Current Events > Man Blizzard really dropped the ball with Overwatch

(+) Yeah! (+)

Overwatch 1 was huge, and there's zero hype for Overwatch 2. Game looks awful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BowIDnsNvjs&ab_channel=PlayOverwatch

Overwatch "2" is basically a vehicle for Blizzard to make more money while screwing over the playerbase. For example, I heard that new heroes will be locked behind a battlepass instead of being free to everyone on release.

Man Blizzard dropped the ball and shot up

YellowSUV posted...

Overwatch "2" is basically a vehicle for Blizzard to make more money while screwing over the playerbase.

Yep, this. The servers shutting down and forcing people to buy 2 to keep playing is bullshit. And I generally like Blizzard.

Sad. Overwatch was the only multiplayer online game i really played and enjoyed regularly.
Used to watch all the strams and stuff too.

Yeah Blizz is absolute garbage now. I've seen 0 hype for the new WoW expac too and it comes out like this month I think?

But what do you expect from a company that basically awards its employees for sexually harassing each other?

YellowSUV posted...

Overwatch "2" is basically a vehicle for Blizzard to make more money while screwing over the playerbase. For example, I heard that new heroes will be locked behind a battlepass instead of being free to everyone on release.

yeah the trailer I posted tried to advertise that shit as a plus. "Free" season 1 unlock characters. Like what do you mean "unlock"? Act like we're fucking stupid.

I'm still convinced Overwatch 2 was only ever a thing because of the EU threatening to ban lootboxes. The whole reason it's backwards compatible is so they could sell a version of the game without lootboxes in places where they're banned. Since then the concept seems to have evolved a bit, but replacing lootboxes with battle passes just confirms my suspicion that this was more about dodging legislation than it was actual innovation.

ZangsBeard posted...

Yep, this. The servers shutting down and forcing people to buy 2 to keep playing is bullshit. And I generally like Blizzard.

I thought they were going to keep the OW1 servers up so OW1 and OW2 could play against each other. They went back on that?

Blizzard died when they sold themselves to Activision. it's been all downhill since then.

ZangsBeard posted...

Yep, this. The servers shutting down and forcing people to buy 2 to keep playing is bullshit. And I generally like Blizzard.

Overwatch 2 is free though

Solar_Crimson posted...

I thought they were going to keep the OW1 servers up so OW1 and OW2 could play against each other. They went back on that?

I keep seeing that the servers are shutting down...

https://afkgaming.com/esports/guide/is-overwatch-1-shutting-down

rip man blizzard shot up to 97 waifus

ZangsBeard posted...

I keep seeing that the servers are shutting down...

https://afkgaming.com/esports/guide/is-overwatch-1-shutting-down

They said a long time ago that OW1 is merging into OW2.

Fable posted...

Yeah Blizz is absolute garbage now. I've seen 0 hype for the new WoW expac too and it comes out like this month I think?

But what do you expect from a company that basically awards its employees for sexually harassing each other?

thats just wrath classic starting this month, the new retail xpac will prob be December since its not even in beta yet

YellowSUV posted...

Overwatch "2" is basically a vehicle for Blizzard to make more money while screwing over the playerbase. For example, I heard that new heroes will be locked behind a battlepass instead of being free to everyone on release.

Overwatch 2 is free, the heroes are in the free part of the battle pass. If you miss a battle pass you can unlock them through a quest. Essentially they are just ripping out the loot boxes and adding an in-game shop and adding a way to earn the shop currency through quests.

Redwarz posted...

Overwatch 2 is free, the heroes are in the free part of the battle pass. If you miss a battle pass you can unlock them through a quest. Essentially they are just ripping out the loot boxes and adding an in-game shop and adding a way to earn the shop currency through quests.

Pretty much this. My only negative about the monetization so far is that the hero is at tier 55 on the free season pass which is absurd. On the plus side, you can play the new hero without unlocking it in everything except quickplay and competitive

To busy committing sexual harassment to make good games

Ugh I forgot they changed it to 5v5 as well. It sounds awful but has anyone tried it?

Fuck blizzard. OW was a good game.

Battle passes are fucking shit.

Redwarz posted...

Overwatch 2 is free, the heroes are in the free part of the battle pass. If you miss a battle pass you can unlock them through a quest. Essentially they are just ripping out the loot boxes and adding an in-game shop and adding a way to earn the shop currency through quests.

the problem is the people who are paying will get the new heroes on day one and anyone else wont.

Rather than just continuing to add new characters and maps, they stopped like 3.5 years ago to work on OW2 and completely rework everything including making a system worse than loot boxes. So effing stupid. They killed the game balancing for pros and casuals without actually being certain they could keep the casual audience playing.

Probably because they trimmed out 1 character per match on top of keeping that stupid class system that forces people to choose classes instead of whatever character they want.

Plus all the bad press for Activision/Blizzard too >_>

thronedfire2 posted...

the problem is the people who are paying will get the new heroes on day one and anyone else wont.

You cant use them in competitive for 2 weeks anyways

Redwarz posted...

You cant use them in competitive for 2 weeks anyways

Depending on how long the grind is, that still means you'll have people going into competitive with two weeks of practice on that new hero and a bunch of people who maybe only just unlocked that character.

Redwarz posted...

You cant use them in competitive for 2 weeks anyways

and every other mode in the game?

You could make an argument that paid battle passes are also gambling, since winning games and earning points towards prizes is time constrained and probabilistic. You could get matched with shit players time and time again and make little progress through no fault of your own.

If there was no time constraint, there was no paid tier, or if all prizes were guaranteed to be earned, then that would be fine.

Having the skill stop on a slot machine doesn't mean slot machines aren't gambling after all.

i already play 1 game with a battlepass: im not going to play 2.

i should stop buying the valorant battlepasses.

