There is way to please everybody, as Overwatch managed to do just that, until developers had “bright” idea of rebuilding everything for their e-sports scene.
Not really. They control change itself, but outcome is beyond their control. No one knows with certainty, if it will work out. I expect it to end up with game becoming even more about shooting, making all additional abilities(such as healing, shields, etc.) just strange optional part of hero no one uses anyway.
Were is this way, because I played since beta and each interation made folks angry or made them quit for several reasons.
Torb changes, bastion changes, mercy changes, symmetra changes, hcl/paris, goats, comp, owl, reaper, roadhog, barriers, dps changes, role changes, rq, hacks, smurfing, main hero, main role, one tricks, mei changes, d.va changes, hero releases.
Every single one of these made the game great and worst at same time, so until this day I never saw a state in this game that pleased everybody.
Control what outcomes can be it’s possible, that’s why math, physics, science works when they create a enviroment that makes a restrict set of choices they can prove the same outcome several times if done at same steps. That’s were implemented in almost any game doesn’t matter if it’s rock-paper-scissors, tic-tac-toe, chess,rpg, action, co-op, br, moba, card games or 3d action team based shooter. Because even on chaos we have a set of rulings, just it’s a matter of how many of these are controled or planned. Because anything can be restricted to the point that we reduce the outcome for a plausible and controled value. Be willing to do that it’s a matter of choice, time, money and design philosophy.
Several games in the past restricted the player choices by narrowing their paths, several games made the outcome based in your choices. Overwatch isn’t different from them, just it’s a matter of how many expected outcomes are valid for them. Because at the end of the day, if folks aren’t doing what you planned them to do, it’s your fault, because you created a thing without realistic goals or expected outcomes and even after several years you didn’t figured out the proper way to do it. Maybe they figured but was inviable, either way they will keep trying until get even more unavoidable things become a norm and they need to proper handle them or change the game itself.
As game tester I know a lot of design choices and philosophy. Most of the choices they made improved the game in certain aspects but the root cause was never addressed, because often means a major rework in the entire game. OWL just sped things up, but the outcome was inevitable if they wanted to increase and keep their playerbase at certain thresholds. 5v5 will make the game to become something else and that change more often than not it’s reversible.
UX/UI play an important role that most folks don’t realize. But at end of the day what it’s popular or trending it’s what matters. The mainstream game/tool/object almost never will be the best option, but it’s the most convenient choice because several folks are using it. They’re changing things to appeal to broader audiences and get more revenue and playerbase. Using a “popular success recipes” to achive their profit. Money moves the world and what folks often choose it’s where often money comes.
I won’t claim that Overwatch was perfect, but it had place for everyone back there. Not anymore.
Knowing Blizzard they never go back on their ideas, no matter how much they backfire.
More like you didn’t realise, that players can have other goals, besides winning. Failure of Overwatch was in assuming, that players will do everything for winning.
When you want player to act in certain way, simple threatening them with losing game may not have desired effect. You can even end up with game, where losing is more fun, than winning.
Ultimate goal of player is to have fun. Ideally, winning game shouldn’t clash with having fun, or you get 2 groups of players, based on their choice, that are playing in different ways, despite game being same.
Immediately contradicts their self
Winning or losing never needed to be a factor to “fun”. Making a player play the game properly will make them to have fun. Not one side matches/stomps. My argument isn’t about win or lose, it’s about play properly.
On chess each piece has their own perks and own rulings, you can’t play chess without those rulings, otherwise would be a different game. Same goes for overwatch if you compare RQ, the only difference it’s the degree of influence and control on player’s choices. If you narrow the possibilities you can get more valuable data and results to the point that you have expected outcomes. That’s why Chess AI and several RTS games ended up beating professional players and most often than not are used to both test and check unexpected behavior, but those implementations are costly and often aren’t that benefitial from their cost x utility perspective.
We have an AI system handling the matches, If I remember correctly. So in theory their purpose of fair matches are met. The “noise” on results are broader because they didn’t addressed that, maybe because was costly, maybe the philosophy, maybe the implementation would break several stuff.
Matchmaking system it’s a perfect example of a system that works properly but has too much noise because unfiltered inputs on it. If they filter the inputs the matches will improve a lot, but that’s a design and philosophical choice. That often it’s costly on money and timewise. So the solution often it’s starting from the ground with new things.
The 5v5 choice, just showed that they planned a different game, not just a expansion. Because they would need to work from the ground, still if they don’t address the current issues some of them will impact negatively again in the future.
Playing properly often isn’t fun. Giving sandwiches to everyone in TF2 often is more fun, than “playing game properly”.
More strict you make “proper play”, more players start to have fun in “illegal” ways. Which, in case of Overwatch, includes alt accounts, throwing games, or using heroes in suboptimal manner. Trolling and being toxic to others for the sake of making people angry falls in same category of “unintended” ways to enjoy game.
If everybody plays it. It is, otherwise this game was a failure at even conceptual stage. If the core concept isn’t fun the game isn’t fun. That’s the whole point.
When the game it’s played properly and doesn’t provide fun, means that the game doesn’t appeal certain audience or isn’t fun. So if each member of a team plays in one of “acceptable” ways the game and everybody doesn’t have fun, means the problem with the game, if at least one of them have fun, means that the rest isn’t their “target” with that game.
The conceptual “freedom” aren’t freedom at all, because the game have internal rulings. Having more or less restrict set of rules will determine the number of outcomes and behaviors. If that number of outcomes are managed right the devs can literally do anything in the game as long they respect their own rulings. When they start messing with stuff or never actually addressed the outcomes the problem just gets bigger and start to impact more places.
