xQc explains why Overwatch isn’t balanced

Felix ‘xQc’ Lengyel gave his take on why Overwatch isn’t balanced in response to a viewer’s comment.

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While xQc was streaming matches in the new Competitive Season 18, one of his viewers made a donation in which they stated that Blizzard had failed to balance the game despite only having “one job” to do.

While xQc has certainly never been shy of speaking his mind when he believes the developers are making mistakes, in this instance he actually defended Blizzard. While he didn’t refute the balance issues, xQc argued that maintaining the game actually involves balancing multiple different goals, which is an impossible task.

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“That is not true, it’s not one job, it’s like five jobs. They’re not trying to balance the game, they’re trying to maintain the game alive for casuals, balance the game for casuals and pros, make the game thrive with normies, keep Overwatch alive and thriving, keep shareholders happy, it’s impossible.

“It’s a web of problems. That’s why it’s not balanced, because they don’t have one job, they have six of them, and so they’re not even qualified to do it.”

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Though it may not be the system’s primary function, part of Blizzard’s reasoning for introducing role queue actually related to balance. With a strict 2-2-2 role distribution in all matches, they won’t have to account for as many possible scenarios when making adjustments.

• Read more: Role Queue finally comes to Overwatch Competitive Season 18 and Quick Play

This was an issue that Jeff Kaplan cited when discussing the infamous GOATS composition, which Blizzard tried on multiple occasions to nerf with limited success. While the heroes involved where very powerful when stacked in that particular line-up, Blizzard couldn’t hit them too hard individually without making them useless in more standard 2-2-2 compositions.

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While it’s still early days in the role queue era, Blizzard have already made sweeping changes to Brigitte to fit the new system, and going forward should hopefully be able to make more dramatic changes where appropriate in the knowledge that players can’t stack a particular role any more to exploit unanticipated synergies.