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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!!!
Coach Mills (00:00.684)
What's up, everybody, and welcome to a brand new Clear Comms episode. We are at a turning point. There is more doomer takes and toxicity in the community than ever before in 9.5 for Marvel Rivals. And we wanted to have a real conversation, sit down and talk about some of the solutions to this state of the game. And we thought no better to bring on the king of Marvel Rivals. Flats, welcome in. How are you doing?
CaptainCoach (00:24.338)
Yeah.
Flats (00:25.74)
I'm good. How are you guys?
Coach Mills (00:27.446)
you know? Yeah.
CaptainCoach (00:27.957)
Pretty good. I mean when I'm not spamming too many games every day. how how how's your nine point five been going for you so far, Flats?
Flats (00:36.738)
I mean, I think it's noticeably worse. I mean like taking out like the the daily, like normal rattle stuff, like your slursling slashers and whatnot. you know, people running down games like that happens. like putting men off to the side. I'm not a pro player. I don't even play at that level anymore. I play like pretty casually and like hang out in like mid celestial till the end of the season and make an eternity push just for fun sometimes. And
CaptainCoach (00:45.769)
Ha ha.
Coach Mills (00:46.04)
I liked. Yeah.
Flats (01:02.988)
We have the fights that are lasting two, three minutes long. And so I'm already starting to see the cascade working its way down. And it's like, yeah, it's kind of fun maybe once after the fifth game in a row. I like I need to turn my game off. Like I can't. My brain is fried at this point. So I would say this season has been a little bit worse as it's gone on, but that just means I get to play other stuff. So
CaptainCoach (01:06.548)
Yeah.
CaptainCoach (01:31.155)
Well, you mentioned like you're playing casually. I also have a a friend who I would consider casual, plays maybe like once or twice a week, still manages to get to like GM every season. He actually told me recently he just hit Celestial for the first time. And I I feel like as you, someone who's kind of been championing championing for like the casual, like having the game cater more towards the casual audience, to really kind of define what that is. Is it more of a
amount of time that you play the game or is it more related to your skill level or is it like a mix of both? What'd you say?
Flats (02:06.785)
I think it's more a mix of both. I do think that you can casually play something more often than someone who does play it competitively to a caveat, right? Like if you understand, like you're playing with your friends, you're playing like just to like silly challenges for yourself. Either you want to learn new heroes, or you know, you just want to like have some fun interactions. But like you know, like it's fun to climb and watch the funny number go up. But there's a difference between, at least to me, if I'm a competitive player, because I've played professionally, like when I played Siege.
Then I got into Overwatch and then I got older and realized, shit, I need to get a job and actually survive. So I was like working in Overwatch League, but also being a really good player and like playing like tier three, working towards tier two. And then I realized, shit, this is this is kind of not worth it. and so I ended up kind of transitioning away with that. But when I did do that, I was someone who would, when you want to be competitive, you go into every day. How do I get better? How do I win this game? Why did I lose that game? I fucked this up. I should be better at this.
Coach Mills (02:42.455)
Good one.
Flats (03:04.981)
Working on your improvement, working on making the funny number go up, but like, you know, how what things can I do every day, every game to be better? What is the end goal of that? To be the highest rank possible to that you can achieve where you want to try to shoot for top 500, you want to shoot for rank one, or if you want to shoot to be a pro player, right? But why would you do that? Like, why are you going there? Like, what is your end goal? And I think if you don't have the end goal of you wanna be top 500 and you don't want to be a pro player and you don't want to be those things.
You have to realize that like you can be competitive and like want to win, but then the same way that you would sign up for your local softball team. You're gonna play to win. But if you lose, you're not gonna like be depressed on the way home and like fuck, like we all like like you know, so and so, you know, threw a meatball down the plate to their best player, like, what the fuck's that guy doing? Like, okay, like you kind of just forget about it and you go home and you're like, Yeah, that was fun. I had a good day, you know? And I think that's how you can treat things competitively, but still view it casually.
Coach Mills (03:47.853)
Right.
Yeah.
Flats (04:03.201)
But the way I look at a competitive game when I'm trying to be competitive is I want to be better, I want to climb higher, I want to work on self improvement, I want to work on being the best I can be. And I don't think there's a good end game in Rivals to doing that because the higher you go, realistically, the more miserable it becomes. So I want when I say people be more casual, you can play actually a lot and still be pretty casual, but it's a mindset of what is my end goal? What am I showing up to do every day? Why am I playing this game?
CaptainCoach (04:20.574)
Mm.
Flats (04:33.043)
And like, you know, are you playing to have fun or are you playing to be the best? And I think you playing to have fun is way more enjoyable and way more sustaining than trying to be the best, because this game doesn't really feel like it has a good end goal.
Coach Mills (04:49.056)
And to kind of piggyback off of that, I I I know that in the past you have said that you think the casual experience should be at the forefront, right? That's like the majority of balance. But I saw recently you said that the pure like the the outer edges or like the the extremely bad metas for high end should be tailored, right? Like like like kind of what we're running into with the Veswa clip that broke the internet where, you know, these really unfun experiences,
Has has your opinion like changed at all there as far as the casual experience? Do you think that the like only tailoring to the casual experience creates these unfund metas for the high end? Do you think that that is just a consequence of the balance and that doesn't really matter? and a and just just to I only preface this because I think that that clip broke the internet and has kind of been used to like really trash on rivals and I've seen like a whole bunch of Overwatch people retweet it and talk bad about rivals.
but some people would argue that that that only happened. I that's a high end lobby. That's a top five hundred game. That only happened because of the balance philosophy of not really caring that much about the high end of play or balancing around it.
Flats (06:03.425)
Okay. actually it's you know it's very funny. just a small caveat. I I I don't know if you saw, but Overwatch had its own version about three days later, and now they're all arguing. And it was kind of f it's kind of f yeah, it's kinda funny. It's like they kind of saw that and we're like, we can do better than that. They've started their own their own shit about Roadhog and Five U Five. Yeah, the Tracer Roadhog clip. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're you you've that there's actually technically two. There's an overwatch two clip and then they also have an overwatch one clip to show the difference and anyways.
Coach Mills (06:12.929)
really?
No is it was it like the tracer? yeah yeah the Tracer Roy. Yeah yeah yeah.
Coach Mills (06:30.722)
Yeah, you glass houses or you you don't don't throw yeah, something like that, yeah.
Flats (06:33.161)
Some something like that. We're peop people don't realize we're two sides of the same fucking coin. Everyone thinks that they're better than the other one. Like, motherfucker, like if you turned around and looked at a mirror, we would be the same human, you know? Like there's no difference between the two. Like they'll say, old Rivals is way more toxic. Sure, because in Old Rod, you get banned left and right if you say anything. That's the big difference. They're the same people.
CaptainCoach (06:43.579)
Mm-hmm.
CaptainCoach (06:51.273)
Do Do all the players who play Dive and Overwatch also AFK the most?
Coach Mills (06:57.304)
I don't know if you saw that
Flats (06:58.185)
I would I I mean that you would say like everyone talks about like the Doomfist and the Genji players. Like that's boyproof it, you know? Like I'd say, I'd say there's no difference. I the whole reason Brig even existed was because of the dive players, you know? Like they made that character because back then they couldn't kill Tracer Genji Winston. And then casual support players, especially, were like, How do we deal with this shit? And they're We'll just give you a character that kills everything. Have fun. Wait, that sounds so kind of familiar, right? Hang on, sorry. to answer your question though.
Coach Mills (07:02.693)
Yeah, that's that's
CaptainCoach (07:03.067)
Right, right.
CaptainCoach (07:18.248)
Sure.
Coach Mills (07:20.504)
So it's it's the d it's the di Right, yeah, no a hundred percent.
Flats (07:27.797)
no, it has not changed. But I think that this is why every conversation needs to have nuance. And I think that ninety five to ninety-eight percent of the time, pro players are going to break everything every time. Most of like my friends are like either fr retired pro players or like still like occasionally used to play back in Overwatch or whatever. And they know for a fact.
That they will always find whatever is the most meta strategy or the most game-breaking strategy to win. That is what they are paid to do. That doesn't mean that everyone else is always going to find it. And as long as there's consistent balance updates, you will keep it moving fast enough that it won't trickle its way down. The reason with the current problem, though, is it's taken the casual balance philosophy too far to the point where you literally can't kill anything. And I don't think that's
just a top 500 problem. I think that's where it's the most egregious, right? Where everyone's using their cooldowns correctly, but they're also hitting all their shots correctly, right? So that's how you have these fights going three, four minutes with like multiple reses and whatnot. But if you always look at lower rank gameplay, and I've done a lot of spectating of lower rank gameplay, it's the same game in slow motion where a top 500 player makes a decision in less than half a second. That's correct. It might take someone in silver
Eight seconds to make the same decision, right? And so they're not gonna pop their cloak and dagger freeze as quickly, so they might die, but they're also missing six shots in between, so their health bar is going down slower. And what I'm saying why I say that is the same thing happened to us in Overwatch back in the day, where GOATs was the problem at the highest level. That was a top 500 pro player problem. No one else had it. And so the dev said,
Coach Mills (09:06.017)
Right.
Flats (09:24.097)
Top of it, they'll figure it out. They'll figure out how to beat it. And so they left it unchanged for months. And then after months of people complaining, it started to work its way down the ladder. And people started to play it more and more to the point where before a couple months, teams at Scrim that are like plat teams. I know some people are gonna be like, What do you mean plat team scrim? Yes, the same way that you have softball teams, local softball teams where people pay for fun.
Coach Mills (09:46.924)
The good the good old days, yeah.
Flats (09:48.579)
Yeah, people will play with other friends and they'll make a team and they'll scrim against other people instead of playing ladder. And it's actually an enjoyable, nice experience. And if you haven't done that, let's say you're a plat gamer, I actually highly encourage you to try to find a group and join a team to play and scrim because you might learn more about yourself and you might make some new friends along the way. When they started scrimming, the plats would scrim, they started to play goats because they realized, shit, this comp's kind of broken if we just stand together. What did that cause?
Then they would go play it in ranked. And then people would go, I could cheese a game of ranked out or two if I can get my team to pick six heroes. And some people would try to be the nice guy and be like, hey guys, like let's pick, let's pick this ghost comp. I'm like, we'll just win, right? And they were playing it fuck all wrong. But they would still win because they could sustain and they'd sit on the cart and they wouldn't die for six minutes, right? And they would s even if you lost first point, guess what? On second point, there's no time left. You gotta win one fight. That's it. And so it worked its way down throughout the ranks. And eventually Overwatch said, shit, we have a problem. And they didn't know what to do.
Coach Mills (10:26.488)
Yeah.
CaptainCoach (10:32.425)
Okay.
CaptainCoach (10:36.501)
Yeah.
Flats (10:47.938)
They didn't know how to fix it. So they buffed Reaper. The tank killer. That did nothing.
Coach Mills (10:52.472)
Yeah yeah.
Flats (10:54.296)
So then they said, okay, that didn't work. We'll we'll nerf that guy. Let's buy Farah. That didn't work. Okay. Farah's like a flying, that's like their flying squirrel girl, best way, or their Iron Man, best way to describe it. So then they were like, you know what, actually? It's the tanks that are problems. So they nerfed all the tanks. Nothing changed. Why? Because it was a support problem all along. It was always the sustain that the supports kept going.
And Rivals kind of has the same issue right now with the ultimate support support stain. And that's why you see a lot of people calling to revert the day one patch where ultimates come up as fast. I actually don't think that's all that will fix it, though. I actually think that damage is too high across the board. And that's why also healing is too high across the board. It is needed to have healing that high because damage is that high. If you look at screenshots of stats from season two versus now, you have pro players, like literal pro players on Magneto getting less.
Kills and less damage than I get in an average control game on Mag, and I'm not even close to that level. Like I'll have like 1.5 times as high stats because it's just been so juiced up. And so I think that they should be the focus, but it's gone too far, and you can scale that back without being disingenuous to the ideal ideology overall that that is the community that needs to be catered to first because that's the lifeblood of the game. Pros will always break the game, but you cannot make the game.
unplayable for them. That's when it goes too far. And so far right now, it's too far.
CaptainCoach (12:20.351)
Okay. A a lot of w ways we could go with that. I my question is you mentioned the GOATS meta from Overwatch kind of having w like a trickle down effect where people see what the best players are doing and then being like, I wanna do that. I wanna climb rank. I mean, if that's gonna be the natural end game for any kind of like real balance change being made, is the people who play the game less or casuals trying to emulate the top levels of play, why wouldn't you just try to make the top levels of play
something that people can strive for rather than have to feel like they need to play by focusing the balance on that and then fixing things at the the lower ranks once the dust settles. So it's kinda like the inverse. I mean Coach Mills was the one who kind of
Coach Mills (13:04.822)
Yeah. Yeah. So to kind of piggyback off of that, it's like if if your philosophy is like ninety percent of the focus should be on the casual experience and then ten percent of the extremes, what we have always argued on the pod is the reverse, where the ninety percent is focused on a a top down good experience, you know, something to strive for. And and and by doing that you
also maybe motivate people that want to take the game seriously because they see what the games are like in the high end and maybe they you make more competitive players. But then of course like ten, twenty percent you make the experiences good. Like, you know, if Squirrel Girls terrorizing a gold lobby or BP is like making people miserable or penny or whatever. You you you focus on making good experiences and you give low rank players good experiences. But you don't base the entire bounce strategy on those low rank players just because
You know, they don't they don't take the game to that extreme that you're talking about, that like the the pro players and the higher players to you. And so when people take things to extremes, it needs to be more finely tuned because they are gonna find the every gap in the meta, you know, every absurdity in the meta versus the low-rank player, all they really care about is that they're not losing to what they feel is unfair or nonsense. And that's you know, that might that that isn't I don't think that that takes your entire balance team to to balance around them. I just think that you just have to kind of
surgically deal with problems. At least that's how we that's what we believe.
Flats (14:33.417)
So I just want to completely understand before I I respond. so you're saying the inverse that you should go you should focus on high rank play and balancing for the high rank play, and then that will trickle its way down and then if there's outliers, you fix those outliers. That's actually a very good philosophy and and actually something I used to believe in. And the reason why I don't believe it in it for this game in particular is this game is way more casual.
Coach Mills (14:48.012)
Yeah. Yeah. Just for their experience.
Flats (15:01.003)
And I can point to you just the systems of how the game is designed. You can climb to GM easily with a negative win rate. I spectated a guy the other day who had been flaming my me and my chat for hours talking about because earlier in the day I was doing like a rank rank one spectating of like Veswa's hood, right? And I don't know why it came up, but basically I was like, by the way, just so you guys know, like I always advocate if you guys have fun. But if you actually want to be but good at the game, this is how you do it. And like laid it out. I just gave people like a game plan, right? Which doesn't something I don't give too often, but like
Just felt like it because we were talking about it. It was good discussion. And someone was very adamant that their teammates were holding them back. I had walked away to go pee or something. I came back, and that guy was like hard shit talking to me, like flat's a fucking moron. That guy's so stupid. If he thinks like teammates to hold him back, I go, give me your account. Let's take a look. And it was the most disgustingly dog shit gameplay you've ever seen. It was horrendous. And I'm not even trying to self-plug. Like if you haven't seen the video, I uploaded it like four or five days ago. It is embarrassingly bad. So then
CaptainCoach (15:49.437)
What
Flats (15:58.734)
After multiple games going through, the guy was kind of justify it, whatever, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Went and on. And there was some other stuff that went later on. I'm gonna leave that out out of the picture. But what has happened with this game is especially when you see with online sentiment people arguing, people always flex their rank, flex their peak of like, like I got to this rank or whatever. But you what always is followed up with? What season was it? Was it a boosted season? Did you do it yourself? Were you duo cued? What characters did you play? Did you abuse a new broken character that came out?
Nobody gives a fuck about your rank prestige. There is no reason to really rank up. So nobody really respects those high level players. They don't think that they're better than them. They don't think that they know better than them. And Rivals has encouraged people to play the game more and be rewarded with a higher rank, right? So when you say balance for top down ranks, yes, you have the pro players, and I think those guys are phenomenal. They're obviously gonna know their shit. But what do you cut that off at? Because I think GM is the start of high rank, quote unquote.
So is Celestial. That's like top 1%. But most people don't even believe that because they got to it in season 1.5 or season two, right? And so the systems in the game have curt encouraged people if you just play a lot more, we'll give you a high rank. So it's not competitive already. And so where do you look then? Right? Where do you look then to what is considered high rank? And I don't even think pros even always agree with what balance should be. How often have we seen somebody go on Twitter and talk about dive is dead and it wasn't? How many times have we gone on Twitter and seen somebody complain that, you know,
Coach Mills (17:22.4)
Right, yeah, yeah.
Flats (17:25.795)
like hell is broken right now. And it wasn't. Like it was actually like kind of mid this this season, right? No offense, like with how fast Rivals was doing patches, nobody really knew their shit. And the reason why I think this season is different is because you can see with your own eyes, not just data, that eye test shows how long the fights are lasting and we've gone too far. Like we've we've we've pulled it way too far. If they're balancing more for fun and more towards casuals, right?
They might be seeing things that we don't see in those ranks. Like, for example, the highest win rate characters in bronze through like plat is Ultron. Like by far. And that's like Ultron Penny BP, right? And it's like pennies are just fucking annoying, right? Like nobody likes playing against Penny. Let's be real here. Like, even the Penny players kind of know low key that they're annoying and like, you know, they just like their character. Ultron, why is Ultron so good? Because gamers don't look up. That's why we haven't had an Iron Man meta since season one.
Coach Mills (18:07.682)
Yeah.
Flats (18:20.523)
Because when Iron Man was good in season one, he not only was good in high rank, he terrorized the lower ranks. And so I hear you, I hear you, right? But at what point then do you have to start reworking certain characters? Because like if we're going top down balanced, right? BP, if he was balanced from top down, would be like the spawn of Satan in bronze through plat, right?
Coach Mills (18:41.472)
Well yeah, so yeah, I mean I I a hundred percent agree with you. And I think that part of this means that, you know, when we talk about surgically dealing with characters, some characters need to be bad or be reworked. They can't, you can't like I know a BP player will beg and plead to get their character buffed and make their character A or S tier. There some of these characters are designed in a way that there isn't a healthy way to make them meta. So how I personally feel like that right now is with the thing.
I I I pretty much bring this up every time I possibly can because that's that yeah, that I mean that that's a because you you I we all play thing. Like we all know what that character is like and it's it's a character that he's fine on the fringes, but he's not fine as like a top five tank or like a top three. Like he there are
Flats (19:14.987)
You don't like just going ding ding ding ding until your brain starts to rattle.
Coach Mills (19:37.431)
certain characters that have to be removed. But I think that high rank players would accept that if it means that there are certain fundamental things that are changed. Like the sustained problems, the ult problems. And I would just me personally, I would love it if the devs came out with a statement that said something along the lines of we will do our best to balance for the high end and high end. We will not get it right every single time. But we were gonna try based on these five philosophies. But we're also going to
You know, get rid of these these abnormalities in the low elos. And this could include reworks to a lot of characters, but this is what we think will be the healthiest for the game and the most enjoyable for everybody. That's what we would pre prefer.
Flats (20:18.369)
So I'm gonna ask you a quick question. Alright, let's say you had to, I don't know if you're like saying rework thing or just like scale him back, right? I think you have to consider also player knowledge. Player knowledge spreads very slowly. One of the most hated metas in lower ranks, metal ranks, is dive. Is that fair to say? Would we all agree that like they probably hate dive the most? So
Coach Mills (20:24.44)
Probably.
Coach Mills (20:40.844)
Yeah, they they hate it, they hate a lot. Yeah.
Flats (20:43.731)
If you're a player playing in the metal ranks and you bump into a Daredevil or BP, what do you do?
Coach Mills (20:52.716)
Yeah, you jump Yeah think I think Right.
CaptainCoach (20:52.885)
Go thing.
Flats (20:54.517)
Go thing. You ask for someone to go thing, right? So they like having him there. He's a good option. And he's not that difficult to stop because you just hit E at your teammate and then you hit shift and then they can't move for five seconds. That's why it's there. That's why it's so long. Because if it was just a quick stun, you just leave it like an Emma stun where it like it lasts just the animation and then it's over, right? So it would be like the 2.5 that it used to be. But they need to make it longer because they take longer to actually execute the kills.
And to actually react. And so, for example, with something like Dive, they hate playing against it, but that's one of the only options they really think of. Bucky used to be one too, and they changed that because Bucky was like very well hated because it's like he has CC on his hook, he has CC on his E, he has CC on his on his fucking punch. Like this is ridiculous, right? He has CC on everything. It just feels awful to play against. But that was them trying to give another tool to the metal ranks because they're not going to hit the hook.
Like with let's be real, they're not hitting the hook. They're missing it. That's why they don't play Phoenix. That's why they don't play Hella. Like a lot of the hits get that's why don't look up. They just don't have the mechanics. So you have to think from their perspective, what do you do versus that? Especially with this game having such a large console player base where most of console plays melee, right? Like even top five hundred console is mostly melee players, unless people were cheating with Zim and Titans and I don't know.
So, like, what do you what else do you do? Like, well, you can maybe go invis or cloak, right? So they gave Cloak another ability to survive. So they're trying to give them all these tools to fight against Dive because that's the thing that they hate the most. And I would bet, I would bet that every season that Dive has been out, they have seen data on their back end of people playing the game less at those ranks. And so they're trying or people not filling support, for example, in those ranks, and they're trying to encourage people to do it more.
By giving them more tools, which I don't personally agree with. But I'm just saying, like from their perspective, I see why they're doing it. And if you went from top down, the only way that works is if you improve and you would turn your game into a competitive game. That's why, like, we don't like we don't give a shit about BP and like really high ranks now. Like you have a if you have a Coke and Dagger right now on your team, you just hear him coming from because you hear his from like 900 miles away like.
Coach Mills (23:18.633)
Yeah.
Flats (23:21.045)
Yeah, he's coming, you know. Like I I know his ass coming, then you can turn for him. It's like not that difficult. But they don't do that there, you know?
Coach Mills (23:27.234)
So I have a two-part I have a two-part response, and I th I I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna hit you. First I'm gonna hit you where you can really this is this hits home a little bit hard, is the Mercy Mafia. Okay. We all know about the Mercy Mafia. and I fe and I feel like there's some things that happened in this game that that very closely align with what happened with the Mercy Mafia, which is, you know, if I first in season zero with the Iron Fist problem, I think Iron Fist was like everyone's
Flats (23:42.729)
Flats (23:50.56)
Mm, you're spitting.
Coach Mills (23:56.107)
Number one complaint, and he got changed because and that he he actually, you know, he's punching us now and not back lines. You know, he punched punching us tank players. because you know, this might be a hot take. I don't feel like us tank players complained as much as the support players did back in season zero online. Yeah, I know that's true. Well, I I I I there's also s I feel like there's some personality differences. We kind of just
Flats (23:57.965)
Mm-hmm.
Flats (24:03.244)
Yep.
Flats (24:12.717)
'Cause there's not as many of them. There's not even close to as many of them. You can
CaptainCoach (24:14.741)
That is true.
Flats (24:20.279)
Maybe, maybe a bit of bias. I'm just saying, if you talk to anyone about any hero shooter, Overwatch or Rivals about balance, the tank players are the most honest and will advocate for their own characters being nerfed more than other roles. DPS players, motherfuckers, the dive players especially, always say their characters are shit, need more buffs. Hit scam players always complain like everyone hates us. They say we're we're so broken. It's not even that good this season. Support players, same thing. We need more tools.
Coach Mills (24:29.854)
Let's go. Let's go.
CaptainCoach (24:31.271)
Coach Mills (24:38.176)
It
Flats (24:47.873)
This is like this character sucks, buff this, whatever. Tank players they'll go, yeah, Mag's a little broken. We need to we need to scale that back. Thing, yeah, that's too much. We need to pull that back. Penny, yeah, like, okay, it's kind of annoying to play against. They're the only ones who do it consistently because they get to see everything, and they're the most blamed, so they're much more honest.
Coach Mills (24:52.29)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's because we're like no game.
CaptainCoach (24:59.55)
No.
CaptainCoach (25:03.485)
Something about getting Jeff booped three times into Emma Grab, into Jubilee all you kind of start to lose your self respect a little bit and you
Coach Mills (25:03.794)
I mean we'll we're
Flats (25:08.383)
Yeah. Yeah.
Coach Mills (25:09.688)
Well w we I it's 'cause we are part of the system. Like we we see the system. Like the the the the system of the hero shooter. Like I feel like a lot of DPS players, I mean, if we think of like dive players, they just think about their interactions on a individual basis. Supports think about their inter interactions on an individual basis a lot. Tanks understand that it's like I mean we need tanks need the team more than anything else, right? There's a lot of things we cannot do. We can't control. and s okay.
CaptainCoach (25:16.116)
Yeah.
CaptainCoach (25:35.317)
Unless you're the hood.
Coach Mills (25:37.529)
Yeah, yeah, we'll t we'll we'll talk we'll definitely talk about the hood a little bit. But anyways, and then eventually we ran into a dive meta. I think it was like season two, season three, I forgot exactly the season, and there was like the the support strike that happened, which was definitely a vocal minority, but there was also definitely dev responses to the that. There was instant dev responses to Iron Fist, there was instant dev responses to the dive meta. And basically from then on out, it is only felt like supports have gotten more tools, nonstop tools. Like the
The dev has the devs have basically done everything they can to quell this community of people that won it. And I'm not saying that every support is saying that, but I am saying that they have undoubtedly bounced around them. And it feels very similar to me to the Mercy Mafia, where there was a vocal minority that no matter what they said, like they they they had so much power and sway. And I feel like Overwatch doesn't cater to those communities as much as they used to.
