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FaustianQ posted:I don't disagree, and am not trying to say Dva should be flat nerfed, just that DM is so loving good that it becomes consistently problematic in any meta, and maybe they should take a look at that? I'm not sure Doomfist is going to force Dva out at all, Doomfist seems to be a great dive character who is great against things that aren't Dive. If Doomfist wrecks poo poo and winds up being real good and D.Va can't do anything to stop it, why would you keep running D.Va into that? The question isn't whether Doomfist can 1v1 D.Va but whether D.Va winds up being as useful in a post Doomfist environment where defense matrix can't protect your squishies from a rocket fist. I'm actually interested to see how it plays out. I also recall that D.Va didn't immediately jump into usefulness after her matrix was reworked, and in fact she was considered a liability during dive 1.0 due to a combination of 50% orb of discords plus Zaryas on every team.
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Jul 13, 2017 04:20
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SuccinctAndPunchy posted:I don't think games being complicated and hard to parse with no prior experience is what prevents people from watching them tbh given that I completely don't understand how Cricket works at all and that doesn't seem to stop half my country from being excited about it. Complicated and hard-to-watch are two different things I think. You can enjoy cricket (and American football) on a surface level even understanding little about the game. Fencing is one of the harder sports for non-fencers to watch because the blades are so thin and hard to make out and the action is so fast and furious that many spectators rely on the referees to understand what even happened. You see a huge downfield pass or a home run swing and you immediately realize Something Good Just Happened even if you don't fully grasp the deep intricacies of what's going on. That's key for spectators, I think. Tying this back to video games, this is part of why dotalikes are so successful. You can see a big flashy ult go off, everyone OOHing, and you can join in alongside them even if you don't fully understand the flow of the fight and why the ult was used right there and then. For whatever reason this doesn't really work as well in Overwatch.
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Jul 13, 2017 04:46
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It's funny and sad to me that HotS is probably the most watchable MOBA (at least imo) but is one of the least popular. HotS is incredibly easy to understand simply from watching and is shorter in duration compared to DOTA and LOL and something is always happening. There's also no inventory or gold or whatever to keep track of. Team level is the only thing that spectators need to really know about for the most part. Overwatch is just very chaotic. I find I don't enjoy watching OW esports streams as much as watching individual OW streamers, which is not the case for most other games.
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Jul 13, 2017 04:51
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Glad to see the grav fix, because being able to escape it makes no loving sense whatsoever
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Jul 13, 2017 04:54
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I'm assuming Orisa's Fortify is exempt from the Grav buff, since being unaffected by traps is what it's for?
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Jul 13, 2017 05:14
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Maple Leaf posted:I'm assuming Orisa's Fortify is exempt from the Grav buff, since being unaffected by traps is what it's for? Fortify and Wraith Form can escape from it
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Jul 13, 2017 05:16
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^^^The wraith form thing is weird since you can't actually escape junktraps that way. I wonder if it's a bug.Maple Leaf posted:I'm assuming Orisa's Fortify is exempt from the Grav buff, since being unaffected by traps is what it's for? She's immune to Junkrat traps so I would assume she also remains immune to Graviton Surge, yeah. Basically Fortify seems to immunize her against anything that would hinder or prevent her from moving, period.
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Jul 13, 2017 05:16
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SKULL.GIF posted:Complicated and hard-to-watch are two different things I think. You can enjoy cricket (and American football) on a surface level even understanding little about the game. Fencing is one of the harder sports for non-fencers to watch because the blades are so thin and hard to make out and the action is so fast and furious that many spectators rely on the referees to understand what even happened. Fencing is stupid because you just have to land a hit on your opponent a few milliseconds before they land a hit on you. Any true goon that lives and dies by the way of the sword recognizes this is just a good way for you to both be killed.
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Jul 13, 2017 05:26
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Also now that I'm home and had a chance to look at the PTR notes in greater detail lol that Doomfist isn't off the PTR and they're already pruning away some of his mobility.
