The Great Marvel Rivals Debate ft. Flats & LytePK

In this special debate episode, we moderate Flats vs LytePK on the debate statge! 

What is Clear Comms Podcast?

A Marvel Rivals Podcast hosted by Coach Mills and CaptainCoach, two creator and educators for Marvel Rivals. We discuss all things Rivals including META, balance and the future of development. We will often debate controversial topics that surround the game and plan to bring on many exciting guests from pros to devs!!!

Lyte (00:00.428)
Ha ha ha.

Coach Mills (00:00.798)
Yeah. What's up, everybody, and welcome to a special Clearcoms episode. Today, Captain Coach and I join you as moderators covering the heavily anticipated Light versus Flats debate. Two passionate community thought leaders, but both with very different visions about the current and future state of Marvel rivals. We thought it would be best for us to sit down, hash it out, and come to some form of mutual understanding.

Flats (00:01.635)
Did I did I miss something? Shit. Okay.

Coach Mills (00:29.308)
Now, before we begin, there are three core debate outcomes that we would like to see. Number one is understand each other's point of view. Number two is to find that common ground. And number three is to find actionable solutions that both sides agree on that would improve the state of Marvel rivals. Now, thank you guys for coming. Welcome, welcome flats, welcome light. How y'all doing?

Lyte (00:53.016)
Good. Good. Thanks for the invite.

Flats (00:55.373)
Good. And thank for the invite as well. can I I I wanna half just send you guys something really quick to start off. you can show it or not show it if you'd like. whether you agree, disagree, whatever like the outcome of this at the end is, I just shared something that we had in Overwatch about six months ago, which was from the director of Overwatch, Aaron Keller. basically he admitted that Overwatch made a big mistake and like not

Listening to the community's feedback on how the game should go. Like just there was a lot of debating for the community for about a year and they stayed silent and they realize it was the wrong decision to not at least speak what their mind is. I hope Rivals does not make the same mistake and just stays silent and doesn't say anything and basically just keeps going. Whether whoever side is right, they should definitely weigh in and at least tell us like what they're thinking, because there's a lot of good discussion going around and I think it'd be very insightful to hear what they have to say.

CaptainCoach (01:53.024)
All right.

Coach Mills (01:53.128)
Yeah. Yeah, agreed.

Lyte (01:53.775)
You know what's what's really interesting? I got brought to the notice of this last night by one of my viewers. it was a clip from Boger interviewing the developers, it was Xi Yong Danny Koo, and I can't remember the other one. I'd have to go and I'll forward the clip to you guys in a second. But basically it was the developers saying that they prioritized both casual and pro players' experience. And I can't believe that that just missed my mind because I watched that live. It was in Boger's interview again, and I think that that like

I would really appreciate more clarification on their end, like what their priority is, like an update on that, 'cause it was two years ago. But the fact that they did say it in front of everybody, like on a live stream with Boger, is very interesting. So

CaptainCoach (02:32.491)
Does kind of align with the types of changes they've made in the past, if you really think about it, 'cause some do seem directed at the higher ranks, but others not so much. But

Lyte (02:37.966)
Yeah.

Coach Mills (02:42.919)
So one thing I wanted to do before we got into the debate is I think it's important to have terms defined so that we are sure to be talking about the same thing. So the first thing, the the main thing that I want defined is casual. Like what exactly does it mean to be casual? And I want to start off with you, Flats. In your mind, like as in a casual player, how do you how do you define casual?

Flats (03:06.633)
I would I think the most easily definable would be somebody who treats this game as something where they come and go based on content or updates. it would be someone that, for example, when a new season begins and there's a surge of players that are returning, whether it's for a rank reset, a new hero, whatever, I would say those people are easily the most defined as casual. Something that's a little bit more difficult to define as casual, but I would also still consider are the people that

Play frequently, meaning at least like they play after work for an hour or two every night or every other night or whatever it ends up being. but they're not in it to rank up, they're not in it to like, I need to be the best, I need to actually improve or whatnot. They might play ranked because they like to watch the funny number go up and down with their friends, but at the end of the day, when they're turning the game off, they're not like, shit, I could have done this better, or I could have improved by doing whatever it is. And moreover, are probably not watching.

Twitch streams as a great baseline. Maybe they watch like a TikTok, maybe a YouTube video, but TikTok or like the short form content is probably the furthest they engage with the community.

Coach Mills (04:16.584)
And light, what would would you agree with this term or do you is that all encompassing according to your term of casual?

Lyte (04:23.75)
I think that that hits some of it. I think casual versus competitive is more so how you actually approach the game. And I think I failed to encompass this entire definition in my video, but I think it is completely contingent on like like you can be a casual high ranked player, or you can be a competitive low ranked player. It's not intrinsically attached to your time plate, it's not intrinsic intrinsically attached to your rank. It is again completely contingent on how you actually view and approach the game. So those do tie into the things that flat said.

But I do think it's a little bit more nuanced and it it is completely predicated on the individual.

Coach Mills (04:56.859)
Right. So so it it's not what you're saying is it's not dictated at all by rank. So if if someone isn't just like grinding the game every day, trying to improve, that would still be like a competitive player.

Lyte (05:08.472)
Yeah, I mean yeah. I I think it again you'd like have to ask the person, but yeah, I I've coached plenty of people who are like Blat who have three thousand hours in the game, but they have like a competitive mentality of like their sole purpose and goal is to get better at the game, so they will sacrifice the fun factor, in order to like actually improve. And like you can look at competitive players like me for example, like I've sacrificed my fun factor to learn characters like Ultron, Mantis, Adam, so on and so forth. Like I don't want to do that, but I have to do that for the sake of like competition, so

Coach Mills (05:36.509)
Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay. Okay. Well then the immediate next question that we have now that we've defined terms is I want to hear from both of you, what is your ideal vision for the future of Marvel Rivals?

I'll give you a second to think about it and then whoever wants to go first can go.

Flats (05:56.375)
I'm ready, but if you wanna start you can start as well.

Lyte (05:59.054)
Sure. so my ideal vision is that the developers have an encompassing philosophy where they cater to both competitive players and casual players. I don't think it's an exact percentage. I think it's a case by case basis depending on the hero and the system in question. But I think that both communities and camps are important to acknowledge for the long term health of the game and we can see this reflected in many of the popular games that are on the market right now. And I think if you cater two to like more like one extreme or the other,

you're gonna have a varying degree of problems that may not be foreseen by like the other side. Like if you only cater to casuals, it's gonna hurt gameplay loops in systems that make the game cause retention. Because something like skill expression is something that people enjoy. You like being rewarded for your investment into a character or like making a good play or outplaying someone or like improving. Like that is a big retention factor that keeps people playing the game.

But you have to diminish that if you want to make it more accessible, which goes to the casual camp. So there has to be a balance and an acknowledgement of two and they have to coexist. And again, I don't think it's like an exact percentage. And you can also have it be the case where you can have a system in place that is catered to one where it ruins the game, but that does not therefore mean that that philosophy is bad. Like people people will give an example of, X game did Y thing that catered to one camp or the other, therefore the other side is better.

one instance of that occurring does not completely like make the other side not valuable or encompassing or that needs to be understood. So

Coach Mills (07:32.56)
Okay.

Do you have any specific examples of that? is it so like what you would say is like a like a game that balanced around hyper competitiveness but died? Isn't isn't like a that isn't an example to be used against all competitive games, right? Or all multiplayer games.

Lyte (07:50.376)
I can't think off the top of my head of a hyper competitive example, but like a hyper casual example would be like Helldivers. I don't know anything about Helldivers, but I've seen countless people tell me that Helldivers went like pure casual, completely ignored its competitive and committed player base, and they implemented systems and changes that overall like killed the game over time. Now I I don't know that for certain because I don't know anything about Helldivers, that's what people were telling me. And the inverse, I suppose the Apex example, which I don't know anything about Apex at all.

But people have told me that Apex, I think Flatsu mentioned this as well, that Apex implemented a change that was for the hyper competitive community that killed the game. I don't know anything about these two instances, but my point is that just because Helldivers Yeah, yeah, we can we can get to it after I finish my point. But the existence of of Apex instilling that system that catered to hyper competitive does not therefore mean that you should never cater to hyper competitive, and the same thing with hell divers with the casuals. There needs to be a balance.

Flats (08:30.307)
Would you like to see? I have some of the data if you'd like to look at it. Yeah, go ahead, sorry.

Coach Mills (08:34.048)
yeah.

Coach Mills (08:50.339)
flats does this how does his vision for the future of rivals di differ from yours, if if at all?

Flats (09:01.837)
Sorry, I'm just sending you 'cause it actually

Coach Mills (09:03.313)
Yeah, I c l let me I can pull up the data first if you want me to do that.

Flats (09:06.865)
I mean it has to do with Apex. I want to kind of respond to what he was saying too, but I just wanna to cause just because we were talking about it. and what, you know, people kinda how they kind of felt about the game. so that season that he's talking about was actually season sixteen. No, actually was it season sixteen? I think it was season thirteen actually. if I believe correctly, where they basically tried to implement new systems.

for the game where they were trying to replicate high-level play into ranked, and they had every sign to do that, which was a very healthy, very well respected esport at the time. Their top streamer was Imperial Howl. I'd get like 30,000 viewers a night when it was during pro scene with TSM. sorry, I sent you a bunch of them as we work our way through it. and I sent you a screenshot of

What I wanted to at least focus on mostly, was that era of season thirteen, which was in May of 2022, which is in the screenshot I I sent you. and you can actually see where their player base, it was a brand new season, only went up by and if you look go down to May 2022, it actually only went up by about two thousand average players for a brand new season.

Coach Mills (10:10.673)
Okay, yeah, let me let me let me go and know.

Flats (10:31.761)
which if you see some of the other numbers in there, plus the 47,000, which was season 14, you see season I think it was either 16 or 17, which was the February, they would always have these huge spikes in player bases during a start of a new season. players hated it, and casual players hated the ranked changes so much that actually within half a season, they basically removed all of the changes that they had made to ranked that were making making the game reflect pro play.

And reflect higher level ranked. and it split the community in half, where half the community now believed that they were catering to pros, and the other half believed that they were now catering to casuals because they didn't let it cook for long enough. and actually from the overall chart, which is I send you the big one, I should have sent you screenshots from 2022 and then to like 2024, 25. the game actually never totally recovered. that actually started its biggest downhill slide.

And season 16, which is the other screenshot I sent you, was arguably considered the most casual season. and if you check with when that came out, which was February 14th, and then you check their increase of player base on February 2023, that is by far one of the biggest jumps in numbers of players that the game has had. but what it ended up doing was it made ranks super simple.

kind of like how ranked is in Rivals, where it rewarded you mostly for playtime as opposed for placement or for kills or for actually putting in time and effort. and that reflected with the pro community being very ups outspoken that they were quote unquote not like doing right by the game. And this was Apex trying to have its cake and eat it too by doing casual and competitive play and balancing for both. and nowadays it's actually much more casual, but it like it's casual, but.

All the casuals have left, so they've kind of like gone back towards competitive, but like they're playing, they're treating it competitively with just goofy aspects in a lot of way. This or at least to for today. that said though, I think that Apex is a good example to look at as they had every sign to go competitive and probably did it too early. What the question was originally that you posed was what is the ideal future for rivals? I think that I actually believed prior to season nine that

Flats (12:50.689)
Rivals was kind of getting to the point where it probably wants to go more competitive because it's getting more and more difficult as a casual player to return to the game or to get into the game. The skill floor has come up. just Q and quick play, you know, from the eye test, you if you quite cue quick play, it's very difficult. Like people are sweating their balls off. and so you're getting to a point like, okay, we might have to treat this more competitively. Then season nine drops and any semblance of balance is gone. It's out the window, and every character has been power crept to the moon.

So they don't want it to be more competitive. They want it to be more casual. And so if that's the way they're going and that's what gets people excited and coming back to the game, it's in their best interest to continue to do that. I would say for probably about another year, maybe another year and a half, give or take, until it gets to the point where new players really can't come in because it's too difficult. And then you start making the switches towards becoming a more competitive long-term game. Cause you can only be a casual game that people come and go from for so long. History has shown this with Call of Duty.

Fortnite, Overwatch, you ca which like you came from Overwatch, you know that like back in the day they were very casual, twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen. Then they kind of switched to competitive around twenty eighteen with Overwatch League. That was when things kind of started to have a little bit of of a rift in the community. And I actually I went and tried to go back to find some old posts about that. I found a couple that are just hilariously stupid. but regardless though, I think the future eventually of rivals will go that competitive route. But right now they have a casual base, lean on them.

Try to make it so it's just a fun, goofy game for them as long as possible. Keep that magic as long as you can. And then once it naturally starts to fade away, then you can start to make it more competitive.

Coach Mills (14:27.943)
So before I I let Light respond, I kinda wanna follow up that question based on what you said. Because I don't know if you still have this take, but I I do remember the last time you were on and you made a video about it as well, that you wanted the team up system reverted, at least partially reverted. But the team up system is also part of the reason why you think that we can no longer go down that competitive route. So it just

As an example, like if if the team up system did get reverted or the power got nerfed substantially and there was some form of understanding again with the c more casual community, do you then believe that we could go down a more competitive route if those things happened?

Flats (15:08.939)
It's possible someday for for absolute it's for sure. It absolutely is possible someday. However, up until 8.5, I mean, people are still following the same system of new hero comes out, new content comes out, people come back, they go, yay, this is fun, or they go, this isn't so great, and then they piece out. I do think that balance though is a little bit difficult in rivals, specifically because of how polarized everything is. Numbers are so high, damage is so high.

Healing is so high. And when you want to balance a game, a lot of that stuff needs to come down. You can't have as much exploding, you can't have as much hypermobility, stuff like that. There needs to be counterplay, there needs to be things not just on the high end, but for the for the metal rank players as well. And right now, like Rivals was kind of moving in that direction, season eight, season eight point five, where maybe correct me if I'm wrong, most tanks, almost all of them, felt somewhat playable.

Most supports, if not all supports, felt somewhat playable. DPS, maybe 50% of the roster. There's a good 50% in there that's not very great. But now it's more polarized than ever. And so when I said to remove the team ups, it was what they took was a lot of their base kits which are already strong and jacked them up to the moon. And like, yeah, it's more fun, but half the roster falls behind in that. And it's not a team up system anymore. It's not a reward for working with your teammates.

I'm okay with leaving it in there in like let's say you remove the base state, leave the enhanced state, and then that's the all the time, just like the system used to work. That's fine if you want to do that. What my biggest biggest gripe was was you basically just gave everyone extra buttons. And so you've closed a lot of timing kill windows where like dive is really hard to get kills now, unless you have like a lot of follow up. And I just don't think that made the game very fun for people. Like just giving them a bunch of new buttons and a bunch of new abilities like seems cool at first.

But it's not even just a balanced thing. It's mostly just like when everyone can't die, then like what are we doing? We're all just kind of standing around looking at each other, you know? sorry, we're probably gone a little bit too long. But basically the point I was trying to say is like before season nine, I was kind of leaning that as as well. Like someday it is possible. Right now, now I kind of think, okay, now just extend it on longer. Someday that day will come. I just don't think we're there right now.

CaptainCoach (17:33.302)
So, I wanna direct it back to you now, Light. Flats refers to the timing of attracting certain types of players as good for the health of the game. Do you think he's right in in his assessment of Marvel rivals kind of needing to min max almost the the the type of people they attract, like casuals more now, competitive people more later? Do you think there's any credence in that argument or would you go a different route?

Lyte (18:00.322)
Well, I agree with the sentiment that over time the game becomes more casual because every game every new game has novelty and especially with Rivals' IP, it attracted a lot of people that it otherwise wouldn't have if it was just some random new hero shooter on the market. But I think all of the the the new systems and additions that have catered towards the casual community that have made the game unlike not as fun to play

For example, Cloak and Dagger having three invincibility buttons, Luna Snow being able to instantly cleanse herself, like systems like that that we can point to and see like, okay, this makes the game less fun, but this was something that was catered to because people are complaining about XYZ reason. all of that kind of ties in intrinsically with what I'm trying to get at versus experience versus opinion. And everyone's experience is valuable, but not every not everyone's opinion has the same weight. it's like how a a hotel, if you were a guest at a hotel and

every guest's experience is valuable, but not all of their feedback and opinions about that experience is valuable. Or at least shouldn't be as considered as highly. And when you do cater to everyone's opinion about how something should be changed, even if they don't know what they're talking about for XYZ reason, then you get to issues where the game quality overall goes down. And there's an idea that, well, casuals and competitive are like they're they're in two different camps and improving one

takes away from another when you can do things that objectively make the game better for everyone. And I think with the whole novelty thing, going back to that point, like as the game goes on, the only people who are going to stick around are the people who genuinely love and enjoy the game. And then you might have people come back for like the new updates to their favorite characters. Like we saw a massive resurgence for Deadpool, for example. But they don't stick around, so like that's why we need that retention and we need systems in place that reward

skill expression that reward counterplay, that reward all these different pillars that make the game good without sacrificing total accessibility. It's a balance.

CaptainCoach (19:59.528)
flats, I I can give you a chance to respond or I have a question actually for you that's kind of in that ballpark. Okay. So to light's point, deadlock, I I would consider myself by by your definition a a casual deadlock player. I'm also a casual league player, a casual game called Team or TF2 or sorry, Legion T D two, not TF2. my question is

Flats (20:05.593)
Please go ahead.

CaptainCoach (20:26.531)
Is so I I like to play those games for their competitive aspects, and I'm sure there's a lot of people who play rivals casually who enjoy it for the competitive aspects. Do you think there is a portion of the casual player base for Marvel rivals who only interface with the game casually because it's not competitive enough? Do you think that's a a a a portion of the audience, a percentage of the audio audience?

Worth catering to.

Lyte (20:57.848)
I also have a question too flats on top of that. So why do you feel it's the case that over time, like like netties needs to squeeze out as much casual value as possible before they switch to competitive?

Flats (21:12.067)
W I thought Coach's question was to you. Was it to be?

Lyte (21:15.095)
It was to you.

CaptainCoach (21:15.241)
It was to it was to you, Flats. Yeah.

Flats (21:17.435)
it was to me. Okay. I do believe that actually. I do believe that they do that. Did I grab it actually?

Flats (21:31.193)
Let me see if I did. No, I didn't grab it. So when I was looking into some other games just to see what their history has been, I was looking into Fortnite specifically, and there was just a clip of casual streamer who basically was just crashing out, who was like, I can't even play this game anymore because every game is so sweaty and I'm getting basically boxed in and I'm trying not to sit here and entertain and like I can't even do anything. And they were playing casual solos, right? And I just happened to scroll a little bit of Twitch yesterday.

Outside of the people that you know in your high-ranked games, if you ever scrolled through and just watched some people that play in the middle ranks, like what they do, they play like Cloak and Dagger, they play like Squirrel Girl, Scarlet Witch, Moon Knight, and they just kind of like run it down and they just have a good time and they're playing ranked, but they're mostly there just to kind of have some fun with it. And I think when the game gets harder and harder and more difficult, mechanically, game sense-wise, etc., there's a turnoff to people who don't want to play it, right? Like they're like, this is just too much of an investment. And I don't think.

Rivals at its core has that comp competitive like base, like of say Deadlock. Deadlock from its base is a hyper competitive game. And they're leaning into that and they know that. Rivals, I wouldn't say, is totally there, just from the way certain mechanics work, right? The way certain characters work with each other. They just when I when we played Overwatch, certain abilities that we see sometimes in Rivals are just ridiculous. Like that would just never either never exist or

Or that would be such a long cooldown that, you know, you might as well not even put it there. and I think that is something that Rivals understands is that people play it because they can just kind of mindlessly play it and they feel good about ranking up and they feel like they're having a good time with their friends and it's enjoyable. Whether you agree with that sentiment or not is not totally what I'm getting at. But I do think that there is a lot to it. Yeah. and like, can you restate your question? Sorry, one more time. I I was trying to do one at a time.

Lyte (23:25.364)
Yeah. well I'll restate my question, but I also have another question, in reference to what you were just talking about. So my initial question was why do you feel that rivals need to squeeze out as much as the casual player base as possible before it solely has to gravitate towards the competitive base? And then the follow up question of that is I feel like you are comparing the power level of rivals kits relative to other games when it needs to be relative to rivals itself. So comparing like a Loki lamp to a Baptiste lamp isn't necessarily fair. We need to compare a Loki's lamp to the rest of the rivals' kit.

'cause that's like the game that we're talking about, insofar as like the actual like what's the word I'm looking for? Function of casual versus competitive in the game. Not so much so of where we should approach it relative to other games, but how does each character's power level interact with the other ones? Because just because a wacky ability exists, it might not be as wacky if other wacka wacky abilities exist within the same sandbox. It's wacky compared to Overwatch, but within rivals, like a Loki lamp like whatever. Because we have

Characters flying across the map, teleporting, making themselves invincible, five hundred AoE healing circles and so on and so forth, but yeah.

Flats (24:30.019)
So I guess let me ask this is the second one first then. How are you gonna make that balanced? If everyone has these wacky abilities that are people are flying across the map, everyone has infinite circles of healing where they cannot die, instantly getting resed. You know, you can do it multiple times a fight as we're watching right now in high rank play. You know, what level of balance can be attained there? Especially when you're talking people that literally don't miss a cooldown, don't miss a a a shot, etc., versus everybody else who, you know, let's say Hella for a good example.

If you're playing Hella at a high rank, let's say you hit four out of five shots consistently. If you're playing Hella in the metal ranks, you might hit two out of five if you're lucky, right? So it's like Hella on average probably gets much more value at a high rank than it does at a metal rank. How are you going to balance it for the two of those and then take that to the extreme with tons of abilities where you get res, tons of abilities where you know you can save yourself six times. You're alive with an ult for 12 seconds. That's what I kinda it's not just relative to this game versus others. It's relative towards

How are you gonna balance any of those things ever?

Lyte (25:33.624)
You balance it using a combination of empirical data and subjective player sentiments. So in the video, which I'm assuming most of the people watching have seen it, I talk about how to actually interpret empirical data and how it can be useful d for determining like how you should actually go about balancing the game with the combination of the nuances that I listed, like people swapping when they're losing, or one trick squeezing out more value, or smurfs or whatever. there's a whole bunch of them. So when you use that on top of

accounting for people's pain points, like Black Panther one shotting you, or Black Cat being uninteractable, like that type of thing. Like in my vision of how they should approach balancing the game, it should be accounting for everyone's experience. So address the characters that are uninteractive that people don't like playing against. One shots, things that you can't interact with, like characters with a bunch of iframes, like stuff like that that is universally not fun to play against, b like basically everyone can agree on.

And then you go from a top down because the top experiences the balance the most intensely. And this is kind of get into where we degree or disagree on objectivity versus subjectivity with balance, which I actually think there's a there's a component of relativity, which I'll get into later. But when you go from top down and then you account for characters that are making people's lives and experiences worse, it allows us to have a balance where we can encompass everybody and all of the the ranks and elos matter.

Flats (27:00.153)
Sorry, you can see some?

CaptainCoach (27:02.152)
it's your chance to respond. If not I have you know, I can have a follow up. It's up totally up to you.

Flats (27:06.275)
Sure. I mean, so some of the things you're talking about, like for reworks, or so some of the characters like Black Panther or or for Black Cat for having these invulnerabilities or one-shots, you're basically asking then for reworks, which is not something we really have even seen in Rivals outside of Black Widow. so what do you do with the characters in the meantime then? You just leave them in a p in a state where they just suck? Just all the time? So I feel like that's happened though, and people will get very upset over time. Black Panther's a good example, right? He was kinda awful for a very long time.

Lyte (27:25.378)
Yes. You have to. You have to, yeah.

Flats (27:34.997)
And whether it's because of their dev cycle, right? Like they're putting out 12 heroes a year. That is ridiculously fast. Never mind maps, never mind balance patches, et cetera, et cetera. That is insanely fast. So there might not be a pipeline to really go back to those old heroes as frequently. Black Cat's another great example with the invulnerability frames and whatnot. They did that, right? Between her 7.5 release to this season with nine. They made her horrible after that, right? They they just they just

Did as much as they could to just shoot her, just like take her out, right? But then people are like, Well, you release these new characters for us to play, and then you you kill it within a week, like that's not or within a month. It's just not very fun, it's not very enjoyable. So that couldn't you c take it to the next level then with certain characters? It's like, let's use Phoenix as a good example, right? Phoenix in most of the ranks is not a problem, right? But like when you start to get it up high, she is a problem, right? It's like she becomes very strong, or historically it's been very strong, right?

Can we agree on that? So were you say you need to nerf Phoenix at the highest rank then and make her even worse? Like, cause there was a season or two there where Phoenix was still good at high ranks with like a 49, 48% win rate. And then in the metal ranks had like 40, like almost one of the worst DPS in the game. And it's like, are you gonna then say that, you know, because at the high ranks she's somewhat decent, at these metal ranks, we're just gonna make her borderline unplayable. And that's gonna be fun for all the other heroes we're gonna apply that to long term.

Even though that's ninety seven percent of our player base.

Lyte (29:07.554)
I think the way that you approach it, well I'll I'll adjust Phoenix in a second, but Black Cat and Black Panther, whenever I say rework, I shouldn't I shouldn't say that the character needs a total overhaul like Black Widow, because Black Widow was fundamentally broken in her design, because you can't have a character have a hit scan one shot. They learned that from Overwatch. Everyone knows that hit scan one shots aren't fun. So Black Widow needed to be changed, but Black Panther and Black Cat just need number adjustments. Black Cat needs to have her her iframes or invisibility addressed. That character needs like what they did and how they changed her.

They didn't actually address the problem, which is she's more invisible than invisible woman. They touched all of her shop items and made them all more expensive, but not the actual invisibility, which is what people have a problem with. And I personally think that she needs the iframes to be able to dodge retaliation. So like Luna Snow Luna Freeze, Luna Charm, White Fox Charm, whatever it may be, when she goes in a backline, think of it as a Daredevil Deflect or an Iron Fist Block or a Magic Portal. Like she needs that to be a character.

What the problem is is that when you combine that with invisibility and put that iframe on a two second cooldown, it's too much and it's overwhelming. So the iframe needs to like four seconds, and then we need to give players incentive to use other shop items besides the inches of visibility. So like you can keep the price, but add like an internal cooldown and then make the other shop items cheaper so you could do tricky port like portal tactics or make the cleanse better or something, you know, like there are ways that you can go about addressing black cat's pain points.

without making her unplayable or designating the entire team to rework her while keeping up the same content cycle. Like it's just number adjustments. And same thing with Black Panther. Like BP, his issue is he either one shots you or he's worthless. So the Black Panther needs to you need to adjust the damage and then give him an ability or some type of way to deal with retaliation without leaning too much into like you still can't do anything, right? Because when he's in dashing Yeah. Yeah. So like for

Flats (30:50.969)
Can you give an example of what you mean by that? Like what do you mean for like an e like an ability?

Lyte (30:55.446)
Yeah, so for Black Panther, like for BP in Pacific or just a b an ability in general. Okay, so my adjusted change or suggested changes for Black Panther is lower his damage, increase his survivability. So for example, we make his dash damage do twenty damage, as he dashes more, dash three, four, five times, the damage scales up to like let's say ten damage the more it is now. So it rewards the player for being able to consistently hit your dashes, promote skill expression.

Flats (30:58.701)
Yeah, yeah, for VPN specifically.

Lyte (31:20.15)
It gives you more time as the receiver to deal with him and to deploy your counterplay like your cloak bubble, like your Adam Soul Link, whatever it may be. And it also makes it more interactive for the BP because he has more uptime. So you lower his cooldowns, lowers damage, and then give him an ability to deal with crowd control. So like a Mundo passive, for example. If those for those who don't know, Mundo in League of Legends is a tank where he has a passive ability when he gets hit by CC, it doesn't count for one instance of CC, and like a little thing drops on the ground, he can go and pick it up and then get it back. But that doesn't really matter. But it doesn't have to be that.

It just has to be some type of way that he could deal with hard C C.

Flats (31:56.227)
Sure. so I gotta ask, do you not think like, let's say you made it 20 damage? Like let's now we're giving him like four spears or something, so he like can really just keep moving constantly. You don't think people would go bananas on both ends, where people would go, my god, I do no damage. I'm literally the tickle monster. And then two, where like you said, you're now rewarding hitting multiple spears. You so you've already watched the BPs now. They only have two da like two dashes with like spears, right? What you're

implying then is he would need to have lower cooldowns and even more of those potentially because he's doing it more often to give more time to react. Do you think like those like let's just say like a gold controller player. If you ever watched a gold controller player fight against the BP, it's just like watching a very small, like a slow turret turn each way. Do you don't think they wouldn't freak out if he already does it twice and they die? If he does it five times and then they die? Like I don't

CaptainCoach (32:39.457)
Mm-hmm.

Lyte (32:46.2)
That's not what I'm saying. And it's also the Black Panther and Gold, like a controller Black Panther and Gold is not going to be turning their camera. It's the same thing. They'll be turning around slowly to dash again. I'm not saying that you give him forty five million dashes. I'm just saying like his dash cooldown right now is ten seconds, make it eight. It doesn't have to be anything crazy.

Flats (33:04.089)
Yeah, but if he was going to twenty damage, right? Like for your like what the example we were saying, like he's doing significantly less, right? So it's like

Lyte (33:07.99)
Yeah, it was just it doesn't have to be twenty. It's like an example. Like it could be forty, it could be whatever. Like you'd have to play test it of course.

Flats (33:13.655)
Sure. I Yeah, and I and I'm saying though, is like if you're going to lower it that much, like how okay, so like BP right now, you have to commit double spear, double dash to get a kill on most targets, right? So it's like if he's doing already that right now, if you're going to lower that beyond, then you'd have to give other things to eventually secure that kill. Unless we're just saying, like, if you're going to hit all of your abilities, it's not enough damage to secure the kill, right? So then you're saying that there would have to be more.

Given more to his kits, with survivability and whatnot. Right? That that was the idea.

Lyte (33:46.412)
It's it's kinda like how how Spider Man is balanced. They actually do a pretty good job with balancing melee characters' breakpoints in this game for the most part. There there's some instances, of course, but like Spider-Man, for example, the easiest combo that he has to access only does like two hundred and ten damage or something like that. And it you have to do like this really long overhead in order to actually secure the kill on most targets, which gives people plenty of time of for retaliation. And so like BP's numbers need to be balanced the same way, where it's like his bread and butter cannot kill you.

But if he's able to execute a more difficult combo or follow up, like he can weave in melees, or if he just gets some crazy chain because he's really, really fast, like he should be rewarded for that.

