True bro im playing Ow 2 since it came out i never played ow 1 but im already d5-d3 on all roles the amount of boosted and bad players is insane to me. I know im not a pro but i never played fps games in the first place. Ow 2 was my first one.
If a character is completely destroying the experience of gold then there needs to be adjustments, without that there is no one playing and the game just shut down
Every other competitive FPS game balanced around the pro scene and high elo... Why should it be any different for overwatch (which at its core is competitive in nature). Forum criers baffle me 💀 Edit: it doesn't take more than 5 braincells to realise that competitive games are inherently going to be influenced (maybe more so) by high elo, yes not every game caters solely to the top 5%. Which I feel is a very difficult concept for the average overwatch forum crier to understand. In reality no matter how your game is balanced, in the average ranks people play who they want to because they like the character, not because it's optimal or because it's a throw pick. For the people saying "balance for all" please get a grip and realise that isn't ever going to be possible, no game is ever balanced for all. You can give examples but I guarantee you it would lean into either competitive or casual. Trying to cater to all skill levels simultaneously is the reason games become less fun and less dependent on skill expression.
Everything you said here is wrong. Especially when discussing what the core player base of this game is. Other games also do not balance around pros any more than Overwatch does. The competitive scene in this game is the smallest segment of this game fyi
My question is why, if you're a "casual player" do you even care about the balance? If you're just playing "for fun" and not to rank up and get better, then it literally shouldn't matter to you if they balance for high elo or not. After all, you're just playing "for fun" casually, right? You wouldn't even notice. But they aren't actually casual, they're just bad competitors and now the complaint makes sense.
Everytime I bring up the fact that one shots (unless aided by something) do not belong in a game like this I always get made fun of and then they proceed to call me stupid and bad at the game
I like this opinion. Widows and hanzos counterplay are based on the skill of the player if they have good enough aim to kill you before you get to them
An ability based shouldn't have a sniper like Widow* Hanzo is actually solvable and they can change his abilities so that he is less reliant on being a sniper. Widow's whole identity is the one shot sniper. Not saying they shouldn't remove snipers, but I'm saying only Widow is the biggest problem
@@bitmaskedagreed, snipers don't belong in a game like OW. Long range poke, like ashe, is fine though. I think it's just one-shots in general that is the problem.
I disagree, an fps game without mechanical expression is not an fps. Would rather play league if you want all abilities. OW should just have another tank again to solve the issue of a dominant widow
Watching your gameplay, I could only think about how many team fights you lost purely because their team had a juno and your team didn't. Juno ult is such a win button.
IMHO, OW2 SHOULD be balanced around GM Players. The game should probably NOT be balanced around Champion players or pre-made 5v5 teams. I think it's important to distinguish between solo-queueing into GM and playing the game with an amount of teamwork or perfection that is effectively unattainable.
I could see that. There are comps i’d consider unplayable in ranked getting playing in high rank that i could never imagine the amount of teamwork getting there in a non 1/100 ranked game. Brig/zen/ball type comps.
gm and champion is the same thing when it comes to balancing, champion 5 players will go against as low as master 1 players and on average gm5-4 is very common in champion lobbies. And soloq is nothing like coordinated play i scrim a lot personally and play gm ranked they are two different games. Also the metas from gm5 to rank 1 arent different everyone at those levels play the same way and comps its just about small details on who is doing it better. So "balancing perfection" is not a concern, but balancing teamwork can be. First of all balance should be of all types, specifically average play, skilled play, and elite play, coordinated play (bronze-plat, diamond-masters, gm+, coordinated play with premade teammates usually gm+ too) personally i think most average play changes should be done to change up characters who feel like shit to play against in lower elos, and not necessarily whats strong winrate wise. Also important to note that when characters are unhealthy in lower elos its bound to affect higher elos nerfing them and thats ok, as well even if your rank 1 nerfing a character because of coordinated play can affect your gameplay this has nothing to do with skill its just different environments, EVEN if your a gm player in bronze if bastion turret form was hyper meta and 1 shot everything your teammates would not know how to play around it and you would still struggle if you did not have a bastion. There are just cases where things like that should be changed as its not always determined by a single players actions. (widow maker for example in gm rn its just up to your dps to gap them 99% of the times if your on support its hopeless and if your on tank rare chance you can do something sometimes changing stats doesnt fix this though just 1 shot op rework needed never will come) balance changes around very high elo/pro play are not bad at all though, infact they just did one with nerfing orisa she wasnt good in lower elos (as much as low elo players will cry that she is just because pickrate high doesnt mean wr is a lot of them just copy when gm/pros do) At the end of the day the meta that should be looked at the most is towards the highest levels of play, but neglecting any changes in low elo is bad. Its still good to make the game healthy and fun for the average player.
I saw that comment yesterday and thought "Why does everyone always believe that" Even casuals can appreciate a more complex game that allows for more skill expression and the higher elo players like it more aswell lol
@@karyk-f8f which the funny thing ism it wont change anything bc better players will still be better then them and they'll go complain about moira or torb taking too little skill
@@genkidamavideos99 it's the partipation reward mentality, you'll always have losers who wanna feel special, and the world's been catering to these people in alot of places from schools to sports to our video games. I mean hell, they've added a game mechanic that's known as losers queue to alot of games, which is literally just a buffer for bad players, they used to make games easier for you when you lost by making you fall into a rank that's easier for you but now (and you can even check the patch notes, where the devs buffed their losers queue and while it's not called that obviously, they described it to a T) they make it easier by placing you on teams that are statistically calculated to win... The devs way back before they even added sombra had already planned to make a complex game and make it easier over time which every hero after Ana for awhile was created to make the game easier on bad players... this mentality is cooked into the very DNA of overwatch and its why the community has always been at odds with the devs.
@@faelheavymetal because you gotta think about skill expression Inna game like a spectrum, and we wanna find everyone's perfect spot so everyone can easily climb and learn or just sit comfortably where they have constant fun games, and everyone's gonna be at different skill teirs, even with in the same 1% of a rank, you'll have vastly different players. And the more skill expression you add, the more you stretch that spectrum, it literally cannot be a bad thing as long as you don't mess with the match maker to much, because everyone thinks they're gonna constantly get rolled by genjis, but those genjis will only roll you in your games if the match maker keeps trying to keep you in that same rank with the genji using a losers queue system, while also keeping that genji lower by constantly pinning him against players who don't counter him so he easily wins and than against teams that full counter him with easy cheese comps so he loses, and if you go against that genji when you're onna team who doesn't full counter him... well that genjis used to facing full counter teams with heros so easy they have nearly perfect consistency so he's gonna smoke you. But if the game had more skill expression, healthier match making and all those wonderful things that make competitive games so great than that genji would find his place where he's most likely not against you, and you'll find your place where you can have healthy and fun matches with players actually meant to be around your skill level.
Its funny to me when people look at a competitive fps and dont even recognize growth over time as like, the core gameplay formula. If peak gameplay was in gold, thats just not competitive lol thats most likely not even a PVP game
Every singlr competitive game has a different meta depending on the skill level. Its nothing new, yet the overwatch community is sooo frkn weird about it.
The balance in this game is designed to force 50/50. That is why they keep checking the data. If there aren't enough people in gm with a high win rate on Moira, then the devs buff Moira like they have been for the past 3 seasons. The devs want a 50% win rate across the board for all heroes. That is rhe philosophy that needs to change.
To the point about the goats meta Reaper buff issue at gold. This happened as a result of introducing a character that gave free value - BRIG. So instead of introducing balanced characters that required risk for reward and time played to reach the skill ceiling they introduced a character that literal gold players were able to one trick to GM. The perfect case in point for what is wrong when you balance for casual players. No hero should have an ability to negate the skill ceiling of someone with 1000's of hours on a character. You could be a silver player with 1000 hours and still get pissed when suzu negates your high risk big play. I swear at this point trying to get these points across to people is like seeing those parents with the screaming children trying to get the candy at the check out line in the grocery store.
Control your temper, you're speaking reasonable, don't act insecure, it makes no sense to get self-heated or mockery while trying to explain an argument.
Brig is one of the highest skill heroes in the support category. You're speaking out your ass. Mercy and Moira are the heroes designed for bad players.
@@TracerMain-t9b brig was originally created as an easy way to counter dive, on release she was the most braindead easy character to use, even idiots like you could climb to gm with her, even now she is still one of the best supports(if not the best) there is. and yes she is one of the highest skill heroes in the support line but mostly because the bar is set so low for that role, brig is also not hard to play as it doesnt require any mechanical skills but only gamesense, to play her correctly you just need to have a brain,which most support players dont have.
Balancing around GM is optimal but can only work if blizzard starts banning smurfs. Having Genji/Tracer not be countered by cheese in lower ranks only works if everyone is in their actual rank. A master/GM player in a gold lobby is a horrid experience for anyone who is not that masters/GM and I don't blame the golds for going Moira in order to actually play the game.
Ok but a GM Genji/Tracer isn't really gonna lose because a gold player went Moira. Sure it's better than nothing but they're gonna lose regardless of how the game is balanced
@@GREED_EU They will lose regardless but will have a better time on a cheese hero. I remember watching a Necros unranked to GM and watched him rage when a gold Moira beat him in a 1v1 lol. He ended up destroying them every other time but for the gold player that one win probably felt better than getting utterly obliterated on any other pick.
Nah but fr the game shouldnt even be balanced around gold It should be at the lowest diamond maybe Like if you are hardstuck gold-plat after Thousands of hours its a you issue no offence
The people who are afraid of gm balancing are thinking that the bullshit won't be replaced with skill based sets, the assumption is that the team will just buff their damage to the point they're usable in higher ranks.
