OW2's release plan is deeply confusing - you buy OW2 for the engine improvements and PvE content, and all the PvP additions are added for free to the base game. But you still have to wait for OW2 to come out before any of that goes live. I would not be surprised if they've rethought this approach somehow because it's a silly compromise between two largely incompatible business models.
Oh wait, so does that mean all the characters who are getting a big rework for OW2 will be changed in OW1 as well? I'm not sure how I feel about that.
As far as we know yes, not only are the reworks going live but OW1 is going to become a 5v5 game. Assuming that's still their plan, I think they would probably leave 6v6 somewhere like in Quick Play Classic, or at least custom games would allow it though that's not much of a comfort for people who preferred it.
+1
H3KnucklesBut we decide which is rightand which is an illusion.Registered Userregular
Yeah that's kind of a bummer. As diminished as it now is, you can still find games in Splatoon 1, and it's neat to go back and replay that on occasion. And that series made much smaller changes from 1 to 2.
Yes, the last we heard all changes in OW2 will be made also in OW1. In practice it will all be a single game, people who only own OW1 will be playing PvP with all of the same character changes made in OW2 for PvP, and just not have access to the PvE.
Numbani first point. They get a leaver after we were held because our hog and soldier fed over and over.
So the other 4 of us make it super clear. We win if you don’t feed. Just stay in position and don’t do anything dumb.
So of course, soldier drops down directly into their team and dies. Hog drops right after (not at the same time, sequentially) misses his hook, and dies. They nano visor and we lose.
I’m at a loss right now. In what fucking world is that something a player does and thinks “this is a good play”? How the fuck am in this SR with full on morons?
Like, they only had to avoid suiciding in. That’s it. That was their only job.
I get that everyone isn’t 200IQ but it takes about 5 brains cells to understand that dropping directly into the enemy alone is idiotic. And how the fuck are they winning games if they play like this?
Edit: got my revenge against the soldier next game. Went 22-1 as tracer with 55% kill participation for an easy win. He tried to match me on tracer but I diffed him pretty hard lol.
TLDW: They're uncoupling the PVP and PVE modes. They're starting a PVP closed alpha this week for Blizzard employees and Overwatch League players. In April, they're doing a PVP closed beta. He also said they'll be doing more frequent developer updates.
TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
I am baffled by this decoupling thing, it seems like they're admitting whatever they were doing for the past three years, especially the last year, is so behind or non existent they have to punt it away to focus on PVP or the game will move from dying to dead. They've also been dropping the ball on OWL with not even telling the casters if they're working this year or not.
As a show of good will, just start with removing Paris and Horizon from QP, the one thing that is more universally agreed to outside of nerfing Hog into the ground.
The timeline is on the slower end of what I was hoping for - we already knew OWL would be on 5v5 in early May and it was reasonable to assume at least a closed beta would start around that time. No date given for the open beta, I can only hope I get in the closed one. I'm glad at least that they're decoupling PvP and PvE, I expected that as well. I think everybody is on board with waiting as long as it takes for PvE to be finished, we just want PvP updates to resume ASAP.
I am baffled by this decoupling thing, it seems like they're admitting whatever they were doing for the past three years, especially the last year, is so behind or non existent they have to punt it away to focus on PVP or the game will move from dying to dead. They've also been dropping the ball on OWL with not even telling the casters if they're working this year or not.
As a show of good will, just start with removing Paris and Horizon from QP, the one thing that is more universally agreed to outside of nerfing Hog into the ground.
It'd be pretty hilarious if they just went back to the original cadence of releasing new content after three years of next to nothing, and the presumed multiple heroes/maps for OW2 release was just flat out scrapped.
Until they do something about how toxic the playerbase became, or give people better tools to manage it themselves, the PVE stuff was basically all I was keeping an eye out for though, especially with the overt focus on marginalizing tanks and support instead of making them less miserable to play.
They just reiterated that OW2 will have multiple new heroes in future beta phases:
Just to clarify something: Sojourn will be available in the first beta phase. As Aaron said, we’ll be having multiple phases of beta, and we are working on more, new, heroes for each role.
