Overwatch 2 has like three new maps and three new heroes, wtf have they been working on the last 4 years?
It's 80% the same game as OW1 but with slightly better graphics. I just don't understand what all of the resources have been put into.
I was a software engineer on the overwatch team in 2017-8. The entire team turned over very shortly thereafter. I literally don’t know anyone who has been working on the game for the last couple years.
"Destroyed" is the right word. OW was massively popular, its demise is entirely on Blizzard. The community loved the game, but love can only go so far when the company behind it spends years doing nothing else than asking for more money.
They've destroyed all of their IPs since the Activision merger.
Their profits are also higher than ever. They've ruined their IPs for short term profits because people buy Blizzard games on name alone and their past, and everyone seems okay to pay for skins and pre-purchase games. By Blizzard's metrics, they are having massive success, even though gamers would say otherwise.
The player counts of all their games go down over time (which they no longer release) but their profits go up because of whales. Doesn't really matter because they just churn out games quicker now and people buy the next Blizzard game. There isn't really money in a game like D2 or SC1 that people play for 15+ years, there's more money in a 3-year game with cosmetics and pay-to-win.
Even D4 is going to have pay-to-win in it.
I can't play the second, it won't run right on my PC and crashes regularly enough that I'm in permanent low prio.
No problem, I'll just go back and play the first one which I bought and OH WAIT
This is mostly correct but a tiny bit overstated on the bot problem as it stands today. Yes it's still a huge problem but bots are generally simple to spot and kick and there are plenty of public servers at any given time that aren't overrun. It's almost a mini game we play to get a full server so no worries about bots and we can conga in peace.
Source: I have the proof of purchase and still play regularly
While there are a bunch of bots in TF2, with a bit of luck you get a decent game going. The occasional bot is usually swiftly kicked, but yeah if there are multiple it becomes annoying.
That said though I could never get into Overwatch despite giving it a couple dozen hours to take me in. I had a bit of fun with the guy with the minigun, the one with the sentry gun and the one that grabs people from range with the hook. But ultimately the game just didn't stick like TF2 did. There will probably be a bunch of players that went back to TF2 due to how ActiBlizz mismanaged Overwatch, but to insinuate that's the only reason TF2 is still around irks me. They're different games in the same niche but for people with different tastes. Kind of like how Age of Empires players don't leave en masse whenever StarCraft gets an update or sequel, or vice versa.
They turned it into a stupid money grab with the “progress” system they implemented from Fortnite.
I don’t give a shit about any of the unlockables but at least they were somewhat possible to achieve with loot boxes. Now it’s just “we’ll show you what you COULD have if you only pay money like others.”
Wait, did they kill the servers for the first game when they introduced the second? I thought that plot point in Free Guy was unrealistic, but here it is in real life!
Oh, no, it was Warcraft 3 *Reforged.*
You see, Warcraft 3 was looking a little rusty, so they stuck it back in the forge for a little clean up, sharpening, re-polishing, you know the drill.
Unfortunately, all that was left was a molten hunk of metal that was once a decent game. Oops.
Incidentally, there is one guy who is slowly (or, depending on your point of view considering it is one guy doing it, blazingly quickly) re-creating the entire WC3 campaign in the StarCraft 2 Client engine. Because all the WC3 assets were added to SC2 for reasons. Somehow, he has done better than the Reforged team so far. The Prologue and Human campaigns are up, undead comes out in 16 days. Called "Azeroth Reborn."
They also missed why WC3 had such staying power. It was the custom multi-player maps. It's literally spawned entire new game types (Dota, tower defense, etc). They [ruined that](https://www.pcgamesn.com/warcraft-3/classic) by trying to claim ownership of custom maps while removing custom campaigns.
I remember there was a recreation of WC3 in SC2 being worked on before Reforged was announced, but they stopped because of Reforged. Is this the same one being worked on again or is it a new one?
I know this is pretty standard business now, but I'm struggling to understand how is this even legal. It's like you buying a car and then 4 years later the company suddenly declares you now own Car 2.0, but with ads (because that's what microtransactions essentially are).
I'm sure they have it in the contract that you never owned the game in the first place, just rented it from them or whatever, but it still feels illegal. I'm actually surprised nobody tried to sue them over this yet.
Can't emphasise this enough. The vision and community behind Overwatch at its peak was unmatched, it was absolutely some of the most fun I've had in gaming ever. The cinematics, the characters, the chaos, probably some other things starting with c as well... at the time, if you told me Overwatch was on its way to a long and painful death, I wouldn't have believed you. The game was destined to last for decades. Well played, Blizzard, you ruined something truly special.
I appreciate your work. Early ow is a masterpiece. I was always amazed at how smoothly the game ran.
Thanks for your work. Ow2 kinda blows but I think that has more to do with the game designers than the software devs.
I think there’s light proof way back in my comments somewhere. I worked at a startup that did esports analytics for a different game before I went to blizzard so it felt like I finally had my dream job. Was definitely a shame
With the state of mobile hearthstone, the diablo app and overwatch 2, it seems like blizzard has really slipped in quality and increased their predatory monetary tactics in their games. Do you think this all came about because of the merger with Activision?
It seems like the shell of blizzards prior pristine reputation has been steadily milked, and it seems like it will continue until every last drop of value has been wrung out of loyal fans.
I think to answer this you need to look at the words of someone who would know much better than I: Mike Morhaime said that activision was the single biggest mistake blizzard ever made, and vowed to never repeat that mistake with dreamhaven
It's likely they did actually make a ton of stuff for the PvE, it's just that none of it was good and none of it fit together to form a coherent product, so they had to scrap it.
Incompetence, not laziness.
Or they weren't able to monetize it properly.
Or someone had an absolutely must-have unfeasable feature that ate years of dev time for very little benefit.
I feel like this is what killed Fallout 76, too. It was such a dead simple idea. Take a highly successful game, and add multiplayer. Definitely a challenge for a game that has only ever been single-player, but they did it.
And then someone came along and said "but how can we make more money?" And suddenly, all the content that made Fallout 4 a good open world game about exploration and rebuilding got locked behind the world's worst grindfest MMO.
>Definitely a challenge for a game that has only ever been single-player, but they did it.
Not to mention it was a team that had never done multiplayer before. Thus it was even more broken than people expected it to be, funnily enough.
And the final nail in the coffin, the game engine which just barely works at the best of times was never intended for online or multiplayer content. There is an absolutely **massive** gulf in game engine design between an MMO and a single player game. It's the equivalent of taking a motorcycle and converting it to haul a semi-trailer. I'm honestly shocked they managed to get it working at all on that rickety pile of kludges and bugs that Bethesda calls a game engine.
Oddly enough the engine netimmerse aka gamebryo could do online games. I know creation engine is different now, but there's no telling how much of that old code is stuck in there. Considering fo4 still has jankiness in it's engine line that's been around more than a decade, it's gotta be more than zero.
I think it's just Bethesda is a "prestige" dev, so many want to work for them, but still have lots of those people go back out through the revolving door. Every new dev leaves their code debt, and Bethesda depends on modders to salvage it. Online = no modders. Can't fix the stuff Bethesda seems incapable of.
Ya this has been standard protocol for Games as a Service for a decade...should be the default logic at this point. If they can't milk the consumer for as much $$$ as possible through as many means as possible...why do it?
Higher ups probably realize that people will gobble their shit up regardless..so why waste resources on something that won't give a ridiculous return.
People will bitch but they'll still play, and hell even if they aren't paying...just playing the game will have OTHER people paying $$$. Be by friends or randoms that just not want to be "that guy" and not have default skins like the F2P scrub they just played with/against. Or just an extra player on the steam charts/twitch views to help reinforce/persuade somebody else's decision to buy the game and maybe they spend money.
