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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 เม.ย. 2024
- The game balance devs did a AMA on Reddit for Overwatch 2! In it they gave a bunch of information on their balance philosophy and what shapes their decisions... BUT it is wrong! Check out the video to hear my thoughts on why they just don't get it.
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Time Stamps:
0:00 - The TRUE "Pain Point"
4:44 - Complex vs Simple Heroes
10:15 - The Data "Crutch"
14:08 - Bad Feels Worse Than Good Feels Good
17:46 - Why Devs Shouldn't Balance Their Own Games - เกม
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I just wish these videos were as popular as the shorts, I've never seen these points be articulated so well and it really would do the community good to watch these. I do my part in sharing them but still
Means a lot! Yeahh, it definitely seems like there isn’t much crossover on a channel between shorts and long form. So I’ll have to grind and build it up over time 😅
@@Dunmuir whats the meta in gundam
Picking a one shot or burst hero is a rational response to the inflated healing values and it feels like the devs don't know/care?
I think it’s a solid combination of both don’t know and don’t care tbh :/
Hit the nail on the head with this vid. The part that sucks isn’t that the game isn’t where I want it to be, it sucks that the devs aren’t even moving towards what could be the greatest multiplayer game EVER
Yeeep, it’s not in the worst state it’s been for sure. But the pinnacle of what Overwatch really could be will only be made in another game some time in the future
@@Dunmuir From what I've seen, the switch from 6v6 to 5v5 has caused a lot of people to play much less or stop playing all together. They could have had so many more players if they kept 6v6, but made the appropiate changes to CC & balanced sustain to a reasonable level.
Doomfist needs to be moved back to damage role (would remove/reduce lots of his CC) since so many players hate playing with a Doomfist as their tank, and then they need to only release tank & support heroes for a very, very long time.
The Q&A would've probably went over my head if not for this video
Explanation & critiques are on point. Great video
Thank you! Glad you like it!
Honestly I've come to this conclusion a while ago too, there's just too much healing in overwatch, in some cases too much mobility as well (kiriko tp, before S3 mercy superjump). We have to rely on oneshots because the moment a support looks at someone they just won't die unless you hit 100% of your shots, meanwhile they just usually have to have their crosshair in their general direction. Sure, there's a lot of other skill involved into support I don't mean to say that they are all 0% heroes (or any of them), but the healing aspect is mostly by far easier than damaging.
Another thing I've realised is that jack of all trades heroes, like kiriko, ramattra to a certain extent etc are either hard meta or absolutely useless. If a character has a niche/specific playstyle like rein or winston, there's a lot to learn, a lot of counterplay as well, and you can easily balance how good they are at that niche. A character that can do everything will either never do something well enough, thus someone else will be played above them 90+% of the time, or they are too good at everything and thus are hard meta.
Good point about generalist characters being all or nothing. Because they either do EVERYTHING well and are crazy op because of it. Or they nerf it all down and the character becomes numerically unviable, which is basically Brigitte’s situation
It has nothing to do with ease of healing, it’s just volume. Ana is hard enough to heal with, but the amount you heal for hitting 70% of your shots is just an unbelievable amount. Every character feels like Winston now, where if your target is being pocketed you quite literally can never kill them
@@dugglinieduardo2690 Imo it's mainly got to do with the numbers, but it is also impactful how many times who will miss their shots, going away from their maximum output. No one actively playing the game is gonna have 100% accuracy, let alone 100% weapon AND headshot accuracy. So how many of her 72 hps tickets can kiriko hit vs how many of his 111 overall dps shots does a soldier 76 hit? The kiriko will usually hit more and thus get more value/get more healing in comparison to the soldier most of the time due to the projectiles being so easy to hit.
@@darksplash873 Sure, but I don't think making healing harder to do is an efficient or fun way to balance things. Just make the healing weaker, and give the healers others things to do besides make one person on their team virtually unkillable.
