Overwatch

[ZMOT]

Because content updates are required to retain the existing playerbase. New characters and maps are great ways to get people who have stopped playing to come back to your game.

For a single player game, retaining/growing the playerbase past initial release doesn’t matter that much, but for a multiplayer game played on first-party servers you NEED to keep players coming back, or your game will die.

only if your game has no staying power of it's own, that's like trying to make it an e-sport when it never had the foundation for it.

Good points, I should have been looking at it from the popularity perspective rather than quality. Still, I find it hard to believe for a game so popular and so well received to """"die"""" so quickly simply because the pace of development slowed.

because it was pushed by marketing mostly and the "cool" thing to play at the time. fuck even a mate of mine who doesn't really play fps got 100 hours out of it and still couldn't answer what he enjoyed about it after 100 hours. same guy who called battleborn shit. why? "because it's shit".

that's why you constantly need to push new "content" as a distraction and shit to grind for.

 

[Mooger Meng]

Good points, I should have been looking at it from the popularity perspective rather than quality. Still, I find it hard to believe for a game so popular and so well received to """"die"""" so quickly simply because the pace of development slowed.

I'm pretty sure the most popular thing about Overwatch has always been the porn. Once all the horny brain energy dissipated it had to stand on its own merits as an actual game, and here we are.

 

[Tanner Glass]

I hear quite a bit about how Tencent/Blizzard's incompetence killed Overwatch, but haven't played a 16-tick game since UT99. What killed the game, or better yet is there any good post-mortem that answers the question in autistic detail?

Basically, e-sports.

It seems to me that Overwatch was designed from the ground up (after the MMO was abandoned, at least) with a very specific niche in mind - a competitive shooter. During it's Dev cycle there was a "there hasn't been a new game in a while" vibe in the genre. Quake and Unreal Tournament were "ancient" at that point, Counter-Strike (the premier competitive shooter) was getting up in years as was Team Fortress 2 (the premier non competitive shooter).

Overwatch was a typically Blizzard idea - find a genre that isn't super competitive (MMO in 2004, Gauntlet style Action/RPG, RTS) and take and compound existing ideas and modernize them and try and create a "pillar" of the genre that they can hold on to forever.

Overwatch was the following.
- A competitive shooter, ala Counter Strike. Blizzard was very excited to about the e-sports/tournament scene (and the money it was making) starting from when Starcraft blew up huge and probably driven by the money that MOBAs (DOTA2, LOL) were making at the time.
- A class based shooter, aka Team Fortress 2, but also reminiscent of MOBAs that were popular at the time. This is where the "main skill, sub skill, ultimate skill" loadout was created from as MOBA characters typically have 1-3 "normal" moves and 1 "super" move. This also leads to "counters" - as in some characters that excel at negating other characters.
- Accessible, meaning that they would try and make changes around how the game works in order to increase the "skill floor" (how good is the worst player, essentially) at the game and how easy is it to grasp concepts, which in other games can be pretty hard. This lead to much simpler map design, streamlined "classes" and "roles" (Tank/DPS/Healer), much simpler objectives, and so on.


If the above sounds like a lot - it's because it fucking is. Overwatch, the guts of an already failed project, was trying to be a "better" version of like 9 already hugely successful games in like 3 genres all in one box. Driven by a team that never really even made a shooter before on top of it. Here are some specific problems that OW has that are part of the core design.
- MOBA style class counters are based around MOBA style games, in which Units are selected permanently for the duration of a match and the counters can be worked through with teamwork. Everyone's Units in a MOBA are known to both teams at the start of a match and pro matches have an extremely detailed "draft" process on top of this. Overwatch, instead, lets players switch on the fly, constantly, meaning there isn't much strategy to countering.
- Overwatch's map design is -extremely- linear, almost always being a single straight line of objectives that have to be taken in order. This removes most map strategy that is found in other shooters - as "rush A" becomes the only option as only "A" exists in OW. This means that there is never any reason to split your team up for any reason.
- Overwatch's hero design is -extremely- linear, with most falling into the three pre-defined roles neatly. There are 0 support characters (as in, every character exists to do damage) and 0 support concepts in the game. Because of the extremely linear map design, no level of "scouting" is ever needed because you generally know where the enemy team is going to be at all teams (on the single objective, going to the single objective, or setting up in a chokepoint near the single objective). Because of the extremely limited map design, "roaming" and "ganking" are don't really exist as concepts and "picking" is extremely uncommon and unreliable. This limits DPS units abilities drastically by forcing all of their abilities to be self-support, crowd control, or damage oriented.
- Overwatch's hero design is -extremely- flat. There are 30+ heroes currently, but none of them are remarkably creative from a gameplay standpoint and many of them are just carbon copies of things that were fun in other games, although usually much less fun in Overwatch (because, skill floor). Examples include Pharrah -> TF2 Soldier, Torbjorn -> TFC Engineer, Widowmaker -> TF2 Sniper, Roadhog -> DOTA2 Pudge, and so on. This presents a large number of issues but the main one I'm trying to highlight is that there isn't much in OW that you can't get anywhere else.
- Overwatch's balance and design are extremely bad. For a team game - there isn't a huge emphasis on teamwork and 0 emphasis on support. There was such a poor balance between DPS characters output and Tank characters health that they had to scrap the entire "no team composition" system.
- Overwatch's characters are (mostly) extremely boring - not only do they "borrow" gameplay concepts from other games, the characters story/arc/whatnot are also borrowed and not really expanded on. Overwatch suffers from the "World of Warcraft" syndrome where any story is told -outside- of the game, is usually poorly written and/or excessively pandering. It also suffers from the "World of Warcraft" syndrome where most of the "evil" character are just "good" characters who were corrupted in some way. They look extremely generic and if they weren't so porn-baitable - no one would care about them at all.