You should make a video posing reworks for the characters you mentioned need them (widow Moira reaper etc) Just curious because I’m not sure how one would balance out widow, her one shot seems integral to her character.
@@GREED_EU thoughts on adding some of the cs sniper mechanics onto widow? 1. Unscope after every shot, reducing overall fire rate and making follow up more shots more difficult 2. Remove her hip fire crosshair (or hip fire in general, maybe give her a sidearm like mercy) leaving her more susceptible to dives and forcing her to wait for full charged shots. Of course none of these changes will be implemented but I think these would be cool to see as a resident gold player myself.
IMO if the game isn't balanced around how it should be played at the highest level it isn't balanced. That's how you balance for everyone, you make it viable always. If the only reason a hero isn't viable at gold is because someone doesn't play it well doesn't mean it isn't balanced it means the player isn't good.
@@Adventist1997Well winrates and specific stats like damage done and healing done. But I think they do it based on those numbers at high levels. But they don't actually differ much from rank to rank honestly.
@@ender554-b8e Bro, they ignore high ranks by basically looking at the win rate overall. Meaning mostly Bronze and Silver. The ranks where a lot of people don't know how to play very well.
@@Adventist1997 thats not true, they look at win rates in general, that isnt mnostly bronze and silver and they puit a lot more weight on the high end numbers of them. The fun thing is the hero stats don't actually even change much from rank to rank, as each rank is shotging for 50/50 you either get out or you are where you belong, so it really doesn't change much from rank to rank.
Saying “you should balance around the average player bc most players are the average player” is like saying guitar manufacturers should just make guitars with only 5 frets because beginners, terrible players, and people who have never touched a guitar don’t know how to play across the whole guitar.
I think it’d be cool to do a video on how healthy each character is for the game. Not necessarily balancing wise but design wise. So pretty much if this character is meta would people enjoy it or not.
They've been catering to casuals for as long as game exists and the game has always been shit one way or another. The balance should be around the idea that any 2 different heroes should have a 50/50 chance of 1v1'ing each other. That's kinda the way it was upon the realease in 2016. There's no other way. And they should stop changing metas just because it's "exciting and fresh", they need to try to achieve final state, where the only thing that gets balanced is a new hero (for the most part), that's how CS works and that's how it was able to outlive everything that was out there.
I believe that low rank players with that mentality would want soccer played with their hands because they are not that good with their feet so its not fair/fun for them.
Although I would love having a game be balanced for GM players (even if I'm not GM myself), I genuinely dont think its a foolproof idea to keep the game well balanced. Its good to balance for better players but neglecting even the shittier players is one way to lose a decent amount of players or even new player experience. How i see it, all characters should have a relatively decent-high skill ceiling and the skill floor can be honestly be anything. If the characters are performing well in low rank but are shit in high rank, you have to look at the skill ceiling for the balance. The skill ceiling is meant for the best players so you would have to buff/nerf accordingly for higher ranks. If a character is too strong in low rank AND high rank, then you would nerf the skill floor but not touch the skill ceiling, that way, the playerbase has a healthy skill curve from shitty rank players to better players and their skill of said character is incorporated into their rank. TLDR: Balance skill ceilings for higher ranks and skill floors for lower ranks.
I find it crazy that people are still having this conversation.. I’ve been saying this for the longest time across every game. And people still don’t understand why you shouldn’t balance from the bottom up.
Again, I agree with your take, but I would love to hear you have discussions with people on the other side. I don't know of many creators that would disagree with this take though, but it's the same reason I don't really care for Freedo's monologues where he makes unnecessary jabs at 6v6.
Sombra was killed because gold widows cried on tiktok and they wouldn't buy the new dps mythic if they can't freely play widow. Tanks and specifically ram was shafted again.
i am so pissed at the game right now, i was plat for around 3 consecutive seasons, last season i was around mid plat and climbing. had a 56% winrate, lifes good. BOOM reverse slingshot to gold 3, BOOM ranked deflation. now sitting in low gold/ high silver, standing still while killing the enemy team.
Haven't played overwatch in months, first time since 2017. I'll try again for 6v6 but when half the cast is dumpstered what's the point? Once you get up to diamond its the same comp over and over again
Wouldn’t balancing around competitive incentivize people to learn their heroes better and use them to their fullest ability? Instead of picking one up and getting good in about 10 minutes due to the casual nature of the game?
Hmm. I just realized that they made Brig to be a dive counter so a single hero to solo an entire comp. This created another super strong meta comp in goats and blizzard just repeated the mentality of "Make one hero answer this team comp" with reaper into goats but just luckily failed. Imagine how worse it would of been if they buffed reaper to the point he could solo into the goats comp. XD
She was extremely powerful but she should actually be dove because supports were weaker, there was an off tank to threaten her, and duels actually led to kills back then.
Your right the game shouldn't be balance around the gold players. But when you look at things like the hit boxes and character design and philosophy. It's clear since the beginning it was made for them. If you like this game enough to wanna play it competitively I think that's pretty cool. But this game way always easier than most FPS games. Still doesn't mean they should keep making it even easier.
I agree, but with the caveat that not everyone has the capability to achieve masters+. Either lacking the intelligence or mechanics or time to do it. It is because of this that balancing should be focused around t100/pro play but with consideration for all ranks.
Yeah, I think about Suzu very often and how it needs to be changed because the idea of it is good in my opinion, to have a split second to save your teammate from death, but it is too easy to save whoever is in danger because they can just absorb a stupid amount of healing and pretty much cancel out everything put out against them. Maybe even if someone sussed you can’t heal them would fix the problem. Seems like a ridiculous ability to try to balance when it’s by default, insanely unfair.
To answer the question at the begging of this video, I’d it’s balanced at the top, it will be A) Balanced below B) Entices lesser-skilled / newer players to get better C) There might be a different tactic that works better at a lower ELO, but this one is the worst one because it’s hard to get used to a new meta while you’re playing against together enemies And I get that not everyone has the time to perfect their craft, but that is something that always naturally occurs over time whether you realize it or not! EDIT: The first 5 minutes are exactly aligned with my thoughts. Whoops! I guess my comment is a quicker version of the intro… but there’s still plenty of content in the video that I didn’t write in this comment!
They cant really change widow, they have tried everything. Less damage, longer time to ads. They cant really change her sniper fundamentally, the only thing i can think of is removing smg not like it would help much but some people would die close range or vs D.VA or someshit.
3:20 so im not that good at widow & my team was having trouble getting past the second corner on circuit royal, & when i died i noticed all their squishies were just out in the open freecasting & i thought "this is illegal" so i switched to widow & they all went into hiding when i killed literally nobody. My team was able to make it past the corner, take it to the checkpoint all bc of the threat of being 1 shot. Its funny you brought up the value of her mere existence when we couldn't budge them prior to me switching to her
I like current balancing (except 5v5 based gigatanks and not deleting widow from the game) I think low skill/easy value characters hurt low elo players too “whats the point playing the fun complex character i sometimes pop off with when ow1 brig can just stun me and i die or moira can outlive me or bastion turret or mercy/lw pocket makes anything i do worthless because i am unable to skilfully outplay it yet” I like how they seem to look at most characters through a lense of how would a bot feel to go against this character which is why some characters are ass but thats more okay imo.
The trick is, they aren't the same thing: * Tierlist = Order of Optimal Picks, usually at high ELO ....for GM * Balance = Quantity of Worthwhile Picks, for 1x player ....for Diamond
So I don't know if I mentioned this before. But "Skill", "Mechanical Skill", "Skill Expression" is a bit less actionable than it could be, and less obvious why it's connected to "Value". So let me help with that. Translate this to: "Mechanical Skill" = "Mechanical Input Risk" (i.e. HellDivers 2 airstrikes) That changes the framing, a lot. Because now that it's been converted to a form of Risk, then it becomes obvious how that plugs into "Risk vs Reward". And the "Risk" is ELO dependent on how likely and strongly a misplay will be punished. Honestly, I should do a translation guide for "r/COWspeak to GameDesignerSpeak" Oh, and it kinda translates back to Skill through "Mechanical Input Risk" = "Skillcheck Risk"
And then the reason why high ELO keeps getting upset, 1. Popular heroes should have higher pickrates than unpopular heroes 2. The Risk vs Reward feels off 3. There needs to be a "Misplay" in the "Neutral Game" (Often times called the Poke Phase), in order for it to progress to "Advantage State", which then "Plays, and Outplays" And #3, means that there needs to be big "Misplays" for a barely below eSports level of play. And that's not going to happen at a frequent enough basis for a good "Gameplay Tempo", if the if the "Mechanical Input Risk" is too low. Add to that, you just got community favorites (i.e. Genji) and community villains (i.e. Roadhog) So you want to 1. Literally just ask GM players what Tierlist order would be more fun 2. Try to focus on making sure the "Mechanical Input Risk" is paired with some other kind of Risk if the input risk is lower (i.e. Winston)
Game should be balanced for everyone lol. And it could be, that would also be the funnest experience especially because in low ranks meta doesn’t really matter just because ana brig is good, in plat it won’t matter.
