Local developer Jeff Kaplam fails to understand his audience. Stunned by results - Sensationalist Headlines

TF2 also has loadouts that can alter the role of the character significantly. I think most mobas have some system such as that?

TF2 had both more and fewer hard counters. Overwatch has a frustrating daisychain of everybody making someone else's game more annoying. TF2 has much more direct counters, but they're also easier to play around.

I seems odd to me, in terms of immersion, to have to drop the guise of your avatar to fulfill a role. If your character is faceless, it makes the assumption that you simply chose to pick up different kit to aid the team, but in Overwatch, you have to completely change your image. If I start as a hulking paladin, I shouldn't be expected to end the match as someone completely different. But then, here we are. The game's gameplay and narrative is completely disconnected from head to toe.

Do you try a different loadout when you die in real life?

Why are they surprised by this? You give characters different abilities and skill-sets and are then amazed that people would rather play a game as that character? Plus the charging Ultimates that you'll have a hard time using once per life and no-shit people main and one-trick characters.

You made a colourful shooter with many characters with varying but paper thin personality each with their own playstyle shiny unique skins Jeff, the last thing you should expect people to do is not pick a favourite out of the bunch And even then the game itself discourages you to actually swap heroes so i dont know what he expected to happen

Subconsciously, death in game aren't taken literally. If death is the end, but their participation voluntarily resumes, then 'death' isn't really it, but something else. I think them as setbacks. For a game to express death, when the character die, they shouldn't return like jesus.

Right so instead of assuming Reinhardt tapped out and Tracer came in to cover for him him, you instead assume GayWeedDad69, Reinhardt's real name, transformed into a skinny British girl.?

I wish more people would adopt this mindset, because it detracts from the game world thus players would be more comfortable switching. But instead what happened is that, in a selfish perspective, I am Jack Morrison, and I intend to finish this fight I participated in, as Soldier 76, from start to finish. If my character is nameless, then I'm simply another foot soldier, a reinforcement, then I would have less attachment to my assumed personality.

Surprise! When you make a game that has a bunch of characters with wildly different playstyles, people are going to gravitate towards the character with the playstyle they enjoy most. They're going to stick to that character. because that character makes them enjoy the game. Telling people that they should switch characters all the time to fit the situation is like ordering someone to take one for the team and wear a horsecock shaped anal plug for a few hours and then being shocked when they tell you to dive headfirst into a woodchipper. TF2 got it right. There is no "ideal composition". You can play eight engineers if you want and you can make it work. And because there's a lot more people you don't feel like everyone's sense of fun is balancing on the tip of your dick I wish we could go back to the times where we could play games, lose and still have fun, instead of the constant sweaty hands everything matters if you lose I'm going to confront you with sad music being played over a screen of depressing numbers experience.

"...he said he expected that players would switch heroes more frequently..." Sounds like they failed at designing the game they wanted in the first place.

i feel like part of the reason this is happening is because the characters are portrayed to be so extravagant tf2 made it a lot easier to switch characters on the fly because they're not as obnoxious or out there, they're a perfect mix between subtle enough to not stand out too much, but interesting enough to not be boring

Jeff Kaplam is the kind of guy that had no problem as a kid playing with Lego, Mega Blocks, Best-lock and Tyco all together. He's the evolution of that kid that didn't care what colour the bricks were, he just put all of them together to make one abomination of a house.

