Overwatch

[sjfja_fkdldjs]

8 minutes ago, showtime said:

It is necessary for characters to fall in and out of favor over time.  Roadhog was a tank that was one of the best dps characters in the game before his nerfs.  That lasted for a while and then was ended.  There was a time where Lucio and Ana were almost must picks in a lot of games and that lasted for quite a while, that was also changed.  There was a time when Mercy was hardly ever picked and that last for a while, until Mercy became essentially a must have over the past few months.  Genji and Winston had fallen out of favor a long time ago when Rein was a must pick and that has changed a bit over the past few months.

Characters need to change over time to help keep the meta fresh.  It is really bad for a game to have a character(s) who are always top picks throughout the course of several seasons.  What Blizzard is doing is trying to make different characters more viable, while trying to phase out some constant must picks in the past.  Eventually, Road Hog will be a high pick again.

This is definitely the style Riot goes for with LoL. Although, I think it could be possible for OW to go with a different style. Since there is map variance, you can cater parts of maps to certain characters and thus their counters also become meta. OW already has a bit of this with characters like Sombra, Pharah, and Widowmaker. This is more similar to something like Broodwar and SC2. Some maps favored specific units and races and thus made players favor certain builds depending on map. I do think Blizzard would probably have to rethink the current map pool or even have new map pools, in general, every season. But that would be a lot hard for OW compared to Starcraft. 

[showtime]

3 minutes ago, HighHopes said:

This is definitely the style Riot goes for with LoL. Although, I think it could be possible for OW to go with a different style. Since there is map variance, you can cater parts of maps to certain characters and thus their counters also become meta. OW already has a bit of this with characters like Sombra, Pharah, and Widowmaker. This is more similar to something like Broodwar and SC2. Some maps favored specific units and races and thus made players favor certain builds depending on map. I do think Blizzard would probably have to rethink the current map pool or even have new map pools, in general, every season. But that would be a lot hard for OW compared to Starcraft. 

I agree with the overall premise of your point.  Overwatch's maps are really big and dynamic.  There are usually parts of every map where certain characters are more viable than they would be on a different section of the map, but I believe every character in Overwatch is viable in any game mode and on every map.  Bringing up League of Legends is an interesting point because there is a pick and ban phase in every moba during the lobby phase of a ranked match.  I will make a prediction that a pick and ban phase will be coming to Overwatch ranked game play at some point.  There really aren't enough characters in Overwatch to have a full blown pick and ban phase like mobas have, but I am really hoping that by the end of the year or early next year they implement a short pick and ban phase - maybe one ban per team until the roster grows.

[sjfja_fkdldjs]

6 minutes ago, showtime said:

I agree with the overall premise of your point.  Overwatch's maps are really big and dynamic.  There are usually parts of every map where certain characters are more viable than they would be on a different section of the map, but I believe every character in Overwatch is viable in any game mode and on every map.  Bringing up League of Legends is an interesting point because there is a pick and ban phase in every moba during the lobby phase of a ranked match.  I will make a prediction that a pick and ban phase will be coming to Overwatch ranked game play at some point.  There really aren't enough characters in Overwatch to have a full blown pick and ban phase like mobas have, but I am really hoping that by the end of the year or early next year they implement a short pick and ban phase - maybe one ban per team until the roster grows.

5

It'd be interesting since OW is definitely influenced by the MOBA genre despite being a shooter. I will say though, bans wouldn't be good for the style of balance I mentioned and would definitely mean they are favoring rotating characters instead. 

[showtime]

13 minutes ago, HighHopes said:

It'd be interesting since OW is definitely influenced by the MOBA genre despite being a shooter. I will say though, bans wouldn't be good for the style of balance I mentioned and would definitely mean they are favoring rotating characters instead. 

I think rotating characters in and out of favor is the way to go.  That's how essentially all moba's operate as well.  It's necessary when you have a game with a lot of characters where more characters will be added over time.  With pick and ban phases, they can still rotate characters in and out of favor, but it really helps to elevate characters who are super strong at any given moment.  For example, last season in Overwatch, Mercy was everywhere.  Even a singe ban for each team in ranked, would have drastically lowered the presence of Mercy while still giving Blizzard feedback that she is a really powerful character at the moment.  

[scoobz]

Agree to disagree.  It may be good for the casual player base but such large changes so consistently hurts the competitive community.  Pros seem to agree.

[James]

A ban phase should definitely be implemented in the future, but for now there just aren't enough heroes even for one ban per team IMO.

My biggest disappointment has been how slowly new heroes have been released. I was hoping they would have a couple ready to go shortly after launch, and then a new one every three months. Plus, its unfortunate that there are already heroes that just don't really have a place in competitive play. If the next few releases can be the same quality as Ana/Doomfist, and they can get Roadhog/DVa/Mercy to a stable state, then I think the game will be in a pretty good spot. Bonus points if they can make Torb/Symm/Bastion into real heroes (seems like they're getting there with Junkrat).

[sjfja_fkdldjs]

1 hour ago, scoobz said:

Agree to disagree.  It may be good for the casual player base but such large changes so consistently hurts the competitive community.  Pros seem to agree.

Pros dislike it because it makes their job harder. LoL pros are the same, but it's slowly becoming an "attribute" rather than a problem with design philosophy. The best players in LoL aren't necessarily the ones who specialize in something, but the ones who can adapt to any situation. It's a pretty rare thing in competitive events, but its an interesting one IMO. But I can definitely see why a pro would dislike it, but I don't necessarily think it's wrong in a vacuum. Whether it's the right idea for OW, I'm not really sure. I think it has other problems from a viewers perspective that require more attention.