Flats (34:26.657)
And by the way, I'm only pressuring you on this because that's how difficult balance is. So when I say, like, you know, with the hypothetical numbers, like, okay, well, where that changes a lot of his breakpoints. That changes the way that he's going to be handled. And now we're saying, like, like mix in some melees and stuff like that. That's a whole new like phenomena to his kit, like something that maybe they're not as useful or used to doing. And it's like, is there not maybe a potential possibility that they kind of already do that? But they're trying to think about how one, those BP players are going to feel using the kit.

Two, how the breakpoints currently already work. And three, like working within the best of their abilities now without a rework. Because like we can put clearly both agree that the character sucks. Like he just either is gonna be awful or is going to be, yeah, it's just it's just not good for anything. But if they can't do a rework right now, and like they really don't want to throw him in the trash, because I would say BP is a a pretty, pretty popular Marvel character, and their whole I ideology is sorry, I have alerts on, I had to mute it really quick. Their whole ideology is.

Lyte (35:07.608)
Very toxic, yeah.

Flats (35:24.715)
Is that they want people to hop in and play their s favorite superheroes and have fun. That's stuff that they've specifically said. They don't want these kit like these characters to be so ass, they're never unplayable. So what they'll do to us is say, hey, here's a season of BP, and then three seasons of no BP, which is like kind of how it's gone. But when you change it so fundamentally, like, which I'm not I'm open to by the way, I'm not like against it. you'd have to give something back in other ways. Cause like the way he currently works with his current breakpoints, you know, like.

You can you can achieve a kill if you hit all of your buttons and hit all of your cooldowns. But if we're gonna give him some kind of stacking thing where he's getting more as he goes, well, then it sounds like he needs an extra spear. Maybe it does less damage and the dash does less damage, but now he has an extra one. So now he's dashing even more than he currently was. So that's like on their end, they're just seeing the dashing the same way they did before, if not more intensely, right? So like the reason why I'm I'm pressing you so much on that specifically is because it is difficult, right? Like

The way we perceive the game as like a higher rank player and way everyone else perceives the game as in the metal ranks and another 95% of the game is very different. And so to them, that shit either way probably is gonna look broken, even though to us it might look more balanced. And so trying to find that balance is pretty difficult when a character is fundamentally flawed, and there is a lot of characters that are fundamentally flawed in rivals.

Anyways, that sorry, I I was just I want the reason I was harping so much on specifics is because, you know, if we're gonna give like an actual rework design or we're gonna talk about like what to add, it's like, what do we add? Right. And then what are the consequences of adding those things?

Lyte (37:04.12)
Yeah, yeah, those are important considerations, but I think I I don't think that the the suggested changes for Black Panther, like I'm not saying to give him four, five, six spears, have him infinitely dash. It's more so you increase the amount of counterplay that can be deployed from the person receiving the Black Panther's damage, but you also increase the skill expression of the Black Panther insofar as that like he's rewarded for hitting consistent chain dashes, but his damage isn't at a degree where he can secure a kill by himself.

unless he plays the matchup perfectly or hits a hard combo or a combo that takes longer to s get off. And it also like yeah, the whole reason

Flats (37:37.921)
Right, and I understood that. I was saying, like, you said that the the window the way I mean you said like how do you give them more of a window to react, right? And it sounded like it was making it require more dashes or require more ability hits, right?

Lyte (37:53.196)
I mean consequently by his damage, but that doesn't therefore mean that it's like he's going to be dashing three hundred million times because what you have is a the survivability increase results in him getting more dashes on you, but it's not more dashes in that one instance, right? So like keep his kit the exact same, lower his dash to let's say six to eight seconds, right? But he has some type of passive or some other ability that gives him a way to deal with crowd control. Now the Black Panther player has a way to not instantly die when he gets in.

Or not or to wait to deal with getting marked by like an Angela or a Daredevil in the sideline so he can actually go to do what he needs to do. Once he's actually in, he's not instantly killing you, both sides have counterplay, and the interaction is much more engaging.

Flats (38:39.171)
I understand. I get where you're where you're getting at. I'm just saying, like, for like since we're talking such an example here, like can we be more specific? And so you're saying give it something for more survivability, right? And you're also saying taking away the ability to one-shot you. So that would be fundamentally giving it getting him to a point where unless you're hitting a melee, he could not double spear, double dash you. So he would just not have an ability with using his full kit to get a kill. You would be removing that.

Lyte (38:54.69)
Yes.

Lyte (39:08.28)
yes. Yes, I would say so, yeah.

Flats (39:11.715)
I think that would get a lot of pushback from people that actually play the characters and they would not think that's a a fair trade in any way, shape, or form, because they're still going to get chased down if you remove the cooldown from eight to six. That that doesn't do anything. And so what I'm trying to point out here is there is a lot more to consider.

Lyte (39:28.566)
I d I don't agree. I've talked with like plenty of Black Panther players and plenty of people across the ranks and like the issue with Black Panther is his ability to one shot you and the Black Panther players are okay with doing less damage, having more survivability.

Flats (39:41.015)
And I agree. I'm not I'm not disagreeing with that, but how we're actually implementing it without a rework.

Lyte (39:48.194)
Yeah, I mean I mean it depends what you mean by rework. Like is it a total kit overhaul or is it a adjustment of cooldowns and the addition of an ability?

Flats (39:58.071)
Either one. And I'm open to either one. I'm just saying, what are we doing with that?

Coach Mills (39:58.268)
I think

Lyte (40:03.628)
Yeah, I just I I mean I just explained but you just said that you disagreed and then you said like you referenced how people wouldn't want that, but I can say from and again this is anecdotal and the people watching can feel free to chime in, but I feel like Black Panther's biggest issue that people complain about is getting one shot. And so if the effort and the goal to make Black Panther a less toxic character is to deal with the one shot, while preserving the hero fantasy which is important to make him still feel like the king of Wakanda, we need to give the King of Wakanda a way to actually deal with what's in the game now.

Which is Cloak has four million diff defensive cooldowns. Luna can cleanse herself instantly, frees you, and has more damage than half the DPS in the game. Like so on it Ostron can fly. Like supports have so many options for retaliation now that their ability to deploy counterplay versus Black Panther's ability to actually get in and kill you as you go up the ranks is asymmetrical. It is so much easier for the cloak and dagger player to look at the ground and press bubble.

Then it is for the Black Panther to actually get in range and do what he needs to do. So just make the character less volatile.

Coach Mills (41:05.041)
So so bef

Flats (41:05.399)
Yeah, that sounds like it's the the the supports though, not BP, mostly.

Lyte (41:09.078)
It's both. It's both.

Coach Mills (41:11.655)
So before we get in the weeds here, by the way, is my mic sound okay? I I changed some settings. I hope I hope it sounds okay. so before we get in the weeds here, I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna ask you kind of a follow up question, Light, and then I wanna ask each of y'all a specific question. so first off, like so you have a lot of these these ideas about like increasing the counterplay points and increasing the skill expression of certain characters. And what what right, yeah.

Flats (41:14.99)
You're good, you're good.

CaptainCoach (41:15.372)
No, you're good now.

Lyte (41:36.14)
Without the compromise of accessibility. Sorry, I have to add that in, I don't want to be misconstrued. There has to be skill expression without the total compromise of accessibility. And total compromise is really important there.

Coach Mills (41:46.098)
So

Right. but one of the things that Flat said is that, you know, a lot of these problematic characters, they have to often be shelved because, you know, the devs aren't going to be able to instantly fix these problems. So a compromise for you, are you willing to have characters be shelved for long periods of time if it means that they will eventually be reworked into something that actually has exactly what you're talking about? That the that natural skill curve, much more like pain points addressed.

This might mean that a character is put in a bad state for many months, half a year. I mean, we saw how long characters are put into a bad state. I think that current thing is happening with Hawkeye right now, where the the pain points are too much. So they've just they've just allowed that character to just be very bad. So is that a reasonable thing for you where it's, you know, we we are okay with characters being bad as long as when they finally are being addressed, these things are being met.

Lyte (42:47.136)
One hundred percent. I think that's completely natural and you see it happen in every game. Like sometimes characters when you're designing a character, there's just unforeseen externalities or sorry, unforeseen idiosyncrasies that are come out of the character and they just can't they just can't predict it. And so they release a character that is just horrible for the game and it just has to be bad or it ruins the player's experience. And again, we have to we have to account for everyone's experience in the fun factor.

Because that is like the the the majority of the player base and it's good that they're having like an enjoyable experience. At the same time, we cannot totally compromise what makes the game good because of the opinions of those people who don't actually understand what makes that experience good and bad. Like it's the it's the dynamic between experience versus opinion. And experience is how do you feel? Opinion is how would you change it. And not everyone's gonna have the same knowledge or understanding of how to change something for the better. They will just go off of this is how I feel, and then that's it. Like

A gold cloak and dagger player will experience dying to Black Panther that's smurfing, and then their opinion changes of guys, we need to gut this character completely, even though they just haven't deployed the counterplay that they have in their kit, that shuts him down completely. And so I'm okay with them keeping BP in the gutter, keeping like Hawkeye in the gutter, until they find a way to make those characters not as bro like sorry, not as unfun to play against. Because like, and again we we have to address this point between objectively and subjectively.

But in my worldview, if there is an objective balance, and given there's an objective balance, if Hawkeye and BP are objectively bad characters, it doesn't matter because they make the lower the lower players experience miserable. So keep them shit, that's fine.

Coach Mills (44:28.569)
Is is that something that you can agree upon, Flats? Because I think what Light is getting at here is that you can preserve and even improve the casual player experience while still taking high rank balance into account.

Flats (44:41.699)
Sure, I mean, he is correct about what he's just said. Like, it is not wrong to say if a cloak gold gold cloak player is not having fun and they're like, I this isn't great. You're they're allowed that, and actually, if anything, you should listen. But the problem becomes when the the gold cloak player says, I'm not having fun because it's this Black Panther character. He's too strong, he keeps killing me.

Well, okay, they're not wrong technically, that is what is happening to them, but they're also just not playing the character that they're playing correctly. So you have to figure out some kind of middle ground between. It's like, okay, they're not having fun clearly with this interaction. How do we solve it? And so a lot times the solution that they put forward is incorrect. So we're in agreement, 100%. Like they're not, they typically have the what they think is they have a problem. Them saying it that is a problem is not bad and it's not wrong.

Sometimes the solution that is offered is in fact wrong. And that being able to look through the weeds of though, of seeing, okay, they're not having fun with this. They said this is the problem, but like, let's see if it's actually that or it's something else. A lot of times it's actually something else. And being able to pick out where it is is it's a skill. It's actually a little bit difficult to do, and most people cannot do it. Where it becomes a bit of a problem though, I think, is where you say like a character stays in a perma dead, perma shit state.

because like that's just never fun, right? Like that's just never fun for those those players. And I'm not saying that you need to always leave them in a or a perma shit state. I think that most of the time leaving them in a perma shit state is a good example. Hawkeye, I think that when he's meta, it's just not fun. It's just not a good time for anyone. and I don't think he's even viewed as a high skill character because in the metal ranks, you just play him as a spam character. in the higher ranks, it's like, you know, okay, this guy like he can aim a little bit, he just hits a headshot, and I just explode. One shots are just never fun to play.

play against, right? But from Netius's persp perspective, I bet they're kind of like, we can't leave this guy in the gutter forever. Like these are there's people that play this guy and they want to play him, you know. We have to find out something. And I think like the Psylock team up was a good example where they tried to shift that power into like this like sh weird hybrid shotgun style, you know, bow and arrow style, to make it so that he does like good damage still like he previously did, but without

Flats (47:09.475)
The one-shot headshot factor. And if I was to make a guess, I bet in the metal ranks that's still decently strong. Cause like, you know, I make content saying, like, this character is just not very good. Hawkeye for an example. And people are like, what do you mean in my games? I I fucking shoot on people in Hawkeye. God, that drives me up a wall. But like, there's probably a little bit of something to it where in like the bronze to gold, maybe plat range, they get away with that because he now has power shooting at tanks and shooting at other things. You don't to worry about headshots. And he does good damage without the the one-shot factor.

so it seems like they're trying other ways already to make some of these characters somewhat playable for everyone. And then at the higher ranks, like that team up really didn't do shit. So it didn't, it doesn't, it doesn't make a difference. He's still ass. and so like I I agree. I agree. Like, you know, there's times where you want to leave them just shit, but I also think like leaving them shit forever is also not the play. And I think having a season or a half season like they did with BP.

You know, you throw them a bone every once in a while and it kind of reminds everyone, my god, this character is insane. And maybe it pushes more towards a rework, you know? Cause I guess the the best I can think of right now is like Scarlet Witch. That character's always been terrible. That character is honestly one of the most popular MCU characters. But in bronze to plat, she's really good. So what do you do? Right? Like in those ranks, she's she works. She's very, very fun. But beyond it, you can't use her at all. Do you change her? Because she's just shit?

Lyte (48:34.238)
No. It's completely it's completely fine to have characters that are good in low ranks and bad in high ranks. Like completely fine. That's like supernatural. Think of Sombra. Sombra was always terrible, but she was so miserable to play against. And when she was good, the game was like actually like for anyone in the Overwatch girl, like who likes having your abilities turned off? Miserable. And even the

Flats (48:53.155)
But Somber Samber's actually great example. Sombra's been shit for a long time and they still permaban her. You know, so it's like the perception around the hero, too, which I think is actually very important and maybe something we should even talk about, is the perception of some heroes. Like some heroes are perceived as very strong or very weak, when that isn't the case. And we're gonna get to it, I'm sure. That's kind of where I get into the more of the subjective or subjective balance, where there's all there is the meta that is played, there is also a perceived meta.

and how much they overlap changes on what ranks you're in, but I'm sure we'll get there.

Coach Mills (49:28.413)
Yeah, I think Captain Coach, you have a question that's that's relevant here about

CaptainCoach (49:32.523)
Sure, yeah. so

In twenty eleven, a little game we all know called League of Legends had a hero n named Vladimir, who in the patch notes received Yeah, had a had a patch. really? Okay, you probably know about this changes. All right. Okay, well you'll you'll go first then. So his sanguine pool

Lyte (49:48.898)
Like a you know Vlad one trick? Sorry, go ahead. Yeah. Like Vlad Vlad and Victor, for some reason I just I like that like lifesteal drain tank type of c play so.

CaptainCoach (50:01.931)
got got a nerf which the initial cast time lowered the movement speed so he didn't get this little extra burst of movement speed pretty big nerf to already a an immobile hero the patch went live the community said they had killed the hero his play rate dropped drastically his win rate dropped drastically but here's the thing the changes never actually went through so my question is this

Should we treat something like win rates and other empirical measures a as an objective measure of truth when considering in-game balance if it's so commonly linked to community perception, which is ultimately subjective? Like where where do we find that middle ground? Yes.

Lyte (50:46.786)
Yes. Yeah, we we should. We should use empirical data, objective data to inform our decisions about balance. The problem is that people don't know how to read it, which is why I made that entire section. There are so many different effects or nuances that occur that influence a character's actual strength or power level that I listed in the video, but there's so many more that I didn't list. Like I didn't list the smurfing effect, which is Black Panther's actual strength and win rate is affected by how frequently people smurf on him.

He's not actually as strong in gold as people think. He is very strong, but so many people will just smurf and pick BP. So it impacts his his statistics. By how much, I have no idea. Like Magic is a great example for High Elo. Magic has a very high win rate and high pick rate, but I know it that she's bad. Every High Elo player knows that she's bad. For the most part. Like some people disagree o of course, but like you never see Magic in pro play ever. And why is that? Because it's so easy to deploy counterplay against her, but her statistics reflect otherwise, so that tells us

There is some nuance reason in a combination of the effects and nuances that I listed in my video that contribute to Magic's win rate and her pick rate being as high as it is.

Flats (51:53.401)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think magic has a very high pick rate in high ranks. Is it?

Lyte (51:56.8)
It's like it's like ten plus percent. In Celestial Plus, yeah, it's very high. It's like ten to thirteen percent with a fifty seven percent win rate.

Flats (52:04.983)
I know the win rate's high, but I didn't think the I'd have to double check. I'm not gonna challenge you on that, I'm not a hundred percent sure.

Lyte (52:07.202)
Let me let me yeah, let me double check my work. But I'm pretty sure it's pretty high. I checked Rivals data the other day, which say what you will about it. let's just assume it to be correct, 'cause magic doesn't have to be an exact example. She is just a placeholder for the concept.

Coach Mills (52:09.346)
I it's it's been slowly creeping up. Yeah. It has been.

Flats (52:21.529)
Can we just use the one Nat East put out last season? Or for nine point

Lyte (52:24.17)
Yeah. I'm sure I could find a different character that has good statistics but is bad.

Coach Mills (52:32.433)
Yeah, it says on it says on Rivals Tracker that Magic has picked twelve point three two percent of the time in Celestial Plus with a fifty seven point five eight percent win rate.

Lyte (52:41.134)
Yeah, and Rivals data says similar things. And that's for the current patch. Last patch, which is Netes' official data, is five percent pick rate, fifty four percent win rate. And as far as pick rate's concerned, she is number Wait, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. So she's number seven out of twenty five or whatever the DPS is. So it's pretty high.

Coach Mills (52:59.909)
Yeah, and you and using using last patch wouldn't be accurate, like in nine point zero because she didn't have the hood team up yet. Like the the fully the fully

Lyte (53:05.546)
Exactly. That's another nuance is like the team up the team up effect, right? So like there's all these different things.

Flats (53:10.009)
Yeah, but it's she's al but we were talking about historically for a long time Magic has had that. Like I know obviously right now it's gonna be a little bit higher than it was last season, but like if we're talking for the last few seasons, it's always looked like that. So yeah, like you're it's probably a little bit higher than last season right now, but overall if we're talking I mean hold on, what rank are we? I mean, I have a screenshot from my own video looking at it where celestial and above was a pick rate of four point eight nine percent, which I wouldn't say is that high.

Lyte (53:28.834)
Point.

Lyte (53:39.426)
Yeah, the point is sure, the the point is it doesn't have to be magic, it could be any character that is perceived to be stronger than they actually are, or their statistics reflect a strength that isn't actually there. Like there are reasons for why character's statistics are changed other than their actual win rate. Like a character can have a high win rate and be bad, or a low win rate and be good. There are so many factors that go into it and people need to be more educated in how to read them.

Flats (53:40.035)
Just throwing it out there.

CaptainCoach (54:06.453)
Well well that kinda begs the question then. Yeah, that that kinda begs the question, so then the meta, right, is that based off the absolute potential of heroes or the current state of player knowledge?

Lyte (54:08.097)
And interpret them.

Lyte (54:20.994)
Both. It's a combination of of several things.

CaptainCoach (54:22.188)
Both.

So if we've kind of established that the idea of a hero can affect how the community kind of interacts with them, or at least with l league, h who are we to say that we know better, right, than than the devs who, you know, may have this information and all these ideas and just haven't implemented them that yet or or, you know, have have something else in mind. Like how how do we have such

a a a hold on where we think the game should go when a lot of the times us as players don't even really know the complexity of some of the the changes that they introduce. Like we talk about Black Panther and Black Cat, we as like the community, the people like the voice leaders, opinion havers.

Lyte (55:05.998)
So what does what does we mean? Like who is we?

So every everyone, high elo player, streamer like who specifically? It's important.

CaptainCoach (55:16.72)
yeah, people t t talking to the devs.

Flats (55:18.627)
So then you're saying like you should only listen to certain specific people? Like that's it? Because we're if we he's saying is like as a community, even as a high rank community, a lot of times people agree on something is really strong and then two weeks in we go, actually that thing wasn't very good. Like we were wrong, you know, happens all the time. So like unless you're talking about someone specific, do you have someone specific in b in mind then? Like 'cause he's talking everyone.

CaptainCoach (55:22.518)
Yeah.

Lyte (55:30.786)
Yeah. Yeah, it does.

Lyte (55:36.992)
No, I'm not I'm not like suggesting anyone in specific. I'm trying to answer his question by ascertaining what he means by we because my answer will change.

CaptainCoach (55:45.823)
Any anyone who who s says to a the dev and gives any sort of feedback, it could it could even be like a direct complaint. It could be like a TikTok where it's just like, my god, I got one shot nerf.

Lyte (55:50.868)
Okay. Yeah. So so it's very it's very evident that the weight of people's opinion is relative to their knowledge of the game. And that was like my whole point in the expertise topic. Like whenever I made the comparison of LeBron James or Michael Phelps or anything like that, that wasn't to say that I'm LeBron James or Michael Phelps. It was to s Phelps, sorry. It was to suggest that if you are knowledgeable about a field in question, you are likely

and big emphasis on likely to know more about that field in question. It does not therefore mean that you know everything or that you are always right. And that's why there can be discourse amongst people in higher level fields of any type of field. Like it could be it could be theoretical physics between Michio Kaku and Neil deGrasse Tyson, or it could be rivals between like trust me and Rymazing, just as examples. Like just because the expertise is there does not mean that they're automatically right, but it does mean that they are more likely to be right than a GM player. And a GM player is more likely to be right than a plat player and so on and so forth.

Now that does not mean that you discredit everyone's experience. Again, there's a big distinction between experience and opinion. Experience is how you feel. Opinion is how you would actually go about changing something.

Coach Mills (57:00.039)
So based on what Flats said earlier about Cloak and Dagger and BPI, I feel like do you correct me if I'm wrong, Flats, but you agree with this that not everyone's at at least not everyone's adv opinion for how they should change a character is actually valid, right? Because you said like the cloak and dagger might like their pain points are real and their experience is real, but you know, to improve that experience, they might not actually know

what the right thing to do is to improve that experience. They're actually less equipped to to know exactly how to improve that experience besides, delete the character. Right. So it feels like there's common ground here where you do agree. Maybe, maybe where y'all don't agree is exactly who makes that call. But you definitely both agree that it shouldn't be the cloak and dagger telling you how you should balance the Black Panther. But they it is their job to tell you that there is frustrations, but maybe not necessarily the person to

fix the problem or or diagnose exactly how to fix the problem. Is that correct?

Flats (57:59.149)
I I mean, I think on average, yes. But that doesn't mean always, right? Like I think there's times where let's let's use the same example. I play cloak and dagger, I'm dying too much to VP, nerf that guy, he sucks.

Is that really that unfair to say? Nah, maybe not, actually. Like, you know, he he if especially last season, that's not unfair feedback from the goal player. That's not unfair. I think that's that's decent feedback. Like, yeah, you just don't want to play against that. That he has a shot. They're they're probably right. Now, if they say, I don't have the tools to deal with them, you know, they should make my ice freeze three second longer or shorter cooldown. Okay, well, I don't know about that one because, you know.

You do have these other tools that can make your way there. Like you're not wrong that it is annoying to play against them. Yeah, I use one shotting you and it sucks. But then the feedback that's given after sometimes it's just not right. Like it's just they just don't have the experience, as we said. that doesn't mean it's always incorrect. And being able to weed out who is and who isn't on a case by case basis is important. It absolutely is an important skill for sure. but in the same way the goal player can be right, the same thing happens at high

And with pro players even. How many times have we seen, you know, my God, this so and so or whatever? This is meta right now, 110%. And then it's not, right? Like, you got more pro experience than me today. My pro experience is 10 plus years ago. I mean, the whole point of scrimming is not just to be getting better as a team, but also you learn what works and what doesn't work. And sometimes a team comes along and has a a comp that or a way they're playing a comp and you go, my god, that shit's fucking broken.

And then you guys try to learn why it's strong. And sometimes you'll just copy it, right? Like a lot of times, scrims is you just copy what was working really well to see can we run it? And maybe we can run it better than they do, right? And so someone has to innovate and someone has to figure out what works and what doesn't work. And there's people that do innovate and they're dead fucking wrong, right? So it's like, yes, on average, do they have more experience? Yes. Will they be right a lot of times more than a goal player? Absolutely. But they also

Flats (01:00:11.806)
Aren't all the end all be all and can't all they don't always know like yeah it's definitely this. And I think a lot of times people do jump to those conclusions. And I I mean I can say I've been wrong many, many times. You pointed out in your video that the Punisher placement was wrong. 100%. And I agreed with that. Like I went back to my old like ban video that I made the second day after the season. People Punisher was permafucking banned that first like two or three days because the Rocket team up was back and they're my god, that shit's so broken. And then after about a week or so.

That was we made the two lists and he like, he's still kind of like getting banned a lot, but I don't know if he's good. And then after like two or three weeks, like, my God, that guy's dog shit. I can't believe I ever thought that he was actually good, right? And so that was a good example of I was wrong. But that happens with everybody, right? And so, like you were saying, with experience, you're gonna probably be right more often than others. But you can't also sit there and say constantly, yeah, they're yeah, they're just never gonna know because they just don't have the experience. They can be right too. And at the end of the day, if they feel like they're not heard.

CaptainCoach (01:00:52.566)
Yeah.

Flats (01:01:09.822)
Even if they're not totally right.

They'll just leave. They're not gonna go on Twitter and make a bunch of posts about it. They just silently walk out the door. And this season's a great example where let's use my controversy with the remove team ups thing. Every creator wanted to jump on, my god, that guy flats doesn't know anything, whatever. Go look at the player base right now. Go not be a Steam chat charts, Andy. Pull it up. It's less than 8.5. It's less than nine, it's eight less than point five, it's less than eight point it's less than seven point five. Because people knew.

Whether they consciously knew or not, they weren't having fun. And yes, they can't always express it properly, and they're not always going to be right in what their feedback is, but they know they're not enjoying.

Coach Mills (01:01:54.482)
To follow up on that, Flats, I I I believe Light would would think this. I'm I'm gonna give him a chance to follow up in a second, but doesn't it feel like some of the team ups that were implemented were solutions that felt derived from casual players' frustration and addressing them directly? So like as an example, Cloak and Dagger's ice block is like it's that exact example where it's like, I'm getting one shot. Okay, we'll just give you a button to make you immortal. Like we'll just give you that.

And but but like and then but there's like there there's like cascading effects and I'm not saying just with her, I'm saying with like all over the roster. there's cascading effects that can affect high elos as well. So how do you feel, like personally, about do you do you do you think it's more of a or how do I put this? Do you think that they're directly giving into the casual base? And that's why we're ending up in this situation where they are actually not happy. Like, like what Light is saying is that they are

listening directly to the casual fan base and their exact ideas for the problems at hand. And because they're overly listening to them, instead of going to people that know better in higher ELO, that that know how to actually fix these pain points without ruining the game balance, we're ending up in a bad a worse state where you probably shouldn't have listened to the cloak and dagger player in gold and gave her like an immortality button. Am I am I am I bastardizing your argument light? Or do you think I'm

Lyte (01:03:18.694)
no, you're not bastardizing it, I just want to be more specific. I think making changes, like just because majority of people think something is good or right, does not make it so. And the whole point that I made about expertise in high rank players, again, is that they are more likely to be right, and majority of the time are right. And minor instances of them not being right, or of community perception in Vladimir's case.

being different or like making the character worse, it does not change that that like phenomenon. That is like something that is always going to be true for every field of expertise. Whoever is the expert in question is more likely to know more about the field. And so when you when you rely on a combination of their thoughts, concerns and feedback with the experience and pain points of the majority of the player base who don't know as much about the game, and then you combine that with using empirical data, you have a framework that you can use to actually balance the game.

For both for all ELOs.

CaptainCoach (01:04:19.455)
I I have a follow up to that. Then is it realistic to expect balance around the hero's true potential or for people who, you know, have that experience, like I guess theoretical perfection, you know, you reference the score out of a thousand absolute potential. if if changes are made as frequently to the game as they are, because it's just constantly changing. Like I I I go back to Flats' example of like high ELO players not knowing what they're really talking about a lot of the time.

Lyte (01:04:32.267)
Absolute potential.

CaptainCoach (01:04:47.877)
Hulk for the nine point five changes. A lot of people on their pr predictive tier list said Hulk would be a top three hero because of the team ups he was getting. Lo and behold, fast forward a month, he's like C tier, D tier, awful. So it's like, how can we really expect even the best players to know theoretical perfection if w it's just seemingly so difficult to predict and and there's just constant changes that we cannot, you know.

Lyte (01:04:58.102)
Horrible. No.

Lyte (01:05:10.392)
Because the truth the truth about character strengths and understood ideas and concepts are are

They are underlined and undermined by the the hiccups. Like people notice the hiccups more than they notice like the actual universal truths. So you can give me examples of cases where people being wrong about characters, but give me all the other billions of other times where we were right. Like you know, those concepts are not like ever talked about. Like we knew that Cloak and Dagger having an ice block day one would make her invincible.

That's not hard to figure out because she has three different defensive cooldowns that she can layer with each other perfectly that allow her to live more i like anything. And so on and so forth. Like you could go across the board and think of so many more examples, which is why it's the truth. It's why it's the standard. If it was the case where, well, we can't rely on anybody's assertions because people are wrong.

Then how do we have some type of like streamlined narrative or like like understanding of anything? Like there has to be a baseline reality that exists because there's a commonality, which is people who play the game more and who are better at the game sorry, people who are better at the game, I should say, not play the game more, but people who are better at the game have a better understanding of their craft or of their field in question are going to more often than not understand what makes the game good and just understand its roots more.

So they would never make suggestions that make the game objectively worse because if I asked you, would the game be better if Hawkeye could one shot you and could teleport and could fly? Because that's fun and wacky and awesome and cool. Would that make the game better?

Flats (01:06:50.146)
Can I ask a question? Just curious. How do you plan to measure this? Right? So, like, you're saying that, you know, the whole argument basically is boiled down to like competitors casual balance, balancing for both, right? and wanting to like have the school of thought that higher level players, higher pro players, whatever, do know better on average than a goal player, right? For example. I think we can agree on that.

Lyte (01:06:52.056)
Course.

Flats (01:07:19.448)
How we measure that with the dev team? So the dev team we know aren't pros. Like when this game came out, they were they were pretty damn good at the game. But like now, like we saw from the showcase from MRC last year, like the even the streamers are like far past them at this point. So are you then advocating, I guess, to bring pro players on to make balance patches? Are you basically like how are you gonna measure this at the end of the day? Like, how do you know? How are you gonna be able to sit there and say, okay, you know what? Now they're doing a good job of listening to both companies.

High level play and low level play when you know we brought up at the very beginning this apparently they talked about it when the game first came out with Boger that that sounds like that's what they're already doing, even if, at least to you and I, they're leaning much more casual than they are competitive. So how do we measure that at the end of the day? Like, how do we know, yeah, they're doing much better now?