I'm sure they won't catch up with enough heroes to make up for all the lost time though. A lot of their development effort has gone towards PvE. I wouldn't be surprised if the new hero cadence is slower post-launch either, assuming they continue to work on PvE content post-release. At the minimum, new heroes now need a full talent tree before they can be released.
I think the ping system they announced actually does help with the toxicity problem - just turn off all comms and play with pings when you're pubbing.
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
Yeah I always said the Ping system from Apex Legends was genius and more games need to implement it.
Great way to give clear concise information or in the case of being on a team with an asshole or two convey information without actually having to talk to them
They just reiterated that OW2 will have multiple new heroes in future beta phases:
Just to clarify something: Sojourn will be available in the first beta phase. As Aaron said, we’ll be having multiple phases of beta, and we are working on more, new, heroes for each role.
I'm sure they won't catch up with enough heroes to make up for all the lost time though. A lot of their development effort has gone towards PvE. I wouldn't be surprised if the new hero cadence is slower post-launch either, assuming they continue to work on PvE content post-release. At the minimum, new heroes now need a full talent tree before they can be released.
I think the ping system they announced actually does help with the toxicity problem - just turn off all comms and play with pings when you're pubbing.
I mean with covid and stuff I think it's more than safe to assume that OW2 isn't gonna make up for its old hero release pattern.
But otoh the folks making the heroes and the folks making the campaigns aren't really the same people. It's not like this is a small indie company, the hero design team does hero design stuff, and that's largely its own pipeline separated off from map design and whoever's designing PvE systems.
As much as I'd like to see ALL THE THINGS, only releasing one new hero at first makes sense. The more you release at a time the harder it is to figure out balance overall. And the beta's gonna have Reworked Sombra, Reworked Bastion, Reworked Orisa, Reworked Doom, and Sojourn. Plus presumably a decent amount of balance tweaks on a lot of the hero heroes. Plus just generally the first large-scale exposure to the OW2 engine and 5v5 and 4 new maps. That's a lot of content to beta test!
Also the beta's also a publicity tool, and for publicity you wanna have more content to keep unveiling. You don't release all the new heroes at once, you release one or two every round of beta testing, to keep interest up and people talking about your product.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
+3
DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
edited March 2022
Yeah like Echo was released April 14 2020 that's almost 2 years at this point. There have been no real significant updates since then outside of a few balance tweaks.
Not everything needs to be fortnite but you do need to keep up with updates to keep people playing your game.
Dragkonias on
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BRIAN BLESSEDMaybe you aren't SPEAKING LOUDLY ENOUGHHHRegistered Userregular
Part of me still really appreciates a multiplayer game that doesn't feel like it needs to make a tectonic meta shift every couple of months. Sometimes it's nice to come back to a digital chessboard and readily pick it up again like nothing ever happened.
New content is certainly welcome, but it's good to remember some of Overwatch's biggest and most chronic balance problems came about from the release of new heroes
+2
DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
edited March 2022
I mean that's always gonna happen when you introduce a new variable into a game.
I don't think that's the issue as much as response time.
It is hard though cause you have to ask yourself is this character really busted or are people simply not adapting.
But one problem OW has had is when it's clear a character is busted it takes them the better part of a year to finally get them into a decent place.
They should really err on the side of new characters being weak - the consequences of that are that people stop playing them until they get a buff. The consequences of an OP character are often an enormous meta shift.
+1
DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
edited March 2022
Eh. I think both have their problems.
A highly anticipated character landing like a wet fart isn't fun either. Even worse if you need to completely rework them just to get them into the game.
And really outside of Brig and Sigma I don't think many heroes have been that bad. Sure they have their 15 minutes but that's whatever.
And honestly Brig and Sigma's problems were pretty much the same thing. They were jack of all trades who excelled at everything they did. Even compared to more singularly focused characters.
Like it should have been obvious those two were gonna be a problem.
Dragkonias on
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Part of me still really appreciates a multiplayer game that doesn't feel like it needs to make a tectonic meta shift every couple of months. Sometimes it's nice to come back to a digital chessboard and readily pick it up again like nothing ever happened.
