Jeff Kaplan's new philosophy for class balance

[Cosmic Janitor]

I think it's easier to balance with a hatchet in Overwatch because you learn like 10 heroes and swap them around mid-match.

With WoW, if Ion & Company took that approach, and they utterly ruin your spec for a tier, have fun rerolling and leveling up to level 60 (in Shadowlands) again.

I don't see how that would be the realistic outcome here. If we'd assume that they get the balancing intervalls down to 1 or 2 weeks per iteration, then there would be absolutely no point in changing classes that often since you couldn't equip them anyway in that timeframe. The biggest hurdle here is A) simply to actually touch on all classes equally and not play favorites and B) that the class gimmiks in WoW have more relevance in content than in overwatch. Breaking the rofl-lol-Rogue meta in WoW for M+ is quite a bit harder than adjusting Mei's icewall duration by a few hundret milliseconds without destroying the ability/gimmik entirely.

Edit: Also you just described the current balancing situation. They change things once a tier and depending on the fact if your classes' code monkey bothered to submit changes or not and how they turn out you might as well reroll. The only reason why we see so little class changes atm is because of the fucked up damage distribution having shifted a large chunk to non-class specific gimmiks in the azerite system.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

I don't see how that would be the realistic outcome here. If we'd assume that they get the balancing intervalls down to 1 or 2 weeks per iteration, then there would be absolutely no point in changing classes that often since you couldn't equip them anyway in that timeframe. The biggest hurdle here is A) simply to actually touch on all classes equally and not play favorites and B) that the class gimmiks in WoW have more relevance in content than in overwatch. Breaking the rofl-lol-Rogue meta in WoW for M+ is quite a bit harder than adjusting Mei's icewall duration by a few hundret milliseconds without destroying the ability/gimmik entirely.

Edit: Also you just described the current balancing situation. They change things once a tier and depending on the fact if your classes' code monkey bothered to submit changes or not and how they turn out you might as well reroll. The only reason why we see so little class changes atm is because of the fucked up damage distribution having shifted a large chunk to non-class specific gimmiks in the azerite system.

I don't think it's possible to push balance buttons that fast with a game as complex as WoW without boiling everything down to its absolute simplest iteration where one knob changes everything.

Unless we're just talking like "increased Moonfire damage by 1%" every 2 weeks for an entire patch as the actual effect isn't changed just it's now drip fed to us instead of all at once in a patch.





Also lowkey one of the weirdest thread moves considering this was about applying Overwatch's philosophy to WoW.

[Grimbold21]

Isn't this just a matter of numbers tweaking?

If DHs, mages, rogues dominate, then just up the numbers of whoever isn't

[Kauko]

They tried this already, people didn't like it. The reason was, that in WOW we get gear, classes can improve or vice versa just because of gear. That is also the reason it is so hard to balance them. If there was no gear... classes would be balanced since vanilla...

[Cosmic Janitor]

I don't think it's possible to push balance buttons that fast with a game as complex as WoW without boiling everything down to its absolute simplest iteration where one knob changes everything.

Unless we're just talking like "increased Moonfire damage by 1%" every 2 weeks for an entire patch as the actual effect isn't changed just it's now drip fed to us instead of all at once in a patch.


Also lowkey one of the weirdest thread moves considering this was about applying Overwatch's philosophy to WoW.

It's incredibly easy to do that. You could automate it even, at least a bare minimum adjustment (without the meta-breaking) on a weekly basis is easily possible that way, since all classes already have this adjustment knob. Because Blizzard has access to all the statistical data, they could probably even attempt to do some meta-breaking. Though I will admit, finding an algorithm for that which does not rely on just nerfing overall damage to the point that people would switch the meta is alot harder and probably requires either a more complex pattern analysis or human input to find what the reason for that meta is.

Btw, no clue what your last sentence is about.

[Boneman]

Pretty old Vid but it still checks out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e31OSVZF77w

[NoiseTank13]

They are two different games. One is primarily PvE focused and is based on incrementally increasing ones power and worth against scripted encounters. The other is PvP is (primarily) based on mechanical and periphery skills.

As for Kaplan 'being aggressive' with meta changes I'm going to have to let out a big belly laugh at that. Overwatch team has been extremely hesitant to do any sort of meta changing in this really naive hope that the community would define the meta. The community has proven otherwise, bitching about metas that are really only seen in the t500 games and bitching about heroes (some warranted, granted) and just not showing any desire to step outside their comfort pick zone. That's why hero pools are being added. The community has finally forced Blizzards hand.

As for 'more frequent and aggressive balance changes' I've heard this from multiple leads, multiple developers, through over a decade of being in the Blizzard game community. I'll believe it when they actually do it.

