Beta Critique

Title says it all, what do you think of it?
Any ideas for balancing/improvement?

Mcree needs a nerf. Maybe firing speed?

I'm getting ahead of myself, but is there any news on a decent way of editing the game?

they need to fucking nerf seagull is what they need to do

I feel like they need to buff the drop rate on beta keys.

reduction of view model size like winston and zenyatta and stuff would be pretty nice. reduce muzzle flash on s76.

i think the speed of the game looks pretty good. I haven't played it but the stuff above bothered me from just watching it, and the way the game looked to play seemed pretty good to me. I can't really give much more detailed feedback as i'm not in the beta ;-; but whatever kappa.

viewmodel_fov

I haven't played, but I've watched considerably, I think:

• Visual Cues for when players have/or are using an Ultimate
• Killfeed. A killfeed is more important for the eSport of it than perhaps the Devs realize.
• repositioning/removing of "5 player streak" or "you killed ___". Too much clutter on "field" of play. (a killfeed accomplishes this).
• viewmodel_fov would be super nice

edit: I also think for the health of competitive, ultimate meters should deplete with each death (maybe comp only? like how CSGO treats certain aspects). 10%-20% off an ult with each death would actually reward defenders from staving off attacking players, and make using ultimates when they are ready, a bigger more important decision.

I think everyone is pretty much unanimous in dislike of the UI. Some of the effects are just blinding, like the killstreaks or healing filter

UI needs a complete overhaul tbh,

First off, health is rediculously small for a fast paced arena shooter.
Second, a lot of things like Lucio's abilities are dead center of the screen and clog it up.
Its very easy to lose your crosshair in firefights. Custom crosshairs would be awesome.

edit: I also think for the health of competitive, ultimate meters should deplete with each death (maybe comp only? like how CSGO treats certain aspects). 10%-20% off an ult with each death would actually reward defenders from staving off attacking players, and make using ultimates when they are ready, a bigger more important decision.

This so much. They could also implement a Vitasaw-like mechanic, where you spawn with the exact ult % that you had, but only up to a certain percentage (for instance, 75% max, so if you die while having more than 75% ult, you will spawn with 75% ult regardless)

I wouldn't mind slightly longer spawn times either. Dying just needs to be slightly more punishing in general compared to how it is now.

Killfeed and low health indicator is needed.

Visual cues for ults would be a good move. Because ults are based on damage done/taken, you can't really keep track of them otherwise. Making them purely time based wouldn't work either.

I feel like health on hud needs to be more prominent. Been watching a lot of streams and even incredibly experienced FPS players from multiple games continuously seem to not notice their health trickling away. Constantly walking past packs when they are half health, it's not something I've seen on this scale in other games.

Also +1 to killfeed, but I'd actually prefere peripheral hud elements that permanently indicate teams alive/dead status. Scoreboard is really painful to have open and something that always made TF2 pov streams (a game where opening scoreboard is relatively painless) more difficult to watch was relying on the streamer to open scoreboard to see whos alive/dead.

+1 slightly increased spawn times, I'd also like to see spawn waves implemented. Seems like a pointless burden at the moment trying to coordinate off of staggered respawn times. Decent 6 queues will do this without much problem but it's a tedious mechanic to necessitate that isn't really gratifying. Waves would also streamline the pub experience.

Spec tools need a lot of work as well. I'm guessing this is considered a WIP. but they are really lacking for a game of this style hoping to be an esport.

Not the biggest problem in the world but it would be cool if you could customize your crosshair to some degree (colour, shape, scale etc). I feel like some of the crosshairs (Zarya and Hanzo come to mind) are super obnoxious and unnecessary. The dot with a circle around it is nice though

the sun not blinding you would be real neat

From a casting perspective, it would be nice if the downed heroes were a bit more grayed out/blackened as they awaited respawns. The gray outline that replaces the team color outline around the hero's portrait is too bright and the skull below them is too small. Also, a killfeed at least for spectators would be fantastic.

fov

A few things to take note of on the heroes:

