he probably just greenlit it but this is a good point. How came that OW1 didn’t suck (at least at the start)?
Bobby is not coming up with all the things but is the one whos allowed to make them into reality. How is it when Chris Metzen was in charge there was nothing wrong with OW?
There was plenty wrong. But I’ve pointed this out before, people didn’t realize how good we had it. I used to be a shill around here during the standby years when everyone was whining about loot boxes, whining about the skins, whining about events and I thought it was still pretty great.
Now look what we get.
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And like compared to other live service games, OW1’s Loot Box system was the best. And except for LNY, every event was great.
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No but he is a reason that many of the experienced/lead development team quit and were replaced with new inexperienced devs that constantly make the same mistakes the old dev team made 7 years ago.
He is probably also the primary cause of the seasonal “live service” model that has been forcing the devs to push out buggy patches and make horrible balance changes in an effort to just creates “refreshing metas” each season.
Blizz had mostly succeeded and hit the peak in 2008 when WotLK was released, when Activision Blizzard started. Since then, Starcraft 2(2010), WoW Cataclysm(2010), Diablo 3(2012), and etc… Blizzard was no longer bound to be successful(well, successful sales-wise like Diablo 4) and the decline started imo. There still came some new good games, but we’ve seen many bad, really bad games as well.
It could be a coincidence and we don’t know exactly why and whose fault it is, but what we can see is just so.
I mean, they can’t just 180 the game and completely change everything about it.
The damage has been done already.
They can improve a lot of things, but it’s unlikely that they will change stuff like the monetization now that it’s already been implemented for over a year.
I fully agree. The playerbase was never satisfied no matter how good the game was. They always thought they were entitled to MORE MORE MORE and that is the biggest thing that led us to this sequel.
Valve barely tweaks their games at all and they still have millions of players every day. Sometimes less is more. People can play Counter Strike on 1 map for thousands of hours and have a blast.
Jeff knew what was eventually going to happened if they kept adding stuff. He said he thought they never should have added additional heroes after the first 21. Each time they add a new hero it breaks the balance of the game and ticks off somebody.
The ones whining about skins are just sad people. They gave us dozens of skins for free over the years. Nothing of value would be lost if the ones who only care about skins quit the game and went to play Fortnite with the other 12 year olds.
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I love the skins and voice lines in Overwatch. It’s just a shame industry standard is a bane to modern gaming. If Blizzard cut prices by two-thirds I’d pony up the cash willingly. Keep the battle pass at 10 bucks.
But, given how many of these 26 dollar skins and 44 dollar skin packs I see in every game, I certainly understand why the decision was made. I hate it, but I get it.
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Bobby is that you?
I know you care about your image and are tired of not getting call-backs from dates after they google you.
But this is not the way to change it.
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Ok, but assuming these problems just fell put of midair, instead of looking back to the
- Years of development time on a PVE that didn’t even get finished
- Bunch of the company’s money being dumped into OWL, which was Bobby’s idea (whether ow and that shared a budget or not doesn’t matter, the fact blizz was doing stuff like hiring Dj Another one for millions while he was already on tour, KOTICKS IDEA, is so beyond stupid)
- Making your dev team develop 2 games at once while balancing for the league (which, again, he wanted the league.)
- Revolving door of leaving devs once OW2 neared release.
He’s the ceo. He gets a say in these things, as much as some people think he doesn’t. Half of the sad truth is he is the mouth piece for their shareholders, and the shareholders only want money. The other half is he is also interested in shaking every last cent out of this company, making everything worse in the process, just to get his golden parachute when they finally kick him out.
IDK if things are going to get better. But Bobby sucks, dude.
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Tracy Kennedy (former Overwatch producer) directly accused Kotick of managing the Overwatch routemap. probably everything related to maximized monetization, the insistence on giving an owl 2022 without ow2 existing as a home video game (and the consequences were disastrous even in early access) and even more probably the budget cut intended for the completion of old projects.
it should also be remembered that bobby kotick has 3 details that made him complicit in the ow2 disaster:
- he has been involved too many times in accusations of having fostered the misogynistic environment within the company, including the words of Jenny O’neal who went as far as renouncing the role of co-director of blizzard ent. with Ybarra. this woman (former director of vicarious vision, those who developed d2 resurrected) only had to gain in that role, but she gave it up by directly accusing the entire board of directors of Kotick.
