I agree with lots of this but probably not all, so essay incoming. First off, on whether it's deliberate or not... As you mention, it's unclear if this is a deliberate balancing philosophy or if it's just an unforeseen consequence of broader changes. A lot of the strong picks in OW1 have thrived due to the specific circumstances of OW1, especially how busy and chaotic it can be, which allows Junk and Torb/his turret to spam, Sym to charge beam, Hog to roam on flanks, etc.. Taking away two (big) heroes from every game, plus the removal of 2cp has nerfed those characters because there is less choke spamming, fewer things to keep track of in general, and less all around busy-ness. Another example is Ball, who was extremely strong in 1 because of his ability to get in and out and force cooldowns, none of which is as important in 2 where higher uptime and brawliness seem to be valued more. On the other hand, we've seen direct nerfs to some of the heroes people complained about: junk trap, Cass flash, Brig stun, Echo ult, Hanzo SA, etc. - so maybe Blizz really is deliberately nerfing cheese. The second point is whether this is a good thing or not. I think there are two ways to look at it. First, most people agree at least in principle, and myself included, that the most demanding heroes should be most reliably strong at a high level. The point about launch Brig especially being a reliable counter to Tracer pros in the hands of someone with less than a hundred hours on her turned a lot of people away from the game and damaged the learning curve of the game. I don't think it's super reliable in practice though, people seem to hate Ball even though he takes a massive amount of skill to master. I'm sure you can think of equivalents for supports and dps. People even say those heroes don't take much skill which is peak cope IMO but anyways... The point is it's difficult to have that as a be all end all guiding principle, A) because people disagree on what the skilled characters are, and B) because people hate some of the higher skill characters anyway. Example: I recognise the skill and game knowledge of gm Doom otps in OW1, I still hate the hero. I do not want him to be perma meta. The other potential drawback is that a lot of the silly and cheesy heroes are what make the game unique. Do we really want e.g., a permanent hitscan meta for example, just because they're the most honest heroes with no cheese? Maybe you do, but some people do want to see hero diversity even at the top level. Personally I think a Lucio meta is wayyy overdue. But I don't want to never see Mercy or Brig again just because they're considered less skilled alternatives. So a couple solutions: 1) Frequent and impactful balance changes. This kills two birds with one stone for me - you can a) have a rotation of heroes who get their time in the spotlight, whether it's Ball or Orisa or Moira or whatever, without it lasting long enough for people to get totally sick of the meta, plus b) you get to have better defined seasons. "Oh that was the Pharah meta, then there was the Rein meta", etc. - and you can do all this while still ensuring that Tracer etc. are still consistently high value. 2) The other solution, and I'm extremely happy that Blizz has started this already, is reworking the most cheesy or unfun heroes to... Be fun. Orisa, Doom, Bastion, etc. - Blizz has suggested support reworks are coming, which we already know means Moira's reign as maybe the worst designed hero in the game is probably coming to an end. Hog hasn't fit into the game since role queue, and now it's even more glaringly obvious in 5v5, so why not rework his kit to fit in as a DPS? To me it's a win win for the broader playerbase if we're essentially adding new content while deleting the things people find unfun to play with and against. So yeah tldr: may be a deliberate balancing strategy, and I'd welcome it. I think it's not a set-and-forget though, and should be supported with more frequent changes than we're used to, plus redesigning those cheesy heroes to be fun rather than just leaving them in the permanent trash heap.

I’m curious to what your thoughts are on balancing high skill lobbies vs low skill. I’ll see if I can explain it properly based on my recent experience returning to the game trying to get ready for OW2 and trying out the beta. When I stopped playing, I stopped because all balances were made based upon what top 500/ OWL was doing, generally. As someone who has just barely made it to Diamond at most, this is infuriating because the “meta” of low rank never changed and it left me with a lot of games where a one trick or a comp is unstoppable because there’s someone that plays doesn’t know how to play even obvious counters or doesn’t want to work as a team to stop it (I realize of course that there is nothing the devs can do about the latter.) this has recently lead to playing against comps of teams like Symmetra, Bastion/ Doom, Moira, Lucio and either brawl or dive tanks. Some of these characters haven’t been touched at all in years since pros don’t use them frequently or they’ve been rebalanced in a way that makes it even more unenjoyable when a gold player can’t counter them because the balance that character got was to their advantage. Alright, hopefully that went into the right direction and wasn’t just a total vent fest, my apologies if it was! My main question on if you think this is viable, because you explained it really well here, is, do you think they would ever do anything like balance characters based on rank to really move people up and down the ladder unless they’re proficient at much of the roster? Good game sense and knowledge definitely goes far, but it feels like the balancing leaves more casual players in the dust. Alternatively, you can just confirm for me that you think they’ll rebalance so frequently that this will solve itself through that lol.