So what do you get when you mix all this up and shake it all out? Well, not much of anything. It's a game that isn't all that fun to play, all that fun to watch, or even all that fun to know about (unless you care deeply about -how- the anthropomorphic hamster escaped from the space station he was created on?). The most damning thing about Overwatch is that it (to me, at least) was the first Blizzard game that was extremely not innovative. I can't think of a single thing in OW that "defines" it and that other developers would try and refine for years to come (unlike, say WoW, Diablo, Starcraft, Warcraft, or even Hearthstone). I can point to Starcraft today as one of the best RTS games to ever be made. I can point to WoW as the best MMO of it's time (even if a lack of innovation is burying it today). Overwatch? I couldn't even point to it as being all that good even when it released, much less now.

 

[Keystone]

Overwatch was good for one thing, at least.

Spoiler

 

[BlazikenLover]

Why do content updates matter? Games aren't milk, good design doesn't have an expiration date. Quake 3's just as good as it was the day it was released. Indeed, I can name more games ruined by the content update cycle than improved by them.

People have been conditioned to expect constant updates from games to the point they lose interest if there hasn't been a big update within the past month.
At the same time the gameplay is so shallow/unegaging that new content is needed on a regular basis, and since fixing a game/design that was fucked from the start requires effort and resources... Which are being spent on churning out updates, you get most modern multiplayer games.

One example of this that comes to mind is warframe, the core gameplay is fun but if you got nothing you want to farm or unlock chances are you won't be playing for fun (since you are so burnt out by all the grinding)

Back to overwatch: I expected the game to be more like TF2 or monday night combat, I tried to like it but after 14 or so hours I found it extremely dull which confused me:
TF2 characters have three weapons and different stats, no special active abilities.
Monday Night Combat characters had two weapons and three different skills (but no ultimates) each.
OW had more characters than either game, two weapons each, different stats, two actives and a big flashy ultimate, OW should be an improvement or at least be on par with the other two games and yet it felt boring, out of the 20 heroes only a handful were fun to play with the rest being too damn weak, yeah you could say I am being a faggot for not playing my favourites but when the character I find cool can't do its job well it simply is not fun.
I found the gunplay to be unsatisfying and mediocre, most weapons requiring zero aim. A friend described OW as a FPS for people who don't play shooters and I believe that is a very accurate description.
Tldr: I tried to like the game but found it too shallow.

 

[Thiletonomics]

What I am wondering is how much did Overwatch's smaller competitors, as in Paladins, Battleborn, and LawBreakers, actually did better at than OW did, despite the first game being neglected by Hi-Rez as they chased the next big gaming trend, and the latter two dying out completely.

 

[Airbrushed Van Art]

I miss playing Overwatch as Support. Had a blast keeping my team alive. Then they kept on fucking around with abilities and game setup roster limits and I got pushed right out.

What a disappointment.

 

[BlazikenLover]

What I am wondering is how much did Overwatch's smaller competitors, as in Paladins, Battleborn, and LawBreakers, actually did better at than OW did, despite the first game being neglected by Hi-Rez as they chased the next big gaming trend, and the latter two dying out completely.

I believe paladins is doing better than OW currently, which I find hilarious since everyone and their mothers were parroting "LOL OVERWATCH RIPOFF!!!!" after dunkey's video came out. One thing hi-rez has over blizzard is that their games/updates output isn't awful.

 

[WULULULULU]

What I am wondering is how much did Overwatch's smaller competitors, as in Paladins, Battleborn, and LawBreakers, actually did better at than OW did, despite the first game being neglected by Hi-Rez as they chased the next big gaming trend, and the latter two dying out completely.

Let me play as Rath again. Reaper is too boring.

