Not really. With mismatches player numbers between Damage and Support, youāre shouldering a lot of the weight without much compensation. They canāt buff Tanks otherwise theyāll be a Damage-style juggernaut, they canāt nerf them because theyāll be in a worse positions.
The only thing that 5v5 does is make the game far more volatile than it already is. You might feel more impactful, but the match quality will be worse.
I donāt know if I would agree.
Itās not as straightforward as itās worse. More like itās just a different experience. I was fortunate to be able to give it a try.
5v5 is objectively more team dependent. You lose bigger % of the team when 1 person dies compared to 6v6
Oh, no. This isnāt an āagree-disagreeā situation. It would be if we were going for a āis it better or worseā perspective; it has goods and bads, the decision there is subjective.
The mismatch will just make the data that the match provides more volatile and will make it far more difficult for the devs to keep-up the balance of any individual Tank. For those who hold competitive integrity paramount, this change is unforgivable, but to the casual audience, it might actually be worthwhile.
If they are going down this route, I really hope theyāll fully lean-into it. Trying to jam a casual and competitive game together just makes it worse for everyone.
I donāt follow your reasoning in thinking that itās harder to balance the tank roster with solo tanking. Itās objectively easier - there arenāt tank synergies anymore, each tank individually represents a teamās entire tanking capabilities. Thatās much easier to balance than trying to make the game balanced with a wide variety of tank pairs.
And now tank can be absolutely awful or overpowered, depending on which supports are working with them.
So, remove support synergies next for even simpler balancing.
I agree that there are fewer synergies, and this does make it easier. Itās also true that the Tank now makes-up more of the team.
The issue is that the others also have equal access to their synergies, but the Tanks, as a role, have less of a foot-print in that, too. In this sense, I think it equals-out for Tank vs Tank, but not when the rest of the team is in the equation. The problematic part is that there is now a mismatch in player-count per game per role. Maintaining two Damage and two Supports, leaves the job of the Tank the same (minus one enemy Tank), since the job of a isnāt, solely, defined by the enemy Tanks. They interact with the other roles.
This either makes the remaining Tank stronger or weaker, and it means any individual change hit much harder, and any individual situation presented will swing much harder. You canāt remove a player-slot like this without really destabilising the game. It just canāt be done.
Overwatch 2 would have been a big deal if it released less than a year after it was announced.
At this point? Interest in Overwatch has fallen so much that I honestly doubt itāll even make waves. Iām not saying itāll bomb and not make money or whatever. But prime time for Overwatch has passed, and I donāt think OW2 is notable enough to bring in players who were already tired of Overwatch for more than a month or two to revisit things.
I donāt know anymore. I think the initially planned 5 or 6 launch heroes is nowhere near enough now. Itās gotta be 10 minimum to get peopleās interest in my opinion. Iām still excited for the game but afraid it might get old fast.
I really and sincerely hope it is gonna be a failure. If by misfortune ow2 have a big success, they will annonce overwatch 3 in 2-3 years, and let their game as it is today, again.
Overwatch: Declassified got announced and stated to release on Nov 1st 2022. x.com
Now, this is just speculation, but I am going to connect some dots nows. The Nvidia leak showed us that the release date for OW2 is December 1st 2022, and the Chinese edition is February 28th 2022 https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/comments/qmb9cb/nvidia_geforce_leak_possibly_reveals_new_original/
Now, OW2 Chinese version is most likely the mobile game, or less likely a curated version of OW2. Netease develops mobile games (and is confirmed to develop OW mobile), but also ābrokersā games for release in the Chinese market. Considering the database said OW2 Chinese version and not just Overwatch mobile edition, itās safe to assume that OW2 is getting a mobile release, not OW1.
It also makes no sense to have a mobile release that spoils new maps and heroes in a lower quality medium earlier than the main platforms. It would release at the same time, or later.
So what this could mean is that Feb 28 2022 was the old release date, and Dec 1 2022 is the delayed release date. From the investor call in q3 2021, Mike said this:
The teams have made great progress and passed important milestones recently, and we expect these to be fantastic releases. But thereās obviously been a change in leadership. We looked at what was left in the final phases of production with fresh eyes, and we saw that allowing the teams more time would enable both great experiences at launch and also help ensure that everything will be in place to engage the communities for many years to come. This extra time will also help us continue significantly increasing the size of our development teams ahead of the launch.
With the part I bolded especially, it gives credibility to Feb 28 2022 being somewhat close to the original OW2 release date.
With your prediction, late October would be when the marketing campaign starts, and that makes sense to increase the sales of the book, which will breathe life into the Overwatch fandom and the lore fanās fangirling will influence the inactive and active Overwatch fanbase to purchase OW2. Remember, 40 million players already own OW2 PvP. So the marketing would really have to hype the PvE/story aspect to be successful.
If everyone is excited about the new heroes/maps and not the campaign + hero missions, then the marketing campaign is a failure. And all the time that went into developing cinematics (they are all 100% baked in the campaign btw), PvE only mechanics/physics and A.I upgrades would be wasted. Even if the PvP side carried the game financially and was very profitable, it would be a devastating design failure to follow the PvE rabbit hole.
What will kill or support this theory is the OWL OW2 early build competitive season. If the maps are still in the process of being heavily modified for 5v5 this theory is dead in the water. As thereās no way Mike looked at productionās final phases and saw the PvP section be practically unchanged. That Feb release date would be extra foolish considering that on April 2022, the gameās maps arenāt even changed. If the OW2 early build shows very dramatic changes to maps + heroes, then this speculation is still valid as that would be worthy of being in the final stages of production.
So, hereās hoping that Dec 1 2022 is close to the actual release date, and that the PvE is very good.
Iām most excited for the mobile version.