do not like mass res, they rework Mercy. People do not like stale meta’s they literally put a patch on PTR that is directly targeting the meta and nerfs 3 of the 4 top heroes defining said meta.
How other games have it doesn’t invalidate the point in which the MM system in Overwatch is an absolute joke. In QP per example the system prioritise speed rather than actually balanced team, meaning you get horrible one sided matches 90% of the time. Which is a far cry away from the description which states you’re jumping into a match with people of your same skill level. Given that we have Skill Rating as they proclaim is indicative of skill, why then does a bronze get matched up against a gold, per example? This is how the MM in Overwatch isn’t working, and how it has been broken since the game was realsed.
It’s actually quite simple; what profits the most? Casual or pros? In this case the highest profit potential is the pros, hence they get priority on everything Overwatch. It’s a far cry away from the standards of Blizzard of old, which mingled with their players, and while they made mistakes, they owned them and apologised for it, striving to make changes that accommodated the community’s request. That’s how they went from the release on vanilla WoW to The burning Crusade and to The wrath of the Lich King, making improvements and changes based on the community, and made WoW the quint-essential of MMOs of its time. And also why from Cataclysm until today, the game has declined into a linear pile of retconned mess that is not even a shadow of its former glory.
In terms of the MM system, I refer to the answer above.
But that’s not true. You can have a super op hero. But in lower ranks, they make so so so many mistakes that you can still beat them and rank up. In higher ranks that’s far more difficult as they are playing the hero to the max potential.
They do communicate with the “community” though. A very small, very biased portion of it. And listening to a very small group of the community is not the way.
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Its absolutely the 99.9% of the casual players that brings the most amout if money it. They are balancing around the top end because it’s a competitive game.
No, loot boxes doesn’t generate as much revenue as E-Sports does. Even the notes in the accounting states as much. The best revenue they get from games like Overwatch is generated from their E-Sports. Loot crates is only a marginal source of income.
Well, they’re sure to lose money with people finding out about how they don’t really care about balancing the game.
Who said we are just looking at lootboxes?
What about game sales, merch and Blizzcon tickets?
Also Coach Jayne said the league isn’t making profit.
Not really, they’ve had this strategy for years now. They still have a good revenue stream and the investors continue to back them up because they continue to paying dividend,
There are only 3 revenue streams attached to Overwatch. Selling new copies, selling loot boxes and E-sports related revenue streams. 2 of which isn’t generating a whole lot of money.
The league isn’t making too much, and that’s why they’re starting to show a bit more care towards the casual market, they are trying to win back the favour in order to sell Overwatch 2 copies.
They do balance for OWL only. We don’t see buffed Reaper, Bastion or Hanzo because they are “unfun to play [in/for higher ranks/OWL]”. This is exactly why we don’t see them there, and why Orisa and Brig get nerfed every other patch despite them being non-existent on ladder. And it’s also why they were quick to buff Genji (4 buffs at once btw) and so hesitant to nerf Lucio despite him being a meta hero for 4 years.
Conspiracy theory or not, these are objective facts. They allow certain heroes reign in OWL for literal years and pull out a nerf hammer immediately when other heroes peek their head out of “unviable” pit.
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I don’t think the devs consider lower ranks or If they do they are kinda bad at it.
They certainly didn’t say thay do, not directly anyways. And that’s fine, But please don’t sugarcoat it.
People think balancing for OWL hurts lower ranks but it rarely does. Meta is non-existent in pretty much any rank below GM, people just play whatever they like to play. It doesn’t matter if they nerf Orisa and Sigma because Rein/Zarya is the default tank combo for almost every rank. Even during the peak of dive Rein/Zarya remained the most popular tank duo in every rank but high GM.
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100% wrong. The reason Reaper and Bastion especially can’t be buffed is that if you make them viable in high ranks, you make them unstoppable monsters in low ranks. You counter Bastion with good coordination, and you counter Reaper with a lot of awareness and target focus. Those aren’t things that happen in low ranks much.
When they buffed Reaper’s lifesteal to 50%, that made him a complete monster on ladder in everything plat and below. Buffing Bastion is an even more dangerous proposition, and not for high ranks, let alone OWL, but for low ranks. 