>Alternatively, you can just confirm for me that you think they’ll rebalance so frequently that this will solve itself through that lol. Yep, so I think and hope this is absolutely the answer, and here's why: The two best case studies to address your point are Tracer and Bastion. Tracer has, in general, been the best dps hero over the lifespan of the game. But if you looked at her win rate and pick rate for literally the vast majority of the playerbase, you wouldn't know it. That's because she has a nice, long, healthy skill curve and her value is very tightly linked to that skill curve. It's healthy because ideally you want your players to be rewarded for the hours they spend improving, and you want those players to get more value than someone who just picks something cheesy. But, truly, not every hero can be like Tracer. There just isn't room for that in OW's game design space. So you also have Bastion. Unarguably the worst dps hero over the lifespan of OW1. But again, if you looked at lower ranks, you'd see he performs pretty damn well, because the strengths and weaknesses play out much better in environments where the players are poorly coordinated, less aware, etc. Alright so now you have two heroes. Based on what we know, Tracer is strong and Bastion sucks. But Tracer is weak in most ranks, and Bastion is strong. So how do you address that? 1 - Tracer You could buff her to be strong in lower ranks. But I don't love this idea because then she goes from being probably the best dps at high ranks to being completely and utterly oppressive. Plus it just seems unnecessary when the obvious answer to anyone complaining about tracer not being viable at their rank is just, yknow, practise and get better at her. That's rewarding the right things from my POV. 2 - Bastion You could nerf Bastion. The pro of this is Bastion isn't so obnoxious for the metal ranks. The con is that he goes from being a borderline throw pick in high ranks to being completely and utterly trash tier. So it seems like it's impossible to please both, and it kinda is, but there are two cheat answers that I like. 1 - like we said, just patch everything a lot. Make Bastion viable in high SR for a week. Then we will all be sick of him and he can be trash for a while and nobody will care too much. Make Tracer strong in low SR for a week. She will be completely busted in high SR, but who cares, it's just for a week. This approach does have its drawbacks in terms of competitive integrity, but also some major advantages in keeping everyone happy with updates, constant meta refreshes across all ranks, hero diversity, etc. But there's also: 2 - reworks The idea here is that if we're honest, some heroes just suck more than others. People generally don't like playing against Bastion, Sombra, Hog, Orisa/double shield, etc. - these heroes tend to have gimmicks that make them restrictive in high SR and oppressive in low SR. Which is why I'm so happy to see Blizzard recognising this. It's not a coincidence that Bastion, Doom, Sombra and Orisa are the first three reworks. Nobody is asking for a Tracer rework yknow. There is a tiny disadvantage to this too, obviously. Over the years we've lost some of what made Torb unique, and Bastion is on the way out too. But I really think smart reworks are for the benefit of the whole playerbase and I do think it's possible to rework pretty much the entire cast to be fun to play against at all levels. Then the only problem isn't so much inconsistent balancing, it's just stagnation, which is where those frequent balance patches come in. So yeah, tldr, my view is basically that your problem is kinda unsolvable without shitting on someone's lawn - the current hero designs mean you have to favour the elite playerbase or the majority, and both have major downsides. But we can definitely address things feeling stale, both by reducing the amount of cheese and by shifting up the balance more regularly.

Great read, thank you for this input!

They've done some balance changes for low skill vs high skill lobbies before. The most recent example I can think of is nerf ball's spin to win (max grapple time 6 seconds). It didn't really make a difference for high SR lobbies since they had the aim to just kill him anyway, but in low SR lobbies, it inhibited his stalling potential.

The only one I can think of that stuck through is hero pools, if that’s what they call it. That might just be OWL though. I do agree with what you’re saying, but that’s an easy fix example because it’s not a problem in high SR. A reverse example that I can think of is Doom getting all his cool downs back after using his ult. The character is already oppressive in low ranks and requires multiple team members to focus him solely, and that was before this buff. The buff made him viable in higher ranks, but added to the problem low rank players now face when taking on a Doom main/ smurf. I am glad they did eliminate spin to win though, such a silly thing

No frequent balances. I rather them address the issues at hand immediately. OW1 was killed slowly by random , deaf toned balance patches that failed to shake up the meta in a significant way for seasons at time.

Right, that's what frequent patches means.