Lyte (01:08:10.584)
First off, I don't think that there's like a general trend that you can follow historically with their patches that gives them a like an absolute certainty that they're catering to one side or the other. There'll be in one patch, they'll nerf Gambit, which is a highly change, and in the same patch they'll nerf Iron Man or Moon Knight. Like there's no clear direction. It seems like they're trying to do both sometimes, and then sometimes it seems like who knows what they're doing. but to answer your question, how we actually follow and understand that is

If we nerf a character that is like like let's say I don't know. Like Thing, right? If we ask ourselves, is the game worse if Thing is worse? Because he dominates low ELO and he dominates high ELO and he's very easy to play. So using our empirical data, using nuances, using player experience, and using all the mechanisms in the framework that we have. What is sorry, I got distracted by this. Wha what who

Flats (01:09:04.792)
What is that? The fuck is that?

CaptainCoach (01:09:09.193)
So I'm gonna leak the the link. Hopefully not.

Lyte (01:09:14.714)
I just I completely lost my train of thought. I like what I was like, what just happened? Like what? Could you could you re ask your question so I could get back on my train of thought?

Flats (01:09:17.432)
No, you're good. That's not your fault. What the fuck was that?

CaptainCoach (01:09:20.955)
Coach Mills (01:09:21.837)
What the fu just happened? Hello

Flats (01:09:23.222)
WHAT FUCK WHAS

Lyte (01:09:26.356)
Like Yeah, shout out sh shout out the kingdom but like

Coach Mills (01:09:29.277)
Okay, dude.

CaptainCoach (01:09:31.792)
Thank God they didn't say anything.

Lyte (01:09:32.802)
No more interruptions, please, guys. anyway, Flas, could you could you please ask your question again so I can get back on my train of thought?

Flats (01:09:37.656)
Dude, how do you Okay, so I think what what I was trying to basically ask is how are you gonna measure this at the end of the day? Like, how would you know that Okay, yeah.

Lyte (01:09:42.548)
right, right, right. Yeah. Yeah. So you measure it by using the combination of empirical data, making sure the player experience is fun and engaging, that counterplay is able to be deployed, and just a variety of factors like that that I've already like previously mentioned that you can use in combination with each other that give you an answer.

Flats (01:10:02.434)
But but that's not really like actionable feedback here. Like you're talking about using data, right? And saying like, we have to look at the outliers. Okay, so you s okay. So you said that was one component. Can what was your next component? Remind me.

Lyte (01:10:09.302)
That's one component.

Lyte (01:10:14.85)
Mm-hmm. player experience. So it doesn't matter.

Flats (01:10:18.712)
Okay, so it sounds like they're kind of doing that already with like the team-up system, giving people more cooldowns to like survive certain things, etc. What was the next one?

Lyte (01:10:28.507)
Feedback from high rank players and pros?

Flats (01:10:33.944)
I would I'd argue that's probably the one that's missing the most. but like you said, those random patches will just nerf they'll nerf Gambit and then nerf Moon Knight on the other side. That sounds like it's them trying to do both, but like it is all over the place.

Lyte (01:10:41.996)
Yeah. But Nerf the the nerfs aren't aggressive enough. Like Gambit when he came out was game changing the best hero that ever came out. They're yes, their nerf to him. They I believe it was when he came out in season five or was it five point five? I think he came out after Rogue. Maybe it was five point five. Let's just assume it's five point five. Whatever. Sure. Let's just assume it's five point five. Season six, nothing happens.

Flats (01:10:48.972)
See, I like this answer. This seems more this is more actionable.

Flats (01:11:03.32)
I think he came first, if I remember. Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know. Doesn't matter.

Lyte (01:11:10.614)
Actually no, in season six, I just remember the first nerf, it was either the season after him or the season f like the one after that, so it would be six point five. Their first nerf was nerfing his ult by three hundred points. A five percent decrease in his ultimate charge, which does nothing. It is the same it's the equivalent of buffing blade sword damage by one when he was the worst hero in the game. It it is like the patches the patches and their thought process of approaching it, like the thought process might be correct

But the actual implication of how they're trying to fix the issue is not aggressive enough that it doesn't do anything. And that happens more often than not.

Flats (01:11:44.632)
So it sounds like we're advocating for more aggressive patches overall, right?

Lyte (01:11:49.877)
Yes, that is one component.

Coach Mills (01:11:52.285)
'Cause do you do you wanna go? Okay.

CaptainCoach (01:11:54.306)
Well, I was gonna say like would thing be the thing buffs be considered a more aggressive patch? 'Cause that can also backfire, right? The the buffs right.

Lyte (01:12:00.674)
Yeah, it can. It can, but at least at least we get variety. So in my mind, and I think this is the perfect time to bring this up, there are three pillars that the game can rest on that make it better. I want to say objectively better as well. The first is that can you have counter play without total compromise of accessibility? Let me just hold on. So I don't misspeak, 'cause I wrote it down. Okay.

So it's the preservation of counterplay and interactiveness. So the game is better for everyone involved. If what is coming at you, you have the options and tools to deal with. That makes it more fun. If Black Widow, yes, to a point, of course, I'm not speaking in absolutes, but if Black Widow could shoot through walls and had aimbot, that would not be fun, obviously. There's no counterplay, you can't do anything about it, you just die. So iframes, invisibility, not fun one shots, these all fall under.

Flats (01:12:40.088)
To a point though, clearly.

Lyte (01:12:56.726)
not being able to interact with her counterplay, right? The next one is promotion of skill expression. What about her?

Flats (01:13:01.016)
What about like Black Cat? Didn't earlier you say that's a necessary evil for her?

Lyte (01:13:05.654)
No, so it's the spam, it's again, it's not in absolutes. It is can you d deal with it over a prolonged period of time? So it's like it's like Black Cat needs her iframes, but it's the frequency that the iframes are available to her and on top of the Invis. It's a combination of things. So in the one shot example I gave, like Black Widow having a one shot with damage boost is fine because it's conditional on not only hitting the shot from the Black Widow, but

But also having a mantis on your team, and the mantis also damage boosting you at the right time for it to go off, and it has to hit 250. So a bunch of conditions have to be met. So even though a one-shot at its base in absolute is broken and cancer to play against, if there are prerequisites for it, it's not as big of an issue because that requires teamwork, and that's a good aspect and mechanic of the game. It's the same way as a BP ult one-shotting you with a damage boost, or like a lunatic, like a or a Venom ult one-shotting you with a rocket amp. Like those teamworks.

If it requires investment from the enemy team in coordination to pull off like something that is normally perceived to be toxic for the game, that's fine. So Black Cat in similar case with her iframes, if it wasn't all like so frequent, no one would complain about it to the degree that they do now. If Black Cat didn't have iframes at all, she would be horrible.

Flats (01:14:14.648)
I think they would.

Flats (01:14:18.476)
I think I think people will complain. Absolutely. People complain about Iron Fist block. It's way more more

Lyte (01:14:20.076)
I mean they would they would complain but not to the degree Yes, but not to the degree is the point. Not that they wouldn't complain at all, but not to the degree. Because I agree with all of them.

Flats (01:14:28.876)
Fair, Iron Fist also can't one like basically just run circles around you. He just basically tickles you to death. So it feels like a more fun slash fair interaction than Black Cat, where you just, like you said before, disappear. And then also it's not just the iframe, I think, it's also the twenty meter dash in the iframe, where you actually can't tell if she dashed behind you, or that was that the iframe dash. It's hard to tell in the moment. So there's a lot of things I think in her kit that are that are busted there, but that's I mean I

Lyte (01:14:34.286)
Yeah.

Lyte (01:14:37.645)
Yeah, j

Lyte (01:14:51.81)
Yeah, that's that's another component, yeah. That are frustrating. But you're getting don't get caught up on the example of Black Cat. Sorry to cut you off, but it is it is the the concept that I want to focus on. The concept of the iframe or the one shot. Like these things can be fine if there are prerequisites to meet them or if they're not too frequent. So BP and Hawkeye, their one shots are too frequent, so it's an issue. Venom Rocket, their one shot is not that frequent, so it's fine and it takes teamwork.

So the last pillar is the promotion of or sorry. The second pillar to further dissect is promotion of skill expression without total compromise of accessibility. So you can technically have every character be infinitely skill expressive insofar as your imagination can take it. But that destroys accessibility. Just because skill expression is a good thing and people like being rewarded for making good plays and being good and improving, does not mean that the game should be so complicated and so hard.

that no one can get into it. And it's a big problem that MOBAs have in general as a game type is MOBAs have a difficult time attracting new players in general because there's so many bells and whistles to deal with and to understand if you've never played a MOBA before. Like just understanding how to play League of Legends, how the game works, and how to fundamentally do anything before you even get into your matchup knowledge or into your I like like using your items or picking the right champion or so on and so forth. You need to know every like towers, the Nexus, jungle camp like all of that. It's very hard. So if we

Take skill expression and implement it without total compromise of accessibility, we get a system that is engaging and provides retention and gets people into the game as well. That's why it's okay to have a character like Wanda and Thing exist, but also okay to have a character like Elsa, Black Widow, Spider Man. And have one be better on or worse on average, and then one be better as you get better with the game. That's completely fine that we cater to all players. And then the third pillar is variety. Everyone wants variety and everyone loves variety in the game.

And this is why I'm okay with Thing being good right now, because Thing historically for months has been a bad character. And it's okay, like you were saying, Flats, it's okay to have a season of this character, a season of that character, a season of whatever. Like, I'm okay to have Gene Gray be good for two, three seasons, or Cyclops, or whatever character you put in question. But the problem is, is when there is a character that is dominating the game and suffocating the rest of the roster or playstyle or comp that do this very thing for too long.

Lyte (01:17:17.804)
Like goats, like double shield, like whatever it may be. No one cares about characters being good, it's for how good they are for how long. So

Coach Mills (01:17:28.111)
yeah, we're real quick. So one of the one of the goals of this debate was to find actionable solutions that both sides agree on. And I feel like there's a there's a bit of common ground that we found right here, which is, you know, it in some ways the the changes they have done to Gambit have they remind me of their their attempts to nerf Brig to solve the goats problem, where they would nerf her and then nerf her and then nerf her and then nerfer. I mean both of y'all lived through that exact thing. I think more

Dynamic changes, more aggressive changes in either direction on a faster cadence is something that I I believe both of y'all agree with. I don't think that casual players would have a problem with this. In fact, I think diversity is good generally for casual players. And I think competitive players do not want to sit in six months of Gene Gray, five months of I don't know what is going on.

Flats (01:18:23.032)
Do we have another intruder?

Coach Mills (01:18:23.281)
But yeah, I don't I don't know how this is out. We we might have to hopefully we don't have to reset, but but yeah, five five months of gambit, six months of

Lyte (01:18:31.618)
No no, there's there's no intruder. Sorry, Mills. I'm just at my parents' house and then like my grandmother was calling and she like needs me to help her with some stuff sometimes. But I'm still listening, sorry.

Coach Mills (01:18:36.591)
Okay. Okay, no worries. yeah, si six months of Gambit, five months of Gene Gray. I think that yeah, as a general philosophy, problematic characters after you know, their time in the in the spotlight, a month to two months, should most likely be aggressively changed in either direction.

Plus or minus. D can can we agree on that as a g general philosophy? It did seem like both of y'all did agree with that.

Flats (01:19:07.128)
Sure, yeah, of course.

Coach Mills (01:19:10.663)
What do you think, Light? Is is that something that you can generally agree on?

Coach Mills (01:19:16.733)
We lost him. GG's. Just to say, let's let's let's wait for Led, just a second.

CaptainCoach (01:19:20.887)
Gang.

Lyte (01:19:22.198)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. I'm almost back. yeah, yeah, I agree. One hundred percent.

Coach Mills (01:19:27.321)
Okay. Okay. Well we found we found our first actionable solution that both sides agree on that would improve Marvel rivals. Okay. Cool. All right, sorry. You you could respond to what he was saying, Flats. I just wanted to kind of interject that there.

Flats (01:19:39.2)
I yeah. I just wanna make sure he's actually back.

Coach Mills (01:19:41.957)
Okay, yeah, yeah, let's let's listen. We could wait a second.

Flats (01:19:45.09)
Otherwise I'm just yapping.

Lyte (01:20:02.702)
Alright, I'm here, I apologize. Sometimes I need to like move boxes and stuff.

Flats (01:20:06.68)
You're good.

Coach Mills (01:20:07.139)
No, no, no worries, all good.

CaptainCoach (01:20:07.766)
Mm-hmm.

Lyte (01:20:07.798)
Okay. Yeah. Alright, sorry about that.

Flats (01:20:10.626)
So that was a lot. and I think I agree with the goal of this podcast is actionable feedback. And I do think a lot of things that we've been talked about or that you've spoken about in the video as well, are great theories to build a game on. But actionable feedback and actionable like changes is where I've been getting mostly hung up on here on like I'm not really sure. obviously I've I pressed a little bit more about BP.

You know, how we started to go down it just now with black cap, but you know, wanted to let you finish your your statements and whatnot. I think for example, what Mills just brought up of like more aggressive patches. Yeah, characters shouldn't stay meta, hard meta for such a long time. I think that's that's bad. But also meta for who? Right? Like who meta for who? For high rank? Yeah, a hundred percent. Like it it is. Like that's what it probably was. But was like, you know, Phoenix hard meta and like platinum gold and bra and like in in diamond? I'm not so sure. She might have been. She might have been.

and maybe that's why Gambit, for example, didn't really get the nerf treatment. Was he was mostly being hard banned and played at high rank and maybe wasn't elsewhere, which kind of backs up the idea that we are not their main focus. Like they will they will keep the game in a state where it's playable for everybody at the top ranks, but you are not the main focus. And that's why this season was the season I flipped a little bit and was like, yeah, it's gone too far. Like you can't let this this is ridiculous. Like letting four alt fights like one.

One fight has four alt rotations. Like, come on now. Like, we we gotta stop. Like the Kingsman clip, for example, the Vessel clip clip example, like that. You can't let that happen. That's bullshit. Like, you know, even though I don't think you're the you're you're the the catered to, I think that like you should be allowed to play the game just like everyone else. That's that's just not fair to not allow them to to play the game. Where I get into a bit of a of a hiccup here with a lot of this stuff is I think it is subjective to say what are those specific changes that should be made every season.

And I think there's ones every season which we look at that are very questionable from Net East. And I also think there's ones that may be questionable, but you can kind of if you look at it a little bit longer, go, you know, maybe that wasn't for us. Maybe that's for a metal rank. But I think also on the other side, there's times when you look at it, go, yeah, that is targeted towards high rank. That's just not nearly enough. And I think that's where we can agree right now. what I what I keep asking about like actionable feedback though, is

Flats (01:22:34.806)
Let's say NetEast tomorrow comes out and says, like, you know what? we've heard community's feedback, we're gonna try to be a bit more aggressive in our patches and whatnot. And then they put out their next, you know, patch note, and it's not what you want. You know, like what's the response? You know, are you gonna say, like, like this is better? Like, is this like a little bit better? Or like, let's say more of this, or it's like, no, it needs to be even further. because I think if we're going towards a more balanced game, I

You said earlier that I was referencing Overwatch maybe too much of like, you know, you're relative to Overwatch versus relative to rivals. But I just don't see how it's possible to balance certain things like never not being able to die, having so many cooldowns, you literally don't have any vulnerabilities. support ults lasting as long as they do, slash how fast ultimates come up. There is no neutral right now in rivals. There

There was a season, like it was the big remember the big nerf season? What was it, seven, five or something like that? When Black Cat came out? It was seven, yeah. They did the big nerf season. and I was like, damn, I think they should have gone way harder. Cause I think doing one one reset season a year or maybe every 10 months and like nerfing everything to the ground and then slowly buffing over time, because casuals don't like buffs or nerfs, they don't like it at all. They hate it. even if you are objectively correct with saying, Okay, you know what, this season, black cat, too broken.

CaptainCoach (01:23:31.361)
Seven.

Flats (01:23:55.69)
If they enjoy playing Black Cat, I'm not saying they do, it's they don't, but I'm just gonna use it as an example. They will look at you and say, You are ruining our game because you are a skill issue. And I sent I sent some some old things I dug through to Mills earlier. I had to go into fucking Facebook of all places. God, don't ever make me go back there again. But I was going back into 2018 Overwatch.

And what I found, I don't know if you're able to pull it up, Mills. There was the first, there's like the IGN video, and then I just sent you a screenshot of some of the comments as well. where if you scroll through that, they are talking about Moth Meta Mercy. If you know anything about Moth Meta Mercy, that is the only thing that maybe even gets close to brig levels of meta in Overwatch one. And if you read through those, it is full of people saying, my god, these pros fucking suck. They don't know anything.

How do they not know to kill the healers first? How do they not know what to doing? They're just complaining about this character and trying to get it nerfed. They don't know anything. Even if objectively we all knew it was broken, busted too much. But this started a small train of animosity towards the pro scene at the time, where they were getting what of, if not, the most popular character in the entire game.

Nerfed. Everybody knows or is least heard of the Mercy Mafia, whether you play Overwatch or not. And so even if the pros were correct, and they were in this case, people got very upset at that scene. And basically, this was our era version of people saying they're ruining the game. And I actually found a few other ones. I don't want to get too bogged down into it. If you're super interested, I will I will link them as well. for Fortnite, I found some for Fortnite, I found a bunch for Apex, which I sent earlier.

actually had a little bit more, but I forgot to send it. and I found a little bit on COD, but I'm not as familiar with COD. And so I think there's a bit of a bit of a dance here when we talk about objective versus subjective with balance. And even though, you know, you say like balance is objective. Absolutely. You know what? I I I'm with you there right now. Sure. Like we say, like, you know, Phoenix is too strong this season. Like, not this season. Let's let's use some something that's relevant right now. we'll say else is too strong this season.

Flats (01:26:16.492)
Right? We say Elsa is way too strong this season. 100%. But in the other 95% of players' games who can't hit every single shot, they're not as fluid with the combos, they're not as fluid with all of these things, and they actually like having the trap because the trap's very nice versus anti dive, even though the thing is the size of the fucking globe and it's been power crept to the moon because of the season nine changes. They enjoy maybe having it there.

Because they can kind of shut down that dive a little bit, but they're also not doing as much damage each game. They're not getting all of these combos, they're not getting the ults off. And so to them, it might not be as much of a problem right now. You know, they might just think of it as just another another decent character, right? And I say that as even if you are correct, I heed it as a bit of a warning because being correct isn't always everything. And unfortunately, with a game as casual.

as I think is rivals, there is a very good chance that while you still do have a casual audience, which I would argue the game still does, casual audiences are fickle. You get maybe once, maybe two chances to quote unquote betray their trust, before they turn on you and they don't come back. COD happened in what, like 2019, 2020, 2021. They had Warzone, which was nice to kind of keep them filtered over, but like, you know, around the time they made their COD league, you know, people started to feel that way.

Fortnite, you know, around the time people started getting really into building and their pro scene took off, and everyone thought like streamers and pro players were ruining their game. Overwatch, we had 2018 with Mercy and then Brig, and everyone was bitching and complaining. I was actually talking to Siegel about this the other day, and he was talking about how back in the day he used to talk about Brig being so broken and they needed nerf it on the ground. He had to actually just stop streaming and stop playing at the time because he was just the guy who would complain about Brig all day long. And then after he was right. He was literally right.

But after about six or eight months, like people just got sick of it. They were so tired of him complaining all the time. They were like, he was like, I can't do this anymore. Like people are just gonna start to hate me if I keep going. Right. so the point being to to you here is I wanna say, is even though I I do think that, you know, a lot of times you can look at balance and say, Yeah, this character's too strong. you know, we might need to nerf them here. I think there's maybe a bit of a weariness to potentially have when looking at those balances and the what things to change.

Flats (01:28:35.678)
there might be characters or changes that people feel very strongly about that shouldn't be changed or they feel like there's you know like they feel like they're being targeted by pro players how do you navigate that especially as net ease is a very difficult conversation and so i want to be always trying to be precise on what feedback we're giving or what we want to see out of them and correct me if i'm wrong but something you said earlier was one of them was you know talking to

High rank players and talking to pro players. Who do you like? Who is do you want NetEast to just like contact teams? Like, should they just be listening to people on Twitter? Really? Okay. So you think they should reach out to teams and be like, what are you guys seeing right now? What do we need to nerf?

Lyte (01:29:10.957)
Yes.

Lyte (01:29:17.901)
Yes, literally.

Flats (01:29:20.064)
Okay. I think a lot of people would disagree with that, but

Coach Mills (01:29:20.583)
So

Lyte (01:29:21.344)
I I would well I would like to go ahead, Mills, and then I'll I'll get into that.

Coach Mills (01:29:25.019)
Well well well, I kinda want to press you on that a little bit. I have I had two questions that kind of press each of y'all a little bit on your ideals. And like that's one of the ones I wanted to press you on light is that historically there have been characters that have been very strong in pro play that has not been reflective in ranked play. And the same thing can be said for characters that are very weak. Like like I don't think like as an example in like eight point five and eight point we could say that Captain America was probably the best character in pro play or one of the best characters in pro play. But if you

If if if the devs rang up, you know, trust me, and said, Hey, hey, w what what are we gonna do? Well, what what should we balance? yeah, you gotta you probably gotta nerf Captain America. And then and then the casuals, not even just the casuals, like even like a celestial, a grandmaster, they're like, What are you doing with my hero? Or and then on the flip side Yeah, yeah, right. they were they were mad. They were so mad.

Flats (01:29:58.668)
Great example.

Flats (01:30:13.836)
don't get me started. What happened with that? Remember all the tier lists? Everyone's like, the pro players. People were legitimately trying to start cults around, my god, these pros and streamers are trying to kill our game. They're trying to kill Captain America. They're trying to kill freedom. It was wild.

Coach Mills (01:30:25.275)
And and like on the flip side, on the flip side, like like a character that I like has never been weak at all in in ranked play. Like it this is probably the weakest he's been and he's he's fine, is Thor. but like if they called up a pro and they're like, Hey, what should we do about Thor? well Thor's terrible in pro play. Okay, we're gonna give him plus two hundred HP and a million damage. So w well No, no, I d I I know, it's it's just a question 'cause I wanna I wanna hear where your head's at about

Lyte (01:30:44.78)
Guys guys, you were you are so caught up on it being an absolute, it is a component. Yeah.

Coach Mills (01:30:54.385)
D how much should pros specifically affect the balance for this the the game? Even even like a cause I think there's a big distinction between a pro and just a competitive player in this game.

Lyte (01:31:06.208)
Yeah, so just just so it's clear, like no one is saying and I'm not saying that pro players should be the sole leader on who the dev should listen to. At all. It is it is they it should be considered. It should be a consideration. So again, the framework for how they should approach their balance and the balance philosophy should be predicated on many factors and listening to pro players is one of them. Listening to casual players I don't know an exact level.

Flats (01:31:15.464)
No, but you did say that they should be contacted and talked to.

Flats (01:31:31.362)
To what level though?

Lyte (01:31:34.946)
there there is no exact level. It just needs to be considered and thought of because it's important. But I can't give you an exact percentage because it's a case by case basis and it depends on the meta and the characters in question. There's so many facets to that question. There there is no absolute answer that I can give you right now. But that doesn't mean that you can't have that considered. So Pro play is one consideration, but also the experience of the casual player and again defining casual as someone who approaches the game who fun factor is their most important

like thing that governs what they do. and again, like I I wanted to like point this out too flats, like most of the c actual casual players, not the people who play ranks or that watch streams, most of the actual casual players don't even like look at the patch notes. They don't read like they don't do anything besides just hop on the game with their boys or their kids who get on after school or it's just something like they barely play the game like once a week or something that. They really don't experience the balance in the same way that people who go up the ladder. Like

The higher you go, it's directly correlational to how intensely you experience the objective state of the game. And this is like where we need to actually agree between objectivity, subjectivity, and relativity and how it relates to the actual game state. And when I'm defining those three things, objective like the objective state of the game or objective balance is defined as the state of the game absent of anyone's opinion about it. So certain characters have set like they have abilities that when played to their absolute potential

suffocate the rest of the roster and provide more value to their team objectively. That's just how it is. And what people misconstrued as subjectivity for balance is in reality relativity. So Black Panther's power level changes relative to the rank that he's in, but he's objectively still a bad character. And subjectivity in relation to relativity and objectivity relates to how a person feels about a character. So someone could feel, anyone can feel like Black Panther is the best or worst character in the game.

And their feelings are going to be d driven by their experience, that is the relativity, but all of that is absent to the objectivity.

Flats (01:33:41.184)
Objectivity means absolute truth. We know this, right? So ob absolute truth is determined by who here. Because if you say, for example, the game is in a certain state, the chances you get every single person to agree that it's in the that is objectively the truth is not very high.

Lyte (01:33:44.258)
Yes.

Lyte (01:34:00.894)
Objectivity isn't relying on people's agreements of it.

Flats (01:34:06.69)
Then who decides what's the truth here for what is the objective state?

Lyte (01:34:10.87)
Empirical data.

Flats (01:34:14.05)
But the empirical data has to be analyzed by a human, a person. And the person who is analyzing the data will always be different unless you are forcing towards a fifty fifty win rate. And which, if we're forcing towards a fifty-fifty win rate, which we both dis we both agreed, is not an idea. It's not good. It's boring, if anything.

Lyte (01:34:14.766)
There are like many other things too. Yeah. Yeah.

Lyte (01:34:32.428)
No, it's look at the the con the conceptual application of objectivity. So if we agree objectivity is something that is true absent of human opinion or human perception, correct?

Flats (01:34:42.264)
It is the actual absolute truth. And so when you're applying that to a video game that people play every day, it is subjected to how those people are interpreting their gameplay. And even in this case, interpreting the data. So the data in this case can be interpreted in different ways. That's why when people show data in certain places, they'll show different types of data to back their findings. But there might be other sets of data that conflict with their findings.

Lyte (01:35:00.877)
Yes.

Flats (01:35:11.852)
But they don't think it's strong enough to be presented.

Lyte (01:35:15.362)
Yes, but again and I'm the reason I'm asking you in like a yes or no format is can we agree that objectivity is truth absent of human opinion or perception? Like two plus two being four. Yes, in general. Okay. So if that's the case, that means just because someone perceives data to be one thing and someone else has a different perception, that doesn't change the actual truth of the question in question.

Flats (01:35:24.642)
Like in general? She's sure.

Flats (01:35:39.424)
And the question in question. So the question in question here is what is the state of the game?

Lyte (01:35:41.165)
Yes.

Yes, but I'm talking like actual like the concept.

Flats (01:35:45.602)
There is no absolute objective truth for the state of the game. That will always change from person to person. No, there isn't. Because people will interpret the data differently.

Lyte (01:35:49.154)
There is.

No. People's perception people's perception of the objective truth changes, but that doesn't make the objective truth subjective.

Flats (01:35:58.572)
Okay, so then nobody will so there is no one higher power that gets to decide that then, right? The only person is technically Xeon.

Lyte (01:36:03.842)
It is

No, it is not a higher power gets to decide or an absolute like like there the pro player has a greater chance of being right because they know more about the game. So that is one component, one of many that you use to approach balancing the game. It could be the case where the game is perfectly objectively hold on, hold on. It could be the case where the game could be objectively in the best state possible for as many people as possible.

Flats (01:36:23.618)
But if it was objective truth, they would always be right then.

Lyte (01:36:33.972)
And the subjective experience and opinions of people still forces the dev to make a change to a character that is objectively bad, like Black Panther. Black Panther is an objectively bad character. His numbers and the way to deal with him never changes when you load up into the game. When you load up, everyone's abilities and their like like potential is in the game there. And it's up to the players to manifest it in order to win. So Black Panther, when he goes into the lobby, he goes to one-shot your team.

Just because they don't deploy the counterplay to deal with him does not therefore mean that Black Panther is a good character. It means he's good relative to that rank, relative to the people involved in it, but objectively speaking he is still a bad character. It's the same way that when you're playing chess, you can deploy a chess move that is

Flats (01:37:11.852)
But he's objectively, he's objectively, his kit objectively is unhealthy for the game. When you say he's bad, that's what you mean, not the fact that he will win or lose you games, right? Okay, so we we say objectively his kit is problematic for the game. To say he's objectively bad depends on the balance numbers and the rank you're in. Right? Why would it not? So if you give him back his his spear dash, like what

Lyte (01:37:18.979)
Yes.

Lyte (01:37:24.056)
Yes, like yes. When compared to

Lyte (01:37:36.278)
No, it only depend no, it only depends on the balance numbers.

Flats (01:37:41.204)
one shot like he was at season nine, people would say he's good. He's strong.

Lyte (01:37:41.346)
Because because again, it's rel it's relative. Relativity has to be anchored by a point in truth.

Flats (01:37:49.036)
But we're talking you talking objectivity, absolute truth. You said Black Panther is objectively bad. And what I'm trying to present to you is that we are agreeing that objectively he's not good for the game, but that can also change based on what numbers are being given to the character and what ranks you're being played in, which means it has human interaction with it, and that is means it's subject to people's perspective. And objective is two plus two equals four.

Lyte (01:37:55.298)
Yes.

Lyte (01:38:01.794)
Yes.

Flats (01:38:17.898)
Not every single person is going to agree on the game state. Even if most pros will always say, like, Elsa's really strong right now, right? Well, say most of them say there might be a couple that disagree. That does not make it objective because two plus two equals four here. And where it makes it objective is that empirical data, like you said, but because a person has to analyze the data and present findings upon that data, it makes it more subjective to what to apply to the game.

Lyte (01:38:18.339)
Mm-hmm.

Lyte (01:38:22.093)
Yes.

Lyte (01:38:47.256)
Yeah, no, like I see what you're saying, but it's not true because like if you take the two plus two as four as example, if we're relying on people's perceptions of objective data, if someone perceives two plus two to be five, that doesn't make it five.

Flats (01:38:59.052)
But that's not true though. Nobody's doing that because it's not objective truth.

Lyte (01:39:01.72)
Well that's well that's because no no one's doing that because it's simple, but if you make it super complex, people misconstrued objective data and get shit wrong all the time.

Flats (01:39:09.356)
So then there might not be an objective truth here because everyone can't no you have multiple people in multiple camps that are trying to figure out what the actual truth is. And you've never had a you've never had a time in your life. You've never had a time in your life where you're in God given soul, you believe in something, like you saw something with your own two eyes, you saw a car accident or something, you're like, I know for a fact that's objectively the truth. And then you see the the dash cam footage, you're like, fuck, I missed that piece. Shit, it wasn't the objective truth.

Lyte (01:39:17.686)
No, truth truth does not go away because people can't understand it.

Lyte (01:39:34.072)
Yeah. Yeah.

Flats (01:39:37.432)
Can the same thing not be applied here?

Lyte (01:39:39.392)
It could, but that doesn't mean that the objective truth doesn't exist.