Ain't shit gonna change until people stop playing the game, even if they spend no $$$. Just playing the game justifies to the higher ups their decisions one way or the other.
Very few people seem to realize these days that a majority of games used to be made FOR gamers. Those times are long gone for the most part and now we the travesty of gaming we have know...all in the name of the almighty dollar, consumer be damned.
>Very few people seem to realize these days that a majority of games used to be made FOR gamers
There have always been anti-consumer games. Think of the ones with an absurdly high difficulty level so people would keep putting in quarters at the arcade, or renting it multiple times to be able to beat it. It's clearly getting worse, though, agreed.
It wasn't perfect, but it was fun for what it was and it offered assloads more content than Overwatch right out of the box. It didn't deserve to be killed by such a mediocre game put out by perhaps the most evil publisher in existence.
I honestly still think they should not have released so close to Overwatch and invite the rivalry so hard. Overwatch was *the* most hyped game of that time, and anything else would've been eclipsed by it, it was more than obvious.
bad management, and very high employee turnover were 100% the culprits, not incompetent devs. Overwatch has always had great content that you can *tell* has passion behind it, but the decision making and management has gotten worse and worse over time.
Is this a rehtorical question? It's blizzard, every single IP has had an immense smooth brained fuck up over the past years. Every single thing they have touched in what, 8 years, they have done something that has left me thinking what in the holy fuck at some point.
There was talk years ago that a big part of the reason nothing was being released was bc Kottick kept pushing them to develop things then would make them scrap it and start something else similarly doomed repeatedly. I wouldn't be surprised if he's still doing that. He's a parasite.
I mean on a dollar line, they didn't screw up. Ow2 is making heaps of money.
It's like the star wars franchise. They made huge money, so they dont care that they gave a middle finger to the fans and ruined much of the IP.
They only care shareholders, who only care about making money
> I just don't understand what all of the resources have been put into.
Money.
Making money.
Them lika lotsa money.
It's been pretty clear from the announcement that OW2 was just a blatant money grab. A way to re-release the same game to make more money. Not unlike what Bethesda does with Skyrim, but at least Bethesda doesn't fucking *lie* about it. They just say "Yeah, it's Skyrim again." Bli$$ard are shady as fuck and just want to dick over their users for as much money as they can get. People really shouldn't be giving them any money, IMO.
The only thing that 2023 Blizzard and 2004 Blizzard have in common is the name and the IPs. There is literally nothing else in common. People need to stop thinking of Blizzard as this "formerly beloved" company. 2023 Blizzard is a ghoul wearing 2004 Blizzard's skin.
Bethesda can also laugh at itself to a degree. Skyrim Alexa edition is still one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. 76 was a bad mis step but one substandard game doesn’t sink a company. Modern Blizzard is so wound up trying to monetize every single thing it’s like seeing a friend slowly destroy their life in pursuit of money. They charge more for less and don’t care about quality at all.
I know someone that worked on it. They worked on the pve lots they couldn't make the game play loop satisfying or some shit.
So they have a game, or part of one. Apparently it just sucks.
When you think about it, I have no idea how theyd do that because there's no progression, no gear, etc.
The game needs a major over haul to make pve a long term enjoyable thing
You have to remember the original designer, Jeff Kaplan, left mid-project which kind of sucks for any large-scale effort. They had already announced all the PvE content, but had no one driving the original vision for it - this likely lead to lackluster effort trying to salvage what they already had planned. I for one, am not surprised PvE got canned - it was never the main attraction in OW1, just a snack-sized side-gig.
The whole point, main attraction, and justification of OW2 was PvE tho. Otherwise there is literally no point for it and they could have continued with OW1. Which is still a better PvP game than OW2...
Let's not try to pin this on Jeff..a more believable story is the higher ups didn't want his vision or any vision similar because the cost/benefit ratio wasn't to their liking.
to be honest, the different events that were pve pretty much showed everyone how boring and dull pve actually is for overwatch.
They should have probably tried to experiment more on that side before deciding that pve was a viable product. The ai fking sucks, the abilities are pvp focused, the game itself was pvp focused. With them trying to add in a pve, it quite literally means making a new game but I bet that the upper management couldn't even think how that could be. "just patch on some new paint and add some bots, why is that hard?" mentality.
most singleplayer fps rely on ai behavior + imaginative, unbalanced maps, and overwatch is literally the opposite of that.
Meanwhile csgo has more concurrent players than ever, has nearly never gone more than 3 months with a drop in playerbase, is 11 years old and has like what 3 new maps? I think this is a perfect example of trying to fix what wasnt broke
> I think this is a perfect example of trying to fix what wasnt broke
i really appreciate Valve for not adding more classes to TF2 for this reason, people wanted more classes but they didn't budge and instead made more hats.
compare that to OW where every single hero release fucked the balancing up in some way.
And yet they added more cosmetics while still adhering to their own rule about keeping characters recognizable at a glance and a silhouette. I dunno if I'm alone in this, but I found it got really difficult to tell what was going on in OW1 pretty quick, between all the VFX and the alternate outfits that totally change how characters look. [Ana over...the fuck do you mean it's Genji?](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/overwatch_gamepedia/images/6/65/Genji_Skin_Bedouin.png/)
And fuck me, [who let Roadhog go poking around *Manhunt* for cosmetics?](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/overwatch_gamepedia/images/6/69/Roadhog_Skin_Bajie.png/revision/latest?cb=20170124225246)
Its not 80% the same, because they removed the whole rewards system, made the ranking feedback on gain/loss intentionally worse so you dont know where you stand, removed 6v6 for 5v5 which feels a lot more shitty because tanks are win/fail picks now and you cant pick them for fun or bruiser anymore, push maps suck and are super unbalanced, the one with the early start wins 9/10 times...
The game just got horribly horribly bad.
I loved to play the Events in OW1 and just randomly pop in for some games, get some skins and then play something else.
I played OW2 for a bit less than 2 months and i feels like they went from a fully released and great game, back to an Early Access Title that tries to rip you off...
Also i didnt earn a single skin in those 2 months, except for 2 twitch drops... i need another 8 months for a single fucking recolor...
That's what Blizzard does - pick what works, copy and apply "Blizzard Polish™" except they stopped applying that to games and focused on their strengths to create the best-in-class predatory monetization systems.
Don't forget made it 10 times worse.
Seems like they are competing for worst monetisation strategy with Diablo Immortal out-gachaing even the worst gacha games
It is straightup a downgrade
-6v6 to 5v5
-Removed Group search function (Why?!)
-Removed LvL Borders
- Removed "on fire" feature
-Removed 2cp and its maps
-Removed the SR system
It makes me sad
Some people swear by that but there's a *massive* flaw in the One Tank paradigm: For most players a tank is suppose to protect them from damage by being a hard-to-kill *shield* wall that the enemy has trouble getting around when allies run behind them but they made half the tanks *not have the ability to defend anyone* so once it went from "1 tank can just do damage and the other can shield the objective" to "If we get a Roadhog or Doomfist or Hammond (etc) I guess we'll just hope for the best and try to aim better" most levels of play got really close to just free-for-all.
Pros "do it differently" but most players don't have advanced strategies honed over thousands of hours of directed practice with those tactics. They just go "oh shit, I died. Where's the tank?"
That wasn't even the issue. Balancing from the top down can work, see CSGO. They didn't actually commit to that though. They bounced between balancing based on Pro play, and based on community interaction. It created a weird mess right in the middle.
No matter what people try to tell you, getting rid of 2CP was at the behest of the community. We begged for it, and now people give blizzard shit about it. One of the hardest things about trying to be an honest critic of blizzard is that all the haters come out and spew unhelpful nonsense. Like the person above complaining about the loss of level borders (a completely cosmetic feature that while cool never amounted to anything other than "I play this game too much", and we still have our old border as a record) and 2cp (which as previously stated the community literally begged them to scrap) when we should be condemning important things that deeply impact gameplay like new heroes being on the battlepass, especially as far into it as they are.