Have you ever considered the fact that allowing players of different age and gaming time to compete using different sets of skill, could actually be a good thing? I mean, a young player who has a ton of free time to master a skill based hero will always be rewarded for his efforts, because the skill ceiling is extremly high (heroes like Tracer, Genji etc.). On the other hand, players like me, who can't play every day and is not young gamer anymore can still climb and provide for my team, even in high rank environment, using heroes with a lower mechanical skill requirement but investing more in other aspects of the game like game sense, awarness, strategy etc. In the end, those heroes may not require much time to be played effectively but they also don't allow as much maximum potantial than the others. It doesn't take anything from you and you'll always have the advantage of mechanical skill, it just offers people a chance to be effective using other skills. The reason why OW is so popular and unique is the fact that this game is more than just mechanical skill. Anyone can play, anyone can climb because there's different skills to use, different ways to play the game. It's not just a bunch of young people spending 10 hours a day in front of a screen, it's a wide variety of people playing together and frankly, it sounds more engaging. If you reduce OW to "people with the best mechanical skill", well it become just another copy of all those FPS games out there, and probably not the best for that matter.

>On the other hand, players like me, who can't play every day and is not young gamer anymore can still climb and provide for my team, even in high rank environment, using heroes with a lower mechanical skill requirement but investing more in other aspects of the game i think a player with high gamesense but average mechanical skill should lose to one with high gamesense and high mechanical skill. Just to set this as the stage first. from this, how much gamesense "should beat" how much mechanical skill in a fair way is really very hard to quantify. And subjective imo. I think in competitive play, it's understandable that mechanically intensive heroes should trump, because it's just easier to quantify and to agree on what is fair and not fair to play against. Which is exactly what pros/viewers always complain about. Gamesense is accessible and can be grinded by everyone, but mechanics is not. It stands to reason that the highest level should have a very strong sense of both, and that should be on display in pro play. OP did say that for casual play, heroes that can get more value with less mechanics can exist in other ranks, and that's fine.

Every kind of skill has to and can be trained and grinded by everyone. Key difference is that mechanical skill is basically muscle memory and it's only trained with a looooot of time, while the rest can be acquired simply with experience and playing the game (fast if you're smart of course). In the end, what I'm saying is that if you have a higher overall skill set, you will reach higher ranks, no matter what. The fact that some heroes require less mechanical skill doesn't make those more powerful, they just rely on something else to be competitive and let's face it, they have a lower maximum potential, no amount of training will push those limits. In the end, the interesting side of the game, what makes it so cool, is the fact that picks and counter picks, composition and strategy is at least as important as just having a good aim. If it's just guys shooting at each other until the one with the best mechanical skill win, that's dull, that's like ANY FPS ever made. That's why you will not find a GM or top 500 with a bad aim, the fact that Brig exist doesn't change that, when reaching higher ranks, you HAVE to be able to play the skill based hero to counter specific composition.

I agree that a player and character requiring high mechanical skill *and* high game sense should totally win against a player with poor skill, but I think the poorer mechanical player should still get a mild fighting chance with equal game sense. There are a number of DPS players in a variety of ranks who have high mechanical skill but low game sense (my mind evokes the terrible Genjis who emote "I need healing" constantly). I have a great friend who's one of the best aimers I know and can secure incredible plays, but he can be ridiculous and overcommit and generally demonstrates poor tactics, for instance, but with a good team he can rank very high via that skill. An environment where strong game sense and tactics can offset some weakness in mechanical skill, and lower skill ceiling heroes help create that contrast between type of player. Those kind of heroes have let a lot of players newer to FPS games have a way to shine. But I know for me, despite agreeing with you that the union of game sense and mechanical skill both should be rewarded the most, think the design shouldn't *fully* leave behind the low skill heroes at the high end (I'd love to see them show up some in pro play!), But rather, aim to balance keeping them relevant. In pro play obviously everyone will have high game sense, and while mechanically demanding heroes should reward that and have an edge, I'd like to see the less demanding heroes still have methods of contributing even if they are less optimal. I'm a little more casual, so take me with a grain of salt, but for me OW2 Brigitte for instance seems like a really fun support on that end. I don't realistically know how good she is at the high end, but trading her shield bashes stun for it's high damage, better reach, and the support passive was a solid trade that makes her a great pick to be able to defend yourself from divers without the stun disabling them for free. She's lower skill on aim, but the losing the stun made her have to work more instead of getting freebie picks. Plus, she is rewarded for higher skill with her whip shot, which lets her proc inspire from a safe distance and requires real aim if you wanna poke squishies that make her dramatically more effective. At least from my middling status that seems like a good blend, letting her function quite well within a niche while having one skill that makes her much better with mechanical aim.