I get the Widowmaker analogy, but at the same time, most players can't use her effectively, especially at levels above Masters. Secondly, Widow should be the least of everyone’s worries when every tank is a raid boss and every healer is just a better and easier DPS with self-sustain, favorable hitbox sizes, and zero damage falloff in most cases. Thirdly, Widow is unplayable if your teammates don’t peel for you. I’ve played her enough to know that you can’t solo-carry as Widow when all four of your teammates stop playing the game. You can kill five every fight and still lose if your teammates depend on you to kill five every fight. It’s incredibly frustrating, especially when heroes like Sombra can just farm you off cooldown while your AI healers just watch you die or fail to react at all.
Ok but that is how every hero would work. If your team sucks then it doesn't matter. at least on widow you can 1 tap 4 of the 5 enemy players, unlike a tracer that requires perfect engagement timings, perfect duel fundamentals, aim, correct blink usage and angle control as well as forcing LOS check and such. It is infinitely easier to 1v5 as widow than it is as tracer at their skill ceilings
I slightly disagree that the purpose of a ranked mode is to improve. I think the purpose of a ranked mode is to have the best chance of competitive matches with stakes attached to them. Ranking up one of the bigger stakes, the incentive, but not the whole purpose. That doesn't necessarily upend your argument however. A mode that is there for competitive matches with similarly skilled players can still be balanced around top down balancing. I do find the cases of bullshit characters being problems in low ranks to be a good topic of conversation. Again, doesn't upend your argument, but I think it is an extra consideration. For example Moira - awful in GM but terrorizes gold. This is an example of a character that needs a lower skill floor, needs harder to access skill, not because she's bad in GM, but because she's too good in gold vs more skillful heroes. In other words, balance for top end, but consider the pain points of low rank players and make sure there's not too much abusable bullshit down there to make their lives miserable. For me Mercy is another example. I hate playing around Mercy in plat because plat dps can't hit her and can't coordinate a dive against her so she lives forever and gets infinite value. Mercy may need a buff for the top end, but she needs nerfs to lower her skill floor for the majority of the player base. Hopefully what that ends up being is a more fun and skill expressive hero.
funny thought personally, i don't like "balance" bc it tries to make game static i love the word "rebalance" which makes new updates more complex and include more affort in making the game feel different and appealing to the audience i love role switches (like doom), reworks, new chars, new game modes, new forms of gameplay (like 6v6, 5v5, 3v3, etc), new experiments and map reworks (it would be fun to see permanent juno's rings all over some maps, why not? like they did with gravity on Horizont), i'd love to see some fresh staff like character block on some maps bc it is not lore accurate, i'd like to see new systems with blocks, i'd like to see a system with tank-mdd-fdd-healler-support or smth else but instead i see +0.00000001ms to cast of whatever ability and it makes me feel sad
If the game is conceived on the premise that all the players want to go to the top, why are most of them stagnating in one place!? That's because they are playing it casually (seriously, if you have a full-time job, you can play it in your free days only) and think they will improve at the game just by playing and not by being coached by someone at skill-capped.
Its not balance, its the matchmaking that is the problem. They could make better and more even matches if they wanted to but they are creating loosing/winning matches on purpose for ranking purposes.
I think you're making wrong assumptions from the get-go? There is no disconnect in balance between the casual side of the game and the ranked one. The purpose of the ranked mode is irrelevant, as the balancing decisions mainly serve to better the experience of the casual playerbase, as represented by gold/plat, because making the game appealing to them is a safe business strategy - you cast a wide net and said people are most likely to throw money at blizzard. I agree that the game's balance would drastically improve if it was balanced around high level play, but that isn't a big priority for blizzard. What would likely happen is what happened with tf2, where balance changes came based around the game's niche competetive scene and the playerbase hated most of the changes. The situations aren't exactly comparable of course, seeing as tf2 is way more casual than overwatch, but it would probably be similar to some degree and breaking widowmaker's fingers, which blizzard should rightly do holy shit, would upset a large amount of playerbase that picks her and shoots at bot tier players on the enemy team only to look at her ass in the potg (look at sombra players shitting themselves anytime a change is made to her). The game is already shallowed down to appeal to more players compared to ow1 and it will continue to be shallow because from a business standpoint it's the safer strategy for a live service game. It's as shallow as the assumption that game balance doesn't matter to gold. Those that do try to get better would of course welcome the change, as you've said, but there's is a very strict ecosystem within the playerbase that doesn't, where every hero played mindlessly is about equally as mid and that's what the balance changes with the median of the playerbase in mind try to upkeep. I agree wholeheartedly that the game should be balanced around GM but it's only a good decision from a game standpoint, not a product standpoint. Pretending to not see that and insiting that the game's competetiveness is more important is either naive or ignorant. The game is mainly a product and essentially a glorified storefront at this point.
I spend most of my time in metal ranks or with metal ranked players, they definitely dont know how the game works. I would not have the balance be based on anything other than developer intentions, or the professional's recommendations. Sadly, Blizzard can't figure out their intentions, and have consistently ignored the pros. Hell, even GM players who create content, like this channel, offer so much better insight than a gold player. This is all from a gold player myself, but one who got into the PUG aspect of Overwatch during GOATs, and joined a PUG team soon after.
balancing around the majority has led to supports like bap, moira, kiri, brig etc who all have insane aoe heals/broken abilities and unfun to play against
@@karyk-f8f brig in concept is not a bad character, but her aoe heals are ridiculous. if they reduce the range on her inspire and maybe reduce the heal itself, itll be a lot better for overwatch
@@ianformica7911 i just dont understand how they came to the conclusion of make the counter hero and not , make the dive weaker or the backline stronger
Overwatch doesn't have balance, if you're good the game always gives you weaker teammates to "balance". Let's say both teams have an overall of 10, it would look like 3/1/1/1/4 vs 2/2/2/2/2. It's "balanced" but basically it's a 2v5
The problem with balancing around low elo players is that they cant play the game properly, thats like apex buffing hard to play characters bc players are bad at them. Im not even high rank and ik that would suck, ana, lucio, tracer, genji etc. Characters that have some high skill expression would be barebone and basic, low elo players would want ana to have some type of crazy movement ability, or tracer to have more range and stuff like nerfing moira and sym until there unusable. It doesnt even have to be around gm only, but like atleast master and gm to get a bigger percentage of the player base. Also imagine the gold players being like, widow buff and now she's server admin super plus extreme in master+ lobbies
But I don’t see ranked in the way you play it just for rank up, I believe the majority of non pro gamer will play ranked pretending to get balanced matches compared to qp.
Casual design also can be summed up as counter design alot of the time. People won't like me for this but sombra was designed for players that can't flank or deal with certain abilities, they literally made it a selling point when releasing her that she's gonna counter doom... who wasn't even out yet, but her auto aim hack was added to allow players an option when they can't deal with that mercy, or that Lucio, or that genji, but than sombra caused issues for mercys and lucios, than supports began having issues with flanks (mind you I believe this was sombra not genji/tracer) so they than made Moira as another counter hero for bad players, and because sombra was still auto winning against mercy/Lucio and those mercies and lucios don't wanna swap because they liked their heros, the devs had to than add brig who destroyed the game all Inna attempt to give bad players an answer to what I still believe was sombra 😂 Than they added orisa for rein, bap for ults because these players complained about ults in general which ults insensitived staying on your hero and added depth to swapping, and all this compounds into a counter swapping meta, and 5v5 was just the tipping point where now counter swapping is the name of the game... But if you notice, majority of the most hated heros were designed to counter others heros as solutions to bad players complaints, and another way of putting this would be that they designed heros to ruin others fun, and since these players don't wanna swap to Moira or orisa anyway, they often still complain and than you just create more scenarios of players being mad, like they turned an apple into an onion, an onion of pissed off players where you now got multi layered hate 😂 And this is a direct result of them catering to gold players complaints and Maybe it could have been fine? If they hadn't used adding heros as the catalyst for fixing these issues as it's just created problems they can now only fix by ruining people's heros. Honestly I just think the games cooked, it was cooked the day they added sombra and Moira...
- Damn bro, why this game is so hard to play ? It is literally designed to cater for a people that only spends a lot of time to it. And that didn't change for ages. Why they can not make game where everyone can get at the top by making game more accessible for casual players ? - What game are you talking about ? - Chess Pretty exaggerated, but that's how I see comment at the beginning of the video.
I hate this argument. Balancing the fit the gold majority will kill it. Take for example characters that every one hate moira and LW. Why because of the low skill expression needed to attain results which leads to a very boring game play a very frustrating experience for every one. Balancing the game based on pro scene always leads to a smoother experience because only at pro level a character will be pushed to the maximum level and efficiency which means a very accurate calibration but if why balance based on the casual player we will be given a very boring experience
I think it is important to have easy charcters, I think it is valuable for them to be playable and it shouldn't be unreasonable for them to be functional meta wise. However, there never should be a world where LW should be better Stat wise than Ana. "Difficult" charcters played to 100% or even 85% or better should always out perform lower skill ceiling or skill expression charcters There should never be a world where a charcter does the job of another charcter better than them without it also being their focus (so juno should never be better at providing consistent speed boost than Lucio, especially since she can still heal/burst in additon to providing the speed. And I believe the worst thing they can do is continue to implement "get out of jail free card" type of abilities focused on helping other people rather than the charcter casting the ability. Namely if there is no resource or opportunity cost associated with casting that ability that inhibits or hinders the caster's ability to do their job until that cooldown is up again. Especially if they have a easy execution independent of the number of people it affects. This refers to abilities like suzu, immortality field, life grip. Funny enough I wonder if new abilities like these can exist in this game without being problematic, just exclusively added to the tank line up. The same way ally zarya bubbles, defense matrix, or even new adaptive barrier work. All of which can save allies, but at the cost of effective health, damage output, or potentially mobility/play making. It isn't even a matter or "support is op" but that adding abilities that negate plays made, while also not having, some lose associated with their use, is often unhealthy and promotes stalemates until one if not several ults are committed to a fight.