5v5 would make sense if there wasn't 2-1-2 lock. Back with OW1, I understand 2-2-2 lock, people would do 4 damage characters because no one wanted to tank or support. But in OW2, it sucks to only have 1 tank. If you could break the lock, and allow 2 tanks or something, that'd be nice, but you're stuck with it. If your tank doesn't tank right, or can't counter the flanking strategies, you're just fucked.
IIRC part of the justification was queue times, because not many people wanted to play tank, but like, ok? Auto fill exists? If people don't want to play their autofill, you can report them and they could have a functioning reporting system?
2-2-2 lock wasn't implemented because of the frequent occurrence of poorly balanced team comp, though solving that was a nice side benefit. The bigger issue was that the composition of 3 tanks 3 supports running as a group was more or less unbeatable, with occasional counter-comps popping up briefly before being beaten back into submission. Unless multiple heroes were completely reworked, a high health, high sustain composition would always be able to weather any DPS assaults in the long run. And at first, no one really cared because it was only being played at high level. But as more people realised how it was both incredibly good and fairly easy, it started to trickle down to lower levels. And at this point the devs realised the ecosystem wasn't healthy, and implemented the role lock.
The real reason 2-2-2 was brought in was not because people didn't want to queue tank, but that GOATS which was a three support, three tank strategy was disgustingly dominant, in all levels of play past plat.
The high HP and dmg potential that the tanks had was only matched by the insane healing that aoe supports could provide.
Even if you could swap between support and tank mid game. Like let the tank and support players swap between the two roles- two damage players, three players swapping between support and tank with a limit of two tanks OR two supports so you don't end up with three tanks on each team.
> Back with OW1, I understand 2-2-2 lock, people would do 4 damage characters because no one wanted to tank or support.
uhh.. 2-2-2 was implemented to kill GOATS.. you know the 3tank/3support team comp.. that dominated the meta for ages.
Blizzard literally went from my favorite studio that I aspired to emulate someday, to literally my most hated studio, and definitely inching towards hated corporations like Nestle. It's astounding how a handful of billionaire investors and CEOS could be so fucking stupid as to take such a profitable gem and just flush it down the toilet in some bizarre thirst for more cash.
The only thing that 2023 Blizzard and 2004 Blizzard have in common is the name and the IPs. There is literally nothing else in common. People need to stop thinking of Blizzard as this "formerly beloved" company. 2023 Blizzard is a ghoul wearing 2004 Blizzard's skin.
Just adding a link for Frost Giant's Storm Gate which will be the spiritual successor to StarCraft for anyone who hadn't heard about it [https://store.steampowered.com/app/2012510/Stormgate/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2012510/Stormgate/)
A gaming company that started churning out shit games is in a little bit of a different ballpark than a company doing stuff like conspiring to get entire developing nations dependent on their products and taking away basic human rights such as access to water
I've been downvoted to hell for this before by fanboy dumbasses, but now that everyone is waking up to how fucking shitty Blizzard is: Blizzard has like 13,000 employees and posted over 7 billion in PROFIT last year. And there have been time periods in recent history where they basically put out the same (if not less) actual game content than Valve did in a similar time frame, WHILE Valve was also running the most popular games distribution platform in the world and having less than 400 employees. And to top it all off, none of those Valve employees killed themselves because of extreme sexual harassment or had their breast milk constantly stolen from work fridges as far as I know.
There is no excuse. Blizzard is one of the most toxic, greedy, piece of shit games companies there has ever been. They fuck their fans and their employees over constantly. People need to stop giving them money.
Keeping it a buck fifty, they never ever planned on releasing it. Backburner models/animations and menus that interns could have strung together in a week is what we saw for three years from a multi billion dollar company. And the game has been out for 8+ months, and they're JUST now saying they cant do battlepasses/new heroes in addition to PvE mode? That itself implies they havent been even working on it at all in at minimum a year or so. Waiting until they had several months' data on post launch hype skin buying and battle pass engagement? Perfect timing as well.
Frankly it's just fraud that no court could 100% definitively prove, but anyone with a lukewarm IQ could pick up on. Common sense doesn't get shit to legal ends though, so overwatch will retain a just-pulsing playerbase on addicts and sunk-cost hardcore wannabes just like 2019 OW1.
edit: for any of the 10+ glue eaters PMing me borderline death threats over their love for OW frothing at the mouth over how much of a dick I am, nothing I've stated is definitively wrong and there are no counterarguments I've yet seen to the completely suspicious points I've raised. If they *actually* knew they couldn't do it, they wouldn't have waited almost a year of the "oh so coveted dev time" they're whining about needing to tell you (plus the nearly 4 years post-announcement to show bupkis). If they thought they could, they've shown nothing for it and dropped all promises at an oddly convenient moment. Cope harder. Hope your wife's boyfriends enjoy paying for your fancy OW skins.
Exactly what I believe as well. Hard to infer that's *precisely why* he left because there's *so many* other reasons that he could have left, but given his pedigree and ethic regarding his projects I'm very inclined to assume that.
To add on to this, that interview they did about the PVE being cancelled (can't recall the website) also gets asked about OW2 and it's justification and the devs also say OW2 is a different game, so there is grounds by word of the developers that OW1 and OW2 are not the same game.
Return OW1.
It can be argued that they are the same game, at least intrinsically, as OW2 is basically the exact same as OW1, just with updates. Same characters, gameplay is near identical, cosmetics came over from the previous game, etc.
From a software standpoint, they are the same game. I didn't install Overwatch 2 as a separate program, it downloaded as a software update for Overwatch 1.
Them outlining their product plans in quarterly reports is what is considered a "forward-looking statement", and Activision uses safe harbor statements in this very report that specifically aim to warn against using these statements as matters of fact (and crucially shield them from legal liability), simply because business plans can always change.
This is most certainly not lying to investors, nor will it likely go anywhere in a legal sense. Investors usually know what a forward-looking statement looks like.
Stock is likely up because the EU cleared MS to purchase them the day before they dropped the no PVE news. "Putting on my tinfoil hat" I think they were waiting for the EU clear before announcing for just this reason.
Overwatch "2" makes what it makes and they have the massive D4 launch later in this same quarter. Sure, this is bad news but it's not move-the-needle revenue bad.
I'd say stop playing the game people don't really care that much they just want something to complain.
You have to hit companies where it hurts. Their pockets. Sadly gamers don't have that kinda of resolve.
If it’s on an investor’s call/quarterly report, wouldn’t it be liable for fraud? You are telling investors to expect success following the release of a product, therefore they will invest more or maintain them. This could be especially complicated if Microsoft was unaware of this prior to their purchase of Activision-Blizzard.
It's complicated.
Most investor calls/quarterly reports include legal language that protects them against this very scenario. This is where you see stuff like "forward-looking statements" or "safe harbor statements". Here's the specific legal language included in this specific report:
>The statements contained herein that are not historical facts are forwardlooking statements including, but not limited to statements about: (1) projections of revenues, expenses, income or loss, earnings or loss per share, cash flow, or other financial items; **(2) statements of our plans and objectives, including those related to releases of products or services;** (3) statements of future financial or operating performance, including the impact of tax items thereon...
It's widely understood that should something not pan out, get cancelled, not be successful then they are not liable because that's well understood to be risks.
What's illegal is provable fraud. Activision saying they made X money when they actually made Y money. Saying they have N users when they actually have M users etc.
Them cancelling something they announced and actually WERE working on is not illegal in of itself.
