Silver ranked Blizzard dev responds to criticism over Overwatch balancing

New Overwatch community manager Andy B drew some criticism for providing balancing insight into Overwatch 2 despite being a silver-ranked player.

A slow trickle of information about Overwatch 2 has been released over the last few months, and at the Overwatch League Finals, we will get more info about the sequel to the popular Blizzard shooter.

A new Overwatch community manager has caught some criticism for providing insight into the balancing of the upcoming sequel when fans found out about his low ranking.

Overwatch dev criticism

The new community manager for Overwatch, Andy B, was chatting with fans in the Blizzard forums when one fan asked how he could provide insight into the balancing of the game with having such a low rank saying, “How is a bronze supposed to relay any feedback to the devs? Sorry but I think you probably don’t understand half the things people even talk about here.”

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Andy replied: “I wouldn’t conflate understanding with ability. There are plenty of people out there who have a deep understanding of their game of choice, but are not competitive participants themselves.”

As other players made clear, it is important to note that Andy is just a community manager, and doesn’t have a say in final decisions when it comes to balancing changes.

He clarified his role in another comment saying: “My role is to facilitate communication between the developers and the community, something I’ve been passionate about for years. We’re required to have empathy for both the player experience and the developer experience, and walking in both worlds can be a bit tricky, as shown in this post.”

While Andy’s job is to provide a clear mode of communication between fans and the dev team, it isn’t his job as to what changes end up being implemented into the game. Clearly, there was some failure in communication, as the original commenter that complained thought Andy was the end-all on decisions for Overwatch balancing.