Coach Mills (01:39:43.612)
Wait let me

Flats (01:39:43.756)
But you will never know the objective truth. I will never know the objective truth because there's entire player base of people interacting with the game. And so even if we say objectively, Black Panther's not fun good for the game, there might be people out there that disagree with that. Or you say right now in its current game state, objectively, Elsa is very strong. Well, in the other 95% of ranks, actually she has a negative win rate. She's not getting played that much. And when she gets played, she's on average doing less damage, etc.

Lyte (01:40:11.874)
That people's perception of the objective truth does not make the objective truth either not real or subjective in its nature. So you are right in saying that you or me or everyone else could not know what the actual truth or state of the game is in this perfect absolute potential that I mentioned in my video. But that does not mean that it doesn't exist, and that does not mean that we cannot use a variety of metrics to get close.

Like that is the entire scientific method is applications of of theories and studies to find the truth.

Flats (01:40:42.6)
All of those things you do to analyze that are subjective on who is analyzing the data and who you're analyzing the data for. Yes, you can get as close as possible, and some people are better at getting close to it than others, but you are not God here. You are not able to be omniscient. Neither am I, none of us are. And so there's always going to be room for interpretation, making it subjective. There's no room for interpretation.

Lyte (01:41:02.542)
Course not.

Flats (01:41:12.19)
on two plus two equals four. So they're not the same.

Coach Mills (01:41:16.133)
Wait, wait, real quick. I want to interject here. Cause I I I have counterpoints to each of y'all and I want to hear what you have to say about both of them. So let me let me say both of them first, because I want y'all both to to to hear it. So so light, I think flats agrees with you that there is empirical data that is objective. There is like purely objective data. But the second that data is in interpreted to to come up with any form of

Lyte (01:41:16.194)
I think what we're getting

Coach Mills (01:41:41.137)
Conclusion, it becomes subjective. So as an example, you can look at the win rate, you can look at the the kill numbers, you can look at the pick rate of a Black Panther. But the second you take that data and say, Because of this data, he's bad. now it's subjective. It's no longer objective anymore because you interpreted the data in your subjective appe experience. That's what he's saying. So but the on the opposite side, light is talking about the scientific method to come up with conclusions. So one of the things is you're you're kind of I'm I almost feel like you're over

like focusing on like objective truth here. In science, theories. So like there's like theory the theory of relativity. We hold these theories to the highest standard to the point where we live our life and we build science behind these theories. Now they're theories. That's what they're called. They're they're but they're built on a combination of objective data and and research and opinions and like it's it's it's not to just say

That's subjective, it's it's nothing. Or that's a theory, it's nothing. I don't think that's fair. I in in science we hold these to very high regards. So that that that's the those are the criticisms I wanna I would leave with both of you. what are your responses to each of those?

Lyte (01:42:55.566)
I think that we're getting caught up on individual human perception making the thing that is being perceived subjective in its nature. When what what I'm trying to say is the thing that we're trying to perceive is objective and absent of our own perceptions does not change the essence of its objectivity. It doesn't matter how anyone perceives something that is true. What matters is that it remains true absent of our opinion, that is definition objectivity. So you could argue that it is

more useful to consider the subjective opinions of our interpretation and its application within the game balance. That's completely fine. But if we're speaking in absolute truths and definitions, there always exists in the state of every game, an objective best way to play it, and an objective best character to pick. And the closer you get to that absolute state, which is what absolute potential goes to, if we all played like robots, there is this is where the truth is.

And so pro players are the closest because they spend their lives and dedicate their time to getting to it. But just because this is a thing and a reality does not mean to discredit or disembark or disembark the opinions and experiences of lower ranked players. They still matter, and their experiences matter, and even if a character is objectively bad, when all forms of counterplay, all forms of potential are reached, for Black Panther

It doesn't matter if he if people aren't deploying that he's one shotting people making the game miserable. That's the point.

Flats (01:44:29.112)
So I got a question. From what you're saying then, those people are the closest to object objective truth. And if we're want to make something that's objectively truthful, why are we not just balancing whatever way pro players want?

Lyte (01:44:36.173)
Yes.

Lyte (01:44:41.58)
Because of what I just like it's because of the experience of the low rank player Yeah. Yes. But fun factor matters.

Flats (01:44:44.618)
It's the truth though, right? And it's the closest we're gonna get. But we exactly. So it's like at the end of the day, you and I are not the people that it's focusing its balance on. It wants the other 95% to have fun. And the reason why when you look at the data like you are, and you say, it's why I pose these the example of like, are you going towards 50 50 win rate? That is an objective truth you can work towards, right?

You can work towards 50-50 and having people be at about the same level. That would be boring as fuck. And genuinely, you don't want you should not want that. And I don't want that. And you I you don't either. You've already expressed that and we're on the same page. That is something you could objectively work towards. And it would be in your best interest then to listen to the people that are the closest to being objectively right. But that's not the goal. The goal at the end is you want people to have an enjoyable experience that they want to hop back on for and they want to come back for another day with their friends or with others.

And sometimes that data is helpful and it's very useful because you can't talk to every single player who plays this game and you can't just listen to what people talk about on Twitter. Because when I go to a nice restaurant or something, a lot of times I'm not leaving a review unless I had a horrible time. And the same thing happens for a lot of places. Like if you look up a car dealership, I went to give my oil change the other day. Every dealership reviews a one star and they're complaining about the place. Why? Because you had a good experience, you're probably not leaving a

View, let's be honest. And so you're gonna see most of the complaints on Reddit and Twitter. And so if you only look for places that there's gonna be complaints, that's where you're gonna get those complaints and you're gonna say, shit, like everyone's complaining and everything sucks. You're not gonna hear about all the people that are having fun silently. And so they have to look through the noise and not balance towards 50-50. They're not pro players, so they're not the closest to objectively true. But you're also saying, you don't always listen to them, it's just a case-by-case basis. I think that's a good answer, right?

But if we're talking about getting to an absolute truth where we're having the best state possible, you would actually be probably using a lot of their knowledge and a lot of their information, but we both understand that wouldn't be the most fun. So there's going to be times where either A, you're going to have human error where people are misinterpreting the data and they get it wrong. B, they're making an assessment of, okay, the game is not fun in this state. Let's try something different and they shake it up and it ends up not working out. Or three, there's also a combination of all three where we've had a certain meta for too long and they need to shake it up.

Flats (01:47:09.186)
We've both agreed that sometimes it lasts a little too long. Maybe they would agree. Maybe they wouldn't disagree. You know, maybe they think they leave leave it for long enough. Maybe we could even argue that there need to be more patches. Something I used to argue in Overwatch is we needed patches every two weeks to keep the game fresh. Rivals is already putting out content at breakneck speed. It might not be feasibly possible for them to do that, but at least it would keep the game shooken up consistently. And that's really the thing most people want. They don't want pure balance. They don't want the game to be completely 50-50 playing field. We've discussed that.

And we've agreed on that. And so you have to make changes that are sometimes maybe outside of those sets of data, which means that they have to not only look at the data and say, hmm, okay, like we understand this one might be an outlier, we need to pull it back. By how much they need to pull it back, that's a that's a different story. They've done that historically, but maybe to not the point where we wanted to, which is why I was pressing you earlier on today, saying actionable feedback, being more aggressive in your patch notes. We agreed, right? That's actionable feedback.

I understand a lot of the theories. I understand a lot of things that were that you've spoken about, but those are not always actionable. And and I'm not saying you're doing this. Okay. I'm really not saying you're doing this. But it's easy to move the goalposts when you just talk with theories as opposed to actionable feedback. And so why I've pressed so hard on certain things is because it's not easy. And I'm not saying it's perfect, and I'm not saying we should just let it go. But

To say there's always an objective truth at the end is just not true because even if it does exist, nobody knows it, not even Guang Guang. You and I don't know it either, but there are people that are closer to it. And like you said, those would be pro players. And so rationale says that you should have a balanced team of pro players because they're the closest to understanding the truth if we want to have the truth. But we all know that wouldn't be a good idea either.

So what I'm trying to get at here at the end is that sorry, sorry, go ahead, go ahead, sorry. I apologize. I talked too long.

Lyte (01:49:04.292)
it's I I really want to talk about that point. Yeah. No, so that's that's under the that's under the presumption that that's the only metric that you account for. The idea that the entire no, it's under the presumption that like the idea that the entire dev team should be pro players because they're closest to the absolute truth has the presupposition that that's the only thing that you care about is getting to the absolute truth. When that's never what I've said. No, it is it is a component. It is a component.

Flats (01:49:14.689)
No, it's not.

Flats (01:49:27.448)
Should you not want to choose the absolute truth if that's how the game is? It's like the game is in this state. Well, let's let's understand what it is.

Lyte (01:49:34.188)
Yes, it is a component and an important one, but fun factor is also a component too. So what I was saying is that pro play pro play needs to be taken into consideration in congruence with the casual player's experience. Both can happen and both do happen across a variety of games. That's all. Yeah.

Flats (01:49:39.053)
But I the

Flats (01:49:50.304)
Agreed, sure. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean it does. Like, and I never disagreed with that. I mean, you've I mean, I saw in your video you saw clips of me talking about that. I never said you don't count it at all. I just think the ninety five percent is the most important for the game, but you can't break the relationship. And they went too far this season, they broke the relationship, and I don't think that's fair.

Lyte (01:50:05.656)
So what

Lyte (01:50:11.81)
What specifically? Because in my mind when you he I've heard you say ninety ten and now I'm hearing ninety five, s but let's just use which one do you want to use?

Flats (01:50:17.08)
Mm-hmm. Well, balance I meant ninety five. I was talking ninety five percent of the player base. Like we're less than five percent.

Lyte (01:50:22.698)
Okay. So when we say that we want to cater the balance of the game to ninety five percent, is that fair to say? Is that what like you're trying to say? I want to make sure that represents you correctly. So what does that look like? Like the word cater here, what does that mean specifically? Like catering ninety five percent of the game to the casual and give me specific examples.

Flats (01:50:29.13)
Sure, yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah, that's good.

Flats (01:50:41.868)
Sure, it means the game needs to be more goofy more often. unfortunately, what has happened at the top level is that ends up with things like triple support. People don't really want to play triple support. They feel like it's a crutch comp that they need to play, right? But then there's also characters like Ultron and Adam that people want to play. And you can only really play them in three support. Outside of that, you feel like your team is throwing. So they've tried to add some fun, goofy mechanics to some of them, right? With Adam, they added them the ability to fly, right? Do you think that's a

Balanced ability. I don't know if I'd really say it was balanced. I mean, maybe because it's so slow and shit, but like that was mostly they did for fun. They just add a little little ridiculous factor. And they've added ridiculous factors to other characters as well. you know, giving Mag his sword as an all-the-time thing. That was arguably the biggest ask of season zero, season one is you never got the mag sword because you'd have to have a Wanda with you, and Wanda was terrible. So they gave players these cool, fun or wacky abilities to try to let them have fun.

Even if it's just not like it's not fair. Like one of Mag's biggest weaknesses is the fact that he has a short range. He has unlimited range if he has the sword team up now, even if it's a slower projectile. So they basically removed his one weakness and now he has it as a strength because it's it's still pretty powerful. And so there's other changes that they've done where they try to make team ups with other characters, even if they don't totally make sense. They brought back the Thor team up with Cap.

Does it actually work? Not really. It's not really a good team up because like you have Cap and Thor together. They don't really work. But you know what is kind of cool? Throwing the the the explodey electric shield and it just hears zoom zoom zoom. And is that like balanced? I don't know. You could argue it's balanced, but like they're kind of ass. I'd or if anything, I'd argue that they're way too weak. and so they add these things as a a cool fun factor, right? Yeah, you could say with like the the Jeff tornadoes as well, like the Jeff Tornado with Storm, you know, like was that broken when it came out in season two?

Yeah, that was broken as shit. And so they brought it back in another form. You have the same thing with torch. And so these are not balanced, competitive focused ideas. These are all for fun, and you get to watch the the goofy shark spin around in the tornado and make sharknada, right?

Lyte (01:52:49.816)
So your your definition of catering to casuals, if I understand correctly, is to add crazy abilities.

Flats (01:52:58.392)
Yeah, and just make them goofy and just do stupid shit with them. That's basically what makes casual more fun or more interested in the game.

Lyte (01:53:01.176)
Do you think

Lyte (01:53:06.296)
Do you think that adding abilities or sorry, do you think that accessibility has a relationship with catering to casuals?

Flats (01:53:13.336)
Can you can you elaborate what you mean by accessibility? You're talking like controls, like if you're Skill four kills skill ceiling. So like yeah sorry.

Lyte (01:53:16.716)
Skill floor, skill ceiling.

Lyte (01:53:20.91)
Yeah. So if a character has a a character like the thing is would be considered a more casual leaning character because he has a low skill floor and a low skill ceiling. He's very accessible, he's very simple. Whereas Spider Man would not.

Flats (01:53:37.72)
I mean I gat I mean yes and no. I think the thing has a great niche when he's not OP. he's the anti-dive character, right? It's the character your back line's getting dove.

Lyte (01:53:46.124)
No, I'm not asking I'm not asking about the function of the thing. I'm asking about as a character, does he lean towards the casual player base based on his skill floor and skill ceiling?

Flats (01:53:55.116)
I don't think it has anything to do with like his actual kit leaning either way. I think it ha I think it can. Like you just basically sit there and you just punch. Like, sure. I guess that's like more casual, but I don't know if I'd people say it was fun. I would say they they actually increased the fun factor this season with him, with the torch team up, where because you're just going thong, thong, thong, and people are like, that's hilarious. You just basically just beat the shit out the other tanks. That would make it more fun, but I don't think before this season people thought Thing was fun. I think he thought he was

easy and low skill, but I don't know if I'd say he's fun.

Lyte (01:54:25.966)
Well two things. The first is that in my mind, when we say ninety five percent of the game should be catered to the casual player base, I think the word cater there has a very close relationship with accessibility. Because accessibility is intrinsically in tied to how easy is this character to pick up and have fun with. So if we are to cater the game ninety five percent again, that would therefore mean that we would have to make ninety five percent of the roster

more accessible due to its close relationship. Why? Why?

Flats (01:54:56.48)
No, it doesn't. No, it doesn't at all. Because just be you you can have things that are fun and enjoyable that are not soup like that are high skill. Like y a good example sorry.

Lyte (01:55:08.344)
But it's it's not like for like if something's super high skill and difficult to access, like Spider Man's Yo Yo combo where you pull someone in the out of the air and you kill them out of the support alt or something, that's a very difficult thing to do. That's also very fun. And if you're also using fun as a foundation for how you're arguing they should balance, that is inherently subjective. In subjectivity also y like you can't make true statements about something that's subjective because everyone's opinion is equal in subjectivity.

Flats (01:55:35.414)
Sure. I mean I guess, but that's that's

Lyte (01:55:36.588)
Yeah. So it's difficult it's difficult to ascertain how you should balance the game unless you do it democratically. But if you do it democratically then not everyone has the ability to understand what is right like good and bad for the game.

Flats (01:55:46.508)
Democratically is how you make a good game. Like you make implement changes and then you see if your community likes them. And if they don't, you take them away. That's literally how the democratic game works. It's good. Like we do Overwatch has been doing that recently, and that's basically how they've made a comeback. Like they will implement shit. People don't What mean solely? Like you they're not gonna be in the devs, they're not in the dev room cooking up things.

Lyte (01:55:58.742)
No I mean solely democratically.

Lyte (01:56:06.36)
What I'm what I'm saying is that if we were to balance purely based off a fun factor, it is based on what do majority of people perceive to be fun rather than what is actually healthy. And if majority hold on, let me finish my point, let me finish my point, this is important. And what people perceive to be healthy or fun may not in reality be good for the game. And it could deconstruct systems that actually make the game fun, like skill expression, like preservation of counterplay, and like variety.

Flats (01:56:17.752)
Okay, the way people perceive what is fun? Okay, sure.

Flats (01:56:30.882)
Sure.

Lyte (01:56:34.22)
So if you add something into the game that's super fun and awesome, like Jeff Tor like Jeff Storm, that suffocated the game in the duration that it was good, and it actually made the game worse because variety went out the window. There was no counterplay to it, because she just ults and you instantly die. And that's my point, like you cannot just democratically isolate. Yes. Yes, I they did turn it back, but the action of adding that in solely on the basis of fun, I do not believe to be a good metric in order to approach balance.

Flats (01:56:42.454)
Yeah. Yeah.

Flats (01:56:49.538)
Sure. And they turn and they turned it back because they realized, shit, this goes too far.

Lyte (01:57:03.394)
You can have fun factor be a metric, but the soul metric, and the reason I'm using soul is because you're saying ninety five percent which is essentially absolute, I don't think is a good metric.

Flats (01:57:11.32)
It's not essentially absolute. We're if we're talking essentially absolute, the player base, let's say, is two million total. Everywhere, right? Consoles, everything. Let's say it's two million. We're le probably less than a hundred thousand. Probably even less than that. We're probably less than fifty thousand. If we're talking maybe like mid-Celestial up, probably less than fifty thousand. So, like, it's not absolute, but we're fucking tiny. So, to answer your question, sorry, I gotta answer his question.

Lyte (01:57:28.216)
Yeah.

What about

Coach Mills (01:57:37.372)
Let me

Lyte (01:57:37.526)
No, I'm I'm talking about hold on, Mills.

Flats (01:57:40.944)
On on you can you repeat the first half? It was like you said the fun factor? Cause I was trying to I just wanna be c I don't sure.

Lyte (01:57:45.368)
Well you you yeah, you bringing up the fact that we're a small portion of the player base does not

Flats (01:57:52.608)
No, no, can you say what you just what you you just said like this the whole sentence I was remember I was gonna cut in and then you were like, no, let me finish. You were talking about with fun, right?

Lyte (01:58:00.332)
Yeah, yeah I will. I will. So when I'm speaking about the fun factor and using that as the the metric that you're using to design and approach balancing the game, it is not reliable. If that is the sole mechanism that you're using.

Flats (01:58:13.74)
Why not? Because they they you implement something, it doesn't work, and you go, Shit, this is too far. It's breaking the game. Pull it back.

Lyte (01:58:22.178)
Because things that might be fun will also take away from the systems in the game that make it fun. Like Jeff Storm. So Jeff Storm is cool and fun and wacky, one week later it ruins the game.

Flats (01:58:35.576)
So let me ask you, after they nerfed it a bunch, was it still a problem?

Lyte (01:58:39.274)
No, but that doesn't matter that they nerfed it a bunch, it's the balance approach.

Flats (01:58:41.708)
Yes, it does. It means it means they're actively participating in the community, making new changes, making the community get things and going, shit, that we we made a mistake. This too much and then they take it they tune it back.

Lyte (01:58:52.92)
Yes, but again, like you can't just use fun factor as the sole metric to balance the game. There has to be other considerations.

Flats (01:58:59.84)
No one said no one's saying it's the soul factor. You are saying this f the soul factor. I'm saying the game overall should be catered towards the ninety-five percent. They're the the the major player base. W like you especially at the pro level are what?

Lyte (01:59:04.342)
Okay. Let me let me be more precise. Yes.

Lyte (01:59:13.314)
Yes, but it is at compromise. It's a compromise. You've you've by your you've by your own admission, you've accepted that the cat like the competitive player base has to be taken into consideration. Okay. Now the specific number is what I have an issue with, like that ratio existing because I don't think it's an exact number. So when I say ninety five when you say sorry, when you say ninety five percent cater to, maybe solely isn't the correct word. But if fun

Flats (01:59:18.23)
How's it a compromise?

Flats (01:59:26.454)
Yes, absolutely.

Lyte (01:59:42.122)
is the primary and or only or both tool that you are using to design the game.

Flats (01:59:47.416)
Again, we're not only using fun. I don't know where this came from, but continue.

Lyte (01:59:50.656)
Okay, okay. If we're no no no no no okay. If I misunderstood you then I apologize. What other metrics other than fun are associated with catering the game in a casual way?

Flats (02:00:02.656)
In a casual way, fun is the top. It's not the only. There are other cases because you have to make sure the game feels good to both play and play against. In Overwatch, we have we have a character called Roadhog. Roadhog is fun as fuck to play. Feels awful for everyone on your team and the enemy team. So taking into consideration not just yourself, but everyone else around you and how the character

Lyte (02:00:06.786)
What are the other ones? Okay, what are the other ones?

Lyte (02:00:17.368)
Counter play.

Lyte (02:00:24.973)
Mm-hmm.

Flats (02:00:32.202)
interacts with them is also important. You can implement something that's very fun to play, but it ruins everyone else's aspects around them. That is considering fun, but for both sides. That can also can be interpreted though as balance. You could turn you interpret that as okay, we need to keep the game in a somewhat balanced state because even for a casual, they do play a lot of triple support, they do play these things. Sometimes those fights go for multiple minutes and it's kind of draining, right? Like one of Jinxy when he played the game

Lyte (02:00:36.195)
Yes.

Lyte (02:00:41.176)
Yes.

Flats (02:01:01.708)
His feedback why he wouldn't play again when he did the Kingsman tournament, which again, probably getting run down by Kingsman didn't help. But he basically said it's nonstop. You basically are just running up, shooting, healing, pressing your buttons, and it's non-stop till you die. And then like you respawn and you just run again, right? So it's like the fight's just going on for so long. And so, yes, fun is number one. I think fun for both the current player and for players that are playing against whatever's going on. 100%. Number two is how does it affect the game overall? Sometimes when it comes out, balance does need to be considered.

Not just 50-50 win rate, but the balance of how the characters interact with each other, how do the abilities interact with each other? Because some abilities or characters come out with character abilities that are just too strong in relativity to the rest, right? Whether they're very underpowered or very overpowered. That's another step. The last one I would say is the perceived meta, how the entire public perceives it. And so, for example, Daredevil, Daredevil was still getting permaband two seasons after he was good.

He was still good, but was he permaban worthy? I don't know. Hell, I mean, at the start of season nine, there was people still permabaming Daredevil. He was not worth a permaban. And so the perception of the game also matters, right? Where it's not the absolute truth. You can't say, well, the perception is everyone believes this, so it must be true. You guys used a league example of, like, you know, like the guy that, you know, they said they nerfed him a bunch, and then it it it came true, right? Like they've made their own reality, right? But

CaptainCoach (02:02:23.862)
Vladimir

Flats (02:02:29.548)
That isn't always true, but it is something to consider.

Coach Mills (02:02:32.775)
So wait, can I cut in your real real quick? I w wanna I wanna play off this. so so I think we're getting a little lost in the weeds about d like some of the some of like the specifics and some of the definitions, but mostly what this what this argument what what y'all are having trouble with is flats, you consistently say that you know, ninety five percent of the game like of the balance and the way that they they work on the game should be t tailored to to casuals.

Lyte (02:02:32.983)
So

Coach Mills (02:03:01.093)
And what Light is saying is that that that ratio is off, where there should be an element of other things taken to account. There should be an element of high-level players. Now, not they're not deciding the entire balance, but it shouldn't be 95% towards the casuals. Maybe it's 70. Maybe it's 60, whatever the case may be. And what I would wait, wait, wait, to go along with that, wouldn't you you have argued that we've gone too far in this specific instance and that you know nerfs need to happen.

Flats (02:03:17.944)
Sure, yeah.

Coach Mills (02:03:28.017)
You know, things need to be reeled back. Maybe the team up system needs to be removed, which is definitely gonna be something that casual players greatly feel, disagree with, hurt them. It wouldn't it reason that because they have been overly catering to the casuals with that 95%, now we have to do something that's gonna piss them all off. Where if we would have had a more balanced ratio in the first place, we never would have gotten to this point this quickly.

Flats (02:03:36.564)
Mm-hmm. Yep. Yes.

Coach Mills (02:03:58.076)
I mean, there's no way that if there was any amount of high level play or pro play taken into account, or or just high level opinions, they would have ever greenlit a lot of these insane power creep things like the Bucky one, like the Elsa one, like the cloak and dagger one. So a lot of this thing this thing that we're about to do or that you're suggesting to do that is gonna piss a whole bunch people off is a result of the 95% catering. And we're not saying to not cater to them primarily, but we're saying to let's inc incorporate different people's opinions and elements

You know, especially like Light says, the high rank player, you know, we feel the balance more strongly than the lower rank player because we understand the game more, we play the game more, we are more devo devoted to the game. So that that that's mostly I think the way we can find common ground here is in that percentage. Like, can we try to find a way to meet in the middle here where there is more of the game tailored and and utilizing higher level opinions, more of the game tailored to

You know, to t to find that that ratio it's it it shouldn't be ninety five percent or or a hundred percent pro players' opinion, but there's probably a balance here that is more healthy for the game.

CaptainCoach (02:05:03.751)
Or we could even look at it more holistically and say something maybe not even directly related to balance. We could do something outside the game, like you know, whatever whatever offering more bands or removing double bands. Some something that could improve the quality for the higher ranked players. Yeah, like

Lyte (02:05:22.186)
I I don't feel like my perspective has been totally encompassed. I think that there is an assumption that fun is like like there's a separation between fun and like the things that make it so. And to cater to fun is to like like sacrifice the things that make it so. Like h the example that I'm gonna use, okay? So counterplay is a mechanism

That makes the game not only more competitive, but it also makes the game more fun. Counterplay must be an option to make the game fun. It is why Black Cat and Black Panther are not fun to play against, because there's no counterplay. In the same vein, if you add abilities that are crazy and wacky and cool that still allow for skill expression, counterplay, and variety, you can make casuals happy while also keeping the game competitive without letting it destabilize into how it is now.

The other component and aspect is that there is no ratio. It is not a magic number that we have to find. It is a case by case basis of a particular character system or some type of implementation into the game that is overall making it worse and needs to be addressed for one party or the other. Then that's my point. And in my video, the example that I gave of Hella is if you are going to make the game fun and use fun as a function.

To cater towards casuals, that is completely fine. But you also have to understand that if you're going to have a 95% of ratio, accessibility is intrinsically tied to a player's ability to access and enjoy the game. And casuals want as much accessibility as possible in order to actually get into the game. That was the whole point I made about Deadlock and League of Legends, is that there's not that much accessibility. So given that that's the case, if the game, if we go off of a ratio in 95% of the game's balance and the systems that they implement,

have to be catered towards the casual player base. It neuters the systems that make the game fun in the first place. It neuters counterplay. It neuters skill expression. It maximizes accessibility. That is why you cannot have a system like a an exact ratio.

Flats (02:07:33.908)
So I'm gonna say it here. sure, if you wanna say there doesn't there's there's an exact ratio, sure. I mean I still disagree that it should be more casual focused, but

Lyte (02:07:42.478)
I'm not saying that. I'm saying that you were saying that. You said ninety five. That's a ratio ninety five percent casual, five percent competitive.

Flats (02:07:48.408)
I said, cat okay. I said the 95% is who I personally think should be catered to. What I was just saying was that if you want to say that there doesn't need to be a ratio or it maybe it's more even, I was gonna just agree with you if you give me a second and say, sure, I personally disagree. But if you want to say it's more in the middle, go right ahead. That is

Absolutely, you're right. But I am a little sick of the hypotheticals with Hella, for example, because they didn't do these things. Can you give me some actual examples where this is currently happening with the game? Because it they don't exist. And like maybe. So, for example, with Hella, you you keep referencing your video. And Hela, you said, you're gonna make the hitbox much bigger so you hit more shots because it's more casual and fun. They don't do that though. They've never done that. So, why, like, why do we

Lyte (02:08:30.935)
Is what currently happened.

Lyte (02:08:44.494)
I'm not saying they have.

Flats (02:08:46.284)
But you make up the hypotheticals like, if that's what they were doing, this is what they would do. Okay, we are currently right now saying that we think it's more casual than competitive. And we want it to become more conceived with more competitive balanced considerations. Incorrect or correct? So you want, you know, like we we're not gonna go too deep into it, but we talked about maybe having pro player feedback. We talked about being on a case by case basis. That that means more competitive feedback, right?

Lyte (02:08:50.414)
That is

Lyte (02:09:01.526)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm, correct?

Flats (02:09:15.362)
But I want to look right now, in its state of current casualness, where have they done these things to make the game so stupid, maybe brain dead, that make it so much more casual focus? We used Hella, but that's not real. That didn't happen. So, like, can we use some actual examples where they're doing this?

Lyte (02:09:29.208)
Yeah. Yeah, I can give you I can give you plenty of specific examples, but I just want it to be I will. I just want it to be understood that Hella is a like she is just a value that you plug into to the point. It doesn't have to be Hella. And here's your example. Luna's charm cleansing after she gets hit by CC. That is a very casual focus change that has made the game worse. Or Cloak and Daggers team up, or Pylocks Ultimate's existence in the first place, or Black Cat being invisible more than Invisible Woman.

Flats (02:09:33.783)
Elaborate.

Flats (02:09:48.184)
Sure.

Sure.

Flats (02:09:59.22)
I hang on, hang on. You lost me completely. Luna, absolutely. Super easy. Silox ults since the beginning. In Black Cat's invisibility, I'd say Black Cat is mostly a higher rank problem. They don't really know how to play her that great. They only just know the iframes and like the ability to just like kind of run you down. Like the ability to spam Invis is more of a higher rank issue. I'm not saying she's not broken.

Lyte (02:09:59.288)
Like Silock.

Lyte (02:10:03.852)
Yeah. Yes, because Silock Silock Salt is very uninterruptive.

Lyte (02:10:17.507)
People

Lyte (02:10:21.302)
No, people people hate black cat at all ranks because of the Invis and the iframes.

Flats (02:10:25.324)
I would say, hang on. If you think that they're playing Black Cat completely properly in the metal ranks, you you just haven't seen it. Yeah, so they're not using the the Invis constantly. They're they're more if anything, they're sneaking up from behind and they're trying to just one shot you with their combos.

Lyte (02:10:30.848)
No, they're not. But no one's playing any character properly down there.

Lyte (02:10:38.86)
Yeah, but that doesn't take away from the problem. Regardless, it was just an example. Like we could agree we could agree Yeah, we c we can agree on Luna, so let's focus on Luna. Implementing changes that take away from counterplay.

Flats (02:10:42.52)
But it does because we're being specific. I asked specifically to be specific. Okay, sure. Can you give me another one though? You gave me like four. What was the last one? You said three, and there was like three or four, and you gave me two of them are just no. Cloak, sure. But but cloak, hang on. Cloak kind of counteract contradicts you though, because you said, for example, Black Cat and BP are uncounterable, right? Like they're they you don't have tools. And that's why they're unfun.

Lyte (02:10:54.722)
Luna Luna Cloak.

Flats (02:11:08.748)
So did they not just give tools to those characters? Just not in the way we would have liked, but they did.

Lyte (02:11:11.862)
No shoot. She already had tools. And my point is is that you were derailing the fun of the game by taking away counterplay. By taking away engagement.