Should you balance the game around people who do not understand the game and play it wrong or on people who understand it and play it the right way. Most players in lower rank are there because they make positioning mistakes or other mistakes.. Technical skills , make people who still make lots of mistakes just win a bit more, or carry a bit more.. If the game would actualy teach people the game: let them know the mistakes they make, all high plat/diamond players(technical good the game) they all would be GM All gold silver players would be plat and diamond and bronze would be gold. Then they could balance the game around lower ranks. because they would play the game like GM players just with less technical skills.
I disagree with balancing around the average player base. However I also cannot agree with some takes Pros have. Want to balance around average players? Literally the reason why Brig, Moira, and Orisa exist. We’re still doing this right now with Mauga and Kiriko, skill floors are being killed off. Want to balance around Pros? Brig will be nerfed to the ground, Genji will be buffed to high hell, and Bastion would be deleted. I want to balance where the general consensus agree upon. Widow is fundamentally broken, Immortality and Suzu are complete bullshit, Anti-Heal and Stuns are NOT FUN.
I understand your argument here and I generally agree with pretty much everything what comes to OW. But when you first say "Moira would likely get buffed and Mercy giga buffed" and then emphasise something completely opposite by saying Moira would not be as strong makes me question how much you really thought this through. Secondly, those two heroes are absolute terrors in lower ranks because people don't have the skill to take them down. Also most people do not have the ability or time to ever rank up so they will stay at low ranks no matter what. I understand this argument but it is pretty ignorant and oversimplifies this balancing issue massively.
You said you had a 150 iq then you go an use "worstly" and I gotta say, it hurt. All joking aside, do you think there would be a viable way to add modifiers at higher levels to adjust individual characteristics to appease both casual and competitive audiences?
I think it adds a level of complexity that becomes overwhelming. For example, if you are plat and then rank up to diamond, and then say Mercy now only heals for 50 instead of 55, then it becomes extremely jarring moving from rank to rank because you're essentially playing on a completely different balance patch between games.
@@crast4758 I think the same problems apply at the rank border to GM, but also it will incentivise players to smurf ever so slightly lower than GM so that they can play a buffed version of their hero. Also when you factor in player population, you can get games that are Master 3 to Champ 5, And then how would that work? It just seems confusing for little gain
While I generally agree you have to realize the same thing you’re saying applies in inverse. If you balance around gm then the further away from gm you get the worse those changes get. For example widow. Balanced for higher rank she’ll be trash for lower ranks. Sometimes like in this case that’s just better for the game but for some things it won’t be. For example mercy getting mega buffed wouldn’t help lower rank players because they already struggle to deal with mercy as is. This weak state of mercy still performs well winrate wise in lower ranks so buffs for her would push her over the top. Skill check characters become harder skill checks which isn’t what casuals want to play. Also using the comments of an Overwatch RUclips video as an example of casuals is flawed. No casuals are watching ow yt vids. The only ones watching let alone commenting are those who are invested in the game. Balancing around gm players would just make this game dead casually as a gm player. The game will never be balanced and fun for casuals. Rather have a casual experience than a balanced one.
Ok but the heros will not be oppressive which is the issue currently. Think of it this way, if you're in gold, and the game is balanced around GM, then you losing is purely because you're not good enough to win. BUT if you're gold and the game is balanced around gold, then the game is balanced for players who are making constant mistakes and are getting bailed out by terrible hero design and dogshit balance. The only factor in winning or losing should be your skill, not terrible balance giving players free outs because a gold player needs it to be successful, that is anti competitive
But tbf Any character that is the only one who has a one shot hit on 90% of the other playable characters to choose from is immediately a boochit character. The flick glitch that maked it a 100% hit rate was extra broke
Anything "free" should be worked out of the game. By "free" I mean you press a button and get rewarded simply for pressing the button. One shots are free kills, auto aim heroes like Moira are free damage, Kiri and Bap are free invincibility. Every ability and weapon should be designed to where you have to work for the value, not just press a button and get free value.
And free value is worse for low rank players. Think about Bap's immort. High rank players will melt it, low rank players will let it stay up. You get a 5 man grav on Zarya but get no kills because Bapp immorted? You think Gold players like that? Ofc not.
this is the same exact argument controller kids used to spout around and console in fortnite well there are more controller players so yes they should receive a softaim disguised as aim"assist" in a mixed environment tourneys/arena...... yes the games alive but holy shit does it look like a roblox tycoon compared to what it used to be
I like current balancing (except 5v5 gigatanks and not deleting widow from the game and any poke meta ew) I think low skill/easy value characters hurt low elo players too “whats the point playing the fun complex character when that other character has an unbalanced interaction w my character at its skill floor” I like how they seem to look at most characters through a lense of how would a bot feel to go against this character which is why some characters are ass but thats more okay imo. You are wrong cause lower elo players can have a worse experience if some characters have low skill floor things that give disproportionately strong value in lower ranks.
Also the entire of existence of characters like moira and brig is because of them catering to a lower skill audience imagine the entire game designed around that philosophy. it becomes even more miserable for lower skill players ironically!
The problem is that they keep making the eazy hero stronger. For some reason, the balance team dont like players have fun and keep making anti fun heroes.
personally I dont think a game should always be balanced around the highest level of play, and this is very tricky conversation to have in general. Now before I get my head is bitten off, hear me out (Also I used to believe in the same Idea, A top down approach for balancing) . If we look at competitive Sports around the world, overall the core game doesnt change, but rule sets for different divisions do. An example I take (And yes it is rather crude) Is the sport rugby (a sport im familiar with). Fundamentally the sport is the same on all levels, but rulesets change. For example, You are only allowed to wear studded boots at an U14 level and above (for player safety). You also do not play full length fields (about 75% of the original length) until a certain division. You also only play 20 to 35 min a half (division dependent) instead of the full 40 a half. I do think video game can benefit from this like of thinking and balancing, instead of a 1 size fits all approach. And yes It would require more money and resources which development companies arnt willing to spend.
5:45 idk about EU but both GOATs and double shield were in gold when i was in gold. Were they played correctly? Hell no but they still existed because people emulate pro strats as much as they can. This was see much more when i was playing in groups. Also i agree the game should be balanced at the highest level BUT not just based on what streamers say because some of their takes are aweful. P.s. blizzard, please stop nerfing genji
The game should be balanced around Bronze 5 open queue
🔥🔥🔥
now were talking
That’s what it’s balanced around currently
100% true! THE absolute worst players provide the best statistics!!!
Wrong. Plastic 37 Open queue.
No game should ever be balanced around people being unable to play it properly.
If you're gold it's your fault. Tough pill to swallow I know.
True bro im playing Ow 2 since it came out i never played ow 1 but im already d5-d3 on all roles the amount of boosted and bad players is insane to me. I know im not a pro but i never played fps games in the first place. Ow 2 was my first one.
If a character is completely destroying the experience of gold then there needs to be adjustments, without that there is no one playing and the game just shut down
EXCUSE ME SUR I may be bronze by I identify as GM
I feel like they balanced around Bronze.
You can play a game "better" but I don't think there's a proper way to play. The only improper way would be cheating or throwing
Every other competitive FPS game balanced around the pro scene and high elo... Why should it be any different for overwatch (which at its core is competitive in nature). Forum criers baffle me 💀
Edit: it doesn't take more than 5 braincells to realise that competitive games are inherently going to be influenced (maybe more so) by high elo, yes not every game caters solely to the top 5%. Which I feel is a very difficult concept for the average overwatch forum crier to understand.
In reality no matter how your game is balanced, in the average ranks people play who they want to because they like the character, not because it's optimal or because it's a throw pick.
For the people saying "balance for all" please get a grip and realise that isn't ever going to be possible, no game is ever balanced for all. You can give examples but I guarantee you it would lean into either competitive or casual. Trying to cater to all skill levels simultaneously is the reason games become less fun and less dependent on skill expression.
W Miku pfp
Cause other competitive FPS are not balanced only around the pro scene
@@ni9274ikr people saw how that worked out with apex
Everything you said here is wrong. Especially when discussing what the core player base of this game is. Other games also do not balance around pros any more than Overwatch does.
The competitive scene in this game is the smallest segment of this game fyi
Because overwatch is the official e-sport of fetal alcohol syndrome
My question is why, if you're a "casual player" do you even care about the balance? If you're just playing "for fun" and not to rank up and get better, then it literally shouldn't matter to you if they balance for high elo or not. After all, you're just playing "for fun" casually, right? You wouldn't even notice. But they aren't actually casual, they're just bad competitors and now the complaint makes sense.
Everytime I bring up the fact that one shots (unless aided by something) do not belong in a game like this I always get made fun of and then they proceed to call me stupid and bad at the game
Here’s my unpopular opinion: an abilities based FPS shouldn’t have snipers.
I like this opinion. Widows and hanzos counterplay are based on the skill of the player if they have good enough aim to kill you before you get to them
An ability based shouldn't have a sniper like Widow* Hanzo is actually solvable and they can change his abilities so that he is less reliant on being a sniper. Widow's whole identity is the one shot sniper. Not saying they shouldn't remove snipers, but I'm saying only Widow is the biggest problem
@@waterrr6332 Yeah I mean scoped long range instant kills like Widow. Hanzo / Ashe are fine imo (edit: solvable, as you said - might be more apropos)
@@bitmaskedagreed, snipers don't belong in a game like OW. Long range poke, like ashe, is fine though. I think it's just one-shots in general that is the problem.
