Which died because literally "where's the content" for years on end. People kept saying shit like "why do they have a story guy when there's no story being told" and then we found out. It's the most exploitive kind of stuff and Blizzard deserves to go under.
Pay streamers to play your product and force people to watch it for 4 hours for an invite to a beta version of a 1.5 update to your dead game instead of having your paid employees make enough content to satisfy swaths of players for over 4 hours and organically generate buzz around your product that will lead to customer retention/returns, continued sales and most importantly, continued interest: the Blizzard way.
There is no organic hype for the game. If the Blizzard from 4 years ago wasn't able to avoid the original OW to reach its current level of deterioration, whatever "talent" is left in current year Blizzard is not going to fare any better. I get the feeling the game will be popular the first couple of weeks, then people will realize it is basically the same game with barely anything new worth sticking around and player numbers will drop faster than the original game. Plenty of people who were there for the first game and got burned won't even try it.
While I don't believe OW2 will be death-on-arrival, it'll die way faster than the original. I have no confidence whatsoever with the people in charge of this IP.
I've been playing Paladins ever since I left Overwatch some three years ago. (1000 hours of play so far) Is it perfect? of course not but IMHO when I started playing it I was willing to try it because playing OW was nothing but endless frustration and disappointment. Paladins despite its initials flaws is fun to play and its system and mechanics give the player control as to how customize your champion of choice to one's playstyle.
Also, unlike OW, the developers balance the game around the feedback of the overall community and not around the top 5%. Evil Mojo is a small developer but they seem to care about what their player base is saying and they have been ironing out bugs and continually adding characters every 2-3 months. In two weeks time champion number 55 will drop ( Lillith, a vampire healer ) .
If you want to try it, there is nearly no barrier of entry, it is free to play, runs on potato PCs ( is out on consoles too ) and you can unlock characters by earning in game gold.
Just try it, go to the shooting range to test any of the characters in the roster and if you find one that you'll like, grind gold to unlock it. Build a deck of cards to buff the skills that fit your play style and see how it goes.
I tried out the Overwatch 2 beta. I'm not impressed.
I know it's a PvP beta, but it could have been just a graphical updated version of Overwatch 1. Also, it's just the same game just with a tank removed and a few tool kit changes for some of the heroes.
I watched vtuber Selen play (who was a T500 Lucio under the name dokidokibird), it's hard to believe this was three years in the making. It looks the same, they just changed the day/night on maps like the seasonal events. The new push mode with the robot looks fucking bland and the levels look like they're from a 360/PS3 gen FPS. Doomfist still looks strong as a tank. The one thing I liked seeing was lack of barriers.
I tried out the Overwatch 2 beta. I'm not impressed.
I know it's a PvP beta, but it could have been just a graphical updated version of Overwatch 1. Also, it's just the same game just with a tank removed and a few tool kit changes for some of the heroes.
I watched vtuber Selen play (who was a T500 Lucio under the name dokidokibird), it's hard to believe this was three years in the making. It looks the same, they just changed the day/night on maps like the seasonal events. The new push mode with the robot looks fucking bland and the levels look like they're from a 360/PS3 gen FPS. Doomfist still looks strong as a tank. The one thing I liked seeing was lack of barriers.
The very few changes that were made to the game, makes even fucking Battlefield 2042 more tempting to play, because they actually made a game that was different from past BF games (and that's not a compliment), even if it turned out to be absolute shit.
Also, unlike OW, the developers balance the game around the feedback of the overall community and not around the top 5%. Evil Mojo is a small developer but they seem to care about what their player base is saying and they have been ironing out bugs and continually adding characters every 2-3 months. In two weeks time champion number 55 will drop ( Lillith, a vampire healer ).
Is it supposed to be a good thing or not, that a game is balanced around overall, compared to either the top %, or bottom %, of players? DOTA 2 balances the game based almost exclusively on pro play, and people consider it to be one of the best balanced competitive games available today. Their community also likes to have pride about the game having the largest E-Sports prize pool, and they also have pride that it's made by a company that doesn't have shareholders (Valve), compared to inferior games made by games that rely on investors (i.e. anything made from EA, Blizzard, Microsoft, Sony, Ubisoft, Nexon, and Riot Games).
I'd say this franchise is only good for the porn, but the SFM community obsession with penises on genetic females has ruined that, and all the good fanartists moved on years ago.
I guess it's good for a laugh.
Was big for all of a single year before dying of a thousand cuts.
They gotta do a mobile game with a gay name first. All these companies have to turn their IP into a shitty mobile game. They'll do it to recoup costs.
I love that they put so much work into the wrong things. Esports, story missions, the non-sequel sequel. Tens, maybe hundreds of millions of dollars flushed down the toilet. Meanwhile TF2 trudges along with nothing but cosmetic DLC and still had 80k peak players yesterday.
To be fair to all other companies, it's not as if they manage that by selling the world's greatest games. Having a monopoly on the PC gaming market leaves them free to make business decisions other companies couldn't dream of. It's a weird thing for a fanbase to be proud of.