@@dugglinieduardo2690 oh yeah I'm not arguing that they should do that, but even if it should remain unchanged, it is a factor that should be taken into account :)
"Heroes should have clear weaknesses"
also them: "We present to you, The Sojourn". Only the most versatile, flexible, adaptable hero that has ever existed in the game since the very beginning. She's only a mobile sniper guys! A mobile sniper! Makes perfect sense from a design philosophy standpoint! Let's take all the weaknesses that a sniper has, remove them, and let's call it a "new character". Surely nobody will think we're trolling
cant believe they took out most dps cc to give supports and tanks more impact yet sojourn launched with one of the best cc abilities in the game (before it got nerfed)
Nothing contradictory here... everything looks perfectly normal 😅
Don't know if you've seen the new blog posts, but I guess that's more evidence that not only they do not fundamentally know how their game works, but they also cannot really read their own stats.
The whole point about brig being better than kiriko in their opinion because she has a higher win rate shows that not only they don't understand the game, but they can't even make a simple connection between pick rate and win rate.
I guess this explains why the latest patches have been so unbelievably bad in terms of balance
I hadn’t looked at it yet, but are they looking at win rates including those where both teams have the character and then balancing off that?
Lol yes they are doing that and ignoring how people who deviate from the norm tend to have high win rates because they are a one trick or the character is only being played on very good maps for it. If they’re not doing this and they actually are talking about non-mirrored win rates for each character, then they’re just picking and choosing data to match their balance decisions
@@Dunmuir I want to hope that they're not that clueless and they realize both of those are reasons why the win rate can be inflated or deflated. But even then, if they do realize that, then it means they're putting out this misleading blog post to push the narrative that kiriko is balanced because she has low win rate after all, which kinda seems like a "fuck you, your opinion about the character not being balanced is trash because we have data that tells us otherwise".
It would make sense considering they need to sell the battle pass after all
Honestly, the devs don’t play the game enough. They’d see and understand a lot of the pain points even at lower ranks. Orisa was very boring and unfun at lower ranks because no one targeted the supports properly. Hog’s sustain still lets him get value by existing. And Mercy is terrible to play against as Winston or lower damage heroes because you cannot kill pockets. I mean, any sustain character can’t secure kills against most healer combos. They have too many buttons and escapes. And yet they keep introducing heal creep and burst healing potential.
If they just balanced around a decent skill to reward curve, I think most ranks would feel pretty healthy. And lowering burst damage and healing would go a long way to enable that.
This is true for sure! They just need to walk back the game to how it was in 2017. Dive was meta for very top players, but everyone else was just playing whatever they liked and the game wasn’t oversustained. Chip damage you put out mattered, so positioning was more important too
I think you're right about what you're saying here, that games that aren't one and done are usually bad because the devs don't play their own games, so they don't know what they're doing and so fall back on tweaking numbers or tweaking little stuff and it just acts as a bandaid on a festering wound. But I think the real problem is that they're not allowed to play their own game, because they don't have the time to, they're pressured to pump out new content so the shareholders get more money. What do the CEO and BOD care for game balance? They don't because it doesn'tput more money back in their pockets,, and anyways, that's what the testers are for, the testers being people that they only have a few of and who a lot of are probably getting fired soon so that corporate doesn't have to spend as much money on anyways. The problem is videogames being a product, and one mostly run by giant corporations, which means devs don't have the time to play their own games. So, I agree with you and I agree complexity creep is a problem but making more complex characters is an easy way of getting people excited and more hype = more money, see where I'm going with this?
I don’t think you can let the devs off the hook that easily, when there are plenty of high tier players/coaches who could explain just what I said to the game balance devs without giving biased top tier oriented recommendations. But you’re right about the last part, that they just churn out some new, overcomplex, overturned character to get easy hype
Random thing, if I recall right..their stats are also what they used to change Kiriko's healing output by increasing the delay on her healing tickets, I admit I was slightly confused by that personally even if I adapted to said changes...was the healing even the issue with her? I know there's things people are more openly outspoken about her kit than they were about how much healing she did.
It’s just the problem with stats inherently, it takes so much to properly contextualize it, and there’s no way they’re able to do that
@@Dunmuir and we'll never know anything about that... because they don't share the stuff (which I get to a degree)
I wonder if the complex vs simple heros is why characters with less damage and more utility in the DPS role are just unfun and not useful to play against.