They might I I I've I I've been I've been from from the outside looking in. I saw I saw some takes from some other creators talking about it. But I I think that there's it's a two part problem where number one, I think you can have your cake and eat it too. Like if we talk about Thing, he still counters the BP without being able to be OP in a poke meta where he's swinging front lines and gaining, you know, 120 shields nonstop. But number two, there needs to be some growth that is allowed to happen.
Flats (26:33.451)
If I agree on that one.
Coach Mills (27:01.11)
with some of these players. We can't they we can't have them where if if we just give them tools to press a button and deal with whatever problem they run into, eventually the game's gonna play the it's gonna play for you. Yeah, you press one button and your character does everything for you.
Flats (27:18.603)
So you see why I wanted to revert the team ups, by the way, to the old system. I'm just saying that was that's supposed to be like a a grand, grand, like we've gone too far moment. Like, don't get rid of them. Like they worked fuck there's like 120 of them. Like keep them, obviously, but like there's no reason to have the enhanced versions most of the time. You just have a free button all the time. There's no reason to work together. Have you seen what Lunacles looks like? We all see the clips of Cloak and Dagger every time. Let's not let's not forget about thing. A button boom!
Coach Mills (27:21.558)
No I d I I
CaptainCoach (27:43.23)
Yeah.
Coach Mills (27:47.345)
Flats (27:47.937)
Let's let's not forget about all those, you know, like that was the whole point. That was like the start the discussion, right?
CaptainCoach (27:48.061)
Yeah.
CaptainCoach (27:51.765)
What you would think that when they introduce a massive change like that, more abilities, more options, more tools for everybody, that would mean raising the skill ceiling of the game. And I think for me personally at first at least it felt like that. But do you think now in hindsight flats after all those team ups have been implemented, do you think the ceiling of the game has gone up and it's like more skill based? Or do you think it's just devolved into this whoever presses OP button first wins and it's not
really that impactful to like you know, use your cooldowns wisely.
Flats (28:26.527)
Yeah. No, that's a really good question.
So if you ask me that question from season two to season eight point five, the answer is unundoubtedly yes. It is harder for a casual player to come back. And I I think I can say this, hopefully without sounding egotistical. I probably have one of the largest casual bases of this game that plays it consistently. you know, I played Overwatch for many, many years, played Rivals now for two years. And so I have probably get asked almost as much as anybody, if not more.
You know, hey, I used to play Rivals, or hey, I haven't tried Rivals, I play Overwatch, you know, is now a good time to hop in. And then people will also come in and say, Hey, like I've been trying to get back in, I've been struggling, right? And I would say that the game has gotten much harder because people have learned how counters work. They've learned how interactions work. You know, like, they're cloak dagger alting. Let me mag ult it, right? that was something people learned obviously like towards season one, but people knew all of real good players knew it in season zero and from the betas. But like it became more common knowledge in season one point five, you know, as people start making TikToks, et cetera.
but like as the game releases so many new heroes and whatnot, like we figured out pretty quickly, right? Like, you know, I remember talking about how Thing is good into Dino when when Dino came out, and people were like, You're stupid, shut up. And I was like, Well, well, he does percentage based damage and Dino has a huge hate health pool and like you both are unc. And now like, you like as time goes, like, yeah, he's actually pretty decent into him. and so there will always be pushback on that. With season nine specifically, it's hard to say if it's actually gone up or is it stayed the same.
Because, like, yeah, there's also lots of bailout buttons, but I think that two set sentences are true at the same time. And I know this is hard for some people to understand, but like just try to like give it a second. It is at the same time extreme sustain where nothing dies, but also you can get one shot. And what I mean by that is you really need your supports to constantly be healing your tanks, like constantly be heal botting, basically, or you will die.
Flats (30:23.009)
The reverse is true though, where you're all shooting the enemies at the exact same time, DPS supports, whatever, and they feel like they don't die because they're getting healed, right? They're getting they're getting hard pumped.
CaptainCoach (30:32.211)
I I think this is by design, by the way. I've been very vocal about them trying to make this game very like dopamine fixated and and having constant right. Right.
Flats (30:38.763)
Yeah, I don't disagree with that actually. I think you're right. I think you're onto something. I should I was gonna say something a bit more diabolical when you brought up the whole Mercy Mafia and stuff like that. Like, I don't know if you know this, because I don't know how tapped in you are with Overwatch these days, but there was a a leak that basically Overwatch almost shut down when the PvE debacle happened a couple years ago. The game was such a nutshitter. but apparently like Kiri was the only thing holding the game, and then the La Seraphone collab came out and it sold so well that they were like, fuck it, let's give this a shot.
Coach Mills (30:45.708)
Yeah.
CaptainCoach (30:59.859)
Yeah.
Coach Mills (31:08.46)
shit Okay. So they they actually did have more power than like like actually the entirety of the power, okay.
Flats (31:08.877)
I'm d I'm s like and it's like you can kind of see with the way Yeah, you can s you can see why all the skins go the way they do, because they just buy them more. That's what keeps the game afloat. that's why I I it's funny with Rivals, I don't actually think it's I think there's actually a little something to that too. I think there's a little something to if you look at other skins, like you actually see probably more support skins than anything, or at least you'll see towards the women characters. You'll see more skins than maybe more some of the male characters. and
CaptainCoach (31:09.909)
Wow.
Coach Mills (31:21.816)
That's cra that's crazy. That's nuts.
CaptainCoach (31:28.276)
Flats (31:38.892)
You know, I think that could be potentially a very sneaky, like underlying tone of we need these support players. But I'm gonna play devil's advocate to the same sentence and say, when you queue up and play rank, though, what is the role that you have to fill the most? And some people are gonna say tank. In my ranks, I think it's support and it's not close. I don't think anyone wants to play it because it low key does feel like a victim role sometimes. where
Coach Mills (31:58.521)
It's a by a by a mile, yeah, I agree.
CaptainCoach (31:59.057)
It's support. It has to be.
Flats (32:07.179)
You said by design, it feels like it's supposed to be more heel body. I think the opportunities to actually be aggressive and do things are less now because if you aren't heal botting, your tank will explode. So, so you kind of are now forced into the cycle of you can't play like offensive, you have to sit there and heal bot. And then if they're playing, for example, let's say Black Cat, right? Like somehow made through the band phase, you are fucked. You are basically sitting there and going,
Coach Mills (32:17.239)
Well d
CaptainCoach (32:17.359)
I I agree with that. I definitely agree.
Coach Mills (32:33.662)
Yeah yeah that's what I thought. No, no, no. That do you you would
Flats (32:34.497)
Please don't choose me, please don't choose me, please don't choose me, please don't choose me. And waiting, because you're not getting helped. You're not you're like, guess what? The thing changes, made it so the thing wants to punch the other tank, so he keeps getting overshield. Bong, bong, bong, bong. He does not want to sit on you and wait for the black cat to show up because he doesn't get any dopamine. He doesn't get his his his cooldown. He doesn't get to keep punching. So the the dive tool at the high rank is actually gone. it's now punching the other tanks. but it's not fun. It's genuinely not fun to play. So, so Rivals is in a tough spot here.
CaptainCoach (32:40.392)
Coach Mills (32:52.224)
Right.
CaptainCoach (32:56.169)
Yeah.
Flats (33:04.011)
Where what do you do about the supports? Do you give them all these cool tools to survive, like these these buttons that win them the game? So people will play it more and you'll win more games, or they take those away and people cue the role and play the role even less, right?
Coach Mills (33:18.722)
So i he this is what I will say. I I think ultimately the the decision to constantly add sustained tools to supports over time has backed them into this corner where now their whole job and purpose is to heal bot. But if we look at Overwatch, that's not always the c the case with characters like Anna and Zen and Lucio and like the ability to playmake as a support, which I don't know about you, but I find way more enjoyable than
Flats (33:36.269)
Mm-hmm.
Coach Mills (33:48.769)
Standing around and just trying to just j j Yeah, by by far. And but it doesn't have to be that way. And that that's kind of like when I saw your take about removing the team ups, I can understand exactly why that might be a great idea 'cause what we like the results, but why couldn't we instead of give supports buttons that just get free value, like an ice block or a gambit bubble or whatever, why not give them more problem solving tools, skill skillful tools, you know?
Flats (33:49.142)
straight up Overwatch is ten times better in the support role. But like
CaptainCoach (34:16.789)
Mm-hmm.
Coach Mills (34:18.884)
and and you know, not just give value for free. Like press button, you give value. Like maybe that is because they're balancing purely with the low ranks in mind. They're only thinking about, okay, how do we give them ways to deal with these problems that take no skill at all? But I feel like we've run into these problems because of it. And I like I I I think that that is a consequence of like hyper balancing around casuals is because of that. Cause like, yeah, I mean y it
Flats (34:33.934)
Mm-hmm.
Coach Mills (34:47.244)
The a cloak using ice block, ev every rank's gonna use it the same way. You know, under pressure you press it.
Flats (34:52.172)
So I'm gonna ask you a question and see if you agree. What team up do you think is better on Cloak and Dagger? The hood team up or the freeze?
Coach Mills (35:00.756)
I the the hood team up's really good with hood on your team, right? It's like really good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Flats (35:04.586)
Yeah, I think it's by far way better. Like it's disgusting if you actually have the enhanced version. The enhanced version of Luna, I don't even I don't even know what the enhanced version does for Luna. It doesn't matter, you still get the same freeze.
Coach Mills (35:14.132)
Yeah, it's just yeah. It heals, it passively heals, but it's whatever.
Flats (35:18.956)
I think it depends for exactly this, where you're asking a dev team to come up with a hundred and twenty give or take ideas for characters to give them interactable and quote fun abilities to use, right? On top of what they already have, and then also make them somewhat balanced. Of course, there's gonna be misses in there, right? But what I think is very interesting is there's
Team ups that are obviously frustrating and annoying to play against, for example, the Cokendagger Freeze. But if you actually are like have an understanding of the game, you play the Hood one. And you play with Hood and you just roll them. You just run them down. So for someone that's in the higher ranks, for the higher ranks, you just play that one and you'd get the huge damage amp, and you actually will do way better than someone who's playing on the freeze. Like if anything, they're kind of trolling, playing on the freeze. But in their ranks, it's really good.
Coach Mills (36:03.131)
These things are dying, but yeah.
Flats (36:17.494)
So it's kind of like a give or take. It's like, yes, that one's a problem, but it's mostly a problem for them, not for us. Like if you have hood available, you just pretty much play it every single time.
Coach Mills (36:25.41)
Well let me give you a better example then. What about Bucky and his Elsa team up? Where it literally just turns them into it's just a stat check monster. I mean
Flats (36:31.278)
Mm-hmm.
CaptainCoach (36:33.641)
It's like over four hundred health with that with that team up.
Flats (36:37.324)
What is so the cap one? What does the cap one do? Enhance? I don't remember. Or just the cap one in general. It's just like you jump to people, right?
CaptainCoach (36:41.277)
He he you like knock for Bucky? He it's like a knockback, yeah.
Flats (36:45.197)
Yeah, Bucky.
Coach Mills (36:47.67)
No, it's with Punny. Yeah, he doesn't have a cap he doesn't have a cap team up anymore, right? Isn't it with Punny? I thought it was with Punny. Isn't it like the Punny arm? Yeah, he has like the it's like the tentacle arms. I I never you never use it. You just use the one that just makes your ca yeah, you d you just keep spamming your b yeah. just infinite infinite value and sustain.
Flats (36:48.273)
it's a knockback.
Flats (36:53.613)
Was it Punny?
the tentacle yeah, it's the tentacle arm.
CaptainCoach (36:57.322)
Yeah.
Flats (37:00.8)
Yeah, you just sit there and you keep spamming your abilities, you know?
Flats (37:06.774)
So, you know, it's it that one's actually that's an interesting one, right? 'cause at the higher ranks, I think it gets i infinitely better. Cause like you're you're just getting to shoot more often, you're getting do more damage more often, right? but I think if you're in the metal ranks, does it really matter which one you're choosing? Like you get to have the Bucky one, like you might think it's better versus dive. And you know what? Part of me thinks actually now that we're having this conversation, when Bucky was an anti-dive hero, I bet they already were cooking that idea. I bet that idea was already made or like they were
programming it and balancing it. And I bet that would have been another stun tool before they decided to revert Bucky from being an anti-dive character to be more of a DPS character. I bet it was going to be not just a knockback. I bet it was going to be a knockback stun. and so it was probably something that they had already made before. And then the balancing team said, shit, people really don't like this version of Bucky. We need to change it. And they already had the team up thing planned. They talked they told us like it was a a year plus in advance. Like they had started cooking all this stuff up. and so when they released it, they it probably you had to be
Coach Mills (37:47.488)
Mm.
Flats (38:04.918)
You know, the same, they're not gonna make a whole new ability within the next three months. Cause it wasn't too long ago that they made those changes to Bucky. It was like season seven or seven five or something like that, right? so they have to put out the content. The content, the content engine train doesn't stop. And especially with NetEase's pace of like how content goes out, they are already breakneck pace ahead ahead of the rest of the industry. It's disgustingly fast, right? So I think that that's an example of potentially a lame duck team up, but maybe it's because it used to be something else and they changed it.
Coach Mills (38:11.874)
Right. Nope.
Flats (38:34.4)
Now, if that version of Bucky had a stun on it, right? You could stun people with it. You gave him an extra stun. And now he had the hook stun, the double E stun, the shift stun, and that one. Would you think it's still the same way it is now? Would you think if it's like, this is like useless? Or would you think he's the best anti-dive character of all time? I think that's a bit more debatable. so it's like right now you just pick the Elsa one and just win. But I think it gets infinitely high or more value at the higher rank than it does at the lower ranks.
Coach Mills (38:43.745)
Okay.
Flats (39:03.894)
If that makes sense. so that sorry. No, I I'm probably rambling too much. you go.
Coach Mills (39:06.242)
I 'cause yeah, you no, you can get you can continue.
Well, w just to what I was what I was saying is like I think that like you said it's a lame duck like it's a lame duck one where it's like it's kinda like an outlier. My my I think my ultimate problem is like if you're gonna implement a system like this with team ups across the board, there can't be this many misses or this many team ups that just provide value for very little. and I think ultimately what this conversation's about is actually power creep. Like I think that's the big thing. Where it's mostly
Flats (39:37.678)
Mm.
Coach Mills (39:40.181)
Every one of these team ups are up too often. They're on too low of a cooldown and they're too powerful. Like they We basically I mean, we we made the game everyone like 30%, 40% more powerful in one patch, in a game where everyone was already way more powerful than like, you know, alternatives like Overwatch, right? Like the numbers have just gotten ridiculous to this point. So like
CaptainCoach (40:02.899)
Like cloak's ice block, that's an ultimate in other games. Like it r it it's such a powerful ability. And you you said yourself, like it's not even the best one. And I think a lot of abilities are you know I mean, thing right click buffs over time should be studied, like just how much value that single abil ability has been given. It's just it it's there there's too little effort for how much output I feel like a lot of these these heroes have. And I don't think that's a thing that's necessarily beneficial to like a casual for for instance. I think there's a certain level of of fun and excitement that comes from
Coach Mills (40:16.088)
D
CaptainCoach (40:32.617)
trying to master your hero, especially with with the Marvel IP, you know, you want to play your favorite hero and get good at it, you know? So
Flats (40:39.438)
So let me play devil's advocate here, because I'm actually on your side. If you've seen, I've talked about power creep. That was the whole ideology around we've gone too far, right? Like team ups in my mind were supposed to be a special effect for working together with another player. Now people will argue, but people weren't working together. I looked at season one Punisher Rocket as a great example. That shit was so strong that we're like, we need to have both. Most of the the team ups over time became kind of useless. That's why we all wanted a rev a revamped team up system. Everyone would talk about.
We want cool team-ups. We want good team-ups. And that's what we asked for. And so instead we got the equivalent of Overwatch's perk system, where you just have it all the time. And then you either get a slightly juiced up version that really doesn't matter. Or you get a juiced up version that's actually pretty good. Which is less often. Let me play Devil's African here though.
People will say, especially on the casual side, especially like online and whatnot, this is a hero fantasy game. You're supposed to be your favorite Marvel character. Heroes are strong. Heroes are broken. Heroes are really, really powerful, right? If everyone is God, I gotta say it. If everyone is broken, then no one is broken, right? And that will be an online sentiment because that's what I've been bombarded with for the last week. Is nonstop that, right? But they don't.
Coach Mills (41:45.464)
Yeah.
CaptainCoach (41:46.543)
Yeah.
Flats (41:59.139)
Really know what they're asking for, but you can't sit there and say, well, they're completely wrong. Because if you sit there and say they're completely wrong, they're not going to listen to you, right? And if that's what those casual players want, and that's what they're saying they want, and the game is more catered to them, that's what the game is going to give them, right? And so we have to unfortunately, and I say this as myself, unfortunately, I had to be
The bad guy in this case, and say, no, what you're asking for is detrimental long term. 95% of the time, fuck it, go nuts. I want you guys to have fun. But what you're asking for right now, we've already experienced an insane amount of power creep. Because most of the context around what people have been asking for with season nine, 9.5 isn't to nerf the really strong stuff, it's to buff the weak stuff. And that creates an endless vicious cycle of shit just being stronger and stronger and stronger and stronger.
To the point where your health pool doesn't even really matter anymore. It's either gonna be there or it's gonna be gone. Whatever, depending on if you used your cooldowns or stuff correctly. And where I think we've got into this big problem though is you can't tell them no, that's not what you actually want, because that's what they're asking for. But it's gonna cause big problems long term that maybe they don't see. And that's why this week I've been like, listen.
I'm with you 90-95% of the time, but right now you don't know what you're asking for. And I can point to history and show you times where this has happened and it didn't end well for you long term. You might not see it now, but you're gonna see it in a couple months, and shit's not gonna be pretty then. So, like, please have an open mind. But most people don't want to have an open mind about it, they want to just argue on no, this is exactly what they want right now.
Coach Mills (43:27.896)
You're the You're the you're the dad.
CaptainCoach (43:33.183)
Mm-hmm.
Flats (43:55.961)
So the question becomes, do you just let the just let it go and just say, fuck it? Shit deal with it when it becomes a problem for you. And maybe that's what Ravels is gonna do. They're gonna wait till the majority goes, shit, this is actually pretty bad. or they deal with it now and start to slightly scale it back. And I remember season 7.5 or something, they did the nerf season, and I remembered I was like, this is it wasn't enough. It should have been harder. And do you guys remember what online sentiment was about that?
This is awful, this is ruining the game, this season sucks. Why'd they nerf this? Like, my god, they're catering to pros, they're ruining our game. It's the same shit every time.
Coach Mills (44:32.28)
So well that that this is the thing though is I feel like you agree with us a lot more than maybe it seemed like you agreed with us and just probably some other takes online where like I think a lot of low rank players don't want to feel like they are ignored. Casual players, they don't want to feel like their opinions are completely ignored. But the reality of it is you're looking out for their best interests when you don't bounce for what they think they need.
Flats (44:57.688)
Yes.
Coach Mills (45:00.524)
Like they they they want these things. They want buffs because the reality is nerfs that's that's not a casual change of in any kind. There are no nerfs that are casual in nature. People don't like when anything is nerfed. Like historically, no one likes when things are nerfed, but high rank players understand, competitive players understand, that it's for the betterment of the game when certain things are nerfed. And i I think a lot of I think you would you agree at this point, and we all agree.
That we want a lot of nerfs. I think I think we need a lot of nerfs. Like power creep is too hard. Things need to be real bad. Especially like if r taking away the team up system like you've argued, that's a that's a nerf to everyone, right?
Flats (45:40.633)
Correct. So the reason why I've said that, and I know they're not gonna do it, but it's needs to like it needs to like jolt you, is because what level of nerf would be required? Let's say Mag. Mag we can all agree is really strong. Mag's sword is a three-shot kill.
Coach Mills (45:59.331)
Yes, it's insane, yeah.
Flats (46:01.24)
How often are you three-shotting anybody right now in your games with Magsword? Be honest. Almost never unless you caught someone on the flank. And the people you're catching on the flank are dive heroes, and they probably left. And you probably didn't get the kill on them. So, you look at all of these characters, you would have to nerf them significantly. Either you make the cooldown much longer than 12 or 13 seconds, what it is now, you make it a four hit or a five-hit. And then you apply that to every character across the board. What is the reaction to that?
People go bananas. People are gonna be so mad that you took away the power from them. And that's why more recently, I made another video talking about it. I said the community is drunk on power. They're drunk on it because they genuinely don't know how this will affect long term. And that's okay because Rivals need to have a reset every once in a while. For example, with season seven, five or whatever the nerf season, they should have been much harder and like.
Coach Mills (46:39.667)
Ha ha ha.
Flats (46:58.882)
Just one rip the band-aid off season where they piss everybody off and then you just keep rebuffing again. And you keep rebuffing for about six to eight months, and then you do it again, and then you just make everyone happy again. Like you just do endless buffs. That's how you balance casually. Unfortunately, we have now broken the scale that we used to have, right? So before the team up change, you could have done this where you buff eight, nine, 10 months in a row, and then you nerf it really fucking hard.
Coach Mills (47:14.744)
What?
Flats (47:28.492)
And then you do it again, and everyone has fun. One season, one month where people will be upset, one month for nine months of happiness. It's a good trade. Now that the ceiling has now jumped so much higher for power, there's no real way to make it lower unless you sweepingly make them shit across the board. And I think people would really hate that. So it's like they've kind of put themselves in a corner.
Where you don't really like how do you solve this? I mean, the answer that they're gonna go with is they're gonna nerf the strong team-ups. They're probably gonna nerf, well, they're not gonna nerf Luna, but they'll nerf Cloak, they'll probably nerf Mag, they'll probably nerf Thing.
Coach Mills (48:04.962)
But but what what if instead they just buff everything again? Because that's what casuals want. D d d that's that's kind of what I'm getting at here is like
Flats (48:15.0)
Cause it will become more polarized, right? Where you will explode.
Coach Mills (48:17.142)
Well, for high rank players, but not for low rank players. If you just give them more survivable tools.
Flats (48:21.11)
Over time it will trickle down it will trickle down to them. Over time. Like not right away, but
CaptainCoach (48:24.634)
Not if all the top players quit.
Coach Mills (48:25.132)
My my my my problem with the trickle down thing that happened in Overwatch is I don't feel like there's enough time to trickle down in a game that changes this much. Like with patch to patch like in Overwatch we sat in the same meta for a very long time. So there was plenty of time. I don't know if like I think if the devs really wanted to, they could literally say, We don't care like this Veswa clip, that's only for high level players. We don't care about you. We don't care about you at all. And they just keep going down this road of like
Flats (48:41.272)
Mm-hmm.
Flats (48:50.339)
Mm-hmm.
Flats (48:53.656)
They couldn't.
Coach Mills (48:53.664)
Actually we're just gonna start buffing. Cause here's another question I have for you. should dive ever be meta?
Flats (49:00.334)
Coach Mills (49:00.98)
Or even good at all? Like why not ner why not make every single dive character C tier or less if if Dives dive seems to be a meta that no casual player enjoys at all. In like it
Flats (49:12.898)
Yeah, that's a great question, actually. because most casuals do not like it. But also this is where you come into and go, well, what about the people who actually play Dive? You know, like you always make their characters perma shit. And I think this is where where you have like a little bit more nuance to it of like, yeah, letting them have a season or two here and there is not bad, right? Does it put a scar on the community? Yeah, like people still be still people are still banning Daredevil, you know? It's like, okay, like cat's right there, sure, absolutely, but like why are we banning Daredevil?
People will still do that do that all the time. and I think that's part of the cycle of hero shooters. No matter what meta we have, people are gonna complain. Always. So as long as they're keeping it frequent, that's okay. Right. Like I would say dive should probably be the least frequent of the metas because of people freaking out all the time about it. But having it every once in a while keeps it fresh, at least for a little bit. then we go into pro brawl and then we go into poke, and then the cycle just continues to loop back around.
Coach Mills (50:00.089)
So
Flats (50:12.492)
Which I think is good. You're never gonna make people happy no matter what. But keeping it fresh is also important. If that makes sense.
Coach Mills (50:17.89)
Cause I agree with you. See, okay, this is this this might be a hot take. I don't know if you agree with me or not, but I think that the most healthy time in Overwatch and the time when the game was performing the best was during those first two seasons where Dive was was the best meta. Winston, Diva, Genji Tracer in Overwatch one, where Dive was the best. And I think that the beginning of the downfall of Overwatch was when they finally bent the knee to casuals. Cause you said in your video yourself that they introduced Brig.
Flats (50:34.466)
Of Overwatch One? Okay.
Coach Mills (50:47.436)
Because ca casuals couldn't deal with dive, right? That's the whole reason that she existed and she she had all these sustained problems. I mean, that's what it is. It's a s sustained problem. And it it broke everything. Where the game was like despite the complaints and despite casuals not being able to counter dives, quote unquote, the game was doing better than ever when dive was meta, and only when the devs finally bent the knee did the game start its downfall.
Flats (50:50.029)
Mm-hmm.
Coach Mills (51:15.81)
Like I don't think that regardless of the complaints, 'cause like dive to me is an inherently it's it's it's skillful, it requires coordination, it requires calms. Like like you you need you there's a lot of things that you just don't have in low Elo you where it's very hard to emulate the divers. Like like and in in the same way with Overwatch where I mean Dive wasn't meta in plat back then in season two. It was Reinhardt. I Reinhardt or or or or or Cass or whoever, like
So, anyways, I'm curious what you think about that, because I really do think that the bending of the knee was what caused the problems, not the complaints. Cause the complaints were there from the beginning, but Overwatch was doing better than ever in the first two, three years when Dive was met.