I'd say this franchise is only good for the porn, but the SFM community obsession with penises on genetic females has ruined that, and all the good fanartists moved on years ago.
I guess it's good for a laugh.
Was big for all of a single year before dying of a thousand cuts.
"Blizzard plans to artificially boost Overwatch to the top game on twitch on Wednesday by requiring players to watch for at least 4 hours in a one time 8 hour window to get access to the Overwatch 2 beta and having 2 of the top streamers (Pokimane and XQC) to play it (probably being paid to). Really pathetic honestly"
i had no idea this is how gaming marketing worked these days. relaying on twitch and streamers? sad!
Haven't seen anything from the Beta, likely not going to. Comments are based on what's been said in this thread so far.
If this beta had been released around OW's third year as an add-on, OW would likely be in a very different place right now. Mostly because it would be managed by a competent company but I digress.
Anyone still playing this game has been experiencing some level of content draught since the game's third year (when people realized events were largely repetitive, cosmetics for those events started to wane, and OWL became the priority some some fucking reason). Having the exact same game they have had with a few heroes updates and a new game mode will be enough to keep whoever is fine with the game in its current state, but it will not bring in old players and it will not boost this game's numbers for very long.
What they needed to push out into a beta:
1. New heroes, plural, with characters people have been thirsting for and speculating over for ages. Mauga, Junker Queen, Maximillien, the omnic from the last Achieves event. Make Tracer's girlfriend a hero, revisit meme/scrapped characters like Mama Hong and Jetpack Cat who both have larger fan bases than fucking Sojourn. The French cop from the cinematic they released had more hype than Sojourn's official announcement, for god's sake.
2. Advance the identity and shallow stories of established characters through in-game changes, and thus justify shit being different.
Widowmaker starts getting her complexion back to normal because her brainwashing is wearing off, her lack of stability could forge new narrative connections (people go apeshit for Tracer/Widow, it's right there, start pandering in the ways that might make some money) which forces a change to her gameplay style or abilities entirely.
Introduce a character that threatens Akande and is vying for the title as the next Doomfist (DPS character vs. DPS turned Tank that actively counter/play off each other with one or two abilities).
Torbjorn and Bastion are apparently broing it up in the comics, let Torbjorn mount Bastion as a duo-ult. Shit like that that shows there is a change in what little lore that exists and shakes things up for a game that is over half a decade old and largely ignored by both players and the neglectful team behind it. Which brings me to:
3. A good gimmick to get new people and curious old hats back into the ring, or at least interested in watching something on Twitch for ten minutes, let alone 4 hours. I starting thinking about separate hero load outs as an idea. Essentially parallels or classes for each individual hero, allowing for duplicated abilities, assets, and even entire characters while encouraging their desire for multiple play-styles. Like the end result of a class tree in Borderlands, I guess.
- Bastion as his regular self with ability tweaks explained by his new association with Torbjorn, always accompanied by his bird and retaining his old design, with a focus on self-sustain and working with a team. Or Bastion as "Siege" the Null Sector unit, a bird-less glass canon because they're manufactured in droves.
- D.Va, your favorite e-girl and mech pilot who is a Tank that remains in her mech most of the time and is severely weakened when out of it; her mech, Tokki (rabbit in Korean), is good for getting in, disrupting or aiding in a clutch, and getting out. Or D.Mon, your newest former e-sports player and mech pilot who is a Tank that remains in her mech most of the time but can choose to eject when things get messy; her mech, Beast, is great at bullying and soaking big bursts of damage at crucial moments but its resources must be properly managed to achieve the best results.
- Play as Satya "Symmetra" Vaswani, the Vishkar architect, a damage hero that uses sentry turrets, positioning, and enemy prediction to her advantage; small rooms, tight spaces, and close range combat are where she shines. Or choose Harita "Quake" Patel, former Vishkar head geologist, a damage hero disillusioned by Viskhar that uses armor, sentry sensors, and enemy prediction to give her team an advantage; her quick arc projectiles and blaster (charging required) can assist allies from a afar.
Null Sector Bastions exist in the game. D.Mon exists in the lore. Harita exists as a comic, I believe. There's shit right there and no one is willing to use any of it for anything beyond the bare minimum, if that.
Am I saying any of those ideas are viable or even good? Not necessarily, I'm not a damn game developer, but it would be SOMETHING.
4. COSMETICS SHOWCASE. New emotes, new skins, new sprays, new icons, new highlight intros, new voice lines, new achievements. A lot of people are content to do the exact same thing over and over again (i.e. grind and overlook repetitiveness in a game) for a new shiny, or will sit and do the same thing if the room looks a little different. OW is an excellent case of this, where people still feel an attachment to the game because "uwu my wifeu". Mobile games are a testament to this. Normies, for their part, generally don't fucking care about being the top 500. They get EXP and in-game currency to buy something they like and enjoy it for a few hours before logging off. So many people, for YEARS, have been begging Blizzard for this as the bare minimum and they cannot even tease a beefy content drop that isn't just their same skins on a slightly different model.