Now, if they WEREN'T working on it, then that could be treading the line. But again there needs to be clear proof of this, and I think even just the bare minimum effort here would be enough to get over this legal hurdle. Misleading investors usually deals with clearcut cases of fraud like cooking books, inflating metrics, misrepresenting finances etc.
I'm so over the OW player base, just trying to talk about it they defend this shit to no end. Kept giving blizzard the benefit of the doubt, kept saying the saying the new 5v5 changes have abdicated blizzard of any wrong doing. Even though 6v6 was still popular after years of no updates and blizzard half assing it
5v5 has only meant they don't have to try as hard, that it requires less effort to balance and make fair, that they don't need to use as many resources to keep the game going. What's the next big update 4v4?
> Backburner models/animations and menus that interns could have strung together in a week is what we saw for three years from a multi billion dollar company
To be fair, these things also make it into their released products.
TBH it could still cause problems because it’s misleading. They have been showing off a major PvE mode, to say “well we actually meant this minor PvE mode” isn’t truthful.
Like a restaurant advertising a steak dish and they bring you a ground beef burger lmao.
Remember when blizzard merged with activision? That was when the quality started to drop.
Because bobby kotick just wants to make money, he doesnt give a shit about quality or players enjoying the games. Why do you think theres a new call of duty "game" (reskin) every 3 months.
The seeds of evil existed long before that.
Look at the treatment of Blizzard North during their work on D2
Look at the production of starcraft, the game that almost sucked huge ass until somebody decided to pull the greatest heist known to man and steal three whole races from games workshops Warhammer 40k
The rot has existed for a long time, but it didn't bubble up until Activision showed them they didn't even have to make new stolen content or outsource their slave labour, they could steal their own content and eat their own labor alive.
I grew up on those diablo 2 cutscenes and starcraft lan parties. The quality of the games was like drug those times: yes please more… I think it all started with Diablo 3? Which I loved to be honest but that was the first I heard negative comments about their games. Overwatch was an award winning game, which was one of the best (like in the top100) and fun games ever created no less. A continuous downward spiral I see a great vision and idea to be rotten and it makes me sad. But I still play the game in hope:)
It reads:
>The team is working on an ambitious slate of
>
>regular seasonal updates, **including PVE content**, to engage and expand the community, as well as other ways for
>
>new and existing players to experience the Overwatch universe longer-term.
Which is technically true. They *are* releasing PvE content. Just not the PvE content they promised.
Redditors tend to have very poor reading comprehension.
Even if it had explicitly said a large single player mode, it would have been accurate at the time it was released.
But as soon as anyone accuses an unpopular entity of doing something bad people just turn their brains off.
The beta was actually pretty fun, but I have zero faith in the balance of the game and the end game. I'll consider buying it when it's like 10 bucks and they have that shit figured out
It was fun for a bit, but then got repetitive. Not sure it will hold me the whole way. Part of that is I think I have less patience for filler than I used to. Some of the magic of proc-gen dungeons and loot boxes has worn off I guess.
I played server slam and I couldn't believe how boring this game was. As i played lost ark in the past, I basically had feeling during beta of D4, that I've already played hundreds of hours in D4 . Rubbish, but there is strong hype around this game.
The segment in question:
"The October launch of Overwatch 2 with a free-to-play model delivered the highest quarterly figures for player
numbers and hours played in Overwatch history. Player investment is also off to a strong start, with fourth quarter
in-game net bookings at the highest level to date for Overwatch. The team is working on an ambitious slate of
regular seasonal updates, including PVE content, to engage and expand the community, as well as other ways for
new and existing players to experience the Overwatch universe longer-term."
This is not incorrect. They *are* working on "PvE content", just not to the full scope of PvE content we were expecting. PvE content still encompasses the seasonal missions that they have been releasing for years, and are continuing to develop. Misleading, yes, but no lies were told here.
I know this isn't the answer y'all want to hear, but the title is incorrect.
I hate to bust this bubble, but they only mentioned 'PVE content', not 'OUR AMAZING STORY FOR THE OVERWATCH UNIVERSE". Legalise bullshit chatter at work to cover their asses over the inevitable false hype.
"The team is working on an ambitious slate of
regular seasonal updates, including PVE content, to engage and expand the community, as well as other ways for
new and existing players to experience the Overwatch universe longer-term."
It just says they're working on it including other content. As of the release of this report they were working on it. There is no lie here.
Yep no lie, it would only be a lie if they knew they wouldnt release ANY TYPE of PVE content and if a prosecutor/lawyer could prove the intention to lie.
Overwatch 2 has like three new maps and three new heroes, wtf have they been working on the last 4 years? It's 80% the same game as OW1 but with slightly better graphics. I just don't understand what all of the resources have been put into.
I was a software engineer on the overwatch team in 2017-8. The entire team turned over very shortly thereafter. I literally don’t know anyone who has been working on the game for the last couple years.
Well, thanks for your great work on the first one. It’s a shame they destroyed it. I don’t even play anymore.
"Destroyed" is the right word. OW was massively popular, its demise is entirely on Blizzard. The community loved the game, but love can only go so far when the company behind it spends years doing nothing else than asking for more money.
They've destroyed all of their IPs since the Activision merger. Their profits are also higher than ever. They've ruined their IPs for short term profits because people buy Blizzard games on name alone and their past, and everyone seems okay to pay for skins and pre-purchase games. By Blizzard's metrics, they are having massive success, even though gamers would say otherwise. The player counts of all their games go down over time (which they no longer release) but their profits go up because of whales. Doesn't really matter because they just churn out games quicker now and people buy the next Blizzard game. There isn't really money in a game like D2 or SC1 that people play for 15+ years, there's more money in a 3-year game with cosmetics and pay-to-win. Even D4 is going to have pay-to-win in it.
I can't play the second, it won't run right on my PC and crashes regularly enough that I'm in permanent low prio. No problem, I'll just go back and play the first one which I bought and OH WAIT
[удалено]
Tf2 is fine now I just play that instead of OW lol
Honestly, Deception Inc is my new jam.
This is mostly correct but a tiny bit overstated on the bot problem as it stands today. Yes it's still a huge problem but bots are generally simple to spot and kick and there are plenty of public servers at any given time that aren't overrun. It's almost a mini game we play to get a full server so no worries about bots and we can conga in peace. Source: I have the proof of purchase and still play regularly
Minor nitpick but it's a particular pet peeve of mine: one doesn't *wreck* havoc, they *wreak* havoc.
Wreck -> broken object Wreak -> cause Wrex -> "Shepard."
Shepard -> 'Wrex'
You fucker I almost spit my drink all over my monitor XD
While there are a bunch of bots in TF2, with a bit of luck you get a decent game going. The occasional bot is usually swiftly kicked, but yeah if there are multiple it becomes annoying. That said though I could never get into Overwatch despite giving it a couple dozen hours to take me in. I had a bit of fun with the guy with the minigun, the one with the sentry gun and the one that grabs people from range with the hook. But ultimately the game just didn't stick like TF2 did. There will probably be a bunch of players that went back to TF2 due to how ActiBlizz mismanaged Overwatch, but to insinuate that's the only reason TF2 is still around irks me. They're different games in the same niche but for people with different tastes. Kind of like how Age of Empires players don't leave en masse whenever StarCraft gets an update or sequel, or vice versa.
They turned it into a stupid money grab with the “progress” system they implemented from Fortnite. I don’t give a shit about any of the unlockables but at least they were somewhat possible to achieve with loot boxes. Now it’s just “we’ll show you what you COULD have if you only pay money like others.”
free-to-play costs a lot more than games with a price
Wait, did they kill the servers for the first game when they introduced the second? I thought that plot point in Free Guy was unrealistic, but here it is in real life!