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Jul 13, 2017 05:49
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how do we balance a character with an ability that can consistently prevent almost any other characters from doing anything, on a very low cooldown, with a movement ability that makes the short range of it nearly negligible, hmm, why don't we, uhhh, make it better and make everything else worse? yeah that will probably work, can I have my cheque now blizzard
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Jul 13, 2017 05:55
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Bleck posted:how do we balance a character with an ability that can consistently prevent almost any other characters from doing anything, on a very low cooldown, with a movement ability that makes the short range of it nearly negligible, hmm, why don't we, uhhh, make it better and make everything else worse? yeah that will probably work, can I have my cheque now blizzard are you talking about flashbang...? because it's really not a big deal that it got a minor buff
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Jul 13, 2017 05:59
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Manatee Cannon posted:are you talking about flashbang...? because it's really not a big deal that it got a minor buff Pretty sure he's talking about defense matrix.
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Jul 13, 2017 06:05
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BOO that Zarya ult change BOOOOOO!!!! I loved charging out of her stupid ult as Reinhardt
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Jul 13, 2017 06:12
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Kai Tave posted:Pretty sure he's talking about defense matrix. o I just assumed he was talking about the patch notes my bad
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Jul 13, 2017 06:12
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Yeah was just chiming in about DM - I think the flashbang change is a good thing
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Jul 13, 2017 06:15
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ok besides all that esports stuff, imagine loving shaq giving commentary on an ult push
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Jul 13, 2017 06:53
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYjoGU-gyz8 Shaq owns
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Jul 13, 2017 06:56
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Splinter posted:Games aiming at being an eSport should really consider separate 'pro' modes that have different mechanical requirements and/or balance. This works around the issue that design for a great competitive game sometimes conflicts with design for a game with mass appeal. This would be bad for all kinds of reasons, both in terms of making a good game and in terms of promoting the game as a spectator sport (two goals that are already at odds with each other). It's an additional barrier of entry for watching and understanding what's going on in the pro version, likewise for actually making the jump from one to the other, it's twice as much balance work, and most importantly, anyone with an ounce of fight in them will instinctively realize that being put in the kiddy pool balance mode is lame as hell. 
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Jul 13, 2017 07:08
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Also, framing it as "competitive play" vs. "mass appeal" is mis-stating the problem. There is no "mass appeal" player. There are just audiences with certain preferences. For some of those audiences the problem with "mass appeal" is that it extends to people who want a high-skill game with a lot of individual impact and high execution barriers to overcome. Think of all the times Hearthstone has nerfed fun, goofy cards even though it's a total joke as a competitive game for reasons that are inseparable from its basic concept; it's the same problem, just operating in reverse.
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Jul 13, 2017 07:25
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Here's the thing with D.Va: What she needs is a stronger counter, not a nerf. As it is right now her counters would be Mei, Zarya and Roadhog. None of them have mobility, and Zarya loses if she doesn't have her gun charged and also can't do a thing if D.Va just decides to nope on out of there. Maybe this counter will be Doomfist I dunno I haven't toyed with him much yet.
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Jul 13, 2017 08:47
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Slime posted:Here's the thing with D.Va: What she needs is a stronger counter, not a nerf. As it is right now her counters would be Mei, Zarya and Roadhog. None of them have mobility, and Zarya loses if she doesn't have her gun charged and also can't do a thing if D.Va just decides to nope on out of there. Maybe this counter will be Doomfist I dunno I haven't toyed with him much yet. Winston adadadading around like symmetra will gently caress dva up unless she nopes the gently caress out where Winston can't just leap after her.
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Jul 13, 2017 08:54
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Slime posted:Here's the thing with D.Va: What she needs is a stronger counter, not a nerf. As it is right now her counters would be Mei, Zarya and Roadhog. None of them have mobility, and Zarya loses if she doesn't have her gun charged and also can't do a thing if D.Va just decides to nope on out of there. Maybe this counter will be Doomfist I dunno I haven't toyed with him much yet. I mean that's more or less what I've been saying. Rein received no intentional nerfs whatsoever (he's had some bad bugs for a month or so) and his pickrate has plummeted simply because the landscape of the game changed around him, not because they reduced his shield to 500 hitpoints and made his hammer do 30 damage a swing. D.Va, more to the point defense matrix, is an ability that has counterability built into it, there are a number of attacks and abilities that are completely immune to it, the problem at the moment is that you can't really build a very cohesive team strictly around ignoring defense matrix that doesn't suffer in other respects but with the introduction of new heroes I could see that easily happening. Doomfist is one such hero and if he happens to be good enough to take off then he's someone that D.Va is not going to be able to shut down by flashing some scanlines over. For what it's worth I don't think Doomfist is going to be a direct D.Va counter but what I do think is he stands a good chance of being someone that can reduce the effectiveness of D.Va by ignoring her and pounding her team's squishies into paste, the only thing of his that D.Va can eat is his shotgun knuckles, everything else he simply ignores and his ability to generate overshields means that he can stay and punch people for a bit longer while taking shotgun fire than a regular 250 hitpoint hero would be able to.
