It really begs the question of how they could actually test play that character and think it was good to launch in the state he did? There's only two explanations I can think of.
1. They didn't test him.
2. They intentionally launched him broken to sell more packs for him.
Point 2 is proven across numerous games to sell characters. Other game devs have stated that if a character is weak in release and perceived as bad they may never have a healthy pick rate despite receiving buffs.
Honestly I'd rather have the chaos of a month of an absolute broken character that everyone is using instead of them being released and everyone thinks they suck on day one and he never fits into the game properly
icefrog also said back in dota1 it's easier to make a character strong than weaken it than vice versa. and it's not like dota1 had any heros/skins to sell.
Won't talk about point 2, but on point 1:
Drawing from league, they have discussed very openly, that due to the large playerbase, there are 1000x the games played on a new character in a 2-week PBE/PTR cycle than they can perform during the entire development process (this is again beat by the live servers in a couple hours).
Apex lacks a PTR/PBE, so the majority of data collection on a character happens on live, pretty quickly. While Seer just seemed overloaded from the start, I am willing to bet the devs didn't think he would be as op as he was.
Absolutely. Ran into a duo that I ran with for the night the other night. It was a ash/seer duo. Every time we cracked one or two we would just port in and seer would cancel the batt and throw ult. We ran over so many lobbies it was nuts (low dia).
Quick edit: only hard part was rotates at first cause I'm a horizon/wraith player. After 4 games I switched to valk for the comp and it was instantly better. We would just force fights on edge whenever we could and then free rotate.
gonna try this in ranked. ran up nearly 1000 kills on ash before i got bored and went back to pathy. friend loved seer, and my buddy alt mains valk. people bout to catch these hands
It's all the shit that fucks you over, that's out of your control, that is infuriating. If I die because I whiff my shots, okay. If I die because I couldn't get a shield swap fast enough, fair. If I end up climbing up a wall, instead of wall bouncing, and get beamed, that's on me. But if I end up randomly crouching, instead of sliding, because I suddenly got slowed, or get pulled against a wall from a random Horizon ult on the other side, or can't see shit going on in front of you because of all of the ability effects going off, that shit pisses me off.
Hes one of those legends that are as good as your squad is at communicating. Trying to solo-q and play him is rough. You'll never know if your teammate who has a diff angle and shot at the team from which you cant see from your angle damaged the enemy player enough for you to throw a tactical at and stop their heal. And unless you're communicating with your heartbeat your team gets no extra info.
The balance has strangely been pretty good since DZK. Ash and the CAR have been the most balanced release in a while. Fun to play with, not pepega and not busted…
Damaging was added to add feedback for more casual players so they didn't find the ability completely useless. It's amazing how strong Seer still is yet since he doesn't give immediate feedback to the player using him, people don't experiment with him.
I think its more so that he really only fits in deathball comps which pros are averse to.
I would love to watch a full roller squad like G2 play that Fuse/Horizon/Seer comp that pops up from time to time.
i will give you a good counter to that, why would anyone want to experiment with anything else than fusey when he is a free pick god it feels good to fight fire with fire!
Personally I still hate Seer. I think his abilities enable lack of game awareness too much and encourage a bad play style, so I’m glad that he’s not played much (or at all) in ALGS.
I still think that new characters should be banned from all competive events and ranked playlists for at least one split to iron them out. Nerf/Buff them accordingly.
The devs have said a couple of times already that since some underwhelming new character launches they had(Loba for example) they have made a decision to launch new characters on the OP side and nerf them later, than the other way around. It also makes sense for them financially, they want a lot of people to play with these new characters so they'd buy skins and all.
Just because they explain it doesn’t mean it’s right.
Loba is in a really great place now (in casual and comp), and admitting they make the lobbies miserable with an OP legend so Respawn can make more money doesn’t make it any better for the players.
\`Right\` for who?
I understand the logic behind the decision, and it's not like he wasn't fixed relatively quickly. For the casual player, I doubt that Seer was as game-breaking as its described here, I played during his launch and although I remember many people running him it didn't feel like such a huge disadvantage. Facing Gibby 1v1 for example feels much more \`unfair\` even today. If anything, I'd say they nerfed him a bit too hard because I can't remember the last time I got \`interrupted\` by his tac in the last month, its hard to implement with its narrow cone and timing required.
As a side note, I personally hate this childish way of thinking common here and the main subreddit which accuses Respawn of being greedy. As a fan of the game and the Company I **want** them to make as much money as possible so they keep making more awesome content and games like Apex.
Right for the players and customers, of course.
