Tracing our steps back - Understanding Overwatch's core problems and how to address them
This discussion is going to require a bit of setup. To talk about what I believe is wrong with Overwatch I will have to step all the way back to the fundamental ideas Blizzard based this game off of. While Blizzard has not shown or talked about these values we can get a good guess based on their design and balance philosophy. Once established we can discuss the current roles in Overwatch, how the fundamental ideas shaped them and how they compare to the popular roles across other game genres. This will set us up to finally discuss the issues we're seeing in today's version of Overwatch. Finally at that point we can properly discuss the direction we want Overwatch to go towards. This will leave us in an open ended state on how to accomplish these changes. Again, I'm not Blizzard so I don't know what their exact method is for design but the method I'm going to show here will be similar to the concept Jeff Kaplan talks about when he asks players to vent how the game makes them feel rather than giving balance changes.
Let's first look at the key themes I believe Overwatch was created on. Take these as the main talking points when trying to get a game funded by a company.
Accessibility - By far the strongest driving factor in Overwatch is accessibility which we've covered in a previous post. What accessibility means is that players from all skill levels and all genres can come together and pick up the game. FPS games are notorious for being a tough genre to get into, let alone to only have competitive play. Blizzard needed to focus on accessibility to allow as many players into the game as possible. Not only does targeting all levels make for a better game by designing it to be easy to learn and hard to master it also leads it be more profitable by hitting a larger market. It's no coincidence that Overwatch's main tagline is "the world needs more heroes" as a metaphor to get different types of people playing a competitive FPS. We're facing a large boom in the gaming industry in respect to new players and Blizzard hit the nail on the head with OW. You could say that their design is following the current trends of gaming that I talked about in my last post. The way they accomplish this is through our next point, simplicity.
Simplicity - Overwatch is designed to be simple and while many developers want a wider market for their game few actually execute on it. Notice how there are no items, skill builds, skill tress or leveling systems to worry about, this is all by design which we've discussed before. By stream lining the game they turned heroes into items or play styles and in so have removed the need for items, currency and experience during the game. This is how Blizzard can quickly onboard players into a game that can only be played competitively. They add accessibility to this through hero design that caters to all skill levels and now you have a game that can quickly get new blood in from a vast array of markets. Very few mechanics in Overwatch need explaining, health is simple and the only two major distinctions are shields and armor. One regens and the other takes less damage, that's Overwatch's damage system in a nut shell. Unlike WC3 a 5x6 matrix to understand how each damage type is done isn't needed. All of this drives a common element in all great games, easy to pick up but hard to master. Mastery requires player engagement which they do through our next theme, player impact.
Player Impact - All players should feel that they have an impact on the game or have the chance to. While accessibility and simplicity can get players in and onboarded quickly they need players to feel like they're accomplishing something to keep them playing . Player impact in my opinion goes hand in hand with players having fun. Without feeling or seeing their impact players will be much less open to playing the game long term. This is where Blizzard did things right, they use abilities that are strong to be tied to cooldowns thus allowing them to be balanced but still have a visible effect on the game. Cooldowns give a reason why something can be strong but still fair. In a way it builds hope that these abilities can be followed up on with FPS mechanics to accomplish something more. I think of it as that abilities more easily open the possibility of success so that if a player loses they think to themselves "I almost had it, if only I did <blank>." This helps the player feedback loop in a way that makes them keep playing to try and overcome what they almost just accomplished. For better or worse the queue system tries to make you have a 50% win rate, so 50% of the time this can work. Now if the habits this builds is good or not is another discussion but for player engagement it's great.
Teamwork - I'm a bit reluctant to put this as a main theme as it's more of a way to play the game rather than how the game works. The truth of it is that at the start of OW heroes were designed to be played with a specific weakness in mind and have teammates make up for it. I believe hero design is shifting slightly away from it and while I lack a source I do remember an AMA/stream where Jeff and Geoff mentioned that it was tricky for their development team to move hero design away from teamwork and more to individual performance.