 

[ZMOT]

Tldr: I tried to like the game but found it too shallow.

it's worse than brink which I actually liked quite a bit coming from ET just with waifus.

What I am wondering is how much did Overwatch's smaller competitors, as in Paladins, Battleborn, and LawBreakers, actually did better at than OW did, despite the first game being neglected by Hi-Rez as they chased the next big gaming trend, and the latter two dying out completely.

imo they were better games, pretty much (although better is relative, battleborn for example is more moba than tf2clone closer to gigantic - remember that one?). the problem were the details and the companies behind it. lawbreakers had cliffyb, battleborn gearbox and randy, paladins hi-rez.
to give you an example, when it was obvious that battleborn was bombing and people started to get sick of OW - they did absolutely nothing. worse, they did fuck all to support the playerbase they had, at one point there were seven queues for less than 1000 players, with matches possibly taking 30-40 minutes for 10 people. you can do the math. there was zero support via lobbies and other stuff to get games going even if you wanted to work around the matchmaking, and even if you somehow managed to find 9 other suckers there was no progression in custom games (which you wanted/needed to do since certain unlocks made a big difference for certain chars and MUH FARMING was always a retarded argument especially in BB).
the start itself was also incredibly retarded, not only did you have to sit through a 5 minute mandatory intro movie, then you had to play a tutorial with an advanced character you then had to unlock.

OW, as shit and boring as it was, you could at least play because there were enough people in the pool to actually start games. in BB and LB you had to get lucky to find a match.

honestly, I can't remember how many games simply euthanized themselves by going full console matchmaking. doesn't even make sense because even consoles had lobbies at some point.

 

[WULULULULU]

it's worse than brink which I actually liked quite a bit coming from ET just with waifus.


imo they were better games, pretty much (although better is relative, battleborn for example is more moba than tf2clone closer to gigantic - remember that one?). the problem were the details and the companies behind it. lawbreakers had cliffyb, battleborn gearbox and randy, paladins hi-rez.
to give you an example, when it was obvious that battleborn was bombing and people started to get sick of OW - they did absolutely nothing. worse, they did fuck all to support the playerbase they had, at one point there were seven queues for less than 1000 players, with matches possibly taking 30-40 minutes for 10 people. you can do the math. there was zero support via lobbies and other stuff to get games going even if you wanted to work around the matchmaking, and even if you somehow managed to find 9 other suckers there was no progression in custom games (which you wanted/needed to do since certain unlocks made a big difference for certain chars and MUH FARMING was always a retarded argument especially in BB).
the start itself was also incredibly retarded, not only did you have to sit through a 5 minute mandatory intro movie, then you had to play a tutorial with an advanced character you then had to unlock.

OW, as shit and boring as it was, you could at least play because there were enough people in the pool to actually start games. in BB and LB you had to get lucky to find a match.

honestly, I can't remember how many games simply euthanized themselves by going full console matchmaking. doesn't even make sense because even consoles had lobbies at some point.

If you gave Battleborn to the community, it would survive longer I would say.

 

[Kramer on the phone]

Overwatch was good for one thing, at least.

Spoiler

View attachment 2782494

i think we can all agree it was near-blatant when it came to appealing to coomers, the characters were already finalized right after GG so they still had that "videogames are for boys, they want women to jerk to and men to self-insert as" feel games had before Anita and the blog cunts started calling them out for it.

we should be lucky it took this long for them to start changing it.

If you gave Battleborn to the community, it would survive longer I would say.

the farming pissed people off, but the writing, characters, and lack of difference is what really made people not want to play. also locking most characters behind unlocks while good in concept meant it went to shit quickly. less than 5% unlocked half of the roster. so that should tell you how little people saw of the game. it would have been quite the different story if everyone was unlocked from the start.

I remember when OW first came out everyone called it out for being a TF2 ripoff, the difference is that A. it was new so the spergy fanbase wasn't there yet B.it had women so people would want to fap and learn about it C.it had marketing my family knew what OW was from commercials and billboards way back in 2016, they still don't know what TF2 is

the free betas really compelled people to play as well, this was before most games had that but weren't lootbox f2p faggotry. plus like others said Blizzard had a much better reputation than it does now, so their TF2 rip-off would be way more enjoyable.

even if it sucked it for $0 it was fun, plus that was before they started tweaking it all over. every new patch it went from a casual game to shit around in with friends to a failed competitive mode.

 

[YourFriendlyLurker]

I'd say that the thing that killed the game was lack of any development and lack of attention to the fanbase. Remember those first years when we got the cinematics for characters? Compare them with a low-level effort of what they did after, the difference is appaling. The sheer laziness to even do new PVE events instead of feeding the players the same over and over, laziness to expand the lore (it doesn't requite multimillion budget ffs), laziness to even communicate with the fanbase (the official forum looks abandoned). I still can't grasp the decision to abandon the development of the game when it was on its peak, there was such a potential, that sometimes it looks like some conspiracy. The games such as team looter-shooters do every possible shit to attract attention of players (Fortnite is great example, or even the same Warzone), OW just did nothing. I don't understand why Caplan received his salary, during the last years OW just ceased to exist. In such situation the average gamer just stops playing the game, swtiching on something that devs cared about.