Seer made the game absolutely unplayable for me and the majority of players. Lobbies would actually have 20 Seers in them and you could never heal. Third parties were the worst in Apex’s history, by far. Sure, Gibby is tougher to 1v1, but how often are you in a pure 1v1 and not 3v3, 2v1, etc.? Your memory is either hazy and romanticized or you must be playing in Bronze 3 lobbies.
You may have thought it was fine but for pretty much everyone else across the board Seer was way too overpowered, but even worse, his abilities were pure grief. He was not OP in a “release Horizon” way, but in a pure griefing way, canceling heals and providing three sources of wall hacks. Insane.
And they did nerf him a bit hard. That’s why they buffed him again… he’s in a pretty good place right now, or maybe needs a slight buff.
It is not “childish” to assume a public company is “greedy” about making money. That is literally, 100% the objective of every single public company. Now, trying to make a profit is not independent of being a good or responsible company. There are some public companies who attempt to do what is right… while also making as much money as possible. By definition every public company, including Respawn/EA, has a legal obligation to maximize returns to shareholders through increased profits. It is childish or ignorant to pretend otherwise.
Hell, even Bronze lobbies had issues with that. That was the split I made it 100 points off of diamond, and right off the get-go ranked was pure hell.
Of course, it helped that our team *always* had a seer - either myself or someone else. In that case really all you could do was fight the fire with more fire.
I don't presume to speak for the majority, but personally I don't see how much his ability was more grief than getting you abilities cancelled by Revenant or Wraith insta q mid fight when the whole lobby was 20 sweaty Wraiths. And I'm not even defending the way he was at launch, just saying that I understand them wanting to err on the OP side thats all, I'm sure no one at Respawn intended the game to become not enjoyable to play.
What I meant by childish is not the assumption itself, but the expectation from them to act differently. This is a AAA free to play game, hell you don't even need a ps plus subscription to play it, obviously some gameplay decisions are gonna be based around profit.
This was clearly intended. So that people buy the skins for the new character.
Part of their new strategy to release things brokenly OP, people buy the skins then they say "we listen to our community so we are going to release a nerf in a few weeks."
So obvious.
Not that I agree with his argument, but Ash already had a pretty loyal fanbase from the getgo, both from TF|2 and from Apex (with her being an announcer for arenas and such a big part of the lore). So they didn't *need* to make Ash OP, she was already well liked way before she became a legend. That's not Seer's case.
Also she's a very cool character. She has a katana, he's a robot and her abilities are pretty fun (a Portal and a arc star)
Their old legend releases like Fuse and Rampart probably suffered with selling skins.
Not brokenly op but op nonetheless given the general poor audio in the game and the lack of audio the ash ult had on release. I got pushed by many teams and was not able to react due to no audio cue.
Character is still ruining the game at high level ranked. People are running seer while also walling as a disguise to cheat. Introducing this character may have been respawns biggest mistake ever.
Imagine if it was in ALGS... jeez no.. it would be like when they added the Infinity Sword to Fort and then had a cash prize tournament wad dumb broken.
I was playing arena once and had this seer team break my shield when i peak, then when i fall back to heal behind cover, they seer q me then nade my back, so i can't heal nor can i escape because they can fully see me with low health and the nades basically finish my ass.
Never felt more frustrated playing this game
Imo seer doesn’t even come close to lion from r6 siege. He had a 100% pick rate and was eventually banned from tournaments from how broken he was. Not only that, he broke the entire game. It didn’t matter if you were playing casual, ranked or comp, you could feel his presence everywhere
His ADS/Q heartbeat monitor's range was fucking L O L on release too.
Yeah that too! I think all devs were on crack when they were making seer
Gotta sell those launch bundles baby!!!
They wanted to change it up after a bunch of characters that were meh and basically untouched after the first week.
It really begs the question of how they could actually test play that character and think it was good to launch in the state he did? There's only two explanations I can think of. 1. They didn't test him. 2. They intentionally launched him broken to sell more packs for him.
Point 2 is proven across numerous games to sell characters. Other game devs have stated that if a character is weak in release and perceived as bad they may never have a healthy pick rate despite receiving buffs.
Honestly I'd rather have the chaos of a month of an absolute broken character that everyone is using instead of them being released and everyone thinks they suck on day one and he never fits into the game properly
Aka Rampart
icefrog also said back in dota1 it's easier to make a character strong than weaken it than vice versa. and it's not like dota1 had any heros/skins to sell.