I disagree, an fps game without mechanical expression is not an fps. Would rather play league if you want all abilities. OW should just have another tank again to solve the issue of a dominant widow
Watching your gameplay, I could only think about how many team fights you lost purely because their team had a juno and your team didn't. Juno ult is such a win button.
IMHO, OW2 SHOULD be balanced around GM Players. The game should probably NOT be balanced around Champion players or pre-made 5v5 teams. I think it's important to distinguish between solo-queueing into GM and playing the game with an amount of teamwork or perfection that is effectively unattainable.
I could see that. There are comps i’d consider unplayable in ranked getting playing in high rank that i could never imagine the amount of teamwork getting there in a non 1/100 ranked game.
Brig/zen/ball type comps.
gm and champion is the same thing when it comes to balancing, champion 5 players will go against as low as master 1 players and on average gm5-4 is very common in champion lobbies. And soloq is nothing like coordinated play i scrim a lot personally and play gm ranked they are two different games. Also the metas from gm5 to rank 1 arent different everyone at those levels play the same way and comps its just about small details on who is doing it better. So "balancing perfection" is not a concern, but balancing teamwork can be.
First of all balance should be of all types, specifically average play, skilled play, and elite play, coordinated play (bronze-plat, diamond-masters, gm+, coordinated play with premade teammates usually gm+ too) personally i think most average play changes should be done to change up characters who feel like shit to play against in lower elos, and not necessarily whats strong winrate wise.
Also important to note that when characters are unhealthy in lower elos its bound to affect higher elos nerfing them and thats ok, as well even if your rank 1 nerfing a character because of coordinated play can affect your gameplay this has nothing to do with skill its just different environments, EVEN if your a gm player in bronze if bastion turret form was hyper meta and 1 shot everything your teammates would not know how to play around it and you would still struggle if you did not have a bastion. There are just cases where things like that should be changed as its not always determined by a single players actions. (widow maker for example in gm rn its just up to your dps to gap them 99% of the times if your on support its hopeless and if your on tank rare chance you can do something sometimes changing stats doesnt fix this though just 1 shot op rework needed never will come)
balance changes around very high elo/pro play are not bad at all though, infact they just did one with nerfing orisa she wasnt good in lower elos (as much as low elo players will cry that she is just because pickrate high doesnt mean wr is a lot of them just copy when gm/pros do)
At the end of the day the meta that should be looked at the most is towards the highest levels of play, but neglecting any changes in low elo is bad. Its still good to make the game healthy and fun for the average player.
I saw that comment yesterday and thought "Why does everyone always believe that"
Even casuals can appreciate a more complex game that allows for more skill expression and the higher elo players like it more aswell lol
In reality, they will not balance around the higher rank because devs themselves are silvers and don't even want to play their own game.
Steve Kaplan (the lead designer of the original game) was saying that the devs were mostly Plat players.
@@artmanromplats are the worst players
jeff kaplan or papa jeff m8 get it right@@artmanrom
Do people forget how dead the game was during brig meta?
for april fools they should get a bunch of golds to balance the game and then put it on the comp queue and see the chaos unfold
Lol I thought that was already the case with team 4 balancing the game in general :p
@@L33730 nah right now they have one of those bingo ball thingies that they spin and pick out ai generated balances
This game makes no sense because if I play normal ill win a game lose one for hours, played drunk af 2 days ago and went up a rank no issue
It's because when you're drunk off your ass you're far less likely to get hit with the ranked anxiety.
I don’t understand why some people think lowering skill expression in a game makes it better such stupid logic lol
i legit just think its copium they think the game should be made for them so they can win more
@@karyk-f8f which the funny thing ism it wont change anything bc better players will still be better then them and they'll go complain about moira or torb taking too little skill
@@genkidamavideos99 it's the partipation reward mentality, you'll always have losers who wanna feel special, and the world's been catering to these people in alot of places from schools to sports to our video games.
I mean hell, they've added a game mechanic that's known as losers queue to alot of games, which is literally just a buffer for bad players, they used to make games easier for you when you lost by making you fall into a rank that's easier for you but now (and you can even check the patch notes, where the devs buffed their losers queue and while it's not called that obviously, they described it to a T) they make it easier by placing you on teams that are statistically calculated to win...
The devs way back before they even added sombra had already planned to make a complex game and make it easier over time which every hero after Ana for awhile was created to make the game easier on bad players... this mentality is cooked into the very DNA of overwatch and its why the community has always been at odds with the devs.
Why do you assume that skill expression to such extreme extents is a good thing to begin with?
@@faelheavymetal because you gotta think about skill expression Inna game like a spectrum, and we wanna find everyone's perfect spot so everyone can easily climb and learn or just sit comfortably where they have constant fun games, and everyone's gonna be at different skill teirs, even with in the same 1% of a rank, you'll have vastly different players.
And the more skill expression you add, the more you stretch that spectrum, it literally cannot be a bad thing as long as you don't mess with the match maker to much, because everyone thinks they're gonna constantly get rolled by genjis, but those genjis will only roll you in your games if the match maker keeps trying to keep you in that same rank with the genji using a losers queue system, while also keeping that genji lower by constantly pinning him against players who don't counter him so he easily wins and than against teams that full counter him with easy cheese comps so he loses, and if you go against that genji when you're onna team who doesn't full counter him... well that genjis used to facing full counter teams with heros so easy they have nearly perfect consistency so he's gonna smoke you.
But if the game had more skill expression, healthier match making and all those wonderful things that make competitive games so great than that genji would find his place where he's most likely not against you, and you'll find your place where you can have healthy and fun matches with players actually meant to be around your skill level.
Casuals are not necessarily special ed kids, only certain characters are
Its funny to me when people look at a competitive fps and dont even recognize growth over time as like, the core gameplay formula. If peak gameplay was in gold, thats just not competitive lol thats most likely not even a PVP game
Every singlr competitive game has a different meta depending on the skill level. Its nothing new, yet the overwatch community is sooo frkn weird about it.
The balance in this game is designed to force 50/50. That is why they keep checking the data. If there aren't enough people in gm with a high win rate on Moira, then the devs buff Moira like they have been for the past 3 seasons. The devs want a 50% win rate across the board for all heroes. That is rhe philosophy that needs to change.
Chess can be enjoyed at all skill levels.
Imagine if we started banning the "4 move checkmate" just because it was effective against beginners.
To the point about the goats meta Reaper buff issue at gold. This happened as a result of introducing a character that gave free value - BRIG. So instead of introducing balanced characters that required risk for reward and time played to reach the skill ceiling they introduced a character that literal gold players were able to one trick to GM. The perfect case in point for what is wrong when you balance for casual players. No hero should have an ability to negate the skill ceiling of someone with 1000's of hours on a character. You could be a silver player with 1000 hours and still get pissed when suzu negates your high risk big play.
I swear at this point trying to get these points across to people is like seeing those parents with the screaming children trying to get the candy at the check out line in the grocery store.
They could rework her to fix her, but they haven't for years, so I doubt they ever will.
Control your temper, you're speaking reasonable, don't act insecure, it makes no sense to get self-heated or mockery while trying to explain an argument.
if we balance around bad players we get characters like brig(who was made for bad players to easily counter dive)
What ? Low skill character tend to be even more problematic in low elo, balancing around low elo means less low skill character
@@ni9274 i dont understand what this means balancing for bad players means less easy characters?
Brig is one of the highest skill heroes in the support category. You're speaking out your ass.
Mercy and Moira are the heroes designed for bad players.
@@TracerMain-t9b brig was originally created as an easy way to counter dive, on release she was the most braindead easy character to use, even idiots like you could climb to gm with her, even now she is still one of the best supports(if not the best) there is. and yes she is one of the highest skill heroes in the support line but mostly because the bar is set so low for that role, brig is also not hard to play as it doesnt require any mechanical skills but only gamesense, to play her correctly you just need to have a brain,which most support players dont have.
@mofumofu9648 Brig is heavy on not just macro but micro too.
Yes brig release was broken, but so was almost every other support or tank
Balancing around GM is optimal but can only work if blizzard starts banning smurfs. Having Genji/Tracer not be countered by cheese in lower ranks only works if everyone is in their actual rank. A master/GM player in a gold lobby is a horrid experience for anyone who is not that masters/GM and I don't blame the golds for going Moira in order to actually play the game.
Ok but a GM Genji/Tracer isn't really gonna lose because a gold player went Moira. Sure it's better than nothing but they're gonna lose regardless of how the game is balanced
"counter" lol can't counterplay a GM player as a gold player
@@GREED_EU They will lose regardless but will have a better time on a cheese hero. I remember watching a Necros unranked to GM and watched him rage when a gold Moira beat him in a 1v1 lol. He ended up destroying them every other time but for the gold player that one win probably felt better than getting utterly obliterated on any other pick.
Nah but fr the game shouldnt even be balanced around gold
It should be at the lowest diamond maybe
Like if you are hardstuck gold-plat after Thousands of hours its a you issue no offence
I have a legit overall 84/% win rate on Tank. Do I need a 100% win rate to rank up???
The people who are afraid of gm balancing are thinking that the bullshit won't be replaced with skill based sets, the assumption is that the team will just buff their damage to the point they're usable in higher ranks.
You should make a video posing reworks for the characters you mentioned need them (widow Moira reaper etc)
Just curious because I’m not sure how one would balance out widow, her one shot seems integral to her character.
