Potential Solutions & General Critiques

As a pretense, I understand that many of these issues may not exist to an equal fervor across all ELO brackets, however, by opening the discussion in a constructive, detailed, and dissecting manner, appropriate actions can be taken to address the issues in a way that is ideal for all parties involved.

Add a scoreboard (and preferably a post-match breakdown screen, even if it’s only in competitive). It’s egregious that this isn’t a feature to begin with, as its’ disappearance has caused a multitude of other problems to stem and ferment. With a scoreboard, individuals can reflect and assess their personal performance in order to make corrections to their playstyles and hero choices in the long term, rather than perpetuating the current standoff of ignorance and misunderstanding caused by the lack of transparency. To extend this, when players aren’t playing well, they likely will go on tilt and won’t be able to be as introspective on their own performance as usual — this is totally normal and happens in any video game, not just Overwatch. By having a scoreboard, teammates can communicate constructive suggestions that can improve the experience for both that individual as well as the team as a whole.

Ex: “Hey, I know you’ve been having a hard time putting out damage as offensive Hanzo this game, maybe switch over to a Widow and pick off their healer?” This allows for aligning of values while accessing a win-win scenario: the player still gets to play a Sniper (their desired role), but should have more utility.

2. Role queuing system/stricter competitive requirements, similar to what already exists in World of Warcraft for dungeons and raids with LFR/LFG and iLevel gear requirements. Again, I understand that you don’t want to enforce any particular type of meta, and you don’t “want Overwatch to be like any other game that’s already out there”, but there are simply too many players who only play one particular character (dare I even say, one role) to actually tap into the entire realm of team composition strategy that you want to exist in this game, and the gameplay suffers a lot because of it. You’ve got the data, so you know as well as any of us that the number of one trick pony Genji and Hanzo mains is far too high. In League of Legends and DoTA, there exist over a hundred heroes, meaning that for every hero that one could potentially go up against, there are a handful of different viable individual heroes that can be an even or favorable matchup, allowing people to have true choice and preference while still abiding by the conventions of counterplay. Due primarily to the relatively small hero pool in Overwatch, individual matchups become less of a suggestion and more of a requirement to win or even be competitive. This game balancing strategy is perfectly fine, so long as precautionary steps are taken to facilitate truly proper matchmaking of players. See a Winson? Play Reaper and you’ll shred him, otherwise, good luck as he runs around your backline disrupting everyone short of a Zarya. Going against any decent Tracer worth her weight in salt? If you don’t have at least one McCree to stun and kill her, you’re in for a nearly impossible round (who am I kidding, Tracer is way too strong at the moment). This rock-paper-scissors balancing mechanic works when teammates are capable of playing a large number of the heroes, but in practice, matchmaking has come down to teams getting completely rolled over as soon as the opposing team presents a composition whose counters aren’t within the other team’s wheelhouse (I won’t even get into the issues with ultimate charging speed and offensive sided maps). This leads me to my next point, which is my hypothesis as to why MOST games come out as stomps in either direction.

Individuals can have extremely variable match histories not necessarily because their skill has a huge variation, but rather, that ‘one trick ponies’, are incapable of adapting to the given situation. Certain players, especially the niche hero mains(Genji/Hanzo/D.VA), will have extremely inconsistent outcomes based on the strength of the team composition matchup in each game, getting one of these players on your team feels just like losing a game to a coinflip. It’s fine for heroes to be high-risk high-reward, but your luck of getting a particular player in a game who either carries or is useless based almost entirely on the random map, game type, and enemy team comp is simply unacceptable and should not be promoted. These players, who aren’t just unwilling, but incapable, of playing other heroes, literally take their team’s chance at victory hostage. I believe this to be a perfectly logical/plausible hypothesis as to why this phenomena seems to occur, as an extrinsic factor BEYOND actual game balancing (offensive/defense sidedness, individual character balance, etc).

3. Hero stacking NEEDS to be addressed, either a hero limit or some form of diminishing returns on particular abilities. I understand you’ve said in the past that hero stacking is an intended mechanic, but I think another look needs to be taken at how this is playing out in professional and high ELO play, which will only trickle down to quickplay/competitive as exposure increases. The most frustrating aspect of double/triple heroes is that stacking essentially masks the fundamental weakness the hero possesses through sheer overwhelming, something that is typically noninteractive and not in any way enjoyable to play against. I’m warning you now Blizzard, if you continue to allow double or triple hero stacking, balancing this game will become a nightmare. You will never be able to playtest every iteration of team composition and will constantly be playing catchup to address FoTM team comps that arise from imbalanced stacking interactions that slip through the cracks.

It’s time for another look at this philosophy.

Blizzard, are you really worried about teams not being able to come up with innovative compositions? Allowing hero stacking creates a bit of a cop out answer, and here’s why (time to put my Applied Math & Statistics degree to good use). There are currently 21 heroes in the game, with 6 players per team. This is known as a combination problem (rather than permutation, where we would care about which player was playing each hero.