And finally, 5. New maps and new game modes. A fair amount of Blizzard's player base seem content to fuck around in the arcade or in custom games without touching the main modes. Feed them. People have made UNO, red light green light, entire PvE modes, and more using the lacking tools given to them. Take some of that shit, polish it up, and slap it into the arcade. Give people the battle royale experience where they've only got a gun and standardized healing with the appropriate changes made to the characters available to play in those modes. Make the 12v12 chaos mode a reality. Properly monitor and tweak the arcade modes already created, balance that shit beyond upping some numbers and disabling some abilities, especially if they're meant to last for more than an April Fools' Joke, because those on their own have kept people coming back to the game on their own.
And yes, TL;DR: all Blizzard needed to accomplish was the barest fucking minimum after several years of reduced content output in a world where mobile games are racking in millions simply selling gem packs and they couldn't even manage that.
I'm not saying Overwatch is the greatest game of all time but they clearly had something here. Biases fully exposed, I loved this game. A flock of knock-offs that lived and died in its presence are a testament to the lightning in a bottle that it was. It's not an e-sports goldmine and I don't really think it's a great competitive game outside of very specific environments, but casual players dug the shit out of this and because they so thoroughly trounced the competition with the visuals and personality of their cast, OW has managed to last far longer than it had any right to.
It makes me MATI seeing companies like ActiBliz stumble into something good and royally fuck it up because they can't handle the basics of their jobs. But that's the games industry for you, I guess.
Is it supposed to be a good thing or not, that a game is balanced around overall, compared to either the top %, or bottom %, of players? DOTA 2 balances the game based almost exclusively on pro play, and people consider it to be one of the best balanced competitive games available today. Their community also likes to have pride about the game having the largest E-Sports prize pool, and they also have pride that it's made by a company that doesn't have shareholders (Valve), compared to inferior games made by games that rely on investors (i.e. anything made from EA, Blizzard, Microsoft, Sony, Ubisoft, Nexon, and Riot Games).
I think it depends on the type of game it is and what the vast majority of the player base wants out of it. Like you said, the DOTA 2 community has pride in being a competitive game, so balancing around that type of play likely isn't an issue for most because whilst they aren't gunning to join the pro leagues, they enjoy the type of gameplay and experience such an atmosphere brings and want that in their casual spaces as well.
Overwatch League had some supporters, yes, but the vast majority of the player base saw anything OWL-related as unimportant, because they didn't give a shit. Whoever won this match or that tournament barely got any traction compared to hero teases, those monthly hero events (Lego Bastion, Bastet Ana, etc), and cosmetic updates.
Reddit is a cesspit but it's a great example of what mattered to most people playing Overwatch. Not the League, not pro strategies, not even necessarily getting better and becoming the best at the name (Overwatch University), but actual game updates, impactful lore, and POTGs that wouldn't often happen in games like their own. Because OW is loved by a bunch of casuals and Blizzard refuses to acknowledge and accept that.
Not very familiar with the AAA space so I'll try and use OW as an example. I remember when the second Archives event dropped and they went all out. New cinematic, new game mode, new mobs that weren't all entirely re-skins of existing character models, and a spotlight on the long forgotten lore that made people feel like something was coming out of the story. Finally. At the time, all of my friends and I were still playing. We were genuinely excited to dig out teeth into it, pick up and play the game again.
It's not genuine in the sense that people just randomly found a game and started hyping it up all over the place. I'm not even trying to say that any buzz generated by games - especially AAA games - are true and honest and built from the ground up by the community itself and nothing else.
However, because the OW team put work into the game, there was a flurry of excitement from many who played it. When you give people something you've clearly put work into and they latch onto it because they are excited for it and enjoy what you have created, that's as organic as I think it can get. That's the kind of buzz I was referring, I guess?
Like when the last big Stardew Valley update dropped and everyone and their mom was going apeshit over it because there were new things to discover and experience in a familiar world. So not organic in the proper sense, just more of a really good outcome in a give and take, product consumption scenario.
cant speak for Apex Legends but games like the witcher and soullike used to relay more on word of mouth from fans. sure, there was adds on billboardes and game sites but the shilling feels so in your face and farced now, there is no shame in how the prop up there own game like they dont think it cant speak for itself.
Doesn't CD Projekt Red make their numbers public? You could probably find their marketing budget for Witcher 3. I bet it was more than the GDP of many small nations!
She is a Flank character that uses stealth instead of vertical mobility to get into the enemy's back line. She excels at close range engagements and if played right she is quite lethal. Depending on the build and Talent combination she can also be played as a off-Support or even a DPS.
Her main weakness is the "Illuminate" item that enemies may buy to increase the effective range at which they can see her while in stealth. I like using card builds that increase her speed while in stealth and self support with her Smoke Bomb. You can further increase her speed with the "Nimble" item while in a match.
As you can tell by the image she's one of the sexy "Femme Fatales" of the game and has some of the most fan service oriented skins and emotes in the game. ( Seriously Evil Mojo knows which type of skins sell and they deliver, this is the cosmetic they made for her last Halloween:
As a side note, something that Paladins does better than Overwatch regarding cosmetics is that these no only change the look of the character, they also change the visual effects, sounds and voice pack.