Flats (51:59.853)
Necessarily agree with that because I mean if we're talking season one, season two, like we were just coming out of Hero Lock. So like it was like two Winstons, two tracers, two Zens, which was the beginning, right? Like season zero into season one. Then it actually became, I wouldn't say dive, because Diva was still shit. Like Dive wasn't yet a thing. It was actually the Ryan Zaryas for a long time. And then Dive popped up around like season five, six, six through I think it was like five, it was like four or six through eight.
was like the the of Overwatch One, which is like the real the real power cycle. and I'd argue they had the same issues where people would talk about instalock engines the same way people talk about instalock Spider-Mans in in in in Rivals. Like they're the s two sides of the same coin. this might be a hot take, but I think Overwatch is Overwatch twenty sixteen is not nearly as big as Rivals was in twenty twenty four. strictly speaking, because of how much bigger gaming was. Like COVID exploded gaming. in terms of how many people existed, there is way less. Like
Coach Mills (52:37.177)
That was me. It was fun, yeah. You're right.
Flats (52:58.168)
There like there's like a couple like really iconic Overwatch clips that have like millions of use because it's been 10 plus years, but there's like Rabbles ones that eclipsed that by miles, and it's only been two years. so I think overall it's bigger. Now, I I I wanna preface that by saying, you know, it's it's a little different now. and I think like there's much more casual gamers now than there was then. I think people were more competitive on PC gaming, especially, and Overwatch was a PC focused game for sure. It was not ca it was not console.
Focused, at least during those years. Now, I think that we obviously don't know the data of like how many people were playing the game and whatnot. but the game did have its fair share of problems already before dive, just with like community issues, people like, you know, not getting healers on their team, not getting you know, the right tanks or whatever. And then you would run into a well coordinated dive and you literally couldn't play the fucking game, right? And
That's why Mercy was so strong, actually, originally, because Mercy was a beloved character who was kind of shit. so they reworked her and they made Moth Meta. And Moth meta is what helped enable Dive so much, is having that really powerful support along with Zen, which was for the damage boost, or sorry, no damage boost, like the Discord on some one person, they could all run at them. I think there's a real real possibility. The thing that made Dive actually even meta was Mercy plus plus D.Va, which was like the hypermobile support, because they were trying to get people to
Play support more back then and tank more back then because everyone just played DPS. Everyone wanted to play Tracer. You wanted to play Genji, you wanted to play Cass, right? all of these things, right? and so once they got people to play those other roles, they had created this dive meta and they realized, shit, like if somebody runs dive into you with these characters, you can't play anything else. And so the meta became polarized around it, and it became really, really strong.
And I think that's probably when they started to design Brig. That's when they probably came up with the idea of Brig. And I think that they really wanted to counteract Dive, not just for the casual, but I think just because how much better Mercy had been for so long that they wanted to slow the game down. And they thought Brig would do that. What they didn't realize is by creating a character sorry.
Coach Mills (55:09.036)
I don't know if I mu I might be I might be messing up my timelines 'cause I see I like from my from my recognition or from what what I remember is like what was it? It like Apex back in Korea where we had like Timu and like I don't know if you watched that back in the day. But it was like we were at least the Koreans were running Dive for a very long time and Dive was meta for a very long time and it was like Tracer Genji it was like Tracer Genji Lucio Zen and then it was Tracer Genji Lucio Ana.
Flats (55:26.296)
Yeah.
Coach Mills (55:37.782)
was like the meta for a very like large chunk of time. I I guess what I'm curious of is if they never instituted Brig in the game, do you think the game would have just crashed and burned? Like like do you think that Overwatch was on a downward traject trajectory without Brig? Like Brig was a necessary evil. Like I I I don't I hear that a lot. Necessary I th I
Flats (55:56.511)
No, no. I mean, they w like I underst I understand the concept of why Brig wasn't made, but the problem was Blizzard was very stubborn and they wouldn't change it. They didn't realize that they had created a monster and they thought that they would figure it out because the casual players did love it, right? They were like, we can we can survive de dive now, but it was too much of a power creep. Like I think instituting a anti-dive character was what the game needed, because the support world didn't have it. It had Anna, Mercy, Zen Lucio.
Coach Mills (56:07.956)
Right.
Flats (56:26.476)
Maybe I'm missing one, but I think that was like it at the time. Am I missing one? Am I missing one? I think that's it. Like there was there was not many supports. They needed an anti dive support. And and Moira. Sorry, Moira was out. they had no way to fight back. And so they were trying to give people a I guess Symmetra technically was a support, but like, let's be real, no. and so they wanted to give people a chance to fight back, which was what break was, and that is a good thing.
Coach Mills (56:31.254)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and we had yeah.
Coach Mills (56:43.958)
Yeah, she got a rework, yeah. No, yeah.
Flats (56:54.562)
But they were stubborn and they refused to change it because they were like, they'll figure it out, which was wrong. And it was not the way to go about it. There needed to be radical changes because giving them what they needed to survive was a good thing. But the way it was instituted and the way it was left and the power creep that it was given was off the charts, right? And I think that kind of comes around to what we're talking about in a way is the power creep of it. The power creep has gone too far. And giving them the tools is good.
But I would also argue Overwatch was a hundred times more competitive game than Rivals is. And it was advertised as a hy hyper competitive game. It was not advertised as a casual game. You played it because you wanted to be the best. You wanted to go to Korea. You wanted to go to Korea and beat them. You wanted to win. We all know the XQC clip. Then you wanted to go into Overwatch League. You wanted to be a pro player. You wanted to play on stage. You wanted to have millions of fans. People had that mentality since 2016, all the way into 2018.
Coach Mills (57:37.602)
Wait Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Flats (57:51.715)
Their culture was it's a competitive game first. And so they knew going into it, this is a competitive game. And Overwatch was trying to have its cake and eat it too by going more that casual route, like you were just saying, but they were stubborn in keeping it as powerful as it was because it was good for those lower ranks. So much so, there's a very famous story that a guy was 2200 gold. That's the equivalent to today, Overwatch, of gold for Neek, who I played with the guy.
Coach Mills (58:17.162)
I re I remember this shit. I rem I played with them too. I played with him too.
CaptainCoach (58:17.855)
Mm-hmm.
Flats (58:21.676)
He was so shit, it wasn't even funny. Who climbed to 44, 50, 4500, top 500, top 100 break only. He was handless on anything else because of how good the character was. It was it was disgusting, right? And so that was a good example of power creep out of a good idea that they were stubborn and didn't want to change. Because a lot of people were voicing that this is really good. We like it. And it's not a problem in our games. Sound familiar?
Coach Mills (58:50.629)
Yeah. No, yeah, it it is W but we're in that time right now.
Flats (58:52.386)
But but that's what I think though is overall though, there are also two different games where one was hyper competitive, this one's not. On average, the game being more casual and more casual friendly and focused, I think is what has kept this game dominating the charts in this category. If it went hyper competitive tomorrow and reworked its rank system, got rid of Chrono Shields, you actually have to win more games than you lose to climb. It would fucking shoot itself in the foot.
Coach Mills (59:18.946)
Yes.
Flats (59:22.122)
Instantly, instantly the magic would be gone.
Coach Mills (59:23.576)
So I I do you think do you think that so my theory though is I mean this game releases so much content. Do you think that casuals would actually not play this game considering the amount of hero releases and content coming out into this game? We never got that even remotely close in Overwatch. I mean, that is I feel like that is so strong to the point where if every balance patch they added one competitive change, one competitive tweak, it wouldn't affect anything.
Flats (59:49.859)
This game doesn't have the sauce of of of competitive Overwatch. I'm sorry. Like it just doesn't. Like it's not even close. Like, if you're talking 2018 Peak Overwatch League, season one, XQC in the Dallas Fuel, Seagull and the Dallas Fuel, this game does no sauce, like in comparison. Like there nobody, nobody gives a fuck about pro play in this game. Pro players in this game are laughed at by every casual. They have n and I don't even think that's necessarily right. I think there's ways that they could put more motion into it. Like rivals could do more, but
Coach Mills (59:57.943)
Well yeah. Yeah, I remember it. it was sick.
CaptainCoach (01:00:12.585)
Ha ha ha.
Flats (01:00:19.38)
Also, there's just nothing there right now. Like it's it's just not there. And like
Coach Mills (01:00:19.508)
Okay. Laughing out of the
But but d don't you think that's a result of the way that they balance the game though? And the the like like it you're it's you're creating your own loop, what's that called? Where you like you create your own like yeah, like y like they're they're creating that end result.
CaptainCoach (01:00:24.436)
Yeah.
CaptainCoach (01:00:34.857)
Feedback.
Flats (01:00:37.442)
You could argue that, yeah, for sure. But there's a reason why this game keeps dominating the charts and probably is printing them money. And I think they would be foolish to ruin that. You know?
Coach Mills (01:00:44.181)
You you well
CaptainCoach (01:00:46.63)
do y how much of that is carried by the Marvel IP though too? Like I
Coach Mills (01:00:47.458)
But d do do you but yeah, i i the from the Marvel IP to the consist consistent releases, do you not think they would also be dominating if they just had a different philosophy? Slight tweak?
Flats (01:00:57.922)
How many mar sorry, how many Marvel games have been released in the last ten years that have just flopped? Tons. This game had the sauce. Like I I played the Alpha. I wasn't a huge fan.
CaptainCoach (01:01:02.687)
Fair point. Very fair point. A lot of Yep.
Coach Mills (01:01:06.272)
And I mean all those games were hyper casual though, right? Like none of not a single one of them was even a smidge competitive.
Flats (01:01:13.326)
I mean, yeah, maybe.
Coach Mills (01:01:14.646)
Like I I can't think of a single Marvel game. I mean, maybe there is one. Maybe Marvel Snap if you want to say Marvel Snap or whatever. But like there is like I it was not not competitive. Well, but that you care about this one and people care about this one because it's a competitive hero shooter. All I'm asking is a little bit more of that competitive hero shooter and a little bit less of that casual. While still like I I I once again, I I do not want to ruin the casual experience.
Flats (01:01:20.908)
Was strike? I don't even know if st was strike. I don't I didn't play any of them. I didn't care.
Flats (01:01:27.436)
Yeah.
Flats (01:01:37.538)
So I so let's be sm so let's be more specific then. Let's be more specific. What are you asking for?
Coach Mills (01:01:44.291)
What I'm asking for is first off, I'm asking for well, we need to fix this problem first. Before we talk about like the the power creep problem. Like the power creep problem that happened is happening right now. Where everything is way too we need nerfs. Like we need a lot of nerfs. Like like like dramatic nerfs across the board. Like ten point I mean, I don't wanna see a single buff. yeah, like like yeah.
Flats (01:01:49.069)
Which one?
Flats (01:01:53.944)
So how do we fix it?
Flats (01:02:02.146)
How would you nerf it? Can you give me like I'm I and I listen, by the way, I just want to say I'm I'm pressing you really hard because I think it's a good conversation, not like anything personal. I'm like I'm not upset with you or anything. I'm just like I think it's just good to like get it going. Okay, cool.
Coach Mills (01:02:09.529)
No you please please parse me. No, no, no, no, no. No, fr no, this is we we love it. We love it. the the very first thing is first the the overperformers. I think these were obvious ones that we could have we could have nerfed in 9.5. So like black cat, magneto, thing, right off the top, I think very easily. Elsa is also included. You could probably include Widow in there, even though I don't think she's as big of a deal as the other two.
CaptainCoach (01:02:11.965)
This is this is we do this every week. Yeah.
Flats (01:02:23.98)
Like what? Just like very be very specific.
Flats (01:02:36.088)
Would you include cloak and dagger?
Coach Mills (01:02:38.622)
I think that that that going along with this is an increase in cooldowns for most team ups. Like almost every team up should have an increase in cooldowns. I think Magnetos is at was it fifteen seconds or something? I want that to be twenty seconds for I want I want the cloak and dagger.
Flats (01:02:49.134)
I think it's like fourteen. Would you include Cloak and Dagger in that though? Just curious.
Coach Mills (01:02:54.188)
The nerfs to cloak and dagger? I would probably I would probably include include somewhat of of nerfs to cloak and dagger. But but I think like Luna, Gambit, Mantis are like more important than Cloak and Dagger, but like, you know, like if if I'm talking about off the top, but my argument is that every character should get a nerf w one or two nerfs. And like like I I know that like I I don't even know what your chat is saying right now. But they might be losing their minds, but we we j we've gone way too far.
Flats (01:02:55.712)
Yeah, would you incl would you include her in the
Flats (01:03:05.742)
Mm-hmm.
Coach Mills (01:03:22.7)
I mean like like right now dive tanks cannot they don't see any play. Venom Cab do not see any play because they literally cannot they can't play their gameplay loop out without blowing up. They literally can't. There's too much damage. The sustain protects the back line for ten seconds and they die in that window. Like they it
CaptainCoach (01:03:39.113)
There's not enough windows of counterplay, both in between individual cooldowns, mobility cooldowns, and I would say defensive cooldowns like cloak bubble fade, but also just the passive sustain. Even if you mess up your cooldowns, if you just go triple, it won't matter. So for me, when I look at like balancing, I mean you said it yourself, they kind of balance more towards what's going to be fresh at the time, not actually what they think is.
Really going to give the game the most competitive like richness, like integrity, right? So when you look at the balance, I'm looking for things where the fights aren't just press a button and win. We have moments of counterplay opportunities where you can punish if you if a a mistake is made, right? And then we go to like triple support. Obviously, their alts come up way too quickly. I shouldn't the the only time that I experience a a like a normal neutral shouldn't be the first minute of every game. And then
the rest of the game, the next 10 minutes is just alt, alt, alt, alt. And that's currently what it is. So I need more parts of the game that are not just press a button and win like Thing Punch, like support alts. We need more opportunities to make plays and have impact on the end game, like the what happens at the end of the game.
Coach Mills (01:04:38.718)
Is it?
Coach Mills (01:04:56.536)
So there's a controversial figure that you and I know really well, Flats. Sumito. Shout out Samito. and he's been preaching the same concept for a long time. And you know, it's it was it was easy to disagree with him back then, it's not so easy to disagree with him now, which is that there is no meaningful cooldown downtime in this game. There's actually no meaningful downtime at all where a character doesn't have an ultimate or an ability that they can press.
But as we've seen in like, I hate to bring up Overwatch, but like Overwatch has made infinite mistakes, so I don't want to like put them on a pedestal or anything like that. But you go in, you bait out BAP lamp, you cycle out. There's a vulnerability window there. Now there's not it's not like there's nothing he can do, but there's a cost to play in a bad position, have to use lamp, not have it, right? In this game, it doesn't feel like there is.
any window of vulnerability or any downtime window. And that's why the things that are the best in the game right now is just play gun character, shoot. Play Bucky, shoot. Play, you know, just front to back, throw damage stats at the enemy team because eventually something will break.
CaptainCoach (01:06:03.581)
A a quick little I'm at a point here. The most played top most played DPS on console are actually gun heroes, believe it or not. which was what we covered last week with with what was it, light? I don't remember who, but like just just to kind of highlight a point where it's like balancing versus lower ranks, those heroes are still picked in those ranks as well, like high damage. so sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.
Coach Mills (01:06:28.748)
So yeah, I I guess what what do you that that's that's what we want. What what do you see the consequences of that? I know I know you probably have a lot of casual people in your chat, like what are they saying or what do you think about like some of these solutions? I like I I don't I don't really I know that that's a hard band aid or like a hard pill to swallow, like the nerf everything pill. It's like hard to swallow, but like we've caught but Yeah.
Flats (01:06:51.682)
It's not hard for me to swallow. I that's why I said the whole revert the TM thing, because it is like you've given everyone an extra button and like that's a really hard thing to nerf. Like you now have instead of two cooldowns to bait out, you have three or four or five. You know? That's that's difficult. So I wanna I wanna circle back really quick because a lot was just said. So the reason why I asked you about cloak and dagger, specifically for for nerfs, is because what are you gonna do when you ask for nerfs, right? And then for example
The hero hot list will come out and it will show negative win rate across all ranks. Same thing with like Luna back in season five or six, right? Luna, people were still asking for nerfs with Luna after a couple nerfs. and she dropped all the way to like 40% win rate, like worst support in the game. And people were still asking for nerfs across the board, especially even high-ranked players. There was pro players that were asking for Luna nerfs. And I remember being like, Luna sucks. Like, why the fuck does everyone think Luna's still good? And then that hot list came out, and I remember looking at it and going, like,
Holy shit, it's even worse than I thought, right? And so I think there's partly a perception of like what people think is always strong versus what is strong. I think that not everyone is always on the same page of what is strong versus not strong. And you said it, unfortunately. Gambit. I think if you ask most casuals, they will say Gambit is actually balanced. And they will say he is not as good as people say he is. And the reason why we disagree is because.
High ranked players all know that Gambit's cycle circles around three things. His ult being number one. Number two is his two little card tricks that he's got, which is the cleanse. So that helps really good for against like Groot, for example, Groot Ult. You it's coming. That shit's canceled. It's over. and three, which is like the anti-heal one, which is not nearly as big, but sometimes you get a tank that's kind of low. If you have the card ready, you hit him with the anti-heal or the like reduced healing, and you can help secure that kill. Those are insanely impactful abilities.
And then he got the mag team up, which was the rage bait bubble. The rage babe fucking bubble. Holy fuck. Holy fuck. That guy has a negative win rate across all ranks. He's actually, even at the higher ranks, like barely 50. So you look at it, we know what the problem is. But if you ask most casual players, they're saying the high-ranked players overreact. And the only reason people ban him in the ranked games is because they're listening to streamers or listening to pro players.
Coach Mills (01:08:53.204)
It's not I hate that shit so much. The ranch me that's actually
CaptainCoach (01:08:54.409)
Yeah. Jesus.
CaptainCoach (01:08:59.7)
Yeah.
CaptainCoach (01:09:20.244)
I
Flats (01:09:20.726)
And those people are ruining our games.
Even if the problem is mostly the ult, the neutral is much more negligible, right? The ult is still strong. It's still really powerful. And so if you nerf it even more, which I'm not saying they shouldn't, I'm just saying like how people are gonna react. They're gonna say, You this is ridiculous. Like we gotta stop listening to these guys. They're ruining it for the rest of us. And it's disingenuous actors.
And I'm gonna take it one step further, and I'm gonna use your cloak and dagger as an example. To talk about like when you were bringing up the Sam thing, there used to be a cycle where you have to bait out cooldowns as a diver. Let's say you're playing Spidey. You bit bait out a cooldown, and then like once the cooldow a fade is used, then you can commit for the kill, right? Commit get the bubble out, get the fade out, swing out, wait a second, come back, get the kill. We all have seen the Spidey clips of season nine, where they go in, they go to bait out the cool cooldown, it's the bubble. Okay, then they come back, and then it's the fade.
Coach Mills (01:10:19.458)
Yeah.
Flats (01:10:22.688)
Okay, then they come back and it's the freeze. Okay, then the bubble's back. then they come back. there's the fade again. they come back. there's the freeze. There is no more baiting. Like you said, the window has closed. There's no more time to engage. If you read most of the comments on those, it's well, you got their cooldowns out. You did your job. Because everyone doesn't know what the fuck they're talking about in terms of what the game is supposed to be played and what actually
Their jobs is. Ask any metal rank player, what is the job of a tank? What do you think they will say to you?
CaptainCoach (01:10:59.423)
Take damage.
Coach Mills (01:11:00.76)
Put a shield that's a shield they finally
Flats (01:11:01.208)
Take damn. I think they'll say I think they'll say take space. I think they've learned. I think they've learned to see to say take space. Like take space. But if you question them, what does take space mean? No idea. Because they've heard all everyone talk about it for years. Take space. Okay. Well, how do you take space? What does taking space mean? They can't answer the question. For those who don't know what taking space means, taking space not only means walking up on the enemy, but you have to be threatening. You have to actually have a reason to
CaptainCoach (01:11:04.653)
you think that okay.
Flats (01:11:30.85)
To respect the tank that's taking space. And also the tank has to not draw too many resources from his own team to take that space or take too much damage from the enemy team and die. The only way you can take space properly is by being a threat while also not being a detriment to your own team. What that means in these cases is sometimes you walk up on an off angle. Sometimes you're like, you're playing frontline, but you're not totally frontline, right? And so their tanks are shooting at you, but you have a you have free shots on their backline.
Right? Their backlines healing their tanks, or maybe they're going to go look at you, but you're getting shots on them and their tanks can't stop it because they have not adjusted to stand in front of them and to deny you that space or to punish you from taking too much space. They don't understand those concepts because they've only heard what they've been told. And they're like, I must walk forward because that's how you take space. Wrong. You take space by holding off angles. You take space by trading cooldowns. You look, you take space by being a threat.
Most of the tank roster that you brought up, like Cap and Venom, are no longer a threat because you cannot, you don't have a kill window. The kill window has shut. Right? And so where people will respond to that, though, is just get good. Or they'll say, you got their cooldowns out, etc. And we have a lot of disingenuous actors on how the game is supposed to flow. And that's where it gets really muddy. Where when you have a community that's mostly casual focused, like this one.
Coach Mills (01:12:44.93)
Yeah.
Flats (01:12:57.548)
And I think that's the only way this game survives long term. And that's the best way for this game to survive, stay as popular as it is, and make as much money as it is, because that is the job of Netes, and they want to make money, is by focusing on that group. But there's not really any accountability either. Right? If people get it wrong, if he like, I can't tell you how many times I've had somebody fucking comment the most ridiculous shit and it's most liked comment or like, fuck you, you're stupid. And then a month later it proves to be completely wrong. I'll give you a good example. There was some guy that made
TikTok about like, your tier list sucks. Like, why are we listening to this guy? This guy is fat, annoying, stupid, whatever. I said Cyclops was D tier. Turns out Cyclops was like the lowest DPS like win rate in the game with like 40%. And like if you've played any ranked, you know Cyclops was not good after the big nerfs into season nine, right? Like it just kind of sucked, especially without the rocket combo. But there's no accountability. They're not there to be held accountable. So unfortunately, I think it's okay to let them have their opinions and to talk about these things and ask for what they want.
Coach Mills (01:13:44.184)
It's right, we're
CaptainCoach (01:13:48.574)
Yeah.
Flats (01:13:55.523)
But there's times like this where people do have to step in and go, this is going too far. It's time to pull it back. And it happens probably once every eight months to a year. But the other nine months doing really well is a good thing for the game. It is very good for the game because people are happy and they'll play the game and they're enjoying it. But every once in a while they do need to be reined back in. And this is unfortunately one of those moments, but that doesn't take away that the other nine months were gre like.
People were more happy and let them get what they want for one month of pain. Does that make sense? Sorry, that was a lot.
Coach Mills (01:14:29.784)
Would d don't you think that this is gonna be a cycle we just keep running into though? Like
CaptainCoach (01:14:34.041)
I I I don't think it's gonna get any better. Like it it's just gonna keep progressively getting worse unless they take a design philosophy, take a stance and be like, This is how we're going to to balance the game. I I think there's other ways Yeah, so like
Flats (01:14:34.702)
Mm-hmm.
Flats (01:14:43.426)
So how should they? Other than saying top down.
Coach Mills (01:14:45.848)
Well, they definitely shouldn't be listening to people like comments on TikTok about like Cyclops being broken, which is what like I I wanted to just throw in this comment. Reading TikTok comments about Marvel Rivals, it's a complete tr like it's a complete trip. Like it like if you w No, I know you know I no, I read the comments on your videos and some of them are just completely absurd. Like just
CaptainCoach (01:14:49.919)
Right.
Flats (01:14:58.947)
you're not telling me nothin'. You're not telling me nothin'.
CaptainCoach (01:15:01.203)
Yeah.
I I genuinely can't believe how much hate you give flats. Like it it it's it's honestly like I I it makes no sense. You you were actually like why I got into rivals. Like you you and Tim like were content. I watched I'm like, these you seem like the chillest guys. Then I read the comment section, I'm like, what the fuck? Like what is going on here?
Coach Mills (01:15:11.35)
I mean I mean it
Coach Mills (01:15:17.204)
So
Flats (01:15:24.886)
It's unfortunately the price you do pay as a as a large creator and especially being on short form platforms. I mean, I kinda outed myself. I'm gonna fuck it, I'll do it again. So this week's obviously been a shit show. But during this week, during this week, I've actually been conducting exper an experiment. And I was gonna wait till the end of season 10 or season nine to to to out it, but some guy was complaining about cap and like why haven't you talked about how bad cap is and all this stuff? So I decided to to to play my hand. It's been eight days since I made my tier list for the season nine point five.
Coach Mills (01:15:35.858)
Yeah yeah.
Flats (01:15:55.021)
Five days since it's posted, I've seen zero people like make videos like, this guy sucks. This is like stupid, it's tier list or whatever. You why that is? I instructed my short form content team to not make a single video about the tier list. Do not say a word. Let it sit. It's got almost 200,000 views, long form content. Because it's just people that only see something that's in front of them, which is the point of a tier list. Because the video is an hour long. It's about talking about the whole game the whole way through.
CaptainCoach (01:16:21.087)
Right.
Flats (01:16:24.728)
Problems, good, bad, whatever, about each hero. And then you can go and skip through like what is what did he say about my hero? What's up with my hero this season? But you can't make a TikTok an hour long. They're about a minute long. And so you kind of like jump through really quickly, like, he's here because XYZ. here because XYZ. And then you use a visual, which is the whole point of this tier list even existing. It's mostly just to give people a visual. And the reason why it's instructed them not to say anything is because most people don't actually go beyond what is presented in front of them. And it's why misinformation
CaptainCoach (01:16:24.819)
Yeah.
Flats (01:16:53.11)
runs rampant. It's why drama runs rampant in this community. It's why all these things run rampant. And I hate to say it, that data that came out that said the game is mostly 60% people under the age of 24 is completely true because most younger individuals see something that's given to them, don't really question it, and they just believe it and they run with it. And Rivals is no different. Like people see either misinformation about the game and run with it, or they see misinformation about people running with it.
