I see what your saying. Part of the problem is that the Devs don’t seem capable of understanding the context of their own data.
This is problematic because they don’t exactly communicate with the players at all. They don’t dismiss community myths or falsehoods. There’s literally no leadership voice in the community from the Dev team.
Maybe. Pharah got railroaded over the last few patches. Hit scan heroes got huge buffs, Mercy got her base line healing nerfed and the Trob rework added another counter.
Sadly, most posts on the forums are of the ****post variety. The Devs never respond to actual constructive posts. Hell, barely anyone pays attention to actual constructive post here.
I don’t think players are leaving en mass but they are leaving. Recycled events, lack of new content (maps and new base game modes) and poor balance is driving people away.
If the Devs would be more transparent it could go a long way. Sharing a balance roadmap would be a great start. We also need them to take on a leadership voice in the community.
We also need major fixes to ranked, MMR, matchmaking and more, but sadly, it appears the Devs have been pulling overtime for the OWL expansion teams. This will drive more people away…
I thought that when they said “Reduced spread” for Reaper they meant less spread, which would have made him a powerhouse against smaller targets… But it turns out I accidentally omitted “Randomization” when reading it. It really calls attention to how extremely short his range is, and his attack is, incredibly, way, WAY worse than it was before. Roadhog changes seem to help him, but holy crap Reaper’s changes are absolute garbage. I hope this is just a starting point for future changes, because this is just incredible that they decided to make this change.
Symmetra’s change is cool, the reduced ramp-up time is very useful, but DAMN is she overpowered. You can practically melt entire teams in an instant. The strategy is basically Target Tank for 2 seconds -> Target literally anyone else for .5 seconds -> Win. DPS power creep is real, and it’s not even “creep” anymore so much as it is a huge lurch forward…
Mercy’s change… Don’t really notice. I was playing her and it’s cool to be able to use her ult more often, so that’s useful. The healing beam change is useful, but I don’t really notice the difference too much.
They literally just buffed 4 heroes who needed buffs, fixed some bugs, and gave us an update on a new feature coming sometime soonish. What was ruined?
I wouldn’t say the forums is a majority of the player base. You are right though they do have access to lots of data and the for them to not respond to post such as these would indicate it not being a problem at all.
That’s what they claim, but we don’t really know. We know there’s millions of copies sold (and it’s likely a good percentage of that are smurfs/alt accounts anyway).
Noone is alone here, a single voice in the forum might accidentally speak for a big number of people. So I personally think it’s quite concerning seeing so many post about leavers lately.
And I have to agree that balancing is really bad. Some of you might like the changes, but only because you finally are able to climb. That isn’t an indicator for balance, it’s just a personal preference. I used to be diamond for a long while, now I simply stopped playing, I didn’t even care to rank in. I play like once a month just to realize that the game has totally shifted into a cc fest and terrible balancing or rework failures.
Some of the issues are so obvious I fail to believe a single person cannot see it. Here is an example:
Brigitte’s shield bash does 50 dmg. Why? It’s a stun ability, it shouldn’t do 1/4 of a squishy or even 1/3 for Tracer. Reduce it to 25 like McCrees flash.
Whip shot does 70 dmg. This one is even more mind boggling. This ability is supposed to gain a gap between you and the enemy. It’s a displacing ability, a defensive ability. Yet it does 70 dmg? It’s just stupid.
That’s just an example, I could talk about DF or some other heroes as well, but I know it’s useless. OW is out for quite some time now and it has gotten absolutely terrible, they had time enough to do fix it.
Me: I campaigned for a year and a half and over 5000 total posts to give Pharah survivability, give her a better ult that isn’t a suicide bombing meme, let her not be so dependent on Mercy to survive, SHE NEEDS SURVIVABILITY BUFF
Blizz: Ok Pharah now has a weaker splash damage and weaker splash knockback so its even easier for her counters to fight her. There’s a ton of hitscan buffs on top of this. One of three healers (Mercy) that can even heal Pharah properly now gets a direct healing nerf. Oh but Pharah can shoot 7 rockets in the time it took to shoot 6, enjoy!
Merle, I appreciate your passion for Overwatch. We may view the developers differently, but we both appreciate and love this game. The devs shouldn’t waste their time responding to threads here. That’s what the developer update videos are for. They respond by making changes that the community has asked for. And they have made changes. Sure, it isn’t always what we expected or suggested (e.g. Mercy and Pharah changes) but that doesn’t mean they are ignoring us.
I hate that rhetoric ‘blizzard doesn’t listen’. It’s complete bull, and Baja’s thread already proved it. A growing number of forumgoers here already know its bull. Blizzard will make changes to Overwatch based on more than just this forum.
I don’t really care about the events, I play mostly competitive. I would like more lore content, but I hardly think people are leaving because there aren’t enough Overwatch shorts or comics. I agree balance is driving some people away, but that is simply the case of ‘you can’t please everyone’. Every balance change they make will inevitably upset someone.
I personally believe a majority of the changes has pushed Overwatch to a more balanced state. But I also think this game will never be balanced. It’s too complex for it to ever be balanced.
I would love more transparency, but it ultimately comes at a cost. Delivery.
If Blizzard shared a balance roadmap, and if even the smallest part wasn’t delivered, I guarantee this forum would burst into flames, literally. Look at 2 weeks ago when Jeff replied to a post about Hog
When it wasn’t delivered in that week, dozens of people posted demanding answers. So they aren’t transparent because they don’t want to say something they aren’t 100% sure they can’t deliver. And I appreciate that. When they have something important to tell us, they will.
Ranked, MMR, and matchmaking I agree isn’t perfect but they already acknowledged it.
I’m not sure why its so apparent
the Devs have been pulling overtime for the OWL expansion teams
I need proof of that statement, because to me it isn’t apparent.
And again you have no proof it drives more people away. In fact, I have anecdotal proof it did the opposite. It engaged more people to play more.
I went to the recent unveiling of Toronto Defiant and I met a few passionate players. One was a 15 year old kid that started playing Overwatch on console. He had no clue about OWL up until it went into stage 4, but when he learned about it he became super engaged.
He got a new PC and an Overwatch PC version just so he can aspire to go pro. He knew about every single player trade, and watched a lot of Contenders.
He went from a casual console player, to an aspiring pro player. It’s anecdotal so take it with a grain of salt, but I also saw dozens of other kids at the Toronto Defiant event. OWL is going to get bigger, and that is good for the game.
