This. People forget what Blizzard promised vs what was delivered. What they showed off back in the day is very different to what they were able to actually give us in those 3 Story Missions.
That’s like promising a pizza with all the fixings… and then arriving with a lukewarm pizza… with everything scraped off but the sauce at best. THAT is why it failed, not because no one wanted it to begin with.
That is what OW2 was supposed to be.
OW2 would be story and PVE in a separate game.
OW1 would continue to be PVP, but also get all the new heroes in OW2.
Unfortunately, a lot of people didn’t like Jeff’s old school Blizz mentality of “dev and iterate until you have something amazing” or thought it was unsustainable.
Honestly, I found it ironic that people criticized Jeff for trying to build something a reasonably sized team could sustain by saying development was unsustainable.
Obviously there’s a point where that can be true. But, Blizz has huge coffers, so I doubt they were at that point.
Same. Junkensteins lab was probably the first time I felt genuine joy when playing OW2.
It gave me hope and it solidified my belief that the PvE skill trees could work.
Now I’m hoping for the other features and modes that never made it into the game.
There were tons of good ideas for OW2, but it was clear that so much was sent out way too early. So much felt like it was sent out to die.
There is a rumor that exactly that is going to happen: a purley PvE-Game set in the Overwatch-Universe.
I’m one of those people that got crushed by the PVE being cancelled. I’ve been playing overwatch since 2018, and barely played PVP modes. I’ve spent most of my time in customs where i’ve made my own PVE madness mods for fun with friends. I just do not like Overwatch PVP, but I adore the gameplay of each heroes.
I do believe that the team can still please the PVE fans like me, and they do not need to do crazy things, or invest crazy amount of people/money to do something fun. They already have a very basic VS AI mode that can be explored with basic ideas.
I personnaly do not want big customized missions with story lines, cinematics etc, because they already failed with the previous ones, and execs won’t let them invest much into developping something similar. But i would love them to try something simple, just give us VS AI matches with bots doing crazy things. Equip the bots with stadium passives/abilities, buff them slightly, add random events (not crazy coding, just simple ideas) that modify their ult charge/cds, stuff like that.
Just that would be a nice, it wouldn’t not take away too many people from he PVP pool, would not require (i think) too much effort, and would give people like me incentive to play the game since the PVP is really not my cup of tea.
The idea is to not invest too much to try having just a little PVE mode without impacting the PVP development too much cause i understand its the main focus.
Considering they just made bots for Stadium that pick powers and items…it shows they have workflows that could make it actually happen.
arm chair game dev advice of the week
JUTS DO IT OK 
Cancelling the PvE was criminal. The Bs statement AK put out about it not being good was a bold faced lie.
I won’t be surprised if their “big news” happens to be a resurgence of PvE content. I don’t think they can afford to release free PvE content though.
They actually hired again a Developer who was previously working on the PvE
Anything can happen
Its just the pace of F2P games and releasing content when its needed
And you can actually do so much in Overwatch, that even Jeff’s MMO dream is still standing xD
If i remember correctly, when Kaplan leaved the team, there was talks that Keller isn’t interested in PvE, so that’s probably the answer. He, and probably many other lead devs simply aren’t interested in it.
Invasion and Wrath of the Bride were leftovers from previous development, and Cosmic Crisis and Trials of Sanctuary probably was made by small team on their own initiative, because they wanted it. (and to promote new skins)
We also have the 3 released missions
We have more, actually. 3 Archives misisons that simply needs to be updated (i’m not buying their bs on hard work it will take, you have the tools, that’s what you’ve spent 3+ years on), Junkerstein’s Revenge (which they did updated, interesting), Wrath of the Bride, Cosmic Crisis (remove imposter), Underworld, 3 Invasion missions. (Trials and Hero Gauntlet would require rework, still could be added in some form).
That’s already 10(12) missions, add All Heroes mode, weekly rotation with different modifiers (which you already have and used before) and add a free lootbox upon their weekly completion (like in Starcraft II Co-op).
Stadium isn’t necessary, and imho, won’t work with those missions, only if you’ll be able to fully assemble your build before the mission, and cash / powers you have depends on the difficulty (to stimulate you playing on higher difficulties).
Oh, you must be able to complete daily / weekly challenges in them as well, probably with slower progression and required victory.
TL;DR: Yep, they can make PvE at any time, they just don’t want it (also they 100% would wanted it to be competetive)
If that’s the plan, that would be awesome.
The idea of trying to add pve like how it was originally intended into this game sounds like a bad move to make. They already have a very challenging time with all the systems happening in current OW.
then delete stadium and focus on pve
It was the plan and I agree that it was awesome
I mean it wasn’t how it was originally intended. Killing OW1 and merging everything into one game was a pivot a lot of people didn’t want. OW team ended up losing a lot of talent due to that and a bunch of other problems.
Ay holup. Don’t be rash.
Stadium is my go-to mode now.
