Re: Variants vs. New Characters
To be honest, even with the original 4 characters per side and especially with the variants, we had some bleeding over, even though GW and GW2 don’t have set roles like some games do, which for me is part of their appeal. That’s to be expected though. Even TF2 which has had the same roster since launch (with alternate weapons added later which mix it up a bit), has this to a point. OW is by Blizzard so the balance there has always been a mess, and the blurring of roles makes it worse. I don’t think BfN needed to stick characters in roles like OW does, in fact, one reason I like the GW games far more than OW is not feeling required to swap classes midgame if I don’t want to, but OW’s rock-scissors-paper mechanics mean I often felt compelled to do so. I also wouldn’t mind having more than 1 healer class per side, I even designed an aloe character as a plant healer on the side. Paladins has a ton of characters and their balance isn’t exactly great either, but it works pretty well.
OW maps are so forgettable that I had a hard time telling them apart barring things like the cherry trees in Hanamura. I don’t mind BfN’s smaller maps at all, but the TT maps do feel so constrained and Tourist Trap Island’s 2nd and 3rd points are just fenced off areas in the open, making that map my least favorite TT map in a game with my least favorite TT maps of the series. I don’t mind Peachy District or Preserve Pastures, but they still lack compared to GW and GW2’s offerings here.
Making both snipers like Widowmaker was a bad move, and not a big fan of the charged snipe. The drones are too slow, my artichoke drone in GW/GW2 is faster than the BfN drones and their hit boxes are off; the Cactus’s petal power move is really buggy, I was able to take out just this weekend thanks to them being stuck in the air for a very long time, and I made sure to watch the potato mines in all three games, and you’re right about the flashing light, even the bling mines in GW2 aren’t as visible as those lights make them in BfN! I see most Cacti and Deadbeards in GW/GW2 just hanging back and sniping though. Cacti really made some GW1 maps a nightmare to attack, and they still do today! I do like how in GW2, they were quite different, although Deadbeard is better able to defend themselves at close range with the shotgun while cacti have to rely on their mines. I’d like them to have more diverse kits again.
GW1 also nerfed Berry Shooter and Agent Pea (remember when Agent Pea had 125 health?), and GW2 did fix a lot of these issues, including making Toxic Pea and Super Commando less oppressive, but those 2 characters dominate GW1. Imp Punt and Long Bomb could use more of an activation time instead of being instant. In BfN, the imp can fly oddly and I’ve seen it stuck for a long time before detonating.
And yeah, losing so many variants and dropping to 20 characters, even though we have more base characters (10 per side vs. 4 and then 7(8 with the trials characters)), than before, does feel off and getting level cap in BfN was far, far more of a chore than GW or GW2 thanks to that and the grandmaster levels being so unrewarding. In theory it’s much easier to balance 20-21 characters than 120, but some of the changes, like the Scientist insta-warp, the engineer’s main weapon and turret/ammo mechanic, and then steam blaster and brainium basher are all head-scratchers. I also don’t like healing hose as it takes away one of the things I’ve loved about healing in the GW games; being able to heal and shoot. Toxic Brainz are obnoxious but they tend to be overconfident and like Brainium Basher players in BfN, I try to take them out first when I can, although taking out ol Toxie is much easier than Brainium bashers.
People exploit the 3rd person nature a lot in all three games, and detonation characters are the worst of this. Electro-Pea is the worst offender here, but should they return in a new game, they need to be adjusted down a bit. I’m not very good at them, and you won’t see me use them much in PvP, but they are a problem in GW2. I actually like them as an idea, as they break up the typical elemental variants though.
As I said before, variants aren’t no effort to make, but they already had so many and only needed to add a few in a new game if they went that route. New characters require more effort from the ground up. Of course, if they add both new characters and variants to GW3, that’s a lot of work for sure!
Unlike Paladins or OW where anyone can play any character, they should have had 2 characters done at once and released them together; maybe making special prize maps with 2 end goal branches or something to keep them equal. It was a mistake to add one character to one side without one being added to other, especially if they wanted Battle Arena to do better. Getting rid of the role idea would help here too. I remember we discussed that adding a single new character to one side was an issue way back when we got the wizard in the first place.
For the record, if I had my way, we'd get new characters and variants. That could be a crazy amount of options, but that much variety would certainly keep me interested for a long time!