You dislike the concept of training on set of characters instead of trying to play every single one of them? Uh, well colors me surprised. To be effectively competing, you don't need to understand a wide range of characters/classes: OTP are not unheard of in DotA and League of Legends and we've had multiple OTP reach rank 1 in no time (Right now, the current rank 1 EUW is a Ivern OTP, Ivern being a support-jungler) and it is not such a big deal (only when the guy is a dick and refuse to have a back-up character to play). You are at best overexaggerating how bad "maining" is and how bad "One tricking" is. You want to know why people one-trick and main? Because they like the characters. They like the kit. It's NOT FUN to be FORCED to switch out of your FAVORITE CHARACTERS to play a characters you may not even like, and that happens a LOT. "Oh gee, somebody picked Reaper in the enemy team, now I cannot play Winston AT ALL because if I meet Reaper it is an instant death". The idea of "counters" in Overwatch is possibly one of the worst, the most badly integrated I've seen and I've played quite a lot of MOBA and I played Paladins & Smite, because once your counters is picked there is no reason to keep playing your characters. Another reason why people may one-trick and main is simple: Proving to themselves that they're good players and that even with unfavorables characters they can climb. This is the next half of the OTP playerbase, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that even thought the other players may get harder game. It is better to focus on a set of characters than trying to play everybody because then you do not masters any of them you merely have a basic understanding of each characters. But I do not think it apply to Overwatch because the vast majority of the Overwatch are all shallow, with any possible skill siphoned out of their kit, not a lot of mechanic differentiating a good player from a bad players beyond.. aiming. But what is there to say with such generous hitbox for most characters projectiles, or hitscan weapon? And then again, you guy forget that in a MOBA you cannot switch characters at all, so why do the comparison even come? This is not an issue in MOBA, because well, the item shop allow you to play around your counters. And the clever game that successfully saw this is.. Paladins. Paladins has an item shop and a card system that allow you to play a characters how you want whenever you want and it make for a more healthy meta (burst meta currently). Overwatch has none of those mechanic. It has no variable other than the characters kit themselves to balance and it makes balancing a very difficult thing. But then again, not everyone can be Icefrog (DotA 2 team leader working on DotA since 2005 when it was still a mod and possibly the best game balancer in the world as DotA 2 is reputed for its incredible balance and hero diversity in the meta each international and tournament) so I cannot blame Blizzard to be so incompetent on their first attempt at an hero shooter. Just a curiosity, I'd love to know people's past with that kind of game. Do anyone here have any experience with MOBA? Because trust me, that really help in understanding the state of Overwatch in the grand scheme. I can't believe I'm praising Riot Game when talking about Overwatch..

The hard part of balancing is that more often than not you address a symptom and not the cause. LoL may well have 143 characters, but they're definitely not balanced. I'd guesstimate at least 40 of them have skillsets and kits that are outdated and don't stack up to modern releases. LoL has had a problem from day one in that it needs mobility. People say there's only 1 Summoner Spell because everyone always takes Flash (a blink on a 4 minute cooldown), and they're correct. The more mobile you are, the more you can dodge enemy skillshots, burst them down and snowball to carry the game. Every hero is expected to have some short-range dash ability because if they don't, it's a crippling weakness in their kit that you have to overcome. When old heroes in LoL get reworked, their kits are now absurdly overloaded with passive/on-hit/active abilities that it's become clear that the game is adding complexity inplace of depth. My favourite Heroes in LoL were Junglers, characters whose job it was to roam the map, kill NPC monsters and help the rest of the team by ganking them. My favourite heroes were an auto-attacker called Nocturne (he could go a bit faster, and dash to an enemy while blinding everyone), Fiddlesticks (scary skeleton man who drained life, he could also teleport a short distance with his ultimate and deal lots of damage). And these guys were basically in the game at release. I can see the huge problem LoL has, but it feels like it was there from day 1, and it can't be fixed without gutting the whole game. My go-to moba of late has been Heroes of the Storm (hurrrr). It has a much smaller roster of about 80 or so Heroes. The game has a very different design philosophy to LoL, which is reflected in its Heroes and maps. There're very few Heroes in HotS that can 1v5 the enemy and carry the game by themselves, so their kits aren't built around making sick MLG plays for youtube and E-sports, but rather about rounding out your teams composition to complete map-objectives. It's rather refreshing in all honesty, because huge mobility in HotS is more team-centric (Lt. Morales can call in a dropship to speed her team across the map) rather than Nocturne or Rek'sai's "you charge to an enemy and get the kill". Not to say LoL hasn't borrowed this design in Tahm-Kench and Ryze, but it's very evident all the same.

