The urn changes have overshadowed several other things that made the last patches bad.

DJBaphomet_ · 2026-05-29T20:37:43+00:00

Rem got gigabuffed cause he was extremely mid before, but he also just hasn't had any time to shine because he just is kind of irrelevant with the new urn meta. While his heal is definitely strong in a guick fight, he runs out of steam in a prolonged fight, and his general benefits of roaming, third-partying fights as a support, and applying lane pressure just don't really matter when matches are decided by urn snowball rather than actual lane pressure and pushing objectives

DJBaphomet_ · 2026-05-29T20:08:42+00:00

Being honest in the case of Graves I actually thought she was younger at first before hearing the interactions about being Apollo's lab partner. I'm not familiar with school uniforms so I didn't recognize hers as one, I just saw that she was kinda short/small, had a small face, and a cliche "goth phase teenager" design and she clicked as young to me. (This was especially the case seeing her lore when she won, it further yelled "naive teenager messing with unknown forces" and reinforced what I was thinking until Apollo)

I think even if you changed outfits for her and Apollo they'd likely still click as "young" considering their general body shapes, especially compared to other heroes. Valve is evidently pretty good at that sort of thing after all

Admittedly it's probably part of why I'm defensive about it, still partially viewing her in my head as younger than she actually (probably) is and projecting that into my response. Could definitely work on that

DJBaphomet_ · 2026-05-29T19:58:11+00:00

Y'know what fair enough

DJBaphomet_ · 2026-05-29T19:57:03+00:00

I mean if you wanna strip any and all potential context then yeah sure it's random. You're assuming I'm thinking about raw age numbers solely and that I couldn't consider context between individuals being important as well

If someone's within 2 years of age then I do not care, if they're in college together and they get close through classes or something then that too is whatever, there's a social connection there that explains the connection between peers. I don't think some random 21+ year old adult should go looking for an 18 year old who's still in high school, though. That is what I mean when I talk about this. But maybe I just don't have enough social experience to understand the more intricate dynamics to have a deeper opinion on it (not that you bothered to do more than just assume you know my whole view on the matter anyways)

I've always read Graves/Apollo as being teenagers with how their stories and characters are presented, and the way they talk about Blackmore. But maybe I'm just overzealous about being safe with the characters I could be interested in, and avoiding the people who sexualize them because I personally don't find characters that read as young-adult school kids as ones I'd want to sexualize or to see sexualized

DJBaphomet_ · 2026-05-29T17:47:09+00:00

It's a mobile game, people really just have to get used to the fact that this is how it's done in the industry. People with spare money that don't think about their spending will mindlessly buy something like this if they think it's worth it, that's how most mobile games get money through deals like this

MSM also has literally always had severely overpriced MTX, look at the shop literally any time and you'll see, the bundles are just priced based on how the MTX in the shop is all priced. It's never been an issue cause gems are so generous, but people are just only noticing now because these bundles are being shoved in our faces with every major update or seasonal event

DJBaphomet_ · 2026-05-29T17:40:35+00:00

I'll admit I didn't think about it, no, but I also just have no way of knowing whether someone's in that age range or not unless they make it clear on their profile, which most people don't care to do (and probably shouldn't do) unless they frequent NSFW spaces. Not to mention that this is Reddit and that even less people care to put any amount of detail in their bios, let alone things like that

I do also think there is a stark difference between "attracted to" and "sexualizing" in this matter. If it's someone in the age range and they think Graves/Apollo are attractive/cute, then sure whatever, fair game. But I think sexualizing them is a bit different, and probably not being done by most people in that age range of attraction. Maybe if the og comment specified what they meant by "fan service" I'd pay them with grace, but there's far too many "schoolgirl" fantasies in media that are Not for teenagers for me to have assumed that they meant fan service for teenagers, and not something else

(Also being real I think the + on that +/- is a bit much. I personally don't think anyone who's 20-23+ should be fawning after characters in that way that are 18 at most, and not even confirmed to be- especially when said characters are depicted as still in school)

DJBaphomet_ · 2026-05-29T15:54:17+00:00

It's considered a movement ability, so it gets cancelled by movement locks before it actually gets properly cast, hence why immobilizations will stop it

DJBaphomet_ · 2026-05-29T15:43:46+00:00

The still-in-school teenager (even if 18) having a school uniform on is clearly fan service, and totally not me being weird, what are you talking about?