New content is certainly welcome, but it's good to remember some of Overwatch's biggest and most chronic balance problems came about from the release of new heroes
The meta shifts are a huge part of what killed my interest in the game. I got so fucking sick of putting down the game for a month, coming back, and having to relearn every character plus find out favorites of mine are now shit for no goddamn good reason. Even worse, the shifts could be non-obvious, so I might just think I was screwing up and then I would find out, nope, Blizzard screwed with balance again.
BRIAN BLESSEDMaybe you aren't SPEAKING LOUDLY ENOUGHHHRegistered Userregular
The release of Doomfist basically nullified most all of the work I put into learning Zen, and that basically sealed the nail in the coffin ever attempting to be good at competitive after like, 10 seasons. Quick Play is fun enough with mates whenever they want to boot it up. But after years of doing well enough, the day I came across a meta shift that literally stopped a favorite hero from being useful because no amount of behavioural adjustment was going to help was the day I realised that the level of investment required to continue having fun wasn't really something I could be bothered with. Up until that point I'd never felt so fundamentally powerless from a hard counter in that way and it bummed me out pretty hard.
I think the design of the game means you have to main more than a few characters which is untenable for most folks. Like I can do a passingly good Bastion but I shine on Rein. It feels like a lot of characters from the base game kinda stagnated while newer characters got a lot of fun tools and toys. The game has always been a nightmare for balance but it feels like there should be a more defined "rock paper scissors" meta than one where it's kinda just chaos with so much thrown into the mix. Destiny PvP suffers from the same thing, where they want to give players powerful and shiny new kits but can't seem to balance them all that well against what came before
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
edited March 2022
I don't think switching between characters is that hard tbh.
Unless you're playing one of the higher mobility characters what every character wants to do movement and spacing wise is pretty similar.
And I think the OW team does a good job of making abilities pretty intuitive for the most part.
But yeah, hard counters exist in every game with a lot of variables so it is usually a good idea to have backup strategies.
Part of me still really appreciates a multiplayer game that doesn't feel like it needs to make a tectonic meta shift every couple of months. Sometimes it's nice to come back to a digital chessboard and readily pick it up again like nothing ever happened.
New content is certainly welcome, but it's good to remember some of Overwatch's biggest and most chronic balance problems came about from the release of new heroes
The meta shifts are a huge part of what killed my interest in the game. I got so fucking sick of putting down the game for a month, coming back, and having to relearn every character plus find out favorites of mine are now shit for no goddamn good reason. Even worse, the shifts could be non-obvious, so I might just think I was screwing up and then I would find out, nope, Blizzard screwed with balance again.
I mean...most characters still do more or less what they were doing when the game came out. I don't think the meta shifts required you to relearn every character as much as they required you to be cognitive of the opposing team's strategy and what they could do with it.
The release of Doomfist basically nullified most all of the work I put into learning Zen, and that basically sealed the nail in the coffin ever attempting to be good at competitive after like, 10 seasons. Quick Play is fun enough with mates whenever they want to boot it up. But after years of doing well enough, the day I came across a meta shift that literally stopped a favorite hero from being useful because no amount of behavioural adjustment was going to help was the day I realised that the level of investment required to continue having fun wasn't really something I could be bothered with. Up until that point I'd never felt so fundamentally powerless from a hard counter in that way and it bummed me out pretty hard.
The meta doesn't matter unless you're in GM. People even make off-meta picks work in top 500.
This has been demonstrably false at various points in Overwatch's lifespan and no amount of exceptions necessarily disqualify the existence of a norm
When GOATs was the meta, people below top 500 weren't really playing it. They pretended to play it, but GOATs required such a high level of teamwork that some OWL teams were barely playing it. That applies to a lot of metas (to a lesser extent). The lower your rank, the more individual skill matters. I've dominated games as Pharah or Winston when they weren't meta and I've seen others do similar things with other heroes.
