It’s a decent game but a terrible one if you are comparing it to the original Overwatch.
I’m just genuinely curious why/how it’s still getting updates and people are playing it with the way it’s talked about, they make it sound like the worst game ever
That’s honestly not that good, when games like CS2 are regularly pulling 2million+.
According to 3rd party websites (that may not have accurate estimates), Overwatch 1 had between 600k-1mil peak concurrent players through a lot of 2020/2021. One of those same websites now says that OW2 had about 140k peak players today when combining all players on all platforms. So it would seem there’s been a huge drop in players.
In my opinion, anyone saying OW2 is worse than the original is saying this for personal reasons and not trying to be objective. OW2 is, in my experience, much more balanced than OW1. Many of the more frustrating aspects of the game have been fixed or removed, and most of the characters added since OW1 seem fun to play and not frustrating to play against.
There are very many valid criticisms one can make of Blizzard. The history of being a shitty workplace, the objectively awful decision to make OW2 a sequel, the treatment of Jeff Kaplan by execs, the monetization, and probably more. None of those criticisms (except monetization to a limited degree) have anything to do with whether or not OW2 is a bad game or not.
But I’m speculating since the person you responded to has not elaborated on any of their views.
I agree with you. Even though they’re still not the kind of game so would play regularly, Overwatch 1 was extremely annoying to play with all the stuns, freezes and more. Overwatch 2 toned down and removed most of these which made it actually somewhat enjoyable.
Ehh I disagree, I played consistently ow1 for years and ow2 just wasn’t as good.
I mainly missed tank synergies. Without it the game just wasn’t the same. The other tank changes were just insane too. And I preferred the full 6v6 experience.
Then they had to go an monetize the shit out of it, when I already paid for the game! The last straw was either paying for new characters or grinding like hell.
The tank and 6v6/5v5 has been heavily discussed, recently devs made a long devblog about it. I can kinda see where you’re coming from, I think, but between balance/queue times/the average player (of which there tends to be more of when you’re with 5 others instead of just 4) it seems to me like 1 tank works better in practice even though it struggles when compared to the ideal world+nostalgia goggles.
I was very pleasently surprised not disappointed by the monetization, like uncompleted weekly (battle pass -primary method of profression) challenges carry over, so in theory you can do all weekliesduring the last week if a battle pass. also aren’t the new heroes available if you play just a few matches?
I honestly though I would get used to it, like the forced 2-2-2 comps which I initially disliked, but I never did. It just made the game feel like too much more like a pure fps. And it not feeling like that was what made it unique.
In my experience all the que times were fine as 2-2-2 even when queued as duo dps
I don’t mean to be a dick but without giving actual reasons all you’re saying is “I preferred ow1”, which is kind of what my original comment was referring to. Tank synergies is definitely something that was lost with ow1, rein/zarya and dive comps were very fun and definitely something I miss. But it was also a major source of balance issues and player frustration.
Two tank team composition was a consistent balance issue and severely restricted the design of tank heroes. Sigma is a really fun and interesting hero, but when he was added overwatch entered a prolonged two shield meta which was incredibly boring. The devs added a cool hero, and he made the game worse. Not only did he make the game worse, but there was no obvious or easy solution, because sigma wasn’t the problem, two shields was the problem. In my opinion that exemplifies how bad of an issue the game was facing and justifies the changes made.
There’s nothing wrong with preferring ow1 but the person I responded to called it “a terrible game compared to the original” which is just blatantly incorrect in my opinion.
Why? I played OW from beta, stopped playing after all the shitty workplace accusations came out, then played again for 10 or so hours last month.
I didn’t play much competitive (in my recent sessions) but the game seemed like it was in a pretty solid place. The only “major” issue I can think of is that the tank role is incredibly important, which creates a bit of a toxic environment where people are scared to play tank because they get flamed if the team gets rolled. But I think the downsides are worth the benefits, with tank being so important it’s become the core that the rest of the game balances around. Healers have more agency and dealing damage/contributing to elims is a vital part of the role. A lot of the frustrating/cheesy aspects of the game have been removed, scattershot, damage-doomfist, mercy 5-man-res, goats, double shield.
Again, I took a long break from the game, but before that I clocked a lot of hours in competitive. Personally the game feels about as balanced and enjoyable as it’s ever been.
Obviously the monetization is gross and that entire side of the game sucks now but that’s an entirely different conversation.
So funny when a corpo is forced to seem positive about something where there is absolutely no positive way of spinning it. It has this surreal energy where the person doing PR seems almost uncanny, like some kind of lizard person.
Yeesh, I’ve never used the website but that NightCrawler person seems like they have some serious control problems. The fact that the whole community was willing to chip in/pay for it and take it over and the admin still refused to cooperate is pretty shitty. At least it looks like someone managed to convince the admin to let them host and takeover the site’s wiki.