Like Symmetra
To an extent yeh. It’s really more so of complexity usually means they have busted capabilities like one shots or the survivability. And the less complex heroes have generally fallen down in strength as characters like sojourn and ashe were added to the game
@@DunmuirThe sad part is that in a way Soujorn is almost like Ashe but better
Commenting in order:
I think they are adding complex and uncomplex characters. Ramattra for example is not a complex character even though he has a transformation. His most complex ability is the gravity zone which barely matters for playing him. And complexity isn't the same as power, Widow isn't a complex character either. Uncomplex characters see play. I think the real issue is heroes being overly well-rounded like Sojourn, where there isn't anything for her that you can call a weakness. Ramattra being a "tempo tank" who can play as Sigma or as Rein. It's fine in moderation (Soldier is a good design) but shouldn't be the overall philosophy; characters should have solid identities and shouldn't all be generalists.
So I think slightly doomer take there. However, you are completely right that the devs use data naively and don't seem to account for its limitations. It's especially frustrating in Mercy's case, where her numbers didn't change so that must mean the rework was fine right?
The things the devs say don't add up to a coherent design philosophy, and it is what it is, it's a f2p game made by Blizzard, this is how it goes. A bummer, but you shouldn't expect better and should moderate your investment in the game as such.
Ramattra to be fair is a simple character, which is why I was very happy with his release other than that I think his ult is uninspired.
The “complexity” issue can be heavily spliced down into specific definitions and some meta and some non meta heroes can be found in each category. But when it comes to translating the devs’ opinions it’s safe to assume all nuance goes away. And “complex” will just mean “Toss as many op abilities on the hero as possible lul” which then goes into your generalist idea. Unfortunately OW2 will never be what it used to be, and I think a lot of people recognize that now, especially comparing 5v5 to 6v6
great video I always dislike when buffs and nerfs are determined by data and not actual gameplay and feel
Thanks! Yepp, it’s just a crutch that devs without enough game knowledge make
I also feel like one of the issues that Overwatch has for a while is that because the devs focus on making the heroes distinct for the sake of it (in some ways) in a game around counter picking, it basically encourages one tricking because outside of the basic role of DPS, Sup and Tank with no other class category’s that have a good selection, there is not as much alternative choices for people to have within their pool.
For example, in league, tank engages and Tank peels have their own selections in spite of being within the same class. Same with Healing bruisers (Warwick, Mundo and Aatrox), Tanky Bruisers (Garen, Darius and Illaoi) and we’ll-rounded mobile bruisers (Wukong, Xin and Diana).
Overwatch doesn’t have this sort of luxury, meaning that pools are much more limited.
Sure there’s off-tanks, main tanks, burst/sustain dps and off/main healers, but that’s kind of it. Not to mention that again, their kits are really distinct to where it generally discourages on trying out other picks that might fit a similar taste for you.
16:20 Was Paying attention during for most of the video but listened hear and my thoughts are
I get close games in my rating but it requires counter swapping and hoping players equal my skill are online
The fact that every tank is actually a juggernaut already makes it clear their design philosophy is flawed.
Honestly true, tanking lost a lot of its skill expression and enjoy ability with 5v5
@@Dunmuirthe only tank i legit find fun is Junker Queen.
Glad to see you have long form stuff!
Interesting discussion... So glad the devs do try to reach out and explain their thought processes.
Balancing by data *sounds* like a good idea, but it means things slip through the cracks. Same for judging purely by perception too. That's why we need to take BOTH into account when it comes to balance solutions. Your point about sustain/positioning leading to a more healthy environment is a great point. Oneshots and "invincible" abilities definitely lead to frustration due to inherent lack of counterplay.
I'm forever gold but I do want every rank to feel like things are balanced for their skill level. It's hard for me to see skill disparity in OW but I see it much more clearly in something like Smash--the noob crushers are heavies with big strong attacks, whereas high tiers seem initially underpowered but are untouchable because they can chain their attacks together with such rapid speed and mobility. So in OW, Sojourn has small moments of "welp" for me, but I imagine she's a NIGHTMARE for top 500's where she hits EVERY single crit shot lol. A good Widow is more manageable because she usually stays more stationary, but a good Sojourn can oneshot you from afar OR up close AND escape with her slide.
17:45 you have a solid point, but so does Blizzard.