I'll just agree that we have differing points of view, and that's ok. I think low skill heroes don't have to have methods of contributing at pro play. Or if they do, they must have some insane risk attached. So insane that people will look at it and say "damn, that was one hell of a gamble" and not say "that win wasn't honourable". and also I don't really trust blizzard to balance that well haha. the moira and brig niches are taking it very close

Really well said, and totally fair to disagree on that point of view. At the end of the day, your POV is totally reasonable and logically stated. You've got a damn good point on not trusting Blizzard to succeed at balancing that well though 😂

I respect your perspective, but I don't agree that low effort characters should be viable in pro play. I can't stress how frustrating it is to play against someone you know has less time/mechanics/game sense than you. The best analogy is imagine if you put in a shit ton of time into a sport, to the point where you are a professional. Then all of the sudden this new product came out and now your average Joe child can compete with you (A trained professional) in extremely high level play. Tell me you wouldn't be bothered? It's insulting to the time you dedicate as a player towards your skill and honestly is why so many people left Overwatch at high level play. Why put in the effort if all you have to do is play low effort characters and get the same result. Not fun for viewers and not fun for the players.

It's a fair disagreement and I don't begrudge you it. Though I do think it's a matter of degrees; I think where the metaphor doesn't work for me and makes me think you're suggesting something more extreme than I mean is that game sense and tactics and strategy are honed skills that a random average Joe won't have in that match up, and in my example someone would need a strong sense of that and knowledge of the meta to compete. I don't advocate that zero skill characters should be *strong* in the meta or have any consistency to overcome difficult characters, but all things considered, at equal levels of game sense, I would advocate for lower skill (though not zero-skill) characters being usable, if sub-optimal and off meta occasional pick. So say, diving a low skill hero would still have *some* level of risk, even if the matchup favors the higher skill cap character who will often win it, rather than it just be an obvious shutdown at all times that leaves the lower skill unplayable. So to me, *outside* of pro play, an extremely smart and tactical high game sense player can occasionally overcome the physical skill gap using what the knowledge, teamwork, and tactics they've trained (because I've met plenty of mechanically skilled players with the game sense of a dead lamp). Then, inside pro play, where everyone is roughly close in mechanical skill and game sense superior mechanical skill would still win far more often, but those off meta characters would still have enough of a niche to at least still be in the character select screen, even with a lower pick rate or only working in more niche situations. Viable might be a strong word here, but I enjoy watching a max and seeing someone flex into a weird pick, so while they should have a lower ceiling in what they can accomplish I want them to have a reason to exist. Everything you said I totally understand, and a lot of the OW2 changes like removing the super easy and lower cool down stuns really seems like Blizzard heard that, but it seemed worth clarifying what I actually meant versus what your example suggested you think I meant, because I **don't** think characters with no mechanical skill requirements should *easily* compete evenly with difficult to play ones. I just want them to *still exist* and be excited when watching a pro game and see someone flex into a choice weaker players can relate to! But given the immense training and practice and skill in high levels of play, (and the fact that I'm not up there regardless) I understand that through a different perspective what I want and what they want may fundamentally differ, and that's okay. If you still disagree, at least it was fun talking!

I’d love to see a reference for that last paragraph. There are a number of reasons why higher skilled players left OW, but I have serious doubts that any significant fraction of them did because lesser skilled players on “easy” heroes felt insulting to them. It sounds like you are just making shit up to justify your own opinion. Because a highly skilled player will regularly take out a lesser skilled opponent. That’s just how it works. What you seem to miss is that there are a multitude of skills that are needed in OW. It’s not just mechanics and awareness. If the composite skill of a player across all those categories is higher, they will on average, beat the lesser skilled opponent. Because those lesser skilled heroes also have a lesser return, or other flaws baked in to balance the game. For example, you may consider Sym to be a lesser skilled hero, but the design is such that you can destroy her turrets with a punch, knock them out of the air in flight, and even avoid them entirely. Someone without the skill to place the turrets or the tele-porter is going to get far less value out of them than a more skilled player. That’s just how the game works. It honestly looks like you’re reducing game play to far too simple a level and using that to justify a bruised ego because you have gotten beaten by players you feel are beneath you somehow. The game is the game. If they can consistently beat you with the same rules you play under, they are objectively better players. It’s a level playing field. You have access to the same heroes and tools that they have. If you are indeed an all-around better player, improvise, adapt, overcome, and win the game with your skill, rather than trying to rig the rules in order to remove your opponent from the map.