Ultimates are so fundamentally antithetical to the idea of switching classes on the fly and there so much weight to them in Overwatch, I don't know how you could develop them and still expect people to do so. People are hard pressed enough to switch from their favourite class as it is, but Ultimates, or the loss thereof, actively punish you for doing so.

That's right! This is why I ended my rant with "Can't believe I'm praising Riot Game" I am NOT seeing League of Legend is superior to Overwatch, I am just saying it does thing way better than Overwatch and that me saying that means there's a grave problem with Overwatch. Just to update you, currently League of Legends meta is somewhat healthy but focus more on burst damage, the recent rework and hero release are probably what you'd enjoy as they have less mobility and they do not have bloated kit (Ironically, the subreddit had a few thread about how BORING they were, when the subreddit was the same place where people complained about the amount of bloated characters kit!). Flash is a grave balancing error that I hates and I won't argue this. This is true. I would argue that the old heroes aren't as absurdly overloaded and I think you're exaggerating. But also, you're only merely saying that their only error with those rework is bloating them, forgetting that the old heroes were INCREDIBLY obnoxious and unbalanced to play against BECAUSE of their simplicity (remember old Poppy?) Let's take a look at who have been reworked so far (Every visual relaunch so far) Karma: A point for her, she was butchered and has no identity. She's a versatile mage that don't shine in anything and Tank Karma is very obnoxious to play against. Sion: The standard for a perfect rework, kept a lot of what made old sion fun and simply made him useful and also kept his role versatility Trundle: More of a visual update than anything, it is decent and made the characters more fun. Sivir: More of a visual update ,but more bounce on her W was really cool. Gangplank: Extremely good VGU all-around. Not only it actually made the lore progresses with Gangplank downfalls, but it also replaced his (admittedly fun and unique) denying ability by the skill ful barrel mechanic which added a new layer of depth to him all around. Poppy: What is there to say? Poppy was an obnoxious champion for years and years, one of the many blacklisted champion, and her rework is perfect althought it made bruiser poppy a rarer thing I believe it was a great VGU and her kit is not bloated at all. Taric: One of the "Point and click" stun man finally reworked, and I would not say his kit is bloated either as it is VERY straightforward and easy to get the hang of. His passive add a lot of depth. Yorick: THE definition of a blacklisted champion. Obnoxious at every stage, nerfed purposely to keep him away from the meta, didn't get a skin for over 3 year and was purposefully not added to the rotation because nobody wanted him to be played (Since League of Legends champion are pay to play, they have this thing called the rotation where every week a set of hero become free to play for a week). Riot knew, and his rework was perfect on all front, emphasizing his theme as THE gravedigger. His kit is still very simple (Boosted auto attack, circle wall, little rectangular AoE) Warwick: Again, there is no denial in this and it is a community-backed opinion: It's the perfect rework. Everything from Old warwick has been kept and made somewhat balanced, his ultimate was changed into a skillshot, and he still feel like Warwick, the beginner jungler that everyone play. Galio: A controversial rework because the characters only kept Old Galio taunt in the kit and the magic shield, but I think it is pretty good and it is CERTAINLY not overloaded as his ability are fairly straightforward and easy to understand Urgot: Still an easy characters, less obnoxious, removal of the "Switch position with enemy" ultimate is sad but it is for a better characters. His kit is not overloaded. Evelynn: Another very good rework that keep her simple chain of ability, althought it removed her role versatility completely (fully jungle now), I do not think her kit is overloaded either. Swain: Straightforward ability, very easy to understand kit. Not bloated ,a great rework. Irelia, Aatrox, Akali: Those three are together because I agree with you. They have tons of mechanic in their kit for no reason and do not respect the old characters at all. They are also very mobile. Nunu, Ezreal: Two perfect rework that strived to keep the essence of the characters. Ezreal only got his W changed and Nunu got a new very fun W and a new E and passive but kept his bite and ultimate. I think they're not bloated at all. So, no, I don't think most old heroes have been turned into overbloated mess: It is merely an illusion because many of their thing have been replaced with "skill shot" instead of their old ackward point and click ability. Also, I wish to adress your mobility fear: This is not the case. Many of the characters with mobility are melee characters because they need a gapcloser. The ranged vs melee was always an issue in League of Legend and I give you that. Otherwise, most of the characters do not have either good mobility or mobility altogether. See: New Swain or New Urgot. Funny that you use Fiddlestick and Nocturne as your main example of Mobility creep! For me, the first example of mobility that really went overboard was Lee Sin and Riven. But we were unprepared for what was coming.. HotS isn't a game I like. I never hide my distaste for that game, as it represents, for me, the ill-intention of dev who saw the success of a genre and decided to streamline everything in that genre in the hope to get the casual playerbase (already done by League of Legend, which is why HotS never found its footing) but I always gave its heroes design credit because they are truly creative and they truly took a page from DotA 2 creative character design to make unique heroes with unique playstyle instead of making characters who belong in a role and will do everything that role say it does. There are many samey characters (The ADC are TOO similars in League) in league so I can understand where your coming from. Sorry for the vast off-topic information in the hopes to debates with the man. It's all about comparing it to overwatch, and I am in noway saying that Riot Game have a good balance team, only that I believe that Riot Game Balance Team out of every team possible is better than the Overwatch team at balancing it, a crazy claim.