Liking something because they have been around for long isn't equal to you will like everything because they have been around for long enough.
They are just saying that with the time people took characters that they loved and got to know them, not only ability-wise but lore-wise too.
I only started playing this season and I tried rein.
I love rein but he has so many counters now.
You mean you don’t like it when Orisa just walks into you forever and never dies while cc’ing you into oblivion? Lol
OW2 being in a better state than OW1 is no excuse for making the game worse with every update since beta 1. OW1 was in a better state on release than OW1's end of life, but it still ended up where it was at.
Yeh I feel you on this.. improvement doesn’t mean you can start backsliding
Great stuff. The magic of the game is gone as a tank main. It used to be strategic and really synergistic. Now its just a huge death match all the time. Fun but not for me especially with como in such a garbo state
tru, i feel this 100%, game is butchered compared to what it once was
Great video! Hopefully your words will reach the right people. Even if they do, the money coming in from OW2 is likely a thick filter for criticism, unfortunately.
Lol that’s honestly how it’s been with OW since the beginning. The absolute mess Overwatch 1 deteriorated into and was abandoned to was a shocking example of money being a nice filter
None of this really matters, as its all ultimately determined by how it will potentially impact profits..
Overwatch unlike other similar games, is defined by its complexity.
The complexity is only an issue because Statistically speaking those who would financially support a game like this tend to struggle with complexity.
So in essence Blizzard has a game built for a "chess player" audience that's attempting to profit from those who play checkers, because they actually have to work to get money from chess players
There is nothing in this game I despise more than hanzo. I will forever be a hanzo hater. His entire kit is based around cheese.
He's a harder and more pain in the ass Widow but at least you can peak and not get 1 shoted immediately
Loool I wonder if you were around for scatter arrow too 👀
Yeah I see your point, but as a hanzo main, hanzo is the LEAST of your concern when talking about snipers in ow, hanzo has all of those tools because his kit is based around flanking and supporting his team, he has storm arrow and sonic arrow, One is a offensive tool that bounces off walls to allow you to Safely get picks and another is used to gain information not only for himself but for his team, his ult is a displacement tool designed to create space for the rest of your team to push in, or back up, depending on how you use it. His kit is much more skilled oriented than widowmakers, hit scan with sonar, grapple and a trap, Plus, a good hanzo has to calculate before he shoots in order to get a headshot, in addition to that his projectile drop off makes it even more inconsistent, where as Widowmaker can one tap from across the map.
@@aspectjayOW hanzo is so unique hero just like doomfist and wrecking ball any little buff or nerf gonna make him unplayable this is the hard part about balancing but in my opinion Widow health should be 100 just so you can one tap her all the time just like her
This aged like fine wine, I'm pretty sure this came out just before they did the most brain dead thing because of numbers, they giga buffed bastion and orisa and now the games completely fked 😂
How the devs and the delusional content creators think a ranked interface change will fix it, like are these people hamsters? Do they need numbers onna screen to tell them they're having fun? It doesnt matter what the ranked system shows you, if the games competitive and healthy, the ranked will inherently be fun and since bastion who is boring has the same win rate as genji who is fun, well guess what now genji doesnt reward skill and bastion by his very design doesnt have much skill so wheres the skill coming from? Well now it's coming from counterpicking so now the games a glorified rock paper scissors game which means theres no real skill separating the worst players from the best players because anyone can pick a character based off the counter chart and play the game, and than people wonder why qp feels like ranked 😂
lol true.. they somehow managed to make the game even worse
@@Dunmuir well in ow1 the game at least had skill expression in teamwork, I mean the game still does just its watered down in exchange for individual player skill and even that was fine in seasons 1 to 4, but than they started balancing for that 50/50 and now the game has watered down teamwork and poor individual hero skill curves, leaving the game to mostly just get its skill expression from counterpicking, and when you have poor skill expression in your game, your game cant be very competitive.
They gotta decide where their dedicated players will get their skill expression from because the type of people who enjoy climbing a ranked system are the type of people that need an engaging way to express their skill, these people ain't playing the game casually, they want to express their skill in some way and when you deny them that, they either leave your game or they stop caring and start goofing off in ranked or just playing qp, which is why qp and ranked feel so ass to play and so similar.