• Winston's shield needs a nerf. It's currently way too game-changing at the moment. A reduction in shield health down to 750-800 would be rad. His ult INSTANTLY heals/buffs his health, that should be checked out.
• Widowmaker's scope should not charge too quickly as it can be full charged in a matter of seconds.
• McCree's damage output is amazing and could match with the Widowmaker. A small nerf of some sort would be beneficial.
• Roadhog's heals should be nerfed so that the weaker DPS characters could have a marginal chance to break through his sheer tankiness. His one-two combo is near-instant death for most heroes, if anything, there could be a fraction of a second between his chain hook and firing his shottie.
• Torbjörn could have a boost in reload speed for his gun.
• Junkrat's nade splash damage could deal less damage? He plays incredibly well on chokes.
• Zarya's shield boost on allies will block their field of vision when looking directly up due to visual clutter.

Ugh, I need to watch more streams aka I want the game aka Really badly.

• Complete rework of the UI, or create options for players to do that.
• Create some progress for your account everytime you play a game
• Create a match making rating system
• Killfeed (or just a bar on top of the screen showing who is alive just like dota 2)
• Create a UI system for spectators
• An option to whatch a stream through the game client
• Colorblind mode
• More maps and gamemodes

+1 slightly increased spawn times, I'd also like to see spawn waves implemented. Seems like a pointless burden at the moment trying to coordinate off of staggered respawn times. Decent 6 queues will do this without much problem but it's a tedious mechanic to necessitate that isn't really gratifying. Waves would also streamline the pub experience.

Increasing spawn time could change the pace of the game a little, but I like this idea.

edit: I also think for the health of competitive, ultimate meters should deplete with each death (maybe comp only? like how CSGO treats certain aspects). 10%-20% off an ult with each death would actually reward defenders from staving off attacking players, and make using ultimates when they are ready, a bigger more important decision.

This is another idea that i like, but again, it would probably change the pace of the game.

custom crosshairs + kill feed

-Free Spectator Cam (although their player switching transition is sexy as fuck).
-McCree nerf (make long range at least a little inaccurate or something). Keep him mid range poke and close destroy. He shouldn't be better at sniping than snipers are.

• Visual clutter tone down, only a tiny bit is needed, no need to go overboard as some people suggest.
• Lucio HP reduction (maybe only a little bit, but he seems too tanky compared to other supports.
• Widowmaker ult cooldown / build up reduced... it's too frequent.
• Widowmaker notification when enemy has your team marked. I know she shouts, but need to know how long tbh.
• Health turning red when low. Sometimes I don't realise I'm on 25 health. Maybe a colour change when low would help.
• Kill feed as others mentioned.
• Maybe forcing each team to have a max of 1 of each hero might improve the game. Can't see a reason to stack the same heros, but not the end of the world if this is never changed.
• As mentioned above, the skulls aren't clear enough when people are dead. Something a bit more prominent would be nice so that when you tab, you can quickly see how many of your team are down.
• Add 3 seconds to the play of the game clips. They miss so much that happens after the last kill.... like... an additional kill (plus it gives you time to taunt / emote which adds some swag).
• Not sure if Tracer should be able to get her life back when rewinding. It means a good Tracer can sit behind an enemy team for hours using her E as a quick heal. Rewinding should get you out of a tricky position, but people are just using it for the heal purpose.

UI gotta be fixed

Better match format

From what I've heard in streams and such there's no raw input currently, which is quite a shame if that's true. If it doesn't get added at some point, I wonder what blizzard would think of people using RInput or something similar to get raw input.

Stuff that seems obvious:

• UI and certain graphics elements need to be added/removed/fixed/made optional (killfeed, killstreak notifications, crosshairs, gun models, muzzle flash etc.)
• Adjustments to maps and game modes. 5 CP maps would be ideal, but is unrealistic at this stage. We at least need stopwatch mode for att/def
• One merc rule/highlander/some sort of limitation on the amount of heroes used or hero switching. Gameplay is way too chaotic as it is now, not appealing to spectators

Alot of these complaints/points are about the UI, and i think it would be cool to see them make a customizable UI, where you could place, scale or even disable different parts of the UI. Dunno if thats is asking too much of the devs.

Edit: Last bit sounded a little salty, was not meant to be.