Part 1 - Fixing the Overwatch Jenga tower of balance - Armor
With this being part 1 of some changes i'd like to see i'd like to address the problem i see in Overwatch.
With a new balance patch on the horizon a lot of people are hoping for goats to be removed. The problem i have is that goats isn't the issue, its that players are forced to play with only one strategy.
To be the bearer of bad news - goats is a legitimate strategy and should be an option. We need to strive for multiple viable strategies on each map, not completely remove those that we don't like.
If goats goes away then double sniper becomes the dominate comp, if we take that away then dive comes back. This trend will take you back through the strong comps and leave you with the same issues. A boring repetitive play style or being forced to play what is deemed "correct". The most popular idea I've heard so far is that a ban system would fix this. While at first glance it looks like a good answer since you can ban a strategy out, it actually fixes nothing. It simply pushes the issues down the road, now i will say that it does give players some control it still doesn't progress the game to a higher level of strategic depth or creativeness. Instead of having one dominate strategy, players will form the next one afterwards. No matter who we ban we still run into the issue of having a "correct" answer. This "correct" answer that doesn't depend on how something is played but rather what is picked. Which brings us to the main problem.
Overwatch is entirely based on pre-defined answers.
This issue manifests itself as necessity. It doesn't matter if its because of map design, hero design or hero balance. We should strive as much as we can to avoid necessity as it removes player creativeness and leads to stale game play. A significant amount of hero design is based around giving players a tool to deal with a specific problem. This will work at first but when players learn to deal with that one counter there is nothing left to deal with the original problem and the problem hero is forced into every game. On the opposite end, if blizzard gives us a tool that is too good against a problem then we've forced a different hero into the game but still have the same issue of it being required.
It is to this extent that niche heroes are a flawed concept. If too strong in one specific area then the community will want a nerf. There's no fun in playing against someone that wins 100% of the time in a specific area. While if you make a hero have a chance to lose in their strong area, then why ever pick them in the first place? Everyone would rather pick a hero that has a chance to win and lose in all areas rather than stick with a hero that's useless in all areas but one, while still being able to lose in that singular area. Further more because niche heroes are specializing in one aspect, they usually have strong counters in the game. If a hero has a counter and that counter is more useful in general combat then the niche hero will never have a use in the game.
We also have the issue of offense vs defense with niche heroes. Picking a niche hero on offense is strong because the defense cannot change heroes easily, picking a niche hero on defense is an almost guaranteed loss because the offense can scout and change up their lineup to crush your niche composition. Currently niche heroes are more of a puzzle solving issue. Once you solve the problem with hero picks then you can easily overcome it, it comes down to what hero is picked rather than how you play that hero.
While fixing niche heroes is a great direction to go we still need to address that the time to kill in OW is getting incredibly low. Too many heroes are getting buffed instead of a few heroes getting nerfed has created an incredible power creep that has lowered the TTK for a lot of heroes below 1 second. Now when we think about nerfing D.va or other tanks the community is worried that there is nothing left to keep damage heroes in check. If we pull one piece of this Jenga tower of balance out then the entire game collapses. This is a result of pre-designed answers instead of balanced heroes. If Dva keeps tracer balanced and you need other answers to deal with tracer then how can we balance any one part of the game without effecting a long change of dependencies? We have to start from the ground up on balance.
Heroes should be designed with three groups in mind. Balanced within their class, balanced within the game and balanced within themselves. Never balance a hero based around a dependency on another hero, either ally or enemy. A Pharah shouldn't depend on a Mercy to exist. Tracer's balance shouldn't depend on D.va's balance.
If a hero is too strong or too weak within their class then other DPS/support/tanks will always or never be picked. If a hero is not balanced within the game then you will either have too many options against them or too few. Finally balancing a hero within themselves means that they have strong points and weak points, while having neither of each is balanced it does lend itself to creating boring heroes. Taking all of this into account seems difficult, specifically when trying to keep their roles unique but we're very close to it now! As much as everyone complains in overwatch, it is possible to hit top 500 with any hero. Its not perfectly balanced but it is something to be noted that we're within the ballpark.
So the big question, how do we do this? First i believe we need to address the armor system. Not that it's too strong but that it targets specific heroes too much. In a sense armor is a counter to some heroes and that just won't do with the new goals of balance we're looking to achieve.
First we need to change how damage against armor is calculated, specifically to head shots. Currently OW takes your damage then multiplies it by the head shot factor and then subtracts 5. McCree does 70 damage, x2 for head shot making the total 140. Armor takes -5 from this for a total of 135. Armor needs to take effect before the head shot bonus. Doubling its effect against head shots. McCree would then do 70 damage, -5 from armor for 65 x 2 damage. Resulting in 130 damage.