To me these are the four primary themes in Overwatch, I think of these as the "grand strategy" of the game while anything else would be sub themes which I consider the "tactics" of the game. Some of these sub themes are the use of counter picking or promoting community values like a low amount of control. These are more about how the game is played rather than how the game is designed which is why I won't focus on them too much but know that they do direct the game's design a bit.
An interesting part about these themes is that it shows the steps I believe all developers should go through to understand their own game better. Don't even assume people will play your game, list a set of reasons why they will and how you'll accommodate players from different markets. Now that they are playing your game how will they learn to play it and then how will you keep them playing? Any game would benefit from these stepping stones prior to sinking real development time into a title.
Let's get to the clickbait title, what is Overwatch's problem?
It's an FPS.
To be clear, it's the expectations that come with an FPS. Primarily, it's the idea that in an FPS you need to deal damage to be impactful. This has lead to all heroes being designed to deal significant damage while still attempting to adhere to a role based design. No small amount of hero tweaks and balances will ever change this fundamental concept. Which leads us to what I'd consider the "crux". In Overwatch you only have two heroes that can heal, two that can tank, but six heroes that can deal considerable damage. This forces tanks and supports to be designed to have abilities that can deal with an entire team's worth of damage. How else can two supports heal six sources of damage? How can tanks have enough shields and health to live through the same six sources of damage? If there is any semblance of balance they can't be because non-damage based roles are over kitted. This is the problem Blizzard has willingly chosen to solve and have been overall fairly successful. Now to understand their design better lets walk through the traditional holy trinity of roles in modern gaming (Support, Damage and Tank) and then discuss how Blizzard attempted to change this in order to make it work in a FPS.
Tank
Tanks are traditionally damage sponges and attention getters. Their main point is to deal low consistent damage while keeping the enemy attacking them through abilities. In PvE these abilities are simple things that generate enmity and force enemies to attack them. In PvP tanks will often force attention on them by being a threat with abilities. These abilities are often on a low cooldown that focus on control or damage mitigation; allowing them to slow or stun their enemies often if not dealt with. The single biggest core component to tanking is that tanks must be a threat in some way. Tanks that have no ability to threaten cannot properly tank by design as they would be ignored. At first it seems like tanks could be overpowered as they can survive and control but traditionally most tanks don't have a good source of damage. This means if you run into them alone it's more of a stalemate or trade of resources(which often favors the tank) over a longer period of time. It's when other roles are together with them that they really start to shine.
In Overwatch this couldn't be farther from the truth. To adhere to the rules we've established tanks have to deal damage. In the worst case (Winston) does 60 DPS in an AoE. While most players don't believe this is burst damage you have to remember that this is 30% of an average heroes health pool in one second. You won't see this type of damage come out from a tank's regular attack in any other game. In the best case you have heroes like Zarya and D.va that boast 170/147 respective DPS that eclipse most damage heroes. Not only is this damage high but it's also fairly consistent as tanks have lower range but easier execution to balance it. On top of that they have massive health pools, damage mitigation, and abilities that control the enemy. In comparison to any other game tanks are absolutely broken in OW. Within OW tanks do have some semblance of balance so I'll give credit to Blizzard as they have been able to balance them in some clever ways which are model size, effective range, conditional burst damage and balance for competing demands. Think of these balancing points as knobs that can be turned up and down to reach a finer point of balance.
While in MOBAs and MMOs model size doesn't matter too much; size is a unique balancing point to FPS games as larger targets are easier to hit by enemies and allies (healing) alike. It also introduces a unique balancing point within the FPS genre as weapons with a larger spread can be more effective against tanks and less against other roles. I try to not accept model size as simply an increase of average damage taken. I think of it as a dart board, if you increased the bullseye by 10% you're not going to get a 10% increase of bullseyes. Because everyone is aiming towards the center the chance to hit goes up significantly at first and then slowly drops. I believe the best part of model size is that it's incredibly simple and understood instantly as a mechanic.
