The quick development of Stadium shows that they actually are capable of doing a progression system that would suffice. The Stadium maps show how they could reuse art assets for missions. The comics show that they can do short stories and cutscenes. We also have the 3 released missions that have different enemy types. These also demonstrate how unique events could happen.
So “just” use
Stadium progession but slower
Stadium map workflow
Existing enemies
Current and future story (exact integration is unclear to be honest)
And you have your first PvE with progression almost as advertised?
I’m afraid the time of the Blizzard that loved to tell a story are long over. We’re dealing with a group of certain people that hunt for as much profits as possible.
Even if it would make money in the long run, it doesn’t get them money right now. Thus it’s not as profitable as selling tons of skins.
That growing buffer either goes into even more skins for spontaneours profits or into the pockets of certain figures.
It’s not fair to immediately assume that Blizzard is involved in shady business, but we should remind ourselves that Bobby Kotick, whose business philosophy was to milk games for their profits, and who was listed in Epstein’s Black Book, has seriously changed Blizzard, including the personnel. Who might as well carry on with his philosophy.
While he made out with lots and lots of money he extracted from games.
I wouldn’t be surprised if those who truly cared about the game have jumped the ship because of his shady practices, while those who tolerated, or worse, even supported him are now in control.
As it stands, they’ve thrown lore under the bus, clamped down on the production of cinematics and replaced them with shorter animation and comics. AND they laid of writers. Since recovering all that would cost money, I doubt they’ll do it.
Probably as advertising.
Event modes or Story-Comics don’t make any money either, but they get people invested in the game and lore.
PvE could easily do the same thing. Maybe even better, as giving players the thing they feel like was taken from them could be a huge boost to reputation.
I can’t help but feel like this is dramatically underestimating the amount of work it would take to get PvE up and running. Just for starters, Stadium being PvP means that the devs don’t have to worry about A.I., and replayability is much less of an issue than it is in PvE games.
No. The people who wanted PVE are long gone or do not care anymore. I’m in the camp of do not care anymore. I no longer care who or what these characters are. They are just things. I didn’t buy those PVE missions. Because that was money being ripped off. And they lied about the PVE stuff.
I’m pretty sure their aim was to make a full-fledged PvE coop experience. Something people want to play not only because of the story, but because it’s an engaging and fun experience on its own. I think you need much more than what you listed to achieve that and I also think the old devs have tried very hard to make it work (twice), so when they said it didn’t, I believe them.
The “quick” development? We have acknowledgement that Blizzard started working on early renditions of Stadium since 2023. That’s not quick, lol. Blizzard has also confirmed they are solo-focused on PVP.
I have a suspicion it’s more of a “we can’t get it to be fun” issue than an assets issue. Like the one “hero mission” we did get, it was decent, but it clearly wasn’t something that could be replayable for years on like they intended unless they pumped out like over 100 of them which just wasn’t happening given the scope of it. Plus then balancing the missions when every hero in the game is selectable and each has their own skill tree that they can be at different levels of progress in, it’d be difficult.
I think where they are now they could just throw some of the existing enemies on to random maps and add in some stadium powers and it’d be fun for a while, like CoD zombies or whatever, but they’re still nowhere near the original vision
It wouldn’t be the perfect thing we always imagined, that’s for sure. I propose this first step because they’re more willing to do incremental improvements. The final perfect version of Overwatch PvE is an infinite project and therefore can’t really be delivered.
To me this shows that even with specific dialogue and animations every few seconds the players don’t care much. What is “full-fledged” then? What is missing? Idk.
It’s possible that Overwatch heroes aren’t actually a lot of fun to play unless the difficulty of the enemies is perfect.
My proposal could lead to something like a bad version of Borderlands in which you can’t pick up weapons.
wowow buddy, big mistake there, they started working on stadium before ow2 launch in 2022 becuase they knew pve was cancelled since 2021, in 3 years they relased a half backed mode, incomplete, not even half the characters ready, with smaller maps that are quick to develop because they recycle assets from other maps and only could advance on it because they were working on the pve powers
in 2 years we only got one comic that confirms the story is cancelled, years teasing null sector second omnic crisis and is over, the war ended offscreen and ramatta just gave up
no hell no, no more stadium crap, they could use the MAIN MODE pvp maps because almost all of them are relevant to the lore, the next pve mission was going to happen in suravasa basically, and something on the artic
they cant and dont want to make pve, they dont even want to bring back archives because is “no worth”, the story is death, pve is done, the super engine reworked to run pve was a lie and they destroyed the story with so many retcons, did anybody cares for this characters anymore? all of you only care for skins, nobody talks in the story forum, is so death, thanks for nothing developers
I assumed its more about costing Blizzard money to make the cutscenes, creating new maps and npc animations. While yes, its easier to make more money on skins, its less moneymaking on PVE. They made sure you wouldn’t like it by removing its content.