And I don't even want to start about the balance decisions, OWL and gameplay problems.

 

[FatalTater]

Tumblr not alowing porn anymore had a lot to do with Overwatch's popularity sinking, be honest. Look at the dates. Tumblr says no porn, soon afterwards OW declines.

I was watching some Muselk videos from 3-4 years ago and it made me sad.
Overwatch used to be fun. It used to be a game that people played with.

I miss those days. Can we make it fun again, regardless of what nonsense the company does?

 

[ZMOT]

the farming pissed people off, but the writing, characters, and lack of difference is what really made people not want to play. also locking most characters behind unlocks while good in concept meant it went to shit quickly. less than 5% unlocked half of the roster. so that should tell you how little people saw of the game. it would have been quite the different story if everyone was unlocked from the start.

no one seems to have problem with borderland's writing, and it was less annoying than that (some parts were actually quite good, like certain stories from the pve dlc).
as for unlocks, that comes down to the problems I mentioned. to unlock chars you either had to level up your rank or complete challenges, good luck with that when the queue never pops and there was no other option besides doing pve stuff solo, because iirc the game of course didn't have backfill either.
they added bot matches later - after 7 months.

tbh, I miss it. the classes were fun to play and the pve stuff pretty chill to farm with some actual gidgud parts.

this was before most games had that but weren't lootbox f2p faggotry.

instead it had $40-$60 lootbox faggotry.

 

[Tanner Glass]

no one seems to have problem with borderland's writing

A lot of people have issues with Borderland's writing, extremely so the writing in Pre Sequel and BL3. BL2 writing was extremely mediocre save for one DLC that people liked (Tiny Tina's DND campaign) and even then it's people latching onto the one or two passably written emotional moments.

Borderlands writing is extremely bad and I think that's the prevalent opinion.

 

[Dick Justice]

no one seems to have problem with borderland's writing, and it was less annoying than that (some parts were actually quite good, like certain stories from the pve dlc).

I want some of what you're smoking. I've never heard any kind of compliment about le memeland (xDDD)'s writing, but tons of complaints, self included. In fact, the writing was so terrible it kept me from buying any of the sequels. Seriously, you'd have an easier time defending the writing in fucking DNF (another gearbox game lol).

 

[ZMOT]

A lot of people have issues with Borderland's writing, extremely so the writing in Pre Sequel and BL3. BL2 writing was extremely mediocre save for one DLC that people liked (Tiny Tina's DND campaign) and even then it's people latching onto the one or two passably written emotional moments.

Borderlands writing is extremely bad and I think that's the prevalent opinion.

I want some of what you're smoking. I've never heard any kind of compliment about le memeland (xDDD)'s writing, but tons of complaints, self included. In fact, the writing was so terrible it kept me from buying any of the sequels. Seriously, you'd have an easier time defending the writing in fucking DNF (another gearbox game lol).

meanwhile:

As of August 2019, more than 45 million copies of Borderlands games had been shipped, with 22 million from Borderlands 2.[1] An additional 5 million copies of Borderlands 3 were sold within five days of release, bringing the total series' net revenues to over US$1 billion.[2] This makes it one of the best-selling video game franchises of all time. A film adaptation of the series is in development by Lionsgate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borderlands_(series)

my point is "people didn't play battleborn because of it's writing" doesn't really hold up when people still buy borderlands in droves.

 

[YourFriendlyLurker]

I see we would make great autopsists lol, but let's sperg about what-ifs. What would you do with OW if you were Bobby Kotick (aside from the apprently correct answer "shut bliz the fuck down")? Would you make it f2p? Would you introduce season systems or some new game-mods? What wouldyou change to make OW great again? Let your fantasy fly, kiwis.

 

[BlazikenLover]

I see we would make great autopsists lol, but let's sperg about what-ifs. What would you do with OW if you were Bobby Kotick (aside from the apprently correct answer "shut bliz the fuck down")? Would you make it f2p? Would you introduce season systems or some new game-mods? What wouldyou change to make OW great again? Let your fantasy fly, kiwis.

Huge rebalance to make most characters viable and fun
Stop obsessing over e-sports, you can have your tourneys but stop balancing everything to be "competitive"
Better custom game support
Better maps and more gamemodes

If it was up to me this is what Overwatch 2 would have been, the base game is there, just get people good at game design to have a go at it and tweak things until you have something that's fun.