Flats (02:11:21.772)
But that is giving counterplay because it gives them another option. Do I agree with you that it's the way to do it? No. But hypothetically, that is what they're doing.

Lyte (02:11:31.116)
Yeah, it's it's cloak gets more counterplay, but when I say counterplay it's encompassing. You cannot as anyone else that is not the cloak

Flats (02:11:38.136)
Encompassing what though? Just in general?

Lyte (02:11:41.44)
Anyone else who is not the cloak cannot interact with her when she presses that button. It is one button press, instant value. It's in like you can't interact with it.

Flats (02:11:50.828)
Sure. Okay.

Lyte (02:11:52.098)
Yes. So Jeff NATO is another example I gave earlier. The Jeff the Jeff NATO spawns and the time that you got eaten before was like instantly before they nerfed it. There was no interactivity. You just died. So when you add I know, but like you need to stop getting past them mate like rolling it back and focus solely and focus solely on the approach to the balance that they had to implement it because it coincides with your general philosophy of having a ratio.

Flats (02:12:02.252)
Okay. Yep. And they realize that was a problem, yeah, for sure.

Flats (02:12:11.818)
Why? That's important details.

Lyte (02:12:25.218)
That's why I'm saying that there is no ratio. It is a case by case basis and by using

Flats (02:12:30.008)
But it's always gonna be a case-by-case basis, no matter what. That's such a cop-out to constantly say the actionable feedback is just not there. That's why I've pressed you this entire time to say, okay, well, then how would you implement these things? Well, you you brought up yourself talking to pro players, contacting teams. That's actionable feedback. You are you on you've hid behind this entire time. I'm sorry, about theories and about all and about like, and analyzing the data, but they're not, there's not actionable.

Lyte (02:12:49.24)
Yes.

Flats (02:12:58.264)
Actionable feedback almost behind most of it, unless I'm clawing it away. And I feel like once I claw it out a little bit, I I even agree with it sometimes, but not always. But like when we give actionable feedback, for example, Storm, let's stay on topic. Storm. They implemented this thing. It was supposed to be fun and goofy, shark NATO, ha ha ha. It was fucking broken. And so they go, our bad. And they nerfed it so much that like it really wasn't worth using anymore. Is that not the sign of a good dev team that tries something fun?

Doesn't work and go, okay, our bad. We'll nerf it down. I would argue yes. You're saying it doesn't matter? Of course it matters.

Lyte (02:13:36.332)
No, it matters, but it doesn't matter insofar as the conversation that we're having with the approach to balance. You have to let me let me finish my sentence. It doesn't matter insofar as the function that we're talking about, which is the approach to balance it's its implementation in the first place. If their philosophy is we need to make the game as fun as possible, we don't care about anything else besides fun factor and w crazy new wacky abilities Let me finish. If that is their mentality, if that is their mentality

Flats (02:13:39.052)
You said it doesn't matter. You said to me just now it doesn't matter.

Flats (02:13:58.05)
We're speaking in absolutes. We were never in the absolutes. We're not in absolutes though.

Lyte (02:14:05.046)
Or their primary mentality, abilities like Storm, Storm Jeff, are a manifestation of that mentality. And it's great that they dial it back. And that's that's a sign of a good dev team that they dial it back. I'm not disagreeing with you there. But the reason I'm I'm like not with you on that and saying that that aspect, that other half doesn't matter, is because it is not pertinent to the point that I'm trying to make.

Flats (02:14:28.044)
Without that, you would be making a hyper competitive balanced game, which is not what Rivals is fundamentally, which is why I disagree that you need to go that route because at its baseline, that's not where we are. You would have to remove or rework so many abilities, abilities in this game to make it a fair, competitive game. And that's not where we are. They've clearly showed that they want it to be more fun. And we're using this one as an example. And I think it's good that they also realize when it goes too far.

And I think that stuff like that, even if it's wrong, is good for the game to at least get people to be excited for something new. And then if they mess it up or they botch it or it ends up being out of hand, pulling it back is the right call. And I'm glad they did it. But I would rather them swing the bat and make good content that's at least interesting and will bring people back and make people interested in the game than not make it at all because they're afraid of making something that might be broken.

might not be balanced or outside of their data.

Coach Mills (02:15:30.183)
So what do you would you not say?

Lyte (02:15:30.422)
It goes both ways. Hold on, Mills, I need to address this is important, I'm sorry. It goes both ways. Like they do need to have the the courage to implement cool abilities that draw player engagement and get the casuals to come back for sure. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that you also need to consider and take into the fact that those wacky abilities within themselves make the game less fun, which takes away from the casuals enjoyment in the first place. Like if

Flats (02:15:57.686)
Is it always less fun though?

Lyte (02:16:00.608)
If Gambit we'll use Gambit as a perfect example. Gambit has this crazy wacky all awesome ability that gives his entire team a nano boost for all intents and purposes. And this is awesome and cool and fun and it brings people to the game because of how cool Gambit is, but it makes the game worse because it decreases varieties. And I would argue I'm almost done coach. I would argue that anything that significantly, and again significantly is a major point here, put a pin on this, that takes away from variety

Counterplay and interactiveness and

Flats (02:16:35.474)
Just stay locked in. It's fine. Like I you want to stay with Gambit, okay? Gambit is too far. But I would argue back in season five, when Gambit came out, people thought he was the first true support, not healer of this game, because he had other things to do. It was clearly an overloaded kit, and clearly we've adapted to the point where it's too much and maybe even needs to be either reworked or scaled down. I'm not gonna disagree with you, but I wouldn't say that's a wacky, cool, fun ability that they came up with for him.

Lyte (02:16:40.28)
Well, I o I just wasn't doubling my point.

CaptainCoach (02:17:02.327)
Could I provide potentially another example and maybe we could g get out of this kind of that's a good one. Yeah.

Flats (02:17:06.05)
I'd say riding the dyno. Punisher riding the dyno. Funny goofy. Jeff riding dyno now. Funny goofy.

Lyte (02:17:08.364)
Yeah. I mean it's it's up to it's up to like interpretation what is considered funny and goofy, but the point I was trying to make before you cut me off and I was looking over my notes to make sure that I was speaking precisely, so and my words didn't get misconstrued. Anything that doesn't significantly or anything that significantly takes away from preservation of counterplay and interactiveness or that takes away sorry, from yeah.

Flats (02:17:16.554)
Sure. Yeah, absolutely.

Coach Mills (02:17:17.329)
Could it could it?

Lyte (02:17:36.094)
promotion of skill expression without the compromise of total Can I finish what I'm saying?

Flats (02:17:36.748)
But I feel like we're just rehearsing talking points, we're not having a debate here.

Sorry, I apologize, that's my bad.

Lyte (02:17:46.252)
That the promotion of skill expression without total compromise of accessibility and variety. If you implement an ability or a team up or any system that takes away from these three things significantly, it is going to in turn make the game less fun, even if the novelty of the implementation in the first place is fun. Jeff Storm's novelty is cool and fun and awesome, but it takes away from those three major things for between variety, counterplay, and skill expression without accessibility. So it's a bad implementation.

And you could still implement it, just make it more balanced on its implementation and that's it.

Flats (02:18:20.492)
I'm not even disagreeing with you. I'm in the same boat. I thought that they'd want a bad way of doing it. So, like that's why I'm c a little confused because we're not disagreeing that they did it badly. We're disagreeing on the fact that it exists. And I said that it's a good thing for it to exist because it's a fun, interesting, cool thing that they came up with, and clearly they missed. They missed. They they missed, and they totally they they scaled it back. I would rather them keep doing that though. I'd rather them try to make new stuff and make goofy stuff and try to swing the bat. I've played games that say that play it too safe. It's

Coach Mills (02:18:25.71)
So it's to it to

CaptainCoach (02:18:26.119)
I

Coach Mills (02:18:32.167)
So so the

Flats (02:18:49.92)
Fucking boring, dude. It's ass. And so it's like, yeah, they're not perfect with it. I understand they're not perfect with it. And I agree with a lot of what you're saying. And that's why I want to give actionable feedback. And for example, what we're talking about here with like something that's fun and goofy, I think it's better for them to do that kind of stuff because it's a Marvel superhero game and it's good for the game's health long term. But as long as they scale it back, and I think season nine is a good example where they failed because they fucked up with that support rework.

Or the the nerfing or sorry, the buffing of of support times and they promised us that they were gonna make all these changes and they didn't. I think they failed. But historically there are been times where they do stuff like that and then they either fix it or they're like, we'll we'll capitalize on this more. And I would rather them do that more than be afraid.

CaptainCoach (02:19:37.482)
I can go Mills if

Coach Mills (02:19:38.703)
Yeah yeah yeah yeah g go for it and then I'll say something after.

CaptainCoach (02:19:40.704)
So an example I we've talked about recently on the podcast, actually when opening it up to our community, that I really want to emphasize here is someone like Star Lord, who to Light's point, you know, adding that counter play and and having that gameplay loop that feels fair to play against. I feel like with Star Lord, when they impl implemented his team up I think the one where they throw out the seeds and and it roots people, like to me, that as a

design isn't really part of what makes Star Lord Star Lord. It kits kind of counterintuitive, doesn't really fit with his kit. Yeah, yeah.

Flats (02:20:17.57)
Set the group team up? Sorry, I'm just curious. Yeah, maybe that's what it was. They were trying to make like a crossover with like the heroes because they're on the same team. But like I it's just ass, yeah.

Coach Mills (02:20:19.847)
Yeah, it's the group came up, yeah.

CaptainCoach (02:20:24.055)
I think so. I I most likely, yeah. And to me in my mind I'm thinking, okay, well yeah, this is probably directed more towards the casuals. You offer this easy root ability that now if it hits now Star Lord, you know, who are maybe aren't as good at the game, get to easily line up their headshots, get it full clip and it's like a reliable way to consistently like fool the dead someone, get a confirm on someone, just like the you know, the poke heroes have like those little mini routes to line up like a free headshot or or the mini stuns, I mean.

it's funny, I I feel like listening to you two, it's like you both kinda want the same thing. It's like it's like Avengers Civil War with a Cap and Iron Man. Like Flats, you're kind of warning us don't listen to the the top, right? Because it can c potentially cause more harm than good, like too too much that is. And light, you're thinking that pros opinions should be considered more because it's dangerous to add mechanics like that to break the game. Can we agree on some philosophy? Okay.

Lyte (02:21:21.998)
Find

CaptainCoach (02:21:23.843)
with Star Lord as an example, like with the root where we can maybe not objectively, but look at a hero's identity, know what makes them cool, and at least have a agreed upon community idea of things that do or don't belong within the realm of like a hero's gameplay loop and counterplay, using maybe the Star Lord route as an example. Is there s is there some kind of philosophy we can both agree on here?

Coach Mills (02:21:45.649)
Yeah yep.

Lyte (02:21:50.07)
If by both you mean like me and flats, maybe, but I think if you say we as a community then definitely not.

Coach Mills (02:21:50.235)
Yeah.

CaptainCoach (02:21:51.872)
Yes.

Coach Mills (02:21:55.569)
Well we're just talking about mo mo more specifically y'all two. Like like kinda to tack onto that, 'cause I think one of the things that they could do as an example is when they have a cool wacky ability, they he they come up with a really cool wacky idea and they say, you know, they bring it to whether it's an internal playtest team of high level players like they've done in Valorant, or whether it's pros or whatever, and they say, Okay, this is our really wacky fun idea. Does this violate any of the principles of counterplay? Does this violate any of the principles of

Flats (02:21:56.056)
That's a good point, yeah.

Coach Mills (02:22:24.337)
You know, maybe it's too strong for too much value or identity, right? And then

CaptainCoach (02:22:24.509)
you know or identity. It doesn't even make Star it's not Star Lord's not Star Lord, so now you have to make every other part of his kit weaker if you want to have this really strong why I w maybe not strong, but like the Star Lord players, a lot of them I've heard, like don't like it. They don't like the 'cause they now you can't do the flips and all the cool stuff about Star Lord. You're just relying on this this stupid well, it's whatever. It's ups but subjective but

Coach Mills (02:22:45.287)
Cause I think there's tons of examples of like cool abilities that don't violate the principles. Like I like an example I think of is like I don't think any pro would have had a problem with like the magic strange team up where you have to like actually skill shot, hit them, tie two people together. Like that's cool. But immediately, if they would have shopped around the Bucky Elsa team up, i immediately someone would have been like, No, this is this this this is problematic for X, Y, and Z. So I think that

Part of what Light is saying is that j from conception, these abilities are created with pure wackiness and fun in mind, without even thinking about okay, what what is there any other principle that they violate that perhaps we can tweak it a little bit, keep the fun there, but you know, not make it so that it completely violates th those principles of counterplay, gameplay loop.

Lyte (02:23:33.942)
That's good point, Mills. I should have used that phrasing that phrasing, like front conception. So the fact that they reel back on broken stuff is good, that's what they should do. But it's front conception, which is the point. And also like if you implement ability that is so broken that it's cool and wacky and awesome and it's fun for the people that are using it, but my entire point was that for everyone else in the sandbox of that game, it takes away from their experience and makes the game less fun, which if fun is the main thing that we're balancing for.

then that's a problem. And so it's not just the case where if you if you make the game more competitive, it takes away from the fun. I think like competitive and fun actually have very close relationship. Because the things that make a game competitive also make it fun, like rewarding you for your skill and your time investment, like promotion of counterplay. And obviously it does it perfectly align. And there are cases at which you can compromise one by catering to the other. But they're not they're not

completely opposed to each other. They're not mutually exclusive.

CaptainCoach (02:24:36.439)
Okay, so yeah, go ahead, Flats.

Flats (02:24:39.064)
I was just gonna say historically, like I don't agree with this. I personally don't agree with this. Historically, that's not totally true, in terms of like feeling rewarded for your skill expression, depending on what type of game it is. The Apex stuff that I showed you earlier, showing their massive drop in in player count, and then spiking back when they made ranked much easier and much more easy to attain, actually I would say mirrors rivals in a lot of ways, where it used to be kind of like easy to play ranked, then they mirrored pro play, everyone, all the casuals hated it. All the pros and everybody loved it, by the way.

Like anyone who's competitive loved it. Everyone else hated it. And so then they made it super easy in season sixteen. And then all the pros and the competitive people hated it and all the casuals loved it. Realistically though, the player count went way up because they outnumbered them fifty to one. Maybe not fifty to one, but like hypothetical example there. sorry, did you want to say something, Mills? I d just saw you.

Coach Mills (02:25:30.225)
Well, I I wanted to ask you a question specifically about that. Like specifically about Apex and Ranked and Rivals Ranked. Because you know, they you said they implemented a competitive change into the ranked system. So one of the things in the past you've stated that you don't need a positive win rate to climb in rivals, even up to Celestial. So does that mean that you also agree that the current ranked system is actually an engagement system and not a competitive one? It's an it's an engagement system for c casual players and not a competitive one. If you if you do not need to actually succeed in the system to climb.

CaptainCoach (02:25:56.117)
Now you're speaking my language, Mills.

Flats (02:25:57.666)
Yeah. The real system doesn't kick in till at least celestial. No, it is an engagement tool. Like I think when me and the light were going

Coach Mills (02:26:03.557)
And and and and do you think that it is a healthy s scenario? 'Cause is is that actually healthy for the future of the game?

Flats (02:26:09.752)
I just said at the beginning, I don't personally agree with it, but it works. Cause I am a competitive player. It works for me. It's what I I want, a competitive experience. That doesn't mean I'm everyone else. And so trying to take their account into experience or take their experience into account, sorry, misspoke, but also seeing the data of like that's what people do, right? Like they enjoy ranking up, even if it's not totally real. And you say, like Light said this in his video is like, you know, competitive games are what you make of it.

You know, and this game has a competitive mode. I personally believe the competitive mode of this game is an engagement tool. It's because people like to play ranked. I I

Coach Mills (02:26:46.365)
And would you would you change that? W w is there anything you would change about it or are you are you vouching for it?

Lyte (02:26:46.53)
Hundred percent.

Flats (02:26:51.244)
I mean, like, it depends. Like, if I was selfish, sure. Make it so you can't climb with a negative win rate. You actually make rank legitimately matter. But hang on. Now you're kind of like, wait, whoa, whoa, hang on. Where is the most of the player base? It is my belief that most of the casual player base is in quick play. That's my belief. But I don't have any evidence to back that up other than just like seeing rivals data and stuff like that. And I also think a lot of third party websites need to be questioned. Nothing against Rivals data, they're a little bit newer, but

We've had other ones in the past that make outrageous claims or show win rates of characters and then Net East gives us the real data and it's not true. So I would say I'd have to know a little bit more about how many people actually play comp because I think a lot of people play comp from bronze to gold to get the rewards. And then they stop. There's a lot of probably casuals that are in those ranks. and then once you get to gold, that's why the chrono shields are there. They want to get you to get to gold, so you get your rewards. Then once you get past that, then they kind of like they like push you off the swing a little bit. They're like, okay, now you gotta actually grind.

And either you're good and you win a lot of games and climb, or you're bad and you play a fuck ton of games and you climb. Both are good for net use because one, the good player is going to get to their rank correctly. Two, the bad player is gonna climb, which means they're playing more hours of the game, which means their chances of probably buying your skin are higher because they have more investment in the game and they're more in the game in general. So on their back end, it probably is a great engagement tool because the more committed you are and the more hours you put in, the more likely you are to buy a skin or to buy something. And that's good business for them.

CaptainCoach (02:28:12.479)
Yeah.

CaptainCoach (02:28:16.191)
They're trying to put you in that

Flats (02:28:18.38)
And I'm not saying it's good for us. Like I said at the beginning of this, I personally disagree. But I can't also sit there and say, well, if that is what's best for the game and that's what they enjoy getting, even if it's a little bit hollow, maybe that's the reason why they let you stack until Celestial. And then it's duo Q only. And then the rank system kind of turns on. I know you can get to eternity with like a 49 if you like play a thousand fucking games, but that's a that's a slog to really get through. but that's about where the real

Matchmaker kind of turns on. I think it's by design.

Coach Mills (02:28:49.735)
Well, 'cause I would I would argue that you're not catering you're not catering to your casual community in any capacity if you don't have a system that is at the very least fair. At at the at the very like that's a that's a minimum requirement to cater to the casual community at all. And so like is it isn't there any danger in not catering your to your ca to your competitive community at all when there are, you know, stuff like GTA six around the corner that threaten your more casual community and then your competitive community is already really disenfranchised because you're not catering to them in

CaptainCoach (02:29:04.375)
That's a great point.

Coach Mills (02:29:18.777)
in any capacity with a rank system that does not promote skill.

Flats (02:29:23.808)
I mean, you could argue that for sure. But I mean, historically though, games that go much more competitive, you know, would do take a big hit. sometimes it's good for the game and it will recover long term. I just don't think Rabbles is there. And I think Rabbles' base, like the base of the game, the foundation of the game, is not that competitive. And I think if you wanted to go competitive, you would have to change so many things. You know how we talked about earlier, you brought it up, like, you talked about wanting to remove the the team up system, or

What I was really kind of wanting is like changing it to the old team up system, but you can keep the changes. That's gonna cause a lot of friction and a lot of people are gonna be upset. And it's like, yeah, like you you're gonna have to rip that band-aid off. You you fed the community, you got them drunk on power. That's on netties. That's that's not on me. Like, I didn't do that. I don't, I don't fucking make the game. But for your long term game's health, you gotta consider some of those things. Cause at some point, not just competitively balanced, it's gonna be difficult, but as a casual coming in, well, hang on.

Now you used you played against Luna Snow before. Why the fuck does she have two new abilities? What the hell? And then you also play against four or five new characters you haven't played since you last played. All those characters have a bunch of abilities. And then, yeah, all the other four raw other players on your team that like you you've played against Cap, you've played against Mag, whatever. Now they have extra abilities all the time. And maybe you don't think to check which team up they have. So you're like not hitting tab to check, you're like, whoa, whoa, everyone has all these extra abilities. What's going on? It's even tougher to get into.

And it can run away too far. Sorry, go ahead.

Lyte (02:30:55.436)
I have a question for you, Flutz. What do you think is a change that they could make to the game that you would consider competitive that would make it worse? Maybe like two or three examples.

Flats (02:31:03.702)
And competitive to make it worse?

Lyte (02:31:05.996)
Yeah, like what is a change that you would consider a competitive focus change that would make the game worse?

Flats (02:31:12.128)
Hmm. Competitive focus change that would make the game worse. removing stacking in general. that would probably be number one. competitive focus in general.

Lyte (02:31:18.689)
Okay. I agree.

Lyte (02:31:26.446)
Like with the balance.

Flats (02:31:27.808)
Yeah, with the balance in this particular. The balance one's interesting because I mean I personally think the power level's gone too far because of the team ups, but before that I think it was fine. I think overall that

Even though I think that there's too much sustain in the game overall, I think that it would probably you'd have to do it all at once. You'd have to just rip the band-aid off. But if you over time started doing these patches what that were more competitive, like nerfing healing, nerfing damage, nerfing uptime for for for tanks or for example, or whatever, that would compound into a bad example or a bad decision. I'm much more proponent of ripping the band-aid off all at once. And

Then going from there. But if you consistently balance the game every patch more competitively and you slowly start to bring down the power level of some of those characters that are overperforming, that would be bad because people would just perceive as nerf, nerf, nerf, nerf, nerf, and they would get upset. And the last one, I don't know if you consider it a competitive thing. I think it's competitive is roll queue.

Lyte (02:32:26.744)
I have a question about your

I have a question about your last one. so do you think that the the output of a character is like relational to how competitive or casual it is? So like you said that you nerf healing, nerf damage, nerf tankiness, like bring it down over time. Do you think that those things like high healing, high damage, high tankiness, are inherently intrinsically tied to like a competitive focus?

Flats (02:32:31.405)
Okay.

Flats (02:32:57.782)
I think the game just has extreme extreme power creep. I don't think it has anything to do with competitiveness or not. I think if you were going to go more competitive, you would r lower a lot of those things, right? So because sustain, especially when you actually hit all your shots and you hit all your heals and whatnot, is ridiculously high. And I mean you can even say that with like triple support and some maybe the lower ranks. But also without that healing, a lot of tanks, for example, will stand frontline and they just

Lyte (02:33:07.352)
Yeah. But why?

Flats (02:33:27.19)
Pretend like that's their job. Take space and you stand there. But you'd have to lower the damage too, because those are the guys that are getting shot all the time. Most DPS from like bronze to plat slash gold, I mean to diamond, are stat farmers. They want to shoot the other tank, so their number goes up and like they're like, look at me, I did all this damage. And so it's the tank players that standing there on both sides. So you'd have to bring those down too. but the game has had outrageous power creep because of how fast you're implementing new heroes, and also buffs are widely regarded as good.

Nerfs are regarded as bad. And so NetEase doesn't want to upset its its base. So it just kind of slowly power creeps up.

Lyte (02:34:04.504)
So yeah, so you're saying that the general power level of the game is too high right now, insofar as that it's made the competitive experience worse, and then if we wanted to make the competitive experience better, we would bring down the current power level. In aggregate, like universally. Okay. I just wanted to make sure I understood. The way that I think about it is is kinda similar, but I think more so of like specific interactions, and certain abilities that have pain points or characters that have pain points. or even comps for that matter, like triple support in aggregate.

Flats (02:34:18.2)
Sure, yeah. Sure.

Lyte (02:34:34.314)
I would I would add like a penalty as an actual suggestion, add a penalty to triple supports that decrease their effective healing by like let's say ten percent or something. You have three sports on your team, ten percent less healing output. address Luna being able to cleanse herself, address invisibility, eye frames, like that type of thing. Address poke characters having too many options for too many situations. bringing up some of the disembarag or sorry, disenfranchised

Flats (02:34:53.784)
Sure, yeah.

Lyte (02:35:03.852)
melee dive DPS as well that have been too bad for too long that don't compromise the lower rank players. Yeah, yeah, so like you gotta be a little careful about Black Panther and Magic, but like Iron Fist you can make better, DPS Deadpool you can make better. Spider Man you gotta be a little bit careful with as well. But for the most part, like those characters are more volatile than their hit scans, but historically and my biggest contention with them is that they have been on average worse.

Flats (02:35:10.968)
Except the outliers. Yeah, yeah.

Lyte (02:35:33.132)
Than their Hiskian counterparts. and whatever argument yeah, whatever argument people want to make, like, aim has infinite potential, therefore it should be better. I think like a concept that people don't really understand is that like in order the you can't have it be so asymmetrical to where a character's output or effectiveness in the game cannot be so much so that its retaliation is so much harder to deploy. So like

Flats (02:35:34.7)
Hunt I yeah, I agree.

Lyte (02:36:00.726)
Gene Gray or even Elsa in her current state, it is way easier for the Elsa player to do what she needs to do and to do her job, to suffocate the rest of the roster and be the best hero in the game, than it is to actually deal with the Elsa. And that's how it was with Gene, that's how it was with release Hella Hawkeye. And that's how it's always been generally with like your top two or three hit scans, even like Black Widow right now. Like it's far far e like the it's hard to aim, yes, no one's saying that. But your reward is too great. And I'm not even talking about like nerfing it completely to where

You make hit scan unplayable. I'm just saying bring it down like ten percent, like fifteen percent, and give other heroes in the DPS roster more options to to interact with them.

Flats (02:36:29.378)
Yeah.

Flats (02:36:33.751)
I'm with ya.

Coach Mills (02:36:37.086)
Yeah, you're talking to a lot of take players. We probably all agree. Yeah, we're we're that yeah, yeah, yeah.

Flats (02:36:39.0)
A hundred percent.

CaptainCoach (02:36:40.648)
Okay.

Flats (02:36:41.654)
No, yeah, I'm I'm completely with you. A hundred percent. I I think I think there's something to be said too that you're right. Like I mean we've had okay, before someone says I someone's gonna say, like, we've had a couple melee metas where like melee's strong for a season. Sure, yeah, a hundred percent. Although I think you're you're hundred percent right. It's been mostly hit scan, you know, hit scan, like the more stand with your team, poke, shoot them, they explode. I also think there's something to having a different flavor of that, right? Like

Lyte (02:36:55.276)
Yeah. Historically. Yeah.

Flats (02:37:10.39)
This might sound fucking insane, but like Hella's always Hella's always been kinda good. Like good. But like has she been hard meta for a while? Probably not. Like I'd say like Phoenix was more hard meta for a long time. I'd say Elsa was hard meta more for a long time. Widows now come up, right? Like I think there's something to be said that maybe like cycling through which ones are strong might help alleviate that as well. both for competitive and for the casual side as well that are dealing, you know, with that less fre much less frequently, but for the the competitive higher side that

Lyte (02:37:34.158)
Variety.

Flats (02:37:40.332)
We'll deal with it much more intensely. At least you're not three seasons of Elsa, which is obviously the biggest pain point, right? I think Netes could probably do a little bit better of that. They want to keep that as a strong component. but also, you know, there's maybe something you've said that some of their kits are just more juiced, right? Like Phoenix, a lot of times, is just more juiced hella on average. how do you deal with that?

Lyte (02:38:00.288)
Yeah. I mean Hella was the premier Hella was the premier hit scan for ever until Phoenix was introduced in the game. And then it wasn't even like Hella was bad, Phoenix was just so much better that you never picked her anymore, and there's no point. And then Phoenix dominated the game for forever, and then Daredevil became the only melee DPS that could deal with her and check them. And this is something that I think that

Flats (02:38:13.078)
Hundred percent.

Lyte (02:38:26.06)
really needs be understood by everybody. All of my posts that I've ever made that have been me complaining about the game and like hit scans was a consequence of this game for some reason, with the poke tick the poke DPS in particular. Usually how games are balanced, like in Overwatch, which we're both ex familiar with, the hit scan in question has some type of weakness that you can exploit, whether it's their range, mobility, or like a stun, like their dueling potential, right? So Cassidy compared to Ash.

Cassidy is like a mid to close range character that was problematic and annoying to play against because of his stun one shot for Genji Tracer players. But Ash was weak to Genji Tracer because she didn't have the same ability to retaliate, but in consequ like like in a trade-off she had more range, more AoE damage, her ult can contest the point. Like it's a tradeoff right between the two. It's basically stopping py power versus survivability and dueling potential. But in this game, especially before the release of Daredevil, in season eight, or not eight, it was four, I think it was, four, four point five. There was not a single

DPS in the flex DPS like subcategory of roll that could contest reliably a hit scan walking to a lane because Hella just has a sniper, one stop one-shots you, and her bird makes her invincible during the duration, and her ult just basically resets her cooldowns because you know she goes up, gets all of her cooldowns back or whatever. Now that DD and Black Cat are in the game, and there's like Angelas running around and power crept Thors and stuff like that, it's not as big of an issue as it used to be. But a lot of that

in my contention with the game is like the inherent design of these poke characters is unhealthy relative to the balance of the game back then and the state of the character's options within my role back then. And so now I think it's still the same. And so far as you have Elsa and Widow and Bucky running around that are just superheroes compared to their prior selves. Bucky and Black Widow of course, because Elsa's recent. But that has like been my general pain point of the game.

In so far as the balance in the DPS role. So if like anytime I said dive was well dive is actually bad now, but like In the past, before they nerfed Captain America and Venom to make dive completely unplayable, like the dive tanks are always good. It's the dive DPS in particular that I really want to give a voice and make it understood. Like, guys, like it is not skillless. You can't kill an entire archetype because it's boring to play against. I know like the subjective experience of each player feels like, I hate playing against this one, I hate playing against this one. But like Black Panther.

Lyte (02:40:51.338)
is one just bad apple of all of them. And the same way I hate playing against suffocating hit scans is the same way that a support might hate playing against like a a Spider Man that's doing really well or something like that. So

Coach Mills (02:41:04.433)
So I wanna change gears really quickly. We're gonna kinda go into something similar to a rapid fire round. Yes, yes. Let we could let's take a let's take a little can we take

Flats (02:41:04.502)
Yeah, a hundred percent with you on that.

Flats (02:41:10.648)
Can I pee for like a minute? I'm dying. Okay, give me one second. Sorry. I'll even I'll hang on, I'll even turn on my phone so I can hear you in there. Hold on. Give me one second.

CaptainCoach (02:41:18.207)
No, we could chill. It's not a big deal.

Coach Mills (02:41:19.235)
Yeah, well let's I I

Flats (02:41:19.992)
Alright, you're good.

CaptainCoach (02:41:23.157)
I I did wanna do a follow up when they mentioned the ranked being kind of like an egg yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lyte (02:41:29.518)
I'm gonna go too, actually. Sorry.

Coach Mills (02:41:30.555)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fi five intermission inner intermission could chat, everybody. Go get popcorn or something.

