Blizzard Game Design

[Strangewayes]

I've been thinking about this ever since OverWatch was released. Blizzard tends to follow a particular format for the design of their team games. Hear me out.

WoW Battlegrounds, WoW Raiding, Heroes of the Storm, Overwatch all have this common theme. The team is more important than the individual.
Individual skill means little beyond reaching a minimum required skill level. Sure skill is good, but beyond a certain point there are massive diminishing returns for improving. "Carrying" in Blizzard games is usually impossible, unless there is some sort of character balance problem Blizzard fixes soon after.

Secondly, Blizzard games never use kills as a way to measure who wins a game. It's always objectives. This takes pressure off Blizzard to design "balanced" damage Heroes. But also allows them to design characters that don't revolve around damage at all. In fact, I'm sure that Blizzard would probably want to avoid a K/D counter completely in most of their games. Blizzard also avoided showing an MMR in HOTS. Does it mean Blizzard does not want people to see if they are improving individually? Why?

Team composition and communication are the main anchors of Blizzard team games. As long as you are a working cog in the machine of the group, you have nothing to worry about. But at the same time, "rising above" the other players in order to show skill is very unlikely, because of the skill cap on individual characters, and because the only way for one character to shine is by others supporting them. Reinforcing the idea that the group matters more than the individual.

I just find it odd that Blizzard pushes so hard for the player to drop a sense of individuality and even in-game, attempting to "main" a character is a bad strategy also, since Blizzard designs around comps being fluid and changing, so it's troubling for players to even strongly identify with a character in game, since they may have to change it next game, or in the case of OverWatch, next death.


Anyone else see this theme?

[Tehterokkar]

Carrying Impossible in WoW raiding? Dunno about that, our guild has made around 35 million gold so far from boosting Mythic HFC.

Regarding Hots/Overwatch, teamplay should trump, even in real life sports a team with better teamplay wins over that which has better individuals.

[Strangewayes]

Carrying Impossible in WoW raiding? Dunno about that, our guild has made around 35 million gold so far from boosting Mythic HFC.

Regarding Hots/Overwatch, teamplay should trump, even in real life sports a team with better teamplay wins over that which has better individuals.

I hope you realize I meant individuals carrying, not 20 people carrying others.

[Radaney]

Carrying is extremely possible in WoW raiding. 1 - 2 people can carry an entire guild through entire raid difficulties and tiers in dps, healing or tanking.

[RedGamer030]

Battlegrounds and raids can be carried by a single player. Watch Bajheera play some casual PvP or just look at all of the guilds selling Mythic Hellfire Citadel runs...

[Vineri]

Carrying is extremely possible in WoW raiding. 1 - 2 people can carry an entire guild through entire raid difficulties and tiers in dps, healing or tanking.

Only in Overpowered Legacy raids, which is likely why people think these Retro raids are Soooo easy. Yeah right. They were not designed like you think they are.

Try an actual raid when you level is 60, with appropriate gear. It's hard. Very hard.

As for Overwatch, not buying into the hype. Activision-Blizzard is not the company I once knew (neither companies actually - Activision made awesome Atari games in the 80s - Blizzard awesome Warcraft 10 years ago + Starcraft games - neither company does anything awesome these days )