Next up is effective range which could be the most obvious form of balance. Tanks in OW are limited to 15-20m by either weapon or ability range. Outside this range they can do little except use damage mitigation abilities or disengage. The problem with range is that while damage and support heroes are viable outside this range, most of Overwatch is played within 30 meters. With a base speed of 5 meters tanks can close in on their target in a couple seconds. This is the basis of the goats composition we saw years back. The balancing factor with range is that it's combined with low mobility or mobility on a cooldown. This forces tanks to commit to defending one specific area or removes the ability to deal with a drastic change in environment, such as high ground.
Conditional burst damage is a new and brilliant aspect to tanks in OW, it's the best example of player impact in the game. While most tanks on average deal less damage than a damage hero, when conditions are met they often deal the same if not more. I believe this is to give tanks a sense of strength, excitement and timing in waves instead of the damage design of always doing something. Examples of conditional burst damage would be Reinhardt's and Winston's cleave, while they deal less than 100dps for a single target their DPS multiplies by the amount of enemies they hit. Often they can hit two or three targets putting their damage over most damage heroes. Other examples are Zarya with high charge, Roadhog on a successful hook, and D'va's full onslaught. I would also consider Winston's and Roadhog's ultimate as conditional because environmental kills are a form of conditional damage. All of these situations happen from time to time and allow tank players some semblance of carrying the game. This concept is really interesting and if a tank player remembers any of their games its going to be the ones where they leveraged this mechanic the most. It gives all other players in the game something to work around that's not fully predictable. The added benefit of tying all of these situations to abilities is that you can modify the cooldown of a strong ability to make it seem balanced, which also contributes to tanks timing happening in waves. This concept is key to tank balance.
One point to understand is that outside of conditional burst damage a tank's damage is high and consistent, it's close to the amount of healing done by support heroes. This creates a dynamic that outside of conditional burst damage, tanks will lose to a damage/support duo more often than not.
Lastly is the concept of balancing for competing demands. What this means is that tanks need to properly weigh what they want to do, if they chose one then they cannot do the other. Most tanks follow this design, Reinhardt being the best example. Either he's attacking or he's defending, he cannot do both at the same time. Dive tanks(winston,dva,hammond) and damage (hog,zarya)tanks have this by having to commit their bodies more and are far more reliant on cooldowns. This forces them to chose to engage or disengage for a period of time, they do not have the ability to change their mind once an ability is used. This leaves the controversial heroes left, Orisa and Sigma which can do either at anytime but are notably lacking conditional burst damage like the other tanks.
Support
Next let's look at how supports work traditionally. In MOBAs and MMOs supports normally provide low damage at range but often have abilities that heal, buff, debuff or control their enemies/allies. It's important to note that while most do, not all supports have healing. This is can be off-set by items and natural regen that's natural to other games but is not applicable in Overwatch. In MOBAs you'll often see a little less healing and more control or "save" abilities that allow them to mitigate damage briefly to a teammate. In MMOs supports are more focused on healing but their healing is more deliberate and slower paced, don't expect to full heal from 1hp in a couple seconds like in OW.
Now we take a look at OW's support design. Again all heroes need to do damage and supports sure do their fair share of damage with Moira having the lowest DPS in OW at 50 DPS but is still 25% of an average heroes HP each second. On the healing front supports typically heal in single massive quantities or in a lower passive AoE. Lastly each support brings some unique utility to the game. The utility varies across the board but it should be noted that both their healing and utility can win fights. While model size is not a huge balancing point among support it should be noted that they are some of the smallest models in the game.
Healing is done in two primary ways in Overwatch, high single target or low AoE. Here we again run into the issue of all heroes dealing damage as low AoE healing isn't viable unless there was some condition for that hero to do some burst healing. If they had no burst heal then the massive single target damage in OW would kill an ally instantly. The way Blizzard balanced this is that each AoE healer has another ability that allows them to burst heal but lock it behind a cooldown. This allows AoE supports to compete with single target healers when focus fire starts to happen but fall short if this damage is persistent. This gives more varied designed with supports while still being viable. While AoE healing is a sore point for some community members it's important to remember accessibility. OW is about bringing in more players to the support role so more 'actiony' methods that don't have to focus solely on healing is needed.