BRIAN BLESSEDMaybe you aren't SPEAKING LOUDLY ENOUGHHHRegistered Userregular
I think where I split the difference is that during the days of the smaller roster there were clearly hard counters but you could really work through most of them by modifying the way you played that character along with the rest of the team, which felt rewarding in that you could still meaningfully contribute in the face of adversity
Later on, new hard counters felt less like this was possible for average players
Yeah, I think the super hard counters are a core design problem, but a lot of it could be addressed quite a bit by just having a better overriding philosophy for hero design instead of this chaotic mix. All it would take for Zen or Ana to not be lunchmeat is any kind of basic mobility ability. Playing a tank wouldn't be quite so miserable if there weren't a bunch of DPS who are designed to just walk straight into your face and bully you with nothing you can meaningfully do about it except try to run away. In practically any other game, that's what being a tank is all about. Make tanks short range and CC focused. DPS mid to long range with lesser mobility and only minor CC at most. Flanks are burst damage and high mobility. Supports all get at least some kind of minor escape.
+3
DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
edited March 2022
Hmm...maybe it's because I come from a fighting game background where matchups are a big thing.
But could you guys give me an example of a game where characters have diverse kits and abilities and counters don't exist?
Dragkonias on
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
A big problem with Overwatch is that it took so much inspiration on roles from TF2, before building out to be its own thing. For example, with what Overwatch is, there should never have been any kind of Sniper character. there could be a medium to long range type character, but just a "click head delete" character should not have been on the table.
Hmm...maybe it's because I come from a fighting game background where matchups are a big thing.
But could you guys give me an example of a game where characters have diverse kits and abilities and counters don't exist?
I would say virtually all MOBAs and similar have diverse kits without the kinds of counters that are common in Overwatch. It's not just there are counters or bad matchups, it's that there the matchups are oppressively bad and borderline unwinnable in what should be the character's specialty. Like tanks holding points/positions. Reinhardt in your face SHOULD be a death sentence, but a bunch of DPS want to charge straight at him and effortlessly win when they do. And some of the counters in Overwatch are so lopsided, particularly when Reaper is involved because of his massive self-sustain, that they can easily 1v2 or even 1v3 their better ones.
Counters should be situational, not character based. Tanks dominate short range with enough damage, sustain, and CC to make it dangerous to be near them for anybody, but are ineffective at mid to long. DPS dominate at mid to long, but can't escape if they're in trouble. Flanks are able to engage or escape quickly with the ambush factor giving them the edge over DPS, but lose to DPS if the DPS picks the engagement (either from better range or better damage) and don't have enough burst to just run straight at a tank that sees you coming. Not hard and fast rules, but a possible general overall design philosophy. Same with CC for that matter. Overwatch is a little weird in that almost all of the CC is on DPS instead of being on tanks/support. CC is a major thing that makes tanks dangerous to approach in other games, but tank CC in OW is almost entirely concentrated in ultimates, which aren't going to be used commonly or to deal with one Mei running into your face.
Overwatch's solution to this is that you can just change heroes on the fly, but there's multiple problems with that. You're probably not as good with the other hero, or just plain don't want to play them. There is no actual better counter to switch to (esp for tanks vs tank-killers), or that hero is already picked by a teammate. The overwhelming weight placed on ultimate use taxing you heavily for switching. It's just a bad solution all around.
This is compounded by there being a singular objective at all times, which makes the "just run away from bad matchups" not effective like it would be in a MOBA. You can't just go to a different lane or do something else, forcing them out of doing anything productive to go find you and harass you again. You have to hope that a teammate will do it for you, which might work in a perfect world, but we go back to the cost of switching, that it might not even be obvious or clear to them that they need to.
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E:
I 100% agree that the very low TTK is also a problem that I wish would go away. Hanzo blindly pre-firing arrows at a choke at head height should not be one-shotting anybody, even supports. This is also something that Overwatch's kind of poor map designs causes more problems with. Too many death chokes. That's more of a 2CP issue, though some like King's Row A could stand to be opened up too.
ArcTangent on
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
edited March 2022
I don't know if I agree with that.
Yes, characters should have strong areas and weak areas but it shouldn't be an auto-win for either character. You should be able to showcase your skill and outplay people even in lopsided matchups.
I feel like you're arguing two things at once you're saying matchups shouldn't be oppressive but also saying that characters should be really strong at what you feel their "job" is. Which is something that creates uneven matchups.
Also counters being character-based simply happens because well...the characters have the abilities.
As for the MOBA comment I really don't know enough about them to comment but from what I understand bans are pretty popular in their competitive play which makes me believe they are maybe a little lopsided.