IF she keeps the one shot, she needs to be highly punishable and she must give more info of the area she is holding
@@GREED_EU thoughts on adding some of the cs sniper mechanics onto widow?
1. Unscope after every shot, reducing overall fire rate and making follow up more shots more difficult
2. Remove her hip fire crosshair (or hip fire in general, maybe give her a sidearm like mercy) leaving her more susceptible to dives and forcing her to wait for full charged shots.
Of course none of these changes will be implemented but I think these would be cool to see as a resident gold player myself.
I’d say make widow do 235 headshot and then like 40 damage overtime so it’s still kind of a one shot but won’t instantly drop a 250 health target
@@BigPro1123 i feel like a change like this would make her just a direct downgrade to ashe and a change like this makes her ult kinda poopy
@@karyk-f8fwidow also just needs a new ult. It’s hard to balance a hit scan insta kill character to be fun to fight without making them bad.
IMO if the game isn't balanced around how it should be played at the highest level it isn't balanced.
That's how you balance for everyone, you make it viable always. If the only reason a hero isn't viable at gold is because someone doesn't play it well doesn't mean it isn't balanced it means the player isn't good.
They legit constantly say they buff or nerf based on win rates. They never cared about balance
@@Adventist1997Well winrates and specific stats like damage done and healing done. But I think they do it based on those numbers at high levels. But they don't actually differ much from rank to rank honestly.
@@ender554-b8e
Bro, they ignore high ranks by basically looking at the win rate overall. Meaning mostly Bronze and Silver. The ranks where a lot of people don't know how to play very well.
@@Adventist1997 thats not true, they look at win rates in general, that isnt mnostly bronze and silver and they puit a lot more weight on the high end numbers of them. The fun thing is the hero stats don't actually even change much from rank to rank, as each rank is shotging for 50/50 you either get out or you are where you belong, so it really doesn't change much from rank to rank.
@@ender554-b8e
Which rank has the majority of players?
Saying “you should balance around the average player bc most players are the average player” is like saying guitar manufacturers should just make guitars with only 5 frets because beginners, terrible players, and people who have never touched a guitar don’t know how to play across the whole guitar.
I think it’d be cool to do a video on how healthy each character is for the game. Not necessarily balancing wise but design wise. So pretty much if this character is meta would people enjoy it or not.
This is a good idea
They've been catering to casuals for as long as game exists and the game has always been shit one way or another. The balance should be around the idea that any 2 different heroes should have a 50/50 chance of 1v1'ing each other. That's kinda the way it was upon the realease in 2016. There's no other way. And they should stop changing metas just because it's "exciting and fresh", they need to try to achieve final state, where the only thing that gets balanced is a new hero (for the most part), that's how CS works and that's how it was able to outlive everything that was out there.
I believe that low rank players with that mentality would want soccer played with their hands because they are not that good with their feet so its not fair/fun for them.
Although I would love having a game be balanced for GM players (even if I'm not GM myself), I genuinely dont think its a foolproof idea to keep the game well balanced. Its good to balance for better players but neglecting even the shittier players is one way to lose a decent amount of players or even new player experience. How i see it, all characters should have a relatively decent-high skill ceiling and the skill floor can be honestly be anything. If the characters are performing well in low rank but are shit in high rank, you have to look at the skill ceiling for the balance. The skill ceiling is meant for the best players so you would have to buff/nerf accordingly for higher ranks. If a character is too strong in low rank AND high rank, then you would nerf the skill floor but not touch the skill ceiling, that way, the playerbase has a healthy skill curve from shitty rank players to better players and their skill of said character is incorporated into their rank. TLDR: Balance skill ceilings for higher ranks and skill floors for lower ranks.
how do you balance around 10 monkies doing completely random shit? you can't
I find it crazy that people are still having this conversation..
I’ve been saying this for the longest time across every game. And people still don’t understand why you shouldn’t balance from the bottom up.
Again, I agree with your take, but I would love to hear you have discussions with people on the other side. I don't know of many creators that would disagree with this take though, but it's the same reason I don't really care for Freedo's monologues where he makes unnecessary jabs at 6v6.
Sombra was killed because gold widows cried on tiktok and they wouldn't buy the new dps mythic if they can't freely play widow. Tanks and specifically ram was shafted again.
i am so pissed at the game right now, i was plat for around 3 consecutive seasons, last season i was around mid plat and climbing. had a 56% winrate, lifes good. BOOM reverse slingshot to gold 3, BOOM ranked deflation. now sitting in low gold/ high silver, standing still while killing the enemy team.
if you could give gold players a good experience, do it. however, dumbing everything down sacrifices everyone's experience.
Widowmaker is the fakest skill based character I’ve ever seen
Tbh just the concept of competitive game justifies for me why it should be balanced around the best players
I fully agree. Design the game for casual player, so the game is fun, and balance for competitive players, so the game is dynamic and fair.
Haven't played overwatch in months, first time since 2017. I'll try again for 6v6 but when half the cast is dumpstered what's the point? Once you get up to diamond its the same comp over and over again
Wouldn’t balancing around competitive incentivize people to learn their heroes better and use them to their fullest ability? Instead of picking one up and getting good in about 10 minutes due to the casual nature of the game?
it really doesnt matter , player base shrinked so much only bronze and gm players left , MM now is really one sided usually
Hmm. I just realized that they made Brig to be a dive counter so a single hero to solo an entire comp. This created another super strong meta comp in goats and blizzard just repeated the mentality of "Make one hero answer this team comp" with reaper into goats but just luckily failed. Imagine how worse it would of been if they buffed reaper to the point he could solo into the goats comp. XD
was widow as much of a menace back in 6v6? i assumed her current state was just on of the many symptoms of losing a second tank
She was extremely powerful but she should actually be dove because supports were weaker, there was an off tank to threaten her, and duels actually led to kills back then.
overwatch ben shapiro
Don't insult the poster like that
@@crabdoc
It was a compliment because he used logic to destriy bad arguments.
@@Adventist1997Ben Shapiro memes aside is a fucking racist and I wouldn't compare someone to him ever even if I heavily disagree
The cuntsta flashbacks, oh god
The custa flashback bro good lord
If the game was balanced around gold, ball and doom would kick ass and be unstoppable
I sit in high diamond to low masters on like 5 accounts working in healthcare lol
Your right the game shouldn't be balance around the gold players. But when you look at things like the hit boxes and character design and philosophy. It's clear since the beginning it was made for them. If you like this game enough to wanna play it competitively I think that's pretty cool. But this game way always easier than most FPS games. Still doesn't mean they should keep making it even easier.
I agree, but with the caveat that not everyone has the capability to achieve masters+. Either lacking the intelligence or mechanics or time to do it. It is because of this that balancing should be focused around t100/pro play but with consideration for all ranks.
Yeah, I think about Suzu very often and how it needs to be changed because the idea of it is good in my opinion, to have a split second to save your teammate from death, but it is too easy to save whoever is in danger because they can just absorb a stupid amount of healing and pretty much cancel out everything put out against them. Maybe even if someone sussed you can’t heal them would fix the problem. Seems like a ridiculous ability to try to balance when it’s by default, insanely unfair.
I’m also a gold player💀
To answer the question at the begging of this video, I’d it’s balanced at the top, it will be
A) Balanced below
B) Entices lesser-skilled / newer players to get better
C) There might be a different tactic that works better at a lower ELO, but this one is the worst one because it’s hard to get used to a new meta while you’re playing against together enemies
And I get that not everyone has the time to perfect their craft, but that is something that always naturally occurs over time whether you realize it or not!
EDIT: The first 5 minutes are exactly aligned with my thoughts. Whoops! I guess my comment is a quicker version of the intro… but there’s still plenty of content in the video that I didn’t write in this comment!
They cant really change widow, they have tried everything. Less damage, longer time to ads. They cant really change her sniper fundamentally, the only thing i can think of is removing smg not like it would help much but some people would die close range or vs D.VA or someshit.
Overwatch 2 is balanced around the Shop, not just low skilled casuals
3:20 so im not that good at widow & my team was having trouble getting past the second corner on circuit royal, & when i died i noticed all their squishies were just out in the open freecasting & i thought "this is illegal" so i switched to widow & they all went into hiding when i killed literally nobody. My team was able to make it past the corner, take it to the checkpoint all bc of the threat of being 1 shot. Its funny you brought up the value of her mere existence when we couldn't budge them prior to me switching to her
I like current balancing (except 5v5 based gigatanks and not deleting widow from the game)
I think low skill/easy value characters hurt low elo players too “whats the point playing the fun complex character i sometimes pop off with when ow1 brig can just stun me and i die or moira can outlive me or bastion turret or mercy/lw pocket makes anything i do worthless because i am unable to skilfully outplay it yet”
I like how they seem to look at most characters through a lense of how would a bot feel to go against this character which is why some characters are ass but thats more okay imo.
The trick is, they aren't the same thing:
* Tierlist = Order of Optimal Picks, usually at high ELO ....for GM
* Balance = Quantity of Worthwhile Picks, for 1x player ....for Diamond
So I don't know if I mentioned this before.
But "Skill", "Mechanical Skill", "Skill Expression" is a bit less actionable than it could be, and less obvious why it's connected to "Value".
So let me help with that.
Translate this to:
"Mechanical Skill" =
"Mechanical Input Risk" (i.e. HellDivers 2 airstrikes)
That changes the framing, a lot.
Because now that it's been converted to a form of Risk, then it becomes obvious how that plugs into "Risk vs Reward".