While healing alone doesn't diversify supports the utility they bring to the game does. Utility is supports "conditional damage" and player impact type mechanic. Each hero brings something unique to the field that helps their team immensely to the point that it can win the game for a team. Examples of utility are Immortality field, sleep dart, movement speed, damage, and control. Utility is typically locked behind abilities making it less about execution and more about decision making and cooldowns. Utility is needed just like tanks conditional burst damage as it provides a brief moment of excitement that is noticeable and visible to everyone that this player did something great. Identical to tanks, this is what support players will remember. Rarely will support players remember a game where they constantly healed really well.
The subtle part about supports is how well they deal damage. If you take the damage of a support hero without factoring in reload time, their average DPS is actually quite low when compared to all other heroes. All supports are easily within the bottom quarter of damage in Overwatch but if you look at their damage with reload you'll notice their damage spike up in comparison. This means supports are slightly better at sustained damage rather than burst damage, giving some uniqueness to the damage role. Still we need to understand that supports do significant damage. While Ana "only" does 70 damage per shot if combined with another support they can kill a damage hero within a second. Even outside of specifically targeting a 200HP hero, adding an extra 100 damage in a second adds up against tanks. In Overwatch less damage doesn't mean low damage.
Damage
The damage role, where to start? It feels the most active and has the most feedback as when something dies you know it was you that did it. The game always feels like its in your hands and that you have the tools to do what is necessary to win it. I believe these are the core reasons that it's the most popular role across all genres. Traditionally speaking the damage role only has to worry about dealing as much damage as possible to the target - which goes hand in hand with surviving longer. MMOs have slightly changed their damage role design by allowing the damage classes to heal to provide more solo-ability. This was changed when MOBAs started to become more casual and needed to step back on teamwork. This still hasn't changed the fact that they are the best sources of damage in their game. In MOBAs damage or "carry" heroes are designed to start slow but have abilities and mechanics that allow them to scale higher than anyone else eventually. In the same fashion MOBAs have life steal items and other things to help the survivability and and solo-ability of the damage role. In either melee or ranged form the role is still about killing a target as fast as possible.
In Overwatch the damage role is by far the most popular and it's not because it has the most heroes available. Its a FPS and the majority of people that pick the game up want to shoot something until its dead. It's also the easiest role to pick up if you're coming in from another game. The defining characteristic of the damage role isn't specifically damage as heroes in other roles outperform a majority of the damage cast, the actual uniqueness is freedom of movement and long range damage. One key design feature missing is that most damage heroes in OW do not have any self-sufficient abilities. While rare when these heroes do have self-sufficient abilities it is to balance their niche design. Other balance points for the role are mobility, damage type, damage range, consistency, hitbox and in some cases utility.
The most obvious design and balancing point is a damage hero's damage type and range. By damage type I specifically mean projectile or hit-scan. Projectiles are inherently less consistent than hit-scan but in most cases do not lose damage based on distance, which we call fall-off. Projectiles are also larger in size allowing them to be more accurate but the nature of projectiles is that if seen ahead of time it can easily be dodged. A funny note is that this means projectiles are best shot at an enemy that is not aware of them, which would explain why a lot of players get annoyed at projectile based heroes. Hit-scan having an instant travel time makes them significantly more consistent but suffer from fall-off damage. With fall-off damage there are two minimum damage ranges depending on the weapon. Most long range hero's damage will drop to 50% while all other hit-scan will drop to 70% less damage at max range. Clearly hit-scans are most effective before their damage fall-off starts but offer opportunities to still deal some damage outside of it. The main goal is to have similar types of weapons but used differently because of damage fall-off. A good example of this is McCree and Ashe. Both have strong mid-range damage but McCree's damage starts to lower at 20m while Ashe's ADS starts at 30m. Giving her the ability to be a better sniper in longer ranged situations while McCree has a fire rate advantage that's more useful closer range.