CaptainCoach (02:41:38.123)
I'm just gonna stare until they get back at everybody watching.

Hey chat, no, I'm just kidding. All I'll be right back.

Flats (02:42:05.31)
thank God. Alright, they're all gone, so no one's gonna hear this, but I wasn't trying to recreate the the the fart clip with a piss clip, dude. That was I was dying. I was fighting for my fucking life trying to leave. Holy fuck. I didn't want I didn't wanna be rude and cut anybody off, but like

This was not my best idea. I should've just not said I should've just well, it's too late now, so

Flats (02:42:40.959)
Ugh.

Flats (02:42:47.266)
Well if they do hear you, they're not gonna hear me.

Flats (02:42:56.651)
I guess I am unmuted. I guess that's a good point.

Coach Mills (02:43:28.283)
Yo, yo. Welcome back. Welcome back. Welcome back. Hello, everybody.

Flats (02:43:30.304)
Hello.

CaptainCoach (02:43:33.984)
Can I ask one question, Mills, before we move on? Because there was something I wanted to ask both both of them. so we you both agreed that the ranked system you think is primarily or at least partially serves as an engagement mechanism. My question is, do you think that the casuals would benefit more from a more traditional ranked ELO system?

Coach Mills (02:43:36.402)
Yep.

Coach Mills (02:43:40.029)
Yeah, sure.

CaptainCoach (02:44:02.583)
Do you think it would be better for the game's overall health? because I feel like a lot of people maybe don't get to their true rank and it causes a severe decrease in game quality. Just curious to hear your thoughts on that.

Flats (02:44:14.04)
What do you mean by don't get to your true rank? I think if people go past their true rank on average.

CaptainCoach (02:44:19.519)
I mean i i because you can play a lot of games, your rank is not necessarily as indicative of your skill level as it would be in other games. because yeah, it's more of a play to win rather than like be better to win. And I was just wanted to know if you thought that maybe 'cause we we talked a lot about of a lot about in game changes and I I it's nice that we

Finding some common ground with some of the balance that you guys would like to see. But I'm talking more about this the rank system as a whole, I feel like is a big elephant in the room when addressing the casual versus competitive conversation because it's something that we all experience. And you know, at different levels it's it's felt in different ways. Obviously in lower ranks, not so much people with the chrono shield kind of just blow past those ranks if you're you're you're winning, as you said.

But in the higher ranks, you kind of get to this point where, like you said, rank starts at celestial. So it's like if you're the C1 player trying to get your eternity or pushing one above all, you can get those Celestial Three players. And then for the Celestial Three player who's been grinding hundreds of games to get to that point, now it feels miserable playing against these people who are just clearly not really in the same skill level. So I I would just wanted to know if maybe like a more traditional ELO system could be a solution to that.

Flats (02:45:39.032)
So also by the way, if you saw me like squint, I wasn't talking about you. There's gift there's fucking gifts now for Twitch chat. They're just sending the fucking most degenerate bullshit I've ever seen.

CaptainCoach (02:45:41.967)
you're good.

Mm-hmm.

Coach Mills (02:45:45.533)
Okay. Let's go.

CaptainCoach (02:45:47.455)
Yeah.

Lyte (02:45:47.938)
Yeah.

Flats (02:45:50.272)
Well, I mean, I guess there's something to be said, right? The guy you're you're basically trying to say that the guy who gets to celestial and he's not that good is gonna be miserable in those games. I'd argue that it's way worse for the teammates. I think it's way worse to have the guy who doesn't know what the fuck he's doing, the guy who's played a hundred games and you've played like six. so I would say that if you are actually good at the game, you're gonna climb no problem. It doesn't matter if you put put some hours in. The reason why I think it's an engagement tool is cause the guy can put in a hundred hours and get to the same rank you did in ten. d do I think that's actually a good rank system? No. Do does it

Clearly get people to come back and play the game. It also keeps people invested and like, you ain't telling me nothing. How many times someone goes, flats, that guy sucks. That guy's boosted. How do you know? I'm fucking GM. Okay, buddy. Like, sure, man. Congrats. You got the GM3. You know? so you're not telling me nothing on that. It's just

CaptainCoach (02:46:31.67)
Yeah.

Lyte (02:46:32.91)
I don't think yeah bruh, there's not gonna be a single person. There's not gonna be a single person that's gonna sit here and say the rank system is good, like at all. Like it's it's what is there even to talk about?

Flats (02:46:40.32)
Yeah, yeah, I'm not gonna yeah, but like is it's but the thing is though for Net East, is it doing its job?

CaptainCoach (02:46:44.619)
But I yeah, that's that's my that was my question though too.

Flats (02:46:47.672)
I for neties it is. Is that good for for for us? Like us four? No. But is it making them more money? Is it getting people more engaged? I'm the only people who know any of that is them, unfortunately.

Coach Mills (02:46:58.75)
So one thing I'll

Lyte (02:46:58.87)
Yeah. I'm I'm curious I'm curious to know if like if they actually had like an actual good rank system, if that would actually drive engagement better because the game's quality is better.

CaptainCoach (02:47:09.669)
I think it would. I think it would.

Flats (02:47:09.794)
You would I would you would think, but like

Lyte (02:47:11.854)
Like maybe maybe probably probably not, otherwise they wouldn't have invested billions of dollars and years of research in order to implement this system into the game. But a as far as match quality goes, I mean this is like one of the things that we're all gonna universally agree on. Like I think the big things that we agree on, Flats, even before we got in here, is that there needs to be better incentive to watch pro play, like with the Twitch drops. The matchmakers the matchmaker's just terrible. and the server lag is is horrible. Like all of like the systematic stuff

Coach Mills (02:47:11.867)
I would think I would definitely think

Flats (02:47:32.5)
yeah.

Lyte (02:47:42.42)
needs to be better for sure. And I don't think anyone's gonna disagree on that, bro. Like

Flats (02:47:46.987)
No, yeah.

Coach Mills (02:47:47.006)
'Cause 'cause one of the things, flats, I you know, I mean we we went through it with Overwatch. I think Overwatch had a much more traditional rank system, you know, i i especially in the beginning. And I I just remember like Elo Hell was like a buzzword that was used all the time. No one s talks about elo hell in this game because there isn't one. You just play

Flats (02:48:03.682)
Cause you can just c just keep queueing. Keep Qin! Cue again!

CaptainCoach (02:48:03.799)
True True.

Coach Mills (02:48:04.594)
You just play. Like, do do you remember the the iconic clip from Siegel where he basically called everyone trash, they couldn't climb? Do you know what I'm talking? It's one of my favorite clues of all time. But we haven't had that, I don't know, come to Jesus the come to Jesus moment in this game because and and and I think that that's part of the reason why pros are less respected in this game than any other game. I think this that's the reason why skill is less respected in this game than any other game. Because in Overwatch, you would run into silver and

Flats (02:48:11.702)
My favorite clip.

Flats (02:48:15.99)
Mods, grab it. I know where it is.

CaptainCoach (02:48:27.775)
Mm.

Coach Mills (02:48:33.455)
And eventually the reality would seep in that you're bad. Like it doesn't matter how much you played, you would have to embrace the reality that I mean, I I remember embracing that reality. I was stuck in silver on console back in twenty sixteen. I remember it. I had to embrace this reality that's like, wait, I'm fucking ass. I need to watch someone and someone needs to tell me how to get better at this game. But that does not happen in this rank system. So people just kind of, you know, you know, la la la play the play the game and it you know, it rewards them for just plugging in the hours. I I

I would you say that there maybe you still think the system is better because it's working, but like would you say that there's any consequence to a system like this? Like are there any consequences either now or in the future of a system like this?

Flats (02:49:15.298)
We're looking at it. You're you're not respected for being high rank. Being a pro player, for example, nobody gives a fuck. Like this is this is it. This is the this is the the consequence. We're in it.

Lyte (02:49:16.686)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's that's one of

Lyte (02:49:24.312)
Yeah. That whole that whole like like disrespect for pro players and people that are better in this game, I think, is a multifaceted issue. I don't think the only reason people don't do it is 'cause the rank system is so bad. I think there's like many reasons. but like Yeah, but the the rank system's pain points is that the match quality is so bad that it just drives player frustration through the roof. And I don't know how it's possible

to for people to still be engaged when the game like like incentivizes you to stop playing in order to start winning. Or you just drop twenty games. I mean I guess that's the point is you're supposed to drop twenty games and then you climb back up, but that feels horrible when you're on a lost streak that is manufactured or artificial. At least insofar as like you you are not favored to win at all. Like in league or in like Overwatch even nowadays, you queue up in a ranked game

If you're not favored to win, it's like forty eight percent, maybe forty five. In this game it's like you're spawn cramped, bro. Like you know, I'm on BP. We can't win this game, it is what it is. Or they're spawn trapped and I'm bored regardless, you know? There's so many of th those games in this game, bro.

Flats (02:50:30.828)
Do we

CaptainCoach (02:50:32.503)
Does anyone else hear Robolite or is it just me? Okay. All right.

Flats (02:50:34.058)
Yeah, RoboLight is is going crazy. I was gonna say, do we actually know what their their range is for cues on ranked? Like like what the what the minimum maximum is?

Coach Mills (02:50:34.489)
Yeah, okay, I I didn't know if it was just me. Okay, well.

Lyte (02:50:39.608)
Hello?

Coach Mills (02:50:39.931)
It was like a internet leg. it changes day to day. I don't know, who knows?

CaptainCoach (02:50:43.809)
Could could could you re could you could you repeat that? I didn't

Lyte (02:50:43.862)
no.

Flats (02:50:48.044)
So he was said bringing an Overwatch. he was right about like the whole like 48, 52. actually the way the matchmaker they've they've come out and say it. They just tell everybody how the matchmaker works this these days, which is kind of great. And it's like it tries to find 50 50, then after like a minute, it will move to 49 51, and then after another minute, it goes to 48, 52, and then like it'll just like over time creep up trying to find you a match. I was asking, have do we actually know what how it works in in Rivals? Like, cause the cues are instant here.

Coach Mills (02:51:15.485)
Yeah, I think I think transparency is is a policy that I think we also could all think that could benefit this game. There's not a lot of transparency with how the matches are created.

CaptainCoach (02:51:16.439)
Flats (02:51:20.94)
Yeah, for sure.

CaptainCoach (02:51:24.223)
I I have done and I I think Light has too I've done a lot of research on their netties engagement systems, their algorithms and and such, but they they're it's not confirmed to be in the game. So I don't want to bog down this little debate we're having with my EOMM conspiracy theories, you know. But I've done

Flats (02:51:41.644)
Yo MMM. Yo Mm.

Lyte (02:51:42.55)
Can you can you guys can you guys hear me so or am I lagging?

Coach Mills (02:51:42.814)
He couldn't get he couldn't he couldn't he couldn't get through one episode one episode Okay anyways so so shifting gears I'm gonna shift gears immediately when he brings that up let's go ahead and I'm just gonna say a statement like in it it's not a statement I agree with or something it's just a statement that I've heard and it's like we're gonna do it like rapid fire where I want to hear like just short thoughts from both of y'all on Ta like agree, disagree, and why very quickly. and then we'll move on to the next one and the next one and the next one. I like six of these.

Flats (02:51:46.853)
you're better now.

Coach Mills (02:52:12.281)
Okay, so the first one is a role queue system would increase game quality across both low and high ranks. Agree or disagree?

Lyte (02:52:22.242)
Yes, but I don't think it's worth implementing role queue for that.

Flats (02:52:26.69)
But I'm means you.

Coach Mills (02:52:26.789)
I Okay. And and and just I specifically say a roll queue system 'cause I'm not talking about roll lock here. I'm talking about like a like a like a prefer road queue, yeah.

Flats (02:52:34.206)
like a preferred roll queue? that's a little more open. Sorry, you go first.

Lyte (02:52:35.24)
Then yeah, yeah, no downside.

Coach Mills (02:52:40.049)
Where w they do they just try to put two tanks, two DPS and two support people that say that they'll play those roles on each team, but it's not like it's not force. You're not locked into doing that. You just they're just trying to create. Like they are like you technically are artificially creating the the two two two, but like it's it's better than what we got n well the the argument the the argument is that it's better it's not locked. It's not locked, it's just like

Flats (02:52:59.448)
I disagree unlocking it.

Flats (02:53:03.744)
No, no, no, no, sorry. I mean you. You decide, I want to play tank this game when you queue up. I think that's not gonna work.

Coach Mills (02:53:10.375)
Well they could put like two flex players on the team too or something, like like people that queue from a

Flats (02:53:14.172)
I I'm more insidious. I think it should work behind the scenes and they tell no one. I think that they should like find what you like to play, like your on average a DPS player, on average a support player, on average a tank player, and build off of that in your player history as opposed to what you lock, because people will lie. People will fucking lie. They're gonna they're gonna do whatever they can to get the fastest queue.

CaptainCoach (02:53:18.655)
I think it already does that.

Coach Mills (02:53:20.443)
I don't think it does.

CaptainCoach (02:53:37.041)
I I'm I'm in complete disagreement. my research on their engagement systems, stuff like this is a thing. Again, we don't know if it's in the game, but to me, I just don't see how you could say whether you're competitive or casual that more player freedom is a bad thing or more player control. I just don't ever see an argument for their being it being beneficial for players to have less control. That that's just kind of always been my point of view. Sorry.

Flats (02:54:01.814)
So w I'm confused then on sorry, like we're saying if you did unrel implement a roll lock, that is the way I think you sorry, not roll lock, sorry. Preferred roll queue. Preferred instead of having you decide it, are you saying

Coach Mills (02:54:08.667)
Well not a not a

Coach Mills (02:54:13.617)
Yeah. Yeah, 'cause you would you would never queue into a game and have like four tank mains as an example, which happens all the time in Cell Plus.

CaptainCoach (02:54:14.325)
Yeah. Main roll, off roll.

Flats (02:54:20.65)
Yeah, that's what we're trying to so I I'm confusing what

Lyte (02:54:22.51)
Would you guys mind if I if we took like five minutes real quick so I can restart my internet? My stuff like really laggy, I'm getting packet loss. Okay. I'll like right back, guys. Sorry about that.

Flats (02:54:27.248)
yeah, do your thing.

Coach Mills (02:54:27.942)
Yeah, yeah, go for it, yeah.

Flats (02:54:31.32)
To your point, real quick, so hang on, are you saying just like no preferred role queue at all? Like you're you're just like a f like a free bird type system? Or are you saying something different?

CaptainCoach (02:54:42.877)
I I think you should pick you the yeah, the role you prefer and the role you prefer if soft role. Yeah.

Flats (02:54:46.592)
you you're in favor of the pick. So do you hang on, do you think most people are just honest and they won't lie about it or like what

CaptainCoach (02:54:53.667)
yeah, yeah. I I I think that and I think you know, if again, now that we have this kind of agreed upon standard where it's like, Okay, we at least got two out of the three that we know what people are gonna play, there's gonna be a lot less disagreements to where they can actually utilize the report system to do meaningful stuff and maybe turn up the knobs a little bit and have it be a little bit more aggressive with who they ban. So it's kind of like a win win if if as long as they kinda do the do it the right way.

Flats (02:55:19.746)
So would that be banable if you select tank and then you don't play tank?

CaptainCoach (02:55:24.195)
again, yeah, I mean obviously it's not gonna be perfect. There's gonna be some gray area. I'm just trying to create the most for sure. Yeah.

Flats (02:55:30.648)
'Cause I can see where that gets a little a little fuzzy. Like if you like someone you swap with someone on your team and they go support and you go for them and then they get mad at them and you report because it's like, that guy's not playing his role and the system goes, yeah, that's reportable, bang, and one shots you, that just seems messy.

Coach Mills (02:55:31.825)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

CaptainCoach (02:55:36.641)
From my ex yeah.

I I I

Coach Mills (02:55:42.685)
'Cause 'cause I think there's bad apples. I mean, there's bad apples in the system as it is now, or D PS players that just throw or won't swap and I mean th there's I think we're trying to avoid the auto loss from select thing that happens way too often. I mean Yeah.

Flats (02:55:47.547)
yeah.

CaptainCoach (02:55:53.484)
From

CaptainCoach (02:55:56.802)
From my experiences playing League for ever since they added that system into the game, obviously I know it's different. And I would also say from my experiences, the rivals community probably a bit more likely to do what you're saying, Flats, just from my experience. But I would like I've I've had that happen in almost ten years of league since they implemented that system. I've seen it happen like once.

Coach Mills (02:56:10.045)
Yeah.

Flats (02:56:16.952)
Can I ask a question with League, how fast are Qs?

CaptainCoach (02:56:20.329)
About the same, probably y I mean they I think they've actually gotten faster over they're they're pretty quick. rival like like a couple minutes at most. You're not gonna get it in a queue more than a couple minutes unless you're in like the highest highest ranks. So yeah, they're they're quick.

Flats (02:56:23.574)
The same as what? Like what's the time?

Flats (02:56:31.916)
I say rival skis are pretty instant. So like you're saying a couple minutes. Couple minutes is like you're saying like three to five minutes, keep or take?

CaptainCoach (02:56:39.323)
for for like say I don't really do the ranked in league anymore, so I I couldn't really speak on it for but for me it I'm playing League Classic right now. I've never had a queue longer than three minutes and that's like not their big game mode and then they have preferred role queue. So yeah, so I mean it's it's it's relatively quick. I I I don't think it would be a big trade off. And my argument has always been I actually think the queues would increase if the game quality increased.

Flats (02:56:46.634)
Even quick play, quick play is fine.

Flats (02:56:55.83)
Okay.

CaptainCoach (02:57:08.959)
And and players felt like they had more control. But

Flats (02:57:12.344)
I don't know if I agree that. I mean we have a historical data of Overwatch, like when

CaptainCoach (02:57:16.311)
Well you're not allowed to disagree with me. This is a b debate between you and Lightflats. What are you doing? What the fuck? I'm I'm just the mod. I I'm just the mod, bro. No, I get what you're saying. I mean So what what Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Fight, fight chunk of beer. So you don't think the game quality increasing wouldn't collectively I mean, people talk, people chatter, like th there's a community sentiment that I think kind of arises from

Flats (02:57:19.128)
Yeah sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. Get his ass back in here so I can fucking debate him. No.

Flats (02:57:28.716)
He's not here, so hang on, you gotta step in. Let's fucking go.

Coach Mills (02:57:30.375)
Yeah.

CaptainCoach (02:57:45.723)
people just commenting on the state of the game, the quality. I mean, obviously the the conversation right now, the the reason like probably partly why you're even here is just 'cause everybody feels like the game feels terrible to play. You don't think those are at least a like somewhat related? Like to to your to the point of like all the balancing issues. I think if we had like a little bit more control, a lot of these like terrible situations like, my God, we don't have a D P S player and a thing is just punching us to death, what do we do? We lose. That's what that's what we do. So I think just that alone

Flats (02:57:55.672)
Mm-hmm.

CaptainCoach (02:58:14.091)
would give players more agency over like a lot of the broken stuff, I feel like.

Flats (02:58:18.77)
so I I just wanna be sure I'm clear. So you're saying that if match quality was higher, then people more people would be playing. I think people are dumb and they don't understand what a good match quality is. Straight up. Okay, so I'm actually so I this actually kind of comes into a little bit of of research I was doing.

CaptainCoach (02:58:25.75)
Yes.

Coach Mills (02:58:30.588)
Ha ha.

Coach Mills (02:58:36.593)
That's going in the intro for sure. That's going in the intro for sure.

CaptainCoach (02:58:40.695)
Yeah.

Flats (02:58:41.848)
So I'm actually linking you. If you want to look at him, you can. If you don't, I mean he's not here. so basically, I just linked a couple like Reddit posts and a Twitter thread, which is Avril, who's a caster for Overwatch, who's replying to Frito, who's a creator, I don't know if he really makes content anymore, who's replying to Samito. and basically all of them are talking about how balance in this game might have to hit open or I actually don't know if it's if it's under that one. yeah, basically.

CaptainCoach (02:58:44.426)
Yeah, sure.

Coach Mills (02:58:46.695)
Yeah, let me let me let me pull it up. Yeah, let me let me

Coach Mills (02:58:57.693)
Okay.

Coach Mills (02:59:07.249)
Okay.

Flats (02:59:11.102)
Everybody was obsessing over balance, and they're obsessing over quality of matches, right? And I think that was kind of relevant, at least for what we're talking about, is because people will always say the game matchmaking sucks, my teammates suck, balance sucks, whatever. And like you can always work towards making it better, and that's like should be the goal, always. But in the Satan's here, like

I this is really fucking long. I I I went deep into this one and then the root the retweet and the quote and the quote 'cause they were actually talking about rivals a little bit. And it's like overall, people don't care as long as A, they're having own fun on their own, B, they're getting into games quickly. Like as long as they're not sitting there for out like 10, 20 minutes to get into a game, they'll just queue up another one. Like if they have a shit game, they'll just go again. And I we talked about on a previous podcast how

Coach Mills (02:59:41.465)
You're right.

CaptainCoach (02:59:59.458)
Hmm.

Flats (03:00:03.286)
When Overwatch 2 launched, Overwatch 2 was very happy with itself because it had a really high play like player retention or sorry, not player retention. when somebody would log in and play the game, they would stay on average playing for longer than historically they had. And it was one of the highest in the industry. Basically, like you're getting people addicted to playing your game all the time. That's a good metric for game companies to look at, especially when they're trying to make money and a piece of share shareholders and whatnot.

CaptainCoach (03:00:30.134)
Yeah.

Flats (03:00:31.744)
And so one of the things that Overwatch 2 did with going 5v5 is it significantly lowered Q times. And because of the lower Q times, if you had a bad game, you just go Q again. That happens in Rivals 2. But the problem is though, in Rivals you compound because you get the lost streak and you just get more tilted, more tilted, more tilted. You could talk about matchmaking, EOMM, whatever the fuck you want to, like whatever your spices that you want to go with with that. But regardless though, I think that if you made hard roll lock or soft roll lock and you doubled or

CaptainCoach (03:00:49.249)
Yeah.

Flats (03:01:01.652)
even unfortunately, if it was D P S players tripled Q times, I think you would see a massive drop off in the way people in people playing.

CaptainCoach (03:01:08.853)
I guess mostly what we d disagree on is just the whole Q times thing. 'Cause I mean, I'm I'm old school. Like when I when I play a ranked game, I want the appeal. No, I I definitely get your argument. And I think I I agree you know, now that kinda interjecting my own opinions a little bit, I do agree with it to an extent. I do think like for lack of a better word, they do need to kind of farm the casual base a little bit a a and kind of get those people in the door.

Flats (03:01:19.65)
Player base is young, man. It's young. Sixty percent.

CaptainCoach (03:01:38.731)
But there there is some value in having a like robust and highly competitive rank system that I think a lot of these casuals may also get sucked into simply because the gameplay it's like you don't need like a a a accessible for fun to play game and then also have this rank system is kind of what I'm saying. Like I think there's a world where you can only you you you can keep it

the gameplay itself, the balance or whatever you want to call it, kinda kind of casual, but still have a rank system that is takes itself seriously and isn't meant to keep you on the hamster wheel of of addiction. And and and I'm j like I say, I like I I from like

Coach Mills (03:02:15.677)
Exactly. Yeah.

Flats (03:02:17.366)
Yeah, might be just agree or disagree on that. I think that I think they understand that it's all in tandem and they want you they want you know, like you might get bored of getting on the yellow hamster wheel every day. Why don't you get on the blue one? It's different, you know, and it's like they get s they have just a bunch of different flavors. So I think that's more of like an e like we're we're kind of talking talking theories at that point, so like I don't have a super hard stance.

CaptainCoach (03:02:28.086)
Right.

Yeah. I No, a hundred a hundred percent. Yeah. I mean like for me, I've kind of just accepted it. Obviously streaming's my job, but I I play other games to get that fix. Like I I play two other games in ranked just off stream, don't even stream it just because that's what I like. So

Flats (03:02:49.644)
Yeah. Fair.

Coach Mills (03:02:50.957)
welcome back light. What is how's your how's your internet doing?

Lyte (03:02:55.427)
I mean Xfinity is just dog shit. Like I called them did I called them yesterday because I wanted to make sure that it was gonna be good for today and they told me rest assured that there was gonna be no problems and there was just interruptions in my area. And that's why Fucking horrible. Horrible. Like my internet Yeah. My internet back where I'm from is completely fine, but I'm visiting my family right now, so I mean it's just G G like whatever, but at least yeah at least like the

Flats (03:02:57.506)
Fuck that company.

Coach Mills (03:03:06.769)
Ha ha

Flats (03:03:07.836)
Sold my house because of that shitty ass company. I literally sold my house. I'm not joking.

Coach Mills (03:03:10.598)
Ha ha ha.

Coach Mills (03:03:14.311)
That's great.

CaptainCoach (03:03:19.649)
Sorry, I h I held down the fort. Tag team you back in.

Coach Mills (03:03:21.273)
Yeah yeah.

Flats (03:03:23.213)
Yeah.

Lyte (03:03:24.888)
viewers can watch for a flash stream and it won't be super laggy. So I mean whatever. I can't do anything about it right now.

Coach Mills (03:03:28.411)
Yeah, well i it's it's it's Riverside's also uploading it in tandem. So in post you'll sound perfectly fine. if we if w once it's uploaded, it's just we just perceive you as a robot and

Lyte (03:03:38.274)
Okay. Yeah, I mean. Yeah, I didn't I didn't really have anything to say about the the matchmaker either. That's like to me there's nothing interesting to even talk about there. Like it's shit, everyone knows it's shit, like move on. Like there's nothing controversial.

Coach Mills (03:03:46.639)
It's it's it's just like it's not okay. Okay, well let me let me throw out some more of these rapid fire takes and then y'all y'all keep going. Okay. I think we answered this one about the team up system. So here's another one. Dives should never be meta in Marvel Rivals.

Flats (03:04:02.284)
You actually asked me this already, so that's that's you asked me last time I was here.

Coach Mills (03:04:06.671)
Yeah, I know. Yeah, I it's it I I wanted to I wanted to throw it out there with light here 'cause he's a dive player, so see what he says. 'Cause I I've heard this a lot. Like there's a ton of casual players and honestly, there's a ton of players all around that believe this across the ranks.

Lyte (03:04:13.732)
Yeah. I mean

Lyte (03:04:20.152)
Yeah. I mean I think every playstyle should be viable. And again if we're if we're at healing adhering to the pillars that I mentioned earlier about variety, that should be the goal. Like season of dive, season of pokes, season of brawl, you know, just ev every once in a while just shake it up, bro. Like we want variety and that's just really important. So I think that you could have characters in dive that feel worse to play against than other classifications of gameplay for sure, and that's probably where people's sentiment where that comes from.

But that doesn't therefore mean that the playstyle itself should never be good. I think dives weak like dive being weak right now, especially dive tanks, bro, like there are no good dive tanks at all. They're they're both horrible. And there's only two as well. Like at least dive DPS there's like I mean technically there's only two dive DPS as well. Yeah. But

Flats (03:05:03.596)
Hot take Venom's boring. Hot tag boring as fuck.

Coach Mills (03:05:05.847)
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. God damn it. No. I'm being I'm I'm I'm getting rage baited.

CaptainCoach (03:05:07.741)
I I I kind of agree.

Lyte (03:05:10.926)
But yeah. No, it should it should definitely be a viable playstyle that that could, if they were good enough, keep these poke heroes in in check.

Flats (03:05:11.042)
Cap's fun though.

Flats (03:05:19.958)
I mean, I I had a similar answer. basically like every season, just flip it out. I do think dive probably you want to lean the least on out of the three if you're talking brawl poke dive, because dive is the one that gets the most hatred slash like you know, like everything's going wrong. And like you could actually account for that if you if you planned ahead, you could maybe have like that's a season where you like two or three balance patches and you like like flip around what dive heroes are strong. you could pick

I mean you could potentially do if like NetEase was like, we're gonna make this a dive season, you know? And cause you kind like there's no way they don't kind of know when they're making a passion, like, yeah, like we're gonna make this guy kind of strong. Like he's gonna be kind of good, you know? Like you kind of plan it out ahead of time. maybe it's something you could consider. but like never is just not fair. Cause like there's people that enjoy those heroes too, but they do have the most animosity. So I'd probably say like the least amount, but as long as it's like you wanna keep the game fresh all the time.

Coach Mills (03:06:13.925)
I I think that that's probably where you both agree the most is that like in combination with the other thing that we talked about earlier, which is the actionable step of like stronger balance changes and and a and allowing for diversity in the meta. Like making sure that different playstyles are represented, making sure that things don't stay meta for too long. I think that's like the biggest frustration and I think both of y'all agree with that a hundred percent. Like so like the that's like the biggest like actionable steps we can give to the devs is

Yeah, like don't allow us to sit in six six months of Gene Grey or whatever.

Lyte (03:06:41.166)
Yeah, it's just

I think I think our biggest well at least my biggest contentions are like all the stuff I talked about in chapter three with like the the telling people to leave if they're not enjoying the game and I'm sure Fletch will want to clarify and what you mean by that and we can get into that. the telling people that the game is too casual to be taken seriously, therefore it like undermines change and I can't remember the last one off the top of my head, I'm sure I'll remember it as we as we keep going on, but yeah.

Flats (03:07:11.724)
Let's go one at time then. I think if you are somebody who constantly is complaining and constantly hates it and you don't like give flowers where it's due, and you know, you are like actually driving yourself insane, it is not unfair to say you need a break. And that is in any asset of life that has nothing to do with rivals, has nothing to do with pro play, it has nothing to do with anything. That is just good, healthy habits because people will get burnt out. That's natural. I don't care, like you

Lyte (03:07:13.635)
Yes, sir.

Flats (03:07:39.202)
You know, in your video, I you talked about being like, you know, like going for like your doctor or something. yeah, like I've like I've been with someone who was going through their law degree and going to law school and graduating through law school. I saw how fucking awful it turns them. Like they literally turn almost into a different person because you don't sleep as much. It's all you think about. It consumes you. Like you c you're waking up in the morning and the first time you grab your phone or something, you're already thinking about it. Like, great, that's awesome to have.

Passion, it's great, it's awesome to do these things, but it's when it's driving you insane, it's actually making you a more miserable person. And it's maybe skewing your perspective. Cause like if you say, and and I try to remember this with myself, because I do it too. Like I'm not a perfect human. I complain about things all the time. Like I'm no different. but if I'm complaining about something and I say this thing isn't good, like this sucks, and I look out and everyone else is having fun, I have to go, shit, is it me? Am I just like, am I burnt out? Is it something that I have going on?

