Tanking has been the only thing holding back Overwatch for years since goats was started and since RQ became a thing.
They are the sole reason for the woes of the game. No other role has been under constant scrutiny or babying like the tank role.
Merging tanks with damage is the ONLY right answer and the solution the team has been looking for.
It offers the benefits of open queue by allowing more team compositions AND gives player relief knowing they’ll be supported by two players who will more than likely be experienced at the role, since support mains are usually higher IQ’d than the rest of us.
Some HP roll backs will be needed to avoid goats pt.2, but that’s fair when the option of having 3 tanks at the same time will be available again BUT now with the DPS passive and one less player, it will be countered more effectively.
We can all agree that supports are what makes OW, OW. The whole “you shoulda picked Mercy” parody song shines on this. The song didn’t say anything about going Reinhardt, as tanks are not needed, just as optional like damage heroes.
This is how you make 5v5 work. You’re welcome, Blizzard.
The devs have recently stated that they look at the forums, reddit, twitter, youtube, and instagram.
They pay close attention but people like you halt our progression for a better game because you just can’t let go of nostalgia.
Pre-RQ was ANNOYING only because nobody wanted to play supports consistently (they didn’t want to play tank either but who cares about them).
“I need healing” is a macro, not “I need tanking”. Supports are more needed for OW than tanks and dps. Just admit that the game can be played regularly with no tanks and we can move onto greatness without even having to lose tank heroes!
Who wouldn’t want a better OQ back?! 3 DPS/Tanks + 2 supports is the best freaking layout for this game.
A game being more MOBA/RPG does not mean people cant shoot things, tanks cant kill thens, or supports shooting things.
Overwatch was a very unique game on its release, It was not just your box standard shooter that we have had for decades. You would never find a hero like rein or mercy in COD. It had different heroes for a ton of different playstyles. It was unique and different.
However overtime its been lossing the things that made it unique/different. Take CC for a example, CC is not a common mechanic in FPS, ya there might be a flash bang or something, but never something like mei freeze. CC is just one aspect that set overwatch apart from other games and made what its its. Healing and Mittigation are another 2 mechanics that set overwatch apart. But overwatch has had a trend of removing or nerfing thoes types of mechanics.
The game has become more “generic” (its still not generic like CoD and never will be, but when you compare ow now to OW1 early years, its much more generic)
Except we can 100% deny that? Overwatch is not in its golden age, not by a long shot. The golden age was the first 1-4ish (give or take) years of overwatch.
Also when people complain about Goats and double shields I alway wonder if you guys even played the game?
Goats while a issue was not a common of a issue, it only happened consistently diamond and above, same with Double shields.
For ~80% of the player base people did not experience goats or double shields. Its was mainly high ELO players that had to deal with that.
Take double shields, that was a specific strategy of staggering cool down ability, mainly with sigma and orissa, to have a near 100% uptime of shields/mitigation. You needed coordination between players, which just did not happen for most players.
People need to remember that people will play what they find fun/intresting, its why before role queue it was common to see 4-6 DPS on a team.
So Yes I will deny that OW was at low because goats and double shields because it only effected a small % of players.
Yes I know they read, that part is mostly a joke because the devs no longer interact on the forum.
I prefer open queue over roll queue (at least for QP, comp RQ is really nice), just not the idea of making tanks into DPS.
Overwatch works and is different because of the three rolls, and the need to work with the other roles to win the game.
You need the tank to make space/midigate damage, you need the DPS to try to kill, and you need the supports to keep people alive and provide utility. Remember way back when DPS was attack and defence, every heroes had a roll/job to do. That is what made OW different and Great IMO.
But now thoes rolls and jobs are getting more blurred, everthing apears to be trending towards everything just being DPS. And your idea of combining the tank and DPS is just another step in that direction. Whats to stop in 1 or 2 year then for the supports to become just another DPS?
That is why I dislike OW2 design choice, making it more FPS focus, and less team reliant is the opposite of what drew many people to play the orginal OW.
If I want to play a FPS shooter, I have hundrends to pick from, but a roll based FPS shooter requireing team work? There arnt that many to choose between.
the combination of tank and damage wouldn’t turn tank heroes into damage heroes. It would just make them just as optional as DPS.
Of course their HP will need to be nerfed but their advantage will be that they’re more defensive than offensive + there will be no complaints on tanks who are more offensive than defensive, like Hog and Mauga.
All the merging will do is allow queue times to be even better + give players more options on team comps + get rid of tank diffs and raid boss tanks + return us back to OQ but with mandatory supports.
How can you be against this when it aligns with what you want?
Because it blurrs the line more between the rolls.
Take when the made attack and defence into 1 role, while this mostly didnt change much, there were a few that didnt transfer well. The main one being torb.
Even to this day torb still has the idea that he is a hero for defending, but since he was but into the generlized DPS roll, people picked him in situations he was not the best at, like on attack.
As such the devs changed him so he was more viable in more situations. And while I think overall they did a good job while keeping him still defense orientated, it wasnt a perfect transition.