Where OW greatly differs from all other games is that in a FPS consistency is required for most actions. Not to belittle the execution in MOBAs and MMOs because they do have some skill shots but it's not every interaction like in OW. This creates an bit of a problem when it comes to damage as the two notable ways to deal damage is either sustained or burst. Sustained damage happens over a longer period and is more consistent, by definition it does lower damage. This is because high consistent damage would just be considered our next damage type, burst. Burst damage is high damage that happens over a short period of time and is usually less consistent. Nearly all cases of burst damage in Overwatch are based on the heroes primary weapon. This is because of consistency and balance. A high damage ability(which are easier to land) wouldn't feel fair. High damage needs to be gated by consistency (difficulty or condition ie: range), as if they happen too often or too easily nothing else would be played. This is where we have a bit of a paradox with the Blizzard developers. Jeff Kaplan stated that he doesn't like changing the game for the sake of changing it but as players get better these burst damage abilities balanced around a low consistency start happening more. True to Jeff's words this has yet to be addressed in Overwatch. Rarely do high skill heroes get balanced because players have pushed the hero out of scope for what it was originally designed for. The truth is heroes must balanced constantly for the ever practicing community. This is exactly why we're currently in an era where burst damage is consistent damage. Both lower damage and lower consistency heroes (but burst) are no longer needed.
While tanks and supports have their player impact locked behind abilities damage heroes have theirs locked behind their primary fire, it's everything else in their kit that supports this. This is because if damage is locked behind an ability it inherently becomes less skillful as abilities have larger hit boxes and cooldowns. This will create situations where some heroes feel unfair to die to or on the flip side become too dependent on cooldowns. In either situation it's neither fun for the player nor the target.
Now to the unique mechanic of damage heroes in OW. Mobility! Mobility for damage heroes works in two primary ways. The first is that it helps damage heroes navigate maps to always find a way to keep their damage on their target and secondly it helps them survive so that they can keep outputting their damage. In the first case movement abilities can help heroes get into their effective range, such as Doomfist, Reaper, Genji, Ashe, and Widowmaker. These close range heroes have movement abilities that allow them to get closer by not taking damage or to quickly come from an obscure angle. The longer range heroes have abilities to get to high ground to gain clear shots on their targets. In either case the idea is to allow heroes to keep the damage on the enemy in more situations than other roles. This helps the damage role have more uniqueness when compared to other roles that deal the same amount of damage. In the second case movement abilities allow damage heroes to survive. They can avoid getting in the killing range of tanks or other damage heroes and allows for riskier plays. This gives them more time to keep outputting the damage that they're designed around. It's specifically because all heroes do damage that damage heroes need mobility to differentiate them in Overwatch. That is in most cases!
There are 5 damage heroes that lack good mobility. Bastion , McCree , Torbjorn, Symettra and Mei. While these heroes lack mobility their kits are given more damage under specific conditions. They may not be able to keep damage on from multiple angles but when in play they deal significant damage to the enemy constantly. Mei is an off case as she doesn't deal damage constantly but she does have easy access to control. An ammusing observation is that these heroes often feel the worst to die to because of the communities response to control and/or turret damage.
A minor note to the damage role's balance is their hitbox. Damage hero's hitbox can range from the smallest body hitbox (Symmetra) to bigger than some tank hitboxes (Bastion). Many factors can influence this such as how the hero does damage (burst vs sustain) and how mobile the hero is. In all cases the hitbox normally supports how the hero is suppose to be played and how damage is dealt. Of all the roles damage hero's size varies the greatest.
Where are we now?
We've talked about how the roles work in OW so let's think about each of their balancing points and if we can modify them.