Dragkonias on
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TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
Hero ban is something that would fix things for the community if only to be a stopgap. At this point it's better than nothing. So Roadhog being this beast or Richard Hammond being the still overpowered piece of shit can have some mitigation.
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
I think hero bans would be interesting but you probably need more than 10 tanks and supports first lol.
Horizon and Paris were just removed from the QP map pool (they were removed from competitive some time ago). So effectively they're now gone forever. Maybe some day in OW2 they'll reuse the assets in a different game mode.
I've always been skeptical of the community consensus that these maps are trash, but I'm sure they really did have serious balance problems in internal metrics. I'm not sure why they didn't do more to try to balance them, I guess they must have tried stuff internally and not been happy with any of it. I do tend to think that if they're not good enough for competitive, they're not good enough for QP.
I would argue that Assault is an inherently very flawed game mode. The attacking team needs to win exactly two team fights, so the defending team gets advantages in map design. It sucks. There's a reason they're getting rid of it for OW2 and I think it was just stubbornness that's kept the other Assault maps in the game this long.
It seems there isn't a good source of map balance data, except the time in 2017 they revealed it officially. However Hanamura and Anubis have nearly perfect balance numbers apparently. I'm not sure what it was about Horizon and Paris that made them completely unworkable while those other maps managed it from day one.
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TexiKenDammit!That fish really got me!Registered Userregular
That's great news, finally!
More than anything they saw metrics people leaving repeatedly in these maps, which starts to tilt at least 5 other people, and it just creates a start of being toxic. Now implement a 10 minute time-out for anyone who leaves a game, that gets 1 warning, then starts stacking.
Yes, characters should have strong areas and weak areas but it shouldn't be an auto-win for either character. You should be able to showcase your skill and outplay people even in lopsided matchups.
I feel like you're arguing two things at once you're saying matchups shouldn't be oppressive but also saying that characters should be really strong at what you feel their "job" is. Which is something that creates uneven matchups.
Also counters being character-based simply happens because well...the characters have the abilities.
As for the MOBA comment I really don't know enough about them to comment but from what I understand bans are pretty popular in their competitive play which makes me believe they are maybe a little lopsided.
It sounds like we're in agreement then that matchups like Reaper-Winston or Mei-Ball, or even Mei-DVa are problematic. There's no reasonable amount of skill or outplaying to be done in those cases. The only range at which they're effective is the same range that they get utterly destroyed. At best, all they can do is stall for a few seconds, not even force them to use their CDs, and in Reaper's case, come out of it with full health, so not even any cost to the other side except the ammo and two seconds it took. The counterplay is to switch. Which also goes to your third comment. I don't have an issue with things like Sleep Dart countering Barrage, or Transcendence countering Dragon Blade (though how little defensive ults actually counter a lot of DPS ults is another conversation). I mean character matchups where one side has no meaningful choices except to suck it up and die.
I am arguing those two things, and I don't believe that they're mutually exclusive. A planted tank should be able to hold a point, and a DPS should be able to damage from the distance. A DPS trying to hold a point and fight a tank toe to toe should be at a disadvantage. A tank trying to fight a DPS at range, or approach them out in the open should be at a disadvantage. Who has the advantage in the matchup depends on the situation, not just inherent to their kit/skills. The kit should determine how they pick or approach the situation instead. Snipers want long sight lines. Artillery wants choke points to shell. Defensive tanks want spots with cover and support. Mobile tanks want to approach undetected and to have escape routes. But in all cases, they're trying to engage in a situation that gives them the best advantage. This is also a place where I think Overwatch's map design hurts it, especially the 2CP maps. There's frequently no choice for everybody but to charge through some disgustingly deadly choke point.
I think bans are a little bit of a different beast, and I honestly am not sure if they'd help or hurt, though yeah, definitely agree that there aren't enough tanks or supports for it at the moment as we saw with the rando-ban seasons. Overwatch also allows hero switching on the fly and mirrors, plus no draft phase. Picks also get banned not because they're too strong, but because they're not fun to play against (or with), or countering them is not fun.
