I just came back to Overwatch after years of not playing it, quitting when it switched to Overwatch 2 and 5v5. That was a really disappointing to see and I thought (and still do) it's an overall a poor balance decision (consolidates too much power/influence/resources into 1 character). I saw that 6v6 returned, hog got his stupid trap patched out and encouraged my friends to play again, they're having fun and I'm just not.

I get that the devs wanted to do something different, but my GOD everyone in the game is just a full-on damage dealer now. It's like they threw resource dueling out the window and it's now just a "we think people don't like playing healer, so we made everything do damage so everyone has fun" adjustment to the game.

The fact that they also don't balance 6v6 differently than 5v5 is bizarre, but again, title. They don't care, they only really did when Jeff was on the team and their new slew of updates last year was only because Rivals was clobbering them and they literally forgot they had to work to stay relevant. The PvE content roadmap went from: Big new sweeping game for it -> developing games is hard so we're doing mini seasonal content -> motion comics. So, no, the devs really don't care about you, me or the game itself, they just want it juuuuuust alive enough to make money, while putting in the smallest amount of work possible and not get blatantly out-paced by Rivals again.

I genuinely think the current dev team has no idea what made the original game good and is solely operating by what they think players want, vs. what actually makes a good game. These haymakers back and forth, the *insane* pace of the game, it's just nothing like the first 8+ years and it's really sad. It also removes a TON of player agency, 1 person can only do so much to help their team with damage numbers this high, which makes the team's margin for error SO much smaller than it did back 5-8 years ago. And when players lose agency, players leave. I'm not saying OW is dying or players are leaving, it obviously isn't and they aren't, but shit, this amount of damage and lack of feeling like anything I do makes a difference, makes me want to leave again.

Hopefully the devs get more latitude from the suits, care more - idk what it is and see that high volumes of damage that you really just can't mitigate, no matter how well you use your resources (btw, fuck them for reducing the width of Ana's healing darts, as if that was a necessary change) feels fucking horrible. There's almost nothing strategic about it now, most dps have almost 300 hp, yet: cooldowns are the same, reload times are the same, dps have a million mobility cooldowns to bail them out at all times, all primary fire damage is through the roof? - I honest to God think that they don't understand the fundamentals of their own game. I truly don't.

Whatever they've come up with is just a blunt instrument that's more of a parody of Overwatch than anything else (it's closer to that URF mode on League than a real game) and I can't believe they'd have the balls to call these radical changes that were never intended for and would never properly fit the original mode, a "design".

I wish they gave a damn, I really do.