If this were the case, Mercy would still have 2 instant resses in Valk and 60 HPS. I cannot tell you how many Mercy mains thought that was balanced. And some of the rework ideas I see…
Reaper would also be abysmal because he is only good or oppressive in lower ranks.
It isn’t a good idea.
Most of the money you’re probably referring to came from sports organizations. Unfortunately they are not interested in dropping millions of dollars to fund videogame skins.
The resources from the actual devs are minor things, imo (tech to do team skins, the promo skins, some tech stuff for LAN, and spectator stuff (which was requested before OWL anyway).
They sold s1 team franchises for $20 million each, S2 franchise slots went for $50-60 million each.
It never was a good investment abandoning a majority of the fanbase to listen to some 100 players and their tunnelvisioned views of balance.
This fact alone tells me that OWL is a long-term venture for both Blizzard and the team owners. Regardless of the opinions of OW players/fans (and I enjoy the OWL, if we’re being honest), there is an absolute ton of money invested in it. I highly, highly doubt that it’s about to fall by the wayside.
Youtube reportedly is paying $160 million for the exclusive rights to broadcast OWL. This is not a fly-by-night investment.
But the money is coming from sponsors like espn and disney the previous years and youtube exclusivity this year.
They’re making more money from it than they would otherwise.
I’m pretty sure he was the highest paid player. And overwatch league teams aren’t paid by Blizzard. They’ve got their own private owners.
Which was paid by his team, not Blizzard. What some other company pays their employees in no way detracts from what Blizzard can choose to spend on its own game.
This is the best answer on the three major points. Also, though they spend a lot on marketing and events too, I don’t think money is the issue at all.
It’s a conscious decision to try and make players play the game OWL players do. While Blizz tries hard to takeover esports, many of players are being resentful of it. Seems Blizz’s design and exec team aren’t listening to their nerds and gamers trying to advise them. This is what happens when decisions are made on a spreadsheet.
Blizz did the same thing with hots. YOU don’t create an esport, it creates itself.
The problem facing OWL imo is every season is going to get worse than the last. With very little content or balance in the base game you can only do so much with Pro Matches. Hence all the panic changes we have had lately. Massive nerfs and buffs just to “change it up” and keep OWL interesting.
Add to that the quality of players is going to drop. Remember most E sports players come from the best of the best of the ladder. With a dwindling player base, and a decrease in quality matches the amount of good players to be the next Pro is going to decline as well.
It’s like if you had to draft a Pro Football team from one high school. No matter how popular OWL gets to be. It’s turning mostly into a spectator sport for people who don’t even play the game.
It was a fantastic scam by Blizzard. It was a terrible investment by any team. Blizzard made out like bandits before it comes burning to the ground.
40 million accounts! You’ll surely make all your money back in no time.
This is such a garbage take. Blizzard doesn’t pay the individual players in the league, they’re payed by their team’s orgs. Sinatraa for example was being payed by NRG, who own the Shock. The parts of the league that are payed for by Blizzard are things like marketing and personnel.
Also, Blizzard has done nothing but make money from the league. In the first season there were 12 teams, each with a $20 million buy-in. That means in 2018 alone Blizzard made $240 million before the league even started. Not to mention that 8 teams have been added since and reportedly those newer spots cost MORE than the originals. Please do some research before making comments like this.
I think having an Owl can be a great investment if you know what you’re doing, they’re cute animals
They need to balance the game properly instead they dumped all eggs into the sequel game determined to neglect this one and it’s, seemingly, endless flaws. That is how they will save Owl. By balancing the game properly. That alone is how to save the League.
ESports are good for video games and video game companies. It’s a form of marketing as well as a possible revenue stream. Running a successfule esports team is about securing endorsements and payments from the sponsoring developer - just like any sports team.
When OW launched their dev team consisted of 44 employees, many of whom would consider working for Blizzard to be one of the most prestigious jobs in the industry. I’ll tell you I’ve seen dev teams half that size and with nowhere near the credentials do a lot better, more frequent balance patches and better, more frequent content updates. Hell, TF2 did about as well as Blizzard, and their dev team was two guys and a houseplant. And certainly Activision Blizzard has the capacity to throw a lot more money at their games’ development studios, if they had proven to be lacking in resources.
I’m not endorsing OWL or anything, I’m just saying that there’s like a 100% chance that most of Overwatch’s sloppy/slow development problems are the result of poor upper management and corporate meddling, which would have happened with or without OWL. Sure, there are a few situations where prioritizing OWL might come at the expense of the casual player base… but for the most part, let’s be real… OWL would also have been much more attractive to viewers if the game had better balancing and faster hero/map releases, but even those things never materialized. To me that says the guy giving the orders is a money guy, not a development guy.
Okay, I have 2 main points:
a) Blizzard doesn’t pay the teams, staff, players, etc, they are just the production team. The sponsors for the league pay the teams. So therefore Blizzard isn’t putting a lot of money into it, but they are getting a lot out.
b) The balance team would STILL be focused on OW2 instead of the game if we got rid of OWL. There would also be less patches, as the balance team wouldn’t know if picks were being made to win, or to have fun.
that wasnt the reason why we didnt get enough content it was because they didnt commit to competitive balancing or casual balancing. Owl didnt take developing out of the game. Production and franchising is way different than game developing. Its just that the things that owl effected wasnt pushed fully and ow2 was mainly where all this content was coming from
for most of owls history the pro players had no impact on balancing. Thats why goats, moth meta, and double sheild lasted for so long. Lastly owl made more money for the actual game than not having it would. Also if pros balanced the game it would feel so much better.
Yeah i dont understand why you need to balance for casuals. First off it means that investing or playing the game competitively is meaningless. Second off casuals dont even care about balancing because it doesnt really affect them. Lastly we balanced for casuals and we got double sheild and goats. Maybe we let pros balance for one patch and see how the game does afterwards