Because it's been true. And if you don't at least consider that as a possibility, then you end up having blinders to different parts of your life. And the only way to reliably take those blinders off is to take a step back, maybe take a couple of days away, breathe, reset, go do something you actually enjoy, like another hobby or like stuff that you have in your own personal life, because it will give you a much clearer picture. If you just try to power through it, a lot of times you just make it worse.

Lyte (03:09:05.967)
Yeah, so I'll I'll address it one at a time because I think that is leading into the expertise thing that I was making the point about earlier. So as far as Ergo Desido is confirmed, or like if you don't like it you can leave, I think that the way that you framed what you just said is under the presumption that the person is solely committing themselves to the point of it negatively impacting their mental their mental and physical well being, which is possible.

But that is not the case that's going on in the context of Marvel Rivals with most pro players. Like most pro players are perfectly sound of mind.

Flats (03:09:40.332)
You do know specifically I was talking about you though, when I said that. Okay.

Lyte (03:09:42.936)
Yeah, I I know. But I am like an I am like an avatar of ideas and so are you and so when we're conversating, we're like representing other people that think about how we do. So when you're talking to just me in particular, you're also talking about other people who have similar frustrations that I do.

Flats (03:09:57.878)
I guess that's fair. I just don't see those other people going as hard of like every season, Nerf Phoenix, this character's ridiculously bad, Daredevil, when in seasons where like I'm not trying to like go on you too hard, but there was a couple seasons I remember seeing some Twitter posts and stuff of like he's so fucking dog shit, and then he was still really good at the time. and I I I I I get it. I get shit wrong all the time. We talked about this at the beginning. so I'm not gonna hold that against you, but like when you are like

So locked in and so in tune with the game to the point where you can't really see anything else. That's when taking a step back is good, whether it's you or anyone else. And if it genuinely is doing that much harm to you where you cannot think about anything else and it's making you miserable, now it's up to you if you want to say it's miserable, not only you will know. Sometimes you have to walk away from it. And I use myself with Overwatch. I had to why had to walk away because it was driving me insane.

Lyte (03:10:52.482)
No, I I understand that.

Lyte (03:10:56.943)
The the point that I was making in it is that walking away from a very real and valid complaint does not make the complaint disappear. And also exit, like I use the the the Hirchman book and the examples of exit voice and loyalty in my video as a general concept that can be applicable to any field. And so exit within itself is not elastic for everybody in the sense of you as a variety streamer.

you can go play something else, maintain your viewership and your audience for the most part. So your relationship with rivals is much more elastic than mine is. And me, I'm a very, very niche like content creator. And so like while I make enough to support myself, I recognize that I am not a representation of anywhere close to the majority of people. But there are other things that can can impact elasticity insofar as someone's ability to exit. So it could be your friend group, they primarily all play Marvel Rivals, so you feel like an attachment to the game because of them.

Flats (03:11:31.096)
Hundred percent.

Lyte (03:11:54.476)
Or you have like a deep like love for a character in the game, like if you're a super diehard Spider-Man fan, you love playing Spider Man and you love Spider Man as a character, you might feel an associated loyalty with rivals that disrupts your ability to exit and go do something else. So if it's the case in the extreme where someone's mental and physical well being is deteriorating to the degree where it is negatively impacting their life, then that is a valid thing to say. But in the context of like when you're talking to and like how I perceived it, because I do not feel like I'm in that headspace, even though I do

in the past have tweeted things that have given off that perception. when you tell people to just leave, again it doesn't make the criticism go away or less valid. Especially if their exit isn't e i isn't elastic.

Flats (03:12:38.754)
So Xfinity is doing you dirty, by the way. So I'm gonna do my absolute best to like remember and like work my way through. I know it's not your fault. I'm not upset like with you or anything. It's I've dude, I've I get it. that said though, it is unfortunately not the game's responsibility to you in this case. I understand you have a lot of investment, both being a niche content creator, pro player, etc., but it is not the game's responsibility to then

Lyte (03:12:42.796)
Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Coach Mills (03:12:43.149)
Yeah, it's it's a it's a little r it's a little rough. Yeah.

Flats (03:13:07.444)
mold itself to make sure that you have a habitable place to survive and create this content. And I'm not saying that the game can't be better, but when you reacted my original, you were not nearly as well spoken and coherent as right now. It just kind of was like a like a rant with like some small, like little bit of insulting undertones under it. Did I go too hard on you? Yeah, I can I can look back and say, absolutely, I probably went a little too far. And I apologize for that. But

Lyte (03:13:36.346)
I appreciate that.

Flats (03:13:36.446)
At the same time though, I think that it's not unfair to say all we I'd mostly seen of you was that. And me telling, or sorry, was like the more of the outbursts of like, you know, well, that sucks or whatever. the game is in a bad state because of X, Y, Z reasoning. And you might have had very good reasonings. Not always we're gonna agree as this this is gone. And I still obviously do disagree on some of them. That is your right, though. Like, that's not.

You don't you don't like not deserve a right to an opinion. You absolutely deserve a right to an opinion, but you also don't you're not entitled to the game forming around you. And if the game doesn't go the way you want it, you're going to have to figure out a new plan or adapt. I'm not telling you get a job or something, by the way. I'm not saying anything like that. That's that's fucked up. I'm saying more like you you might have to adapt to say, okay.

Lyte (03:14:13.838)
Course.

Coach Mills (03:14:26.252)
Kid

Flats (03:14:29.61)
If every day I'm playing this game and I'm losing my mind playing it eight hours a day, I might have to play it less and try to make content somewhere else. Or maybe I lean more on the pro side and try to, you know, get on a better team or try to like, you know, win prize money or stuff like that. and and I know I understand on that other end that's a conflicting statement because you get to put more hours in a lot of times to be that pro player. But on the more content side, like there's other things you could make. And I understand right now you're in that rival's niche.

But that doesn't mean you can't try something else too. Like you have every day, you you said you stream eight to twelve hours, I think you said eight to ten hours playing every day. Dude, that's crazy. I don't know how you do that. I I used to do that at some point, huh?

Lyte (03:15:09.005)
No, I I definitely don't. I don't. I don't. And also it's important to understand the relation between like a content creator pro player, like like intertwine with each other. And like this is super specific to me. So keep that context going forward. So if I am a someone who is making a living playing pro, through streaming and through my pro contracts and stuff like that, there is an intrinsic dynamic that goes on to where I have to simultaneously practice for my matches and scrims while also playing the game. So

Flats (03:15:37.846)
Yeah, it's hard.

Lyte (03:15:38.366)
my my ability to my ability to exit is basically zero. And that's when my voice is deployed. And from my perspective, and I give the analogy of being the guy at the top of the crow's nest on a pirate ship, of seeing the the ship start to crash and burn, like we're about to go down a waterfall in a couple of miles. And now season nine, we've hit the waterfall, but I've been saying it for forever. And so

That portion of chapter four where I was addressing the criticisms was not a justification of the things I said. I regret the things I said in regards to Xee Yong and all those other stuff. I don't mean that stuff. But it is an explanation for what happens when someone who is not able to exit and their voice is ignored for too long. And it is not like my voice is like I want the game to be revolved around me. I've never said that, I've never wanted that. I've just wanted more variety, I've wanted more counterplay, I've wanted more skill expression without a total compromise of accessibility.

CaptainCoach (03:16:32.533)
Yeah, I think a lot of people kind of misunderstand you light as someone who's talked to you a lot. One of my favorite quotes from you, I think, was the last time you were on, whereas y you said like the only way to get devs to listen to you is just to you you said we were in in a crime meta, which I I still use and I find it one of the funniest the funniest things I've ever Yeah.

Lyte (03:16:49.546)
the cry meta? Yeah, which is Yeah, 'cause the devs yeah, the cry meta is basically where the devs for a very long time the way that they actually approached balancing the game was who was the loudest on Reddit, Twitter, and Discord. Yeah. Yeah, so it was the cry meta of I was saying, hey guys, for those who feel disenfranchised and you want to be heard, you just have to cry more. that's the unfortunate reality.

Flats (03:16:51.99)
Wait what?

CaptainCoach (03:17:01.536)
Right.

Flats (03:17:01.726)
you're a hundred percent right, by the way. That's not wrong.

Coach Mills (03:17:03.929)
Yeah. And that's

CaptainCoach (03:17:04.736)
And

Coach Mills (03:17:12.379)
Yeah, and that's why Venom was nerfed in nine point five for some fucking reason. Yeah.

CaptainCoach (03:17:12.97)
Yeah.

Lyte (03:17:15.778)
Yeah.

Flats (03:17:16.438)
Yeah, and I agree with you. That's just stupid. Like it it genuinely is dumb. Like I there's no there's no disagreement with me on on that one. And by the way, I didn't get to finish, but when I asked when I like, You you play like eight to ten hours a day, I you said you don't, but like I was gonna say that's commendable 'cause I couldn't do that not anymore, especially.

Lyte (03:17:32.536)
Most pro players average about like six to eight I would say. Some go ten to twelve on some days, for sure. It can range between six to twelve. you'll play more leading up to a competition.

Flats (03:17:36.668)
yeah. yeah. It and that's how you Yeah, and when you do anything for twelve hours a day, that's how you burn out, you know? And I'm not saying that like I get it. Like you have to you have to scrim, you have vauder view, you know, play ranked to keep your skills up. I get it. I've I've I've literally done it like 10 years ago now. It's a long time ago, but I it was a long a different time. But I've either been involved with it or I've done it. So I get it.

But I also get the other side of what it will do to you and it warps your perspective. And I know you just said the analogy of like you see the ship going towards the waterfall. It might really feel like that, but if season nine doesn't happen, I don't think we're going off a waterfall. And I don't know how we could predict that they would put 120 team ups into the game that you just constantly have, you know? And I know it might really feel huh?

Lyte (03:18:27.748)
I think we will actually. I think we would have actually and I can give you like examples. yeah. Yeah, so the reason I was complaining for so long about those types of things, I think season nine just exacerbating the already existing issues. 'Cause if you look at the meta of season nine, what was the meta of eight point five? It was it's like the same game except everyone has more exactly, it was like a poke meta, basically. poke a triple support.

Flats (03:18:32.534)
Yeah, no go ahead.

Flats (03:18:45.836)
Cyclops Rocket.

But but it was different though, because eight point was dyno.

Lyte (03:18:52.706)
8.0 was Dino, and 8.0 was still primarily spam meta because of Dino's existence. Like you had some D D thrown in there, some cat thrown in there for sure, but those are the only two dive DPS that were viable. And Brawl generally has been weaker than both playstyles, if we think about it. unless you want to count triple support, like the the spawn hold stuff as three tank three support as Brawl, you could count that. That's been pretty good. But generally speaking, Brawl's been the weakest, Poke's been the strongest, and dive has like kind of gone up and down. but the ship example that I'm using, examples that I can provide of changes that they've made in the past that are

Flats (03:18:57.207)
Yeah.

Lyte (03:19:22.713)
Making the game worse are again anything that infringes on the pillars that I've been talking about this entire pod. So a change would be like Luna's snowball instantly freezing you, which takes away from the counterplay of the person going on to her. It it removes the skill expression of my ability to deal with it because it's I can no longer react to it now. I can no longer I have to anticipate and guess. And if I guess wrong, I die. So it's like before if you were really locked in, really dialed.

CaptainCoach (03:19:49.036)
Yeah.

Lyte (03:19:49.742)
You could deflect it as a daredevil, you could parry it as a blade, you could block it as an iron fist. But now, because not only does she get overshield and it's instant, but they also buffed her damage too, so she just kills you by herself. Whereas in my opinion, I think it should be like an Anna sleep. Anna, the dynamic between Anna and Genji, I think, is like so perfect and should be encapsulated behind how dive DPS and support should interact with each other if you have a character like that that has like a stun. Where if the support hits the ability.

They need follow-up or help from their team to guarantee the kill, but at least it stops them for long enough to where they can restabilize their cooldowns, health, and positioning, but it doesn't generate a net kill. And so interactions like that that were just like whittled away over time is making the game worse because it infringes on the things that I previously mentioned.

Flats (03:20:36.45)
So I would so I by the way, I I I know exactly I get exactly what you're saying. But my wonder is again, different balanced philosophy of who we're we're we're working towards, right? Luna was really good what seasons one through I think three and a half, and then like people thought she was still good, but like she was like really tanked in the middle of those of in those middle seasons at somewhere. and so they were trying to get her out of being like statistically like the worst win rate support. I think she was actually for a while. She was like bottom three characters in the game across all ranks.

Lyte (03:20:54.489)
Yeah, she did.

Lyte (03:21:03.994)
Yeah, she's like forty three percent for a while.

CaptainCoach (03:21:04.233)
Yeah. Yeah.

Flats (03:21:05.61)
It was bad. so I wonder if part of what they believed is skill expression as a support is hitting the freeze, right? And because it was slower, it gave you that time to react, or gave you that time that people would just like, you know, see her start the the the startup and then you'd pop like your your whatever, like your block or something like that. And then you'd just die because in the metal ranks, you don't get peel. It's not really a thing. Like

Everybody shoots forward, nobody turns around. It's why Ultron has like a fucking 65% win rate because the guy does flies around at the top and no one knows how to look up. so you give that individual player an interaction where, okay, I'm getting dove. How do I fight that as a one-on-one? That's your freeze. Like that's your only way out, or you just kind of quote unquote die. and so I think that the way they viewed it is if you are hitting the freeze, that's your skill expression. You landed it.

Lyte (03:21:36.271)
Yeah.

Flats (03:22:02.23)
You should win the interaction. Do I agree that's the right way to go about it? Maybe not, but I also do think that they lean really hard towards supports, having more tools to dealing with dive, especially than anyone else in the game. whether it's right or wrong. I would assume that that's the way they view it. And then you can see stuff that we would have seen coming, like for example, Luna giving herself a damage boost for

Whatever the fuck, God knows reason, and that turned into DPS Luna. Like, yeah, we saw that coming from nine miles away. What did the dev team see? Luna is like not doing as much healing and damage as as her other teammates around her. Maybe instead of giving Snowflake to other people, she can give it to herself. And instead of relying on teammates to do stuff, they're trying to give more individuality to the character and have more.

Lyte (03:22:31.044)
Fun, for fun. Yep.

Flats (03:22:54.922)
Individual skill expression of doing more damage and doing more healing by having on yourself, and you don't feel like you have to rely on anybody. Is that right? I don't.

Lyte (03:23:01.339)
think you can do that. Yeah, I think you can do that without compromising the interaction though. Like just give like for example, if the if the issue is that Luna players feel like they can't survive or live or something, instead of like neutralizing her skill expression and the interaction between other divers, you just give her more survivability by increasing her base HP by twenty five or increasing her like healing on her clap or something. Like give her more instant value on the button press that isn't so

intrinsically damaging to the counterply.

Flats (03:23:33.612)
I don't know, like granted, it I think at anywhere above like Slecial Those are impactful changes. I just don't know if those would be impactful changes from like bronze to diamond. Cause like if they miss the freeze, they just kinda like are helpless chickens. If they have an extra twenty five percent health, maybe they take one more hit. if we're talking about the clap healing, like they're probably not even healing at that point. They're probably like spamming trying to do damage at whoever's on them. so I I just really think that like that's an example of

Coach Mills (03:23:56.825)
So I have a question.

Flats (03:24:00.194)
They're trying to give into individuality to a kit a role that felt like it was being oppressed for bat lack of better word of from dive, into which if you land the cooldown, you will be rewarded. Whether it's right or wrong, I think that's an example of like they're trying to give those ranks more tools. Cause higher rank, you probably hit that what 90% of the time, at least if the thing's fucking massive. But maybe when you don't have as good of an aim, like what's the what's the percentage? 50, 60?

Lyte (03:24:26.906)
It's also it's also perfectly fine to have a character that's weak to a particular meta. Like I think Luna only had that win rate because she was just weak to dive in general, because when she uses that freeze, even if she hits it, most of the time there was another person or even three people there that would just clean her up after that. But that's fine. It's okay to have Luna be weak for a meta or two, or for her to be weak to a particular type of playstyle because she excels in another type of way. Or you have another character like Cloak who complements Luna where Cloak has more survivability, less utility for a team and less healing.

Flats (03:24:50.552)
Yeah.

Lyte (03:24:57.058)
And then Luna has more healing, more utility, but less survivability, and that's kind of the dynamic between the characters, and that's part of their diversity, and that's fine. I just think like neutering interactions is how we get the game to go off the waterfall.

Flats (03:25:04.76)
I think

Flats (03:25:08.938)
Sure, but I also think that the game is still new enough that people have not learned those interactions. And that's something that maybe comes with more time and with more heroes. So like they introduced White Fox. White Fox was very, very obviously an anti-dive character, right? People didn't see it at first, but like with a few like a month of, you know, everyone telling everyone, hey, this is an anti-dive character, people now kind of understand it. I don't think we had a support that was like so easy to point at. Like

People would say Invis. Like, okay, Invis, you have the push, but once you miss the push, GG's, right? or at least for them, GG's. cloak, right? Like, but then you fade and then it's GG's. like a lot of times they would miss the fade. Granted, it was actually bubble and fade, but people just couldn't figure that out. I think Luna is an example of a character that gets picked a lot. I think she's almost always been top three most picked, not only just characters in the game, but like supports in the game. So like you have a lot of your player player base that are logging in and they want to play.

Lyte (03:26:00.322)
Yeah.

Flats (03:26:03.938)
The Luna Snow character, and they're playing in a meta where they're getting fucked on, and they're you have no teammate help because there's not as much coordination in those ranks, and it's a 1v1 game. I understand why they gave it to her, but I think that's maybe something as the game get become people become better at the game, maybe that's something that's reverted and there's more counterplay in there. But right now, with how they want to make sure each individual person feels like they have a fair chance, I can see why they gave it to them.

Even if like even if it obviously at the higher ranks has a much detrimental effect. Cause is the is the plat Daredevil really hitting the reflect in time before the other one? I don't think so. But like the couple times it happens, you're like, what the fuck? you know? So

Lyte (03:26:41.728)
No, never. Literally literally never.

Coach Mills (03:26:47.673)
I I I have a I have a question for you, Flats. Do you think that so it's it's kind of a two part question. So do you think that it is okay for certain characters to just not be good in certain situations, or do they have to be always good in any situation they come across in low Elo? 'Cause like as an example J just as an example, like the White Fox is gonna be really bad in Low Elo when they're rocking Punisher and Bucky and like all this damage, right? And so but it but it but it but it

Flats (03:27:05.302)
It depend sorry.

Flats (03:27:15.554)
But you're bad in high rank with that too.

Coach Mills (03:27:17.383)
But if you take the the the their experience to like the absolute, right? Isn't it like, okay, let's just keep buffing White Fox so that the low Elo player can still play into the Punisher, can still play into the Bucky because they don't know any better. So like I think it's like a two part problem is like, isn't it okay for a character to be bad in some situations or not be the optimal pick? And then the second part about this is should netties implement more things to educate players about that? Like, this character is good in this situation, this character is good in this situation, like

Lyte (03:27:31.204)
Homogenizing the characters, right, Mills?

Coach Mills (03:27:46.641)
They could have some sort of onboarding education process in built into this system. You know, hovering a care hovering a character with a simple explanation. about, you know, I I I think it would be really cool if there were pro players that actually talked about, you know, like like maybe it's like a you hover a character, 30 seconds. this is what, you know.

This character's strong and weak against this. You know, this character has a lot of survivability. So that means they will be really good against dive cut type of compositions, but they're gonna be very weak at this. They, you know, a I just think more education would be a good idea. Cause you cannot go down that rabbit hole where you're just like, yeah, we need white fo we need the person that has the desire, the casual that has the desire to hop on the game and play White Fox to be able to play White Fox no matter what the opponents are playing. Cause if you do that, what do you have to make White Fox? Like w like how strong you have to make her?

Flats (03:28:35.544)
No, it's a good question. Like like, you know, do you make characters viable in almost every situation? I think the answer should be no, but also it kinda is yes and no, because you can play to top 500 basically on any hero, right? if you're actually good enough. Maybe Wanda's like the one exception at the to be honest with you, 'cause there's not much skill expression in there to do anything. But regardless though, you can there's almost a one trick on every hero that gets up there as long as they're not getting hardcore target banned, right? so you can make it.

CaptainCoach (03:29:00.863)
I I

Flats (03:29:06.626)
But it's an interesting question. Should they make it so characters almost have no weaknesses and they're viable everywhere? Like, no, because I I think that, you know, characters have strengths based on their kit, no matter what. So you would have to give outrageous buffs on the other side, which you could argue some of the season nine team ups are to make that viable. But also the casual player is drunk on power and they love it. They love the ability to just never die. They love it. They they think it's great a lot of times.

having six f six bailout buttons and whatnot. So, like, what is the real answer? I think NetEase is probably trying to figure that out. You know, I think that's why you saw the cloak change. I think that's why you see the Luna change. I think that's why you see all these like extra abilities to stay alive, because they had enough, but it wasn't truly enough because like, you know, they they were still dying. Like, you know, they want to take that away. They want to make sure that they're having fun. in terms of like, can you always pick the white fox character?

Lyte (03:30:03.236)
Yeah.

Flats (03:30:06.262)
I mean, you pretty much always could in those ranks because like like we've talked about, they're gonna play it if they wanna play it no matter what. Can you do you make the hero then like an instal loss if you play against the right comps? Cause then you're basically encouraging counter swapping. And I think that's a new a new area to go into.

CaptainCoach (03:30:24.831)
I I think if you expect to tell a casual or competitive player for that matter that they are going to play a Marvel hero game and that the best option for them in a majority of their games is to just swap. I think there's some credence to Light's point in that when you remove these skillful interactions, it it takes away a player's ability to

be that difference in the game rather than just having to swap, which is why I think that like that kind of design philosophy is very important for them nettes, that is to to strongly consider, even if it may be you maybe those casuals experience some growing pains with like flats like the dive you referred to, Luna just getting fucked on. that to me is is you you kind of need a little bit of that. You need that adversity.

Flats (03:31:14.23)
Wait, you're you're say you want them to swamp or don't want them to swap?

CaptainCoach (03:31:17.291)
I I

Lyte (03:31:17.465)
Don't. Like he wants them to be have more counterplay in their interactions rather than it being more based on your character.

CaptainCoach (03:31:20.373)
Yeah. I Now obviously I obviously there's a little bias. Most like most people know I I tend to only play Hulk, but I I I

Flats (03:31:26.978)
So wouldn't you just have to f wouldn't you have to shure up weaknesses then at that point to make it like doable for everybody?

Coach Mills (03:31:29.37)
A little bias, or

CaptainCoach (03:31:34.423)
Sure up weaknesses. why I think if the skill expression is high enough, you could outplay weaknesses. Yeah, it it depends.

Lyte (03:31:39.256)
It depends on the character. Yeah, it depends on the character. Like characters that are very difficult to play, that are very skill expressive and have a lot of bells and whistles should have more answers to more like options deployed against them because they're so difficult to play. So like s a character like Spider Man, for example, or like Black Cat that are harder to play relative to the other members in the cast, should be able to have more answers across the entire roster than like Squirrel Girl or Thing. Like Thing is like a good healthy character

Flats (03:32:05.772)
I

Lyte (03:32:08.034)
Insofar as like he's a good counter dive option, he is good for low rank players, it's easy to play. But it should never be the case where we're in the most prime poke meta of all time and thing is dominating the game at every rank because you can't kill him.

Flats (03:32:20.972)
yeah. I mean outside of thing, like thing of course, just they just went too far. yeah, no, I agree. I do question it a little bit.

Lyte (03:32:23.95)
Yeah, he's just an example.

Flats (03:32:32.694)
Reason being, think just because a character is difficult to play doesn't mean that, like, if you play that one character well, you should beat everybody. I think that part of the magic of a hero shooter. So, like, okay, maybe let me rephrase that. let's say Spider-Man. Spider-Man's a really hard character to play. But if you gave him more tools to basically play against any comp, poke, brawl, or dive, right? Like he had enough tools that if he was good enough, he could make it work in every one. I don't know if that would be okay.

Lyte (03:32:39.628)
No, definitely not.

Flats (03:33:02.646)
Because like just because he's more mechanically difficult than say, I don't know, let's say strange, for example. Like Strange is pretty, pretty easy and straightforward, but not quite as like turn your brain off his thing, right? I think that you should be able to have just as much impact on Strange as you do on Spider-Man if you're playing him super well, right? And it's like, I understand that like if a character's more difficult, you know, you get more value. But like also it depends on what do you consider.

Skill in that aspect, because aiming could be a skill, right? Like if you're just really fucking good at aiming, should be able to you should should you be able to walk down a team on Hella? You know, like yeah, I I agree. I but but like, you know, that's another skill. You could say that the aiming is a skill, not everyone's gonna hit headshots consistently. If you can consistently hatch headshots, shouldn't you be rewarded for that?

Lyte (03:33:40.972)
No. It's what we were talking about with the asymmetry of counterply. Yep.

Lyte (03:33:55.598)
Yeah, it should be based on the mechanic of the character because all other forms of skill are universal.

CaptainCoach (03:34:02.783)
One of my favorite quotes about game balance, it's from guy from the fighting game community, Keats, if you guys know who that is. the Adam Hart was his name. The only way to tune your game to a state where no player is complaining is if they all quit. It's one of my favorite quotes. There there's always Yeah, so to me, yeah, maybe fairness necessarily shouldn't be

Flats (03:34:24.204)
Damn, that's a good one.

CaptainCoach (03:34:32.491)
the ultimate design goal. But if if you look at something like whether or not you think balance is subjective fairness is something that every player experiences completely differently. So to me, it just goes back to kind of what we're saying. Like if you give more tools and have the risk associated with a certain input be relatively similar to the reward

I don't think we'll run into these problems too much. And I think netties, like you talk about drunk with power, they have a real problem with that particular dynamic is the risk versus output or s or effort versus output. And I think it's one of the biggest issues. And and I think that that is something that can translate from lower to higher ranks and be kind of like a universal thing. We go back to like Luna Freeze, is the risk of missing the freeze worth

the output of of essentially like making someone useless for four seconds. Well, I mean, yeah, I sure I'm sure it like it kind of depends. But like currently with how easy it is, I would say no. Like that is an incredibly powerful ability, even pre buff. So I mean, obviously it's gonna there's nuance and we need to like define the like what what is skillful and not. But I think it's just something that over a long period of time it just comes with like conversation. Yeah. Like

Lyte (03:35:53.924)
Yeah, I was just gonna say, I think the the easiest way to streamline it is on average, if a character is harder to play than another character, they should be better when their skills their skill ceiling or absolute potential is approached. If it was the other way around, you get situations like rocket, like past rocket or current thing, where you have very easy characters that are getting infinite value, and that does not feel very good if you like it playing any of the other characters in the cast, and like flats we saw it with Overwatch with Moira or Brig, where these characters get infinite value, they're relatively easy to play.

And it it like for the rest of the cast, it makes your investment into the game feel horrible and it makes it to where why would I pick anything else if I could just pick this brain dead character and get like infinite value for half the effort.

Flats (03:36:36.342)
You're not wrong, but I would actually argue that it's okay in small dose doses. I think every character should have its time in the sun. I think a thing meta like right now would be fine for a month. I think rocket meta, fine for a month.

Lyte (03:36:41.41)
I agree. I agree. And that's why it's in general.

Yeah, I agree. For a month. Yeah. It's okay. It should not be, and I try to make a like big emphasis of my of this in my video, it it should not be the case where if a character is easy to play that they're bad and hard to play they are good. It's on average, and sometimes bad characters or easy to play characters should have their set their their time in the spotlight. There should always be comps, there should always be situations where they are not so bad that you can't pick them or you lose the game like it is right now.

Coach Mills (03:37:17.191)
So one thing I wanted to interject, so I haven't really given my opinion at all, but it now that we're kind of closing things that are getting towards the end, I wanna I wanna ask this question to both of y'all. I also feel in a similar way to that about the low skill ceiling, you know, characters should never be hard meta is about like right now I I kind of label this meta that it's anything if you had a if you have to risk your life for value right now, you're not seeing any play. Everything that is seeing play or things that get to get value.

without ever putting themselves at risk. And one of the pro one of the reasons that's the case is because like I like to put heroes, this is a little oversimplified, but I like to put heroes in the camp of threats versus answers, where there are certain characters that present a proactive game plan. They are threat characters, and there's certain characters that their entire job is to deny game plans. So like Magneto and Bucky historically have been answer characters. Thing has been historically an answer character. But the problem is

When you give these characters too many offensive tools as well, now Magneto can present lethality even though he never has to risk his life for it. So he is simultaneously like the reason that Magneto is so strong right now, with like a the high s probably the high I think it's the highest pick rate ever out of any character we've ever seen is because he is both simultaneously a threatening answer and he doesn't have to risk his life for it. And so like you have yeah, and he's very easy.

Lyte (03:38:39.566)
And he's easy.

Flats (03:38:40.856)
I don't think his weakness, that's that's the big one. There's no weakness to him right now.

Coach Mills (03:38:43.707)
There's no weakness. But that's that's the thing is like before, like Magneto never really had like in my opinion, like a true weakness in the same way. It's just that he couldn't Well, yeah, well that's the thing is his weakness was his lethality. So he was an answer in the way that he could deny things. Like that was kind of his whole identity. But not but not he was not a I can kill you type character. But you're seeing Magneto's block infinite damage and end the game with twenty finals, twenty five finals, thirty finals. I mean that you're seeing that 'cause he's

Flats (03:38:50.934)
Range.

CaptainCoach (03:38:59.339)
Heavy brawl, I think used to be.

Coach Mills (03:39:13.105)
He simultaneously. I mean, that basically I gave a character that is Mace Barry basically a defensive character that gave him an offensive capability that's too strong. Like far too strong. and I think it you have to be very careful when you do stuff like that where like like a like imagine like like imagine if you gave like like I don't know like like an offensive oriented character like like BP a defensive ability that could protect his team or something. Or or like like he could

Flats (03:39:13.272)
Do you think it's 'cause the sword?

Flats (03:39:27.714)
So what would you change?

CaptainCoach (03:39:27.892)
All buffs.

Lyte (03:39:35.962)
Clock Panther more more kill potential.

Coach Mills (03:39:39.708)
He could like protect like or they gave him a defensive, like a lunar snow or something. I don't know. Like something stupid. Like like you have to Well, for Magneto especially, I think he needs to have a ver like he needs to be clearly defined as someone that is more of an answer. He's he's the he's a denier of problems. He is not a problem in himself. So like l damage should not be like his damage should be a means to deny things, and I think they had it right with his like I Light's had problems with this in the past, his stun, but I think that that is

Flats (03:39:45.144)
So what would you change?

Coach Mills (03:40:05.938)
Because of the range, that's fine. It's just the sword damage range uptime making him a lethal threat is where where it crosses that threshold. And in in a say yeah.