- Kotick has been at the center of union calls to remove him from his role, blaming him for the massive layoffs of 2019 which were followed by flash rehires to deny salary increases (especially in the testing game and customer support sections). he was also always very aggressive in discouraging the formation of unions in his public letters, and to make matters worse, when Activision shares went back up he also denied that there had been any scandals, and that it was not his responsibility. he abdicated all responsibility and denied that there were problems, publicly.
- kotick’s PR was completely unprofessional. Netease accusing him of shady profit management by splitting contracts in China, always aggressive communications on the Microsoft acquisition process (the latter remained calm and calm), budgeting behind the scenes of the agreements with Jim Ryan on the publication of CoD on PS , if the Microsoft agreement had not gone through… he is not exactly a person who has stood out for his gaming management.
but I went off topic. the problem that interests us is that without kotick there is more confidence in getting hired at blizzard. should we really ignore how many professionals have spontaneously left since the development of OW2? numerous producers, concept designers, screenwriters, even those who were directly responsible for the original story. ow2 was left without developers in the year leading up to its release, literally. We are interested in Microsoft supporting it with the trust of the world of gaming professionals. and from the point of view of all blizzard entertainment… stop the compulsive release of activision / blizzard games every year. note this: in the past a maximum of 1 blizzard title was released, today they release like 3 per year (including cod), leaving some projects to be treated as disposable (w3 reforge, d2 resurrected, etc.). all because there was a frightening share pressure on the name of activison blizzard: perhaps it’s time to return to the blizzard that doesn’t forget any franchise and that thinks calmly about who deserves to be released. ow2… unfortunately he was a zombie of this historical principle.
I dont care who is the reason so long as 6v6 comes back soon. This game is a mess with one tank.
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Now being in every single freaking comp game i play……
What i hate most is when DPS are getting owned and u are about to win in comes the bashtion desperation and most of the time it turns the game.
Bobby Kotick ruined my POTG.
Bobby Kotick banned me.
Bobby Kotick stole my cereal toy.
Bobby Kotick flirted with my wife.
Bobby Kotick killed my dog.
Bobby Kotick burned my house.
Bobby Kotick plays Mei.
Bobby Kotick made me impotent.
Bobby Kotick hit me on the shoulder.
Bobby Kotick listens to Justin Bieber.
Bobby Kotick sent me a spam mail.
Bobby Kotick eats pinneapple pizza.
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No, the Monetization of OW is all on him, and that’s by far one of the worst issues of OW2, and other Acti-blizz games.
#WhalesAhoy #NerfShopPrices #OptOutOfBackfill #Return2CP #FixMatchmaker #RememberOW1 #RememberWhatTheyTook #RememberPapaJeff
You guys think one person is behind all the “issues” with Overwatch 2, this is like changing the president… Rest of the government will be the same, won’t really help much. lol.
Don’t hype yourselves up that everything will immediately change and become awesome…
At least you said “maybe”, because you probably have no idea.
How do you know? You’re stating this like it’s FACT. How do you know? Do you know? Or are you just pretending to know?
At least you said “probably” because again, you probably have no idea.
How do you know? Again, you’re stating this like it’s FACT. How do you know? Do you know? Or are you just pretending to know?
Unless you have inside information, you sound just like another person that goes around pretending to know things they have no idea about, making things up, stating what you are making up as if it’s factual information, which is precisely how misinformation always starts off before it spreads.
My guess is that a lot of the problems with OW and OW2 stem from Kotick. But, I don’t know… and I have no problems admitting I don’t know things that I don’t know. And I don’t think that pretending to know somehow makes it true.
But again, my guess, is that the refusal of Blizzard to do anything at all about the rampant smurfing and alt-account usage in comp is due to Kotick insisting on intentionally ignoring any kind of issues that might help pad the player number stats to ensure the player numbers appear higher than they really are.
And that issue alone is, in my opinion, the root cause of the poor match quality issues of OW2. It’s impossible to create balanced matches with everyone is using uncalibrated alt-accounts.
My hope is that the transition to Microsoft might improve on this area, which would make OW2 a lot better of a game, again, imo.
Pineapple does not belong on a pizza.
Bobby Kotik asked me to stop posting pictures of him with devil horns because it hurts his dating life.