I never cared about dps-only players and filtered their complaints so I guess I’ll take your word for it. Old overwatch was very rewarding to flex players so I didn’t run into too many DPS-onlys in diamond and masters games. A majority of players I have seen had at least one tank or support hero as back-up.
Anyone who hated playing tank was always welcome to roll the matchmaker dice or queue with a friend who could fill. Heck, the devs even created LFG which was perfect for metal rank players where there were more selfish dps-lockers. Tank was very much fun to play. Most dps-mains, particularly one-tricks, never actually bothered to learn the tank role or it’s heroes because they mistakenly thought “Damage” was the killing role. Most players today still mistakenly think “tank” is for protecting teammates and “support” is for healbotting.
We see a lot less overwatch discussions in general as we have lost much of the playerbase. Well now it’s non-stop “why should I queue tank if we no longer enjoy playing the role?”. Why would dps mains complain about RoleQ? It was made primarily for their benefit. Of course many DPS players love now having a 50/50 chance at selecting their favorite hero first and having guaranteed healers.
RoleQ killed genuine fill players like myself. I will only queue dps these days and I’m not alone. Meanwhile, I fill in OpenQ where tanking is significantly more tolerable and support playstyles are more varied. Catering to less than half the playerbase with 2-2-2 wasn’t the move. Simply creating more pewpew tanks and supports that weren’t just healbots/spongebots would have attracted more players to flex those roles.
I understand the sentiment that you guys are playtesting a lot, but truthfully until we really can play it for ourselves we won’t know how to fully form an opinion on this. Also no offense to the team but the skill levels are vastly different, I doubt there are 12 people on the team who are all GM who can identify crucial issues that pro players in your esport/OWL would immediately recognize. Baptistes Lamp being one of the biggest culprits and problems of current OW right now, would certainly make a ton of things about 5v5 seem overly oppressive.
Speaking of the removal of CC, as a Mei main seeing major utility stripped from her and replaced with “more damage” is extremely worrying. I personally don’t care about CC being toned back, I do however care about removing utility for nothing with the same depth which in turn dumbs down heroes. Can you comment about whether any new utility will be added for those heroes who are having some removed?
Will Winston finally be able wallclimb? I mean, King kong most definetly could do that if we already have 2 DPS both doing it anyway. He could even be slower tho, just saying. In fact, all tanks could be slower than the average hero to become the nemesing MVP they were inteded to be dealing high damage and defensive capabilities… But, even more than that, the diving tanks needs more movement capabilities to keep up with the madness it will become only 1 tank. So maybe D.Va can also d be able to soar or slowly decay like Echo/Mercy? or WB get a increasing speed by keeping the ball spinning non-stop outside grappling? I honestly feel they need something. Just like the Orisa’s foward movement boost or sigma’s free from gravity in a second jump on delay kinda ability. These are all most welcomed implementations imo. But the thing i am most anxious about it i gotta say it’s Mauga. Not only the concept of a dual wielding machine guns + moving shield, possibly richoceting too, AND a hitscan tank is what i feel the most needed addition to the role. As of course, many more supports now that their ratio/player in the team is by far the lowest.
Same as now but people in mid ranks don’t care so it won’t change
You could nerf barriers and give tanks more health now, it would be the same
a net positive change for who? at this point i don’t think it will be worth for Damage players either, because queue times are going up anyways since one tank player is going to queue dps or support, and i will be one of them as a tank main.
to me tanking is special in OW because of the synergies and if you ask tank mains 90% will answer the same. The more brawler, faster, deadlier tank is a narrative blizzard pushed to accomodate dps-players-only and justify 5v5, dps players will never play tank role
i will try 5v5 but when thinking about it, it doesn’t sound right in every way imaginable, we’ll see i guess
Caveat: I am not confirming here the extent to which we’re looking at Doomfist. It would be disrespectful to the the hard working members of Team 4 to not give their work our best effort in revealing it.
Speaking more generally, existing hero reworks and/or balance changes are a part of our larger comms plan for OW2. We want for heroes to have the appropriate amount of space and time to shine and we’ll be doing what we can to create some great reveal content that will hopefully surprise and delight you.
Can you comment at all on general levels? Like, in general, are we going to see damage levels or burst damage go down?
In general, are we going to see healing levels go down, or else burst healing go down, or else AOE healing go down?
