This is interesting. I mean of course, I am aware of the reasons they did this massive change, and on paper they all made sense ahead of time.
They also massively degraded the game feel, and IMO were ultimately the wrong solution for the problem(s) they were facing. I understand why they did it, much like I understand why they chased the eSports-hype, but I disagree with all actions taken and their outcomes regardless.
The game had already mostly lost me by the time OW2 rolled around, and between the very intense-feeling 5v5 that was nothing like the chill chat-with-friends-while-playing-some-OW we had before and the rampant monetization, I just dropped off. I don’t think this will at all make me come back to the game, but on a conceptual level I really enjoy them at least experimenting with undoing a lot of the shit they did to the game over the years, this isn’t the only thing they’re reverting after all.
So why did they drop the team numbers from 6 to 5? Does it really make that much of a difference? Couldn’t they just have both modes available (like Halo has 16v16, 32v32 and such)?
It makes a massive difference, the game was balanced with 6v6 from the get go, removing a tank completely changes how the game works.
They had problems with certain tank combinations, but instead of addressing that directly, they just removed one. A lot of changes they made just felt like justifications to calling it a 'new game'.
The devs are too proud to add a 6v6 mode along side, it's took so much pressure for them to finally 'experiment' with 6v6, they just won't admit their modes, changes etc are failures.
It also essentially undermines the whole idea of the game. “More FPS focus” and “more focus on individual gameplay” are not why I enjoyed OW1 in the first place, after all. It was the game to play with real life friends while hanging out on voice chat and relaxing after work. The mix of high-precision, low-precision, no-precision, tanking, healing, everything meant that there was something for everybody and we could all easily play together and just spend an evening talking shit and doing shit.
They want everyone to feel powerful on every hero (to sell skins), but that's not Overwatch's identity. They took a lot of skill expression and teamplay out of the game.
I mean the devs are completely clueless anyway, they removed mccrees stun citing "too much CC in the game" while simultaneously adding more CC through both new heros and changing existing ones. Just reading their patch notes shows how lost they are.
Oh the grenade part was so silly. “Hey we are removing the stun, too much CC and let’s be honest, it makes it far too easy to blow up stunned flankers”.
…
“Here, as a replacement that’s a homing grenade that just straight up kills the flanker, no stunning necessary.”
It’s worth it to read the director’s take that goes with this announcement, it’s quite long but goes into great detail about the motivation and effects.
I hate the change, but I can totally understand why they did it. Much as I personally dislike it.
I stopped playing shortly after OW2 came out. They killed my favorite role (tank) by throwing one of the tanks away, making the tank role miserable to play since the team fights were always on my shoulders. Then, on top of that, they unbalanced everything even more, and had to update maps for 5v5, forever removing some of them from the game.
That was all after the slap in the face that was taking away a game I paid money for to replace it with a broken, microtransaction-ridden experience.
I might be willing to look past the microtransaction BS and play again if they bring 6v6 with some of the original, unmodified OW1 maps.
The biggest issue is that IMO, even nowadays balance isn’t remotely as good as it was before the change, owing to the massive imbalance on all ends the 5v5-switch introduced, and them only working through that at a glacial pace. But even more so, this is annoying because of how it essentially undermines the reason they did this.
Sure, the queue time argument still stands. Yeah. But on a balance level, “Double tanks were problematic for game balance” is a bit of a moot point in hindsight. Yeah, they were, sure. Less so than 5v5 is, it turns out.
Iirc it had occasional pve events but the point of ow2 according to them was to have a permanent pve mode which iirc never happened but I haven’t played in a while so take my words with salt.
There were holiday events, like halloween (junkenstein) and an anniversary event covering the robot invasion thing from lore. But I don’t recall there being any permanent events, especially at launch.
I only got into the game after 2 was launched so I only really played the 5x5 mode, but I always thought the 6x6 mode could be fun. Unfortunatelly I am not playing anymore. The core concept of the game is fun, but the matches felt just too unbalanced for me to enjoy. And although I think this change would be fun I don’ think it will fix the balance problem on matchmaking.
I'm glad they're looking into 6v6, but I honestly like 5v5 better. Queue times are short, games play quick, and it's easier to keep track of what's going on. It does put a lot of pressure on the solo tank, but not so much that I don't enjoy playing tank.
I'm more interested to see where they go with some of the other queue changes they mentioned. If they can add some more flexibility than "1-2-2 only" in a way that doesn't totally break team comp, that could be a lot of fun!
I completely gave up on the game after they killed the PvE / skill plans for 2 (around Lifeweaver launch), but I played quite a lot of 2 from launch and agree. I really like 5v5 and team structure wise to me the game felt in a great place with the change.
My guess is that they’re still bleeding players and looking for any shot in the arm to bring the oldheads back
Double tank was such a pain in the ass. The new tanks were built to solo tank. It will require an almost 100% tear down and rebuild to get back to 6v6.