Supports are primarily healing, utility and damage. If we lower healing at all then two support heroes won't ever be able to deal with the immense damage in OW. AoE healers will always need a burst healing ability to go with their low AoE healing. While their number's can't be modified much we can modify their uptime by introducing longer cooldowns or reload speeds, this would give windows of opportunity for players to leverage. What about utility? Utility is already on a cooldown and provides supports with their playmaking ability. I think it would be unwise to modify this because a significant amount of hero uniqueness and impact come from utility. I also think it would be a bad idea to give supports more control or disable. As a whole the community is against massive amounts of stuns and slows. That leaves us at damage, while supports do less damage it still adds a significant difference when combined with the team. Ana is in the middle of DPS for supports at 88DPS, which is 44% of an average heroes health. As stated before supports have better sustained DPS than burst but overall their damage could be still considered burst. If we do want to target damage then we would have to make it so there's enough damage to defend themselves for a short while but not enough to contribute too much to the teams DPS. Target reload times, clip sizes, projectile sizes (consistency) and falloff damage.
What about tanks? Tanks are about model size, damage mitigation, effective range, conditional burst damage and balance for competing demands. Tanks already get shredded with their large models and large HP pools so I don't believe modifying model size will help the situation at all. To lower their damage mitigation would be to sentence them to death as there's always an amazing amount of damage happening at any moment. Do we make it last for a shorter period of time and lower the cooldown or the opposite? Give shields significant health but don't allow them to regenerate for a half a minute? How do we want shields to interact in Overwatch and what happens when players pick multiple shield heroes. If shields are too strong then they either feel unfun to shoot all the time and unfun to keep up all the time. Strong shields also become an issue if a hero turns the corner and meets a tank hero, how will they deal with a shield designed to stop 6 heroes worth of damage? We could lower a tanks damage but with their low range a hero would walk through their shield and kill them with no threat of being killed. Remember the key design to a tank is that they must be a threat in some fashion. We don't want to add more stuns and slows into the game so damage is all that is left. Many players feel that sigma deals too much damage but he's has one of the lowest DPS in the game. So do we lower tank's consistency and focus on their conditional burst damage? Tanks already have low range so are we able to lower it even more? At what point do tanks feel powerless? Conditional damage is the tank mechanic that is the most fun and provides for the best experience so it's best to not change it too much but it is possible to change some of their damage towards that and away from consistency. It feels like tanks are painted in a corner so what do you start to take away without compromising the entire role?
And what about damage? Damage heroes are about mobility, damage type/range, consistency, and utility. Mobility is what makes damage heroes viable, it keeps them alive, provides a high skill ceiling and allows them to keep constant pressure on the enemy. While they need mobility balanced around cooldowns or other limiters I don't believe it's possible to modify it too much. Damage type is an interesting concept, look at apex legends that requires a large map so it made all weapons a projectile type. This allows for longer firefights at long range but quick burst damage at close range. Our other balancing point would be damage range but if damage heroes are too good from far away then tanks, supports and close range damage dealers feel helpless and they will live behind cover playing a different game. Not to mention it's already difficult to dive longer range heroes without them using their mobility to get away and live to shoot again. Consistency isn't a good balance point unless it's done in a way that's permanent. By this I mean that making something more difficult to shoot like Mei's iceicle or Ana's dart only works long enough for the players to adapt to it. Making Ana's dart slower would be a more permanent change in consistency as enemies would be able to dodge it. Lastly, damage utility is a highly hated source of design in the role. This includes Sym/Torb turrets, Mei freeze/wall, Sombra's hack and McCree's stun. All of these are complained about by the community and feel crummy to die to. I don't think adding more of these abilities would be good in general for the game.
What needs to be addressed?
While we've done a lot of talking, understand that it's needed to get the community thinking in the right direction. This is why Jeff Kaplan said that he needs to understand the source of a player's frustration, instead of telling him to nerf Echo tell him how you have to play against an echo and why that's an issue. This gives better insight into the source of a problem and not the symptom.
