They have, but dive fundamentally only works because of the overwhelming advantage they have over their targets. It’s inherently an awful meta for anyone who has to play them.
In this upcoming meta, it’ll likely be Ana.
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I too have ADHD but its more odd for me. I like zooming in racing games but OW is like the only exception somehow.
Whatever a hero is, not a hero let alone a meta should be “forced”. Dive is the greatest example because the devs always were between forcing Dive and Anti-Dive instead of working on making as many heroes viable at the same time as possible.
When people say that they want something be forced to be good, i already know that things are about to be bad. I don’t want my heroes to be “forced” to be metas for example…
What’s silly is that’s not really a significant gameplay design concern.
It’s just streamer hivemind stuff.
Like complexity creep is certainly a concern, but that’s only to the point it becomes unmanageable. And you need a certain base level of complexity to accommodate for “modularity” on making a knob/dial do exactly what you intend it to do.
Otherwise it’s not “bad” so long as there’s enough Worthwhile+Unique choices for a given ELO range.
It’s just different.
It’s also often dumbed down to the point where literally every buff is complained as Power Creep. Which is just stupid. Like if it’s not causing “Inflation” in the total amount of power in a role, then it’s not even Power Creep.
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So poke meta was okay? And support dps meta was okay? And all the other metas are fine. But dive? Nope can’t have that meta again. Sorry dive heroes you don’t have the right to ever be viable.
That’s true, but I don’t feel like these changes are achieving that. It just seems like it’s going to make hero variety even less in certain elo ranges and make them the most optimal pick in others.
I don’t mind buffs. But when their reasoning for “Hog is really strong, we don’t want to nerf him because we want to see how Mauga does against him!”, I think that’s a sign of legitimate power creep.
When it’s, “Winston isn’t doing well against other tanks” and they buff him to ignore armor, they ignore what it does to Brigitte, Torb, and Bastion, instead of just…nerfing those heroes a bit.
And buffing Tracer - there’s a reason she was meta before and fell off. There are hero interactions that do too much against her, but they didn’t address that.
This is where I feel like the buffs are power-creep.
What heroes though other than torb? Bastion will still most likely wipe him. And winston won’t go after tanks.
The only people who enjoy the heroes you mentioned, are the ones who aren’t good enough to play the actual difficult heroes in the game.
Winton ignoring armor will make him great and we will see more Mercy play into him because its easier to combo with her rather than Ana.
But there are heroes like Ramattra whos got a buff on paper but didn’t in gameplay. Armor conversion but both Winton and Mauga will be able to negate said armor and the other Tank heroes can negate his ult with all the stuns.
Besides a few memey OTP-s, most of the people only play these characters because they have the least counters. If they would have more counters without their skill being changed then people would instantly call them more skillful and vica versa, We’ve been through this with McCree since years.
I don’t even care for all these meta wars I’m just happy tracer will be able to implement assassin playstyle again and not just disruptor role.
I think the game hasn’t ever reached a point where you could say it’s in an “ideal” state yet. And that the devs STILL haven’t dealt with stuff that I thought they’d have figured out over a year ago, like Snipers and AntiNade.
So the whole premise that the game is moving away from some supposed “perfect” state, and that’s “bad” is rather silly.
They’ve never had a baseline worth complaining about moving away from.
So it’s less of a “Is this, or is this not, Power Creep?”.
It’s a “Why the heck would that matter even if it was?”
It’s just… so dumb when you got people obsessing about terms, but they don’t even know fully what the term means, or the full caveated theory on why it might be relevant.
And then they just spam it completely out of context, like it’s a one-size-fits-all scenarios type of thing.
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Sub-Masters during Goats was very close to that. Almost every character was viable at the same time. I get why they’ve had to dismantle the meta but they should’ve reworked Brig instead of buffing Tank killers then force two of them in a match with Role Q. That would be a much better alternative timeline.
Which was a bad, brain dead solution.
It’s not really the players fault the developers seem to enjoy installing crutches on support.
Thats a very, very, very weird statement.
Most people play heroes because they like their kit and/or thematics. Very few people pick heroes because they think they’re hard. That sounds really shallow.
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I guess, but yeah.
Pretty much anything involving 6v6 would require a Time Machine to be relevant.
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Kiriko is probably gonna be in dive zen and the whole meta will be forcing suzu to quickly kill zen and then snowball and im yawning as I type this
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I can agree that people use powercreep on every buff. But if that buff is to help with their viability, then I don’t think that is powercreep.
What I consider powercreep is, “are you buffing this to deal with a specific interaction, instead of nerfing the hero responsible for said interaction when it is a universally discussed and hated interaction?” - that is when I consider it power creep.
We’re never going to have perfect balance. I’m aware of this. How can you “perfectly” balance so many heroes and unique interactions? It’s impossible. We can get as close as we can, and even then it becomes subjective to a degree. But some of these changes, I’m sitting here and I do feel like it is actual power creep.
Not nerfing Roadhog who they agree is doing incredibly well, almost too strong because they don’t want to nerf him yet, because they’re hoping another character can keep him in check, is a pretty bad sign to me. Same with relying on anti-nade and not nerfing it because of Roadhog.
These are things that I feel like are power creep. And sure, it’s not the end of the world. But they’re going to keep dancing around it and never actually address the core issues like you said. They still haven’t figured it out.
I’ve always wondered if the balance team only does this to Hog to see how will Mauga whos similar to him would perform statistically. If the stats prove it to be a failure, i can see Hog getting a Rein-sized nerf hammer.
Idk I think it’ll be Ana over Zen, and we may still see Brig instead of Kiriko, and Lucio may show up
Idk really.
Right, but the whole point is that the “baseline” ideal power levels, haven’t ever fully been decided yet. So of course they are going to change.
And I think powercreep discussions are usually, counterproductive, because they usually just devolve to “up is always bad”. Which is a very dumb type of gameplay conversation to have.
The only reason PowerCreep would ever be relevant, is if there’s a big issue where a hero is a must-pick for a given role. And for whatever reason, the devs refuse to revert them back down.
But even then, that only really matters if it’s leaving too many D,E,F tier heroes.
And I don’t think that problem exists right now.
(For real, we don’t have something like 50 heroes per role, like League or DotA2, where there’s a high risk of too many of them getting left behind.)
And to the extent it exists, it’s mostly because…
The devs haven’t dealt with AntiNade, Widow, Hanzo yet…
Roadhog is in a weird place right now. He’s too durable, but also too vulnerable to AntiHeal, and UltCharge feeding.
Mauga, is going to be in a similarly weird place.
A lot of mid-lower ELOs, since 2016, have been stuck with a lot of Rein usage since forever. And while that’s partially because “popular” or “simple”.
But a lot of that, even back in the day, was because…
The devs haven’t dealt with AntiNade, Widow, Hanzo yet…
I don’t know about Brig because Anti is as big as Inspire but i can see her being a wild card both in Dive and Anti-Dive metas. Zen is not that good without juggling so i can see Mercy, Ana and Lúcio being the most picked supports with Brig and Moira being the wild cards.
Lmao Poke is infinitely worse. Just a bunch of hitscan standing near corners all game long.
If dive comes back in Ana won’t go anywhere, she’s a huge dive enabler.
People pick heroes for a variety of reasons, including because they’re too Pepega to play anything harder.
Typically people don’t pick “Difficult” heroes because of difficulty - alone. It’s usually complexity that draws people in, with complexity comes difficulty.