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Jul 13, 2017 08:57
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FAUXTON posted:Winston adadadading around like symmetra will gently caress dva up unless she nopes the gently caress out where Winston can't just leap after her. I have literally never had a problem killing a Winston as D.Va no matter how much they addaaadadadadda around. Like Winston is 90% of the time a complete non-issue for me when I'm playing D.Va. The shotguns have enough spread on them and he's such a big target that it feels like I can't miss. Kai Tave posted:For what it's worth I don't think Doomfist is going to be a direct D.Va counter but what I do think is he stands a good chance of being someone that can reduce the effectiveness of D.Va by ignoring her and pounding her team's squishies into paste, the only thing of his that D.Va can eat is his shotgun knuckles, everything else he simply ignores and his ability to generate overshields means that he can stay and punch people for a bit longer while taking shotgun fire than a regular 250 hitpoint hero would be able to. Just knocking D.Va around while she tries to defense matrix for her team will be pretty strong, especially since he can also do the same to Winston or teammates he drops his bubble over.
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Jul 13, 2017 09:06
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Supercar Gautier posted:Overwatch derives a lot of its mass appeal from the fact that casual players are playing the same game as the pros. The notion that there's a smooth gradient from your average player to an eSports pro, and that this mountain is climbable, is what gets people invested in comp mode. If they made an alternate mode where the characters are balanced differently, and designated that mode as the game's kiddie pool, no one would want to play it just based on stigma alone. This is what originally got me into overwatch. I looked at what the pro's were doing and thought "Yeah I could probably do that". Fast forward a year and i'm scrimming with people who play video games for a living. It's pretty cool. I might actually win some tournaments with my new team (We have an actual coach, entire team is made up of top 500 players, coach is an ex top 500 who wants to coach rather than play). It's really cool. I'd argue that people lower down still aren't playing the same game though, because even scrimming feels like an entirely different game.
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Jul 13, 2017 10:00
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FaustianQ posted:Allowing casting from wraith form would also be good. Ana is another good example - a well timed dart will basically kill a solo flanker, but a flanking team will still kill you and getting your main healer shut out by a defense matrix or bubble shield is really bad.
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Jul 13, 2017 12:44
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:It's an additional barrier of entry for watching and understanding what's going on in the pro version, likewise for actually making the jump from one to the other, it's twice as much balance work, and most importantly, anyone with an ounce of fight in them will instinctively realize that being put in the kiddy pool balance mode is lame as hell. I was envisioning subtle tweaks to numbers or mechanical requirements that really shouldn't make spectating one mode or the other much different. If someone watches pro baseball there isn't really a barrier to spectating a little league game. As far as going from kiddy mode to pro mode goes, you'd only be in kiddy mode by active decision and the differences would be crystal clear. When someone is ready to make the jump to pro mode they'd know exactly what to expect. It'd be like playing in a no-checking hockey league then moving up to a checking league. Maybe it'd be too hard to do something like this with OW, but my thought was more that games with goals of becoming popular eSports should design for this from the get go. If done right concerns with maintaining two separate balances could be minimized (e.g. BW could have a more accessible version without having adjust any balance). To be clear, for OW my worry is we're getting the kiddie version. That once the game matures we're not going to see the long term individual stars develop that drive a sports popularity.
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Jul 13, 2017 13:03
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Splinter posted:I was envisioning subtle tweaks to numbers or mechanical requirements that really shouldn't make spectating one mode or the other much different. If someone watches pro baseball there isn't really a barrier to spectating a little league game. CSGO has this. Casual mode in CSGO has a vastly different ruleset from competitive mode (and there used to even be some minor tweaks between valve competitive and esports modes, most notably timers). Casual mode is 10v10 instead of 5v5, kill rewards are decreased and body armor is automatically given for free. This means that you can jump in and use whatever gun you want whenever. This also means that no one plays casual CSGO. The appeal of esports in some sense is that its so much easier to get a pick up game and follow the same rules that the pros do! Sure, pickup basketball plays by some different rules, but that's because of material limitations, i.e. your local basketball court probably doesn't have a referee hanging out. Why would you play half court pickup basketball when you have a dude in a striped shirt and a full court right there? One of the biggest advantages of eSports is the very small barrier to entry to competitive play.