That means with a 1 hero limit, there exist 21*20*19*18*17*16= 54,264 potential unique team compositions in this game without hero stacking.

If team compositions are too rigid in the status quo, maybe the issue is with balancing of individual heroes, in which case, allowing hero stacking only exacerbates such imbalances. Great examples of why these systems feel so rigid are due to such balance issues with individual roles, particularly how invaluable certain abilities or roles are that have no clear alternative. There is no alternative to a Mercy resurrection or a Zarya Gravitron Charge. There is no alternative to Mercy for single target healing (Zenyatta? haha) or Lucio for AoE heals and a speedup (in addition to a pre-emptive defense boosting ultimate). That number of unique team compositions starts to quickly dwindle when there exist only two viable healer choices (Mercy and Lucio, where at least 1 Mercy is required on Attack/Defend or Payload), Reinhardt and/or Zarya nearly being a necessity on Attack/Defend and Payload, as well as Symmetra being a necessity on Attack/Defend maps.

With these core values in place, the conservative estimate of number of viable unique compositions quickly changes (I even included ‘liberal’ comps like 3+ tanks): 2(Reinhardt or Zarya)* 2(Mercy or Lucio)* 2(Lucio or Off Tank)* 19(All other heroes minus Lucio/Mercy)* 19*19= 54,872

On defense for Attack/Defense, Symmetra is a borderline necessity for the first site defense team, further lowering the number of comps to 2888. Now take relative strengths of offensive heroes into account and you’ll see that there are far fewer than this number of compositions being played consistently in solo queue. It’s not a mystery, it’s nothing that can’t be explained by some simple math.

It goes without saying that it isn’t impossible to win with comps that don’t abide by these formats, but in the status quo, deviations from this template represent the vast minority of games whose results can most likely be attributed to players being disproportionately good at a particularly unconventional hero for their rank (see: one trick pony argument), or reasons that extend beyond team composition (bad in game decision making or performance by an opposing team, leavers, etc).

Honestly, this is due in part to every role being so good at their job that there really aren’t alternatives to not picking up a team composition that is balanced around that. There is no alternative to a Reinhardt wall. Resurrection is an unparalleled ultimate in the same way Zarya ultimate is, however there are countless DPS heroes who all have ults that ‘just kill everything’, making them interchangeable in the context of balance. I don’t necessarily agree with the large number of ultimates that result in easy team wiping, but I digress. The game is designed in such a way to facilitate balanced team compositions but at the same time offers little flexibility for choosing within those parameters outside of the DPS role, completely not accounting for the relative balance state of the offensive heroes, which limits this further.

Many heroes can be fairly balanced in isolation, but become unnecessarily imbalanced when stacked. This also results in teams getting cheesed in Sudden Death defenses, where the defense essentially goes in blind and has no way to adapt to the offense’s composition due to the longer run back time, whereas the offense can afford to wipe once and adjust. I understand you’ve said you’ll get rid of the coin flip, but hero stacking collectively still needs to be addressed.

Reaper: At least in competitive and specifically, KoTH, one of the big elephants in the room at the moment. He is arguably the best duelist in the game, able to kill essentially anybody at close range, with a facerolling’ly easy escape via wraith form. Personally, I think 8 bullets is far too much for his clip, as he is capable of securing kills while missing too many shots, or simply running around with his left mouse button taped down facerolling people. 250 health is also quite a lot. Make reaper require some semblance of a brain stem beyond deciding when to drop down and use his team wiping ultimate. I don’t know how you should choose to go about it, but as of right now, Reaper has been seen as extremely powerful mainly because he has no clear counters (post-McCree nerf). The issue with Reaper being duplicated stems less from the interactions between two of them, but rather that he is simply one of the strongest, and most un-counterable heroes at the moment.

Tracer: No, everybody isn’t a professional level tracer who can one-clip kill any non-tank in the game, I understand that. Despite this, even in mid to high ELO & professional play, doubling up on tracers presents two hyper-mobile, high damaging, relatively uncounterable death balls. In the current ‘mobility’ meta, it makes double tracer a crippling composition to play against, especially considering how little they need to actually coordinate with their team to be maximally effective. With only one enemy tracer it becomes possible to find her or track her movements/rewind positions, but with two, it doesn’t just become doubly difficult, it becomes exponentially more difficult. Maybe nerf the amount of health regenerated on rewind (50–75% of damage recovered instead of 100%?) to make her slightly more dependent on her team, at least for heals. Again, they weren’t as much of a problem until after the McCree nerfs, but the issue with McCree as a counter for double tracer is that tracer can simply choose to not interact with the McCree, avoiding him and still being extremely powerful, while McCree is stuck in his currently gimped form trying to get kills on her. In competitive tournaments with no hero limit, Tracer has over a 130% current pick rate per team, but she only has a ~30% pick rate with 1 hero caps. Further, tracer in general is noninteractive when it comes to KoTH site control, as she only needs to tap it once. It’s the reason the only viable KoTH comp right now consists of 2 Lucio/2 Winston/2 Tracer. KoTH and site holding mechanics need to be re-examined regardless of how you change Tracer, but duplicates are significantly more of a problem than individuals.