Like I love that we can throw his turret and it auto builts, but losing his armor packs/scrap mechanic and his old T3 turret ult changed him a bit to much IMO.
But my point is that since he was removed from defence to the DPS role, he ending up getting changed to reflect that.
So my concern is that if you turn tanks into the DPS roll as well, they will also end up getting changed to reflect the new roll they are in.
Take rein for a example, he is the near perfect immage of what a tank is, but if he is placed in the same roll as a hero like soilder, people will get idea like “Why are they classified the same?” “they are to different to be consider DPS” so there is a chance rein migh be made less “tank like” to fit more into the dps roll that he is now in.
Problem is, that means that at least one of the DPS/tank flex player will have to pick a tanky hero to help their team create space. What happens if all three DPS/tank flex players on your team would rather play squishy heroes like widowmaker, hanzo, and sombra? There would be nobody to create space.
Whereas with tanks, there are no wrong choices when it comes to tank heroes. Since every tank hero creates space in their own way. So for your solution to work, every DPS heroes will have to have the ability create space, which I’m not sure how it will be possible (e.g. widowmaker).
Trying to merge Tanks with DPS would probably cost too much of the game’s identity to justify. It’s an interesting thought experiment, and could reasonably be expected to improve the queue situation, but it’s probably going to make the Tanks feel rather poor gameplay wise. Sure, some of the Dive Tanks and shooty tanks could probably play close to how they do now, but either they’d lose too much lethality to work properly or too much durability to work properly.
It would require a lot of careful reworking to get them feeling decent without them being dangerously powerful.
There’s a lot more room for tweaking Tank power when it’s a separate class with role queue.
I have little doubt that a lot of ex-CoD players would be fine never having to play against a tank in a 1v1 as a non-tank, but I think that oversimplifies the big picture of how the game plays/feels and is only reflective of a portion of the audience. Overwatch is supposed to feel different compared to typical PvP FPSes; Tanks are a part of that.
Devs just need to keep iterating on Tank tuning and reassess the countering situation; it take’s time, but it’s a more worthwhile approach than trying to bury tanks.
GOATS and double shield were not “leaning into a MOBA” - they were just balance issues that involved slowing the game to a crawl so nobody got to play. The two are orthogonal to one another.
Well I’ll be super up front with you off the bat - I heavily dislike people referring to this game as a moba since in reality this game and mobas have almost nothing in common outside of the concept of heroes with abilities. I use the phrasing ‘moba’ here primarily to interject into your usage.
But what I imagine most people refer to when they say this, and what I’m getting at, is the strategic aspect of the game. Positioning and flanking. Tracking ability usage and knowing when to use your own. Team coordination and working together – e.g. combing abilities and ults. People love those huge team fights and getting big wipes with their abilities.
But my point with what I initially replied with above is – nothing about GOATS or double barrier have anything to do with this. They were just balance issues from flawed hero design that allowed teams to have too much sustain. Too much sustain isnt a “moba concept.” Suggesting this doesn’t even make much sense to me as it would imply actual real mobas would have these same issues, and yet we certainly dont see this happen.
Yes, it’s true there shouldnt even be a comparision to Moba. But as you said, I guess it’s ability-based and the execution and team building instead of hitting shots, and that is the stapples of Goats and Double Shields: you dont have to worry about hitting your shots, it always hits somethings. You dont flank, you move everywhere as a mass of 6 players. It was just about circling cooldowns.
The balance issues was, it was so easy to execute that you just ended up spamming abilities instead. Just spam shields and spam healing and immo abilities, a rag tag gold team doesnt have the coordination to chew through all of that.
dont get me wrong, overwatch really interested me because of the TRINITY role system found in mobas and morpgs. being a long time wow player i was like, woa a trinity role system in a shooter game, neat… still i noticed it was open queue at first so there was no role limits but back then i often wondered why the roles WERE SO DEFINED. when you have tanks be super tough and supports have tremendous healing then you run into the problem where you have to have those roles… hence they made role queue
still i think they should have never defined tanking and supports so much. should have been really light and more of an arena game like quake and unreal from old. still i dont mind the roles and role queue its just that any role that isnt damage wont be as popular as the tough tank with little damage (not now lol… they are raid bosses and do more damage than dps) and the healbot support which kinda has turned but still a support doesnt have damage potential like a dps
they being blizzard should have known this since world of warcraft. its super hard to find a tank to run dungeons heh. way harder before automated group findings. in classic wow you had to spam chat for hours heh
What moba has shooting that is still popular and wasnt dead? Does Moba even have headshot multiplier???
Also out of the box OW has a very fast ttk, almost everything 1 shot or combo 1 shot you. That was your golden age OW. If you played non-aim hero like Mercy or Rein you were at the mercy of your team to carry you. It means someone else had to hit the shots for you. So yeah, so much for “unique”.
And everyone knows Goats and double shields were the lowest point of OW, i dont even know why i even have to explain that while everyone could see the most popular role of the game became unplayable. So you can argue all you want, it was just not logical.