Honestly this is a consequence due to the total absence of a story mode, which in OW2 would be the PVE. let me explain by taking starcraft 2 as an example: in addition to multiplayer that game offers a story mode that allows you to clearly have to lore enthusiasts or casual gamers with avid competitors. on the contrary, OW mainly offers quick and competitive, and everyone has at least once heard “if you play quick, you’ve never played OW”. but it is also true that not everyone is really suitable for the competition, and they risk ruining the games for those who are really interested. just as the OW judgment system would need a group judgment system rather than an individual judgment, which is why there is the theory that between the OW2 revolutions we will have a WoW-like clan system (which should already be more manageable).
Either way, the point is you’re right: OW throws the inexperienced into a lair of super predictable bots and a quickplay that doesn’t help at all to get to know the game as it should, nor does it limit smurfing.
for example I have always admired Hearthstone, which even though it is a very individual game, has a much more intensive learning: you cannot participate in rank systems until you reach a certain level on all deck classes. this creates perfect learning about what opponents are doing in their strategies, and paradoxically makes it more “annoying” to have to create a new smurf account. on the contrary, OW has been designed with optimism that it is very easy to learn what heroes do right away, but it does not give enough time to have the necessary experience of team play and map knowledge. accessing comps at 25th XP level is simply silly.
there is always a lot of confusion in the term “who is to blame for ruining the game”. frankly I would say that 80% are overly optimistic developers of their game and 20% of players who in addition to the abuse of certain strategies that have become meta, hinder the progression of the game a lot with the speeches on "oh, the first OW days were wonderful ". these pink eyeglasses called nostalgia are just a prerogative due to the inexperience with which we all started. Ow has a strong appeal, but he has to pay for the consequences of his mistakes by reworking himself almost from scratch. I still read many naively saying “erase this hero and restore the open queue”, which basically means going back to other issues. it doesn’t matter if they seem more or less serious, they are always problems that must be solved, not re-proposed. is the exact opposite of growing OW. It’s also one of the reasons why seeing so many cyclical reverts in hero balances got everyone bored.
the developers have the grave fault of not having been clear on what OW2 would have been (in fact a rework of OW1 as well as a pve) but if we have to see what they have proposed from blizzcon 2019 to the blizzconline of February 2021, we can suggest that the he idea of the rework came only later, taking advantage of this “2”. maybe what we really have to ask ourselves is how long they still intend to pretend that this waiting room made up of time exclusives (ow league, temporal skins etc.) is actually a “continue to support OW1” but the sad truth is that OW1 is “OW2 employee”, both in the proposals and in the hype
It wasn’t just nostalgia. Original Mercy and her massive popularity did a TON to help low and mid rank Overwatch not be terrible until she got reworked.
The Dev’s actual biggest mistakes have been taking heroes that existed and people loved and reworking them to be radically different than their initial versions. Then showing no indication that they’ll ever undo those mistakes and in some circumstances outright belittling their player base for not liking the changes. That is a fantastic way to make a lot of people mad at you.
Playing game as it should be played is way too much extra work to do.
We do know how game should be played - coordination, working together, etc. And we also do know, that all of that requires building a team, chain of command, and trusting each other for once - something you can’t create in 1 minute before game begins.
Most players do not want to spend time not playing, but searching for players to play with, organising teamwork and doing other stuff to play game “as it should be played” - they just want to play the game. Creating cohesive team from complete strangers, that often play incompatible heroes(Mercy main, when tanks need Ana main, for example) is something players should NOT be forced through to play game properly.
Having to assemble raid parties is why I chose BDO and not WoW, for instance.
That rework and fallout from it killed any motivation for me to even bother with Overwatch.
I can’t wait for the game to feel fresh again after 5 years of rein/zarya nearly every game.
5v5 is going to be awesome.
I don’t understand what I’m supposed to be excited for.
Less teammates to heal?
Less enemies to play against?
Less teamwork?
Less big plays?
More shooting?
I guess that’s what other people want, so screw me.
I don’t get off on pointing and clicking things; I like the strategy aspect of Overwatch so I don’t get what I’m supposed to be looking forward to.
What 5v5 does is remove 1000+ hp from the total hp pool.
Just think about how much hp Orisa has on her own with shields and Fortify, or Sigma and his shield and his Kinetic Grasp. Or how much effective Dva has with her armor and Defense Matrix. Not to mention that Reinhardt literally has a flat 1500+ hp in his shield.
Tanks have more effective hp as the rest of their non-tank team combined. That’s also why we saw Rein’s shield hp nerfed in the pvp stream: Even without a second tank, they still have too much hp.
That’s also ironically why tanks can be “deleted” so quickly. If you mismanage or mistime your abilities your effective hp drops from over 1000 to barely 400 (or even less if you factor in headshot multiplier). But the damage needs to be there, because otherwise a tank that manages and times their abilities well becomes virtually invincible (= GOATS).
The same logic can be applied to why a support cannot be removed. There are only two healers, so removing one effectively cuts down healing by 50%, and that is not sustainable with a tank’s hp pool.
This is also why dps can be removed. Tanks and supports have historically always contributed to damage output to a significant degree (sometimes more so, like a Zen or fully charged Zarya doing more over-all damage than Sombra or a less-well positioned Genji).
Removing a tank cuts down a team’s total hp pool by roughly 1/3rd. Allowing damage numbers to be redistributed (less insta delete), allowing the game to run faster (more fps-y, less old static Orisa gameplay (she is getting a rework)), etc.
The alternative is not turning dps into tanks, like making Doomfist a tank, but the reverse, making more tanks like Doomfist. The devs chose the middle ground: Remove a tank so tanks can remain tanks