Based on what we've discussed the biggest take away is that we can't compare Overwatch to other genres like MMOs or MOBAs. What Blizzard is attempting here is to do something different than what anyone has seen before. While it has some elements from other genres it's still trying to be a FPS at it's core. We can see this by the lack of damage abilities, higher emphasis on execution and by far is the idea that all heroes deal damage. The idea that everoyne deals damage is so fundamental that the damage role's unique aspect is not damage but versatility with damage. This also means that other ideas to fix OW such as hero bans will not work. I've discussed it before but we have to stop thinking this is an issue hero bans could solve. Hero bans will only give the community the ability to deal with a problem quickly while Blizzard solves it. No single ban will ever change the game completely and if it did would only cause the game to become another single way as a ban meta would form until balance patches. Look no further than MOBAs to see the same bans during month long tournaments until a patch is released. It's treating the symptom, not the problem.
Secondly, if a change has to be made then more changes will have to follow. All of the current suggestions currently handicap one role so that another can feel better, we need to think of balance as a whole so what we take from one role must be reflected by changes in another. Damage isn't just a mechanic we can modify on a couple heroes and have a balanced game. This would require a patch that changes every heroes in the game and changes how heroes are designed from now on.
That being said! Here's my main takes from looking at Overwatch from a more fundamental level.
1) The average DPS in OW is 100dps, this means 600 DPS at any time from a team of 6 players. This does not include headshots or damage amplification. Stop complaining about Zenyatta and Echo shredding tanks when no tank in the game can live from 6 sources of body-shot damage damage for a second. We need to face the facts that all heroes in OW deal burst damage as the lowest DPS in the game kills a DPS hero in 4 seconds. This damage is why shields, damage mitigation and healing have to be so extreme.
2) Heroes designed and balanced around consistency have slowly drifted out of scope from what they were originally designed for. This is because of player skill and is the primary reason burst damage that is normally inconsistent has become consistent. To keep hero design in-scope balance changes must be made when the community has gained enough skill.
3) The concept of counters and buffing counters to deal with problematic heroes does more to stop players from playing the game then allowing others to play. This is because someone on one team has to initially switch and then the hero that's countered has to switch as well. Now neither team can do what they wanted to. Sure player impact was immediately high but at what point do players get to play the game?
4) Damage mitigation from tanks is so strong that most DPS can't stand against a tank 1v1. If a DPS is within the effective range of a tank they need to immediately leave or die. There needs to be more of an ebb and flow here that allows for more interactions instead of feast or famine.
5) Shielding needs to be broken up into personal and team based shielding much like healing is with supports. Most supports heal themselves slower or dependent on cooldowns, shielding needs to imitate this model some how.
6) Nearly all damage heroes are based on mobility and snipers shut this mobility down. The damage role will never have variance in it if it has the sniper architype. This is compounded that 90% of a map is unusable because snipers are dominate. By opening up more of the map players will find more ways to fight that suits different heroes and allowing for different strategies to be used. Fighting heatmaps with and without snipers would be interesting to see but only Blizzard can provide those.
7) Heroes with no clear balance for competing demands have the most issues. Sigma has some of the lowest DPS in Overwatch but is widely perceived that he deals too much damage. This is because there's not much a hero can do when he puts up a shield and dies in two volleys. In the support category we see similar issues with Baptiste. The easiest way to notice these heroes is that they will seem "over kitted".
8) Support damage is high in burst while still being able to heal. There needs to be more trade-off for being able to do both. To make it perfectly clear I'm not saying to remove heroes from being able to do both, just at a slightly higher cost than currently. A good example of this is Ana getting a smaller clip size in august. With fewer shots she now has a harder time balancing on who to shoot.
9) For whatever reason anti-tank heroes still exist after role queue was created. Anti-tank heroes were there as a mechanic to pick incase a team was tank heavy and while that didn't work out (GOATS) it still drives the question. If you're required to have two tanks why design a hero to excel at crushing them? Designing a close range hero is one thing but designing a hero to specifically kill tanks is another.