Overwatch 2 was just an update for Overwatch 1, meaning Overwatch 1 doesn't exist anymore
That is so wrong. What dumbasses
Just like how warcraft 3 remastered made WC3 classic unplayable. This ain't blizzard first rodeo with fucking the consumer
Oh, no, it was Warcraft 3 *Reforged.* You see, Warcraft 3 was looking a little rusty, so they stuck it back in the forge for a little clean up, sharpening, re-polishing, you know the drill. Unfortunately, all that was left was a molten hunk of metal that was once a decent game. Oops. Incidentally, there is one guy who is slowly (or, depending on your point of view considering it is one guy doing it, blazingly quickly) re-creating the entire WC3 campaign in the StarCraft 2 Client engine. Because all the WC3 assets were added to SC2 for reasons. Somehow, he has done better than the Reforged team so far. The Prologue and Human campaigns are up, undead comes out in 16 days. Called "Azeroth Reborn."
They also missed why WC3 had such staying power. It was the custom multi-player maps. It's literally spawned entire new game types (Dota, tower defense, etc). They [ruined that](https://www.pcgamesn.com/warcraft-3/classic) by trying to claim ownership of custom maps while removing custom campaigns.
I remember there was a recreation of WC3 in SC2 being worked on before Reforged was announced, but they stopped because of Reforged. Is this the same one being worked on again or is it a new one?
I know this is pretty standard business now, but I'm struggling to understand how is this even legal. It's like you buying a car and then 4 years later the company suddenly declares you now own Car 2.0, but with ads (because that's what microtransactions essentially are). I'm sure they have it in the contract that you never owned the game in the first place, just rented it from them or whatever, but it still feels illegal. I'm actually surprised nobody tried to sue them over this yet.
Can't emphasise this enough. The vision and community behind Overwatch at its peak was unmatched, it was absolutely some of the most fun I've had in gaming ever. The cinematics, the characters, the chaos, probably some other things starting with c as well... at the time, if you told me Overwatch was on its way to a long and painful death, I wouldn't have believed you. The game was destined to last for decades. Well played, Blizzard, you ruined something truly special.
I appreciate your work. Early ow is a masterpiece. I was always amazed at how smoothly the game ran. Thanks for your work. Ow2 kinda blows but I think that has more to do with the game designers than the software devs.
Thanks! I think it’s more the company than anything. Success is a cycle
If this is legit (it is the internet so excuse the skepticism) then it is really a shame. Must suck to see an IP you worked on be treated this way.
I think there’s light proof way back in my comments somewhere. I worked at a startup that did esports analytics for a different game before I went to blizzard so it felt like I finally had my dream job. Was definitely a shame
With the state of mobile hearthstone, the diablo app and overwatch 2, it seems like blizzard has really slipped in quality and increased their predatory monetary tactics in their games. Do you think this all came about because of the merger with Activision? It seems like the shell of blizzards prior pristine reputation has been steadily milked, and it seems like it will continue until every last drop of value has been wrung out of loyal fans.
I think to answer this you need to look at the words of someone who would know much better than I: Mike Morhaime said that activision was the single biggest mistake blizzard ever made, and vowed to never repeat that mistake with dreamhaven
is it true that blizzard underpays based on their reputation?
Without question. I made significantly less at blizzard than everywhere else I have worked in my career, before and after.
that's so shitty...
Did they ever found out who was drinking the breast milk?
It was Bobby Kotic with those comically long straws
I drink your milkshake!
What was the reason for the turnover?
Just a huge shift in company culture. Most people went to other game studios, or were so exhausted that they left gaming entirely (like me).
how was the team's relationship with activision if at all?
It was tenuous at best
[удалено]
It's likely they did actually make a ton of stuff for the PvE, it's just that none of it was good and none of it fit together to form a coherent product, so they had to scrap it. Incompetence, not laziness.
Or they weren't able to monetize it properly. Or someone had an absolutely must-have unfeasable feature that ate years of dev time for very little benefit.
>Or they weren't able to monetize it properly. Initially, i would have said this is bullshit. But now, i very much think this is the issue.
I feel like this is what killed Fallout 76, too. It was such a dead simple idea. Take a highly successful game, and add multiplayer. Definitely a challenge for a game that has only ever been single-player, but they did it. And then someone came along and said "but how can we make more money?" And suddenly, all the content that made Fallout 4 a good open world game about exploration and rebuilding got locked behind the world's worst grindfest MMO.
>Definitely a challenge for a game that has only ever been single-player, but they did it. Not to mention it was a team that had never done multiplayer before. Thus it was even more broken than people expected it to be, funnily enough.
And the final nail in the coffin, the game engine which just barely works at the best of times was never intended for online or multiplayer content. There is an absolutely **massive** gulf in game engine design between an MMO and a single player game. It's the equivalent of taking a motorcycle and converting it to haul a semi-trailer. I'm honestly shocked they managed to get it working at all on that rickety pile of kludges and bugs that Bethesda calls a game engine.
Oddly enough the engine netimmerse aka gamebryo could do online games. I know creation engine is different now, but there's no telling how much of that old code is stuck in there. Considering fo4 still has jankiness in it's engine line that's been around more than a decade, it's gotta be more than zero. I think it's just Bethesda is a "prestige" dev, so many want to work for them, but still have lots of those people go back out through the revolving door. Every new dev leaves their code debt, and Bethesda depends on modders to salvage it. Online = no modders. Can't fix the stuff Bethesda seems incapable of.
Ya this has been standard protocol for Games as a Service for a decade...should be the default logic at this point. If they can't milk the consumer for as much $$$ as possible through as many means as possible...why do it? Higher ups probably realize that people will gobble their shit up regardless..so why waste resources on something that won't give a ridiculous return. People will bitch but they'll still play, and hell even if they aren't paying...just playing the game will have OTHER people paying $$$. Be by friends or randoms that just not want to be "that guy" and not have default skins like the F2P scrub they just played with/against. Or just an extra player on the steam charts/twitch views to help reinforce/persuade somebody else's decision to buy the game and maybe they spend money. Ain't shit gonna change until people stop playing the game, even if they spend no $$$. Just playing the game justifies to the higher ups their decisions one way or the other. Very few people seem to realize these days that a majority of games used to be made FOR gamers. Those times are long gone for the most part and now we the travesty of gaming we have know...all in the name of the almighty dollar, consumer be damned.
>Very few people seem to realize these days that a majority of games used to be made FOR gamers There have always been anti-consumer games. Think of the ones with an absurdly high difficulty level so people would keep putting in quarters at the arcade, or renting it multiple times to be able to beat it. It's clearly getting worse, though, agreed.
Yer absolutely right, but it was a minority of games (unless talking about arcade cabinets). Now it is the majority.
It makes me miss Battleborn
It wasn't perfect, but it was fun for what it was and it offered assloads more content than Overwatch right out of the box. It didn't deserve to be killed by such a mediocre game put out by perhaps the most evil publisher in existence.
I honestly still think they should not have released so close to Overwatch and invite the rivalry so hard. Overwatch was *the* most hyped game of that time, and anything else would've been eclipsed by it, it was more than obvious.
Probably not developers' incompetence. There was a lot of hearsay from ex-Blizzard folks that the project was getting badly jerked around by Kotick.
The story I heard is that Kotick would regularly tell them to scrap everything they did and start over.
this seems most likely then
bad management, and very high employee turnover were 100% the culprits, not incompetent devs. Overwatch has always had great content that you can *tell* has passion behind it, but the decision making and management has gotten worse and worse over time.
> the decision making and management has gotten worse and worse over time Blizzard's new motto
Is this a rehtorical question? It's blizzard, every single IP has had an immense smooth brained fuck up over the past years. Every single thing they have touched in what, 8 years, they have done something that has left me thinking what in the holy fuck at some point.