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
I don't agree with the first point mainly cause this is a team game. If Reaper/Winston happened in a bubble(heh) it would be miserable but the answer to that is to not take that fight.
Also two your second paragraph isn't that already how the game is?
Hard counters are inevitable in a game like Overwatch where the heroes' strengths and abilities are so diverse. You can often mitigate it by avoiding the enemy player or otherwise adjusting your play style, but it might well be that sometimes you're just playing the wrong hero for the situation. There are two paths the game can take from there:
Free swap heroes at any time so players can swap off of bad matchups.
Draft picks at the start of the game like a MOBA with no swapping afterwards.
The Overwatch team made the decision from day one to go with the former, and I don't think they're ever going to change that. If you're one-tricking a hero who has certain really bad match-ups like Winston and refuse to ever switch, then you're setting yourself up for failure and it's not the game's fault. The only way they can remove hard-counters is to "normalize" all the outlier characters to have less extreme strengths and weaknesses, and they've already moved in that direction on a number of occasions, but to go too far with it would result in a much less diverse game.
Posts
As far as we know yes, not only are the reworks going live but OW1 is going to become a 5v5 game. Assuming that's still their plan, I think they would probably leave 6v6 somewhere like in Quick Play Classic, or at least custom games would allow it though that's not much of a comfort for people who preferred it.
So the other 4 of us make it super clear. We win if you don’t feed. Just stay in position and don’t do anything dumb.
So of course, soldier drops down directly into their team and dies. Hog drops right after (not at the same time, sequentially) misses his hook, and dies. They nano visor and we lose.
I’m at a loss right now. In what fucking world is that something a player does and thinks “this is a good play”? How the fuck am in this SR with full on morons?
Like, they only had to avoid suiciding in. That’s it. That was their only job.
Edit: got my revenge against the soldier next game. Went 22-1 as tracer with 55% kill participation for an easy win. He tried to match me on tracer but I diffed him pretty hard lol.
TLDW: They're uncoupling the PVP and PVE modes. They're starting a PVP closed alpha this week for Blizzard employees and Overwatch League players. In April, they're doing a PVP closed beta. He also said they'll be doing more frequent developer updates.
Steam: MightyPotatoKing
As a show of good will, just start with removing Paris and Horizon from QP, the one thing that is more universally agreed to outside of nerfing Hog into the ground.
It'd be pretty hilarious if they just went back to the original cadence of releasing new content after three years of next to nothing, and the presumed multiple heroes/maps for OW2 release was just flat out scrapped.
Until they do something about how toxic the playerbase became, or give people better tools to manage it themselves, the PVE stuff was basically all I was keeping an eye out for though, especially with the overt focus on marginalizing tanks and support instead of making them less miserable to play.
Paris has always been trash, of course
I'm sure they won't catch up with enough heroes to make up for all the lost time though. A lot of their development effort has gone towards PvE. I wouldn't be surprised if the new hero cadence is slower post-launch either, assuming they continue to work on PvE content post-release. At the minimum, new heroes now need a full talent tree before they can be released.
I think the ping system they announced actually does help with the toxicity problem - just turn off all comms and play with pings when you're pubbing.
Great way to give clear concise information or in the case of being on a team with an asshole or two convey information without actually having to talk to them
I mean with covid and stuff I think it's more than safe to assume that OW2 isn't gonna make up for its old hero release pattern.
But otoh the folks making the heroes and the folks making the campaigns aren't really the same people. It's not like this is a small indie company, the hero design team does hero design stuff, and that's largely its own pipeline separated off from map design and whoever's designing PvE systems.
As much as I'd like to see ALL THE THINGS, only releasing one new hero at first makes sense. The more you release at a time the harder it is to figure out balance overall. And the beta's gonna have Reworked Sombra, Reworked Bastion, Reworked Orisa, Reworked Doom, and Sojourn. Plus presumably a decent amount of balance tweaks on a lot of the hero heroes. Plus just generally the first large-scale exposure to the OW2 engine and 5v5 and 4 new maps. That's a lot of content to beta test!
Also the beta's also a publicity tool, and for publicity you wanna have more content to keep unveiling. You don't release all the new heroes at once, you release one or two every round of beta testing, to keep interest up and people talking about your product.