I really, REALLY hate this mindset. Like, I get it, you want players to diversify and experience every aspect of the game - or at least as much of it as possible - but the thing is, I don't like most characters in Overwatch. I don't like their playstyle. I don't like their skins, their weapons, their voicelines. Or at least, I don't like playing as them because of these aspects. I really like playing as Mercy, Lucio and Brigitte - mostly Mercy. I love their characters, I love their designs, I love their voices, I love their personalities - they are good characters that are fun to play. Mercy was my main for the longest time, and I was fuckin' GOOD at playing her. I would always get gold medals, people would actually compliment me and go "Damn, a good Mercy for once". It was awesome, I felt great. Nobody ever complained that my choice was detrimental to the team. Then they fucking butchered her and made her a completely unviable choice in the majority of settings. I don't LIKE having to adapt forcibly. If I want to play a different character I will because I want to, not because the game tells me I should or because the situation calls for it. If I found something in a game that I really like, and it's making me enjoy the game, and I'm good at what I'm doing - the change to make me "move on" to something else is only going to turn me off from even playing the first place. If a situation in a game calls for me to literally not enjoy the game anymore then that's horrible game design. Part of this is, I think, because of Overwatch's philosophy of continuously tacking on new characters. I think this was a problem from the start, since the roster was already massive. You look at TF2 and this problem doesn't exist. There is only one healer, but he has a multitude of tools and exchangeable weapons that make your playstyle to his healing adaptable to the game. Same with every other character. If Overwatch had done this - simply adding new weapons to the characters instead of new characters entirely - I'm 100% sure the frustrations of the community would be slim to none. People who have a favorite character wouldn't have to switch to a completely different one just because the game called for it - they could just switch out a gun, and get a benefit the situation calls for. Okay, rant over. Goddamn.

New characters aren't the issue! Try having a roster of 10 like in beta and see if the game would have lasted as long as it did currently. The rosters at release was pitifully small (24 characters!) and the characters release are pitifully slow and far in between yet being the most awaited and exciting update the company has to offers because they're the only update that bring CHANGE to the gameplay alongside balance patch. New characters allow to widen the appeal of your game by varying the theme and genre (Horror themed character, robot character, western character, fantasy science fiction looking character, centaur character) and by offering new playstyle that more players can reasonate with. I heavily disagree with this straight-from-reddit, casual bullshit to explain the failure of the overwatch team to balance by saying "Duh, the amount of characters is the reason why they're failing". It is a pathetically simple view of what "balancing" is and I cannot stand seeing people blindly hate on having a varied, well-furnished rosters. Paladins is doing well-enough with their 40 characters! Why not Overwatch?