I probably speak for quite a few tank players when I say I’d feel a lot better about these changes if I knew burst damage was also going to be less than it is in the live environment.
they confirmed back in May 24th AMA that they intend to do internal testing with deep changes on Mei as a tank if she were to keep her gimmick that is freeze.
the hero designer said they plan on giving her the most wanted feature, iceskating, and imo it’d be great to have her CC on primary replaced with a CD skillshot like Ana’s sleep dart with less duration and range.
i suppose after all these months they had the time to properly test her so it would be nice to hear what direction they want to go with her in OW2 - make her an actual off-tank / brawler or a dps, but blander
You need to try the product. If you don’t like it, you can stay “done”.
My statement isn’t on what you are entitled to do. It’s on what is most intelligent to.
That would be to know what you do and don’t know.
Give criticism on what you do for sure - the current game. You are well qualified as a customer to do that.
But saying things like ‘McCree will be completely unbalanced - devs stupid for 5v5” when McCree is confirmed to have changes, we don’t know what they are and we don’t know what 5v5 feels like just doesn’t seem useful.
They are going to rework my main. To which I could say “wELL hE AINT DoOM, I’M dONe” but I don’t know what ideas I do I might as well wait to see.
I never said it was 100% or 0%. Seems you aren’t even reading my comment.
I recommend you look at the feedback from GM or higher tanks before saying this a low ELO issue. Mind you I don’t think it’s as much of an issue at lower ranks given people can’t aim very well down there.
Most people here are commenting on things Blizzard has confirmed / re-iterated in this very thread. For example, the fact that Blizzard is making the tanks more offensive and reducing the number of tanks by 1. You don’t need to have played OW2 to see that Tank synergies will be gone (that’s a given now) or that reliance on tanks will decrease, Blizzard have straight up said as such. They’ve also stated that tanks won’t be drawing most of the damage anymore:
This comment makes it clear why Blizzard is calling tanks brawlers in OW2, they are removing 1 part tank and adding 1 part DPS. Yes tanks will still block damage but we’ve also made them even more DPS like. We don’t need to have OW2 in our hands to read Blizzards own comments on where the role is headed, they’ve pretty clearly indicated the direction on multiple occasions.
Ok, I see where this is going. The last thing I will say is there is a big difference between giving your opinion and acting like you know precisely what the final product is going to be like.
I only commented on one of those groups so I won’t be drawn into this further but feel free to carry on.
Whatever they do to fix queue times, will simultaneously attract players and alienate players.
And this includes doing nothing to fix queue times.
There are no options that don’t alienate players.
Furthermore, the idea that if they are changing what demographic of players the game appeals to “I.e. More FPS, Less MOBA”, that is obviously going to attract a certain type of player, and push away another group of players.
The trick is choosing the option which alienates the fewest amount of players, and attracts the highest amount of players.
Which as a guy who spent roughly 600 hours looking at this queue times issue, I believe this was one of the best ways forward.
Because Jeff Kaplan (RIP) literally said multiple times (and we even had an Experimental (double RIP) in order to go to one tank they’d make significant changes to existing tanks for balance.
I wouldn’t be any stock into a rushed showcase for Blizzcon, I doubt it reflects OW2 at all.
Sounds good on paper, but im not sure this will work out this way. At start for sure, plenty of Tanks will play and que times will be fine.
But there are several factors that outright make it an almost irrelevant change imo.
The new players who come to the game with OW2. The majority of them will be DPS players, thats just how it works. So immediately, there will be a lot more DPS player to handle.
There are a lot of tank players atm, who only plays tank, because the long que times, otherwise they would play DPS. Add those to the DPS que.
I am certain without a shadow of a doubt, that a lot of tank players will just leave the pvp scene overall, solo tanking is not something i can see working out well,especially because of the too much pressure and the lack of synergy.
Supports will have enough of it very fast, where they will get overwhelmed from every direction because of the lack of a tank and either quit or move to DPS.
So in theory its good to remove 1 tank from the bottleneck, but for every tank removed, there will be 6 new DPS, so the que times will still be horrible, if not worse after a month or two. Because the tank role will still be on short supply and the support category will become the new bottleneck.
I wonder what comes after that, remove a support as well? Or make it 3 DPS 1 support 1 tank? I wonder how many years will pass until they realize that the DPS role just feels too good to play compared to the other 2. Or the fact, that with every new DPS hero released, they delay the category balance by a year.