CaptainCoach (01:17:17.269)
Yeah.
Flats (01:17:18.374)
Or like somebody says, like, this thing is really strong, and they'll just believe it and they run with it, but they don't even know why. And they don't question for it's no why. And if this game was a competitive game, they might question it more, but it's not. They like being told what's what's true, what's not true. and unfortunately, that's just the way the short form content works. And it sucks, but that's just the game, you know? I don't think there's a way to fix that. and I think I've been very outspoken with this for for a long time. We've we you brought it up, like.
CaptainCoach (01:17:38.291)
Yeah. Lex Lex context.
Coach Mills (01:17:42.968)
No, that's not.
Flats (01:17:47.575)
Isn't this just gonna keep happening? Yes, it is. I think Rivals is a very good game. I think right now it's not in a great spot, but it's not broken. It's fixable. Like it's not fucking over. Like I played Overwatch one. I played double shield for two years from 2020 to 2022 where there was no content. I know all about a game that has no hope. This game has plenty of hope. It's fine. But the only one thing Rivals cannot fix? It cannot fix its community. It cannot fix the people that play the game. It cannot fix the way people act.
Coach Mills (01:17:58.681)
Yeah, yeah. that was very f super fun.
CaptainCoach (01:18:02.666)
So
CaptainCoach (01:18:07.775)
Yeah.
Coach Mills (01:18:07.958)
Yeah, no, agreed.
Flats (01:18:16.93)
You can't fix a community. That's impossible. Sometimes it just grows out of control. Sometimes you get a League of Legends. Sometimes you get a Dead by Daylight. Ravels is just going that route now. And there's two options are they start hard banning people that they find in their game. I got a Sword Second Slasher yesterday. I'm dead serious. Like five seconds into the game, we're talking hard and hard R. Bang. Like I'm I I reported him, he got muted. That's it. Like that's it. Nothing. And that was what like everyone saw it. You know, my team, NC team, whatever. They don't they don't ban anybody. They don't
Coach Mills (01:18:18.494)
Hey, they they they'll grow up eventually. I'm just kidding, yeah. Yeah.
CaptainCoach (01:18:39.082)
Yeah.
Flats (01:18:45.922)
They 'cause they they're people that play the game, they're gonna buy more skins, they're gonna do all these other things. They're not gonna ban them. So they're gonna let them keep playing 'cause one of Overwatch's biggest criticisms and they're very harsh on bans. Bravel said, hmm, let's not do that. So they don't ban people as much. So you have a toxic system that contributes into itself consistently.
CaptainCoach (01:19:00.489)
I I I definitely want to get to that, but I wanted to cycle back to asking me kind of like how what I would do for the balance. This is something we've talked about on the podcast a lot, which is before you give a response, just hear me out here, separate balancing for the ranked competitive mode. you could argue that there's already changes made to the ranked mode that are different. Obviously, like with quick play, you only play half a game, ranked you play a full game.
Coach Mills (01:19:00.962)
D yeah, give it
Flats (01:19:04.302)
Sorry.
CaptainCoach (01:19:31.141)
W bands is another thing that's different. So would it be too much to ask to off offer for the game mode that they consider more competitive, so they can still do whatever the balance changes where they make whatever meta, work for whatever month, something like a global nerf like they did to the support alt change, to to buff it in the in the nine point hop fix to everything. So to to basically raise the skill ceiling of just the ranked mode in particular. So s an example would be
When you hover over the rank tab for competitive, it'll show you whatever bands, different map setups, like longer maps, and then it would say fifty percent global alt surge nerf and like maybe I don't know, maybe like remove tenacity or something. Like what I think that I'm curious to hear your thoughts on that. But something like that where it's separate balancing for the ranked mode, but not any changes to individual heroes, so that like those contexts that you say or conversations that you say that lack context and nuance where people just see a clip and like, that thing's OP, that would
kind of be mitigated a lot. Curious to hear your thoughts on that. Separate balancing.
Flats (01:20:33.51)
So that's an interesting one. Where does it stop? Because I would argue that balancing for metal ranks is a million times different than balancing for top five hundred. I would argue that pro play is even different than top five hundred, even though those probably a little bit more similar because a lot of the same players, but they don't play the same way. Like they don't play the same way in scrims as they do in ladder, right?
Coach Mills (01:20:51.17)
Just we w we'll just be yeah, who you go.
CaptainCoach (01:20:52.457)
Where does it stop? It it's it should all be for changes that raise the skill ceiling, kinda like what we're talking before, where it's like not you don't just right click a thing punch and and whatever, you you're immune to dying. It it's things that encourage skillful use of abilities, things that are aren't just guaranteed value and and
Coach Mills (01:21:10.934)
and you You're asking for the ranks, right? Like the difference Yeah, so like we we would we would we would j we would just do yeah, just rank the rank the competitive mode. So it's like if you want a competitive experience, you sign up for it, you click here, this is the balance for that. If you don't want that, if you want the the fun, whatever, there's quick play, there's all these other modes that you could play.
Flats (01:21:12.844)
So y I think he said ranked versus unranked.
CaptainCoach (01:21:15.626)
no I
Yes.
CaptainCoach (01:21:31.997)
Yeah, nothing for individual heroes. I mean, like just what was it season seven when they did the global alt nerf? I feel like that's pretty much already been erased. Like I I mean, I feel like the alts come up just as quick as they did then. I mean, so it's like they they really can't help themselves with like the power creep. So I'm thinking just have some blanket, like global nerf for just the rank mode. And I and I don't think too many people would complain about that.
Flats (01:21:53.607)
I disagree. I think that a blanket mode, a blanket like just alt reju reduction. I mean sure. Yeah, I mean like that would probably be the most simple version of that. But we all know it's not gonna stop there. We all know it's not gonna stop there. We're gonna start asking for more changes individually to rank versus unranked, and we also cause this community gets an inch and they take a mile, and also you have your casual mode and your ranked mode not lining up. Like think about people that play quick play and ranked, right?
How different you get the feel from each one. I mean, if that would just mean you never want to play ranked ever. You know, if you're a quick play player and you're like, you know what? Like the ranked feels awful. Like, I'm never playing that. Like, it just doesn't, like, it's not the same game. Like, you can't even practice for quick play to go into ranked at that point. You are now completely segregating those two communities instead of trying to get them to play ranked and getting into the game. And because what you want is casuals to turn into competitive players. That is what you want. Because those compet.
CaptainCoach (01:22:49.801)
Doesn't that happen just naturally over time though? If you play the game long enough you kinda grow with the game and get better with it, right? Isn't that just like a natural progression?
Flats (01:22:55.614)
Mmm. Not unless you have a reason to play. Like, and I think the reason po people even touch ranked right now is they want their rank rewards each each season. They to get to gold and they want to get their skins. I th I see I think that's wrong too though. Like, I think Overwatch e Overwatch ended up copying that because they're like, shit, this is a fucking genius idea. Like, we reward people for queuing up in rank. They have their own system called drives. Granted, drives are horrible to queue because like the game goes to shit. But I don't think it's just because all these casuals are now queuing the rank mode.
Coach Mills (01:23:04.052)
Remove it, remove it, remove it, remove it, please remove it. You think so?
CaptainCoach (01:23:06.453)
Mm-hmm.
Coach Mills (01:23:18.424)
Okay, okay.
Flats (01:23:24.054)
I think it's because everybody's wants to win their games more. So toxicity goes through the roof because they know they only have three days to win. If they don't get their wins in three days, it's GGs. Like they just lose out. They miss the whole event. So it creates insane FOMO. So people go, bananas. But it's not they're not trying. They're actually trying harder than ever. They really want to win. I think Rivals wants to get people down that pipeline because people are more dedicated to the game.
are likely more likely to buy skins. They're more likely to be invested in the community. They're more likely to watch a stream. They're more likely to watch some pro play, right? That's the whole point of drops. That's why like I always said like their drops suck. Like if they wanted to get people more into the game, they would have better drops. And if you had better drops, then they would watch people in the community. Guess what happens when you they watch people in the community? Yeah, 70% are probably going to AFK, but you know what? That 30% that doesn't might find a streamer that they like. And all of a sudden they're keeping that streamer up on the second mar while they're at work or they're gaming or something. And guess what? Then they're watching the game more often.
When they watch them play the game more often, they're like, hmm, I kind of want to go home and play the game. Cause subliminally subliminally, they're watching the game more often. They're like, I'm picking up on some stuff. I'm watching this guy's like gameplay. He's actually pretty good. You know, like I didn't think to bubble that, or like whatever. Or just like they catch it in the moment. Guess what? Now they home and they queue up some rings. And they actually get into the game and they get into the community more. And now they're invested. And now they're there all the time. They live there. Casuals are like a migration. They're gonna constantly come and go. And Rivals does a great job of bringing them back pretty constantly.
But you want to pipeline them in more into a competitive side, but they kind of can't either because they've boxed themselves out of being a com like a hyper competitive game. So they're trying to be a light competitive game, which means the higher the more you play, the higher rank you go, right? They reward you for playing the game more often. It's all, ooh, well, you get to be high ranked because you play the game a lot, right? That's what they've done. That's why it's not a real competitive game.
CaptainCoach (01:25:07.125)
Yeah.
Flats (01:25:14.208)
It is a cycle of trying to get people to be competitive, then rewarding them with tons of dopamine so they buy more skins and then they just go do whatever, right? But the game itself isn't competitive. So, like by balancing hyper competitively or saying top-down balance, those casual people come back, might have less fun and they don't come in. Now you are saying to come back to it, quick play and ranked having very different plays, right? I don't think people would feel like that feels good in the moment, right? Like
They if they go from quick play to rank, they're like, wow, this is just so different. It's a completely different game. Never mind, I think that it would become a runaway train where you have people then say, we should balance high rank different than low rank, right? And to give you another example, Overwatch does this right now. Granted, NetEase pumps out game pumps out content faster than anyone else in the industry. Overwatch has 5v5 and 6v6 right now. They're trying to balance them both at the same time. Both have suffered. You split your focus from just one game.
Into multiple modes, it falls apart because we all know what's gonna happen next if they did that. Then they're gonna say, Well, why don't we just juice up the characters even more in quick play? Right? Like if we're already balancing it differently, let's make it even worse. So then, so then, if that's the truth, then comp and quick play are two different balance patches each season, which means the games are no longer even the same game. So if you start playing quick play and get into the game and then you try to play ranked, you're What the fuck? My character's useless, or what the fuck? This character's broken.
Coach Mills (01:26:20.12)
Marvel Rivals Hyper
CaptainCoach (01:26:21.065)
They could. I mean I I
CaptainCoach (01:26:40.263)
It it would be simple simple things. And I I can prep like there's a counterexample to like the example you provided League of Legends A RAM. I mean, that's a different game mode, different stats on the heroes, which I actually personally don't like in A RAM, but I s but I still play it. It it's totally different, but it's still the same core control of like playing your hero, playing your character. They all do the same thing. It's just the numbers are slightly different. A RAM is massive. It's one of the things keeping League of Legends alive. So I mean that'd be a counter argument to what you're saying. And I I do agree with
Flats (01:26:41.024)
All of s all of a sudden.
CaptainCoach (01:27:09.683)
Yeah, like having a hero feel feel useless because I I think the way they kind of current currently keep low ranks bearable is having you know heroes like like Wanda just be like really strong in those ranks. But the higher rank you go, they just they kind of get phased out of the meta completely. So if if you did kind of do this I I I don't think it would be as bad as you're saying. I really don't. Like as long as you don't change the core like gameplay loop of heroes, I I think it would it would honestly it might even vital.
Flats (01:27:38.232)
Can I ask a question? I I don't play league. my chat kinda got like what? Those aren't the same. what is what is the difference between normal league and A RAM? Like what how d what is the difference in the game mode?
CaptainCoach (01:27:39.285)
Yeah, sure.
CaptainCoach (01:27:48.693)
So League of Legends has a map with three lanes where everybody goes down a lane to get like farm, get different resources, and there's like there's objectives on the map where you go around and kill. And eventually you try to go and kill their base. A RAM, there's only one lane. You just go down the middle, five V five, they're all clumped in together. It's just a big team fight the whole time. They change the stat.
Flats (01:28:06.21)
Wouldn't that be eighteen versus eighteen in Rivals then versus quick play?
CaptainCoach (01:28:10.517)
well I mean A RAM is not considered a competitive mode. The first one I said, Summoner's Drift, is what it's called, is. And the characters functionally are exactly the same. They just have their stats modified and there's like little like the map's a little different, but it's it's A RAM is is widely considered to be a non competitive for fun game mode. I I
Coach Mills (01:28:31.352)
'Cause it's it's not quite like eighteen verse eighteen, 'cause eighteen versus eighteen is just literally the characters as they are, thrown into like a random mode. There's not really any semblance to balance. Versus A Ram, they actually Well
Flats (01:28:31.502)
Mm-hmm.
Flats (01:28:41.206)
No, I mean then then then that's where you could do that. You could juice up characters for eighteen versus eighteen, but that's not like the base game. Like quick play and ranked are like mirrors of each other. It doesn't sound like this is a mirror.
Coach Mills (01:28:48.29)
Well maybe I'm hey I mean we would I would prefer so like my my amount I actually don't agree with Captain Coach 'cause my counter argument is yeah, let's juice it up for for eighteen versus eighteen and let's make the actual like game mode, let's just balance it. Like but not for low reading ranks.
CaptainCoach (01:28:50.067)
Y Hey.
CaptainCoach (01:29:01.205)
I I don't agree with me either. I don't agree with me either. I'm just to me, it's like flats, I I view as someone who's kind of a realist and kind of understands like what NetE's as a company wants, which I'm really honestly refreshed to hear. But like under this set of rules that we have, where that's like, okay, we we know they need to make money, we know they want to keep the game fresh, like just give like us something like a bone to chew on. Maybe even have like two quick plays, one that's like pre rank. Like here, this is what it's gonna be like in rank. You can try it out.
I I know it'll split the player base, but I'm just trying to spitball here. Another idea I had was having like more introductory content for new players.
Coach Mills (01:29:32.652)
W we're
Coach Mills (01:29:36.365)
We're we're just trying to find a solution under like if if there's all these reasons why you have to bounce for the compet like the casuals, what can we do to still deliver what what we want? And I think like like ultimately this all blew up because of like once again, a high ELO clip, high low players are frustrated. You're like, and I'm not even like the highest of highs, like anyone Grandmaster Plus is frustrated. You're frustrated, we're frustrated. Like, and I think that this game could be more than what it is. For us
While still being fun for people, everyone else. Like it doesn't have like it we don't have to choose this extremity and we're we're obviously in this constant loop of I mean, how long have we been dealing with triple support? As a high rank player
CaptainCoach (01:30:07.517)
Hundred percent. And
CaptainCoach (01:30:19.317)
Yeah, I was gonna say that clip, like that's been happening for like a year now. Like the like the ultra like pretty much since like Ultron was in the game. Yeah.
Coach Mills (01:30:22.796)
Like tri tri Triple Support Mantis has been like this this extremely unfun composition to play into, and it's only been bearable because a lot of players won't play it won't play it. Like low rank players don't have to deal with it because there's not as much supports. or they play like solo tank, which triple support sucks. And like we Yeah, like like kinda like the what you talk about, like, please go go to my rank up game. Like, we deal with that in this game
CaptainCoach (01:30:42.269)
Or they just don't care, you know, like
Flats (01:30:43.992)
Can I
CaptainCoach (01:30:48.117)
Yeah.
Coach Mills (01:30:50.166)
When people just decide, we're losing, let's go triple support. guess what? We're winning now. It's like why do we have to endure like why do we have to deal with this problem? Why is it like do we just not matter at all? Like anyone that's Grandmaster Plus just doesn't like fuck any any of their experiences unless they're literally suffering like on the edge.
Flats (01:31:08.174)
Okay. So can I be honest?
You know, remember the season that they were like triple supports are actually not that good, it has like a forty percent win rate?
CaptainCoach (01:31:19.635)
triggered me.
Coach Mills (01:31:20.482)
Ha ha ha.
Flats (01:31:20.728)
So that season, I actually agreed with them that that season it wasn't that good. That following season, it actually was really fucking good. And I thought that was hilarious. Cause unfortunately, I don't know how to say this. There isn't enough corrective information because that's just the way the internet works. It doesn't go anywhere. Like I try to make it sometimes, it doesn't go anywhere. Like it just doesn't get the viewership of other stuff. There are seasons where triple support was not good, and we don't talk about those.
CaptainCoach (01:31:46.547)
What what do you mean by that corrective information? Sorry to interrupt. What did you what did you mean by corrective information? I don't I don't under
Flats (01:31:50.04)
So for example, sorry.
So what you guys just said, seas triple support's been a problem since season zero. Has it been a problem every season since season zero? I'd say no. There's been seasons where it's not.
Coach Mills (01:32:01.943)
Not every season, but it it it's it's been it's been a very strong composition for most seasons, I will say. Most seasons.
CaptainCoach (01:32:02.294)
nah. Perception wise definitely not, but
Yes.
Flats (01:32:08.95)
I would yeah, I would say I would say at least 50, maybe 60%. I think there's a few seasons where 222 is the ma vast majority played through the vast majority of ranks. Pro play, I think, is a little different. Like they like Ultron's been like in ranked. How often do you see a Ultron in ranked? Not that often. In pro play, he's insane. He was permanned at at the Ignite finals, right? That's what I mean by pro level being very different than everyone else. They never saw Ultron.
Coach Mills (01:32:25.43)
No, you can't you don't. No especially not one that can aim, yeah.
Flats (01:32:37.538)
Like that guy just didn't exist. That guy's been like a like a myth. He's gone. and there are seasons where 222 was actually the most played by far. And people would try to go the crutch triple support, but it wasn't even that good for certain seasons. But nobody ever talked about it. Like, this season? Yeah, triple support wasn't actually good this season. That was good. It just never really went anywhere. Like that content, like that bit information never goes anywhere. So the narrative almost becomes it's been strong since season zero. And like, yes, but
Also, dive's been strong certain times. Brawl, poke has been really strong since season zero, right? Like, but like that's not always true though.
Coach Mills (01:33:10.156)
Well, I would I would argue that people I think triple support, like, it's it it has been one of the strongest comps you can play, but it's all it's not always people play it wrong too. I mean, like if you play like Luna Invis Cloak with one mag, like when are you building all? Like never. Like like people I mean you don't that this is another part of the problem with like the casual conversation and stuff, is like one, like I said, they don't they only solo tank
Flats (01:33:18.04)
Sure, for sure. I'm not saying it's n yeah.
Yeah, a hundred percent.
Coach Mills (01:33:37.175)
Sometimes they sometimes barely get two supports, much less three supports. Playing triple support with a Spider-Man and a BP makes no sense at all. Like there's a lot of these roles to this composition that's just not gonna affect casual people. Even though when this comp is good, it's like it's it's it's just a miserable experience to play into. And this is this leaves into my segue. I have a segue plan. Something, you know, shook me to my core, shocked me more than ever. I saw a clip from Boger about wanting Rolock.
In Marvel Rivals or a tweet or whatever. I this I actually it I was very shocked by it. Cause he's not a guy that's I I keep I I I mean I've run this podcast a lot and I hear a lot of rivals only guys kind of say, we want Rolock and and and I I was no, we've we played these games before, but now I have an Overwatch guy saying it. So what is your thoughts on that? Because here's the thing Rolock is a casual thing to implement in the game because
they don't have to deal with not having a support or not having a second tank or and and and all the queue time problems that we ran into in Overwatch where I sat in a twenty-two-minute DPS queue, that does not affect the casual rank because there's enough player pop. So like a lot of the biggest reasons to not implement it are competitive reasons. So what are your thoughts with with the philosophy that you have?
Flats (01:34:58.296)
I completely disagree with that. I think it's actually much more casual. sorry. I think it's much more competitive to implement growth lock than casual. because casual player, yeah, they want people to fill, they want people to play things, but they want other people to do it. They don't want them the game to force them to do it. They also don't want to sit in a queue for 10 minutes. We all knew back in the day, we always used to all, you know, we'd all see J3 sitting in queue for 20 minutes, watching some Hell's Kitchen. It was
Coach Mills (01:35:06.443)
Interesting. Okay.
Flats (01:35:27.854)
Peak content before the DMCA apocalypse. Peak content. It was basically his content because he couldn't get a game.
Coach Mills (01:35:29.075)
Ha ha ha
Flats (01:35:37.197)
Rolock in Overwatch was a requirement because of what was happening with goats, what was happening with the community overall asking for something, wanting changes, and they were trying to figure something out. The funniest part about Rolock is Rollock actually happened right after they finished goats. Like goats had been beaten. Like we figured out how to beat goats, and Rolock came in. I'm not joking. Like literally the season after. because it was already in the pipeline.
Coach Mills (01:36:04.0)
It was the was it that like triple D P S ball comp with yeah, with Far Mercy? Yeah. okay. yeah, I see.
Flats (01:36:07.502)
Triple DPS ball, Arissa comps. Orissa, solo like Arissa Comp like Bunker Comp. it was like Arissa There was the it was called the East Coast Special back in the day. So like you play like Bastion, Arissa. Dude, that was so funny. Like we were around back then when like the Korean players would queue into the fucking meme six decks on East Coast and just get shit on. Like like the best, like you'd have like the top players, like you'd have like half of NYXL and half of like Philly Fusion queue into the
Coach Mills (01:36:13.932)
Yeah. I remember.
Yeah.
CaptainCoach (01:36:18.143)
Mm-hmm.
Coach Mills (01:36:25.24)
Yeah.
Flats (01:36:36.546)
Biggest degenerates of East Coast and get shit stomped and be like, my god, what's happening? regardless though, that was implemented in 2018, I believe. And I think that was probably the best decision Overwatch ever made. It was needed. It was absolutely needed. Let me finish. Don't, don't, don't, don't go off the rails just yet. It was absolutely needed for the game. it had massive problems.
Coach Mills (01:36:53.097)
no. Wait, I d so wait, do you okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, okay, yeah, okay, okay.
Flats (01:37:06.134)
Trying to get people to play tank because tanks are boring as fuck and was boring as fuck back then. Everyone wanted to be Genji. Everyone wanted to be Tracer. Nobody wanted to play support other than play Mercy. And they had just nerfed her ridiculously like 16 times because of how powerful she was. Rightfully so. But then they kind of made her like really bad outside of just being a pocket DPS. She's never recovered. And then you had break. So you basically went on a break. That's it. And then eventually they put BAP and you Bap, Bap Break. That's basically what you had. You had like two potential support combinations to play.
No one wanted to play it. It was boring. It was needed. That's what the game needed. And it was a competitive game. This game is not a competitive game. And people want people to fill. And they want people to play 2 2 2. They do not want to sit in queue for 10 minutes to get that game. They want the game to be flexible. They want to be able to swap roles. They want people to work together. The game should encourage you to work work together somehow without forcing you through role queue.
Roll queue would probably be the death of this game. because the alternative, Overwatch, I would argue is a much better competitive experience, but you gotta sit and queue for somewhere between three to ten minutes, unless you're playing quick play. Then you might have a faster queue if you're playing in the metal ranks. This game's greatest strength is to be able to hop on with your friends or whatever, click the button, and you're instantly in a game. Always.
There is even at the higher ranks, like unless you're queuing at four AM in top five hundred, the queues are pretty quick.
CaptainCoach (01:38:41.373)
I isn't there always a trade off though? Like you're alwa i even if you're okay, you logging onto Marvel Rivals wanting to play like your favorite hero, okay. Well now the game's telling you that you you need to swap cause Joe Spider Man doesn't wanna like give up his his pick. So now you're you're taking a hit in fun anyway, right? Wouldn't that naturally decrease the player base or the retention over time and you'd benefit from a system where people just get what they want and the game quality increases? Or am I like crazy like to me I don't think
As long as you don't hard lock it, I don't see there being a Q time issue unless you're in the very highest ranks.
Flats (01:39:16.74)
there would be a Q t issue. That's there's no debate. Like I we have a we have a we have a an example we can look at. Like I don't think there's
CaptainCoach (01:39:23.261)
I I disagree. 'Cause you you look at how the I mean, you said it yourself, like the matchmaking in rivals is not really serious and it lets anybody climb to a high rank. Again, that's by design too, and they have a big pool of people. I mean, you've seen it I mean League of Legends is going through a big problem but right now with this, where like the the rank disparity is so high again, 'cause I think all these games are now focusing on their algorithms, their matchmaking algorithms to give people quicker games. I think that's less of a problem than it used to be. Also, like League of Legends again, I I know I'm using that as an example a lot. You guys have been talking about Overwatch, I'm just kinda just
Citing from my experience, they implemented a soft Rolock system and actually kind of revitalized the game and and it it it it's not really bad for Q times because yeah, League of Legends implemented a like a yeah
Flats (01:40:00.695)
What? What are you talking about? League of Legends did it. sorry. I thought you were talking about Roger. Like, no, we have our hardware prologue.
Coach Mills (01:40:06.348)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. How d how do you feel about Soft Rolock, by the way? That that that Captain Coach has been pitching it to me for a while, I'm curious.
CaptainCoach (01:40:07.795)
Right.
Flats (01:40:12.738)
So what does that mean by soft roll lock?
CaptainCoach (01:40:15.091)
So before you queue up for ranked, you'll select your main role, like the role you want, and then the role that if you're not allowed to play your main role, that's what you'll be put on. And i I I think this I mean, to bring it all back like the the banning and AFKers and like people throwing and griefing, this would be a lot less of a problem, I think, if just the game quality increased, because you'd have like, okay, tank would be blue, healer would be green, DPS would be red, and if you're like a blue red,
And if you don't get your blue, then you're expected to play red. You're expected to play DPS for your team. And if you don't, then there now there's like this agreed upon community standard where there's not all this gray area that I think causes just terrible interactions in games. And and and makes the the game's balance also feel worse because now we don't have people able to like do what they're doing to get to the rank they're in. So I I think it's
Coach Mills (01:41:01.912)
Basically they would make it so every single lobby has at least like let's say, you know, green green green is tanks, reds are DPS, blues are supports. They make sure every single lobby has two of each people that have agreed upon that they're willing to play that role, basically. That's the that yeah. No sorry.