[Fkiolaris]

I understand OW is not an MMO, but when ESO tried the same shit last year its player-base got decimated. Nobody likes building a character, learning how it plays, finding if you like it or not etc etc and then every few weeks (3 months for ESO) having everything turned upside-down. And that's just PvE, never mind PvP where you have to learn the counters. You might take it once, maybe twice (especially if your character/playstyle somehow got a buff), but eventually most people will give up.

[xChurch]

I am still not even convinced it will work in Overwatch let alone WoW which is totally different in how you approach balance. Also not even sure if balance is really the biggest problem in OW currently. Usually, my problems are double barriers typically paired with subpar dps, something better balance wouldn't really affect that much. I would much rather have them tweak some rules of QP and Comp like only one barrier or sniper per team, banning Doomfist, you know, simple stuff. I'm curious however if there is a reason WoW doesn't have an experimental BG or arena though, I feel like that would be really helpful.

[PenguinChan]

I am still not even convinced it will work in Overwatch let alone WoW which is totally different in how you approach balance. Also not even sure if balance is really the biggest problem in OW currently. Usually, my problems are double barriers typically paired with subpar dps, something better balance wouldn't really affect that much. I would much rather have them tweak some rules of QP and Comp like only one barrier or sniper per team, banning Doomfist, you know, simple stuff. I'm curious however if there is a reason WoW doesn't have an experimental BG or arena though, I feel like that would be really helpful.

The main issue here is that'll be competitive only. People in QP will want to play things they want to play, even if it isn't the most optimal thing - although role-queue and how the MMR system works even in QP people try hard and swap. Regardless, they're gonna try hero pools instead and see how people like that, and I kind of hope people do because ban systems are just as boring as no bans.

You go from banning the most OP hero(s) in the meta and just pick the second most OP hero all the time. Yay? Cool? Not really, that's just as boring. Because when the others are pegged down and worth playing but not absurdly broken, what was once the second most OP is now the most banned.

The limitations of how many barriers or snipers seems to be the better choice there. Plus you have to realize OW balances for both low ranked players, high ranked players, and low / high QP players too.



Aaaaaanyways: WoW could benefit from a more aggressive balance change cycle with each new expansion if they were also willing to radically improve the play-styles from patch to patch and not take an entire expansion to fix it. Otherwise it just doesn't work as it has been shown in the past.

[Kalisandra]

Give me a recent example from past 5 years? Beginning of Legion and WW monk is the only one I can remember and it was not like you were denied a raid spots?

Elemental was diabolically bad at the beginning of this expansion. Arcane was too, and still is (as well as being incredibly boring and bead-dead to play).

- - - Updated - - -

Edit: Also you just described the current balancing situation. They change things once a tier and depending on the fact if your classes' code monkey bothered to submit changes or not and how they turn out you might as well reroll. The only reason why we see so little class changes atm is because of the fucked up damage distribution having shifted a large chunk to non-class specific gimmiks in the azerite system.

And when a spec is totally broken, they pop an unbalanced spec-specific azerite trait on their next set of gear, and call it done.

[Eosia]

Do you think that Ion Hazzikostas and the WoW team should follow suit? Classes in WoW are often left untouched for an entire raid tier, and it is always the usual suspects who are at the bottom of the barrel in DPS (Enhance/Elemental/Windwalker, Arms, Arcane, Unholy), Healing (Mistweaver, Holy, Resto Shaman) and Tanking (DH, Warrior). It is absolutely not fair to all these specs in the game and the players who would like to play. The meta at the top undeniably trickles down to the rest of the playerbase.

No. Because the whiny reaction from the players that WILL happen if they do. Lore already said they like to do smaller, incremental changes because it is easier for them to to simply keep going and make additional changes rather than having to scale back one that went too far.

[Unholyground]

This is why they should have bans in every mode like in most MOBA's and then you would not have to bench characters that people love at the developer level. This just sounds like a nasty way to push everyone to Overwatch 2.

[Steelangel]

Thats basically what you say when you cant be bothered to have a balance meta - you just keep messing with it constantly. Having a meta is not a bad thing.

If a meta is so powerful that it restricts play to only a few characters, then it makes the game boring. I remember a time a couple of years ago where Pharah and Mercy together made a crazy powerful combo, able to strike from the air with bonus damage uptime pushing nearly 100%. It was a cool playstyle, but started to dominate matches too much. Same thing with Bastion+Orisa/Rein on the payload. For a while that was serious BS to play against.

In a game like Overwatch, as a dev you want the players to switch it up, not get stuck into a particularly potent combo to keep the game fresh. As a player, you want to win all the time to get that dopamine rush.

It's tough to balance those competing desires.