the good/bad of shields is they are walls. temporary walls that one team can shoot through. Like, if you view them as a wall, it does NOT feel good to be the red team shooting a wall. It feels wasteful. The answer is to keep shields, maybe even buff them but give ult charge off shooting them. Make them tactical to use, so that they offer protect but the other team is going to get ults faster.
I look forward to bot genjis shooting only at shields and doing even less for their team outside of ult.
I honestly don’t mind shields provided they are breakable and provide only temporary mitigation. Bubble is a good example.
They mostly need to work on providing feedback for players outside of YOU GOT A KILL. It means players chase kills, which is often wrong, instead of taking space and positioning properly.
i don't know what bot genjis are but gameplay sabatoge exists as a reportable offense. If shields are going to stay then the problem is they will either be too strong or too weak all the time. There are a lot of options around how the game can evolve. For example, make the orisa and winston shields centered around them. Orisa is a front barrier that is positioned 5 feet out from wherever she is. Winston is a bubble like Zars but obviously bigger and doesn't build ult like hers. That changes gameplay. Just tweaking numbers is usually pretty ineffective at changing how players perceive combat.
I do agree that the killfeed should evolve. The metrics in this game are kind of terrible in a lot of ways. Killing blow being the most important thing has hindered a lot.
Calling a player a "bot" basically means they do the same stupid thing over and over, unthinkingly, without learning or adapting to the opponent's gameplay. Usually low-tier genjis do one of two things: either throw shurikens at a distance to build ult while contributing nothing to any team fight other than when they ult or they dash in alone to try to 1v6 the enemy while spamming "heal me" while dying. That's not gameplay sabotage per se, but it's doing the same dumb thing repeatedly without learning (or even seemingly having the capacity to learn). Of course, getting PotG from the one decent blade they got all game convinces them that they were "carrying" and it's everyone else's fault. Another shitty piece of feedback from the game that actively hinders people from improving.
As for shields, the dev decided shields would be the major source of damage mitigation outside of healing and armor. This isn't bad per se, but as you said, tweaking numbers tends to make the shields feel like impenetrable walls or like tissue paper.
Winston's bubble is the only shield I really like as a design choice because it is skill based and highly dependent on proper positioning, both of the shield and the player. Orisa's shield theoretically could be the same, but plays differently due to her lack of mobility. Winston's bubble is situationally strong or weak depending on how it's used, making good and bad Winston play blindingly obvious (at least to anyone paying attention). It can get massive value by cutting off healing for a vital moment, blocking an ult, or holding a position just long enough to gain an advantage.
It is also weak enough and on a long enough cooldown that a bad shield gets zero value and gets punished easily. It's hard to get a similarly horrible Sigma or Rein shield (outside of failing to block an Earthshatter) since they can be redeployed rapidly. Orisa is again a different case, and I am not good enough to analyze her play (mostly because I find her boring).
What other kinds of feedback outside of kills should the game include? Are there any that should be removed?
Better/Standardized feedback for receiving healing is a big one. Mercy is unique in that she gets a whole popup and health bar indicator when she's tethered. Most of the rest have only a sound effect. Healing provided broken down by each character would also be a good one, but I can understand only allowing the healer themself to see that.
I also feel like they're mistaken with hiding the scoreboard, especially with the medal system, and you should abso-fucking-lutely be able to see number of deaths. It hides who's actually doing well and who's struggling, on both your team and the enemy's, and especially in comparison, and double especially for the people who are stealth throwing. The medal system just promotes paranoia while hiding that yeah, sure, maybe you have gold damage and kills, but your numbers are actually complete garbage. Seeing who's on fire is a very poor substitute. Assholes will be assholes regardless, but the stats being more visible would make at least a few subsets of assholes way more obvious and clear instead of the toxicity falling on the wrong people.
Death recap would also be good, particularly with the kill cam defaulting to the finishing blow instead of whatever did 99% of your health before the Moira ball tickled you.
Yeah, the interface like the PvE missions have showing team health and ultimate charge would be super nice to have as the default instead of having to hit Tab and/or spin in a circle to check everybody's health.
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Better/Standardized feedback for receiving healing is a big one. Mercy is unique in that she gets a whole popup and health bar indicator when she's tethered. Most of the rest have only a sound effect. Healing provided broken down by each character would also be a good one, but I can understand only allowing the healer themself to see that.
I also feel like they're mistaken with hiding the scoreboard, especially with the medal system, and you should abso-fucking-lutely be able to see number of deaths. It hides who's actually doing well and who's struggling, on both your team and the enemy's, and especially in comparison, and double especially for the people who are stealth throwing. The medal system just promotes paranoia while hiding that yeah, sure, maybe you have gold damage and kills, but your numbers are actually complete garbage. Seeing who's on fire is a very poor substitute. Assholes will be assholes regardless, but the stats being more visible would make at least a few subsets of assholes way more obvious and clear instead of the toxicity falling on the wrong people.
Death recap would also be good, particularly with the kill cam defaulting to the finishing blow instead of whatever did 99% of your health before the Moira ball tickled you.
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