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Jul 13, 2017 17:40
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The thing about different rulesets for comp and casual modes is it would mean anyone trying to go from casual to comp mode would need to essentially relearn huge chunks of the game. I can't imagine what a casual Brood War would look like that would prepare someone for playing Brood War For Real. And conversely nobody who plays comp Brood War is going to want to play a less challenging version thereof. Also, Blizzard patches out a lot of things that would add emergent gameplay elements for skilled players to exploit, usually fancy movement stuff like Doomfist's slam attack giving him additional verticality or Genji's triple jump.
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Jul 13, 2017 18:16
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Kai Tave posted:Also, Blizzard patches out a lot of things that would add emergent gameplay elements for skilled players to exploit, usually fancy movement stuff like Doomfist's slam attack giving him additional verticality or Genji's triple jump. This always irritated me because why? The only people exploiting this poo poo are fairly high level to begin with, and it adds more depth to the game. Same with animation canceling, which killed quite a few character combos. There explanation as to why sucks poo poo.
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Jul 13, 2017 18:30
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FaustianQ posted:This always irritated me because why? The only people exploiting this poo poo are fairly high level to begin with, and it adds more depth to the game. Same with animation canceling, which killed quite a few character combos. There explanation as to why sucks poo poo. Because it's hard to learn and they don't want people to see a cool thing happen, try to do it themselves, and fail. Think of how many people you've seen outright reject a game because conc jumping or learning combos or micro tricks are too physically difficult or too esoteric and they don't want to put the effort in, but at the same time, they know they'll constantly be confronted by people who can do those things if they play. It's absolutely lame as hell because, in reality, having really cool poo poo that individual players can specialize in and make their calling card is awesome, learning to do things that are really hard is awesome, and developing mastery in general is what makes PvP games fun, and tricks like these allow mastery to branch off and take more varied forms. But it's a kind of fun that takes determination and a certain amount of tolerance for failure to realize, and that's always going to alienate some fraction of the playerbase. Conversely, good ult timing, good positioning and so on are good and fine skills to test, but they're much less binary -- you're doing the same things as any pro, you're just not doing them as well -- and there's never that gap where the guy next to you can do it but you just flat out can't.
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Jul 13, 2017 18:39
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FaustianQ posted:This always irritated me because why? The only people exploiting this poo poo are fairly high level to begin with, and it adds more depth to the game. Same with animation canceling, which killed quite a few character combos. There explanation as to why sucks poo poo. There's honestly probably a lot of overlap between this and their continued trend of buffing mitigation/healing while nerfing damage...anything that stands a chance of ruffling peoples' feathers gets blunted so as not to. People have already been predicting Doomfist causing the sky to fall because of a gif from Reddit of someone crossing half of Eichenwalde with fancy moves, so there you go.
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Jul 13, 2017 18:40
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Kai Tave posted:The thing about different rulesets for comp and casual modes is it would mean anyone trying to go from casual to comp mode would need to essentially relearn huge chunks of the game. I can't imagine what a casual Brood War would look like that would prepare someone for playing Brood War For Real. And conversely nobody who plays comp Brood War is going to want to play a less challenging version thereof. Starcraft is actually maybe the only good example of this mechanic working in this setting. The balance in the SC2 campaign (especially HotS and LotV) is significantly different from the balance in multiplayer. Most apm-sink skills (inject larvae, many spellcaster spells) are set to autocast or removed entirely, and many things like activated hero abilities are optional, and can be replaced with a low-apm alternative. The cooperative online mode is similar, though different heroes have different levels of required micromanagement. These modes are fun and let me play a game without being a korean teenager. Broodwar is practically actively hostile to the player and SC2 is basically a dead esport so take this all with a grain of salt I guess.
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Jul 13, 2017 18:52
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I'm inclined to think there's a correlation between successful esports and games that are actively hostile to the average player.
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Jul 13, 2017 19:14
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Having casual modes that are different from competitive is a great idea! Maybe they could go into a separate section on the menu and they could cycle through new modes occasionally to keep things fresh.