These are fair points. I stopped playing LoL when Jihn came out I think. I'd been annoyed that Tahm Kench had different passive effects, but Jihn having 3 separate passives was a bit of a deal-breaker. I came back (a bit, I just miss Jungling sometimes) when this new guy Sylas was released, and he has a dash, a self-heal and does %health damage and it feels like fucking nothing changed. The Warwick rework does seem pretty neat though, I should have specified before I rubbished every rework. Irelia and Akali though, what the fuck happened there? Irelia always had that busted combination of "better at low health" and "self-sustain out the arse", and it's only gotten worse? Akali is now flipping all over the lane before vanishing and being half-visible, it's fucking horrible. The Fiddle/Nocturne thing was to show that even my favourite characters (still are, fight me) weren't immune to inherent mobility abilities, though you're right in saying that melee do need some sort of advantage to fight ranged. I just don't feel like dashes for everyone are the way it should be. Riven/Lee Sin is a valid point too, though I'd argue that to me their mobility felt intrinsic to their kit? If they'd been released now I'm sure I'd be hating them because they both have 2 different mobility skills and blah blah blah, but they got in before the problem (in my eyes) became too severe. Re: HotS, I think it does suffer from being perceived as simplified. It doesn't have last hitting and gold, and you just need to stand near dying minions for your team to benefit, that's true. But the metagame of HotS is so different from League, and it's what I enjoyed from LoL but made into a whole game. I played Jungle because I liked influencing the whole map, playing a different game that wasn't about last hitting. I was playing a strategic game while everyone else was rushing BFSwords and Needlessly large rods. And in HotS, everyone is playing that game. You can be deathballing in mid all game long, but the game is specifically designed to reward strategy, planning and macro-level plays. Each different map has different strategies and metagames, and a Hero who's good on one map won't always be good on another (Blaze is good on Braxis Holdout but not on Dragon Shire, while Rexxar is the opposite). It emphasises the tactics and subtlety that I played moba's for, but it's presented and reinforced so subtly that it's too easy to look at the game and think "babbys first moba".

Completely understand your feelings. The Akali rework was directed by CertainlyT, the characters designer that also directed Zed, Kalista, Yasuo, Tresh, and Zoe. So, even before her releasewe all expected a very cancerous characters that is fun to play, but horribly obnoxious and not fun to play against. She has been nerfed to death and is still viable currently. Irelia has been nerfed to death aswell and got multiple mechanic removed (Her new ultimate used to disarm like Amumu ult, now it doesn't, and she had increased damage against shield, now she does not). And yes, you are fully right: Dashes for everyone aren't the way it should be. DotA 2 is a great example, where going back takes some time, it's called "Turnrates" and it's the time it take for your character to turn 180 degree around. Kiting is the worst thing, but it doesn't happens much in DotA 2 because of turnrates as you are forced to stop and rotate before being able to shoot your enemy. Of course, Melee characters have lower turnrates than ranged. One of the brilliant balancing of that games for sure. Sylas kit isn't that bloated, in fact he is one of the simpler heroes according to the community. As I said, it's ironic how the subreddit hates the bloated heroes such as Zoe and Yasuo yet doesn't like Sylas because he isn't complex. Sylas, and Neeko. Funny you mentioned that you hated Jhin, because the common opinion is that Jhin is one of the best characters both thematically and gameplay-wise LoL offers as he is an ADC that doesn't play like the other and offers a mix of auto attacking and ability that makes him very fair and fun to play against. Dodging his ability and playing around him is possible. I have no feeling toward Jhin, personally. I think he is fine. League of Legend went a long way since Jhin came out: Botlane's no longer only reserved to ADC, the runes system as you've saw has been completely changed (For good! Less pay2win is welcome!) and.. Yeah. Lots of thing.

