Ult economy is fine lol. Losing ult charge on death would be terrible for this game and make everything worse.
This game is meant to revolve around ults. Saying otherwise is against what the game was built for.
The game was also meant to revolve around heavy hero swapping and team building based on roles. Both of these concepts didn't survive release with regards to their intended forms. The implementation of the one hero limit, while stopping the double winston, tracer, lucio silliness, puts a hard limit on creative drafting. And most matches are mirror matchups with same small hero pool facing each other regularly.
You look in this thread and other places around where the Overwatch community palavers and you see the same kind of frustrations over and over. A lot of frustration on what their team is doing and they did X and got this number of medals but lost anyway and so on. The root cause of this is that a huge chunk of the game is big blobby team fights in the same exact chokepoints where the end result is overly dependent on how everyone's Q ability shakes out. This obfuscates a lot of personal skill and impact. If people lost ult charge on death (the exact amount of charge would be a balancing point; it wouldn't necessarily have to be the entire charge) then you'd be able to heighten your own team impact by staying alive longer and thus get more ults AND by assassinating problematic characters you deny the enemy team ults. This eases the burden on playing much of the other cast. Junkrat would no longer have the "junk damage" problem of feeding support ults and even zarya charge if a follow up dive after he softened them killed their ult meter. Widowmaker wouldn't have to go full Jude Law at Enemy of the Gates everygame. She could just focus on taking calm shots at enemy supports and would have enough of an impact. The same way in TF2 a struggling sniper can still save the day by getting a good bodyshot on a charged medic despite spending much of the match getting stabbed by spies. Increasing the capacity of solo impact, believe it or not, makes the teamplay healthier in the long run.
You're making A LOT of assumptions on how Blizz work. I wager they put in way, way, way more work into trying to balance the game than you think. They most certainly experiment with all kinds of changes behind the scenes that we will never know. I know people like to make fun of developers, but it's not as easy as "shuffling around numbers" -- Blizz knows this, they're not idiots. But it's a fine balance, and making huge changes like you propose could have severe consequences.
Well the thing is, is that we don't know either way. Blizzard's approach is very much a walled garden style of development. They can be open about their reasoning in some things and other times they can be unusually coy about things that could simply be shared. A recent example is their slip on their thoughts on Zarya. In the community forums and things she's a big talking point in balance discussion and a constant presence in pro games, but Blizzards actual metrics show that she isn't popular enough for them to be focused on her. That one little statement gave a huge window into their balancing reasoning.
And yes while it is making assumptions I would argue that you can still make educated assumptions based on the stuff that has happened like these little windows and just from what they've done. One example is culling of animation canceling tricks from the game. Some tricks that got discovered like Widow's momentum boost from hookshot or using Hanzo's scatter arrow as a single target nuke were kept in and there are even hint tooltips for em. Other stuff like Torb using the weapon switch trick to build his turrent faster got axed completely despite Torb being considered a weak character. Lots of people were completely flabbergasted by this stealth nerf but by examining their statements from the similar change in removing the quick scope from widow you can get an insight into their balance process. Torb animation canceling was not removed out of wanting to decrease the power of Torb, but because Blizzard doesn't want ANY mechanic that is hidden and incapable of being discovered naturally in gameplay. If you have to look up a youtube video on how to do something they don't want it. And when you look at the evidence provided all throughout the game you see this design philosophy everywhere. Pharah for instance doesn't rocket jump like a conventional Quake character. Her mobility options are built into her spells. They don't want people to have to learn how to pogo rollout like in TF2. Everything to learn is suppose to come from playing the game from what they explicitly give you.
You see this strong emphasis on clarity in other aspects of Overwatch as well. All the numbers involved are simple easy baby math. Lots of multiples of 5, things just flatly stack on each other, and the big kicker the guaranteed ult charge you get from doing stuff and some for not doing stuff. Ult charge from healing. Ult charge from damage, Ult charge trickling in from sitting back and relaxing.
Now after this long winded intro springing off of your point. Here is the balance problem as I see it from what Blizzard has presented as their design goals as evidenced by stuff that's in the game.
Blizzard wants a simple intuitive game that you learn by doing, preferably with little to no outside help with some "secret" mechanics that they share with you through a built in tips system.
The problem? The games simplicity and directness has created an unintentional complexity by making the game
un-intuitive as FUCK.
How is it expressed? A multitude of ways but in general, you don't have any true tempo control over the game and shooting at people UNLESS YOU KNOW YOU CAN KILL THEM is bad... in an fps game about shooting people.
The Ana issue exemplifies this the most. Attack characters build charge doing damage. Supports build charge healing damage. If you want to prevent supports from building charge you have to not do damage that they can heal either by not attacking at all or by immediately killing the person as quickly as possible so they aren't used as resource for supports to farm off of. The team that is most efficient at "farming" has the ult advantage that is then used to pressure. The ana deathballs exploit this process the most. Ana can attack and heal with ease and thus has two avenues of building charge. The tanks are bulky enough to withstand chip damage and be used for the Ana to farm off of. The tanks lower damage potential is mitigated by nanaboost. This whole process is also inevitable because ult charge is inevitable. How teams outplay each other is based around who is more efficient at reaching the critical mass of ult charge.
Here are some examples of what this does and how it makes the game un-intuitive especially as an fps
- People are frustrated and confused on how they lose games. They'll lash out easily on things like team comp and not understand the extent of their own impact because the medal system is poor feedback to how the game is actually played.
- Huge swaths of the map are unused. Everyone is at the same choke point farming not unlike a moba to be honest.
- Entire character roles and playstyles can't function. Soldiers whittling dps style can't compete with burst oriented styles like McCree because whittling reliable damage is a liability. Also, burst oriented styles but through indirect zoning like Junkrat are ALSO a liability because while it does more damage it doesn't have reliable follow up for completing the kill. This hampers character diversity both in the current roster and future heroes.
Now here's how ult charged dropped on death would help.
* The person you have the most control over in online games is...yourself. If you can make solo plays and come out alive you control the tempo of your own game because you maintain your own ult charge and deny others. As opposed to BEING controlled by the tempo of however the choke point farm fest settles out.
* Because of the higher value gained in killing an enemy, spreading out has benefits both offensively and defensively. It has benefits defensively to spread out to avoid a mass loss of ult charge from big cc's like black hole and it benefits offensively to lurk in some other place to then emerge for a high value pick off or good trade. For instance, maybe there will be a purpose to the hotel area in hollywood instead of everyone just wiggling in front of the archway and security room.
* Character optimization demands are both softened and utility can be emphasized more. In a game system where people lose ult charge on death, a character like soldier who has several tools in his kit to keep himself alive has a different way to market his skills compared to McCree who is less survivable despite having a lower capacity for damage. Meaning you'll see more Tac Visors as opposed to high noons in a ult dropping system. Zoning actually has a purpose. Buttering people up with Junkrat spam means you can take more dives on defense to finish them off with good trades because you deny them ult charge. His tire pickoffs have stronger value as well. This benefits him more than any number shuffling to his ult like what occurred in the recent patch.
I've been pecking at this post while I've been doing other stuff so I hope it's not too rambling or too long or too late even. But I do firmly believe that a change to the ult economy cuts through the gordian knot of Overwatch's balancing problems.
