The Payload Podcast Ep. 51: JetSetPodcast
by JR Cook - 7 years ago show comments
You know what they say: The world could always use more heroes! On The Payload, your hosts John, Rosh, and Jimmy will look at all things Overwatch: News, Esports, gameplay, and more. Join the crew every Thursday for the live stream, or download our audio episodes Fridays!
This week on The Payload:
- Make sure to sign in before January 2nd and get your 5 free lootboxes!
- Diablo 20th anniversary in-game goodies are coming to Overwatch and other Blizzard games.
- Overwatch becomes the 2nd most popular game-specific subreddit behind League of Legends.
- The crew discusses Blizzard’s behavior concerning nerfs and buffs.
- Symmetra’s new rework has been on live servers for a few weeks now. How has she been doing? The Payload crew dissects where they’ve seen Symmetra work best, how to play with her, and how to play against her.
Make sure to find Jamerson on Twitter @JetSetJamerson on on Twitch at twitch.tv/jetsetjamerson.
Also please take some time to support Jake who made our awesome music over at: jakebutineau.ca
We’re on Patreon! If you like the show an want to support, head on over to patreon.com/payloadpodcast to learn more! This week we would like to thank our MVP’s, Adam B., Jay A., Correl, and Tomi H.
We stream ourselves recording the show live every week over at www.twitch.tv/blizzpro Thursdays at 7:00 p.m. Pacific. If you have questions for the show, e-mail us at thepayload@blizzpro.com, or come find us on Twitter: @PayloadPodcast, @kickedtripod, @F2K_OkayItsRosh, and @djtyrant. We also greatly appreciate your support via iTunes reviews!
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Regarding the discussion about Blizz’s approach to balancing in Overwatch:
It’s worth mentioning that, when it comes to balance chabges, Blizzard tends to subscribe to a design philosophy where OVERtweaking is not only NOT a sin, but is seen as necessary, for the sake of efficiency. This approach is explained really well in Jessie Schell’s “The Book of Lenses”, but the gist is this.
Suppose you have an attack that does 100 damage, and then your feedback tells you that attack feels too weak. When you set out to rebalance that attack, you have to decide how to go about it. Do you tweak it 5 points at a time and take surveys after each tweak? Do you triple its power and hope for the best? Do you just take a stab in the dark?
Schell says the most efficient way is actually to go by doubles and halves, as that ensures you’ll reach that magic sweet spot in as few iterations as possible.
So, in the case above, you’d take that attack to 200. Too weak? Go to 400. Too high? Pull it back to 300. Too low? 350. Too high? 325. And then hey, turns out 325 was the sweet spot.
It sounds ass-backwards, but if you accept that temporary overbalances are not the end of the world, it actually lets you adopt a process that ensures you’ll find the right balance as quickly as possible — and certainly much quicker than just shooting from the hip and hoping for the best.
This is also why the pattern for Overwatch balance patches tends to take the form of one big change, followed by small scalebacks afterward. For examples, look at the history of tweaks to McCree and DVa.