We're talking about a game that has terrible map design, terrible balancing logic, terrible community management, forced eSport implementation, garbage meta choices... There have been problems long before maining was even a bother. It still baffles me that leaving quick play games penalizes you...

Balancing characters in mobas is so much easier imo, because you're dealing with way less factors, and something like 3 dimensionnal movement, hitboxes, aiming, map design is absolutely core to an FPS and impacts hero/abilities balance immensely. There's so many constraints and design challenges that are unique to team competitive FPS games. Overwatch and mobas can be compared on some levels, but not others, and "100+ balanced heroes vs 30ish unbalanced heroes = OW team bad at balance" isn't a fair comparison to me. I really don't think the reason OW feels like it has bad balance is because the OW designers are bad at balancing characters and Mobas designer are good at it. It's because of the core design of OW vs the core design of Mobas, it's something that OW can't fix. They built OW with a lot of pillars and requirements in mind, and just can't fix the game now to me, just try to duct tape it as much as possible. Their take on hero design + all the constraints of balancing an competitive FPS makes it absolutely impossible to balance the game and have healthy meta in my eyes. There's too many constraints and design goals, there's always going to be better and worst heroes, and a crazy OP strategy in comp. Every hero is too powerful, ult charge is too important, CC is too strong and the recesity of having the right team combinaison makes players feel powerless. If there's a way to make abilities work in FPS combat they didn't hit it at a fundamental level. And now, balancing one hero will unbalance another part of the game. There's also the issue that with small teams of 6, at a high level in solo queue, if one player doesn't play the game optimaly and doesn't pick the right character that will make your comp superior, you lost. OW represents exactly a frustrating team competitive game : you have low agency on the outcome match because everyone is extremely powerful, but if one person is bad or didn't pickk the right hero, your team probably lost. In tf2 pubs, with a big team of 12, way more people share the responsability of winning the game - you still get frustrated at teammates when they don't do shit, but way less often in my experience - you can have 4 useless players in your team but still often crush the other team if you play right. You have WAY more agency and power on the game as a player to me, because there's almost no CC, everyone has less HP, and the very deep movement system/higher skill ceiling giving you a huge edge on everyone as a skilled player. OW is Low agency + high responsability, Tf2 is High agency + low responsability, which is exactly why I prefer the latter, why it's more flexible and fun when playing with randos.

I mean, I find it baffling that so many people in here are rushing to Jeff's defense, honestly. Think of the game from a casual standpoint, which is how the majority of people play these games. They don't care about being "effective" or the best player on the team, they just want to pick up the game and have fun with it. They pick up a character they like and stick with them because they like that character. It's not a hard concept to grasp. Also, to be effective, you don't have to know how to play as every character in every match up really. You can just be good at a few characters and know their match ups with everyone else. Rarely does being a jack of all trades, but master or none, pan out in a competitive scenario in games with multiple characters. You begin to stretch yourself too thin, instead of focusing on what you're good at and what you enjoy. I'll be honest, I think it's honestly a failure of game design that Jeff Kaplan did not consider this possibility. How would you not expect people to be drawn to one or a few heroes and just stick with them no matter what? That would've been one of the first things that came to mind for me if I was designing such a game, and I would've designed my game with that in mind. Trying to push people away from what they want to do is pointless, because they'll find a way to do it anyway.

I don't think people are defending him? He (or someone he agreed with) put systems in place that encourage sticking with a character for a whole game or you'll be penalised for it. OW absolutely shares certain characteristics with mobas, but mobas live and die by their balance typically, so the discussion was "how can one company balance rosters four times the size of Overwatches?" FPS's do have more systems in place to balance than mobas it's true, but they ran out of the front door barefoot and are wondering why their feet hurt. It's stupid and is immediately apparent, all they can do now is duct-tape fixes because anything else would require overhauling the games core systems.