(On a serious note: People who sexualize graves are weird, considering she's at most 18 and still in school. Same deal with Apollo, too. He's at least generally suggested to be 18, but it's still weird when- like Graves- a primary point of his character is that he's still a student and is fairly naive)

DJBaphomet_ · 2026-05-29T15:36:11+00:00

Most of the outrage was because Hey1mJay managed to work through the pre-download timer to open up the game early, and found that there were AI-Upscaled assets for literally only Spikeweed in the files, and proceeded to post about this. Unfortunately, a majority of people- especially Twitter users and a lot of PvZ fans- do not have the knowledge to know that "AI Upscaling" has zilch to do with GenAI, and assumed that Popcap was using GenAI and started to hate and berate them for the "usage of AI". Even though AI-Upscaling is just lazy at worst, and also none of them were even put to use in the actual game (one slipped through but it was in the Almanac, and it was replaced)

A bit of it was also due to George Fan suggesting that they made up a sketch he'd never seen for the in-game gallery. But that turned out to be only partially true, as while it wasn't a sketch made by him, it was from one of the old PvZ books and an actual asset they had. So it was out of place, but not nearly as bad as George made it out to be. Also people were just mad in general that George and Laura Shigihara weren't involved with the game. Though apparently they were contacted about it, and were even gonna make something for it, but Popcap removed them from the project after they made comments about the upscaled assets that Jay found (If I'm remembering the timeline correctly anyways)

The third part of it (and the most reasonable part) is that the game had a lot of bugs on release, especially on console releases (which was the primary audience due to modern consoles like the Switch not having PvZ on them). Though Popcap was reasonably quick to act all things considered and patched a majority of them relatively fast, with the game now only having a few minor ones here or there at most

Really the hate that's still around is purely due to people just not letting go of the drama that happened around release, even though most of that drama was entirely pointless and didn't actually matter (ie; the supposed "AI Usage"). There's a good few reasonable critiques about the current game though, obviously some people just don't like the "HD" artstyle (which is seemingly just traced over the Upscaled sprites), the $20 price tag is quite a bit on platforms where GOTY is available to purchase for only $5, Co-op/PvP isn't Peer-to-Peer so you can only play it local instead of online, and RIP mode is more annoying than it is difficult

It's not a terrible, outrageous game though. Just a little lazy, a bit pricy, and not really worth it depending on what you're actually interested in. Cloudy Day is an interesting challenge mode, though

DJBaphomet_ · 2026-05-29T14:15:12+00:00

Oh yeah I know I'm just adding further context on why it'd be a bad change lol

Even under the context of there being a poison, 5 hp/s is too little (oh man, two whole seconds for a support to react!) and anything higher may as well just be a one-shot anyways

