It comes with its own risks though. If you’ve played Overwatch 2 at all, you know Moira is constantly played as a DPS . They shred through enemies, rush off to get kills, and rarely come back to help the team, leaving the job to rest on one support’s shoulders. I’m busy scrambling to hit the mute button while I keep a charging Reinhardt alive as he plummets into the entire enemy team, so my shoulders are more than strained. But Kiriko hasn’t ended up like Moira - at least, not yet. The ease of being able to jump between damage and healing is similar there, but the DPS doesn’t outclass the healing to such an extent that it’s worth dropping altogether. The two are well-balanced, meaning you can easily flit between keeping D.Va alive and taking out a cheeky Widowmaker perched in the dista
My old mains just aren’t fun anymore. Playing Mercy with well over 15,000 healing in lower ranks, keeping the team alive, resurrecting vital players, and helping push the payload, all while avoiding the focus of the entire enemy team, only to get a Cassidy spamming "I need healing" halfway across the map, is annoying ; __ Lucio is fun but doesn’t always work on defence maps, and Bridgette depends on the synergy with the rest of your squad. Kiriko, however, lets me stand on my own two legs in fights, easily jump to my allies with her teleport ability so I can catch Cassidy being a prick and save him, and heal as standard. The versatility is unlike any other hea
Everything must be realistic, atmospheric, and other vague adjectives taken from focus groups and written on white boards. It might remain as a callback, but if it does it will be an exception to the rule. Any of these sorts of things left in by mistake tend to be taken out immediately because players having fun in their own way isn’t part of the developers’ vision. Any way you find to exploit something, even in a single-player experience where no one else is impacted, is viewed as a mistake to be fi
I tried her out because she was new and the daily quests keep asking me to queue for all roles which, as we know, really means support. She can shred through squishy DPS characters and heals plenty, at least enough to scratch my Mercy itch. Being able to reach upward of 9,000 healing in quick play while getting eliminations is like playing DPS with a bit more utility, and that’s what makes Kiriko so refresh
Of course, the problem is ours as much as theirs. When I was a kid I tried to move the truck to get Mew. I can’t remember where I heard it. These days though, our access to the internet and sprawling growth of online communities means myths are never formed and secrets are always shared. The Mei bug is not just a gimmick a few kids found that slowly makes its way through groups of friends, but is instantly broadcast by the biggest Overwatch 2 support guide|https://overwatch2Tactics.com/ accounts, leading to everyone knowing it, everyone spamming Mei, and Blizzard feeling it has to step
Part of the tinkering feels like vanity too. In Horizon Forbidden West , Aloy was too chatty when she was alone , remarking that items will be sent back to storage (somehow?) and repeating the same few lines over and over. People said it was annoying, so it was taken out. But surely they knew it was annoying? Surely part of the point was to make Aloy endearing in this way? I’m sure people think Aloy shutting the hell up is an improvement, but mostly it just feels like fixing something for the sake of it. It doesn’t feel like developers have the license to be creative and eccentric if a few people joking around online is enough for the studio to mandate changing the game. Gaming is becoming more risk averse, not less, in the presence of a constant safety
Patches are par for the course in gaming these days. While your live-service behemoths are always tinkering with the meta, keeping gameplay fresh, and fixing all the bugs those first two fixes cause, even the smallest single-player titles come with constant post-launch care these days. Day one patch is now the norm, and while games like Cyberpunk 2077 which launch in historically unacceptable states benefit greatly from devs now being able to fix things in the wild, it’s unlikely Cyberpunk would have launched at all if the studio knew it would be stuck with what it had. On the whole, patches offer a safety net that’s good to the industry, but it sometimes feels like they take away a game’s personal
Support playing as DPS is inevitable with this meta, though. If a flanking Genji or Reaper gets behind the line, you have to fight back, but it’s often too late if you wait for that moment. That means you have to be on the offensive, or you risk getting killed and being spammed with ironic ‘thanks’ and constant ‘I-need-healing’ in the chat. Yeah, I get it, but I was left on my own to fight the two DPS’ and a pushing tank. Healing the 50 damage you took isn’t high on my list of priorities right