This is oddly common in ROM hacking/mod scenes. There’s been no shortage of drama in the Fire Emblem and Final Fantasy Tactics communities, too.
At the very least I wish people would consider the bus test once a site/project gets to a certain critical mass. Insane to me that a site with this kind of profile never had coverage for that scenario this entire time.
I really hope that tcrf doesn’t take over. I STILL can’t contribute to that website because it requires you to sign up for Discord and agree to Discord’s ToS just to paste some stupid code into their bot.
after some further research, it became apparent that Discord staff could save a significant amount of money by changing S3 providers. The new bucket was set up, but when the time came to make the change NC refused to do it, even though he was not the one footing the bill.
There’s a conspicuous absence of explaining why they wouldn’t do it. What were their actual concerns? Did they not voice them or are they just being withheld?
NC refused to join the Discord to talk about solutions in real-time.
Why was this a requirement?
Did we vent in private? Sure.
And what did you say?
Did we dox or threaten? Fucking hell, no! And frankly I’m LIVID at even the suggestion that we did.
Well something clearly happened if his family was brought into it, so if you’re going to skimp on the details, I’m not sure how I’m supposed to believe that.
The whole thing just comes back to the larger issue with discord: the record vanishes.
That was very clearly on purpose, she starts panicking about the first guys she kills to survive (and there’s a very obvious rape vibe when she gets ganged up on), and near the end she’s screaming I’m gonna kill you all. That is the narrative arc. Welcome to trauma stories?
I couldn’t keep playing that game after the first few hours. It felt like some kind of Lara Croft torture simulator fetish thing and made me feel icky.
It bothers me because TR2013 didn’t have to be like that. The dogs were challenging and scary. The puzzles were good. The bow and melee combat was tense. Hunting and exploration could’ve played a bigger part, the game so rarely took you off the rails and it was good when it did.
The game could’ve been made with killing humans being rare dramatic moments, with the guns being tools of last resort.
I have to force myself to not fall into the trap of trying to play a “perfect” game and instead to just let happen, what happens. Blundering through content and accepting temporary setbacks is more fun than following guides or save scumming.
But it also depends on game design:
With bg3 I missed a one of a kind item in act 1, a staple dnd item (ring of protection) that I was locked out off because I did quests in the “wrong” order. that gave me some anxiety, after which I started checking the wiki page before starting a new zone, which eventually sucked the fun out of the game, after which I abandoned my first playthrough.
And then I found a mod that randomizes all loot, so I can just let happen again what happens, without that anxiety of losing access to unique loot because of game design.
You got upset because you missed a +1AC item? There’s so many much better items in that game I’m surprised this one matters so much.
I totally recognise playing the perfect game angle though, depending on the game I look up collectibles ahead of time, so that when I find the area I know there’s one nearby.
Nah, the knowledge that I could be locked out of unique items is what caused anxiety, not what I was actually locked out off (though I do think it’s a really good item for a ring). I played act 1 as a blundering fool, at the end of act 1 I checked an item list to see what I missed, so I could backtrack for what I could use. And then I destroyed my fun in act 2 by checking guides before starting an area.
I also fall into this trap semi regularly, a happy medium I have found is a missable items guide that doesn’t tell you how to play or where to go but it does tell you “make sure you get item X before going to place Y as that’s your last chance”
It means I can be happy to play sub optimally knowing that if I really want I can go back and collect anything I missed later.
Not an RPG, but in the Thief series the hardest difficulty usually means that you aren’t allowed to kill anyone. Many people even try to play the games as a ghost. Meaning the only sign of their presence after leaving is the stuff they stole. Every door has to be closed and locked again. Keys stolen from guards have to be returned (in lieu of a game mechanic for this you have to lay it on the ground behind them).
People do challenge runs of the Gothic games as pacifists. So it isn’t part of the games but doable with some shenanigans.
And next they will come for other labels deemed “against the rules” without elaborating. Porn is the canary. You can “lol incest” but this is about taking down what folks cant argue with first then the next will be porn at all, then queer stuff, just like tumblr
I hate when the default controls have duck toggled on R3 but then don’t have anything on two of the 4 face buttons. Crouch should be on Circle/B if you’re not using that button for anything else.
The entire reason it’s like that is so you can crouch and aim at the same time, it’s almost objectively better, as long as you don’t accidently press it.
The best control schemes are the ones that bind any action that would be useful to do while still controlling the camera to the back buttons or the sticks.
I’m talking about a toggle tho. It’s not going to be accidentally toggled if its not on the stick, and the stick press is usually really sensitive. I can also hit the far right face button with the first knuckle of my thumb, while still having the end of my thumb moving stick.