Flats (03:40:14.328)
So let me ask you a question. You said the damage of the sword, right? So you're gonna make the sword a four hit or a five hit?

Coach Mills (03:40:20.827)
As as much as you have to, like like as high as you have to make it to where he's no longer like a lethal threat and can kill you from range.

Flats (03:40:26.648)
What do you think the reaction of that will be?

Coach Mills (03:40:29.681)
I mean they're everyone's gonna lose their shit. Like like but like but w with this mass nerf thing that you're talking about, everyone's still gonna I mean they're gonna lose their shit. I like I'm trying to f I'm trying to think if they did do like a

Flats (03:40:38.762)
If they do it, by the way.

Lyte (03:40:40.686)
The mag players being upset is worth the rest of the player base getting to play the game. I think that's fine. You can't make everybody happy. That's a reality. You'll never have perfect balance. Everyone's gonna be biased and that's okay. Otherwise we can't even change the game at all.

Coach Mills (03:40:44.121)
Ha ha ha.

Coach Mills (03:40:53.501)
You d you just have to do it like combine it with the Thanos Snap lore, rank reset everybody, nerf everything, add in a new rank in between like I don't know, Grandmaster and Celestial or something. Yeah, I don't know. Like i it's like when you talk about ripping off the band-aid, I just think it's a lot easier to to feel like if you do all these changes at once, it's a lot easier instead of just doing them gradually and pissing people off like like slowly pissing people

CaptainCoach (03:40:54.554)
I

Flats (03:41:21.501)
yeah.

Coach Mills (03:41:21.937)
pissing people off throughout like the course like a year.

CaptainCoach (03:41:24.193)
Just nerf all the team ups. Increase the cooldowns by fifty percent, lower their duration. Well, like eighty percent of them probably. Cause I I think that those gameplay loops of heroes did get kind of the balance got kind of messed up. And I think if they just kind of toned them down and then maybe even made the anchor when you know, when you have the the person enhancing it, make those stronger. So then you could try to like pull up, you know, more less played heroes, less viable heroes into the higher rank meta, I think you you you're cooking now. Like I I don't think you gotta do

Lyte (03:41:27.95)
Not all of

Flats (03:41:29.398)
Well

Coach Mills (03:41:29.661)
Especially Spiderman's No I'm just kidding, not Spiderman.

Lyte (03:41:53.85)
Flutz, I wanted to I wanted to ask you because we kinda got away from it. So I think that we were able to see like in the extremity it's bad for someone to like quit the game or it's good for someone to quit the game or quit what they're doing if it's like severely impacting their mental and physical health. But in the cases for most people where that's not happening, do you agree with me like how that can be fallacious to say and that like it doesn't actually resolve the problem?

CaptainCoach (03:41:54.091)
A ton.

Flats (03:42:19.394)
What do you mean by those who can't do it?

Lyte (03:42:22.586)
like like where exit is not a viable strategy to leave.

Flats (03:42:26.806)
Why is it not an app viable strategy?

Lyte (03:42:28.822)
It could be i for a difference of reasons. Like your best friends could be playing this game. It's like the main game of your friend group. It's loyalty to the IP or to a superhero. It could be a variety of things. You could be a streamer appropriate, like whatever.

Flats (03:42:41.11)
So, I mean, all of those things are mostly self-imposed. like I understand, like, you know, let's say you, for example, is a good example. Like your livelihood is tied to it. That's much more difficult than someone who say is like their friend group just plays it. I think let's just use the I'll do the friend group one really quickly. Your friend group always plays it, you are miserable every time you play it. By playing with them every single time, I bet your friends are not that happy. Like you guys are boys, you guys play all the time. But

Every time you hop on Rivals, he's the guy who's shit talking everybody, your team and enemy team. He's miserable. He's pissed. He doesn't want to fail. He's just playing whatever. I hate to break it to you, but your friends will start to resent you, even if you're just trying to be along with everybody. And the same thing can happen on the other side as well, where you don't just resent the game, or the game doesn't resent. Or I guess it is kind of the reverse, where it's like, you know, your friends might start to resent you every time you play because, like, you're fucking miserable. Like, just don't play.

But in the opposite end, like here, like you're giving out the energy almost that you're coming that's coming back in. It's like if everything sucks and it's never good, you start to resent the game to the point where you're not in touch with them as much anymore. Right. And I understand what it's

Lyte (03:43:52.28)
it's not it's not that everything sucks. Sorry, 'cause this is an important distinction. It could be like you just have a very strong pin point with a character that is not being addressed like Gambit or like Phoenix. Like these characters that are making the game really bad or unfun to play for a prolonged period of time and you try to voice that and like you love the game, so your loyalty is disrupting your voice, and wherever that loyalty is manifests from can be a variety of things like we said. So don't even focus on that example. I just wanted to

Flats (03:43:56.76)
Sure.

Flats (03:44:06.36)
Sure, yeah.

Flats (03:44:19.266)
Sure. Sure. I'll focus on this one. Do you believe in your heart and soul? Sorry, I was just gonna focus on yours. Do you believe in your heart and soul that if they nerfed Gambit tomorrow you'd be happy and you'd be smiling and you'd be like, This is great?

Lyte (03:44:21.942)
Isolate like like leaving does not resolve the the answer.

Lyte (03:44:33.59)
It is a component that would make the game better, yes.

Flats (03:44:36.834)
That's not what I asked. Would it make you happy and that would solve your issues? Because it sounds like you're saying, like, I have this one issue.

Lyte (03:44:44.044)
No, I have multifaceted issues. I just said one as an example.

Flats (03:44:47.586)
But they're always gonna have multifaceted issues, even as they But you're always gonna have that though, right? Like the they're gonna balance the game. There's gonna be a patch that sucks. Like we played Overwatch for years, right? And I would say Overwatch is balanced these days is much better than it used to be, but it still happens. Like they just buff the cat like crazy. Everyone's pissed. Yeah, so like you you get it. Yeah, you get it, you get it. And it's like there's gonna be patches that fucking blow the whole thing up after they did a great job. And you're going to then now be like, well, we just did unon did all this pro all this progress.

Lyte (03:44:48.974)
Because before it has been before it has been one issue.

Lyte (03:45:01.614)
Yeah. But I didn't get a character in my role for four years. Is is Echo and that was it? Yeah.

Flats (03:45:16.546)
Fuck this, this sucks. And that's only if they're doing all the things you want them to do. So it's like there's a good chance they won't do all the things you want them to do. And if it's like, if it comes down to genuinely, if they make this one change, I'm fucking happy. By God, I'm with you. But I think you and I both know it's not that. Where it's like there's a systematic problems and there's more and more and more. And as more heroes get added, it's only gonna get worse because it's hard to balance a game with so many characters. Like

Lyte (03:45:43.278)
Yeah.

Flats (03:45:44.726)
If you wanted to play the most balanced game on the planet, you could make a game like this where you just have two people on a flat plane, white background, and they both have a gun, and they just you just duel each other. Then it's just whoever clicks first. You know?

Lyte (03:45:52.654)
Yeah, of course. That's not that's not what anyone's saying. Let me use like a current example of like Magneto. If a player has a problem with Magneto and you go on Twitter and say Magneto's broken, I don't like playing against Mag, it's making the game unfun. If that person is now responded with, Well, if you don't like playing against Mag, just go play a different game it's like that could be true, but what is more so the point is that Magneto remains to be broken, remains to make the game not as good as it could be. And that's like the point that I'm trying to

Flats (03:46:17.932)
And you can ex you can express that once. And you can be like, yeah, this this is fucking broken. This is ass. And if it's got to the point where you are like genuinely losing your mind and you're getting physically upset every time you play against a mag, yeah, it might be, okay, this is too bro this is broken right now. I can't stand playing against this every game. I'm gonna play something different. And like, there's two farts to that. I now I understand like the whole like, I I don't have another choice, but that's what I also mean by like it's not the game's responsibility to like

supply you with content slash life slash revenue streams. It's not the game's responsibility.

Lyte (03:46:52.6)
Okay. I get your I get your perspective. Yeah. Okay, I got you. So my next question for you was as far as like the the casual versus competitive thing. I know that we didn't like really get to a consensus on like how to like literally approach the balance. I know that you believe it to be like a a specific ratio. I believe it to be a case by case basis and if you go to Yeah.

Flats (03:46:56.64)
Yeah. Okay.

Flats (03:47:15.02)
And I'm open to that by the way. If you want if you want to say it's not a specific ratio, let's say it's a more open ratio because it's a case by case basis, right? I'd be willing to agree to that. So I like I said like ninety ten, like let's say sixty forty. And now I know you say you don't like ratios, but like now that's a lot more wiggle room because you know. Sure.

Lyte (03:47:23.935)
Mm. I think the race yeah, I would I would see yeah.

Lyte (03:47:35.662)
Yeah, I'll get more specific for for you. so I would say that the ratio always exists somewhere in the ether and it is sometimes it's ninety ten, sometimes it's seventy thirty, so on and so forth. I think it depends on the the temperature of the game. So right now you've argued, okay, it's gone too far in one direction. I've argued in the past that it's always been too far in one direction and it needs to be more considered for the competitive player.

Flats (03:47:50.658)
Mm-hmm.

Lyte (03:48:00.972)
And ultimately I think that all that needs to happen in future approaches to balance for actionable implementations is that more consideration is given to the competitive side. Not all, just more. The degree of more is up for interpretation, but just more than it is right now. I think that the casual the casual experience is very important, but their opinions are not as important. Big distinction there. The casual might present a a solution. Yes.

Flats (03:48:19.064)
I don't think it's unfair.

Flats (03:48:26.764)
I think there's specific opinions, I'm with ya. Opinions in general, a little bit iffy, but like, yes, sure.

Lyte (03:48:30.658)
Yes, specific opinions. Specific opinions. Cause Silver, Mr. Fantastic, will not will likely not give a good solution to how to fix the game as a pro player, which we agree on. But that does not discredit his experience. It's valuable to listen to him, but do we have to take it into consideration with our application? Probably not all the time. Maybe sometimes. and then to use empirical data, understanding nuance.

Flats (03:48:38.412)
Yep. Sure.

Flats (03:48:47.34)
Sure. Yeah yeah.

Lyte (03:48:53.56)
in order to shape our framework of how to actually like make decisions based on objective data. Because objective data is important in making decisions, especially at lower ranks. I think it matters less as you get higher up, 'cause that's when those nuances start to get exploited. And again I I presented much of them in the graph section of the video. But in lower ranks I think win rates, pick rates, ban rates all matter more.

But yeah, would you would you agree that saying the game is like if someone makes a complaint, I hate Magneto, well why do you why why do you care? It's just a casual game like undermines like real criticism in the same way that telling the person to leave does?

Flats (03:49:28.664)
I think if you like even the most basics of criticism, yeah. I mean, like, I don't think if you are someone who is like, this character, broken. And then you respond to them, Well, if you don't like it, just leave. Yeah, of course, that's ridiculous. Which is again why when I was I've I've already reiterated this, you this, I was mostly speaking to you directly. You know, you're saying that you were more like a figurehead for this thing, so I'll adjust that sure. if you are genuinely losing your mind and

Quite frankly, you might agree or disagree, but I I've seen you have some crash outs. I think sometimes you've lost your mind over it. and yeah, like I get it. I've I you're you're talking like the crash out king on some t over the ten over the last seven years of shit I've I've made content over. Yeah. thank hang on, I didn't know this. Wait, hang on, we can work this out. Like

Lyte (03:49:59.122)
for sure. No, for sure I have.

Lyte (03:50:09.23)
No, I hate I hate MAGA too, bro. Don't worry. And just just for clarification, in that yeah, in that in that portion of the video, bro, I said MAGA is not more skillful than Doom, and you took it as I think like that I thought that you thought he was. No, big emphasis on not. No. No, Maga is the most talentless, no skill, garbage character they've ever added. Like s a hundred percent, yeah. And I I've always thought that. Yeah, fuck him. Yeah. I I feel like I have a decent

Coach Mills (03:50:11.591)
Yeah.

Flats (03:50:23.264)
Yeah, I th Okay. we're in agreement then. Cause yeah, fuck that guy. Okay, I'm all right, I'm glad then. Then I misunderstood. I apologize, but like that was a tr that was the you hit the red button. You hit the nuke.

Lyte (03:50:38.838)
Yeah, I feel like I have a decent understanding of your general idea of like Overwatch in particular, because I have been familiar with you for years. I was like in Overwatch, like in the scene, obviously I wasn't a content creator, but like I've followed you for a while, and something that I I came to note of in my original video, because I watched it again, like the very, very first video that started all of this before this podcast started, is I was not as eloquent as I should have been, and I was dismissive more so than I should have been, and I take accountability for that. But I did not

Flats (03:51:05.515)
I appreciate that.

Lyte (03:51:06.893)
I did not feel like I was to the degree that you made it see in your response. And I appreciate the acknowledgement of that on your end because like I never insulted your Yeah, I never insulted your character. I never said any of these things about Boger. All I said about Boger, by the way, as well as I didn't care about a season zero tier list. I thought that I like shit on Boger and all this stuff, but then when I went back and watched it again, I was like, wait, like all I said is I don't care about a season zero tier list, which is super valid. I don't care about anyone's season zero zero tier list. I should have specified that.

Flats (03:51:15.0)
And I'll acknowledge it again. I think I went too far with it. Yeah.

Lyte (03:51:36.538)
Like who cares about any tier list from season zero?

Flats (03:51:36.938)
So I took that as like, I don't listen to any of these content creators because I'm a pro, I know better. So it's like I looked at Boger because Boger is a former pro. You knew this from Overwatch, you knew him. And then obviously played Rivals and was playing in Ignite or MRC Ignite. Who the fucking knows? They change the name of it all the time, but you know what mean. so I knew that he was grinding more, and so I'm like, obviously, he is better than the game than I am, and you still don't take his opinion because it's like content creator, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's kind of how I viewed it. Obviously, it seems like there's a bit of a

Lyte (03:51:41.056)
Yeah. Yeah, no.

Yeah, yeah, no.

Lyte (03:52:04.408)
Yeah. No, there was just yeah, yeah. And the whole the whole dismissal of your opinion was not as a a consequence of my disapproval of you as a person. It was more so like you don't play the game as much as I do. You're a casual player by your own admission as far as like how you treat the game. If you're not having fun you get off. You don't have the same you have much more elasticity than I do. I mean so as a consequence you're not as exposed to the same issues that I am for as long and as intensely.

Flats (03:52:06.774)
Miscommunication on that one.

Flats (03:52:33.43)
Mm-hmm.

Lyte (03:52:34.22)
And so like your interpretation of what and I don't know if we can agree here is objectively good or not, but what would be considered to probably be the best that most of the pros are playing that I'm exposed to would not be as accurate as mine. and that's that's all I meant, not that like you don't know what you're talking about or that you're brain dead or anything.

Flats (03:52:49.378)
Sure. And I and I will say I don't take pro play as the highest consideration. I would when I view the game, I view the highest rank as the apex and then down. And the reason why is because a lot of times pro play scrims will leak into ranked, right? Like you guys end up playing the same heroes or practicing the same heroes. Not saying every ranked game is like scrims. Of course not. There's that like half the time you guys are fucking memeing, but people will practice the same heroes. So like it leaks into ranked and then works its way down.

Lyte (03:53:18.412)
And like triple tank right now, that's going on.

Flats (03:53:18.828)
So the way yeah, so the way I view the game is that the ranked system is the best way to look at the game because it will have pro play incorporated into it in its own fashion. and then taking obviously the rest into a larger consideration.

Lyte (03:53:36.408)
Yeah, I think that's just a difference of mentality for Tierless. Whenever I think about my Tierless or watch another one, I'm interpreting it as this is the best character in the game for here if you achieve their absolute potential. And I know there's like some t like debate between who we're tierless actually for in the community, for like all communities, 'cause I've watched content creators in Overwatch react to my video.

Flats (03:53:45.569)
Yeah.

Flats (03:53:54.148)
Okay, let's let's let's settle that right now. The tier list is to watch what is being fucking said. The tier list placing is just a visual indicator. Everything else doesn't fucking matter. Like Yeah, cause they're dumb. I have the analytics. I can see that they skipped to the fucking end. Like four like 30% of fuckers just jump to the end. You're stupid! Go back! Get your bit! Go back! Get back there! Start over! Like

Coach Mills (03:54:04.261)
No, they're they're gonna skip it and then they're just gonna they're gonna they're not gonna they're not gonna that flats flats that that's why you you have to do so So Flats that's why I very specifically I very specifically do not put my tier list like the final chart in my videos and I put timestamps So you have you have to listen you can't you can't skip it because I know it's that that's exactly what's gonna happen

CaptainCoach (03:54:07.787)
Yeah.

Lyte (03:54:13.796)
Yeah.

Flats (03:54:30.328)
That's smart, it's smart.

Coach Mills (03:54:34.053)
No one no one gives a shit about nuance around anywhere on about rivals.

Flats (03:54:37.164)
Yeah. That's why it sucks for short form, 'cause like we upload short form content of this of the tier list like all of it gets lost because you can't you can't you can't do it. Sorry.

Lyte (03:54:39.459)
Yeah.

Lyte (03:54:43.854)
I would I would say that tier lists are for everyone, high and low as well. But whenever I watch a tier list, and I can count myself in the low ranker casual community as well, because I look at a tier list for a different game like Deadlock or for League. Like if I go and hop on Deadlock and it's not like I care, I'm playing Victor no matter what, but just out of curiosity, I go and hop on Deadlock, I'm looking for a pro players tier list, not because it's applicable to me and my rank, because everyone where I'm at when I play the game is horrible.

Flats (03:55:05.688)
Yeah.

Lyte (03:55:12.783)
But what could my c what is my character capable of when absolute potential is reached and when other people are reaching it? Because fundamentally it doesn't really matter what you play all that much in gold. You're gonna have an easier time playing Victor and Gold or like Scrollgirl and Gold or something compared to a character like like Spider Man or like for Deadlock's equivalent like like Sinclair. But all that matters is that like you're playing the character that you enjoy, and if you want to go pro, sacrifice your fun for what's good. Or if you wanna get super high ELO, sacrifice your fun for what's good. That's that's

basically the fundamental aspect of it. And so I think it's just a different sort of interpretation for the tier list for that. But the whole I just wanted it to be clear that the whole point of chapter three, I know that you were obviously a very big focus of it. But in the same way that I'm a representation of ideas, you are as well. And I think a lot of the ideas that you were talking about, like with the Ergo Decido before we clarified stuff, before the cla the casual competitive, and I still can't remember the last one that I pointed out. but

were undermining like legitimate criticis criticisms e even if there is some truth in them insofar as like the other one was was expertise versus mental insanity that one and we can we can talk about that in a second and clear that up as well. But I would really like going forward to make sure that like I will do a better job. and I think other people should as well of criticizing the devs and bringing criticism with what's the word?

More politeness, more constructiveness. Yeah. Yeah.

Flats (03:56:42.326)
You'll get you'll get most so much further. I can tell you, as like someone who has worked closely with dev teams, like I did this in Overwatch, and I was very outspoken, you know this. and I talked to them many, many times, and they were always like, Nope, this is fine. Like you can you can say everything you've said, you never cross any lines. And that is kind of how you become more well respected and more like they understand that you're not just crashing out, they want actionable feedback. And I think as long as you're giving respectable, actionable feedback.

Lyte (03:56:48.345)
Yeah.

Flats (03:57:11.774)
Even if they disagree, they will always respect you for it. And I think that's just the best way to go.

Lyte (03:57:16.675)
Yeah, for sure. and I think what had happened to me is I did that in the beginning before I was a content creator. And people didn't realize that because I was in the alpha calls with them when they asked for player feedback and stuff like that, and I gave it to and they didn't listen and then they didn't listen to my concerns for months and months and months. and then all of my popular clips are clips of me freaking out and raging over stuff that's like annoying, like getting frozen through a wall, and then one shot, like that old Luna Hawkeye team up.

Flats (03:57:31.899)
I've heard about that, yeah.

Lyte (03:57:44.942)
Or like the Phoenix clip w like when I'm on Venom where this character walks up to me and Beyblade one shots me with a thousand health. and all these different things, when in the past, I have stuff on my channel that is like very real. It's not in the same type of format as this, but it it's not like the rage freak out type of crash outs that I have in the past that are promoting changes. But those type of things don't get the same views and that's like not even like like I'm not catering my content to be like freaking out or raging. It would just so happen that those are the clips that got traction because it's just

Flats (03:58:13.666)
Sure. I mean I get it. Most of my most popular clips are all that too.

Lyte (03:58:14.126)
People like watching crash outs, like that's just whatever. But yeah, but taking into consideration the the criticism that I've received, I I do see the error of like the pathway that I presented myself and I will be better about it going forward. But in an effort to to get common ground here, I want to also make sure as well that you as probably the biggest rivals creator next to J three or someone else that I might be missing off the top of my head, that more caution is demonstrated

when people are criticizing the game in so far as like someone could have a very real true criticism, and many people could, and when you say if you don't like it you can leave, because you're an influencer, you influence other people to say the same thing, and then that narrative gets spread everywhere, and then change that needs to happen doesn't occur. And that was the whole point of chapter three. And it's not just you in particular. I'm just saying you and and as the example because of your size. But it could be any content creator.

Or just anyone in general saying that stuff. I don't think it's productive.

Flats (03:59:13.218)
Sure. I I think that's fair. I think I can see where it comes off as like don't complain, which I think is not the way I want or intended it. I think complaints are fine to an extent. I think the way complaints are provided is also to an extent. I think that if I see a passing clip of someone crashing out, okay, it happens. But I think like

When you intentionally post it, that's another thing, right? When you intentionally post it yourself. I have a content team. My own content team's gotten me in trouble many a times by posting stuff that like I'm like, hey guys, like, what are we doing on that one? You know? but like I think, especially as a smaller career, when you're like intentionally putting stuff out, that's where it's like, it's not just a crash out here or there. It's kind of like, this is my message. and not saying like you're gonna play ranked, it's just gonna fucking happen, right? and I think obviously you've learned that. And I think that.

You know, you reflected on it and I think that's really good. And I think for me, I will try to be a bit more careful about that. Cause I will not apologize for advocating for people to take breaks in their mental health, because I think that is good. But yeah, I think that in terms of you're not allowed to give criticism is not something I would I would ever stand behind. I give tons of criticism. I think it can be done in a a respectful way. I think there's a lot of people, especially children, children will crash out and be like,

Lyte (04:00:23.15)
Yeah, that's a perfectly fine message.

Flats (04:00:40.236)
Yeah, well, I don't have to hold their hand like fuck I'm gonna just tell how it is. And it's like, okay, cool, man. They're just not gonna listen to you. Like straight up. They're just gonna tell you to go fuck yourself. And then then you're gonna be real upset that they didn't listen to you, you know? obviously, you're not that person. You're not, you're not a kid. And I think you've you've clearly now realized how powerful it is when you talk like the way you've been talking and construct conducting yourself, and I applaud you for it. so yeah, like I I think that there's there's definitely a better way to handle it, and I will I will consider that going forward.

CaptainCoach (04:01:11.159)
All right, when's the duo?

Coach Mills (04:01:11.599)
Whoa Wow that the the the duo tier list. Y let's go, let's go.

Lyte (04:01:12.776)
W Do a do a tier list next season?

Flats (04:01:14.326)
Yeah. Sure. I mean, I I I gotta I haven't posted my I told you guys on the podcast my like secret experiment of not posting short form content a tier list out of all the dog shit I went through this season with people trauma farming, not a single tier list complaint. Not one. Why? Because it was no short form content. my they had to watch the podcast. They're not watching the three hour fucking long podcast. It's been cinema. I can't wait for next week. It's gonna be great.

Lyte (04:01:17.21)
No.

CaptainCoach (04:01:24.545)
Mm-hmm.

Coach Mills (04:01:31.773)
They had to watch they had to watch the video, yeah.

CaptainCoach (04:01:33.335)
Mm-hmm.

Coach Mills (04:01:40.411)
Yeah, no the the no the Well, guys, I hate to cut y'all short. And I say short as in this podcast is not four hours long. but I think we probably should wrap things up just in you know, so people will actually watch this thing. So people and and and and actually hear out all of y'all's points. I think we found a good amount of common ground. I think we both we you know, both of y'all addressed some things that netties can do right away that would like at at the very least break up this

CaptainCoach (04:01:42.836)
That's great.

Flats (04:01:48.076)
Cut it short.

Lyte (04:01:49.306)
Ha ha.

CaptainCoach (04:01:49.802)
yeah.

CaptainCoach (04:01:56.448)
Coach Mills (04:02:09.521)
this friction that we're in in nine point five. and yeah, I I I wanted to give y'all both just a quick opportunity to say any closing statements if you have any. but I do I do wanna thank y'all both for coming on. I think this is very productive. Yeah.

CaptainCoach (04:02:21.875)
Absolutely. You guys have been great. Thank you so much.

Flats (04:02:26.04)
Would you like to start or you want start? Okay. first of all, I want to thank you guys for having us on. Appreciate you. the that first article I sent you, can you bring it up one last time? I would love to show that one last time. I know we like there was nothing to go over in it, but I linked it to you because I think it's very important that whether you agree with me or agree with lights or common ground or none of our common ground or I don't know, you think we're both fucking stupid. I think it's very important for NetEast to actually come out.

Lyte (04:02:27.898)
You go ahead.

CaptainCoach (04:02:32.695)
Course.

Coach Mills (04:02:33.551)
Anytime, anytime.

Yes. Let let me let me pull that up.

Flats (04:02:54.644)
somewhat soon, maybe with season 10, and tell us what they're thinking. there's no way they don't see the community discourse. There's no way they don't see the way people are talking. And I think you erode community trust by putting, you know, the blinders on and your ear covers on and not talking about it sooner. Cause I think there's a lot that could be said. And it sounds like there's that boger interview from two years ago. And it's like reiterate that. Talk about where your head's at these days. Why are you balancing the way you do? What is your idea for new heroes? Like what is your philosophies? I think that could do a lot, even if people don't agree with it.

At least they're talking about what it is and they're being more transparent. I think that's a great thing for them to do. I think no matter what side you're on or what side you agree with, transparency is always the best for all of us because with then we at least have a a good starting ground and we're not doing theories and we're not doing like, it could be this or it could be that. We can always start in rationale and actual facts that are being pre presented from to us and then we can go from there. So no matter where this goes, I appreciate you guys for bringing me on. I hope net ease actually

not I'm not saying that they have to go competitive balance. I'm not saying they have to go casual balance. I just want to hear something.

Coach Mills (04:04:01.581)
Light, what would you like to say and as a closing statement?

Lyte (04:04:06.042)
Well, the first thing I wanna say is that not only do I appreciate Mills and Coach for coming on, but flats you in particular as well. You have like no incentive to take the time to actually hash it on talk with me. You could just keep posting content, move on, it doesn't matter. so that was something that had to come out of like your actual desire to do rather than like a direct incentive for you to do so. So I appreciate that. the second thing I wanna say is I really, really appreciate everyone who

watch the video and not only like engaged with it and talked with it, but like all of the positive feedback that I've gotten from it because that video guys like that video probably took me like three days, maybe little less than three days of like sitting in my chair, editing, recording, thinking, researching, like all of that. And I sacked my stream for a little over a week completely, in order to get that out to get my thoughts expressed. So I really appreciate everyone just like engaging with it and all the conversation and and dialogue that it started.

And I think that we might actually see some like meaningful change from Netties or like some updates which would be great. Like it would help me process more about where their heads at or like how I should feel about the game and approach the game if they were to give a better understanding or like like a reflection of like this is what we're gonna do guys going forward, this is what to expect. So there's no reason to get mad if you think about it one way or the other. So we have clear direction.

Flats (04:05:22.28)
Sure. Can I can I say something back to him really quick? Sorry. Sorry, clear comms. My bad, my bad. I'm I'm I'm on I'm unclogging the comms up. I want to say first off, I appreciate you for that. means a lot. I will say when I first watched your original video, I I mean, like obviously we've said all, like, didn't it didn't go well. I didn't think you were

CaptainCoach (04:05:23.543)
Yeah, we need clear comms.

Coach Mills (04:05:25.927)
Clear calms. Sorry, all right, my bad.

Flats (04:05:46.05)
I think I th I think I s literally said the word grifter. And the reason why I said that is it didn't think you were that serious. I think you just were complaining to complain and chased some views with my name next to it. what I realized by video two and then reaction to video two was I was upset with video two's like f framing because I think when you're presenting a like a an idea or a topic like this, that it's like you stay within it and it has like a little bit more of a meme side on it, and it like, is this kind of like a like a h semi hit piece? But then huh.

Lyte (04:06:13.134)
You mean my my cr critique? Like my video two, you mean the critique video? Okay. No.

Flats (04:06:17.27)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. This the the the one you just posted recently. and I think what I realized later on was you did actually really care. And I really cared too. And so even though we weren't in agreement, that it wasn't just like a grift to farm like people like getting in and whatnot, I think that it was a from a place of passion for sure. And that even if we don't agree, or we haven't agreed on everything, but we did agree on a lot,

Lyte (04:06:38.819)
No, no.

Flats (04:06:46.666)
I can appreciate that, which is why I came. Because if I just thought you were still that way and I was like, nah, this guy's just a farmer. This guy's just a grifter. He's just here to like farm a couple of views or farm far farm a couple of likes or whatever. Cause there's people that do that, I wouldn't have showed up. But I don't think I didn't think I didn't I think you had proved with enough time that you were not that type of person. So that's why I agreed to it. So again, I appreciate you.

Lyte (04:07:08.346)
Appreciate

Coach Mills (04:07:09.243)
Yeah. Well Yeah.

CaptainCoach (04:07:09.795)
yeah. No more bum PK.

Lyte (04:07:13.282)
I might I might occasionally still still go by it just 'cause it's funny. It's just like ancient lore, but like no, it's good to get the clarification.

Coach Mills (04:07:16.422)
Yeah.

CaptainCoach (04:07:16.599)
Yeah.

Coach Mills (04:07:19.239)
But but I'm I'm I'm very happy both of y'all are on. I think this was extremely productive. Thank you so much. Thank you, everyone that's watching. I know we're gonna post this. Some of y'all have been watching live. Thank y'all as well. Thank you for continuing the conversation. let's hope for some great changes in season 10. Definitely please check out both lights and flats. Give them support, give them love. Neither of them had to do this. I think that they both want what's best for rivals. So if you want what's best for rivals, I think you should support both these guys with everything you have. Thank you guys. Really appreciate y'all.

And hope to have you both back on the pod sometime soon. Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you.

Lyte (04:07:52.165)
Yeah, for sure. Thank you guys. Bye bye.

Flats (04:07:52.99)
Why