Redwarz posted...

Overwatch 2 is free, the heroes are in the free part of the battle pass. If you miss a battle pass you can unlock them through a quest. Essentially they are just ripping out the loot boxes and adding an in-game shop and adding a way to earn the shop currency through quests.

Still a big middle finger to people who bought Overwatch and no longer get to instantly play new heroes when they are released.

YellowSUV posted...

Still a big middle finger to people who bought Overwatch and no longer get to instantly play new heroes when they are released.

To be fair, people who own OW1 get instant access to the new character in battle pass in OW2. That is just a one time thing though. Honestly too, I always find it kind of weird that OW1 players would get mad about this new system. OW1 has been out for over 6 years at this point. If you have been playing the game, buying Lootboxes wasnt required to get all the skins in the game. Everything else was free.

Its not a surprise that the new content dried up when the monetization system stopped making money. Overwatch did have the most generous Lootbox system I can think of. I would gladly take this free to play model and pay $10 for a battle pass that I wont ever have to buy again since the currency in the battle pass will be enough to buy the next one. Also, I think I read that the weekly and daily challenges also give out currency so maybe you can earn enough for the battle pass through that as well.

All that being said, as long as they give out the meaty content like maps and heroes for free at a consistent release schedule then I think its an overall win. The bad thing is that the hero in the free pass is at tier 55 which is insanely deep. However, that shouldnt be a problem if you spend $10 on a new game and just save the currency for every battle pass going forward.

If you were the person who liked to collect every skin in the game then this will be a problem for you with the shop. If not? Then its an overall win in my book since we finally get content again

Gundam is copying this game and I think that's a waste

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

But 2 sucks....

Hearthstone is also struggling.
Iksar, who worked his way up to Game Director just 6 months ago, quit under suspicious circumstances:
https://twitter.com/iksarhs/status/1570821289388175363

This comes just as Hearthstone is moving to an even more predatory model by adding a paid-only currency, runestones, and switching certain purchases from dollars or gold (which can be earned) to runestone-only.

ZMythos posted...

You could make an argument that paid battle passes are also gambling, since winning games and earning points towards prizes is time constrained and probabilistic. You could get matched with shit players time and time again and make little progress through no fault of your own.

If there was no time constraint, there was no paid tier, or if all prizes were guaranteed to be earned, then that would be fine.

Having the skill stop on a slot machine doesn't mean slot machines aren't gambling after all.

Gambling by definition (as far as gambling commissions are concerned) cannot factor in the skill of the gambler. It has to be a game of chance. If you bet on a football game, that's gambling. If the QB bets on their own football game, that's not gambling.

MedeaLysistrata posted...

Gundam is copying this game and I think that's a waste

I mean all overwatch did was copy tf2, but instead of having 9 characters with different load outs to change their skill sets they added more characters with a locked load out.

Remember when Overwatch 2 was supposed to just be a free update? After all the changes and Kaplan leaving I think there were too many red flags for some people to come back. I actually have a PC now as of last year that can play it better than my Xbone, but I guess I'll never experience that after all.

RIP man Blizzard as micro transaction sales shot up to $97 billion

Frankly I just didn't enjoy playing the beta. Something about the balance with 5 players seemed off to me.

I feel like going free to play is Blizzard trying to compete with Paladins.

It's a silly take, but what other reason would there be to go free to play? OW1 was a fully paid game and it made millions of dollars. As far as I know, the only big f2p hero shooter has been Paladins, and it's almost ten years old and still going strong. I guess they want that sweet mtx money, but they're taking a huge risk where they're offering the game with no up-front cost during the worst optics of their life.

It really does feel like they're following Paladins' league and trying to compete. Granted, I have Paladins in my sig so you know I have a bias. But still.

MrMallard posted...

It's a silly take, but what other reason would there be to go free to play? OW1 was a fully paid game and it made millions of dollars. As far as I know, the only big f2p hero shooter has been Paladins, and it's almost ten years old and still going strong. I guess they want that sweet mtx money, but they're taking a huge risk where they're offering the game with no up-front cost during the worst optics of their life.

They might think it can make bank compared to just the one purchase(+possible lootbox purchases) of the base game. They could be looking at gacha stuff like Genshin Impact or probably BR's like Fortnite as F2P titles that are swimming in money.

I have less hype for this that I do for any given patch or seasonal content for any game. I have been playing Destiny lately after years away and I've got more hype for that now.

Overwatch just feels daunting to get back into at this point. The only mode was pvp and all of the videos you see online about it are about how fucking miserable it is to play right now. I tried to get back into it at one point and it felt miserable even though I loved it at launch.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


The voice actors were at a local con for us, and it was PACKED. People love the characters. The cinematics were amazing and often heartwarming. Now we just get some character trailers that make the characters look like random nobodies.

Porn galore! Upon its release!

Glad I dropped this game a few years ago.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


Ow had insane marketing , with pixar quality "meet the..." type vids (another thing they stole from valve, world building the game outside the game) the marketing budget of overwatch was fucking massive.

But at the end of the day it was always an extremely derivative team based shooter that was made from the rubbish of a failed mmo (titan)

The marketing hype made people look past that. I worked at blizzard during this time, and a lot of people were buying ow for reasons that had nothing to do with the gameplay. It came out in a time when people still had goodwill towards blizzard too. The game was never good and the maintenance and balance patches chasing competitive meta scenes made it even worse. This was the height of just balancing things based on what top 1% of players were doing hubris, and not actually balancing things to make a better product.

The best parts were the co-op levels with mechanics stolen from left 4 dead, but they decided to make those seasonal despite them being pretty significant gameplay additions. Yea what a train wreck of a game. Said it in 2016 and saying it now.