That’s why they’re shifting and making it more rewarding/good to play aggressive tanks as fat DPS. The idea is no longer, tanks need to tank (Even though tanking skillset is important.), but rather, the perception that tanks are aggressive DPS so more DPS players would leapt to it.
Solo tanks like hammond/dva/hog would also further force that change into the players faster. Since if you don’t have a frontline, the only way to win is to dive aggressively. Which is what DPS players want instead of waiting, sitting and pushing up with the shield. Additionally, the lack of synergy is a total sham. Synergy between your DPS and Supports are still a thing. (I also find it bull that tank queues being long will ever be a thing. If anything, tanks will still be the fastest queue since you only need one and with DPS/Supports being the larger pop.)
As for the supports, that’s why they’re giving the role passive, more survivability and punishes flankers who can’t finish the job fast enough. Not to mention that there are still options for supports, going Zen/Moira/Brig/Lucio. If your claims of support having enough of it very fast, they’ve quit a long time ago (And not to mention, DPS players are also moving to support since it’s a tad faster and Bap/Ana/Zen scratches the DPS itch as well.).
I’ll prob agree that support might be the new bottleneck, but as it is, you only need one tank for 2 DPS/2 Support for a game to find a round quickly. Not to mention that it’s also finally possible for Blizz to introduce more shield tanks without the issue of double shield.
Sad to say, but making tanks fat DPS is prob the way to go. Supports are already there with heroes meant for supporting and doing damage part of their toolkit rather than raw healing.
tanks are getting buffed because how does a ball protect his team without a barrier if enemy team is running a reinhardt who does have a barrier? obviously the ball team here is at a disadvantage so they need to adjust ball to be able to protect his team better. or imagine a team with a hog vs a team with a rein… again. the hog cant protect them in anyway, the rein can.
surely anything could happen but in theory the reins team would have an advantage cuz they can shoot all enemies without any danger. they probably wont change rein too much cuz he is ALREADY good thanks to having a Barrier. the main tanks who are getting big buffs and changes are the tanks without shields. tanks who cant help their team as a solo tank. like if enemy has dva… and she is just like she is in OW1… theyre gonna lose. ill just kill her. especially if we have a barrier and they dont. so dva will surely be getting re-worked , just like hog and ball.
no matter how brawly you make a tank. i can still kill u from afar from behind a barrier if you dont have a shield of your own OR some new re-worked abilities to avoid this scenario.
"To be completely candid: I understand that you need to get your hands on the game and experience it for yourself to fully form an opinion. As someone who was an OW fan and player before I ever joined the team, I have a huge amount of empathy for folks who are frustrated waiting for OW2.
Speaking as someone who plays retail comp nightly, and playtests 2 almost daily, it’s difficult to envision what the experience is actually like until you’ve been in the environment and played several matches. I sincerely do not mean this in a gatekeep-y or “we know better than you” tone, but more to create an understanding that we get your sentiment and understand where your feedback is coming from."
That’s the problem - the last demo stream looked to be played by players at a silver/gold level. It is understandable for there to be low confidence in the balancing capabilities of the people currently play testing. If you could at least name some pro players that are contributing to the play testing feedback, I think you would find that there is a higher confidence rate in what you are saying.
With perspective, because Overwatch 1 is essentially "over’, as far as I can say, the development team had never made a lasting change that wasn’t a net loss for tanks as a whole.
Not a damn thing they say will convince anyone who’s still awake that any change they make to tanks will be to the benefit of tank players. The team’s word is worth less than nothing because they have been nothing but duplicitous, deceptive and pathetically biased towards the damage heroes and the pro players that prefer them.
I don’t need to play OW 2 to see what the future holds. That was demonstrated perfectly by the gameplay footage released not long ago: Reinhardt having his shield shredded and then pathetically swinging his hammer at three ranged dps heroes he could not reach, as they pounced on him with impunity while he tries to backpedal into cover. You call that progress or improvement. Garbage. Utter garbage. May your company collapse around all of you.
Something I have concerns about are what supports will look like in Overwatch 2. I really enjoy using defensive abilities and healing to protect my teammates (and even rescue them from getting wiped)!
But I worry that Overwatch’s supports are going the opposite direction, and that they may end up becoming “dps characters with a little bit of heals/utility on the side” by the time the sequel rolls around.
Is the design direction of supports something you’re at liberty to speak of at the moment?