Not everything needs to be fortnite but you do need to keep up with updates to keep people playing your game.
New content is certainly welcome, but it's good to remember some of Overwatch's biggest and most chronic balance problems came about from the release of new heroes
I don't think that's the issue as much as response time.
It is hard though cause you have to ask yourself is this character really busted or are people simply not adapting.
But one problem OW has had is when it's clear a character is busted it takes them the better part of a year to finally get them into a decent place.
A highly anticipated character landing like a wet fart isn't fun either. Even worse if you need to completely rework them just to get them into the game.
And really outside of Brig and Sigma I don't think many heroes have been that bad. Sure they have their 15 minutes but that's whatever.
And honestly Brig and Sigma's problems were pretty much the same thing. They were jack of all trades who excelled at everything they did. Even compared to more singularly focused characters.
Like it should have been obvious those two were gonna be a problem.
The meta shifts are a huge part of what killed my interest in the game. I got so fucking sick of putting down the game for a month, coming back, and having to relearn every character plus find out favorites of mine are now shit for no goddamn good reason. Even worse, the shifts could be non-obvious, so I might just think I was screwing up and then I would find out, nope, Blizzard screwed with balance again.
Steam: MightyPotatoKing
This has been demonstrably false at various points in Overwatch's lifespan and no amount of exceptions necessarily disqualify the existence of a norm
Unless you're playing one of the higher mobility characters what every character wants to do movement and spacing wise is pretty similar.
And I think the OW team does a good job of making abilities pretty intuitive for the most part.
But yeah, hard counters exist in every game with a lot of variables so it is usually a good idea to have backup strategies.
I mean...most characters still do more or less what they were doing when the game came out. I don't think the meta shifts required you to relearn every character as much as they required you to be cognitive of the opposing team's strategy and what they could do with it.
When GOATs was the meta, people below top 500 weren't really playing it. They pretended to play it, but GOATs required such a high level of teamwork that some OWL teams were barely playing it. That applies to a lot of metas (to a lesser extent). The lower your rank, the more individual skill matters. I've dominated games as Pharah or Winston when they weren't meta and I've seen others do similar things with other heroes.
Steam: MightyPotatoKing
Later on, new hard counters felt less like this was possible for average players
But could you guys give me an example of a game where characters have diverse kits and abilities and counters don't exist?
I would say virtually all MOBAs and similar have diverse kits without the kinds of counters that are common in Overwatch. It's not just there are counters or bad matchups, it's that there the matchups are oppressively bad and borderline unwinnable in what should be the character's specialty. Like tanks holding points/positions. Reinhardt in your face SHOULD be a death sentence, but a bunch of DPS want to charge straight at him and effortlessly win when they do. And some of the counters in Overwatch are so lopsided, particularly when Reaper is involved because of his massive self-sustain, that they can easily 1v2 or even 1v3 their better ones.
Counters should be situational, not character based. Tanks dominate short range with enough damage, sustain, and CC to make it dangerous to be near them for anybody, but are ineffective at mid to long. DPS dominate at mid to long, but can't escape if they're in trouble. Flanks are able to engage or escape quickly with the ambush factor giving them the edge over DPS, but lose to DPS if the DPS picks the engagement (either from better range or better damage) and don't have enough burst to just run straight at a tank that sees you coming. Not hard and fast rules, but a possible general overall design philosophy. Same with CC for that matter. Overwatch is a little weird in that almost all of the CC is on DPS instead of being on tanks/support. CC is a major thing that makes tanks dangerous to approach in other games, but tank CC in OW is almost entirely concentrated in ultimates, which aren't going to be used commonly or to deal with one Mei running into your face.
Overwatch's solution to this is that you can just change heroes on the fly, but there's multiple problems with that. You're probably not as good with the other hero, or just plain don't want to play them. There is no actual better counter to switch to (esp for tanks vs tank-killers), or that hero is already picked by a teammate. The overwhelming weight placed on ultimate use taxing you heavily for switching. It's just a bad solution all around.