CaptainCoach (01:41:16.413)
I either main or off roll. So like you could yeah, you you could have like two greens but it'd be their secondary, but it's like well too bad that you like you have to if if their team needs the healer and would like you know you agree upon it, then I I it wouldn't lock you into a comp, but it would like strongly urge you to play
Flats (01:41:32.654)
Wait, how many roles are there in league? 'Cause I can't I'm I'm reading five. So what are the five roles in league? Can you play the game without having all five?
Coach Mills (01:41:32.897)
Yeah, n
CaptainCoach (01:41:36.703)
Five. Five, yeah.
CaptainCoach (01:41:43.001)
the roles in league are are more positions on the map rather than what their heroes actually f fulfill. so it'd be top jungle mid bottom support. but the league has changed so much over the years now that there's been a lot of like crossover with the roles and they've kind of taken away a lot of individual identities of heroes. So like
Like mages used to be mid because it was a a lane that's like unsafe and mages had less mobility. So you you could always just fall back to your tower quickly 'cause it was a shorter lane, right? So but like now mages are getting picked in bottom because again, league, same thing, just over ten years, just the power creep in that game has been absolutely bonkers.
Coach Mills (01:42:20.598)
And and like the idea here, Flats, is like if you let's say you queued for all three, right? Or whatever, like i in a in a different system, you would be expected to fill if you did. But you're gonna have really fast queue times, right? If you queue for just DPS, you might have a slightly longer queue time, but you would not you're not expected to fill at all. And if there's a opportunity for you to fill, maybe that could be reportable or something. Like if I if I queue up as a as a support and then I get into a game and I I'm like, no, I'm actually just lying. I'm playing tank. Like that's banable, reportable, whatever.
But the whole idea here is that you you create bet it better outcomes than I mean I'm sure you've run into it. there's five tank mains in this fucking game. Or there's there's four instalock DPS lords. We lost. Yeah, you know, like that and I mean that that is actually true. That is actually true. But nah. But but that that's the whole I
Flats (01:42:50.2)
So
CaptainCoach (01:43:01.011)
The five tank main games are actually low key like the best lobbies you could get.
Flats (01:43:04.846)
Spittin, spittin. Unless you got me on the DPS and we might be cooked by the lake, you know.
Coach Mills (01:43:14.166)
I've never I I would never heard of this concept before until they pitched it to me, but it it sounds interesting, like a more like it would be better than locking. It'd be better than locking for sure, I think.
Flats (01:43:24.694)
Isn't this like a theoretical lock though? Like you're you're basically saying then you're you're force you're trying to implement matches of two to two, right?
Coach Mills (01:43:32.202)
You are. Yeah. But it's it's not absolutely required, but it is like you you are
CaptainCoach (01:43:36.457)
You could have hybrid roles.
Flats (01:43:36.878)
So what would what would what would so what would change it though? so like let's say I've loaded up DPS and then I just choose tank. Or the reverse. I should I queue up support 'cause it's a fast queue and then I just pick tank and I or I play DPS, I say fuck you.
Coach Mills (01:43:43.8)
Like that's what I'm saying. That would be that would be reportable. Reportable or banable. That reporta reportable reportable and banable, basically. Is is what that would be.
CaptainCoach (01:43:44.169)
Yeah, you'd you'd be reportable.
Flats (01:43:52.268)
How do you know though? How do you know like you're gonna say like, yeah, this person queued up for DPS? Yeah, they're not playing DPS anymore. Or sorry, and like they queued up for support and now they're not playing.
Coach Mills (01:43:57.293)
Well like when peop when people load up into the lobby, they would have like colors associated with like this is what you're expect to
CaptainCoach (01:44:01.651)
Yeah, you th you could have
Flats (01:44:02.275)
So you're basically trying to shame them, like, yeah, I'm s hey, you lock support, but you don't have to pick support. It's up to you, right? And it's like
Coach Mills (01:44:08.758)
Well, it would be in your best i the thing about it is like DPS players, like at least all the all the high ELO ones, when they get in the lobby with a lot of the other DPS, they either ego the other DPS off of it, or they just say, Okay, go next, I'm gonna avoid you all. We're gonna play again. DPS players would rather guarantee have two good tanks and two good supports. Like they're not gonna they're not like I mean, there are gonna
CaptainCoach (01:44:18.793)
Yeah. It
CaptainCoach (01:44:26.549)
Hundred percent.
Flats (01:44:29.206)
I think I think if queue times were going up, people would absolutely do that. Like the reason you don't have that now is because there's no queue time. Like if you had ten plus minutes, twenty minutes of queue time, and your difference is, well, I could lock support, get into a game, and then I'll bully the other guy to play support for me, they're absolutely choosing that almost every d single time. Every single time.
Coach Mills (01:44:32.29)
Well then like then it's like us like you could ban. You could
Coach Mills (01:44:43.714)
No, well that's it well, I mean I mean it th it's just you could just ban them. But like d as much as
Flats (01:44:49.046)
Are you but but but but man, we're not banning people already for being the slursling and slasher. We're not banning people for doing all these things.
Coach Mills (01:44:52.79)
No, no, no, no. We we will talk about wait. I wanna talk there's a lot, there's a lot of stuff we gotta talk about about banning. Like, yeah. No.
Flats (01:44:58.518)
I'm just saying they're they've proven they don't want to ban really hard. Even people that are throwing games maybe get like a 10-minute penalty. That's why we're spiraling as a toxic community in a lot of ways. So now you're implementing a new system that can be abused, and the only way to stop people is by getting them banned through d net ease?
Coach Mills (01:45:02.316)
I I'm just saying it's it's
Coach Mills (01:45:09.004)
I don't know.
Coach Mills (01:45:13.994)
It's being abused now. It's being abused now. Like right now people are abusing. Like like w the alternative is well the alternative is we just get in random games when we lose instantly. For n
Flats (01:45:19.386)
Using what?
Flats (01:45:24.218)
I was somewhat abusing like just like people in general and then like using the re like the report system doesn't work. I wasn't talking about like queuing in.
Coach Mills (01:45:29.988)
well yeah, no no. well yeah. Well I'm I'm just saying that wouldn't this system be like at least better than what we have, even if it is abused. Like like what what what are what are the da what are the Well what I'm saying, you would probably well I mean
Flats (01:45:38.035)
what happens to Ultron? What happens to Adam? What happens to Mantis?
CaptainCoach (01:45:38.963)
You'd get more truth too.
CaptainCoach (01:45:44.245)
Could you could have like a hybrid roll. It could be fourth roll.
Flats (01:45:47.704)
Well now yeah, now you're talking a fourth roll. Like that's that's a whole new different one, like
Coach Mills (01:45:50.05)
Well that you could you could you could still Okay here this is a hot take this is a hot take this is a hot take for I I I'm not well wait before we get to the fourth row idea, because I think that's a little radical. I don't necessarily think that if they implemented something like this, I don't necessarily think that they should like they still need to make sure that people like triple support is not broken and things like that. Like they still have to do that. Cause like the DPS the second DPS player could just decide to to swap to triple support. Like it's still a playable composition.
CaptainCoach (01:45:53.833)
I don't I don't think it would
Flats (01:45:54.934)
How do you how do you queue up the fourth role? Like what what do you call that?
CaptainCoach (01:45:56.789)
Just make every team have the same number of roles.
Coach Mills (01:46:20.79)
Now is triple support gonna be played less? A hundred percent. Is that a bad thing? Also, no.
Flats (01:46:24.872)
Is it is it though, if you queue up for DPS and then or so you say you queue DPS and support and then you queue into your top five hundred game and you're like, I'll just play Ultron. Ultron's the flying DPS anyways.
CaptainCoach (01:46:34.963)
Well I it's curious
Coach Mills (01:46:35.638)
Well I mean I mean d you d you have the option to do that, but but it's it
CaptainCoach (01:46:39.665)
How many like how many people played support just 'cause it's the most important role? I mean like
Coach Mills (01:46:43.562)
I like the
Flats (01:46:45.826)
I don't think anyone w I supports by far the least played role in this game.
CaptainCoach (01:46:49.301)
No, I said important, most important role.
Coach Mills (01:46:49.666)
My my my my thing is what you're trying to not you're what you're trying to prevent is and y at least you have two of each role. Like that's what you want at least. Like that's the what this system would allow is like you're guaranteed to have at least or you're like mostly guaranteed to have at least two of each.
Flats (01:47:03.454)
Well I think support's the most important role in the game, but it's also the least impactful. Like good example is every time we do one of these creator tournaments, like Ar Amori, like everybody shit talks her 'cause she's not winning, but it's like you objectively get way less value in those tournaments as a support player than you do as like a DPS player. Like if you're a DPS player, you just kill the whole lobby. What do you do on support?
Coach Mills (01:47:19.934)
I kind of disagree. I think that that applies. No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I agree with that. But I I think that's only because they're of unequal skill. Like in lobbies of unequal skill, then yes. But in lobbies of equal skill, then no. Like that there's a big difference there. Like you see a huge gap in support play at probe level. Cause everyone is everyone does what they're supposed to do at pro level. But in a creator tournament, yeah, I'd rather I'd rather be hella and just walk around and kill everybody. Sure. I'm I'm running down on Thor.
Flats (01:47:23.884)
You think support's the most impactful in the tournaments?
CaptainCoach (01:47:27.838)
I mean
CaptainCoach (01:47:31.605)
Yeah.
Flats (01:47:47.352)
But a creator tournament's more of an example of what everyone is dealing with. You have one really good player, whatever.
Coach Mills (01:47:50.443)
Not to that it I when I'm on like I just played in a creator tournament the other day on Thor and I'm just running it down and killing everybody because they're Grandmaster and Diamond creators. Like that's different. I can't run it down on me. No, I absolutely couldn't, but that doesn't mean that in a lobby where everyone is a celestial or an attorney player, I can run it down on Thor and kill everybody. Absolutely not. The but the support player that had has meaningful things that they like like the the cl the higher in level and the closer in rank.
Flats (01:48:02.614)
Y but if you were playing support, could you do the same thing? Yeah.
Flats (01:48:12.822)
Right. No, absolutely, I agree.
Coach Mills (01:48:20.076)
The lobby is, the more important support matters in my opinion. But I you know, that
Flats (01:48:24.278)
I I don't disagree, but that the chances you're loading into a game like that, right? And everybody's on the exact same level is decent, right? Let's say it's decent. But that doesn't mean people are gonna cue support because it's the most important role. That was the point I think that was made before. I think people cue support because they enjoy it, even if, in my opinion, it's one the most boring role. And two, out in ranked can be the mo the least impactful. Like you can you can you have to heal bot right now?
Coach Mills (01:48:43.701)
Yeah. Did you do remember we just
CaptainCoach (01:48:49.641)
Well I mean
Flats (01:48:53.026)
You occasionally have an opportunity to do an offensive move, like for example, throwing your your your fade window on cloak and dagger. That's like your best tool. Surviving is your third best tool, I would say. And then okay, sorry, this should be the number one is your ults. Like being ulting correctly. That's probably the way you have the most impact on the game. Then it's probably surviving. Then it's heal botting or slash healbotting, and then the one time you get to do an offensive ability. It's just not as impactful as like an individual player each game.
Coach Mills (01:49:16.063)
D do you think
Flats (01:49:21.858)
But if you put people in an organized setting at a really high level, absolutely it's extremely important. That's not true though for like the other ninety-eight percent of the game, which is why we kind of all come back to like thinking like the port support's not getting played much because they're not having fun. It's not as great. So they're trying to give them more tools to play it and survive, and it's gone too far.
Coach Mills (01:49:31.828)
Mm, okay. I actually agree.
Coach Mills (01:49:43.65)
Do you do you think like if we rebalance the power of supports to not as much sustain and maybe less l less powerful healing or less value from healing and less value from ults and more playmaking, damage, you know, differ
Flats (01:49:56.29)
You'd have to do DPS in tank nerfs across the board too. If there's too much po there's too much damage in general.
Coach Mills (01:49:59.286)
Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, a hundred percent. A hundred percent. No, I we're on we're on the same page about that, where everything needs nerfs. But I'm just saying, like I never felt like I didn't have agency on characters like Anna or Zen. I'm I'm I'm I just really just didn't I Kiriko, I never felt like I didn't have agency. And I feel like like what a lot of dive players or players are complaining about, like the hyper sustain of supports, that it would actually be more fun for supports to get value in different ways besides hyper sustaining. I hyper sustaining is actually not a fun
Like you it's it's it's not fun to die, but there are more funds ways to get value than just heal botting and hyper sustaining, I think. I
CaptainCoach (01:50:34.719)
Well I think I think casuals kinda I think a lot of them are cool with just it being heel body, like in c being kind of simple.
Flats (01:50:40.768)
Yes, I I was gonna say I I agree with that. I think that's what they want. I do think so. For the Overwatch example, I think Overwatch has actually gone too far. So that's why everyone's starting to just turn on five E five. The the most five E five defenders are support players, because they have so much more agency. You're basically a DPS with healing. I think that's what's tuned it too far. I think that, for example, what you talked about, like the old Overwatch, like Zen, Ana, like that back in the day, was a good example where you had some offensive agency and
Coach Mills (01:50:42.518)
Yeah okay.
Flats (01:51:07.8)
But you were mostly healing for the game with a little bit of pressure, right? Like where you could do a little damage here and there. You could throw your nade offensively, do whatever whatever. And then they took the game and they took it way too far. You know what though? Now it's the second most played role, almost tied with DPS, because it's fun. People love it. But it's made at the detriment of the tank role so horrible. So let's do it to rivals in a way. Do you guys remember DPS flank Luna?
Coach Mills (01:51:29.752)
Right.
CaptainCoach (01:51:35.153)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, they they still around. Yeah.
Coach Mills (01:51:35.724)
I mean remember it I had one in my game like yesterday.
Flats (01:51:37.663)
You still see it now where people will still do it. I don't think Rivals wants that at all. I think they're like, I think what what coach was saying is they want people to do yeah, god, I forgot about that demon. they want people to be more heal focused. Like that's what they want. And I think that's what a lot of casuals do want. You know, it's kind of like it's what you queue up to do. You queue up to play healer, you know. Like I'm not, you know, they don't talk about playing support, they queue up to play healer. And I think that's fine, but this is an example where it's gone too far.
Coach Mills (01:51:44.128)
And Jeff? Yeah, yeah.
Ha ha ha.
Flats (01:52:05.388)
And you need to pull it back. And it's why these conversations are so hard, because there needs to be nuance to them. Because overall, I think in most seasons, it was kind like in pro player opinion, it's too far, it's annoying, sustain's insane. But for everyone else, it was mostly fine. We've hit the point where we're now seeing it on the ladder and it's cr it's cascading its way down little by little. You know, if it stayed in its current state, I think you said like, you know, the patches are too fast for it to happen. I don't think there's any radical patches that they're gonna put out.
Respectfully, unless they like take all this this week and now they're back in the in the kitchen cooking something up, and then we're all gonna get blamed in about two weeks, whenever that comes out. just just as a heads up, get ready, it's coming. If they do that. and that maybe is why they've been so silent. There's a possibility they went, shit, we're going back to the drawing board. but regardless though, if they don't, it will work its way down and the sustain will keep going. Like that we've we've broken critical mass, but there needs to be re- there needs to be nuance, and the nuance here.
Coach Mills (01:52:41.624)
So let's go. Let's go.
CaptainCoach (01:52:42.362)
Yeah.
Flats (01:53:04.118)
Is it up until this point, I think it wasn't that bad. Like, yes, in triple support and pro play is strong. But like, I look at Ultron, right? Ultron in bronze through flat is the highest win rate character in the game. They all think he sucks. You could like if I told a bronze player how if I like, you know, you're you're in jail, your mom needs to get to gold for you to get released, and I can tell their mom one sentence, I would just say pick Ultron every game. And then like, congrats, you're out of jail probably in a week or two, you know? it's like, but they they all think he sucks because he doesn't
Do the healing. He doesn't do the job of the healer, right? So it's like in their own rank, the stats show he's fucking busted. But the perception is he sucks. So who's correct? Community perception or the data? Well, I don't think data is the best way to balance something. I need I think it needs a human touch, which is where we get into having these disagreements about, you know, I think this character's strong this season, where you have like the tier list for an example, like, I think this character's strong for XYZ reason. And then little Timmy comes in and goes, Fuck you, stupid. Like,
CaptainCoach (01:53:56.746)
Yeah.
Flats (01:54:03.97)
He's actually really good in my game because I dropped 40 kills the other day. Okay, great, little Timmy. Thanks, buddy, for your fucking input. You know? But at the same time, though, you gotta like say, like, yeah, like their perception does kind of matter a little bit because, like, clearly those characters are fun for them to play, but I think little Timmy would have dropped those same kills anyways. And if anything, I'm probably gonna I I'm giving you a buff. Congrats. Now you get 50 next game. You're welcome.
Coach Mills (01:54:04.19)
Yeah.
He he he did
Coach Mills (01:54:26.84)
What what do you I did real quick question just to follow up on that is what do you think about balancing for data for the high elos and balancing for perception for the mid to low elos? No no no no no just is like you do both where it's like they I think it's
Flats (01:54:40.056)
So you'd you'd have to have two balance patches? Is that what you're saying?
Flats (01:54:46.028)
Luna Luna and Cloak have had a negative win rate at the highest rank for like seasons. So
Coach Mills (01:54:49.624)
Well the win rate argument's a little bit weird 'cause like win rate is is a little bit skewed because of how the percentage of play. Wait, what what am I looking at? Wait, wait, wait.
Flats (01:54:56.386)
So what data then?
CaptainCoach (01:54:59.679)
So this right here is Jeff Dino players. Like Jeff Dino is OP. Jeff Dino sucks. Don't pick it. It's not meta. Jeff Dino is OP. I don't know if you guys are familiar with this meme. Let's talk talk about community perception. 'cause
Coach Mills (01:55:09.144)
Okay.
Flats (01:55:10.798)
Yeah.
Flats (01:55:14.956)
Well, I think if you play Dino and Jeff cur like conventionally, they suck. But if you do the team captain strat and you run around the corner like run around the map, like that shit's actually kinda scary. But that's not traditional. And you would need months of that meta for people to catch on on like how to play that, you know? Anyways.
Coach Mills (01:55:15.096)
'Cause I 'cause I 'cause I I agree.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's it is actually scary. Right.
CaptainCoach (01:55:20.521)
Right.
CaptainCoach (01:55:24.371)
Ha ha ha
Coach Mills (01:55:31.616)
I I guess I guess mostly like what I'm saying is it doesn't matter what the numbers or win rates say in low elo. That doesn't mean that we can't bounce things to help their perception. Like if their perception is Squirrel Girl is an absolute terrorist or whatever, it doesn't matter if Squirrel Girl like a forty five percent win rate. It doesn't matter. We can still do stuff to maybe target their frustrations. Okay, why do you feel frustrated? Let's do balance changes. Maybe not just to the power of the character, but to the frustration itself. Right? Whatever that is. Maybe
CaptainCoach (01:56:00.597)
Mm.
Coach Mills (01:56:01.347)
But but for high but right yeah yeah right, right. Well Well I mean not necessarily. You you this there's there's ways to definitely do it. Maybe you make the projectiles move faster, bounce less, so you they're more you know, you have to target it more. Th there's there's ways to do it. But what I'm talking about like mostly with high ELO is it's just like the objective power level of a character can be more addressed because it is expected of a high ELO player to adapt.
Flats (01:56:02.263)
frustration is they stand still main and they shoot left click and they don't move. So they just take down all the damage in the world. Like, how do you fix that? You have to rework the whole character at that point.
CaptainCoach (01:56:09.821)
Elsa traps worth mentioning.
Coach Mills (01:56:30.966)
Like we don't we don't really expect the low elo player to adapt like you're talking about. We don't expect them to, you need to go Silock, you need to just flank the the squirrel girl and kill them. You need to stop standing main. We we cannot expect them to adapt because that that's the the elo they're in and the the experience they have. We we just can't expect that of them, but we can expect that of a high elo player. You need to adapt.
Flats (01:56:50.402)
I d I think it's like I I think you can't really say that though, because it's kinda like insulting, you know? It's like, you just don't adapt, you're stupid. But like it is it's true and it's not true, right? Where it's true is I did like a ca like back in seasons like one season zero or one or whatever the fuck, I wanted to have another account to play DPS on. So I like an unranked GM Captain America before Celestial was a thing. And I got flamed in like silver games 'cause I'm not standing frontline with Cap. Cap was the worst hero in the game at that point. I think I lost like two games the whole way through, and I think they were like right on my last edge of diamond where I literally had someone throw.
Coach Mills (01:56:55.454)
It's true! It might it's har I
Flats (01:57:20.18)
and like people's perception of the game isn't always matched up with how you could win the game, right? Like there's almost a social norm of how you're supposed to play. Supports sit in the back, healers sit in the back and heal the tanks. Heal the tanks. Why are you not healing the tanks? Like you should be sitting. Like, if you try to do the things that you'll actually supposed to do to win, your teammates will flame you and be like, what the fuck are you doing? Like, why you know, Luna? You know, you took an off angle there to like get a bit of a bit more of an angle. Yeah, you were still healing us, but you know, you killed three.
During that fight, and we lost one tank. Fuck you. You you you suck. Like you're you're a piece of shit, you know? And so, like the perception there is that Luna now sucks, even if they're winning the fight by doing the correct play. And so I think there's also a bit of a norm of like, I'm supposed to fit into playing, you know, this way. I need to stand and do damage. I need to stand and do other things. But if you're a high rank player, you understand you just walk off to the side, you break their LOS. It's like, I don't know, it's like a horse. Like if they they just can't see you, then you just don't exist or something. And then you just come in from the side and you kill them.
Coach Mills (01:58:18.538)
obje object permanence. You did you just said it's insulting and you said that
Flats (01:58:20.492)
Right? Yeah, they don't have object permanence. It doesn't exist. Like I can't tell you how many things I've spectated over the years. Right, right, right. No, no, it is. It is. But it's to say them no no, it is. I'm I'm serious. I'm serious. It is insulting though to say that they can't adjust because they never deal with it. And they're never taught. Like they don't know because they're so used to seeing the same shit every game. The times they bump into that is one out of ten. And the one out of tens they bump into it, they think it's someone else's fault.
Coach Mills (01:58:30.123)
No no no no
Flats (01:58:48.226)
So it's like they don't think there's a problem with their hero. They don't think there's a problem with the enemy hero. They think it's their teammates who fucked up. Right? So it's like, yes, like it's kind of insulting to say that, but like they've never had an opportunity to grow or to learn. And I think the game actually does a pretty good job of stopping them where they belong. So for example, you said squirrel girl is a menace. I think once you get past a certain rank, squirrel girl doesn't work anymore. Like they're not gonna just stand there and you can't just lob shots down me. You're gonna start losing.
And so, yeah, like maybe metal rank players think Scrollgirl's really good. I think as time's gone on, I see way less of people complaining about that because they get better at the game the longer they play and the skill floor starts to come up. They're not stupid, they just haven't had the experiences, and they don't care to learn as much. So they're not sitting there going, Let me vaud review my game. Okay, they came from the side there. What could I have done better there? They just have to be exposed to it over and over and over. That's the only way they'll end up learning.
Because it's more casual, like it's the same thing as if you play any game, even if you're not trying, right? Like you're not like trying to get better. If you die in a certain way a bunch of times, you're like, okay, well, I have to change this or else I can't get past this level, you know? And it's like, you're not try-harding fucking like a Mario game, but like if you keep doing the same jump and you fall into the pit, you're like, fuck, this isn't the correct way. I gotta find a new way, you know? But it doesn't feel like you're being an idiot. You it's just like trial and error to you.
And so if you say like, like they're stupid, you know, they can't adapt, they can't learn, it's like, well, no, it's like maybe they do adapt a little slower than someone who plays a lot and is actively trying to be better, but they just don't care about putting that time in. They will adapt. It's just gonna take a little longer. And so the whole point of this kind of circles back around to what's happening right now, where they're enjoying all these cooldowns and buttons because nobody knows how to play against them. It's almost like season zero. That's the big thing where everyone hasn't learned yet.
We caught up almost instantly because like it was the same game with extra buttons. So we've got to see what happens. They haven't got there yet. They'll get there in three months. They're just a little bit slower, a little bit behind, because they don't play the game as much. They're not intentionally playing to be better. They're not intentionally playing to learn. And that's okay because that's at the end of the day. It's a video game. It's supposed to be fun. And that's what they're playing for. They'll get there. But what we're trying to do right now is stop them from running into this wall that's gonna be really unfun to play against, and to the point where they might go.
Coach Mills (02:01:00.352)
Mm.
Flats (02:01:16.226)
I'm not enjoying this anymore and stop playing.
Coach Mills (02:01:20.759)
Mm.
CaptainCoach (02:01:20.937)
Well, I mean see it just seems like if we're gonna be in this perpetual state of having to, you know, like be behind with learning the game, I mean at a certain point, it's like who are you really balancing for? Like what is the goal of their balance team? Is it is it I think it's I think yeah.
Flats (02:01:35.618)
For fun and for people to play their game, and it's a live service game. And so those people are gonna come back and they're gonna have fun. And then then the content's gonna go away and they're gonna go back to doing whatever. But, you know, like they're all it has to be in a in a decent state for each time they come back. And where it is right now, you know, I don't know what the Steam charts look like. I'm sure they're still somewhat close to what it was, but I doubt it's anywhere close to the start of season nine. Like season nine was a big jump and an average jump. It's probably closer to like
CaptainCoach (02:01:51.625)
Yeah. Yeah.