And the "Risk" is ELO dependent on how likely and strongly a misplay will be punished.
Honestly, I should do a translation guide for "r/COWspeak to GameDesignerSpeak"
Oh, and it kinda translates back to Skill through
"Mechanical Input Risk" = "Skillcheck Risk"
And then the reason why high ELO keeps getting upset,
1. Popular heroes should have higher pickrates than unpopular heroes
2. The Risk vs Reward feels off
3. There needs to be a "Misplay" in the "Neutral Game" (Often times called the Poke Phase), in order for it to progress to "Advantage State", which then "Plays, and Outplays"
And #3, means that there needs to be big "Misplays" for a barely below eSports level of play. And that's not going to happen at a frequent enough basis for a good "Gameplay Tempo", if the if the "Mechanical Input Risk" is too low.
Add to that, you just got community favorites (i.e. Genji) and community villains (i.e. Roadhog)
So you want to
1. Literally just ask GM players what Tierlist order would be more fun
2. Try to focus on making sure the "Mechanical Input Risk" is paired with some other kind of Risk if the input risk is lower (i.e. Winston)
Game should be balanced for everyone lol. And it could be, that would also be the funnest experience especially because in low ranks meta doesn’t really matter just because ana brig is good, in plat it won’t matter.
That comment at the start makes no logical sense 😭 thank you for making this video to explain why 🙏🏼
I get the Widowmaker analogy, but at the same time, most players can't use her effectively, especially at levels above Masters. Secondly, Widow should be the least of everyone’s worries when every tank is a raid boss and every healer is just a better and easier DPS with self-sustain, favorable hitbox sizes, and zero damage falloff in most cases. Thirdly, Widow is unplayable if your teammates don’t peel for you. I’ve played her enough to know that you can’t solo-carry as Widow when all four of your teammates stop playing the game. You can kill five every fight and still lose if your teammates depend on you to kill five every fight. It’s incredibly frustrating, especially when heroes like Sombra can just farm you off cooldown while your AI healers just watch you die or fail to react at all.
Ok but that is how every hero would work. If your team sucks then it doesn't matter. at least on widow you can 1 tap 4 of the 5 enemy players, unlike a tracer that requires perfect engagement timings, perfect duel fundamentals, aim, correct blink usage and angle control as well as forcing LOS check and such. It is infinitely easier to 1v5 as widow than it is as tracer at their skill ceilings
@@GREED_EU Fair point. I just think there are bigger issues in the game than Widow.
I slightly disagree that the purpose of a ranked mode is to improve. I think the purpose of a ranked mode is to have the best chance of competitive matches with stakes attached to them. Ranking up one of the bigger stakes, the incentive, but not the whole purpose.
That doesn't necessarily upend your argument however. A mode that is there for competitive matches with similarly skilled players can still be balanced around top down balancing.
I do find the cases of bullshit characters being problems in low ranks to be a good topic of conversation. Again, doesn't upend your argument, but I think it is an extra consideration. For example Moira - awful in GM but terrorizes gold. This is an example of a character that needs a lower skill floor, needs harder to access skill, not because she's bad in GM, but because she's too good in gold vs more skillful heroes. In other words, balance for top end, but consider the pain points of low rank players and make sure there's not too much abusable bullshit down there to make their lives miserable.
For me Mercy is another example. I hate playing around Mercy in plat because plat dps can't hit her and can't coordinate a dive against her so she lives forever and gets infinite value. Mercy may need a buff for the top end, but she needs nerfs to lower her skill floor for the majority of the player base. Hopefully what that ends up being is a more fun and skill expressive hero.
my m4 support friend just had a 23min queue
i was rly sad when i saw kiri "buff" with 60 dmg bodyshot and decrease of attack speed
this game rly tries to be casual-friendly
funny thought
personally, i don't like "balance" bc it tries to make game static
i love the word "rebalance" which makes new updates more complex and include more affort in making the game feel different and appealing to the audience
i love role switches (like doom), reworks, new chars, new game modes, new forms of gameplay (like 6v6, 5v5, 3v3, etc), new experiments and map reworks (it would be fun to see permanent juno's rings all over some maps, why not? like they did with gravity on Horizont), i'd love to see some fresh staff like character block on some maps bc it is not lore accurate, i'd like to see new systems with blocks, i'd like to see a system with tank-mdd-fdd-healler-support or smth else
but instead i see +0.00000001ms to cast of whatever ability and it makes me feel sad
If the game is conceived on the premise that all the players want to go to the top, why are most of them stagnating in one place!? That's because they are playing it casually (seriously, if you have a full-time job, you can play it in your free days only) and think they will improve at the game just by playing and not by being coached by someone at skill-capped.
If you stayed the same skill level you would derank over time, not stay the same.
Compelling argument but how will this sell more kiriko skins?
my response for that comment: and there are people who have 10k hours and are still gold
Its not balance, its the matchmaking that is the problem. They could make better and more even matches if they wanted to but they are creating loosing/winning matches on purpose for ranking purposes.
I think if they just nerf Genji we’ll be fine.
I think you're making wrong assumptions from the get-go? There is no disconnect in balance between the casual side of the game and the ranked one. The purpose of the ranked mode is irrelevant, as the balancing decisions mainly serve to better the experience of the casual playerbase, as represented by gold/plat, because making the game appealing to them is a safe business strategy - you cast a wide net and said people are most likely to throw money at blizzard. I agree that the game's balance would drastically improve if it was balanced around high level play, but that isn't a big priority for blizzard. What would likely happen is what happened with tf2, where balance changes came based around the game's niche competetive scene and the playerbase hated most of the changes. The situations aren't exactly comparable of course, seeing as tf2 is way more casual than overwatch, but it would probably be similar to some degree and breaking widowmaker's fingers, which blizzard should rightly do holy shit, would upset a large amount of playerbase that picks her and shoots at bot tier players on the enemy team only to look at her ass in the potg (look at sombra players shitting themselves anytime a change is made to her). The game is already shallowed down to appeal to more players compared to ow1 and it will continue to be shallow because from a business standpoint it's the safer strategy for a live service game. It's as shallow as the assumption that game balance doesn't matter to gold. Those that do try to get better would of course welcome the change, as you've said, but there's is a very strict ecosystem within the playerbase that doesn't, where every hero played mindlessly is about equally as mid and that's what the balance changes with the median of the playerbase in mind try to upkeep. I agree wholeheartedly that the game should be balanced around GM but it's only a good decision from a game standpoint, not a product standpoint. Pretending to not see that and insiting that the game's competetiveness is more important is either naive or ignorant. The game is mainly a product and essentially a glorified storefront at this point.
I spend most of my time in metal ranks or with metal ranked players, they definitely dont know how the game works. I would not have the balance be based on anything other than developer intentions, or the professional's recommendations.
Sadly, Blizzard can't figure out their intentions, and have consistently ignored the pros. Hell, even GM players who create content, like this channel, offer so much better insight than a gold player. This is all from a gold player myself, but one who got into the PUG aspect of Overwatch during GOATs, and joined a PUG team soon after.
balancing around the majority has led to supports like bap, moira, kiri, brig etc who all have insane aoe heals/broken abilities and unfun to play against
you dont like playing against mini rein and a character thats literally invincible?
@@karyk-f8f brig in concept is not a bad character, but her aoe heals are ridiculous. if they reduce the range on her inspire and maybe reduce the heal itself, itll be a lot better for overwatch
@@ianformica7911 i just dont understand how they came to the conclusion of make the counter hero and not , make the dive weaker or the backline stronger
There are things way more broken than Widowmaker in this game. Agree with pretty much everything else you say.
Overwatch doesn't have balance, if you're good the game always gives you weaker teammates to "balance". Let's say both teams have an overall of 10, it would look like 3/1/1/1/4 vs 2/2/2/2/2. It's "balanced" but basically it's a 2v5
The problem with balancing around low elo players is that they cant play the game properly, thats like apex buffing hard to play characters bc players are bad at them. Im not even high rank and ik that would suck, ana, lucio, tracer, genji etc. Characters that have some high skill expression would be barebone and basic, low elo players would want ana to have some type of crazy movement ability, or tracer to have more range and stuff like nerfing moira and sym until there unusable.
It doesnt even have to be around gm only, but like atleast master and gm to get a bigger percentage of the player base. Also imagine the gold players being like, widow buff and now she's server admin super plus extreme in master+ lobbies
2 in a 24 hour period? thats a buy one get one free deal right there!
The game needs to balanced around the bottom 500
But I don’t see ranked in the way you play it just for rank up, I believe the majority of non pro gamer will play ranked pretending to get balanced matches compared to qp.
if kiri didn't have a do it all kit she wouldn't sell skins ez
Casual design also can be summed up as counter design alot of the time.
People won't like me for this but sombra was designed for players that can't flank or deal with certain abilities, they literally made it a selling point when releasing her that she's gonna counter doom... who wasn't even out yet, but her auto aim hack was added to allow players an option when they can't deal with that mercy, or that Lucio, or that genji, but than sombra caused issues for mercys and lucios, than supports began having issues with flanks (mind you I believe this was sombra not genji/tracer) so they than made Moira as another counter hero for bad players, and because sombra was still auto winning against mercy/Lucio and those mercies and lucios don't wanna swap because they liked their heros, the devs had to than add brig who destroyed the game all Inna attempt to give bad players an answer to what I still believe was sombra 😂
Than they added orisa for rein, bap for ults because these players complained about ults in general which ults insensitived staying on your hero and added depth to swapping, and all this compounds into a counter swapping meta, and 5v5 was just the tipping point where now counter swapping is the name of the game...