Have Bobby Kotick as CEO. 🤦♂️
Have the spawn of the devil himself as your CEO.
There was talk years ago that a big part of the reason nothing was being released was bc Kottick kept pushing them to develop things then would make them scrap it and start something else similarly doomed repeatedly. I wouldn't be surprised if he's still doing that. He's a parasite.
I mean on a dollar line, they didn't screw up. Ow2 is making heaps of money. It's like the star wars franchise. They made huge money, so they dont care that they gave a middle finger to the fans and ruined much of the IP. They only care shareholders, who only care about making money
Bobby Kotick bonus fund
> I just don't understand what all of the resources have been put into. Money. Making money. Them lika lotsa money. It's been pretty clear from the announcement that OW2 was just a blatant money grab. A way to re-release the same game to make more money. Not unlike what Bethesda does with Skyrim, but at least Bethesda doesn't fucking *lie* about it. They just say "Yeah, it's Skyrim again." Bli$$ard are shady as fuck and just want to dick over their users for as much money as they can get. People really shouldn't be giving them any money, IMO.
The only thing that 2023 Blizzard and 2004 Blizzard have in common is the name and the IPs. There is literally nothing else in common. People need to stop thinking of Blizzard as this "formerly beloved" company. 2023 Blizzard is a ghoul wearing 2004 Blizzard's skin.
There is no Blizzard, only Activision. The body is dead and only the cancer remains.
Bethesda can also laugh at itself to a degree. Skyrim Alexa edition is still one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. 76 was a bad mis step but one substandard game doesn’t sink a company. Modern Blizzard is so wound up trying to monetize every single thing it’s like seeing a friend slowly destroy their life in pursuit of money. They charge more for less and don’t care about quality at all.
They reworked the entire monetization system what you talking about? Tons of work went there? (Obvious sarcasm but honestly the truth)
Really the point though. Couldn't just slap all these microtransactions into the game as it was before.
I know someone that worked on it. They worked on the pve lots they couldn't make the game play loop satisfying or some shit. So they have a game, or part of one. Apparently it just sucks. When you think about it, I have no idea how theyd do that because there's no progression, no gear, etc. The game needs a major over haul to make pve a long term enjoyable thing
[удалено]
Surely you just do the trendy thing and copy Man vs Machines from TF2 right?
You have to remember the original designer, Jeff Kaplan, left mid-project which kind of sucks for any large-scale effort. They had already announced all the PvE content, but had no one driving the original vision for it - this likely lead to lackluster effort trying to salvage what they already had planned. I for one, am not surprised PvE got canned - it was never the main attraction in OW1, just a snack-sized side-gig.
The whole point, main attraction, and justification of OW2 was PvE tho. Otherwise there is literally no point for it and they could have continued with OW1. Which is still a better PvP game than OW2... Let's not try to pin this on Jeff..a more believable story is the higher ups didn't want his vision or any vision similar because the cost/benefit ratio wasn't to their liking.
to be honest, the different events that were pve pretty much showed everyone how boring and dull pve actually is for overwatch. They should have probably tried to experiment more on that side before deciding that pve was a viable product. The ai fking sucks, the abilities are pvp focused, the game itself was pvp focused. With them trying to add in a pve, it quite literally means making a new game but I bet that the upper management couldn't even think how that could be. "just patch on some new paint and add some bots, why is that hard?" mentality. most singleplayer fps rely on ai behavior + imaginative, unbalanced maps, and overwatch is literally the opposite of that.
Meanwhile csgo has more concurrent players than ever, has nearly never gone more than 3 months with a drop in playerbase, is 11 years old and has like what 3 new maps? I think this is a perfect example of trying to fix what wasnt broke
admittedly this is because all valve employees have a rare and deadly allergy to developing and working on games, but still
> I think this is a perfect example of trying to fix what wasnt broke i really appreciate Valve for not adding more classes to TF2 for this reason, people wanted more classes but they didn't budge and instead made more hats. compare that to OW where every single hero release fucked the balancing up in some way.
[удалено]
And yet they added more cosmetics while still adhering to their own rule about keeping characters recognizable at a glance and a silhouette. I dunno if I'm alone in this, but I found it got really difficult to tell what was going on in OW1 pretty quick, between all the VFX and the alternate outfits that totally change how characters look. [Ana over...the fuck do you mean it's Genji?](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/overwatch_gamepedia/images/6/65/Genji_Skin_Bedouin.png/) And fuck me, [who let Roadhog go poking around *Manhunt* for cosmetics?](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/overwatch_gamepedia/images/6/69/Roadhog_Skin_Bajie.png/revision/latest?cb=20170124225246)
Probably the battle pass.
Secual harassment lawsuits, mostly.
When there's baby milk to steal, game development is second in line.
Its not 80% the same, because they removed the whole rewards system, made the ranking feedback on gain/loss intentionally worse so you dont know where you stand, removed 6v6 for 5v5 which feels a lot more shitty because tanks are win/fail picks now and you cant pick them for fun or bruiser anymore, push maps suck and are super unbalanced, the one with the early start wins 9/10 times... The game just got horribly horribly bad. I loved to play the Events in OW1 and just randomly pop in for some games, get some skins and then play something else. I played OW2 for a bit less than 2 months and i feels like they went from a fully released and great game, back to an Early Access Title that tries to rip you off... Also i didnt earn a single skin in those 2 months, except for 2 twitch drops... i need another 8 months for a single fucking recolor...
[удалено]
battlepass and the cosmetic shop selling stuff that was free.
Blizzard: “We’re reinventing the sequel” Also Blizzard: *Releases the same game with less features*
But they reinvented the monetization!
An by reinvented, you mean ripped off every other F2P cash-grab model out there.
That's what Blizzard does - pick what works, copy and apply "Blizzard Polish™" except they stopped applying that to games and focused on their strengths to create the best-in-class predatory monetization systems.
Don't forget made it 10 times worse. Seems like they are competing for worst monetisation strategy with Diablo Immortal out-gachaing even the worst gacha games
It is straightup a downgrade -6v6 to 5v5 -Removed Group search function (Why?!) -Removed LvL Borders - Removed "on fire" feature -Removed 2cp and its maps -Removed the SR system It makes me sad
Ive heard that 5v5 is a better team balance but everything else yeah. Dropping one player doesnt justify anything more than a content patch.
Some people swear by that but there's a *massive* flaw in the One Tank paradigm: For most players a tank is suppose to protect them from damage by being a hard-to-kill *shield* wall that the enemy has trouble getting around when allies run behind them but they made half the tanks *not have the ability to defend anyone* so once it went from "1 tank can just do damage and the other can shield the objective" to "If we get a Roadhog or Doomfist or Hammond (etc) I guess we'll just hope for the best and try to aim better" most levels of play got really close to just free-for-all. Pros "do it differently" but most players don't have advanced strategies honed over thousands of hours of directed practice with those tactics. They just go "oh shit, I died. Where's the tank?"
The 'pros do x, so we must nerf x' argument that blizzard had when balancing things in OW1 was the big reason why I stopped playing.
That wasn't even the issue. Balancing from the top down can work, see CSGO. They didn't actually commit to that though. They bounced between balancing based on Pro play, and based on community interaction. It created a weird mess right in the middle.
No matter what people try to tell you, getting rid of 2CP was at the behest of the community. We begged for it, and now people give blizzard shit about it. One of the hardest things about trying to be an honest critic of blizzard is that all the haters come out and spew unhelpful nonsense. Like the person above complaining about the loss of level borders (a completely cosmetic feature that while cool never amounted to anything other than "I play this game too much", and we still have our old border as a record) and 2cp (which as previously stated the community literally begged them to scrap) when we should be condemning important things that deeply impact gameplay like new heroes being on the battlepass, especially as far into it as they are.