Flats (02:02:03.778)
You know what it was at this like season eight, you know, maybe it's start of season eight or something like that. I don't know. I'd have to go check. people still play the game, they're still gonna actively play the game, they like the game, but we just hit the accelerator on how much harder the game's gonna be, how much more things you have to keep track of, never mind the visual clutter, everything's going off. And it also feels like sometimes draining it, you're just sitting there and shooting the same dudes for so long and nothing's happening, right?
Coach Mills (02:02:10.167)
I guess
Coach Mills (02:02:31.838)
If if they're gonna take three months to catch up, then using your logic about balancing for casuals, why why why does the netties have to change anything? Can't they just wait three months for everyone to catch up and then change it then?
Flats (02:02:45.122)
They could. They absolutely could. But we're all gonna suffer till then.
Coach Mills (02:02:46.508)
But but but but but Well, I know we are, but why why do we matter? Once again, Flats, like why do we
Flats (02:02:52.044)
We don't. That's why all that's why they're all screaming at us and saying we suck and who fuck you. We don't care. But that doesn't mean we're not people. That doesn't mean we can't say our opinions. That doesn't mean we can't say like this really fucking blows and like you're gonna bump into the problem soon, right?
CaptainCoach (02:02:56.787)
Yeah. Okay.
Coach Mills (02:02:57.96)
But but you you don't you don't think you don't think there's a you don't think you don't think there's but I think there's consequences. Isn't there consequences though for p like for just like the the entire top level of creators and pros and anyone that takes this game even slightly serious, because anyone that does is gonna be Grandmaster. Isn't there a consequence for just ignoring that entire group of people? Like like I know you don't think so? You don't think at all?
Flats (02:03:24.77)
No.
I I mean in some way long term
Coach Mills (02:03:29.516)
Cause even you yourself have talked about not playing the game as much as you used to. Cause they're largely not catering to you, right? And like Well, you're not having I don't think you're having fun because it's the game's not catered to you. Like I I think that I think that it's it's But but but if you if you have one day, like, as much as the people hate on you, and we'll talk about that in a little bit later, but as much as the people hate on you, if you got tired of rivals one day and just said, you know what, I'm gonna go I'm gonna go become a
Flats (02:03:34.094)
Mm hmm. No, I I said it 'cause I wasn't having as much fun. Like I wasn't enjoying my time.
Flats (02:03:43.128)
Hmm. I don't think I should be the person they're catering to either though.
Coach Mills (02:03:58.659)
GTA six, you know, VR guy, and and then and never play hero shooters again or go back to Overwatch or something. Like the game suffers for it. The the the actual survivability of the game, i it's important that people like you, boger, j three, and any other creator stays in this game. Like it's that th that's an important group of people.
Flats (02:04:01.999)
This is an idea.
Flats (02:04:20.302)
Depends on who you ask. There's a lot of people who think that all the creators are ruining the game though.
Coach Mills (02:04:21.558)
No, but but but I I d like I don't I don't care I don't care what they say. They're not correct. Just like they're not correct that Scorgirl's broken and they're they're just objectively not correct here. Like like they they can say what they can have whatever opinions they want, but it it's just not true. Like they're d they're pulling it from air. And and we even have tons of historical data to prove it where when large creators start to just leave a game and like I've I've I've been a proponent of this game where it's like I will play this game till like regardless of the state it's in.
Like I'll I'm I'm I mean I like Thor. I'm running it down with Thor. I don't care if he's terrible. I don't think I care if he's good. I will play this game no matter what. I don't care how bad this game gets, whatever. I'll play this game. But I don't think that it's healthy for the long term of the game to completely ignore the competitive side. And I think you're gonna end up hurting this game. Even for the casuals. Even if they don't see it, you're gonna hurt it for them eventually. Like there's gonna be consequences here. Where this game is gonna become a a pure casual.
Fortnite style game where no one cares about it like deeply and everyone just it's ver it's all in vain. like
Flats (02:05:21.41)
No one's saying completely ignore. That's what I mean by 90, 90, 90 to 95%. Like this is one of those times where we need to say something, like it's gone too far. But most of the other seasons, I think it was negligible in certain areas, right? Like there were seasons where I didn't have as much fun objectively. And I understand that because I had been playing a lot, right? Like if I didn't have as much fun, I'm not gonna play it a ton. But like I would come back the next season and now it feels refreshed. And I think that's how most people enjoy it, right? Like they come in, they play for a little and like
Coach Mills (02:05:28.16)
I I guess yeah.
Flats (02:05:51.234)
You know, I had bunch of bad games in a row, like people flaming me, people shit talking me, or like, you know, this Instalock Spider-Man running my game down, you know, and then you do you go fuck off for two weeks and then you the new content comes in, you're like, hey, this is great again. And that's the the proper way to enjoy it. What I mean by the competitive player is most of them play the game every day, somewhere between s four to eight hours a day. That is not how any video game is supposed to be played ever. For those who don't know, I used to have very c I mean, I still do.
Coach Mills (02:05:56.436)
Whoa.
Coach Mills (02:06:17.462)
Yeah.
Flats (02:06:21.206)
have close ties to the Overwatch team. I've got to speak with higher ups, executives in confidence. And I will never forget, I don't think I'm gonna get sued for this, but I'll never forget I had a conversation with some some some of the big dogs, and they legitimately told me we are n unsure what to do because there is no world where we can keep people who play eight hours a day, every single day, happy. The game is not designed to be played that often because they cannot put out enough content.
Every day or every month or every week to keep you satisfied. Like it's just unreasonable to them. NetEase, I would argue, puts out three times or even four times as much content as Overwatch does. And still you will still people see people that call for for the devs team to be fired because they're not doing a good enough job. And it's like, I hate to say it, but in many competitive games, their hardcore competitive community.
Coach Mills (02:07:00.062)
Yeah.
Flats (02:07:18.626)
Will be the ones that will cannibalize you fastest for their own needs. The part about casuals being that group is they're not as organized. They can't. They literally can't because they have such differing opinions and such differing wants that they're not gonna unite under one flag. They can't. It's not possible. But as a competitive player, it is.
Because you all agree, this one hero right now, really fucking broken. We need to nerf this guy into the ground because you can all see it. You all have the game sense. You have enough time. Everyone's in the same boat. On the casual side, because there's so much spread out spread out, yeah, they'll have a bunch of complaints. Scroll Girl's broken this season. you who's really good? Cyclops this season. you think Jeff is bad? Jeff's actually really good. I got a six-man eat the other day. Guess what? They're all over the place. They can't unite under one flag. And guess what? There's enough people that disagree with them that they just ignore it. They're just they're not gonna like their TikTok or like their take. They're just gonna scroll past it. Cause
Coach Mills (02:07:44.152)
Black cat, get her yeah, yeah, right.
Flats (02:08:12.162)
The silent majority doesn't engage with half that shit. So that combat competitive community, though, depending on who they are, if they've made their life and their game around or their personality or their pro player, for example, around the game, they're connected to it. They ain't leaving unless they have a major fraction fracture with either their own identity, their own team, like for a pro player getting dropped or no longer signed, you're not good enough anymore, or you genuinely just fall out of love with the game.
There is no amount of content that's gonna come out to make you fall in love with a game all over again. I use my own self for the Overwatch. I love Overwatch as a franchise. I have so much history with the series, and I know many on the team from either pros to like the dev team, most of my streamer friends are still there. I they could start putting out content as fast as rivals. I would never go back to playing their game full-time every single day because I would drive myself insane. I've learned that if you play the same game eight hours a day,
Coach Mills (02:09:03.158)
Yeah.
Flats (02:09:06.858)
Every single day, you're gonna turn into a nutcase. It's not healthy. So I know that I will go back and I'll play the new season. I'll play for maybe a week, or I'll fuck it, I'll go to BlizzCon and I'll get to see these people and I'll have a great time. But then I go do other stuff because that's how these games were always meant to be enjoyed. We are in a new age of gaming where we're not used to having live service games that have your attention for 10 years every single day. This is literally like
Coach Mills (02:09:33.688)
Yeah, we're right.
Flats (02:09:33.802)
Unprecedented times at that point. We have no data to look at other than older live service games that have had the same problem, and they're basically just shifting things around to try to keep themselves afloat and try to keep the attention and jingling the keys, like, come back. We're doing this. We're doing this, you know. Like most games are supposed be played for a year or played for a couple months, beat the game, and then you move on. Rivals is gonna run into the same problems as every other live service game. And I think that it's in their best interest to try to keep those casuals and keep those people coming back every cycle.
Coach Mills (02:09:47.256)
S yeah.
CaptainCoach (02:09:49.823)
Okay.
Flats (02:10:02.786)
Buy their skins, to play their game, to pump the Marvel IP. Marvel, let's be honest, Disney knows how powerful Marvel Rattles is. I mean, I've got I got invited out to go to a I think it was it was like the Daredevil TV or show or something in New York. They were like, you can go film with like the cast like 15 minutes. And I was like, is it paid? And they're like, no. And I was like, I'm good then. Like, I'm not going all the way to New York to meet some dudes who don't know who I am, talk to them for 15 minutes, shoot some video on my phone, maybe hop in the practice range and show them what Daredevil looks like and then go home. Like, I ain't doing that. but like
CaptainCoach (02:10:20.693)
Yeah.
Coach Mills (02:10:21.169)
Ha ha ha.
Flats (02:10:31.32)
They understood the value of like we want to connect with rivals. And that's why they're doing this whole Doom movie thing in the game. They want this game to be a marketing vehicle for the Marvel IP. They're gonna do everything they can to keep that shit pumping. And they're currently have an idea of what they want and what they want to do in the future with getting people to come back consistently. And that's what they're executing. So like we say, we sit here and say, like, they need to have a plan. I think they do. I just don't think we like it.
CaptainCoach (02:10:57.905)
Yeah. Yeah. I I I totally this is something we've talked about a lot where I just don't think a lot of the top players goals really align. I th I think you've made your your stance pretty clear. What I kind of want to talk about now then is we have this high elo community. We see that there is still some value in appeasing like and and catering to these people at least a little bit, I think was something we c we can kind of agree on a a tiny bit. There are some things that are not in the game that a lot of people have been talking about for a while. I'm just gonna rattle them off.
Flats and Mills, if you want to do it too. I mean, I kinda already know your opinions. And you let me know if this would be good for everybody if they were implemented or not. So we have having more bands in higher ranks and removing double bands. Do you think that would be better for the game and would immediately like raise the game quality?
Flats (02:11:44.942)
Double bands, yes, more bands no.
CaptainCoach (02:11:47.453)
Okay. bigger stacking in Celestial Plus. Three stacks, maybe four stacks.
Coach Mills (02:11:48.108)
Okay.
Flats (02:11:55.779)
Endless cat and mouse mo endless cat and mouse game. I've played a watch for years. Same thing that would always happen. Always say we want to play together. The game would okay, fine. They were loosened restrictions, streamers get to play together, yippee, everybody's having fun. Then there's the four stack that VPNs to Australia at four in the morning to abuse Qs to get rank one. Everyone gets upset. Solo queue players feel like they're losing the game because they can't get a good game. Matchmaking quality goes down, cues go up because you're you're basically either a solo queue player that's stuck in a group, and then that four stack gets mad at you, and then they're all flaming you, and you're fighting them one, four and four.
Or you go back the solo queue route and you basically force everyone in the solo queue game. Match quality does go up, but overall player sentiment and fun goes down. Endless cat and mouse game, you never win.
Coach Mills (02:12:33.44)
It it in a hyper com in a hyper casual game though, doesn't it just make sense to just like just allow three stacking, right?
Flats (02:12:41.142)
Yeah, a hundred percent. But they've made it very clear that Celestial Above is not a compet is not a casual game. The the rank system of the game defines it. But they're not gonna do balance patches for for ranked and for one rank and then the rest. That just isn't gonna happen. So like the balance is for everybody, but they've made clear rules for the for the high rank players, and they're like, Yeah, you guys are high ranked, and the rank system of the game backs that up. Hmm?
Coach Mills (02:12:46.614)
But they don't they don't balance it like it though. They just
Coach Mills (02:12:53.516)
Well yeah.
Coach Mills (02:13:00.812)
I I I d I guess this is there's just a disconnect. It just feels like there's a disconnect there. Where they're like it it's like we have to Yeah, we know we we have to Yeah, but
Flats (02:13:06.85)
But there's not though. Like they still get to play the game. They're like, you're still part of our community, but like you don't get special privilege. You're just like we're gonna try to make sure that you guys are contained and that you have good matchmaking quality. Sorry?
Coach Mills (02:13:13.91)
Well w we have special rules though. We have special rules where we can't you can't three stack and sell. You can't three stack like w
Flats (02:13:20.066)
Yeah, and I'm not saying like you I'm just saying no matter what you do, you could take it okay, like let's do it tomorrow. I'm with you. Go ahead, make it three stacking. I get to have fun with my friends again. But guess
Coach Mills (02:13:25.494)
Yeah. Okay. I mean the my problem is like if the game is super casual and and like Celestial feels like a Mickey Mouse rank, which it is, then let me have fun with my friends. Like I mean I'm just I'm just saying, yeah.
Flats (02:13:33.536)
Mm-hmm. No, I I'm with you. I'm agreeing with you, but I'm telling you, it's an endless cycle though, where if you do that, in a couple months from now, all those players are gonna start complaining that the match quality is down and they're tired of getting flamed by three stacks, and that every game is basically who has the better three-stack, and that you know, you get pro players that are on alt accounts, smurfing, doing whatever, and people get really fed up, and then that ease goes, Okay, we'll just we'll we'll flip it back. Same thing you step in Overwatch all the time. It's an endless mount mass game. You will never win that.
CaptainCoach (02:13:59.573)
Yeah.
Flats (02:14:02.552)
The only thing you can do is every time one side gets too annoyed, you just flip it back to the other for a little while. And then once that side gets a side, then you can put it back. They've done that, though. Like they've literally done that.
Coach Mills (02:14:06.24)
Well I'm I'm down for that though. I'm down I'm down for that. I'm down for that. Well let's let's flip it now. Like let's let's flip it. Yeah I'm saying.
CaptainCoach (02:14:09.13)
Ha ha ha.
Flats (02:14:14.03)
Okay, yeah, that's fine. That's fine. But I'm just saying you'd no it'll never win. Like you could you could put it back right now and then in three months from now they're gonna they're gonna probably flip it back again.
CaptainCoach (02:14:14.207)
Okay.
Coach Mills (02:14:22.012)
sorry, I'm I'm gonna throw in one here, Captain Kitch. so Boger actually asked for this, which I was surprised by. No T P in overtime. No T you swapping the strange doesn't allow you to T P. What do you think? I I was I was surprised it's coming from him 'cause he's the strange guy, so
Flats (02:14:36.716)
Yeah, I I mean, like you you can win a game off that. Like the other team's just too stubborn to swap. Like if you're just you're smart enough that you're the first person who de is dead and swaps. It's also a reason not to play strange. Like if you play strange, you are you arguably make your team worse because if you're alive and it's last fight scenario and you haven't died yet, you can't T P. So you'd have to die. So like he's literally a T P bot at the higher ranks. A hundred percent. Like there's no reason.
CaptainCoach (02:14:52.65)
Yeah.
CaptainCoach (02:15:01.257)
The Yeah, like the biggest buff to Doctor Strange would actually be like a direct nerf from like a design perspective, just making it so his portal is like a thirty second cooldown when you pick him just by default. So you can just swap and pick in like portal plays. Like that would that'd be the single most wind rate increasing change they could make to him. Just because now it would be exclusive to him pretty much.
Flats (02:15:23.926)
Yeah, I mean, it's I think there'd be a lot of pushback. I think people would be very annoyed because they're so used to it now. But I mean, if you're talking about a perfectly balanced game, like yeah, it it's it's stupid. Like we did the same thing in Overwatch with like Wrecking Ball. Wrecking Ball, he's a character that's like he's literally just a giant fucking ball and he rolls and you can you could basically zip out of spawn within like a second. You could go from spawn to the the point in a second and a half and be there to contest with six hundred HP. And he also works kinda like Venom, where instead of having lower HP when he hits his his button,
It's actually how many enemies. So if the whole team's fighting on the point, he rolls over them and hits his button. Now he's got 1500 HP and then he's fucking rolling. And then guess what? Now everyone's has time to respawn and then you can TP at a spawn with Kiri. Like they've done stuff to do that, to to help that. Like it wouldn't be a bad idea. I just think people would probably get a little bit upset about it. But also I think if you did do that, you'd have to make strange like significantly better. Cause like he just he just isn't really that good right now. And if anything, he's a bit of a hindrance to have on your team.
So yeah, I mean I'm not against it, but
Coach Mills (02:16:22.038)
Yeah. With the w Okay. What about performance no performance bonuses past Grandmaster?
Flats (02:16:28.75)
Sure. Sure. I mean, I think that
Coach Mills (02:16:33.088)
Okay, you you I'm sure you've failed the tank tax. The tank tax is brutal.
Flats (02:16:35.874)
Yeah, you feel the tank tax all the time. It's fucking ass. And it's like, you know, if you play DPS and you frag out, like great. Like you did you did your job. You did awesome. Like, congrats to you. But you know, you also fill in on support or something and it's like you do your job. Like, are you perfect stats line? Maybe not. Like, but you did like what you needed to do to win, and you don't get nearly as many points as the next guy. Yeah, like like I I completely understand. I think the whole reason performance based points even exists is to get people out of the metal ranks faster so that you don't have Smurfs in there. Like you get
like in Overwatch we have something called calibration where like as you're queuing, like it reali the system realizes, shit, this guy's too low rank and gives you like hyper boot juiced points to get to get you out of there.
Coach Mills (02:17:11.17)
Do Do you think that that should be in Do you think that should be in this? Cause like in Overwatch, can't you place in a high ELO if you like 10 0 your place? You can't you can't do that here.
Flats (02:17:18.494)
yeah, you can I mean, but that's a there's a c it's a quick it's a quick play abuse, right? So basically, you go into quick play, like play a super high juiced character that you're really good at and you basically win every game, and then when you go into your placements, you win all your games in a duo or something and you can basically place right into the highest rank. I think this that would do this game some good. I think there should be it actually should implement Overwatch's old system where there's a cap.
Coach Mills (02:17:42.081)
Right, yeah. Agree.
Flats (02:17:42.336)
so there used to be a cap before where you the highest you could place was 3500, the bottom of masters, that would be probably this game's equivalent of like GM. but that would actually do a lot of good because if you had really good alt account smurf players like from top five hundred slash or whatever, they would skip all the metal ranks. They would go straight to the GM and start the real rank system. so yeah, like sure, make make placement masters actually matter and not like people talk about their placements. Like if I play my placements at the start of season and I go two and s two and eight, or or like you know what I mean, I lose I win two games.
I'm still placing like top of GM, bottom of celestial. If you start in silver or gold and you go nine and one, you're gonna be like plat at best. And they'll look at it and go, What the fuck? I want all my placement games. But they don't realize there's matchmaking in the background. I'm playing against significantly better players that entire time. So the system knows I'm not playing against plat players or silver players or gold players. You are. So the system's not gonna put you super high, but it confuses people a
Coach Mills (02:18:15.105)
Right.
Coach Mills (02:18:29.847)
Right.
CaptainCoach (02:18:30.484)
Yeah.
Flats (02:18:39.48)
But like the original placements when you account first places, yeah, fuck it, do it.
Coach Mills (02:18:43.532)
Yeah, I mean I mean just so that I mean it would solve smurfing. Like a lot, like a lot less smurfing. There's no reason that an like someone that's on a s like an alt has to like slaughter silver and golds and plats to get to their elo. Okay, there's there's actually people that I mean you there's people that throw your games. There's actually a notable thrower, Pinky Mellon. He's like known for throwing flats his games. And I wanted to ask you, how do you feel about throwers?
Flats (02:18:47.661)
Sure.
Flats (02:19:10.862)
Wait, I have a no notable thrower named Pinky Melon?
Coach Mills (02:19:13.226)
Yeah, yeah, you do. Yeah. but but s specifically I wanna I wanna hear your opinion about thrower. I th what do you how do you feel about th how do you feel about throwers? No don't worry about it. I I'm j I'm just curious about what what how you feel about throwers.
Flats (02:19:16.706)
Do I?
Flats (02:19:20.59)
Is that like a mag player or something? Am I?
Flats (02:19:27.494)
Flats (02:19:30.99)
There's definitely a joke here I'm not I'm not getting but
Coach Mills (02:19:32.108)
Yeah, no now it's I just Yeah. Why is ch what is Chad saying? No. I'm I'm I'm curious of how you feel about throwers and the report system.
Flats (02:19:41.038)
I mean, it's it's dog shit. Like it doesn't do anything. I legitimately had someone drop the hard end the other day in front of my entire audience in game. And I told the enemy team at the end of the game, and multiple people came into my chat, and like the entire lobby report got muted for like two games. Like, okay. I had a guy the other day where I was actually trying to get because we had a Jeff player, a hard, dedicated Jeff player, wouldn't swap. I'm like, I'm gonna work with this guy, I'm gonna Dino. Let's try the Dino thing.
No offense to this guy. He could not figure it the fuck out. Like I was trying to tell him to speed in on backlines and he would like he'd pop the bubble and then like I'm on their mantis and he just doesn't shoot. And I'm like, play the fucking game. Turn your brain on. But like I'm not gonna get mad at the guy, right? But someone got mad at me for trying that with him, and so they just ran out their spawn and just like basically threw the game. But we weren't gonna win anyways. I don't care. I can move on my day. If I I could have a hundred games thrown, like I'm I just I'm gonna do
Coach Mills (02:20:22.271)
Ha ha ha.
Ha ha ha.
CaptainCoach (02:20:28.479)
Yeah.
Coach Mills (02:20:32.641)
Here.
Coach Mills (02:20:36.792)
I don't know if you can if you could see this. I don't know if you I don't know I don't know. I don't I don't I just wanted to bring this data up, because this data is circulating the internet right now. AFK rate by Hero Mane. AFK rate there's also there's also abusive communication penalty rate by most played hero. What
Flats (02:20:38.976)
No, they were di they they were he I think they were playing I think they were playing Hella and then they they took Dino.
CaptainCoach (02:20:41.951)
Ha ha ha ha.
Flats (02:20:48.792)
I think this is bait. I think it's funny bait though.
CaptainCoach (02:20:48.858)
A we
CaptainCoach (02:20:57.503)
See, I see I I laugh at this. I view this differently than everybody else. I feel bad for these players. Like I feel bad like I'm s yeah, like 'cause it's like they're the ones going in, taking the most risk and the least expected to get help. So it's natural that if the games don't go their way, they're gonna quit.
Flats (02:20:57.698)
Yeah.
Coach Mills (02:21:03.449)
Joe, why do you feel bad for these players?
Coach Mills (02:21:11.274)
I d no no no not the not this one. Black cat has no excuse. No Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah what is Wow Elsa Elsa there's not Elsa takes zero risk I as well like like what I yeah this is j this is like generational dive slander right here. but well in in your experience who throws the most? I'm curious. There's also this one by the way.
Flats (02:21:15.714)
Wait, how is Black Widow taking a huge risk? I'm curious on that one. You sit in the back and play fucking cookie clicker. Like, what do you mean?
CaptainCoach (02:21:18.493)
Not maybe not we know, okay.
CaptainCoach (02:21:23.633)
Yeah, maybe not widow.
CaptainCoach (02:21:28.969)
Let's more of talk about this one here.
Flats (02:21:31.291)
okay.
Coach Mills (02:21:39.232)
The lowest abuse communicate communicative penalty.
Flats (02:21:39.399)
The Jeff one is just bait. This is just a bait one. Like they're just this is this is blatant engagement farming. Like genuinely engagement farming to the moon. I I I I actually know that for a fact. I'm not gonna out how I know that, but I do actually know that for a fact. But yeah, so I I mean I don't I don't g I I'm I'm not I honestly like I everyone always memes on the Spider-Man player. I don't I genuinely don't give a fuck. Like I like I will get annoyed if people play certain characters in my games, for example, like before people figured out
CaptainCoach (02:21:44.894)
Ha ha ha ha.
Coach Mills (02:21:53.625)
well you you know okay, cool, okay, cool, okay. I'm thought it's it thought it's adjusting.
Flats (02:22:11.244)
White Fox was really bad this season. I remember the beginning of the season telling people, hey, White Fox is not good. I'm sorry. Like that she just didn't keep up with the power crew. I'm not saying she's a sucks a character that's badly designed. I'm not saying that you're, you know, your character like should never play her again. I'm just saying right now she is weak. And people were like, fuck yeah. And then I get a White Fox in my game. They never swap. They're always they're always gonna stay on it. And then they get shit stomped. And you know who that feels the worst on? The tank player, because he ain't getting healed. And guess who's gonna be the first one to blame?
Coach Mills (02:22:37.4)
Yeah, it does.
Flats (02:22:40.84)
It's me, motherfucker. And I gotta be the one that deals with it. So then I'm more annoyed at the white fox player because motherfucker, you were throwing me under the bus and you don't even realize you're throwing me under the bus. And it's something you gotta deal with. But regardless, so I at the end of the day, I'm not gonna openly flame the guy. I might might and I don't even do it very often. I might ask him, hey, can you play something different here? But if they don't, I don't care. Like I just play the game, I try to win, and then I move on with my day. That's how I FQ I I might complain to my chat.
Coach Mills (02:22:41.526)
Yeah, it's
CaptainCoach (02:22:59.657)
Yeah.