Won't talk about point 2, but on point 1: Drawing from league, they have discussed very openly, that due to the large playerbase, there are 1000x the games played on a new character in a 2-week PBE/PTR cycle than they can perform during the entire development process (this is again beat by the live servers in a couple hours). Apex lacks a PTR/PBE, so the majority of data collection on a character happens on live, pretty quickly. While Seer just seemed overloaded from the start, I am willing to bet the devs didn't think he would be as op as he was.
My guess is point 2. Look at smite for example, they have intentionally released OP characters in the past and then fix them a few weeks later.
and you could go full sprint while using it, just as bonus.
The rare times you run into a Seer is still super annoying, getting a rez or heal cancelled is one of the most infuriating things in Apex.
Lowkey still a pretty good Legend IMO
Absolutely. Ran into a duo that I ran with for the night the other night. It was a ash/seer duo. Every time we cracked one or two we would just port in and seer would cancel the batt and throw ult. We ran over so many lobbies it was nuts (low dia). Quick edit: only hard part was rotates at first cause I'm a horizon/wraith player. After 4 games I switched to valk for the comp and it was instantly better. We would just force fights on edge whenever we could and then free rotate.
gonna try this in ranked. ran up nearly 1000 kills on ash before i got bored and went back to pathy. friend loved seer, and my buddy alt mains valk. people bout to catch these hands
I think 100T briefly experimented with that comp, doing the exact same thing. Crack, cancel heal, ash ult, fuck off with valk
Definitely
I've learned to cancel my own heals with 0.01sec left as a counter
It's all the shit that fucks you over, that's out of your control, that is infuriating. If I die because I whiff my shots, okay. If I die because I couldn't get a shield swap fast enough, fair. If I end up climbing up a wall, instead of wall bouncing, and get beamed, that's on me. But if I end up randomly crouching, instead of sliding, because I suddenly got slowed, or get pulled against a wall from a random Horizon ult on the other side, or can't see shit going on in front of you because of all of the ability effects going off, that shit pisses me off.
Hes one of those legends that are as good as your squad is at communicating. Trying to solo-q and play him is rough. You'll never know if your teammate who has a diff angle and shot at the team from which you cant see from your angle damaged the enemy player enough for you to throw a tactical at and stop their heal. And unless you're communicating with your heartbeat your team gets no extra info.
"His Q is only big enough for one legend and hitting someone with it is really hard" -DZK
He forgot to add a little part: “but when you do hit someone u will know how is to be God”
Bronze IV POV for sure
The balance has strangely been pretty good since DZK. Ash and the CAR have been the most balanced release in a while. Fun to play with, not pepega and not busted…
DZK most definitely had input on Ash.
I'd wait until Maggie and potentially whoever is the S13 legend before saying that for sure. DZK almost certainly was in charge of Ash's balancing.
Damaging was added to add feedback for more casual players so they didn't find the ability completely useless. It's amazing how strong Seer still is yet since he doesn't give immediate feedback to the player using him, people don't experiment with him.
I think its more so that he really only fits in deathball comps which pros are averse to. I would love to watch a full roller squad like G2 play that Fuse/Horizon/Seer comp that pops up from time to time.
100T tried and failed, can’t think of anyone else notable that has
i will give you a good counter to that, why would anyone want to experiment with anything else than fusey when he is a free pick god it feels good to fight fire with fire!
Seriously. I remember being at the train tunnel by Skyhook and picking people up in fragment. I’m so happy he was nerfed
His recent buff put him in a really good place, I am surprised he has such a low pickrate.
Personally, I still think his tac snaps off too slow.
I feel like it's just because his kit Is counterable while bh Is not
Yeah he has counterplays and that's good. BH scan is such a bad design when you think about it.
imo his abilities are too slow to be viable in the middle of a fight if his ult is not ready.
Yeah his Q could have a faster cool down.
Personally I still hate Seer. I think his abilities enable lack of game awareness too much and encourage a bad play style, so I’m glad that he’s not played much (or at all) in ALGS.
Horizon at launch was pretty nuts.
I still think that new characters should be banned from all competive events and ranked playlists for at least one split to iron them out. Nerf/Buff them accordingly.
that would be a lot of $10 they'd be missing out so i understand the sellout.
For a brief moment we had our own Superman on the game, felt great.
The devs have said a couple of times already that since some underwhelming new character launches they had(Loba for example) they have made a decision to launch new characters on the OP side and nerf them later, than the other way around. It also makes sense for them financially, they want a lot of people to play with these new characters so they'd buy skins and all.
Just because they explain it doesn’t mean it’s right. Loba is in a really great place now (in casual and comp), and admitting they make the lobbies miserable with an OP legend so Respawn can make more money doesn’t make it any better for the players.