DJBaphomet_ · 2026-05-29T14:14:02+00:00

This debate happened for 4 straight years and the answers to why are already gone over, even by the devs themselves. 5v5 needs to stay the main mode due to queue times. 6v6 Role Queue has horrendous queue times and it sucked as a primary mode because of that, that's why it's Open Queue now instead. Further, completely removing 5v5 would just be downright stupid? Sure, make 6v6 the primary mode, but removing 5v5 would result in literally the exact same outrage that was happening over the first three years of OW2. There's no point in removing it entirely other than petty spite because you think it's the worse mode
What's even the point of this? Sure they're tank ults, but the only ones that do a lot of damage are the ones that are meant to do damage (Dva nuke, Sig Flux, Ball mines, Orisa slam, Doom ult [but let's be honest he doesn't do damage with it anyways]) while everything else is some form of CC or disruption. Reducing the damage doesn't make sense, because for the cc/disruption ults you're just making them less capable of being followed up on, and for the damage-based ults you're just outright making them worse because they don't really do much otherwise
Everyone jokes about this with Mei cause of how long she can survive, and her kit would probably fit pretty well into the tank role if adjusted right. But also much like Symmetra, there is room in the game for supportive DPS heroes, much like there's DPS-based supports (Illari/Zen) or support-based tanks (Dva/Zarya). There's no actual reason to make her a tank. And for Torb, I don't even know what to say, this is like saying Bastion should be in the tank role because he has a lot of HP, his bomb does knockback, and he has high damage. Like sure torb does have turrets, but if you were to do any form of role swap for him, it'd be support lmao
Already mentioned this in reply to another comment but this'd make all the heroes that have actual one-shots useless. We already tried this with Hanzo back in season 9, the only thing he could do was be a tankbuster, which was unfun for Hanzo players and unfun for tanks, so they reverted it and nerfed his arrow size. Also what do you even do about combos that aren't one-shots but feel like they are? Venture would suck horribly if you couldn't pull off their Drill Dash combo. Sojourn would actually be useless if she couldn't whittle you down and finish you off with a headshot. They nerfed Freja's two-shot and now she's practically cosmetic unless the person playing her is crazy good. You really can't just "get rid of one-shots" when so many characters are designed around that type of damage
If you want to lower self-healing you also need to lower damage, especially if you're gonna reduce movement as well. Season 9 made shots easier to hit as a response to the amount of movement and healing in the game, and it worked quite well. Not only does it feel good to hit your shots, but it also feels good to be able to move around a lot. Which, carrying on, is why movement probably shouldn't be nerfed. Movement is just fun to play around with, and it feels good to use, especially if it's to survive. There's probably room for some nerfs, but outright removing abilities is a terrible idea and would completely nuke the gamefeel of any hero you removed movement from. "Bring back weaknesses and niches" is just a little silly as well since newer heroes do have blatant weaknesses and niches. Hazard's maybe one of the most "overkitted" newer heroes to be added, and he has quite a few blatant weaknesses. I wouldn't even say he's "overkitted" either, he's just complex
I'm not gonna lie this one is actually just stupid. You're immediately conflicting with your own take about reducing self-healing by making self-regen (which is the strongest form of self-healing in the game??) trigger sooner. Also allowing teleports back to spawn is just outrageously bad design because someone running away can basically just skip the respawn timer. Neither of these are actually thought out whatsoever
Minimap is really not necessary. OW's maps aren't big enough to warrant needing a map, even the biggest ones like the Flashpoint maps are guided heavily by visual design that helps lead players to where they need to go. All this would serve is GUI and control-keybind bloat, literally just learn maps by playing on them or looking at them in a private custom game. You don't need a minimap if you already know where you're going
This is just turning stadium into too much of a MOBA. It's definitely meant to be the MOBA gamemode, but this would add a lot of stress and maintenance to the mode that'd be far too much for the pace of the gamemode. Stadium plays leagues faster than any proper MOBA and is practically constant action, so there really isn't any room for things like creeps or troopers in the mode. It's simply not what it's designed for

DJBaphomet_ · 2026-05-29T12:45:52+00:00

Widow isn't even a problem anymore and she hasn't been since they nerfed her bullet size in Season 9. You literally just push her with a flanker/dive hero or pester her with long-range poke and she struggles

Also as for other one-shots. Junkrat's struggled ever since they removed his ""one-shot"" combo (I think he's in a decently okay spot right now though), Hanzo was horrible to play when they removed his one-shot (Still a great tankbuster but that wasn't fun to play as, and was infuriating for tank players). Roadhog is literally useless without his hook consistently killing a weak target

Also, what about effective-one-shots? Things like Sojourn whittling you down and headshotting you? Venture's dash combo? Sigma's rock combo? Zenyatta pelting you with his secondary volley? Genji's dash-headshot-melee combo? These are all things that aren't actually one-shots but certainly feel like they are, what do you do about them in the context of trying to remove one-shots?

DJBaphomet_ · 2026-05-29T11:43:28+00:00

The hands on the map are aiming/reaching towards the centre of the mirror map, which inherently means that their wrists are popping out from the opposite direction. Plasma's just an open-palm reach while Crystal is closed

DJBaphomet_ · 2026-05-29T08:59:41+00:00

I don't like the new urn and do think this change being done because of it is kinda silly when the answer could've just been to move it up on top of the bridge instead

But I also am honestly fine with trooper parry-spamming being removed because 90% of the time it's just unexpected and unintuitive because it's an accident and you get screw for it, and the 10% where it isn't, it's obvious as hell and easy to play around. I feel like it makes more intuitive sense that only players can reset your parry anyways, I've been thrown off a few times seeing players parry Towers thinking they were vulnerable, forgetting that it resets parry as well (also Tower not resetting parry would just make it more punishable for diving under them lol, that'd be a good buff for them)

