It's true. Classes have way too much weight in this game. I'm sure that's how they intended it, but competitively it does not work out. It leaves very little space for personal skill to really dominate, because it's all class rock/paper/scissors and everything takes forever to die. Not to mention people just respawn anyway, so if it's not a pure team vs team clash with all ults thrown, getting successful flanks and pickoffs hardly matters.
I much prefer if the game has low impact classes, that somewhat change how you play a round, but the core is all about aiming/movement/positioning skills. Rainbow Six Siege does the low-impact classes well, for example. So does Titanfall 2 and Quake Champions.
Yeah R6S is a good example, didn't play TF2 ot Q:C, but Blacklight: Retribution is another one. Every class in OW for me was "this class would be great if it had class Z and Y's ability as well", and none of them felt satisfactory as a result. Like if Tracer had Genji's mobility/parkour, it'd be a fun and skilled character. Instead it feels intentionally neutered. Like it's got 1/3rd of the abilities you'd expect it to have cut off and given to someone else, etc.
But rock-paper-scissors hard counter shit is the laziest/easiest way to make sure no good player gets ahead too much.
Team Fortress 2 is almost a good example of how to have distinct classes that also mostly feel like they haven't been castrated. Soldier, scout and demo were all combat classes that could practically beat any other class with skilled play and also had mobility skills. Still not ideal but infinitely better than OW. However, TF 2's way of making sure baddies always have a chance was introducing criticals, which was 100% retarded. Nothing like having your 20 kill streak as as Soldier ended because an enemy Soldier got a random critical hit and insta gibs you with something that would've done 30% damage otherwise.
[–]Kodix 52 points 2 years ago
As your skill grows, so does the proportion of your deaths from random crits to deaths from other causes.
The reason random crits are in the game is not to make it fair or balanced - it's to let lower skill players have more of an impact.
It's the same reason any game introduces randomness - if it was purely skill based with no randomness whatsoever, it would quickly lose newbie players who don't find losing fun.
Of course, personally I think that random crits are entirely unnecessary - the game plays just fine even without them, there's already enough randomness inherent in the game mechanics.