Junkenstein >= Stadium >= non RQ OW classic > 6v6 open queue and old anniversary events (the story ones)
Honestly, I miss the old anniversary events from OW1 and the story-ish events from early OW2. Mix that with Junkensteins lab, stadium, and all the feature we never got and I’d [redacted] until [redacted] [redacted] penguins [extra redacted] right in front of the dwarf zebras at the petting zoo.
Thanks for your input, but I’m talking about in the current state we’re in right now. If they were to use this current game to go in on PVE, I don’t think it’s a sustainable move to make. This is why I’ve stated another game entirely seems like the better choice to make.
The plan they did have, likely would not be a good choice now to use in this pvp-centric game based off the history of what’s happened with the IP.
I know they’re turning some things around, but having a desire for something and being able to properly fulfill it are something I don’t think a lot of players are considering. They just want what they want, without any real thought about the potential consequences. Which would likely water the game down more on both ends.
Ah, that was not clear.
You said “originally intended”, so that did not come across as “current state”.
This is where I’m having a disconnect.
While the current OW2 is what we ended up with, the actual original intention was to have it as a separate game, which seems to be what you want. But you then say “the plan they did have” wouldn’t work. So I’m not sure 100% sure where you’re going with that part of your reply. Is there confirmation of a plan to add proper PvE into current OW2?
It’s hard to tell if we’re talking about the same plan or if there’s some back-and-forward about different plans. In the latter case, it would help me if you were more explicit about which plan you’re talking about.
Because we seem to be in agreement in terms of wanting PvE as a separate game, but the text construction comes across as disagreeing with what Blizzards previous plans for the game were.
This is indeed true for many.
Imo that’s not set in stone and just comes down to execution.
Plenty of active games have both PVE and PVP, so it’s not like it’s some legendarily impossible task.
That said it’d definitely take a lot of time and effort, so it’s more a question of if Blizzard thinks it’s worth the investment.
Honestly, the main reason I’d prefer PvE as a separate game is to avoid unnecessary confusion from players concerning things like play rate and engagement.
I was never really excited for the progression system originally planned for the PvE. Seemed like it would mess up muscle memory for the core game, Main reason I don’t play Stadium
I just want more archive missions released periodically, could be on the same schedule with new heroes that could highlight them. Much easier to implement. Make it a part of the battle pass if that makes more money
in hindsight is easy to tell pve was a bad idea, which never was, developers failed, everyone was excited for it, i would want the whole package they promised, but if they are so incompetent to do it or plain dont want, archives missions for free with some powers to chose from was the perfect way to move the story, instead of wasting resources on stadium we could get a lot of pve missions “duh but is not sutainable, the game sells millions on skins but somehow there is not enough money to make this” yet some games come with pvp, pve and co-op
Understood. I’ll try to be clearer.
Their original plan didn’t work and we’re so focused on PVP, with added channels of gameplay modes, it’s become segmented. We’ve got 3 core modes that are meaningful for the competitive community. 5v5 O & RQ - 6v6 RQ - Stadium. Stadium is essentially stand alone, but this does affect the players base. It not only splits us, but just because they have a different team doesn’t mean there isn’t an allocated resource for it. Then you add in various blocks of management for balance in all comp formats. Trying to place PVE into this game on top of that IMO is not sustainable at this cycle of OW2 life. Why add pressure just because we want PVE?
A stand alone product for that provides freedom to explore evolution. This connects to player sentiment as well. You get less players directly trying to compare the two. You also have less potential systems being messed with because of coding disrupting another element within the game.
I’ve had my share of PVE and PVP integrated games. Destiny is one of my most played IPs with both those elements in place. Its design supported both from the ground up. It still made the experience rougher than it needed to be because of that. Granted, that’s Bungie.
This is all speculation, but I stand by not supporting PVE being integrated into this game. I think it would create more problems than its worth adapting to please us. Furthermore, they probably realize much of this sentiment can be tied to “you promised us this, now deliver.”
Players aren’t going to forget or let it go. That’s consumers for you. Emotions rule in decision making. It doesn’t have to be logical. It needs to satiate. That’s more about initial impact than sustainability. We have to remember, these people study us. They understand what is going to work best for them. Even more so when they build after breaking down because of poor decisions.
Ok I see where you’re coming from, though I’d say their original plan “didn’t happen” instead of “didn’t work”.
And while I agree with the majority of what you’re saying, I would argue that all of that still can happen even if it’s a separate game.
If they release pve as a different game, and I play that for an hour instead of OW2 the ow2 player pool is still down as I’ve chosen to play something else. That would happen if I play or do anything that isn’t OW2.
And as someone in corpo, team budgets/resources change all the time, so there’s never a guarantee that anything related to OW (pvp, pve, or hybrid) would have the resources we’d want it to have. A team can be knocking it out of the park and have their budget cut due to plans and priorities changing.
No worries, I get where you’re coming from and I respect the opinion. I just think it comes down to execution.
And I think it’s very possible to become so fearful of letting people down that a person/team/company never take the chance to try making things better.
It’s all about calculated risk imo. If Blizz doesn’t think they can do it, then I can understand it not being worth the risk right now. But I would hope that they’re building themselves up so that they can afford to take risks and try more.