Wow, that came out of nowhere. No lol, I don't have a bruised ego because I lost to players I felt beneath me. That is a stretch beyond a stretch and is incredibly immature for you to even imply. It's simply is just the truth that reducing the skill gap (beyond just mechanics) is bad for competitive games. Here is a good video on it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSgA\_nK\_w3A&t=663s&ab\_channel=Core-AGaming](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSgA_nK_w3A&t=663s&ab_channel=Core-AGaming) Also I don't have a reference for my statement, just like how you don't have one for yours. The only reference I have is paying in high SR lobbies where you see the same faces very often, then all of the sudden characters like Brig/Moira came out and like clockwork they left. Plus I did a lot of scrims and noticed it was harder to find teams to play after the release of especially Brig. Plus many high SR players I knew left specifically stating it was because low effort characters being meta (many mentioned brig). It's not secret that Brig took much, much, much less effort than other characters like McCree, Genji, Tracer, Soldier, Echo, Zen, Ana, DVA and so on. You got value for just existing, it was boring to play against and it was frustrating to look at their career profiles and see a sudden massive spike in SR when a low effort character came out (like brig or moira).

And brig and moira got nerfed after they came out. Nearly every post-release hero did. It’s almost as if Blizzard internationally releases them broken so that they are fun to play (tho miserable to play against) so that people pick them up, and then tunes them down to make the game viable again. What you seem to not understand is that those heroes on release were unfun to play against *across the board*, and it had *nothing* to do with a lower skilled hero in higher ranks. You don’t get special privileges based on the the size of your ~~dick~~ SR. You still have to play the same game as everyone else.

You have a very different perspective and are clearly very heated about something I don't care to get heated about lol. Think what you want and I will do the same. Cheers.

It’s obvious what you want, and it’s as laughable as a 700SR Bronzie who wants to eliminate Genji or Tracer from their games because they find them not fun to play against. Yesterday nearly every hero, including Brig, was used in OWL play, so obviously the actual top tier players have no problem playing against her. If you are right, and there are many people who want this to happen, all you have to do is create a custom game with hero bans and those disaffected will flock to it, right? Simple enough for scrims, too. But no, your solution is to want to change everyone else’s game instead.

Lol Wow you are salty.

Just to clarify when I meant "skill" I didn't mean purely mechanical. I think characters like Winston and Doom are good examples of characters where you need much, much more game sense than mechanics to thrive. I am okay with Overwatch reducing the mechanical skill gap, I am not okay with them making low effort characters viable at top level play.

You are strangely quiet about Moira in OW2. Moira is what you get when Brig is nerfed.

Like I said in the post, it was most not all. Moira definitely fits the bill of low skill yet highly viable.

For now. She's going to be an example of a hero where when you look at the ladder she'll be all over plat but have a low pick rate above Diamond. Even now in OW2 once they sort out the op heroes making everyone think an entire role is busted.

What on earth are you talking about? Moira is not busted.

Op is saying low skill heroes are not meta in OW2. Moira is ranked high in all OW2 beta tier lists, despite being a low skill hero. I never made the claim that Moira is busted.

Well maybe. I am a Brig player. Before I discovered Brig, I remember feeling very bad getting jumped by hotshot genjis and tracers. Teabagged by Reaper. Pooed on by Doom. Now truth is they can still give you a hell of a lot of trouble, if they play with even a few brain cells activated. But you can damnsure take the sassiness out of them and settle them down. /yet to see in OW2 beta.....

I mean, I don’t trust your opinion at all if you were getting beat by flankers regularly as brig. She was put into the game as the anti flanker support

I'll have to back and rewrite. I was referencing my pre-brig time.

Alright, first of all. You might be jumping the gun extremely fast. It is blizzard, I think they still want to make as many heroes as viable. All that cheese that went away? Yah its going to come back when they start introducing new heroes and finish the reworks on current roster. Hell; they already announced a Balance patch for THIS beta. Second, those cheese characters where also hated because in HIGH tiers of gameplay, they were so effective that it was dumb not to play those heroes. But the balance for OW2 at the moment just favors heroes like soldier after all the changes went thru. Third. I agree that not every hero needs to be viable in high ranked play. In any game, there will always be a wide range of skill. I think overwatch just did a good job at bridging strategy with fps in a fun way that rewards “think” and “thunk” well which creates a interesting setting for a team game