Flats (02:23:05.58)
I might be guy's like, fuck, this sucks. I'm just gonna be dead on cooldown. Then I'm dead. Guess who's gonna get blind in a second? And then like two fights later, boom, it happens. But like that's just me talking to my chat as my stream. I'm not gonna flame the guy in game. Like, I want him to play well. He's supposed to he's just playing the game, whatever. If he shows up to my chat and watches the VOD, you hurt your own feelings. I'm sorry. but like
CaptainCoach (02:23:15.636)
Yeah.
CaptainCoach (02:23:22.803)
Just just go Ultron, put a drone on them, let know that we have more healing.
Flats (02:23:25.794)
That that's the way! That's the way. The amount of games I've had where someone goes, you know what, I kinda wanna win. Let's ultra on it, and boom, we just win the game. Regardless though, I mean, like, I I'm not someone that's like, my god, this guy's locking this thing my game. I I I I hate you. Like, I I kind of just don't really care that much. like, yeah, I'll have moments where I'm like, yeah, this is annoying, but I'm not gonna be like genuinely like, this guy's ruining my whole day by playing this one character, fuck these players, you know. It's like
Coach Mills (02:23:27.743)
Yeah.
CaptainCoach (02:23:30.781)
Yeah.
Flats (02:23:52.813)
Yeah, your character might suck right now. You just haven't fought it figured it out yet. You'll catch up in a week. And then they typically do. And like I haven't seen like almost any white fox since then, you know? but sometimes, you know, you just have to be the guy who's the messenger to let people know that the character's not good.
CaptainCoach (02:24:05.181)
Okay.
Coach Mills (02:24:05.528)
real quick, I I I know we're kind of moving on from this topic, but at one last thing I wanted to talk about the the casual versus competitive thing before we move on is I know you I know you you say like five percent or ten percent for competitives and like ninety percent for casuals. Is it possible like would you agree to like an eighty twenty or like a seventy five twenty five or like maybe just the concept that as the game gets older
We can do slightly more competitive decisions as time goes on. Like maybe that maybe like, you know, it we can keep it casual, but just one small thing every six months. Or we because I think the the the casual audience and just the audience of the game overall, they do evolve. Like everyone does get a slightly more competitive as time goes on. So what what would you say to that? Do you can you agree to just a slight you know, still majority, vast majority for the casuals, but my
CaptainCoach (02:24:35.189)
Bargaining here.
Flats (02:24:57.768)
No, I'm sticking on 90 20 10. But but but but I will agree to the second half that as the game goes on, you do need to. I think that actually before season nine, we were getting to the point where like, okay, we have to start thinking about this now because we're approaching two years. Once a game's been out for a year into two years, that's when things get competitive, right? I I've started with you know what I think Rebels needs right now?
I think Rivals needs a very well-spoken, charismatic coaching content creator. I think that we're right around that point where around the two-year mark of a game's lifespan, someone typically pops up because people, once you get around that point, either commit to not playing the game anymore or they want to be better at the game and they want to climb. We're getting close to that point. And I think we were almost there until season nine. Season nine kind of put a big ass fucking reset on all that.
Coach Mills (02:25:35.704)
Yeah. Imagine doing coaching content.
Flats (02:25:56.936)
so now I don't know because like how often are they gonna do this, right? Like they could do this every year and they do a big big refresh similar to how Overwatch does. I don't know. that said though, I think that as a game goes on, it will inherently always become more competitive. Great examples. If you look at season zero versus so let's say 8.5, the difference in the average player's skill level was immense. Their knowledge
Swapping, right? Like they still have basic knowledge of swapping. Like they have a BP, I go thing. You know, most of it was made out of memes, right? Like the memes of my god, like they have a BP, I gotta go thing. all of all of those that would pop up that did teach people, shit, they have a good BP. I can counter that by playing thing, right? they're playing dive. Let me go Bucky when Bucky was a thing. when he was still strong versus dive. There are things that the player base has learned over time that it didn't know before.
That will only get more or sorry, it will only get stronger over time. Knowledge will still build up as they have more experiences. They get to see more things with their eyes. More content is made, more stuff is explained to them, et cetera. At a certain point, the game becomes hard to get into. We talked about league. I have no desire to play league. If I went to play league tomorrow, how difficult would it be to get in? I have no league experience. It'd probably be fucking ass for a long time.
Especially no MOBA experience either, right? My only MOBA experience is I played like a little bit of deadlock, but like I don't know if I'd that's like it is a it is a MOBA, but like you know what mean. I can also transfer over FPS skills and hero shooter skills that like help. That wouldn't really help in league. It would be really hard. It would be really difficult. And now if I'm someone that enjoys being challenged and I actually wanted to learn it in climb, I think I could. It would require immense effort. But if I just wanted to hop in and play with my friends for a day.
CaptainCoach (02:27:22.879)
Yeah.
Coach Mills (02:27:29.494)
Yeah.
Flats (02:27:49.103)
And my like, let's my whole friend group's like, let's go play league, and it's like, I don't really play league. like just come play with us, you'll have fun. And then I play four games of getting spawn killed. Am I gonna want to play it again? Great example is the Jinxie clip. I don't know if you've seen the Jinxie clip, but he was talking about his experience with rivals, and he said that he didn't really enjoy it because it's just always something's happening. You always have to click buttons, you're always shooting, you're always respawning, there's no downtime. Part of that could be he just doesn't enjoy like those high intensity games.
CaptainCoach (02:28:04.106)
Yeah.
Flats (02:28:15.768)
Part of it could also be it was very overwhelming, and he was basically just stuck on rocket holding right click the entire game, getting spawn killed by Kingsman. There's a lot of ways you could look at that. you know, but I mean, like there's the Punisher clip too. Like he's straight like he's fucking thrusting on Punisher, didn't actually know to shoot. And so some of these things aren't as intuitive as we think. And as the game gets older, it will only get worse. And when your game gets older, it will become more competitive where you like it or not. So Rivals is holding with an iron fist.
CaptainCoach (02:28:20.435)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Coach Mills (02:28:22.699)
Yeah yeah.
Flats (02:28:45.822)
Onto its casual community as tight as it can. And it's gonna squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze until the sand finally slips from its hand and it loses enough that if you ever held a handful of sand, at some point, like no more really comes out. You'll lose a lot, but you'll have more in there. And then that's your competitive community that you start building with. It's much smaller than what you first started with, and it makes sense for them to not want to let go. That's a lot of money. They're making bank off of that.
Coach Mills (02:28:52.34)
It's
Flats (02:29:12.738)
They have Marvel movies coming out that they're going to use this game as an advertising vehicle for. Someday will come where the casuals do not return nearly as often or at all. And that is when you go even more into the competitive side. But every few months, doing a small tweak toward them, sure. But I think there's way more they could do outside of the game for Pro Scene, for example, like drops. They could advertise this the Pro Scene much more. They do these huge prize pools.
Coach Mills (02:29:33.644)
Yeah.
Flats (02:29:40.28)
Why not do half the prize pool and do a live event more often? You know, get people to actually show up and engage with the community and actually physically wanna be there and actually wanting to participate and become a community instead of just an online game.
Coach Mills (02:29:41.921)
Yeah.
Let's see.
Coach Mills (02:29:56.792)
So you're saying when GTA six comes out and all the casuals leave, we can then we can balance for the competitors, right? It's actually interesting that we haven't had any big games since Rivals came out. Like I don't think there's any that there hasn't been anything to steal any casual viewers from Rivals in any way.
Flats (02:30:02.496)
I mean i it's possible. I mean it
CaptainCoach (02:30:03.453)
G
Flats (02:30:08.268)
Yeah, Rivals was the last one.
CaptainCoach (02:30:13.865)
GTA six will save rivals.
Flats (02:30:14.018)
Well, I guess it was Arc Raiders, but that kinda died.
Coach Mills (02:30:15.744)
I mean yeah, I okay, go go.
CaptainCoach (02:30:18.239)
So you you're it almost seems like your advice then to like people who are seeking a a a competitive experience as being like the primary goal is to just kinda hold out until we get past this onboarding phase of just attracting a big player base. Would that be somewhat accurate? Or like would you just okay. Sure.
Flats (02:30:35.232)
No, my advice is to you is to not treat this as a competitive game because it is inherently not. Like you can want it to be a competitive game and you can treat it as a competitive game, but you cannot be mad at the game for not giving you the experience you're asking for because it's not. It's the same way as like if you went to go play Big Walk and then you got upset at Big Walk for not being an action-packed game with monsters and things you shoot. That's not what you signed up for. Rivals is not giving is not telling you it's a competitive game, it has competitive aspects.
It has parts of the game that it could potentially build on in the future, but right now it's not there. It's just not. Like I'm not saying it won't be someday, but there's so many things in this game that you can look at and go, this is not competitive.
Coach Mills (02:31:11.628)
Br I guess we're I I guess what people are
I guess what people have problems with that and sometimes problems with you, which like you know, for better or for worse, is ultimately it's a decision, right? Like it's a decision by the devs about what direction they go in, right? And you understand the nuance behind it, which is like the money is extremely important, the marketing vehicle is extremely important, but it could be a competitive game if they wanted it to be. Like they they could make that call. Just like you could make the call to promote it.
Or like back it or say that would be better for the game. Like anyone can make the call to say, you know, money this is the the money's here, but this matters more. Or that you know, the long term health of the game matters more. Like you can decide they could decide tomorrow to be to shift it towards a more competitive side. And so when you say stuff like, Don't treat this game like a competitive game, but you can have your opinion on it, I mean that's true, but like it makes sense why people want it to be more than what it is, and it's
possible for it to be more than what it is now if maybe you changed your mind, we changed people's minds, the dev changes their mind. You know, like it's not it it's not an unrealistic thing to have happen and I don't think it's an unrealistic thing for people to want either. That I'm that I anyways.
Flats (02:32:35.448)
What there's no reason for me to ever do that. Even if I wanted to. Let's let's let's let's be completely blunt. There's no reason. and let's be real. If you talk about this anywhere online, most people that you the most liked replies, the most upvoted replies, whatever it is, is things along the lines that they don't want streamers and pro players ruining their game.
They want their experience prioritized more than anything. They don't care if you're not having fun. You're not them. They are more selfish. They are not thinking about anyone outside of their own experience. If I, in this one moment, am telling you that competitive it's gone too far and it's ruining the competitive side, they need to dial it back. I have not seen this level of pushback on anything in a long time, like maybe pre-Overwatch Overwatch days. Think about how aggressive it is. Think about how.
not just aggressive but like out of control. It even something as small as talking about the team up system and talking about power creep has gotten in the last week. Right? So there's two ways of looking at it, right? Why would I do that as a creator in a person? Why am I gonna stick my neck out to d to do something like, and if it works out, like let's say it does go more competitive and then it ends up being the right like decision, quote unquote, well all those people stop playing and they're like, yeah, well that guy, he ruined the game.
He's the one who talked about So then they listen to him. That's number one. Number two is the egotistical route of how why do I know more than all of them? Right? Like I have 10 years' experience. I have been in this game a long time. I've got to watch history repeat itself. But maybe that's ego. Maybe that's me saying, I know more than you when I might not. So it's like you have all these people that are saying.
Coach Mills (02:34:24.172)
But you do but you do know more than them. I mean th I mean you do know more than the random plat player.
Flats (02:34:27.882)
I believe that, but what if that's just ego? What if that's just my ego that's talking at that point and it's not actually the truth? And who am I to disagree with ten thousand people or a hundred thousand people?
Coach Mills (02:34:34.834)
I at so at at some point someone has to make the call.
CaptainCoach (02:34:39.215)
I mean i you you you as a thorb
Coach Mills (02:34:39.894)
Like I I I I I don't so I don't I don't I don't like I think for example, me and Light probably disagree on like ninety five percent of things. I disagree with him about a lot. But the one thing that I do agree with him on is the idea of like a layman. Like like like y you are more of an expert. Like like like knowledge matters, experience matters, skill matters. And like the opinions of of you do trump the evidence of a of a casual Wanda player. Like it it just does. Like and it has to.
Flats (02:35:00.27)
Mm-hmm.
Coach Mills (02:35:08.492)
They you can't just give every single person a say and a voice at all times. Like just like you can't have every single person decide how to build a rocket ship. Like people some some things matter. Like like and I and I'm I'm here saying that I know that you like to champion the casual community, and I think that something that's like you you, me, Captain Coach, we are not like these pros that say we don't give a fuck about the casual experience. Cause we do care. We care about the game.
Flats (02:35:37.304)
I agree.
Coach Mills (02:35:37.772)
We care about the health, but that doesn't mean that you have to sacrifice what you personally would like about the game for the greater good. I don't think you have to do that. I really don't think you have to do that at all.
Flats (02:35:49.751)
I that's a tough one because I had I had to be the guy to have the hard conversations in Overwatch publicly and privately. And I think that the game's improved immensely since those days, right? I think I am someone who gets blamed a lot. People always say, like, flats ruined Overwatch, but Overwatch has never been better. And it's like, well, some people could say, it's because you know he didn't play our game anymore. Have you seen how Blizzard works? They take years to do anything. Like
Coach Mills (02:36:15.967)
I all of the all of the blame, none of the credit, right? Yeah.
Flats (02:36:19.594)
Not to be that guy, but like I can still point to many things that are coming out to this day that I have had conversation with to either executives or directors of that game. And I still know about stuff potentially coming in the future that is good for the game. Because that's how long their pipelines are. But that's still something that I have to deal with every single day. Why would I want to be that person? Because like, even if I believe I'm objectively correct.
I am now the bad guy at the end of the day. And what if I'm not correct? If I'm not correct, I've now made a decision that affects everyone else, or champion something that affects everyone else, that might be completely wrong, and it's ruined it for all these other people. Even though I've been right in the past and I was right, and it ended up being a good thing long term. What if I'm not? Because I haven't been right about everything in Rivals. There's been times where I've gotten stuff wrong because it is a different game. It is a new game.
It has many similarities, it has many overlaps. But also, you know, I think there's a bit of a responsibility that you need to have when you call for something that like you have to truly, truly believe it. And I still truly think that this game is better off being casual. To give you a fun fact, I was just looking at when I was looking for your video that you made on Me Back in Overwatch, I was looking for it and I was scrolling flats too. And you know, my season nine point zero tier list?
has more views than my video covering the death of PVE in Overwatch Two.
Coach Mills (02:37:50.112)
That's insane viewership. That's insane. Yeah.
Flats (02:37:51.256)
Two years ago, three years ago, more views are on a a month-old tier list than the biggest game-breaking news that the game ever had. Like it that is insane how many more people play this game and are inactive in this game and this community than what was like kind of the peak of Overwatch 2 at that point. And I think it's it's gone back up again, but like at that point, like that was like the most disgust moment of the game. No, people aren't even as as involved or even as active.
So, like, I don't think, at least currently, that that's the right way to go because it's not going to make them the most money. It's not going to keep people long term. And if people are having fun, who am I to tell you, fuck you, you're wrong? Like you're not allowed to have fun. Like this need this needs to be balanced this way. The reason why I'm saying right now, 10 toes down, fuck you, you're wrong, is because that 10%, that 5% of the player base is getting an unplayable experience.
And I am much more comfortable standing up for those people who literally are having a bad experience such a bad experience right now that they can't play that I would do the exact same way if it was the opposite, where if the bronze and silver and gold players had such a shit experience that they couldn't play the game, I would cover them the exact same way. And so I try to treat both sides somewhat equally, but I understand that the casual player overall as overall.
Does need a bit more agency, needs a little bit more of like, hey, this needs to be for fun for them. Without them, like this game doesn't survive long term. But this one instance of, okay, competitive side has gone too far. We need to say something. Even if it's not agreeable to them, even if it's not good, because I know that those people still deserve to play the game. Just because they're better than others at the game does not mean that they shouldn't get to play or don't get to have a good experience at all.
Coach Mills (02:39:42.136)
Okay.
CaptainCoach (02:39:43.667)
I don't know. I I I think it's I I mean I I respect your restraint when it comes to having an a opinion about how the game like specifically should should be balanced, but I I do think there are some like core pillars you can take away just from like good game design that are like objective truths that you you don't need to look at it from like a high rank, low rank perspective. Like I case in point, like t I I feel like the tenacity system is something that's just clearly a failure. Like would you agree with that or?
Flats (02:40:13.64)
I think it I think it's a failure and n and okay. So when it came out, it was like whoa, spooky. And there were certain characters that were clearly losing versus the others, like Hulk is a good example, Rogue is a good example, like th they were just big losers, right? And then like they realized, shit, like maybe this is like, you know, a a bit bad for them. Let's tone it down. and so they toned it down, and then I think it just ended up becoming a myth. Like really isn't a thing.
Unless you get hit with like a certain combo of CCs, which I would s argue is like things CCs into like, I don't know, like Angela or something. And it's like then it will kick in. But does it doesn't even really matter at that point because you're still hard locked to like the pillar, but you technically can't be CC'd again, I guess. so it's like it was a good idea in theory, and I think people got spooked by it. And I think it had some problems, so they nerfed it down really hard to try to find a better baseline. And then
Coach Mills (02:40:57.935)
Yeah, it is so so weird.
CaptainCoach (02:40:58.826)
Yeah.
Flats (02:41:10.796)
I think they basically said, hmm, I'm not really sure like how we we go about this to make it actually balance and not make it feel good for both the tank player and the people who are actually CCing. So they just left it in this kind of state of disrespair. So I wouldn't say it's completely a failure because I liked the attempt and I like that what they went with it. And there are times where it kicks in where it's like, okay, I just got CC'd eight times. At least now I have tenacity. But like it's such a rare thing, and it's like you don't even notice it when it's there most of the time.
Coach Mills (02:41:23.37)
It's right.
Flats (02:41:40.262)
so like yeah, I I I think it was a it was it was a failure, but I at least respect their attempt. And the fact that it's in the state it currently is is better than nothing, but it's so rare that it comes up and when it does come up, it's not.
CaptainCoach (02:41:55.967)
Well, wouldn't you say that that is a change? I mean, if do you think there was a certain part of the community that that change was directed towards, like the tenacity change? Do you think it was directed tank players? Okay. you know, I wouldn't you also say that like in the higher ranks that being chained C seed is like much more of a problem. I guess now I think about it like eighteen verse eighteen, like if they even consider remotely that that was I'm kinda like finding counterexamples in my argument here.
Flats (02:42:06.424)
Tank players.
Coach Mills (02:42:19.414)
Yeah.
CaptainCoach (02:42:24.447)
But I I my my point is just there there are some changes that they could easily make to the game. And it's kind of why I was asking to rattle off that list earlier, that would just be an objective win and wouldn't affect the lower ranks at all. My question is like, yes, you you're being responsible in in your your like respect for game developers. I I I honestly I respect that. because I'm selfish. I just say what I want in the game. But don't you think there there are some easy home runs that they could do that they're like they're simply if they just listened a bit more? Because I mean
We were I was gonna bring up more avoid slots. You talked about the rank system earlier, how it's kind of like a like it's like a toy. Cause it
Flats (02:42:58.382)
Avoid's tough. Avoid's a tough one.
Coach Mills (02:42:59.572)
Or or just order l no double bands, you know, maybe a a like I mean there's I mean, those people that I mean the the ban system as a whole or not ba not ban system, the report system as a whole and getting banned in this game is a very flawed system, I believe. Like sometimes they're it's either abusable or y people don't actually get banned for very long. It's like slap on the wrist bands that happen a lot, even for like racism, sexism, rampant throwing. like
CaptainCoach (02:43:03.379)
Can't climb with a negative win rate.
Flats (02:43:21.741)
Mm-hmm.
Coach Mills (02:43:29.088)
I think those are wins that competitive players and casual players would be fine with. Like I d I definitely think there's a lot more middle ground here than we like to believe it is. There is.
Flats (02:43:38.869)
Absolutely. Absolutely. I think like, for example, removing double bands. Good. You know, making it so that you know can't climb to GM with a negative win rate. I'd say that's arguably good, but that's just shows that the system is not designed to be competitive. It's supposed to reward you for playing a lot. And I think that's why the system is working as intended. I think that they know that. I think that they understand that pretty well. Cause if I remember correctly, you could actually climb.
through celestial with a negative win rate in season like one point five and they change that.
Coach Mills (02:44:07.192)
I think you could get up to s up to celestial, like up to celestial three, and then it like finally you needed to have a positive one. Yeah. Well th
Flats (02:44:14.818)
And then they moved it did they move it to GM after? Because they did move it. They moved it to where 'cause like there was even people in Eternity that were still doing it, but they had ridiculous amounts of games to do that.
Coach Mills (02:44:23.924)
Well, it's it's a little weird 'cause like Celestial's not always the same rank from season to season. Like it's actually very different. this is something a lot of people don't talk about, but it's like Celestial two as an example, right now, is way more difficult of a rank to achieve than it has been in other seasons, like by a lot. And so like and that moves very often. so like sometimes you can get a negative win rate and get it up to celestial. Sometimes it's GM, sometimes it's higher. It's just a little bit it's basically like
Flats (02:44:45.995)
yeah.
Coach Mills (02:44:53.218)
You won you only have to have a positive win rate once you get to a certain percentile, which is like half a percent or whatever. but but kind of you know, changing gears here a little bit, there's a viral clip of you talking about being the king. And I know it's it's a joking clip, I swe I I love the clip, but but I think that there is a certain amount of farming that has been happening around you specifically.
Flats (02:44:56.94)
Right. Yeah, sure.
Coach Mills (02:45:19.714)
Where it just feels like you're getting a crazy amount of hate from like creators all over the place. How do you feel about that as the s the person receiving the hate? Do you think it's just people just trying to you know, get some free clout? Or do you think it's like do you think it's like the Ryan Reynolds effect where he's in too many goddamn movies and eventually people are like, get out stop stop appearing? 'Cause I I think that's that's a funny phenomenon in like like if a if a if an actor stars in like four movies in the same year, by the fourth movie people are like, I'm d I need him to st I need to stop not see him for a while.
But as a streamer y and a store form creator, you're you're always on. Like you're ev every like they like and I think that whenever the game is bad especially, people just like blame you for anything or they drama st start drama with you. So how do you feel? How do you feel about the person receiving the drama? how you holding up?
CaptainCoach (02:46:04.373)
Mm.
Flats (02:46:08.646)
I mean it sucks, obviously, but like it's not like it's my first rodeo. I think it used to bother me much more when I was younger. I mean, I hit thirty this year, you know. At some point I just I just close my phone and then I move on with my day. But I have learned, unfortunately, that you can't just let the narratives just run. I used to do that actually. I used to just kind of be like, be above them, take the high road or whatever, and then that's how like narratives just kind of spread. Like, for example, back in Overwatch, there was a like a well known career that used to c say, like, flats is so boosted, he's so bad.
Coach Mills (02:46:16.396)
Let's go Unk, Unk, Unk.
Flats (02:46:37.004)
And then that like people still say that to this day, even though in like Rabbles, I like solo queue mostly, like almost all the time. like I very rarely play with almost anybody, but I still hold the same rank that I always have. Like I still can if I wanted to to hard grind back to top 500 and actually care, I god damn, I could. I absolutely could, but I don't care as much anymore. Like, cause I enjoy it more casually. I have more fun, my streams are more fun. I'm just a like a more alive person, you know? Like I I talk about this sometimes with like Overwatch where
When I s when I when I stream to Overwatch all the time, during drop streams, I get 15, 20, 25,000 viewers. That was crazy. You know how much money I made off that? God damn. But you know what though? My mental health and my physical health had never been worse during those times, right? my my bank account was looking pretty damn good. but I've also hit a point where like I can do all that stuff without that. Like, you know, like I am very blessed to have multiple YouTube channels.
Coach Mills (02:47:13.59)
Yeah, so yeah. fifty K now I'm just gonna cut sorry, I'm I'm not gonna make the joke.
CaptainCoach (02:47:22.205)
Mm.
Coach Mills (02:47:25.538)
Yeah.
Flats (02:47:34.38)
that all do super well. I just got my variety channel just hit a hundred thousand this week. thank you, thank you. And so sorry.
Coach Mills (02:47:38.018)
Congrats. It's good shit. I I've been watching you open like Pokemon packs with your partner. Like so my my my wife my wife and I that's that's our thing is my wife and I like to do cards and open packs and stuff. No, it's actually so annoying, but it's it's it's fun when we do get to do it together, you know.
Flats (02:47:45.4)
that's fun. That's a good time.
Can't find them anywhere. Can't find them anywhere now. Yeah. I agree with you. I'm with you on that. so like obviously it does suck a little bit, but like that's kind of what happens when you're at the top of like something, you know? and I think I have more content that goes out than any other creator in this scene, and it's not close because I have a team of Fuck what are we at now, crap? I I we added two more that recently for variety stuff. I think we're up to like
Coach Mills (02:48:14.763)
A goaded team.
Flats (02:48:19.47)
12 people now that are they're under underneath me that like help put my content out. And it's like 14, yeah. And actually I had to instruct my short shorts team this week. Same thing, like we did the experiment with the sh the tier list. I had to instruct them to stop being so good at your fucking job. and what I mean by that is like they're good at it. Like they get stuff out, like they start engaging hook, like something that brings people in, then like, you know, a couple points under that.
CaptainCoach (02:48:38.322)
Mm-hmm.
Flats (02:48:47.448)
But it doesn't have the whole conversation. It doesn't have everything because people don't watch it. And I had to tell them, like, you have to just upload it for a little while. Like it's gonna be three, four-minute long TikToks and they're not gonna perform as well. But that's what you have to do for a bit because I keep getting shit stomped that you guys are just too good at your job. Because if you watch the whole thing, you watch the YouTube version, like yes, people disagree on certain parts, but they're not like psychopaths. And like, unfortunately, content is a
Game where you want to be in the spotlight. And I had this realization when I went to my first streamer awards that I'm like, maybe I'm not even built for streaming because you sort of have to be a narcissist. And that's why you see a lot of the IRL streamers like jumping in on people's streams and like being super menaces and like trying like get attention, attention, attention. Like, I can't do that. I just don't have it in me. I don't care. But I have all these resources at my disposal to post on TikTok, post on shorts, Instagram, whatever. Those will get views because I pump out so much.