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Jul 13, 2017 19:17
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You don't need to be Brood War-level obtuse to make a good competitive game. Like, I love that Brood War exists, I love the virtuosity that is possible within its framework, but I don't play that poo poo, I'm not 18 years old any more. The key thing is that you really just need to have things that are hard to do, in a way that grows naturally out of the kind of game you're making, and which are commensurately rewarding for how hard they are to do. That's enough to make a good game. To make a good eSport they should also be flashy and make visual sense from the audience's perspective. As long as you have these things it's absolutely a good thing to make them obvious to the player, to do everything in your power to teach them how to get started and give them useful feedback until they get it. The problem is when devs get so fixated on not having anything unintuitive in their games that they stifle really good mechanics in the crib. For example Guilty Gear Xrd has a million complicated subsystems, but every single one of them has an in-game tutorial complete with a series of easier -> harder trials for the player to attempt, checkmarks for each step of the process so you can keep track of where you're going wrong, etc.
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Jul 13, 2017 19:23
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Regarding CS:GO, I don't see how It could be considered satisfying from a "sport" or spectator perspective to watch someone put a pixel on tiny pixel of head sticking around a crate at lightning speed. There is no back and forth. there is no reacting or recovering. There is just one superfast motion like an old west shootout. The rest is crouching around a flat map. I don't mean this as a troll post. I'm just staying I can see why Overwatch wants to take it another direction.
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Jul 13, 2017 19:24
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It isn't that satisfying to watch but it feels amazing to do. Honestly I'm sort of with you, I would rank Counter-Strike's TTK as too low. But there's a massive gulf between that and Overwatch, full of reasonable places to settle -- and there's another large gap between Overwatch and, say, Heroes of Storm for that matter. I just want Overwatch to move a little closer to something like Unreal Tournament.
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Jul 13, 2017 19:26
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headcase posted:Regarding CS:GO, I don't see how It could be considered satisfying from a "sport" or spectator perspective to watch someone put a pixel on tiny pixel of head sticking around a crate at lightning speed. There is no back and forth. there is no reacting or recovering. There is just one superfast motion like an old west shootout. The rest is crouching around a flat map. There's lots of back and forth in CS, just maybe not on the single 1v1 engagement level. The engagements happen quickly, but there is a lot of strategy in the set up and an established meta layer. You get set plays (check out Luminosity's (or whoever their sponsor was, the Brazilian team that is now SK) smoke take on Mirage A circa like... early 2016?). Sometimes you see real personal brilliance (1v5 clutch aces happen). But the tempo of CS:GO leaves time to breath. Each round unfolds with a relatively predictable tempo-- 1. Start of round, defense sets up, early smokes stall the round. Offense probes and begins to set up for a take. Small skirmishes occur. 2. Offense engages. Maybe they have a specific set play in mind or they're capitalizing on a percieved weakness in the enemy defense. This is the first teamfight style action. 3. Defenders rotate, either coming in during the fight or attempting to retake the bombsite. 4. Round ends, there is about 20-30 seconds of downtime for analysis and replays, frequently done from perspective of players that weren't shown during the round. Overwatch sees some of this tempo, but there is no clear delineation and teamfights are frequently very frantic all or nothing affairs that can last quite a while. There's also a lot of reacting and recovering in the metagame elements to CS. The economy is designed to punish losers while still allowing a catch-up mechanic, the loss bonus builds on continuous losses. A good analyst will walk you through this meta. It's also really obvious when a player has a stellar individual moment. Getting 3 or 4 kills in a round is prominently displayed in the UI and is typically pointed out and praised by the commentary. Having background in shooters also allows even unfamiliar players to recognize the inherent skill when KennyS hits 2 sick flickshots in a row.
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Jul 13, 2017 20:13
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I haven't been following Quake Champions at all. Is that something that actually has support behind it, or is it kind of just a game being thrown out there for shits and giggles (and money obviously)? Have they done anything in development to support esports, considering Quake's legacy?
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Jul 13, 2017 20:14
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ToastyPotato posted:I haven't been following Quake Champions at all. Is that something that actually has support behind it, or is it kind of just a game being thrown out there for shits and giggles (and money obviously)? Have they done anything in development to support esports, considering Quake's legacy? They're running a tournament that they won't stop emailing me about. From the closed beta it's about what you would expect-- F2P rear end quake with kinda half-baked hero powers. Also I don't know if they've changed this yet but the Railgun did 100 damage when zoomed but only 80 damage without zoom so gently caress that game.
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Jul 13, 2017 20:53
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