Worst yet with ultimates is, consider this: You have a Hanzo. You really need something other than Hanzo (for whatever reason) and your Hanzo just isn't doing too great. You ask him to switch. "Yeah okay I'll switch after I use my ult" Okay fine, his ult charges fairly quick. He uses his ult and kills 5 people. He starts thinking "why the fuck should I switch? I just killed 5 people with that ult! I'm awesome!" And now you're back to where you started.

What thread are we talking about? I can't find a single post in this one doing that. Everyone's criticising the current state of OW in this one.

I was more talking about some of the very first responses in this thread, which were basically among the lines of "yeah, Overwatch is filled with mouth breathers who don't know how to play the game properly and just play one hero no matter the situation." Which yeah, I totally get the frustration from that, but I still think in this case you would blame the developer, not the player, for not accounting that people can get attached to something and stick with it. Why would you not design the game with this in mind, or naively think people wouldn't main? What is so wrong with maining a character you enjoy in a game? Why did Jeff Kaplan never realize that in a game filled with colorful characters, people would pick one or a few they like or identify with the most and play strictly them?

This is an incredible, gross underestimation of what goes into balancing a MOBA and the most funny thing is how you're saying "Way less factors" So, Riot Game when balancing League of Legend have to balance multiple element The characters The itemshop, every characters are able to buy the vast majority of item even if it's not viable The jungle camp The minions wave The tower The principal objective (Herald and Baron) Blizzard, when balancing overwatch have to balance.. The characters. The map, on extremely rare case. But of course, let's not take MOBA as an example. You're right: This is comparing Apple to Orange. So let's check out Paladins The characters. (40 characters compared to Overwatch' 29) The characters respective card and legendary card (40 characters * 16 card for each * 3 legendary card for each characters) The item shop. (16 item that can be bought by everyone.) "Legendary card" could be completely separate seeing how much the vast majority of them changes how you play a single character, but I felt generous there. And, again, may I remind you that a League of Legend character has a passive, 3 ability, and one ultimate, and sometimes those ability turn into other ability? It's not only about the amount of characters, but their kit aswell: DotA has many kit that goes beyond the 3 ability/ultimate limit, Smite has multiple stance switching character with effectively 6 ability. This is not to mention what goes into balancing. What is up with that? Smite aswell is the first MOBA with a third person point of view. A point here because you cannot aim "Up" and "Down" so you are effectively locked to "right and left" but the concept of aiming is very much present and so my point still apply aswell. Yes, I believe this is a fair comparison to merely simplify it to "100 characters balanced = 30 unbalanced heroes". I think that justifying the Overwatch team fault with "It's a first person shooting game, you can aim and all.. it's harder to balance than a moba " is quite dangerous and is giving wayyy too much credit to the Overwatch team aswell. But, I don't know, the game lasted for 3 year now at this pace. We are debating why OW can't work properly, and I always thought it was because the game didn't assume its MOBA root, like Paladins did, and didn't embrace it.

But Overwatch has Hard Counters? Or Rock Paper Scissors as you have put it. There's no way you can play Tracer against Brigitte a while back for example, and that's why the game's balance is a mess right now. If you're character is getting countered by someone on the enemy team, your skill probably won't change the outcome much. Meanwhile, if you switch, you're costing even more for your team since you just lost all your ultimate charge, which pretty much makes a teamfight. On the other hand, counters in TF2 can be played around. Pyro shuts down Spy, but Spy can play around a Pyro with the proper equipments, and simply making the Pyro spycheck is already doing something for the team when the Pyro is in the backline. I am not sure how often would there be 3+ snipers in a game, but having too much snipers already put the enemy team at a disadvantage, and there are more than enough ways for a Heavy to get pass the snipers in TF2.