Next, armor needs to block 10 damage instead of 5, and if under 20 then reduced by half like how it is currently. While making armor stronger sounds bad, remember that it doesn't effect those that are hit hardest by it currently. Shotguns,Tracer and Sombra will still do the same damage amount against the new armor, still a 50% reduction. Now we need to lower the amount of armor most heroes have, by about 50 or 75. Excluding Winston most likely. What this does is allow tanks to be stronger against more of the hero pool but at the same time, by dropping the total amount of armor, making them weaker against what they are currently "countering".
Now we give small amounts of armor to projectile heroes. Phara, torb, mei, junkrat, sym. These five heroes would get turned into 200hp/50 armor heroes. This lessens the "counter" that hitscan is against projectile based heroes. Since most of these heroes will now survive one more shot it gives them that .5 second extra for the projectile to travel.
The last step without going into hero balance too much would be to take widow down to x2 head shot multiplier and hanzo down to 120 damage. Part of the reason why goats and double sniper is so powerful is that the only way to deal with them is to either run snipers yourself or to simply survive the initial shot. Few players understand the reason why double sniper turned into goats is because players needed the extra HP to survive.
That one shot extra in survival is the entire goal of the armor changes. Heroes who are currently weak against tanks because of armor now need 1 less clip to strip that armor. Tanks who had vulnerabilities to medium burst damage now survive that because of the armor calculations and increased efficiency. Projectile based heroes now need an extra shot to die, allowing them to fight against more of the cast, snipers are slightly weaker to more of the cast.
This opens the door to nerfing healing in the game since armor is stronger but in lower amounts and more heroes can survive for longer periods of time. The demand for burst healing is lessened and allows more heroes to be healed for low amounts of health opening the door for more low but consistent healing. Overall burst and consistent healing now become slightly more balanced in respect to each other. It also allows for more interesting damage compositions to be created, high damage heroes, such as Phara, Junkrat, Hanzo and Widow can now strip almost all of the armor off of a hero with a single shot allowing shotgun tanks or automatic weapon DPS heroes to take advantage of it.
I believe this is the simplest way to gradually reduce the "counter" idea that stretches across all of Overwatch so that more compositions are playable.
At this point I would have to stop and see how the game plays out. While i wish i could predict everything that could happen i have to remember that every designer out there never has things go as planned. Players are smart and creative, they will always find some way to get around the designs you have in place and a well balanced game must be built from a solid foundation on block at a time to avoid become a a Jenga tower.
With a new balance patch on the horizon a lot of people are hoping for goats to be removed. The problem i have is that goats isn't the issue, its that players are forced to play with only one strategy.
To be the bearer of bad news - goats is a legitimate strategy and should be an option. We need to strive for multiple viable strategies on each map, not completely remove those that we don't like.
If goats goes away then double sniper becomes the dominate comp, if we take that away then dive comes back. This trend will take you back through the strong comps and leave you with the same issues. A boring repetitive play style or being forced to play what is deemed "correct". The most popular idea I've heard so far is that a ban system would fix this. While at first glance it looks like a good answer since you can ban a strategy out, it actually fixes nothing. It simply pushes the issues down the road, now i will say that it does give players some control it still doesn't progress the game to a higher level of strategic depth or creativeness. Instead of having one dominate strategy, players will form the next one afterwards. No matter who we ban we still run into the issue of having a "correct" answer. This "correct" answer that doesn't depend on how something is played but rather what is picked. Which brings us to the main problem.
Overwatch is entirely based on pre-defined answers.
This issue manifests itself as necessity. It doesn't matter if its because of map design, hero design or hero balance. We should strive as much as we can to avoid necessity as it removes player creativeness and leads to stale game play. A significant amount of hero design is based around giving players a tool to deal with a specific problem. This will work at first but when players learn to deal with that one counter there is nothing left to deal with the original problem and the problem hero is forced into every game. On the opposite end, if blizzard gives us a tool that is too good against a problem then we've forced a different hero into the game but still have the same issue of it being required.
It is to this extent that niche heroes are a flawed concept. If too strong in one specific area then the community will want a nerf. There's no fun in playing against someone that wins 100% of the time in a specific area. While if you make a hero have a chance to lose in their strong area, then why ever pick them in the first place? Everyone would rather pick a hero that has a chance to win and lose in all areas rather than stick with a hero that's useless in all areas but one, while still being able to lose in that singular area. Further more because niche heroes are specializing in one aspect, they usually have strong counters in the game. If a hero has a counter and that counter is more useful in general combat then the niche hero will never have a use in the game.