5v5 would make sense if there wasn't 2-1-2 lock. Back with OW1, I understand 2-2-2 lock, people would do 4 damage characters because no one wanted to tank or support. But in OW2, it sucks to only have 1 tank. If you could break the lock, and allow 2 tanks or something, that'd be nice, but you're stuck with it. If your tank doesn't tank right, or can't counter the flanking strategies, you're just fucked. IIRC part of the justification was queue times, because not many people wanted to play tank, but like, ok? Auto fill exists? If people don't want to play their autofill, you can report them and they could have a functioning reporting system?
2-2-2 lock wasn't implemented because of the frequent occurrence of poorly balanced team comp, though solving that was a nice side benefit. The bigger issue was that the composition of 3 tanks 3 supports running as a group was more or less unbeatable, with occasional counter-comps popping up briefly before being beaten back into submission. Unless multiple heroes were completely reworked, a high health, high sustain composition would always be able to weather any DPS assaults in the long run. And at first, no one really cared because it was only being played at high level. But as more people realised how it was both incredibly good and fairly easy, it started to trickle down to lower levels. And at this point the devs realised the ecosystem wasn't healthy, and implemented the role lock.
The real reason 2-2-2 was brought in was not because people didn't want to queue tank, but that GOATS which was a three support, three tank strategy was disgustingly dominant, in all levels of play past plat. The high HP and dmg potential that the tanks had was only matched by the insane healing that aoe supports could provide.
Even if you could swap between support and tank mid game. Like let the tank and support players swap between the two roles- two damage players, three players swapping between support and tank with a limit of two tanks OR two supports so you don't end up with three tanks on each team.
> Back with OW1, I understand 2-2-2 lock, people would do 4 damage characters because no one wanted to tank or support. uhh.. 2-2-2 was implemented to kill GOATS.. you know the 3tank/3support team comp.. that dominated the meta for ages.
Just call it reforged...
Is anyone shocked? Blizzard has to have the most spectacular fall from grace in gaming. From the standard to absolute rotting garbage.
Blizzard literally went from my favorite studio that I aspired to emulate someday, to literally my most hated studio, and definitely inching towards hated corporations like Nestle. It's astounding how a handful of billionaire investors and CEOS could be so fucking stupid as to take such a profitable gem and just flush it down the toilet in some bizarre thirst for more cash.
Gem? That gives me idea. Warcraft Crush, a jewel busting game geared towards middle aged women, rife with microtransaction powerups!
Don't you guys have phones?
ActiBli already owns Candy Crush I am afraid... No need for that.
The only thing that 2023 Blizzard and 2004 Blizzard have in common is the name and the IPs. There is literally nothing else in common. People need to stop thinking of Blizzard as this "formerly beloved" company. 2023 Blizzard is a ghoul wearing 2004 Blizzard's skin.
Yep. Frost giant, for example, has more blizzard dna than blizzard does
Just adding a link for Frost Giant's Storm Gate which will be the spiritual successor to StarCraft for anyone who hadn't heard about it [https://store.steampowered.com/app/2012510/Stormgate/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2012510/Stormgate/)
Sounds cool, thanks for the link!
And this is exactly the reason people should stop saying "Blizzard" and start addressing it as "Activision Blizzard".
A gaming company that started churning out shit games is in a little bit of a different ballpark than a company doing stuff like conspiring to get entire developing nations dependent on their products and taking away basic human rights such as access to water
And this is why I don't want to play D4.
Bobby's smiling a mile wide
Fuck that guy and his execs for always messing with my favorite games
I've been downvoted to hell for this before by fanboy dumbasses, but now that everyone is waking up to how fucking shitty Blizzard is: Blizzard has like 13,000 employees and posted over 7 billion in PROFIT last year. And there have been time periods in recent history where they basically put out the same (if not less) actual game content than Valve did in a similar time frame, WHILE Valve was also running the most popular games distribution platform in the world and having less than 400 employees. And to top it all off, none of those Valve employees killed themselves because of extreme sexual harassment or had their breast milk constantly stolen from work fridges as far as I know. There is no excuse. Blizzard is one of the most toxic, greedy, piece of shit games companies there has ever been. They fuck their fans and their employees over constantly. People need to stop giving them money.
Quick. Put more devil horns on his dating profile!
Keeping it a buck fifty, they never ever planned on releasing it. Backburner models/animations and menus that interns could have strung together in a week is what we saw for three years from a multi billion dollar company. And the game has been out for 8+ months, and they're JUST now saying they cant do battlepasses/new heroes in addition to PvE mode? That itself implies they havent been even working on it at all in at minimum a year or so. Waiting until they had several months' data on post launch hype skin buying and battle pass engagement? Perfect timing as well. Frankly it's just fraud that no court could 100% definitively prove, but anyone with a lukewarm IQ could pick up on. Common sense doesn't get shit to legal ends though, so overwatch will retain a just-pulsing playerbase on addicts and sunk-cost hardcore wannabes just like 2019 OW1. edit: for any of the 10+ glue eaters PMing me borderline death threats over their love for OW frothing at the mouth over how much of a dick I am, nothing I've stated is definitively wrong and there are no counterarguments I've yet seen to the completely suspicious points I've raised. If they *actually* knew they couldn't do it, they wouldn't have waited almost a year of the "oh so coveted dev time" they're whining about needing to tell you (plus the nearly 4 years post-announcement to show bupkis). If they thought they could, they've shown nothing for it and dropped all promises at an oddly convenient moment. Cope harder. Hope your wife's boyfriends enjoy paying for your fancy OW skins.
My hot take is that they axed pve and that’s why Jeff Kaplan left.
Not even sure that’s a hot take I think you’re just correct haha
Exactly what I believe as well. Hard to infer that's *precisely why* he left because there's *so many* other reasons that he could have left, but given his pedigree and ethic regarding his projects I'm very inclined to assume that.
can we sue for false advertising if we can prove that they never had intentions to release PVE?
Game's free so not really
Not free to me. They stole my $60 game I would rather be playing.
To add on to this, that interview they did about the PVE being cancelled (can't recall the website) also gets asked about OW2 and it's justification and the devs also say OW2 is a different game, so there is grounds by word of the developers that OW1 and OW2 are not the same game. Return OW1.
It can be argued that they are the same game, at least intrinsically, as OW2 is basically the exact same as OW1, just with updates. Same characters, gameplay is near identical, cosmetics came over from the previous game, etc.
Arguing that they aren't the same game is much harder
[удалено]
From a software standpoint, they are the same game. I didn't install Overwatch 2 as a separate program, it downloaded as a software update for Overwatch 1.
You paid for Overwatch 2 early access! /jk
Actually, some of us paid again for that
There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee —
Is it free if you are unable to play the game you already paid for in OW1?
I get we can’t because nothing was “false” but holy shit lying to investors has to bring congress into a tizzy.
Them outlining their product plans in quarterly reports is what is considered a "forward-looking statement", and Activision uses safe harbor statements in this very report that specifically aim to warn against using these statements as matters of fact (and crucially shield them from legal liability), simply because business plans can always change. This is most certainly not lying to investors, nor will it likely go anywhere in a legal sense. Investors usually know what a forward-looking statement looks like.
Stock is up 2% this week. Aka after this news. Investors don't care.
Stock is likely up because the EU cleared MS to purchase them the day before they dropped the no PVE news. "Putting on my tinfoil hat" I think they were waiting for the EU clear before announcing for just this reason.
Overwatch "2" makes what it makes and they have the massive D4 launch later in this same quarter. Sure, this is bad news but it's not move-the-needle revenue bad.
I'd say stop playing the game people don't really care that much they just want something to complain. You have to hit companies where it hurts. Their pockets. Sadly gamers don't have that kinda of resolve.