If there was no toggle crouch in the theoretical game, then I would agree with you.
I prefer toggle crouch and I still much prefer it on the right stick. Allows you to spam crouch and aim at the same time, but do you. I just think it’s objectively better and hate when any action I would use while controlling the camera is on a face button.
My main point is there is a genuine reason it’s mapped to the stick by default, I would be annoyed if it was on the face buttons by default.
I think we can both agree that not being able to make any button do any thing is the best way to go about it. I hate being limited to a single scheme, or even just 2 or 3 and not being able to 100℅ fully customize them.
Even if the year is not finished, this game is such a perfect work of art on so many levels that it became the new favorite to me, and to plenty other players.
The writing, the characters, the dialogues, the story, everything is new and perfectly done. It is pure art and something like 98% of the 3+ millions players would disagree with you.
But you must be part of that 2%, meh to each their own 🤷🏻♂️
Last of Us 1 was really good. But the second one was so bad, it kind of ruined the first one for me as well. And I wouldn’t call it masterpiece. Because for me a masterpiece shines in gameplay, narrative and atmosphere. The Last of Us’ gameplay serves its purpose, but there’s really nothing special here compared to e.g. Elden Ring, were story, atmosphere and gameplay are all pretty much perfect.
How was the second one “so bad?” It had incredible narrative, more in depth gameplay, challenging and coherent themes, depth of storytelling, it took risks that a lot of people didn’t like, but you can’t say they were done poorly. They were just challenging for people. And that’s good. The same stories told with the same character arcs following the same hero’s journey is boring. TLOU2 challenged you with the characters making choices you wouldn’t, it challenged you with co placated character arcs that saw well-loved characters turn into the villains, while the villain of the story became the one to end the cycle of violence…it was incredible. That worldbuilding, the design, the voice acting, the mocap acting, the more varied fighting styles, the expansive world…I mean, shit, I really do want to know what you thought actually classified as “bad” about that game. It pissed people off. But that does not make it a bad game by any stretch of the imagination.
Missing Half-life (the first one). That game was the first one to feature scripted scenes during player interaction and it was mind-blowing. Plus, it had the most sophisticated story ever seen in an FPS before.
I have roleplayed a different flavour of racist in the last three games, and I am hardly unique in that sense. Every race is defined by their racism or the racism they face.
C:S2 is likely too ambitious. Doing too many new things at once instead of incremental change.
KSP2 was a management fuck up. Let’s take this IP and give it to a completely seperate studio with no experience in this kind of work while not allowing the original Devs to help despite being part of the organisation.
Let’s take this IP and give it to a completely seperate studio with no experience in this kind of work while not allowing the original Devs to help despite being part of the organisation.
The decision making behind this is incredibly hard for me to understand. Just a very, very nonsensical way to run the project, on paper. I wonder about the circumstances.
You see this a lot in project management. People go to school to learn to manage projects, and they think that all projects are pretty much the same. You define the deliverables, set the schedule, track the progress, and everything should work out fine. When the project is a success, they pat themselves on the back for getting everyone to the finish line, and when the project fails they examine where in the process unexpected things happened.
Video games are an art form. Creativity can’t be iterated into existence, and the spark of fun is more than the component parts of a good time. Capitalists believe that they can invest in the creative process and buy the value of the talent of extraordinary people. They have commoditized creation, dissecting each step and then squeezing it into a format that fits into a procedure.
Here’s a Kanban board of game features, pick one and move it to the next phase. Develop, test, evaluate, repeat. What are your blockers? Is this in scope? Do we need to push the deadline?
That can help you make something, but it won’t be art.
As an art appreciator, and someone whose professional duties include project management, I love this comment, especially “[project management] can help you make something, but it won’t be art.”
As a project manager (well sort of, but did IT projects for a while, have multiple friends in the gaming manager): Yes and no.
From my point of view: The problem isn’t the fact that games are art. While games have their creative side they also require good “brick and mortar work” in the back - as many games as went horribly wrong due to a lack of space for creativity went wrong due to a lack of “less than glamorous” brick and mortar work and overcreativity. (Most drastic example would be the reddit dragon MMO story)
This is actually a reason why people who are very invested in the subject matter of the project they manage often are horrible project managers - and vice versa people who have no clue can’t be good PMs either.
Project management has one core component: Knowing when to ask whom. A good PM knows that the dev(or dev team lead) will always know better how long “feature X” will take. Of course I can try to learn how to do things… but that wouldn’t help much as the exact dev or team will still have their individual speeds. But a good PM also will know when to ask someone else who is nore knowledgeable for advice or to confirm things. (I literally had an Dev trying to tell me a small feature would take two weeks. Fair enough. But interestingly enough two other Devs were fairly sure it takes 30min including documentation. Which sounded way more reasonable. Turned out said Dev always tried to pull these stunts with new PMs and his lead being on vacation)
A good PM will also know when to give people space for creativity - and defend this room towards the budget.