That like I've been in the game long enough that people will respect what I say and they want to hear what I have to say. And so in a case like this, right, we were already rolling off of another controversy that was legitimately a nothing burger that people wanted to spike into something. So they thought it was an opportunity, like, I already see this. Let me jump in on it. I mean, I'll give you a good example. if you saw the 50k one, like that genuinely made no sense because that was from January. That was from January, right? And also like people's replies to it are like,
Coach Mills (02:50:09.324)
Yeah. It makes no sense. It makes sense at all. Yeah.
Flats (02:50:16.738)
That's so disrespectful. First off, I don't even ask. I don't even have access to the email that it's sent to. It's like my team flats one. It's my agency's side. And you want me to go to my agent and tell them not to get as much money as they possibly can? Because it said in the email it was sponsored by NetEase. Do they not know? Like, do you know what the marketing budget looks like for many of these companies? Like, I don't know, like just for from just for men just for men, they spend like thirty million dollars a year on marketing.
Coach Mills (02:50:38.424)
'Cause I I actually I actually commented.
Yeah. Cause I 'cause I actually commented
Flats (02:50:44.61)
Like, where do you think that mostly goes? It goes to Facebook, Meta, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube. They spend literally millions of dollars on ads on all those platforms. I am a solo content creator with my own team. Do you think I'm gonna instruct my my agents to not do their job? No. Like, if they got 50 grand under that, fuck yeah, I would have took it. 50 grand is 50 grand. But I didn't want to do it. So they just throw a ridiculous number out there.
Coach Mills (02:51:08.235)
Yeah.
Coach Mills (02:51:13.688)
Well I I was
Flats (02:51:14.338)
But the only reason it came up was because of the other stuff. And that's why it's used as clickbait at the beginning of the other drama to try to get viewership. It's blatant viewership farming. It's literally cloud sharking. But there's other times, like I think potato is a good example. Potato made a response. That's fine. Like spark debate. You want to talk about stuff? Like, go ahead. Like, I'm cool with that. You want to react to my stuff? Cool. Go ahead. But as long as you're doing it somewhat not disingenuously.
Coach Mills (02:51:17.122)
Yeah. The yeah.
Coach Mills (02:51:23.596)
Dig it. Yeah.
Coach Mills (02:51:42.658)
Yeah, right.
Flats (02:51:43.319)
Or using it as like an example. Like there was a like Dead by Daylight who did it like have me in the thumbnail, like, flats react. Like, so Dead by Day. My clips are nowhere in there. There's no react. It's legitimately a photo of me in the corner and the guy talking for 10 minutes. And I'm like, what the fuck are you doing? You know? Stuff like that might bother me a little bit more because it's like you're framing something in the wrong way, but you can't also fight every battle. So I will try to do the ones that I think are worth it, but over time it becomes diminishing returns because.
CaptainCoach (02:51:57.939)
Yeah.
Coach Mills (02:51:58.008)
Right.
Flats (02:52:12.206)
You know, people don't want to see that all the time. They just want to see good content. And so I think it's important to like if somebody takes a jab at you, you take a jab back just to defend yourself, to be like, you know what, this is not a run out in a narrative. I'm going to show you why, X, Y, Z. If you don't want to believe that and you want to run away with a different narrative, I'm never going to change your opinion anyways. It's the same thing as like if you have someone in your life that you were friends with or something and they heard of something about you from someone else and they just cut you off. Well, guess what? That guy was never your friend, anyways. You probably dodged a bullet. Same thing happens in content creation. You're not going to pr change people's opinions about you.
You can give your side of the story and give your own take and give your whatever, and then that's it. And you go back to making good content. And that's what I always try to do. But this week was just like one after another, after another, after another. So I have to, it's like I'm fucking sitting in there for eight rounds. Like, baby, where are we going? We're going for a ninth. All right, fine, fuck it. Let's lock in. And the people I feel bad about are not for me. I feel bad for my content team. Because every time this happens, you know what I have to do? I sit here on stream, I watch it, I talk my shit back, and then it goes and then I'm done. Then I hop off, I go downstairs.
Coach Mills (02:52:50.914)
It was and it was
Flats (02:53:11.084)
Me and Shay hang out, go out to dinner, whatever. My content team is the ones who have to take it, clip it up, edit it, make sure it makes sense, make sure nothing's out of context. We're not making the other guy look bad to like, you know, we're not trying to start more shit. We're trying to end it, right? Like we're trying to make it to the point where it's like, okay, like, you know, this is a response because you said this, X, Y, Z, boom, boom, boom. And then they have to come up with a caption and all that stuff and get it posted. Like, that's who gets affected by it more than anybody. So I feel bad. So I try to keep it like to a minimum, but at some point, like.
Coach Mills (02:53:35.766)
I mean that's a goaded team though. W team.
Flats (02:53:40.706)
What do I do? You know?
Coach Mills (02:53:41.548)
Wanted to so I I added on a bit of context. I I cause I actually know Seb. He he was one of the ones that invited me to the tournament too, and I was like I was very shocked that he did that. It's kind of like it's just blatant drama farming. And and a lot of people just don't really understand especially the 50k thing. Like they have no point of reference here. So like I used to work as a for like a social media company doing like social media directs with creators, and like tenses for any like small collab with tens was like 120 grand.
For the s like like people do not understand
Flats (02:54:12.27)
Do you know who rivals had pull in recently to start their seasons? Peanut. How much do you think that one costs?
Coach Mills (02:54:18.442)
Yeah, like yeah, no, th I think people don't really quite get you know, large creators the the Yeah, I mean yeah, it's it's it's it's a lot. But just so that people kind of can kind of understand where it's coming from. I I I think it's I mean, the TikTok farming is just actually kind of insane. Like it it just feels like
Flats (02:54:24.984)
Quadruple what I said.
Flats (02:54:36.718)
But that's what it is though, because people are bored and there's nothing else to talk about with the game. Like there isn't anything. And like when your audience is casual, they don't want to talk about meta discussions. They don't want to talk about balance. They don't want to talk about these things. If you talk about those things, you're a whiner and you're complaining. So you know what they'll do? They want to see the dance monkey dance. They to see how everybody fight with each other. They get to treat it like an like a TV show. That's what they want to see. And again, it's a much more of a younger audience. My audience is on the older side.
Coach Mills (02:54:46.018)
What
Flats (02:55:03.328)
It's why you don't see my audience going in after creators and shit talking them and going hard. You'll see a couple people here and there. Of course, I have a younger audience too. I have over a million on multiple platforms. But as an overall whole, most of my audience fucking works nine to five and goes home and keeps me on their second monitor. They're not arguing in someone's TikTok comment section. They don't give a fuck. But they'll still show up for my next video and they show up for my next stream because they're there for me, or they're there for my content.
Coach Mills (02:55:17.813)
Yeah yeah.
Flats (02:55:29.848)
But unfortunately I still have to fight those battles, so like it's a lose lose at the end of the day.
Coach Mills (02:55:31.736)
I mean that's why we really started that's why Captain Coach and I decided to start this podcast. We wanted real conversations. We wanted real discussions with nuance, not you know, TikTok rage bait and like things just being brought out of context. I think you'll if you end up reading the comments of this pod, I think you'll see what we're talking about. It's it's it's a more respectable conversation. You'll hear real opinions. and and yeah, I mean honestly.
This has been actually really, really fun. I think this conversation has been really productive. is there anything you wanted to still ask flats, Captain Coach?
CaptainCoach (02:56:07.139)
is EOMM real?
Coach Mills (02:56:09.489)
no, I once again I I so there's a running thing where I no, dude. Stop
Flats (02:56:10.443)
Jesus.
CaptainCoach (02:56:12.053)
I if if if anything, like based off of what he said, like flats, I honestly like I'm surprised that like he actually has a pretty realistic like I think he understands what's happening. I have I share a lot of opinions with you. Like Neti's is more profit driven. The whole casual versus competitive thing is to keep the game alive, and you in your mind, like whatever, that's good for the game. EOMM, a retention tactic to keep these types of people on the hamster wheel.
Coach Mills (02:56:19.453)
no, no he just to please don't I
Coach Mills (02:56:28.952)
Please.
Coach Mills (02:56:33.08)
It's actually it it what what how you respond to this it could do irreparable damage. I just want you to know that it can do irreparable
CaptainCoach (02:56:41.799)
The the floor is yours. Me neither me neither.
Flats (02:56:42.302)
Know, I mean, I'm not a rivals partner. I have no I have no skin in the game. I'm literally not. Like, I and actually there's a there's a lot to being a rivals partner, and I I just don't wanna I don't want to be part of any of it. Every time I do stuff with them, it's on a case-by-case basis for season by season basis. That said though, I do believe in them. I don't think there is skill-based match or sorry, not skill-based matchmaking, engaged engagement-based matchmaking. However, I think that skill-based matchmaking in itself has engagement-based tools. For example,
The reason why if you play quick play, if you lose two games in a row, you get a bot game. The reason why they're giving you a bot game is they want to give you a free dub so you don't lose four, five, six games in a row and you're having a bad night. There is an argument to be made that that is engagement-based matchmaking because it's trying to keep you engaged with the game. Every game's main goal is to try to keep you playing for as long as possible. There used to be something I somebody I was friends with on the Overwatch team, they probably should have never told me, but it wasn't under my NDA, so I don't care. But like at the time, way back then, years ago, they said that.
Overwatch, when it switched to the two and all this stuff, had doubled its play rate. Like when someone pops hops on for a session, like it was one of the highest in the industry. For like if somebody hops on to play, they will stay playing for X amount of time. And it was one of the highest in the entire industry, meaning that they had got people to engage with the game and play more, more often, which is a very good sign. I would not be surprised if NetEase and has a similar system where they want players to be playing for longer and longer.
times each time they play because the more you play means you're more engaged, the more you engage means the chances you're gonna buy something go up because you want to see more skins, you want to see your characters you play, etc. etc. That doesn't mean though, I think that the algorithm is actively trying to harm you to get you to play more games. I think that we used to have a thing back in 50-50 Overwatch back in the day, right? Like where people used to always theorize that the this matchmaker is always designed to make you win 50% of your games and lose 50% of your games. It was a whole fucking theory
CaptainCoach (02:58:24.719)
I don't think that.
Flats (02:58:39.776)
Engagement-based matchmaking with rivals feels like the same thing, but people show these big win streaks and these big loss streaks. I think there's also times where people aren't playing as good. You lose two games in a row and you got a little tilted and you cued another one, you queued another one. Those games you were winning where you were feeling yourself, you were confident, you were playing better. Yeah, you could have had better teammates in some of those games, but that's dice roll of matchmaking. And over time, the matchmaking system will put you in a rank that you deserve. And if you play more and more, unless you know you talk about the climbing with a negative win rate thing.
But it's like at some point, you typically are supposed to hit a rank and then you will win and lose about the same amount of games to stay in that rank because not everyone can be in the top 1%. There needs to be people in the other 99% of the ranks, and that's where most people are. So I would say that there isn't engagement-based matchmaking, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's parts of the matchmaking that are there that are designed to try to get you to keep playing more, as that is an objective that any game wants to have is to have people play more often.
CaptainCoach (02:59:36.253)
That's fair. I I think that gray area though of like you being able to climb to a negative win rate, then you say like you can't get any higher. I mean, like we've all said it, like you can still get to celestial. I think that's kind of where it lies. I I I b I think they do have some type of engagement algorithm that they use to like track accounts and everybody has like a like a invisible rating for certain heroes. I'm I'm a I'm full tinfoil hat. I I but
Coach Mills (02:59:58.616)
Yeah.
Flats (02:59:59.695)
I think GM is much more now. I think it used to be celestial. I think it's more GM now. I think that people bump into that wall really hard.
CaptainCoach (03:00:05.801)
But where I think a lot of people kind of misconstrue my argument, and and you kind of mentioned it, is I don't think it's a system that actively is like out to get you. And and I think in a lot of situations it probably probably benefits the game quality. And and it I I just think a lot of people would would like this game more if they they had a more standardized ELO system, like back in I mean, you you kind of said that games have always tried to do this, but that's not necessarily like Overwatch, I think, and a lot of these big like
Flats (03:00:35.66)
I think you're misconstruing rank system and trying to get you to play as often as you can. Like they want you to stay on a session for as long as possible. They want the game to be addicting.
CaptainCoach (03:00:35.711)
Like more.
CaptainCoach (03:00:41.491)
I I I think they're connected. The the rank system is their most addictive engagement like cue, right? Like that's those are the people, the hardcore players who want to Right. So so so to me that that's where they're y like that's why I I actually think quick play matchmaking sometimes can feel a little bit like like people are trying more in quick play 'cause I think there's a more they probably use like a more traditional like skill based system. I've that's actually been one of my 'cause usually when I do quick plays, I'm just warming up I when I start my stream.
Flats (03:00:51.822)
Intentionally.
CaptainCoach (03:01:11.123)
I'm playing with like a six deck from a chat and they're all like locked in trying to like play w play good on stream. So it's like we I my my quick play MMR is probably very high. And when I get into quick play, I see triple healer, I see all sorts of stuff. So I I've heard a lot of complaints about quick play. You know, that's a whole nother thing. But yeah, like my general argument though is like the fact that everybody can get to a higher rank means that they're all kind of clumped there and they have this bigger pool to draw from when they you know they they whatever flag your account to your MMR.
i is you know too much higher than like whatever your skill based is, they'll put you with somebody who clearly does not b like is is kind of at their their height. And I think there is a a bit of that that can be detrimental and and cause the cues to sometimes feel a little unfair. No, for ranked. For ranked. I I think for quick play they probably use a more standard system. I I don't know. It's just conspiracy theory. It doesn't really do a whole lot of good, but I thought you kind of based off of what you said with like how profit driven they are, may may kind of, you know
Flats (03:01:55.224)
For quick play? okay.
CaptainCoach (03:02:10.524)
see a little credence to to what I'm saying here. But I you know, it's just it's the end of the day. It's I don't think they're gonna change it. well he already he already agrees with Gooncreep. I didn't need to say it.
Coach Mills (03:02:15.402)
I I thought I thought you were gonna pitch your your goon creep argument.
Coach Mills (03:02:22.144)
Okay, that's fair.
Flats (03:02:22.766)
Fuck is Goon Creep.
CaptainCoach (03:02:23.827)
You you like that how that's the s the skins and the the heroes with good skins tend to be a little stronger a lot of the time. Or or a little bit more like they get more attention from the devs.
Coach Mills (03:02:34.22)
Yeah, the the b W well just it's like it feels like like as an example here, like Black Cat did not get nerfed in in nine point five, okay? She also got a new skin. It I No, I mean that's true. But what I'm just saying histor what I I I'm not saying I agree with Captain Coach by the way, but his argument is that historically characters with with skins that probably sell a lot of money or characters that have been allowed to be strong a little bit too long
Flats (03:02:34.51)
Well, I think the support role as a whole maybe does in that department, but I wouldn't.
Flats (03:02:48.012)
I just don't think they know what to do with Black Cat, to be honest with you. I don't I don't know if that's
Coach Mills (03:03:04.064)
Historically. I'm I'm mi you know, maybe we're thinking too much into
Flats (03:03:06.062)
I think they just put a lot of like women heroes in the support role and like they just make them the their skins because like people probably buy them a lot. and I mean like how many are in the tank role? Like there's like Emma? And is there any others? I I mean I guess Cap, but like Cap was just funny. Like I don't like I don't know if people went crazy like buying caps, other than the fact that after they nerfed his dong, then they like, damn, we gotta we gotta stand up for him. Rogue and Angela? Did ro does Rogue and Angela have one? I I mean Rogue has the
Coach Mills (03:03:17.112)
Yeah, she another character that's been allowed to be too strong for too long. Yeah, okay.
Coach Mills (03:03:24.041)
No, I I don't think so.
Never nerf a man's dung.
Flats (03:03:34.242)
Does Evroga have d a summer skin? I know Yeah, I don't think so. Yeah. She doesn't have a summer s like a swimsuit skin. No swimsuit skin though. Yeah, you guys are you it. What about Angela? Angela doesn't have one either. Yeah, okay, so there's what? One one woman tank that has a a swimsuit skin in the tank role. So it's like I don't know. Like Emma's always been kinda decent and then they nerfed her really hard and they just made her strong in. I know that has anything to with the skins.
Coach Mills (03:03:37.142)
No. I don't think so. No, and she does it. They don't. Yeah, that's what that's what Yeah.
Yeah.
Coach Mills (03:03:51.894)
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Flats (03:03:59.821)
In the DPS role, there's what Widow, sure, but I think there was a big rework to Widow, so I think that's maybe like they want Widow to be like good for a while because she's been so shit. Wanda, I wouldn't say is very good. Silock was good last year, sure, but
Coach Mills (03:04:00.193)
I mean we'll just d
Coach Mills (03:04:13.388)
I mean we're not talking about just like not necessarily just like the girl characters, but y we're just saying that like i if it if it just lines up with your Well, well yeah. I c just just like making it makes sense that the characters that make the most money are characters that they would not want to be like F tier, right? Probably. I I I mean I can't think of any examples. I mean, maybe. Yeah, I don't know. I'm I'm actually curio I I would love to know. It would be
Flats (03:04:18.926)
that's what I was saying. I was like, I think that they lean more that way.
Flats (03:04:30.382)
I mean
Flats (03:04:34.744)
I mean Wanda's terrible.
Flats (03:04:38.892)
Widow was terrible before the rework and I think they put her skin out before the rework, right? I think. So
Coach Mills (03:04:42.756)
Yeah, yeah. Coincidentally timed. Okay, sorry. So one thing that we like to ask a lot, so one thing I want to ask you, getting kinda going into more lighthearted conversations, is what's your favorite game of all time?
CaptainCoach (03:04:43.785)
Mm. Hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Flats (03:04:46.753)
Yeah.
Flats (03:04:57.854)
All time. god, that's a hard one.
Coach Mills (03:05:01.75)
Or like top three. You could you could say top three if you wanted to do top three.
Flats (03:05:06.84)
God, even that's really tough. I I'd say like the Mass Effect series up there. it used to be Oblivion, 'cause that was like one of my childhood games. I played it I played the re the the rework or the remake of it. It was really good, but I couldn't get nearly sucked into it. I think just 'cause like, you know, times have changed and used to like a bit of faster system stuff. Still great game.
Coach Mills (03:05:11.788)
Ooh, okay.
Coach Mills (03:05:15.831)
Okay.
Flats (03:05:32.332)
And then, you know, I think I have to give respect that like Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 time when I was a kid. Like that game came out was fucking my whole life probably for at least a year. And then it was still one of those games as a COD game you'd go back and play for like the next four years. It was still phenomenal. It was just a different time in gaming and it was like revolutionary for the time. So I'll always hold that at like cherish it, but like COD's so shit now, like you'll never you'll never really ever have that time again. So I kind of cherished that.
Coach Mills (03:05:47.064)
It was so g it was so good.
Coach Mills (03:05:57.555)
Yeah, unfortunately.
Flats (03:06:00.384)
As like a really, really good moment 'cause I I I loved that was like probably the first game that really got me into like competitive FPS and like playing versus other people. so yeah, that'd probably be my three Oblivion slash Skyrim era, Mass Effect and and Marvel Warfare two.
Coach Mills (03:06:10.219)
Okay. That's
Coach Mills (03:06:15.904)
Okay, okay. the other question we like to ask guests is I'm gonna do both for you because I think you you you would know both. So the first one is character from any Marvel, you know, a any Marvel character that you want in the game. Wha how do you want them implemented and what role and what character? And then the other one is any ability or ultimate from any competitive game brought into this game. Like like the one at just the
CaptainCoach (03:06:16.746)
Nice.
Flats (03:06:39.8)
Phanos, when the game is over, like they're done, they're like, We're not doing any more updates, and he just goes and then the game's done. That's it. That's it. Cinema. Rivals two pops out after. Yeah.
CaptainCoach (03:06:45.845)
And then Marvel two pops out. Yeah.
Coach Mills (03:06:46.136)
Yeah I I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm ending I'm ending the podcast on that snap by the way. Like that the podcast is that's that's that's literally the fun but no, okay, alright. Thanos would be sick. Thanos would be sick. Tank? We need a tank, tank Dinos. It has to be yeah, it's be a tank, yeah.
CaptainCoach (03:06:54.801)
Ha ha ha.
Flats (03:06:54.862)
Ha ha
Flats (03:07:05.626)
yeah, I mean it probably makes the most sense. D PS doesn't I don't think make sense for him. Maybe just be like I don't know. Doomfist, I guess. the only thing I could think of, maybe, is like with a punch, but I don't think he really punches, so I don't know. I mean he can punch a little bit, but
Coach Mills (03:07:16.084)
Okay.
Coach Mills (03:07:21.192)
Then actually w w another one is w is there an Overwatch character that you would like to see like implemented like their kit into Rivals? You don't want like a Reinhardt type c I you were known for Reinhardt a lot back in the day. There's not really a pure Reinhardt character in this game.
Flats (03:07:29.303)
Flats (03:07:34.585)
I just I think we just need more shield characters in general. Like a like an actual, like true shields character like main tank type role. Like we had Mag Strange originally, right? Like that like one of the early metas. And then there like Emma sorta. But like after that, we kind of just like almost every tank sorta feels like an off tank, now. It's kind of strange. But like yeah, like Emma's still de good. Like, you know, Mag I'd say you play almost like a main tank because he just has so many cooldowns and so many ways to stay alive, but he's not really a shield character. He's more like
Coach Mills (03:07:37.057)
Okay.
Coach Mills (03:07:51.0)
It's okay.
Flats (03:08:02.369)
Nine million buttons with a small shield that goes up for like one second. like a traditional shield character, I think.
Coach Mills (03:08:04.114)
Yeah, right. Brian would be sick. Brian would be so sick in this game, I think. Think
Flats (03:08:10.572)
I think you I think yeah, I think you'd probably be pretty strong. Like just like up close melee with also like a toggleable like turn off and non shield is kinda nice. So I'd probably say like some type of shield tank for this game.
Coach Mills (03:08:21.442)
Yeah. yeah, well I think that's I think we pay pretty much hit everything. We talked about a little bit of every single thing that the community thought about, but is there any lasting things that you want to say, Flats? Any closing remarks to the community, to the community at large?
Flats (03:08:38.318)
I would say question everything you see a little bit more. I think that we've been a little bit too comfortable in just seeing what's in front of us and instantly believing it without any follow-up, especially in the short form world. I want to say thanks to you guys for inviting me on. I appreciate you for for doing this. you know, I appreciate it. I mostly was just kind of
Coach Mills (03:08:55.458)
course. You're welcome back anytime. It'd be amazing.
CaptainCoach (03:08:56.389)
Absolutely.
Flats (03:09:02.722)
Like I don't really do podcasts anymore. Like I used to do them sometimes for a friend of mine that was named SVB. He used to do the Overwatch ones back in the day, you know. we did a couple of rivals ones because he wish wanted to try it. I don't think it's something that really stuck with him, but typically I just don't really do d do it that much anymore because I just like you know, I don't think there's a whole lot to really say that I say outside of stream already. But obviously with this more recent week, I think a lot of topics have come up, and I think this has been a radical shift from when what I was always said recently, which was like you need to be more casual focused, and I still believe that, but
Like this is one of those cases where it's kind of gone too far. So I need to say for the other side, like, hey, like you can't you can't let this side go into complete disrepair. And I think a lot of people got like shocked by that, is like, my God, like now you're switching up. And it's like, no, no, no, we're not switching up. Like, I think you need to have nuance. I think you need to have a human touch on certain things and say when something has gone too far. And I think when you stay on one side and you never try the see the other side's point of view is like grifting. And I think that there's people that do that. and I despise people that do that.
I I will I will respect the hell out of somebody who's way more willing to change their opinion based on fact or way more willing to be involved in a conversation to try to find a good middle ground or at least try to share their experiences as opposed to somebody who's just going to try to like build a cult following and like rally to one side because like over time those people are not really worth having conversations with because they're disingenuous actors and I don't want people in rivals to be like that. And my biggest gripe with rivals versus Overwatch is
I loved the Overwatch community's streaming content side because we were almost always in this shit together. And there was almost never drama, even if you had fights with other people, like you kind of just stayed out of each other's way. Rivals is much more you are going to try to capitalize on people and use everything for content. And there's never discussions behind the scenes. There never is anything else. There's always just like drama, baiting. I want to fight with this person. I'm going to try to use them for clout, whatever it is. And it's kind of fucking gross.
So I wanna see I wanna see some change in that department. And I would love to see some change in that department. I would love to see people actually work together, actually try to bring better change. And I think this conversation was a good example of, you know, we don't always agree disagree or agree on everything, but there is actually a lot of common ground as well, because all of us at the end of the day want a great game, even if we don't agree on how to get there.
Coach Mills (03:10:57.631)
I agree.
Coach Mills (03:11:17.708)
Yeah. Yeah. Well said. Well said, well said. Well, I wanna thank you personally, Flats, for coming on. It has been a great conversation. I hope to have you on in the future, maybe with like Boger or something along those lines we had Boger on in the past. Not light, or maybe if you're interested. We'll do whatever you want to do and we appreciate any conversation you wanna have. But thank you guys for watching the pod. Hope you enjoyed it. Smash that like and subscribe. Definitely check out Flats even though you already have and yeah, we appreciate you coming and we'll see you next time.
CaptainCoach (03:11:18.153)
Yeah. Well said. Very well said.
CaptainCoach (03:11:28.168)
Light.
Ha ha ha.
Coach Mills (03:11:47.373)
Bye.
Flats (03:11:49.374)
wait.