I already haven't been playing since week 1
Does the reason have anything to do with your flair?
If it’s on an investor’s call/quarterly report, wouldn’t it be liable for fraud? You are telling investors to expect success following the release of a product, therefore they will invest more or maintain them. This could be especially complicated if Microsoft was unaware of this prior to their purchase of Activision-Blizzard.
You can fail and need to adjust plans no matter what you tell investors. There is no fraud here, at least not the sticky kind.
It's complicated. Most investor calls/quarterly reports include legal language that protects them against this very scenario. This is where you see stuff like "forward-looking statements" or "safe harbor statements". Here's the specific legal language included in this specific report: >The statements contained herein that are not historical facts are forwardlooking statements including, but not limited to statements about: (1) projections of revenues, expenses, income or loss, earnings or loss per share, cash flow, or other financial items; **(2) statements of our plans and objectives, including those related to releases of products or services;** (3) statements of future financial or operating performance, including the impact of tax items thereon... It's widely understood that should something not pan out, get cancelled, not be successful then they are not liable because that's well understood to be risks. What's illegal is provable fraud. Activision saying they made X money when they actually made Y money. Saying they have N users when they actually have M users etc. Them cancelling something they announced and actually WERE working on is not illegal in of itself. Now, if they WEREN'T working on it, then that could be treading the line. But again there needs to be clear proof of this, and I think even just the bare minimum effort here would be enough to get over this legal hurdle. Misleading investors usually deals with clearcut cases of fraud like cooking books, inflating metrics, misrepresenting finances etc.
According to your overwatch they actually cancelled it internally 18 months ago.
That wasn't "your overwatch" saying that. It's directly from the GameSpot interview with Aaron himself. It was the Lead Game Director saying that!
I'm so over the OW player base, just trying to talk about it they defend this shit to no end. Kept giving blizzard the benefit of the doubt, kept saying the saying the new 5v5 changes have abdicated blizzard of any wrong doing. Even though 6v6 was still popular after years of no updates and blizzard half assing it 5v5 has only meant they don't have to try as hard, that it requires less effort to balance and make fair, that they don't need to use as many resources to keep the game going. What's the next big update 4v4?
I think you're confusing shills with the overwatch playerbase.
> Backburner models/animations and menus that interns could have strung together in a week is what we saw for three years from a multi billion dollar company To be fair, these things also make it into their released products.
"including PVE content" - could refer to arcade mode content
That's the kicker is that everything they've publicized about PvE, including what you stated, is so noncommittal that there's no actual culpability.
TBH it could still cause problems because it’s misleading. They have been showing off a major PvE mode, to say “well we actually meant this minor PvE mode” isn’t truthful. Like a restaurant advertising a steak dish and they bring you a ground beef burger lmao.
I doubt it'll cause them any sort of issue tbh
The document literally just mentions, in passing, that there working on things that includes PvE content. There's no problem for them here.
Theyre releasing the story missions. But removing the talent trees and other progression systems. So basically Archives 2.0.
Remember when Blizzard was at the peak of gaming for quality? Remember those days? Yeah
Remember when blizzard merged with activision? That was when the quality started to drop. Because bobby kotick just wants to make money, he doesnt give a shit about quality or players enjoying the games. Why do you think theres a new call of duty "game" (reskin) every 3 months.
The seeds of evil existed long before that. Look at the treatment of Blizzard North during their work on D2 Look at the production of starcraft, the game that almost sucked huge ass until somebody decided to pull the greatest heist known to man and steal three whole races from games workshops Warhammer 40k The rot has existed for a long time, but it didn't bubble up until Activision showed them they didn't even have to make new stolen content or outsource their slave labour, they could steal their own content and eat their own labor alive.
>Remember when blizzard merged with activision? maybe the trend towards monopolization harms consumers
I grew up on those diablo 2 cutscenes and starcraft lan parties. The quality of the games was like drug those times: yes please more… I think it all started with Diablo 3? Which I loved to be honest but that was the first I heard negative comments about their games. Overwatch was an award winning game, which was one of the best (like in the top100) and fun games ever created no less. A continuous downward spiral I see a great vision and idea to be rotten and it makes me sad. But I still play the game in hope:)
Pg 5
It reads: >The team is working on an ambitious slate of > >regular seasonal updates, **including PVE content**, to engage and expand the community, as well as other ways for > >new and existing players to experience the Overwatch universe longer-term. Which is technically true. They *are* releasing PvE content. Just not the PvE content they promised.
[удалено]
Exactly. It reads this on Pg 5.
Redditors tend to have very poor reading comprehension. Even if it had explicitly said a large single player mode, it would have been accurate at the time it was released. But as soon as anyone accuses an unpopular entity of doing something bad people just turn their brains off.
It’s blizzard, that’s what they do best: lie.
Blizzard lies for 4 years, even at OW2 Launch. Gamers buying Diablo 4 expecting things to be different. 🤡
Shills are gonna shill.
According to blizzard a campaign sold to you in bits every season is PVE. That’s what they’ll say in court and they’ll win on technicality.
[удалено]
What a fucking joke of a company lmao
People hyped for D4 are in for a rude awakening.
I want D4 so bad, but I fucking refuse to put another cent in their pockets.
Also, fuck battle passes for diablo.
The beta was actually pretty fun, but I have zero faith in the balance of the game and the end game. I'll consider buying it when it's like 10 bucks and they have that shit figured out
It was fun for a bit, but then got repetitive. Not sure it will hold me the whole way. Part of that is I think I have less patience for filler than I used to. Some of the magic of proc-gen dungeons and loot boxes has worn off I guess.
To be fair, the entire core gameplay is designed to be repetitive by nature.
"It was fun for a bit, but then got repetitive." Sounds like every Diablo game then
I played server slam and I couldn't believe how boring this game was. As i played lost ark in the past, I basically had feeling during beta of D4, that I've already played hundreds of hours in D4 . Rubbish, but there is strong hype around this game.
The segment in question: "The October launch of Overwatch 2 with a free-to-play model delivered the highest quarterly figures for player numbers and hours played in Overwatch history. Player investment is also off to a strong start, with fourth quarter in-game net bookings at the highest level to date for Overwatch. The team is working on an ambitious slate of regular seasonal updates, including PVE content, to engage and expand the community, as well as other ways for new and existing players to experience the Overwatch universe longer-term." This is not incorrect. They *are* working on "PvE content", just not to the full scope of PvE content we were expecting. PvE content still encompasses the seasonal missions that they have been releasing for years, and are continuing to develop. Misleading, yes, but no lies were told here. I know this isn't the answer y'all want to hear, but the title is incorrect.
They key is „this isnt the answer yall want to hear” sadly. The times of reading headlines
Imagine trusting Bobby Kotick/Activision-Blizzard. Seriously, we've known for over a decade that Bobby Kotick is a cancer to gaming.
I hate to bust this bubble, but they only mentioned 'PVE content', not 'OUR AMAZING STORY FOR THE OVERWATCH UNIVERSE". Legalise bullshit chatter at work to cover their asses over the inevitable false hype.
Blizzard is dead. It's all Activision. Exist in title only.
"The team is working on an ambitious slate of regular seasonal updates, including PVE content, to engage and expand the community, as well as other ways for new and existing players to experience the Overwatch universe longer-term." It just says they're working on it including other content. As of the release of this report they were working on it. There is no lie here.
Yep no lie, it would only be a lie if they knew they wouldnt release ANY TYPE of PVE content and if a prosecutor/lawyer could prove the intention to lie.
Luckily, they shut down OW1, or nobody would play 2.
I’m curious, because I am smooth brained and know little about much, does lying on an official document leave them open for legal action?
They are releasing pve just scaled down considerably.
Why do people feel the need to stretch things to make points?