We also have the issue of offense vs defense with niche heroes. Picking a niche hero on offense is strong because the defense cannot change heroes easily, picking a niche hero on defense is an almost guaranteed loss because the offense can scout and change up their lineup to crush your niche composition. Currently niche heroes are more of a puzzle solving issue. Once you solve the problem with hero picks then you can easily overcome it, it comes down to what hero is picked rather than how you play that hero.
While fixing niche heroes is a great direction to go we still need to address that the time to kill in OW is getting incredibly low. Too many heroes are getting buffed instead of a few heroes getting nerfed has created an incredible power creep that has lowered the TTK for a lot of heroes below 1 second. Now when we think about nerfing D.va or other tanks the community is worried that there is nothing left to keep damage heroes in check. If we pull one piece of this Jenga tower of balance out then the entire game collapses. This is a result of pre-designed answers instead of balanced heroes. If Dva keeps tracer balanced and you need other answers to deal with tracer then how can we balance any one part of the game without effecting a long change of dependencies? We have to start from the ground up on balance.
Heroes should be designed with three groups in mind. Balanced within their class, balanced within the game and balanced within themselves. Never balance a hero based around a dependency on another hero, either ally or enemy. A Pharah shouldn't depend on a Mercy to exist. Tracer's balance shouldn't depend on D.va's balance.
If a hero is too strong or too weak within their class then other DPS/support/tanks will always or never be picked. If a hero is not balanced within the game then you will either have too many options against them or too few. Finally balancing a hero within themselves means that they have strong points and weak points, while having neither of each is balanced it does lend itself to creating boring heroes. Taking all of this into account seems difficult, specifically when trying to keep their roles unique but we're very close to it now! As much as everyone complains in overwatch, it is possible to hit top 500 with any hero. Its not perfectly balanced but it is something to be noted that we're within the ballpark.
So the big question, how do we do this? First i believe we need to address the armor system. Not that it's too strong but that it targets specific heroes too much. In a sense armor is a counter to some heroes and that just won't do with the new goals of balance we're looking to achieve.
First we need to change how damage against armor is calculated, specifically to head shots. Currently OW takes your damage then multiplies it by the head shot factor and then subtracts 5. McCree does 70 damage, x2 for head shot making the total 140. Armor takes -5 from this for a total of 135. Armor needs to take effect before the head shot bonus. Doubling its effect against head shots. McCree would then do 70 damage, -5 from armor for 65 x 2 damage. Resulting in 130 damage.
Next, armor needs to block 10 damage instead of 5, and if under 20 then reduced by half like how it is currently. While making armor stronger sounds bad, remember that it doesn't effect those that are hit hardest by it currently. Shotguns,Tracer and Sombra will still do the same damage amount against the new armor, still a 50% reduction. Now we need to lower the amount of armor most heroes have, by about 50 or 75. Excluding Winston most likely. What this does is allow tanks to be stronger against more of the hero pool but at the same time, by dropping the total amount of armor, making them weaker against what they are currently "countering".
Now we give small amounts of armor to projectile heroes. Phara, torb, mei, junkrat, sym. These five heroes would get turned into 200hp/50 armor heroes. This lessens the "counter" that hitscan is against projectile based heroes. Since most of these heroes will now survive one more shot it gives them that .5 second extra for the projectile to travel.
The last step without going into hero balance too much would be to take widow down to x2 head shot multiplier and hanzo down to 120 damage. Part of the reason why goats and double sniper is so powerful is that the only way to deal with them is to either run snipers yourself or to simply survive the initial shot. Few players understand the reason why double sniper turned into goats is because players needed the extra HP to survive.
That one shot extra in survival is the entire goal of the armor changes. Heroes who are currently weak against tanks because of armor now need 1 less clip to strip that armor. Tanks who had vulnerabilities to medium burst damage now survive that because of the armor calculations and increased efficiency. Projectile based heroes now need an extra shot to die, allowing them to fight against more of the cast, snipers are slightly weaker to more of the cast.
This opens the door to nerfing healing in the game since armor is stronger but in lower amounts and more heroes can survive for longer periods of time. The demand for burst healing is lessened and allows more heroes to be healed for low amounts of health opening the door for more low but consistent healing. Overall burst and consistent healing now become slightly more balanced in respect to each other. It also allows for more interesting damage compositions to be created, high damage heroes, such as Phara, Junkrat, Hanzo and Widow can now strip almost all of the armor off of a hero with a single shot allowing shotgun tanks or automatic weapon DPS heroes to take advantage of it.
I believe this is the simplest way to gradually reduce the "counter" idea that stretches across all of Overwatch so that more compositions are playable.
At this point I would have to stop and see how the game plays out. While i wish i could predict everything that could happen i have to remember that every designer out there never has things go as planned. Players are smart and creative, they will always find some way to get around the designs you have in place and a well balanced game must be built from a solid foundation on block at a time to avoid become a a Jenga tower.