[James]

2 hours ago, HighHopes said:

Pros dislike it because it makes their job harder. LoL pros are the same, but it's slowly becoming an "attribute" rather than a problem with design philosophy. The best players in LoL aren't necessarily the ones who specialize in something, but the ones who can adapt to any situation. It's a pretty rare thing in competitive events, but its an interesting one IMO. But I can definitely see why a pro would dislike it, but I don't necessarily think it's wrong in a vacuum. Whether it's the right idea for OW, I'm not really sure. I think it has other problems from a viewers perspective that require more attention.

I think the difference from LoL is how severe the meta changes are in Overwatch. It would be like if Mids could only play Viktor or Azir for 6 months, then the next 6 months they could only play Zed or Talon. The only role that's been close to that is jungle, where we've seen Gragas/Sejuani (2nd half of S5 Spring) and Gragas/Rek'Sai (S6 Summer) be the only truly viable picks, but those metas were bookended by much more open metas.

But I do mostly agree with what you're saying. A pro Reinhardt should be able to play Winston at a pro level. Now we're even seeing most Genji players to transition to Doomfist pretty well. If you can literally only play one hero at a pro-level, then maybe you shouldn't be a pro.

Side note, the more I think about the LoL connection, the more I realize how many champions are redundant. Like, if there weren't bans and you could play mirror match-ups, probably two-thirds of the champions would be pointless.

[Thelonebillsfan]

Roadhog did not "fall out of favor" he was made entirely useless. His pick rate plummeted from top-5/7 across the board at all levels to top-10 after the hook changes and was stable.

After his last nerf he was the lowest picked character in the game by a significant margin. Because his utility was gone. He's a walking ult battery that neither offers any offense or tanking ability. Now he's just an even BETTER ult battery that offers no tanking or damage utility.

[Thelonebillsfan]

And no every character is not good at every point on every map that's just silly. Characters are very niche, Bastion has almost 0 utility which is why he's been routinely the least picked or second least picked character in the game aside from the two weeks where he was viable.

Blizzard balances with a sledgehammer, that's how they've always done it. Characters don't need to be completely reworked and altered every single time there's an issue because that's poor balancing, that just means they failed to create a balanced arena so they went screw it and just threw the whole pot out and started over.

[Thelonebillsfan]

And pros disliking it is the key issue, because you balance your game around the highest level of play an that trickles down, you don't balance based on bronze picks.

[James]

4 minutes ago, Thelonebillsfan said:

Roadhog did not "fall out of favor" he was made entirely useless. His pick rate plummeted from top-5/7 across the board at all levels to top-10 after the hook changes and was stable.

After his last nerf he was the lowest picked character in the game by a significant margin. Because his utility was gone. He's a walking ult battery that neither offers any offense or tanking ability. Now he's just an even BETTER ult battery that offers no tanking or damage utility.

They're moving in the right direction with him, but its like you're saying, they eviscerated him, and now they have to completely build him back up. If these types of buffs had come in with the initial nerf, then they could've followed up by now and have him close to being a real hero again. But instead we're still several patches away from anything like that.

[Thelonebillsfan]

The changes from 3 tank meta to dive meta weren't the result of sledgehammer nerfs and complete kit changes. Ana had her beyblade removed by lowering her shot damage to 60 instead of 80 and her Nano Boost damage buff lowered. Tweaks. D.VA became an integral part of dive because she can now flank back but needed a healer with her and Winston to dive with, that's why Mercy has a high pick rate (and despite all the comical kvetching, rez was fine and now is even more broken than it was before as in Valkyr you can res 4 people in 30 seconds which renders team fighting's attrition pointless as you can keep anybody up as long as you need with that and chain heals).

The changes to Doomfist for example are fine, they're limiting his hitbox, that's understandable. 

D.VA has already had reworks done, her armor changes, her DM changes, her pellet changes etc etc were all significant, but this is a total rework that completely changes every aspect of her character. She's not even a tank anymore. Mercy is now more combat oriented which defeated the purpose of her character from jump. A simple, easy to understand healer for those that wanted to heal and contribute but can't figure out Lucio and Zenny.

[scoobz]

7 hours ago, Thelonebillsfan said:

The changes from 3 tank meta to dive meta weren't the result of sledgehammer nerfs and complete kit changes. Ana had her beyblade removed by lowering her shot damage to 60 instead of 80 and her Nano Boost damage buff lowered. Tweaks. D.VA became an integral part of dive because she can now flank back but needed a healer with her and Winston to dive with, that's why Mercy has a high pick rate (and despite all the comical kvetching, rez was fine and now is even more broken than it was before as in Valkyr you can res 4 people in 30 seconds which renders team fighting's attrition pointless as you can keep anybody up as long as you need with that and chain heals).

The changes to Doomfist for example are fine, they're limiting his hitbox, that's understandable. 

D.VA has already had reworks done, her armor changes, her DM changes, her pellet changes etc etc were all significant, but this is a total rework that completely changes every aspect of her character. She's not even a tank anymore. Mercy is now more combat oriented which defeated the purpose of her character from jump. A simple, easy to understand healer for those that wanted to heal and contribute but can't figure out Lucio and Zenny.

Spot on.

Though, I disagree that Mercy was 'fine'. However, I agree that the change made was terrible.  IMO, they simply needed to either lower the rez radius, make her invuln slightly less to give a chance, or, my favorite option, require LoS for rezzes so no more through the wall rezzes.

[Thelonebillsfan]

My idea was to make it like deadeye, where you need to charge it to catch more than 1x rez in the group. Maybe buff her health a bit during so she doesn't just get immediately pasted every time and give her a call out like McCree has and it would work.

Edited September 3, 2017 by Thelonebillsfan