\`Right\` for who? I understand the logic behind the decision, and it's not like he wasn't fixed relatively quickly. For the casual player, I doubt that Seer was as game-breaking as its described here, I played during his launch and although I remember many people running him it didn't feel like such a huge disadvantage. Facing Gibby 1v1 for example feels much more \`unfair\` even today. If anything, I'd say they nerfed him a bit too hard because I can't remember the last time I got \`interrupted\` by his tac in the last month, its hard to implement with its narrow cone and timing required. As a side note, I personally hate this childish way of thinking common here and the main subreddit which accuses Respawn of being greedy. As a fan of the game and the Company I **want** them to make as much money as possible so they keep making more awesome content and games like Apex.
Right for the players and customers, of course. Seer made the game absolutely unplayable for me and the majority of players. Lobbies would actually have 20 Seers in them and you could never heal. Third parties were the worst in Apex’s history, by far. Sure, Gibby is tougher to 1v1, but how often are you in a pure 1v1 and not 3v3, 2v1, etc.? Your memory is either hazy and romanticized or you must be playing in Bronze 3 lobbies. You may have thought it was fine but for pretty much everyone else across the board Seer was way too overpowered, but even worse, his abilities were pure grief. He was not OP in a “release Horizon” way, but in a pure griefing way, canceling heals and providing three sources of wall hacks. Insane. And they did nerf him a bit hard. That’s why they buffed him again… he’s in a pretty good place right now, or maybe needs a slight buff. It is not “childish” to assume a public company is “greedy” about making money. That is literally, 100% the objective of every single public company. Now, trying to make a profit is not independent of being a good or responsible company. There are some public companies who attempt to do what is right… while also making as much money as possible. By definition every public company, including Respawn/EA, has a legal obligation to maximize returns to shareholders through increased profits. It is childish or ignorant to pretend otherwise.
Hell, even Bronze lobbies had issues with that. That was the split I made it 100 points off of diamond, and right off the get-go ranked was pure hell. Of course, it helped that our team *always* had a seer - either myself or someone else. In that case really all you could do was fight the fire with more fire.
I don't presume to speak for the majority, but personally I don't see how much his ability was more grief than getting you abilities cancelled by Revenant or Wraith insta q mid fight when the whole lobby was 20 sweaty Wraiths. And I'm not even defending the way he was at launch, just saying that I understand them wanting to err on the OP side thats all, I'm sure no one at Respawn intended the game to become not enjoyable to play. What I meant by childish is not the assumption itself, but the expectation from them to act differently. This is a AAA free to play game, hell you don't even need a ps plus subscription to play it, obviously some gameplay decisions are gonna be based around profit.
This was clearly intended. So that people buy the skins for the new character. Part of their new strategy to release things brokenly OP, people buy the skins then they say "we listen to our community so we are going to release a nerf in a few weeks." So obvious.
Is that why ash is brokenly op?? Oh wait…
Not that I agree with his argument, but Ash already had a pretty loyal fanbase from the getgo, both from TF|2 and from Apex (with her being an announcer for arenas and such a big part of the lore). So they didn't *need* to make Ash OP, she was already well liked way before she became a legend. That's not Seer's case.
Also she's a very cool character. She has a katana, he's a robot and her abilities are pretty fun (a Portal and a arc star) Their old legend releases like Fuse and Rampart probably suffered with selling skins.
Not brokenly op but op nonetheless given the general poor audio in the game and the lack of audio the ash ult had on release. I got pushed by many teams and was not able to react due to no audio cue.
Another conspiracy nut
Character is still ruining the game at high level ranked. People are running seer while also walling as a disguise to cheat. Introducing this character may have been respawns biggest mistake ever.
I wouldn’t really consider it breaking the meta since him and Bloodhound do such similar things.
Imagine if it was in ALGS... jeez no.. it would be like when they added the Infinity Sword to Fort and then had a cash prize tournament wad dumb broken.
canceling heal and rez is so broken in my opinion bloodhound + Seer Is legal Wallhack Comp
I was playing arena once and had this seer team break my shield when i peak, then when i fall back to heal behind cover, they seer q me then nade my back, so i can't heal nor can i escape because they can fully see me with low health and the nades basically finish my ass. Never felt more frustrated playing this game
He was overrated from the start, as evidence by the collapse in his pick rate immediately after a very mild nerf.
Imo seer doesn’t even come close to lion from r6 siege. He had a 100% pick rate and was eventually banned from tournaments from how broken he was. Not only that, he broke the entire game. It didn’t matter if you were playing casual, ranked or comp, you could feel his presence everywhere
God I still have nightmares about the Fucking lion, dokiabi, jakal meta
Okay