But if you notice, majority of the most hated heros were designed to counter others heros as solutions to bad players complaints, and another way of putting this would be that they designed heros to ruin others fun, and since these players don't wanna swap to Moira or orisa anyway, they often still complain and than you just create more scenarios of players being mad, like they turned an apple into an onion, an onion of pissed off players where you now got multi layered hate 😂
And this is a direct result of them catering to gold players complaints and Maybe it could have been fine? If they hadn't used adding heros as the catalyst for fixing these issues as it's just created problems they can now only fix by ruining people's heros.
Honestly I just think the games cooked, it was cooked the day they added sombra and Moira...
- Damn bro, why this game is so hard to play ? It is literally designed to cater for a people that only spends a lot of time to it. And that didn't change for ages. Why they can not make game where everyone can get at the top by making game more accessible for casual players ?
- What game are you talking about ?
- Chess
Pretty exaggerated, but that's how I see comment at the beginning of the video.
I hate this argument. Balancing the fit the gold majority will kill it. Take for example characters that every one hate moira and LW. Why because of the low skill expression needed to attain results which leads to a very boring game play a very frustrating experience for every one.
Balancing the game based on pro scene always leads to a smoother experience because only at pro level a character will be pushed to the maximum level and efficiency which means a very accurate calibration but if why balance based on the casual player we will be given a very boring experience
I think it is important to have easy charcters, I think it is valuable for them to be playable and it shouldn't be unreasonable for them to be functional meta wise.
However, there never should be a world where LW should be better Stat wise than Ana. "Difficult" charcters played to 100% or even 85% or better should always out perform lower skill ceiling or skill expression charcters
There should never be a world where a charcter does the job of another charcter better than them without it also being their focus (so juno should never be better at providing consistent speed boost than Lucio, especially since she can still heal/burst in additon to providing the speed.
And I believe the worst thing they can do is continue to implement "get out of jail free card" type of abilities focused on helping other people rather than the charcter casting the ability. Namely if there is no resource or opportunity cost associated with casting that ability that inhibits or hinders the caster's ability to do their job until that cooldown is up again. Especially if they have a easy execution independent of the number of people it affects.
This refers to abilities like suzu, immortality field, life grip.
Funny enough I wonder if new abilities like these can exist in this game without being problematic, just exclusively added to the tank line up. The same way ally zarya bubbles, defense matrix, or even new adaptive barrier work. All of which can save allies, but at the cost of effective health, damage output, or potentially mobility/play making.
It isn't even a matter or "support is op" but that adding abilities that negate plays made, while also not having, some lose associated with their use, is often unhealthy and promotes stalemates until one if not several ults are committed to a fight.
Should you balance the game around people who do not understand the game and play it wrong or on people who understand it and play it the right way.
Most players in lower rank are there because they make positioning mistakes or other mistakes..
Technical skills , make people who still make lots of mistakes just win a bit more, or carry a bit more..
If the game would actualy teach people the game: let them know the mistakes they make, all high plat/diamond players(technical good the game) they all would be GM
All gold silver players would be plat and diamond and bronze would be gold.
Then they could balance the game around lower ranks. because they would play the game like GM players just with less technical skills.
Thank you for your content Greed
I disagree with balancing around the average player base. However I also cannot agree with some takes Pros have.
Want to balance around average players? Literally the reason why Brig, Moira, and Orisa exist. We’re still doing this right now with Mauga and Kiriko, skill floors are being killed off.
Want to balance around Pros? Brig will be nerfed to the ground, Genji will be buffed to high hell, and Bastion would be deleted.
I want to balance where the general consensus agree upon. Widow is fundamentally broken, Immortality and Suzu are complete bullshit, Anti-Heal and Stuns are NOT FUN.
I understand your argument here and I generally agree with pretty much everything what comes to OW.
But when you first say "Moira would likely get buffed and Mercy giga buffed" and then emphasise something completely opposite by saying Moira would not be as strong makes me question how much you really thought this through.
Secondly, those two heroes are absolute terrors in lower ranks because people don't have the skill to take them down. Also most people do not have the ability or time to ever rank up so they will stay at low ranks no matter what.
I understand this argument but it is pretty ignorant and oversimplifies this balancing issue massively.
Moira's character design is terrible. She would be buffed via rework so she had more options to express her skill, similarly to Mercy.
@GREED_EU That would be the ideal situation. And we could throw Orisa to that mix too.
You said you had a 150 iq then you go an use "worstly" and I gotta say, it hurt. All joking aside, do you think there would be a viable way to add modifiers at higher levels to adjust individual characteristics to appease both casual and competitive audiences?
I think it adds a level of complexity that becomes overwhelming. For example, if you are plat and then rank up to diamond, and then say Mercy now only heals for 50 instead of 55, then it becomes extremely jarring moving from rank to rank because you're essentially playing on a completely different balance patch between games.
@@GREED_EU I'm sorry I should have been more specific. I meant at GM and higher.
@@crast4758 I think the same problems apply at the rank border to GM, but also it will incentivise players to smurf ever so slightly lower than GM so that they can play a buffed version of their hero. Also when you factor in player population, you can get games that are Master 3 to Champ 5, And then how would that work?
It just seems confusing for little gain
While I generally agree you have to realize the same thing you’re saying applies in inverse. If you balance around gm then the further away from gm you get the worse those changes get. For example widow. Balanced for higher rank she’ll be trash for lower ranks. Sometimes like in this case that’s just better for the game but for some things it won’t be. For example mercy getting mega buffed wouldn’t help lower rank players because they already struggle to deal with mercy as is. This weak state of mercy still performs well winrate wise in lower ranks so buffs for her would push her over the top. Skill check characters become harder skill checks which isn’t what casuals want to play. Also using the comments of an Overwatch RUclips video as an example of casuals is flawed. No casuals are watching ow yt vids. The only ones watching let alone commenting are those who are invested in the game. Balancing around gm players would just make this game dead casually as a gm player. The game will never be balanced and fun for casuals. Rather have a casual experience than a balanced one.
Ok but the heros will not be oppressive which is the issue currently. Think of it this way, if you're in gold, and the game is balanced around GM, then you losing is purely because you're not good enough to win. BUT if you're gold and the game is balanced around gold, then the game is balanced for players who are making constant mistakes and are getting bailed out by terrible hero design and dogshit balance. The only factor in winning or losing should be your skill, not terrible balance giving players free outs because a gold player needs it to be successful, that is anti competitive
But tbf Any character that is the only one who has a one shot hit on 90% of the other playable characters to choose from is immediately a boochit character. The flick glitch that maked it a 100% hit rate was extra broke
Anything "free" should be worked out of the game. By "free" I mean you press a button and get rewarded simply for pressing the button. One shots are free kills, auto aim heroes like Moira are free damage, Kiri and Bap are free invincibility. Every ability and weapon should be designed to where you have to work for the value, not just press a button and get free value.
And free value is worse for low rank players. Think about Bap's immort. High rank players will melt it, low rank players will let it stay up. You get a 5 man grav on Zarya but get no kills because Bapp immorted? You think Gold players like that? Ofc not.
this is the same exact argument controller kids used to spout around and console in fortnite well there are more controller players so yes they should receive a softaim disguised as aim"assist" in a mixed environment tourneys/arena...... yes the games alive but holy shit does it look like a roblox tycoon compared to what it used to be
I like current balancing (except 5v5 gigatanks and not deleting widow from the game and any poke meta ew)
I think low skill/easy value characters hurt low elo players too “whats the point playing the fun complex character when that other character has an unbalanced interaction w my character at its skill floor”
I like how they seem to look at most characters through a lense of how would a bot feel to go against this character which is why some characters are ass but thats more okay imo.
You are wrong cause lower elo players can have a worse experience if some characters have low skill floor things that give disproportionately strong value in lower ranks.
i watch to the very end for the smooch
always worth
so true if u think moira is brainless now wait until they balance her around lower elo 😂
Also the entire of existence of characters like moira and brig is because of them catering to a lower skill audience imagine the entire game designed around that philosophy. it becomes even more miserable for lower skill players ironically!
The problem is that they keep making the eazy hero stronger.
For some reason, the balance team dont like players have fun and keep making anti fun heroes.
personally I dont think a game should always be balanced around the highest level of play, and this is very tricky conversation to have in general. Now before I get my head is bitten off, hear me out (Also I used to believe in the same Idea, A top down approach for balancing) . If we look at competitive Sports around the world, overall the core game doesnt change, but rule sets for different divisions do. An example I take (And yes it is rather crude) Is the sport rugby (a sport im familiar with). Fundamentally the sport is the same on all levels, but rulesets change. For example, You are only allowed to wear studded boots at an U14 level and above (for player safety). You also do not play full length fields (about 75% of the original length) until a certain division. You also only play 20 to 35 min a half (division dependent) instead of the full 40 a half. I do think video game can benefit from this like of thinking and balancing, instead of a 1 size fits all approach. And yes It would require more money and resources which development companies arnt willing to spend.
How in the world did you not pin the sigma at like around 3:40?
Skill issue
@@GREED_EU 😂😂😂😂😂😂
5:45 idk about EU but both GOATs and double shield were in gold when i was in gold. Were they played correctly? Hell no but they still existed because people emulate pro strats as much as they can. This was see much more when i was playing in groups.
Also i agree the game should be balanced at the highest level BUT not just based on what streamers say because some of their takes are aweful.
P.s. blizzard, please stop nerfing genji