This is compounded by there being a singular objective at all times, which makes the "just run away from bad matchups" not effective like it would be in a MOBA. You can't just go to a different lane or do something else, forcing them out of doing anything productive to go find you and harass you again. You have to hope that a teammate will do it for you, which might work in a perfect world, but we go back to the cost of switching, that it might not even be obvious or clear to them that they need to.
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I 100% agree that the very low TTK is also a problem that I wish would go away. Hanzo blindly pre-firing arrows at a choke at head height should not be one-shotting anybody, even supports. This is also something that Overwatch's kind of poor map designs causes more problems with. Too many death chokes. That's more of a 2CP issue, though some like King's Row A could stand to be opened up too.
Yes, characters should have strong areas and weak areas but it shouldn't be an auto-win for either character. You should be able to showcase your skill and outplay people even in lopsided matchups.
I feel like you're arguing two things at once you're saying matchups shouldn't be oppressive but also saying that characters should be really strong at what you feel their "job" is. Which is something that creates uneven matchups.
Also counters being character-based simply happens because well...the characters have the abilities.
As for the MOBA comment I really don't know enough about them to comment but from what I understand bans are pretty popular in their competitive play which makes me believe they are maybe a little lopsided.
I've always been skeptical of the community consensus that these maps are trash, but I'm sure they really did have serious balance problems in internal metrics. I'm not sure why they didn't do more to try to balance them, I guess they must have tried stuff internally and not been happy with any of it. I do tend to think that if they're not good enough for competitive, they're not good enough for QP.
Steam: MightyPotatoKing
More than anything they saw metrics people leaving repeatedly in these maps, which starts to tilt at least 5 other people, and it just creates a start of being toxic. Now implement a 10 minute time-out for anyone who leaves a game, that gets 1 warning, then starts stacking.
It sounds like we're in agreement then that matchups like Reaper-Winston or Mei-Ball, or even Mei-DVa are problematic. There's no reasonable amount of skill or outplaying to be done in those cases. The only range at which they're effective is the same range that they get utterly destroyed. At best, all they can do is stall for a few seconds, not even force them to use their CDs, and in Reaper's case, come out of it with full health, so not even any cost to the other side except the ammo and two seconds it took. The counterplay is to switch. Which also goes to your third comment. I don't have an issue with things like Sleep Dart countering Barrage, or Transcendence countering Dragon Blade (though how little defensive ults actually counter a lot of DPS ults is another conversation). I mean character matchups where one side has no meaningful choices except to suck it up and die.
I am arguing those two things, and I don't believe that they're mutually exclusive. A planted tank should be able to hold a point, and a DPS should be able to damage from the distance. A DPS trying to hold a point and fight a tank toe to toe should be at a disadvantage. A tank trying to fight a DPS at range, or approach them out in the open should be at a disadvantage. Who has the advantage in the matchup depends on the situation, not just inherent to their kit/skills. The kit should determine how they pick or approach the situation instead. Snipers want long sight lines. Artillery wants choke points to shell. Defensive tanks want spots with cover and support. Mobile tanks want to approach undetected and to have escape routes. But in all cases, they're trying to engage in a situation that gives them the best advantage. This is also a place where I think Overwatch's map design hurts it, especially the 2CP maps. There's frequently no choice for everybody but to charge through some disgustingly deadly choke point.
I think bans are a little bit of a different beast, and I honestly am not sure if they'd help or hurt, though yeah, definitely agree that there aren't enough tanks or supports for it at the moment as we saw with the rando-ban seasons. Overwatch also allows hero switching on the fly and mirrors, plus no draft phase. Picks also get banned not because they're too strong, but because they're not fun to play against (or with), or countering them is not fun.
Also two your second paragraph isn't that already how the game is?
- Free swap heroes at any time so players can swap off of bad matchups.
- Draft picks at the start of the game like a MOBA with no swapping afterwards.
The Overwatch team made the decision from day one to go with the former, and I don't think they're ever going to change that. If you're one-tricking a hero who has certain really bad match-ups like Winston and refuse to ever switch, then you're setting yourself up for failure and it's not the game's fault. The only way they can remove hard-counters is to "normalize" all the outlier characters to have less extreme strengths and weaknesses, and they've already moved in that direction on a number of occasions, but to go too far with it would result in a much less diverse game.