I don't understand what you mean about complexity. If complexity is high healing numbers, isn't that more like simplicity? The video was very confusing.
Sounds like you are stupid.
Your asking for an impossible thing balance. Impossible because someone is going to be unhappy with the changes good or bad. Impossible because developers have limited resources and prospective. The only thing you can balance is how enjoyable the game is because if its not enjoyable less people will play it.
The devs are just incompetent. They have been for years, but they're worse than ever.
I really like your channel a lot but I'm always pretty skeptical of top-100 players' thoughts on game balance. God-tier Widowmakers don't ruin my games often enough for me to notice. You do make a lot of good points though.
It’s true that a lot of top 100 players don’t think about the game outside of their rank tbh, but I specifically try to focus on it as a whole 🤔
@@Dunmuir I wouldn't assume you were selfishly wanting the game to cater to you and your friends, it's just your personal experience has been different from most players. Although as a coach you've seen a lot of different levels of play so you're kind of uniquely qualified to speak on this stuff.
Imo widow is fine tbh. If they wanted to balance her they could give her the apex sniper treatment and have headshots do like almost all their hp like 185 or having only 100% one shot. For sojourn give her the genji treatment and have her ult only deal half hp at max and remove headshots for secondary fire. Tbh hanzo is the only one im fine one shot headshotting cause you have like a second or two to dodge when you see him fire and arrow from far away so its not just clicking on heads.unfortunately oneshot meta dying off might lead to echo meta and I don’t want echo to be nerfed like what they did to doom and sombra. Reins charge should go back to 300 dmg cause it’s literally a move that exposes you to dmg snd doesn’t garuntee a kill. Cassidy’s grenade needs to be changed cause that shit is stupid. If your unlucky enough to be in a 1v1 with cassidy and have no support or heals you just lose if you don’t have an evasive and get shot once. They also need to fix dead eye not killing sometimes. Hogs heal needs to be replaced with something else or reworked and hook just needs like a signal animation that its coming out. I also think it would be cool to see resetting cooldowns on other characters besides genji. Like every time you kill someone 1.5 seconds after a blink you get it back or disintegrating with echo refreshes the cooldown. Also a sojourn rework might be cool. Instead of nerfing her. She has roccket legs so what if she become another mobile dps and got a short omnidirectional dash on like a 6 second cooldown instead of the disruptor shot. I think thats more fun than just sliding and super jumping around. It would also give sojourn more movement and depth while making her more fun for people who wanna move around but don’t wanna play the other mobility based heroes like lucio or tracer. She could also gain railgun charges from kills so if she kills someone she has 3 seconds to fire a single charge for the kill and it refreshes every kill you get with it. However it does like 75 dmg and cant headshot and her ult stays the same but her charge shots do 150 and she cant primary fire that would be more interesting. (I just started rambling ideas here so share opinions or ignore if you want)
I’m no balancing professional, and I never played Overwatch 1, but I think the game could be better if the focused on hero strengths. For example, Kiriko’s cleanse is the only ability that functions like that. Kiriko is the best at what she does, and there is little reason not to play her. I think that if every character has a strength, something they’re decent at, and a weakness it could really open up counter play in multiple areas. Once again, Kiriko has strong mobility, healing, damage, and that extra cleanse ability, whereas Lucio has low healing, high mobility, mediocre damage, and nothing really unique compared to Kiriko. Obviously, Lucio synergies with some hero’s, but Kiriko is always the better choice. Once again, I’m no Overwatch pro, but I think that giving new heroes a strength, countered by a weakness, would fit well with more general heroes. Good players will master the new hero, while new players can learn the game mechanics by using more basic heroes.
just dont balance for the low ranks imo
I absolutely hate that my favorite character is roadhog.
The beginning of overwatch 2 has been my favorite overwatch period ever. Where roadhog didn't feel like a throw pick.
Now picking him is sabotaging the game. I understand people don't like playing against hog, but he's downright garbage right now.
And when I played other roles I was aware of how to play against hog, I honestly think people are either dumb or just want to play CoD in overwatch.
I’m guessing your taking a break from OW
Yeh I have been