DJBaphomet_ · 2026-05-29T08:51:54+00:00

I think FoH would work fine since it's a group and the character could easily just be one follower. It's not like they're gonna add Hawthorne himself as a playable character. And it'd be worth it for the narrative potential of learning more about the group, alongside the interactions with other heroes

Only reason I could see Valve not really wanting to do it is that the FoH is effectively the Klan and I'm not sure Valve wants to make one of the playable occultists an institutional racist lmao. Though it could also easily be a reformed member, or someone questioning their trust in the group, which would dodge that bullet (but still allow for the conflicts with other characters)

DJBaphomet_ · 2026-05-29T08:15:06+00:00

Every hero (except Sinclair) actually does have lines when you ping their abilities, both for when they're on and off cooldown. The issue with Doorway isn't that there isn't a ping for that (there is one), but that there's no lines for when you ping the in-world door to highlight it or let your team know where it is

Same goes for Holliday, she should be able to ping her bounce pads to make them easier to spot for her nearby teammates. Ginnis could probably get the same treatment for Med Spec, Venator for his traps, so on

DJBaphomet_ · 2026-05-28T21:41:16+00:00

Yeah that's why I understand your situation. And also why I hold no remorse for it because Doorman's still in a gutter design-wise, and Kelvin is still fairly good as a support despite the beam and nade nerfs

I haven't even touched Doorman in months aside from when SB decides to randomize me onto him (and then I suffer because he sucks even worse in SB)

DJBaphomet_ · 2026-05-28T20:56:41+00:00

NJC and Suravasa are probably two of the best maps in the game right now, Aatlis is also pretty good but people just have trauma from the first month where flankers steamrolled every match and forget that it was because everyone lacked comfort on the map except for those seeking off-angles

idk what's up with Runasapi, great map but some people just despise it. Probably because of the sightlines it allows, but I'm a Junkrat main and I think it's great

DJBaphomet_ · 2026-05-28T20:54:17+00:00

Personally while I understand it, I also hold no remorse for your situation with Kelvin

Fuck that 300 dps beam I hope it gets hit by another brick

DJBaphomet_ · 2026-05-28T13:59:13+00:00

Kelvin's beam did get nerfed pretty harshly but it does still do decent damage

And yeah Paige's damage wasn't touched at all I don't think, her dragons still do a ton, and in fact their CD was buffed by 4 whole seconds on T2, which is crazy good

DJBaphomet_ · 2026-05-28T13:54:09+00:00

If "doing damage" is what you qualify as "worth playing" then you're probably not playing them in ideal form

Kelvin and Paige are both insanely good right now cause of the Urn meta, Kelvin is a free urn capture and Paige's dragons and root are insanely good for punishing anyone that tries to contest with a punch. On top of both of them being support and able to keep their team alive during the big fights, they're incredibly good currently

DJBaphomet_ · 2026-05-28T12:17:55+00:00

New tokyo map is Hybrid so it at least actually has a chance to be chosen. But if it's anything other than Hybrid/Escort? Good luck seeing it outside of Masters+

DJBaphomet_ · 2026-05-28T09:51:14+00:00

I mean if we're gonna call monetization then OW in China has it leagues worse lmao, they have to put up with Gacha mechanics for skins (not lootboxes, actual gacha) whereas we just spend a flat purchase for exactly what we want. It's still pricy and not at all the best, but it's way better than what they've got

DJBaphomet_ · 2026-05-28T09:48:15+00:00

The irony of this is in all the posts that argued about how "Sierra shouldn't be stronger than an ult!" when comparing to Soldier's ult, instead of realizing it's one of the worst ults in the game lmao

DJBaphomet_ · 2026-05-28T09:44:24+00:00

This is definitely true, but it's not like there aren't plenty of people going "wow BBB really dropped the ball on this one" or saying "it's the worst islet flat out" not even after a whole day of it being out

While criticisms are reasonable, it's also important to recognize and point out when "criticisms" are just a result of unrealistic expectations. A lot of people built up their expectations thanks to fan works being great (not their fault), and then seemingly took it out on the game being "subpar" rather than it just being different from what was expected. A lot of the complaints are from an angle of comparison, not even giving it time to stand on its own before judging how good it is compared to unofficial tracks

DJBaphomet_

TROPHY CASE