Lucio: Blizzard’s already acknowledged how strong Lucio stacking is by making his auras unstackable, so I know that you’re cognizant of how overpowered some of these hero stacking abilities truly can be. His slipperiness, coupled with the constant speedup/skilless group healing becomes a fairly obnoxious combination on KoTH maps with the current ‘1-man in, full site hold’ scoring system.

Zarya: She is very powerful right now, able to do an extremely high amount of ranged damage with a high health pool, shield regen, and personal/ally shields with an invaluable AoE CC ultimate. I believe the stun protection from her shield as well as the duration/amount of the shield she is able to give to others is simply too high in general. When there are two Zaryas on any team, there can at any given moment be 4 invulnerable, CC-immune players, making preventing ultimates insanely difficult.

Winston: It doesn’t really matter if a Reaper or Bastion is the counter to Winston, if 2 or more jump on anybody, they will die, instantly. Their shields also stack with one another. This mainly effects first site attack/defend, payload, and sudden death offensive cheese. It doesn’t help that Winston’s damage is easy and reliable, meaning that anybody they jump on has essentially no way to escape.

Soldier76: As an individual, I believe Soldier to be one of the most balanced heroes in the entire game, however in doubles/triplets, becomes too overwhelming to deal with. The combination of (essentially unlimited range) hitscan damage, coupled with controlled burst in the Helix Rockets melts squishies and tanks alike. The AoE healing should have some sort of diminishing returns. Soldier ult lasts fairly long to begin with, but when multiplied by 2x/3x, either concurrently or consecutively, becomes an unparalleled zoning tool that has no true counterplay. We started to see this same issue with McCree right before he got nerfed.

Mercy: Not currently a problem due to the popularity of solo Mercy or Lucio, Mercy/Lucio, or Lucio/Lucio, but I foreshadow this as being a potential problem in the future. Resurrection is an immensely impactful ultimate that should come with some form of post-rez debuff that prevents another rez within a certain amount of time. Double mercy may not be an issue currently due to how immensely powerful Lucio is, but this is something that I could see becoming an issue in the future.

DPS stacking collectively is probably the most forward facing offense(Formerly: McCree/Widow, Presently: Tracer and Reaper, to a lesser extent), as they are essentially ‘best in slot’ for their respective role (killing people). This is a pervasive issue that Blizzard will need to figure out how to deal with should they choose to not implement a hero limit. When the role of a DPS is to ‘deal damage’, and there are multiple ways to perform the same exact task (heroes), the one who does it better than their peers will see a disproportionately large amount of play time (Look at KOTH in the pro scene, it’s 2x Lucio/2x Winston/2x Tracer literally every game). In a game with so few heroes, it will only become natural for one of the very few heroes to bubble up to the surface midway through each balance patch.

4. Increase the number of role labels.

You already acknowledge the presence of snipers, builders, and healers, so why not start breaking down the damage dealers? The difference between constant DPS (Soldier, Pharah) and assassins (Genji, Tracer) is fairly evident and is necessary to diversify if one wishes to have a well varied team composition, however, many in the community seem to think as if damage dealing characters have all been created equally. Recommending a balanced offensive composition, or at the very least, acknowledging that different types of roles exist, could help to curb the stigma of uncooperative offensive players at the root.

5. Add match history.

If the idea behind viewing hero played time is to hold true, adding match history can extend the same principals to allow optimal gameplay. It feels strange to only be be able to go back and view arbitrary highlights from a game that the ever-perfect PoTG algorithm has hand picked for me. I want to see stats about the game

6. Overhaul or remove the medals system.

As per my prior critiques, in their current form, they do more harm than good.

7. Add more heroes.

Obviously, this will only take place over a long period of time. With more heroes in place, the rock-paper-scissors countering system will seem to increasingly fade as players are both afforded more heroes they could find preferable, are given more time to play all of the heroes, and find ways to play around their counters on their favorite heroes.

8. Add a match data API.

Blizzard, please, add a match data API. I would love you forever. As a bonafide data junkie, I would love to be able to be able to use data to prove/disprove some of my own sentiments, or to at least be able to quantitatively analyze things with a high end player’s point of view. Data is an invaluable tool in the arena of game balancing, and I know you’re using it, but I have a few critiques I know you’d be interested in hearing. Ex: Patchtimers for coin flip sudden death hit today, and I don’t believe lowering the timer will change much about the offense bias when the games are usually extremely one sided due to how quickly ultimates charge in this game. PS: You still gotta work on how overtime is triggered, Tracer and Lucio have a few things to say about it.