10) Tanks and supports timing is currently seen as waves but not with an equal up and downtime, currently their downtime is significantly less than their uptime. This causes constant action which at first felt like good game design but now feels like a chore. While downtime seems boring it opens more windows of opportunity for players to exploit. This is how we can make the damage role mechanic of looking for ways to constantly deal damage be significantly different than support/tank design.
11) Map design needs more diversity and start to support fully closed flanks. Currently every flank gives a window of opportunity so the enemy can see they're coming ahead of time which allows a team to reposition.
12) Deception and surprise is a mechanic that allows a game to self-regulate its METAs. OW has neither of these. Point 11 highlights that even map design tries to remove any surprise or deception. Risky strategies or 'cheese' is required to keep greedier tactics in check. Without either the game becomes too straightforward as your entire hand is reveled as soon as your hero picks are shown. While simplicity helps players understand and play the game in the long run it hurts META diversity and leads to stagnation. Heroes need to be versatile enough to execute multiple strategies/plans at any given time.
How to go about addressing the above concerns?
This is my least favorite part of design as the above issues can be fixed in multiple ways. You may agree with the above issues but heavily disagree on how I would fix them which is why I've broken it out and addressed it separately.
To address points 1,2,6 and 9 I would reduce the headshot multiplier to 1.5x across the board. Players have gotten skilled enough where the rarity of headshots is now common. This would require a rework of heroes dependent on headshots, mainly snipers.
To address points 1,2 and 8 and 10 we need to target supports. Supports deal a bit of burst damage and while that's needed for some defense they should have more consequences when forced into direct combat. Increasing reload times and having smaller clips would be a good place to start. This wouldn't stop them from burst healing and making plays but it would create more openings for players to exploit. In other cases such as Zenyatta I would rather target his consistency and lower his projectile size to .1m (torb primary), down from .15. This would mimic the tank concept of competing demands, its good for a support hero to be able to attack and support but not at the same time.
To address point 4. DPS needs some more self-sufficient mechanic that allows them to trade damage more efficiently and have less reliance on supports. I believe all damage roles should have half of their health converted into shields. This will promote flanking and taking fights outside the deathball. By giving the damage role more strategies to use it will increase the variety seen in the game. It will also address the dynamic between tanks and damage as damage heroes can briefly fight a tank before backing off to attack again. This will force teams to separate more which allows for more experiences.
Point 4 and 5 are difficult to take on and this seems out there but I believe if a shield could take reduced damage from multiple sources but extra damage from a single source it would greatly change how tanks and DPS interact. Instead of all or nothing the tanks resources would be reduced quickly because they had to use their ability purely for themselves. In larger fights it would combat spam and give tanks more of an ability to block damage all the way to the point without needing a shield that has massive HP. The trick is how to visually display this to make it seem natural. This is in attempt to mimic how supports that use utility for only themselves put their team at a greater risk.
To address point 1,2,3, and 6. While unpopular, to better support greater map diversity, to allow more damage roles to be played and to lower the overall damage in OW snipers need to be reworked. My suggestion is to rework them into a 'scout' type hero. While providing longer ranged damage but not lethal they also provide utility based on information gathering.
Point 7, 9, 11, and 12 are hard to give suggestions for because they are design issues with no clear fix. It's something to know going forward and attempt to avoid with new heroes/maps.
There's still one other option we have that a lot of players aren't seeing. Say fuck it and let everyone deal mass amounts of damage. It has worked until now and it seems once OW2 comes out it'll generate revenue for another 3-5 years by following the same model. Overall the current balance model isn't terrible - with any hero you can get to top 100 if you're good enough. It's when you get to the higher levels where the design choices really start to show as skill ceilings are hit and design hard locks out some options.
I know it sounds odd to propose the opposite of what I've spent a lot of time writing and looking into know that looking deep into one game will give you insight into another. Personally my goal isn't to change Overwatch but is a selfish goal to help myself understand this game and other games better. By understanding the issues we see in Overwatch we can identify issues in other games easier or in some cases identify an issue and consider it a feature. In either case the exercise around this discussion is probably more valuable than the discussion itself.