Yea I actually really like 5v5. It changed the pace of the game to something that I actually like compared to Overwatch 1. That said, the game still failed to keep my interest weeks after release so maybe I’m really just not part of their target audience.
Personally I get why 5v5 was done, but I utterly hate it. It removes all the things that made Overwatch 1 so cool compared to other FPS to me:
Slow TTK as a result of two tanks in front of the team.
High focus on healing, as someone who enjoys playing healers in all games this was heaven to me.
Lower focus on personal damage contribution and aim, as syncing ults, creating trap spots and selectively bursting targets was how you got kills, not just aiming.
In total, this resulted in me and my friends easily having a game we could all enjoy on a few characters each (me on Moira, Mercy, Torbjörn, Symmetra and Bastion, for example) and talk shit while just playing the entire evening.
This whole “social” spirit was lost as they slowly pitched the balance towards faster and faster TTK, and ultimately with 5v5. It’s a “competitive FPS” now, but honestly, I don’t need a competitive FPS. Never did. I did however need a social fun low-stakes FPS, back when OW1 came out. And that spot is no longer filled, sadly.
Overwatch was so fun, the devs just kept adding and changing shit that we didn't need. OW2 is a complete distaster though, they can keep their predatory macrotransactions, just revert to the OW1 patch for everything else.
Non-essential and predatory are not mutually exclusive, especially given Blizzard’s history of player manipulation. They have perfected the science of making you want someone that you don’t need.
I appreciate the kind words, I was just joking around. I’m a happily taken man with a great girlfriend. To those considering bad choices, I promise the unknown is scary but has much greater rewards than going back to something that already failed.
Nobody is arguing that, I dont buy skins in games. The point is that a lot of people are cosmetic-minded and manipulated into spending large amounts of money on skins and other customisations, the system shouldnt exist.
I mean, cars aren’t essential to existence either, just don’t buy them <-- technically correct, but not at all a helpful statement when discussing car-price-related issues.
They actually changed that a while back, new heroes aren’t in the battlepass any more, everyone gets them for free. I don’t know how that works with the “new player experience” where you needed to win games to unlock the base heroes on a new account though.
Starting Season 10, all new heroes will be immediately unlocked when they launch. All existing heroes will also be unlocked for players. This means that heroes will no longer need to be unlocked through the Battle Pass to be playable in all game modes.
New players will still need to complete the first-time user experience to unlock heroes as they learn the ropes. Once the heroes from the original Overwatch roster have been unlocked, all Overwatch 2 heroes will also become available.
So unless there was another change, new players still need to play/win games in order to unlock the full roster.
If cosmetics weren’t important to players, people wouldn’t spend money to buy them. We are human, we care about looks, that’s why companies make so much money on cosmetics. So yes, it is important enough to dislike predatory microtransactions.
Microtransactions don’t have to affect gameplay any more. The video games industry has successfully sold this narrative (“Please ignore cosmetic microtransactions mkay?!”) while also raising a whole new generation of gamers that value ingame cosmetics to a social-interactions-affecting degree.
There’s a reason kids laugh at one another over default skins in Fortnite or lack of cash in Roblox and so on.
Plus just as importantly, they normalize mtx on an industry level, making selling of other types of monetization easier in the future.
Well, they also sell weapon skins that cost as much as the entire game used to cost. So I’m sure they are just trying to do damage control while also not changing their monetization.
I don’t mind it if the game was always free to play. They gotta make their money somehow if that’s the case. The problem I have with Overwatch and the microtransactions is that they went free to play after they already made a fuck ton of money off of loot boxes and the fact that you used to actually have to buy the game. It’s just a cash cow and gameplay (including matchmaking, like you said) has suffered considerably. Not only that but they charge as much money as entire games for skins. Games like Overwatch when it first came out.
I don’t mind microtransactions in free to play games, I really don’t. It’s just the method they are using is just blatantly greedy and targeted for whales that will pay anything for fear of missing out.
I am with you on that one. I was speaking from the point of view of someone who didnt buy ow1 because I only got into the game after ow2 so I completely forgot it wasnt free before. Its sad how nowadays you cannot ever have “complete” games. Most games just few unpolished and unfinished and they just throw things at it trying to make money. Which for me is so ironic because I think ow has a solid gameplay mechanic - it just gets completely shadowed by all the financial decisions.
I wish more players would just ignore these cosmetic microtransactions and go with the default skin or at least limit themselves to ones that can be obtained by actually achieving something in the game. Using default skin while outplaying people in competitive games could probably induce some people to make quite salty comments.
It already was, activision and capcom both did that, and no, cheat DLCs aren’t accessibility, cheats should be free like they were back in the ps2 days and earlier.
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