Sadly - and this is a problem existing on all sides around PM- in the end it all boils down to a simple thing: Everyone thinks they know better. The PM thinks they know the job of being a Dev(or engineer,etc. etc.) better than the actual people doing the job. And vice versa the Devs think they could do without PMs (they can’t for larger projects it’s impossible, for mid size projects often really inefficient) or know their job better.
I believe the reason it happened, in short, is that Take2 (the publisher) were really obsessed with the release being a surprise, at the cost of far too much.
For one, this meant that basically every job listing for the game never described what the game you’d even work on was. Most of the devs they got were juniors who:
were willing to sign more restrictive contracts without the confidence to push back
did not necessarily know much about the game, or even the genre (supposedly, besides Nate, only 1 dev was an active KSP1 player and another was aware of the game but never really played)
this game was their first sizeable project
For two, it meant that a lot of management roles were taken up by people from Take2 to enforce the secrecy (who also saw KSP as having franchise potential, but that’s a rant for another day). Few of them intimately understood what makes us dorky nerds enthusiastic about KSP.
This is also part of the reason they avoided talking to the KSP1 devs; they were afraid of some of them even hinting that a sequel was in the works. As to why they continued to not talk to them after announcing the game I’m not sure. Perhaps they were afraid they’d tell the uncomfortable truth that the game was making the same development mistakes as KSP1 and more.
Not just making the same mistakes, they were told to scrap years of development and reuse the exact same codebase of KSP1. They had to start over the project with a decade plus of technical debt from a team they weren’t allowed to talk to.
Because remaking the same features from scratch was taking too long. They had already delayed the project due to covid at that point. They ended up with three games: the one they started before intercept was created (and that never saw the light of day), the one based on KSP with the upgrades and new features added (also never seen publicly), a neutered version without the incomplete new features (like multeplayer and improved heat simulation) that was launched as early access. Poor fellows were set up for failure.
The decision making behind this is incredibly hard for me to understand. Just a very, very nonsensical way to run the project, on paper. I wonder about the circumstances.
The rights were aquired by Take-Two Interactive in 2017, and they wanted a sequel to be released in 2020.
The dev studio shut down in 2023 and current status is unkown.
I never played cs1 on release, only played after it was nearly 10 years old, but my understanding is it vastly improved over updates and dlc (which unfortunately did cost more but did at least add meaningful changes for the most part).
Im curious to see where CS2 stands in 3-5 years when mods have really taken off and the devs had made most of their major tweaks.
I had it from release and honestly, even day 1 it smoked the competition in the city sim genre, releasing with features and scale than Sim City ever had.
The DLC often introduced more systems, but they did feel ‘extra’, the game was perfectly functional before parks or tourism or natural disasters etc.
The reason CS:2 felt so necessary is because the first was bloated and had underlying issues in it’s simulation logic, like unrealistically inefficient driving, or a large expansion to residential areas causing all the new residents to die of old age at the same time, crippling the city. Every part of the GUI and logic just felt clunky compared to modern, polished games.
I’d argue the DLCs did more than you imply. The extra modes of transit gave more options to move people, painting a custom park area made cities feel more realistic than premade square parks, universities could be a great centerpiece for a neighborhood. Its not like vanilla was unplayable, but the DLC defintely added more creativity for me.
Oh, the fucks up are massive. They hired a new studio, but also, they pulled the funding then the project without warning. Then they poached the devs, forcing the studio to close and sending them to a newly funded studio. But then, they forced the devs to scrap years of work from scratch, and start over the project with the old codebase and only a year as a deadline. Finally, when it became obvious it wasn’t a massive success, they cut their funding too without warning, and sold the IP without telling the studio about it.
KSP was mishandled so wildly that it should be a case study of how profit oriented management kills creativity and destroys IPs. They killed two studios and a massive IP with their shenanigans. This is why you never let the MBAs run anything.
I mean for ksp2 saying it failed cause they had “no experience with this kind of work” is kind of weird, since neither did the ksp1 devs when they started that. And they didn’t fuck it up either, let alone this badly. Remember that it was a passion project of harvester, working at a PR firm that just happened to let him do it under their roof and employment. The company did not even have any basic experience in game development, arguably even software development in general.
Institutional knowledge is a real thing and also like you said, the first KSP started as a passion project. There’s a huge difference in terms of pressure and expectation between developing your own passion project compared to developing a sequel of a highly regarded game.
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