Reaper is a pretty fun hero to watch, no one was complaining about that when he was meta for a short while in OWL. Same with Hanzo. He’s a “sniper”, spectators love watching snipers. Some people don’t like watching Pirate Ship, but even that was always popular back in season 1 when it was meta exclusively on Junkertown, so even Bastion could be much more popular and people wouldn’t mind.
Hear what they want to hear? The devs themselves say that they balance the game around the OWL. No ifs, ands or buts about it. There’s no interpretating those words any other way.
And Jeff himself saying that he wants OW to go more in an FPS direction than a MOBA one, just further cements where Blizzard’s priority is, the minority of players. Catering to them is why the game is a DPS-biased mess now & the only way to fix it is for Blizzard to put Tanks & Healers out of their misery already.
So how is all feedback important to them, when all they care about is the 1% of the playerbase?
Its the truth. Straight from the devs’ mouths.
The DPS buffs are already constant. You think they wouldnt do those things down the line? Reaper had a lifesteal biff before, he’d get that back at this rate. Bastion surprisingly had a buff at all. Rework Hanzo is already more broken than the original ever was.
Meanwhile, Tanks & Healers get nerfed again & again.
i take it this is your version of jeffs quote:
You cross out everyone’s feedback, but how does Blizzard put the whole playerbase into account, when only the OWL(in turn, Master/GM players) are prioritized?
If Blizzard listened to the majority of players, then Comp would be seperate from the rest of the game, Comp would have all its DPS buffs, while the rest of us get to play
Tanks & Healers that are not suffering a slow death, and QP & the rest get their own changes if need be.
Look at how Experimental works, its gets balance changes that the rest of the game doesnt have. Comp should be that.
Actions speak louder, than words. It’s rather hypocritical of devs to claim, that they listen to everyone, and then do some weird stuff no one besides top 1% asked for.
Still, they are pretty much deaf to 99%, and require a lot of screaming into their ears to actually do something, that favors most players.
i invite you to check out this (evergrowing) list of changes that were due entirely to OWL/TOP 500/GM/Masters players…
It is VERY apparent that Blizzard went from “Fan base” income to signing with sponsors that are companies that hand out money to “sponsor” league.
It has an issue where if this game is NOT popular to watch. Sponsors are going to soon discover that their investments were worth NOTHING and find another platform to sponsor.
Mountain Dew did GAME FUEL with Horde and Alliance (on wow). I will admit, the stuff was VERY good. Red and BLUE flavored Mt. Dew soda was really good for a night of gaming and keeping the “IV DRIP” of caffeine, while raiding Goldshire or Stormwind’s Auction house, PK’ing people.
Blizzard wants and has to have MORE money. Since bootloxes don’t make much money after the whole GAMBLING SCANDAL.
I really think blizzard should have went the route of Paid-for cosmetics, but didn’t. So league was their only avenue to generate revenue. BUT it comes with the cost of them “Fixing matches” and constantly changing the game for content.
The problem is, the popularity won’t remain, when nobody cares about the game anymore. Which League could FLOP overnight.
IMO I really think the first year opened really well with league and was something to Celebrate. But at the same time, It shows Blizzard uncages their old demons of wrecking characters, spot-patching and nerfing characters like MERCY, just to make for a “good show”.
The other day I picked up Link to the past, re-ran it for fun, to see how quickly I could power through the game. I can still appreciate the game since the day it launched, because the devs aren’t actively trying to “Hot fix” the game. So yes, I can do the Darkworld 3 skip for the Big Treasure Chest, and obtain the flame-rod faster, and that would make any dev MAD. But the reality is. I get to enjoy the same exact title I bought over 20+ years ago and it is still fun to play.
Today’s games lose value fast. Especially when they FIX MATCHES and PATCH absurd things.
More like they are intended to lose value fast, so you could sell new games.
Remember Korean situation with StarCraft 1? Blizzard literally had to bribe people to make players change to StarCraft 2.
Selling DLCs is same thing, just covered up a bit.
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