Devs should just focus on the main game

They are wasting WAY too many resources and time on modes like hero mastery and stadium which in a year will likely be completely abandoned like countless other side modes

I don’t understand why blizz devs in particular refuse to actually support the main format and continuously waste time making other modes that they abandon shortly after. Hearthstone in particular is going through the EXACT same issue where the devs have spent 2-3 years adding 4-5 new modes whilst ignoring their main format. They have now spent the last 2 years slowly removing all their secondary formats because they are unable to support them all

Sound familiar? Hero gauntlet, hero mastery, clash, flashpoint, stadium. Too much time spent bloating the game, splitting the players and dev time instead of more time on the main game. If it wasnt for modes like stadium we could have even more content for main game.

When was the last time we got a payload or hybrid map, the games most popular mode BY FAR. They’ve now adding this new payload mode for stadium only. Again! More splitting of dev time and players. How are we still only releasing 3 heroes a year when competitors release substantially more?

Devs need to lock in otherwise the game is gonna continue to decline as it has been doing for the last year +

They put out a post saying they are trying to focus their dev time. Yet are continuing to keep releasing new modes and diluting the game. They say one thing yet are doing the other.

12 Likes

They also splitting the playerbase more and more… stadium did not need a QP version. It was a casual mode from the start without a REAL competitive system. Now they made one and will double the queue times for stadium.

But who cares… I am sure they know what they are doing… right?

18 Likes

The issue is that they seem to genuinely not compromise between both.
This is simply their vision for the standard modes.

I don’t believe it’s a lack of resources.

And if you think about it, Stadium can act as an experimental field for the main modes. All the wacky abilities can be tested there, and popular abilities can be transferred between both modes.

I don’t hate the coexistence of Stadium and regular OW.

The queue times are a real issue. They have to merge as many queues as possible.

4 Likes

They said 2 years ago they are going to support hero mastery and slowly add every hero to it

Now look where it is… 75% of the heroes never got theirs and it was a waste of everyones time

They said the literal same thing word for word several months ago for stadium. How many months before stadium starts to slip and suddenly in 2 years time only half the heroes are playable and they cut the plug

These devs are literally the worse at committing to anything lol. I dont trust them to support additional modes after this being like the 4th or 5th time in recent times they have promised something and cut it before its complete essentially scamming players

PVE. Story missions. Hero gauntlet. Hero mastery

All we were promised to get support for and all were abandoned

2 Likes

I’m completely fine with the effort put in on stadium. Why? Because the instant that all heroes are selectable in the mode they could almost instantly revive hero missions, followed by story missions, followed by lore as a whole.

Remember the cancellation of hero missions/pve being “it just wasn’t possible to finish x amount of talents per hero in y timeframe”. Now hero missions talents would literally just be perks + stadium talents and ability changing items but all in a new UI/screen in the missions tab where you select the hero, equip items, perks and powers and head into PvE. Problem solved.

4 Likes

I want new maps for the main game, not meme stadium

3 Likes

Hero mastery is a very lame mode. Most people played it no more that twice.

Stadium has potential, but it needs constant reiterating. I wish it was well cooked before it was launched, because first impressions matter a lot.

Once a mode is labeled as uninteresting, it becomes hard to convince people otherwise, even if it keeps getting improved.

3 Likes

Good catch.
This sounds logical, as long as the intention is there.
I’m not sure that they want to pursue that route at all. I feel like they are distancing themselves from PvE as much as they can.

I think stadium has already become an extremely niche mode and the fact we are already releasing an entire season specifically for it is WAY too much support for a mode that maybe is played by 10% of the playerbase (being generous)

It genuinely feels like instead of blizzard making a good mode that naturally attracts people they are telling people why we should like it.

Sorry but it doesnt work like that. You have to actually earn your players time

The mode still feels like its in extreme early access. Not even beta ready. I would say its current state is not even comparable deadlock and thats in early alpha. That game feels much more fleshed out and complete than stadium does

Stadium feels like it was released in its first iteration with no testing and now we are fully dedicating entire seasons of content that should be put into the main game into it… it’s insanity that so much time is being wasted on something that isnt being put into the main game.

1 Like

I agree with your feeling that Stadium is undercooked.
But i’m really not sure about this part.
The standard mode is kept at the same pace since OW2 release. I don’t notice any lack of resources.

What do you think can be done differently for the standard modes?

3 Likes

Pretty sure Stadium will be different, it has a way bigger playerbase than everything that got deleted already.

1 Like

The game director is what assigns the tasks and the workloads. The devs have no choice where their direction can or cannot go.

Keller signs off on the projects and decides the game’s direction.


I agree there are some major problems here. We don’t need more heroes. They cant balance them in the way it is.

As for other modes. We should of had more focus on the “everyone” aspects of the game instead of now having 2 comp modes.

It keeps those that want to play their dedicated matches in their lanes and those that want to play the game at their pace and convenience in theirs.

Custom matches could probably be done away with just because its mainly Role Playing and a waste of space. But if we got rid of that. Content creators would be angry because then they couldn’t make B-roll footage for their fake “success”.

Hero mastery is something I use a ton of. thats about as PVE is I can get. I got fedup with the bs quickplay nonsense but still want my fix for overwatch.

1 Like

Stadium has their own balance team, so it doesn’t technically effect regular modes (or arcade, or etc) development.

Unlike the past modes, Stadium actually has interest. Draft is gonna make Stadium SO much more tolerable.

1 Like

It’s not as simple as that.
Game development is a lot more complex than “we just do this”.

You should say your goodbyes.

I mean the OP struggled to define what content for the main game is. It seems to me that they only consider the 3 modes remaining from OW1 to be the main game and nothing else.

1 Like

I hate modern gaming so much. They do this nonsense to appeal to the lowest common denominator…

But whatever, they have not focused on the base game since
2016.

1 Like

I guarantee Hero Mastery is going away because people are not playing it. Stadium queues are going strong which shows interest.

1 Like

Stadium is the only thing I play anymore. It’s much more fun.

2 Likes

OW devs never cared about the base game, whether 5v5 or 6v6. That’s what the whole pve fiasco was. They never believed in 5v5, and clearly never played it themselves. Something like Stadium, or pve, or something besides the base game has always been their main goal. They use OW as a platform to launch their (bad) ideas they couldn’t get made into games themselves.

4 Likes
  • Top priority should be more heroes per year, 3 is not enough anymore. The devs themselves have admitted new heroes are by far the biggest content drop in getting people to come back and play, yet they continue to neglect that clear statistic.

Im not asking for 12 heroes like rival’s cus thats OTT but they should be able to output 4-5 a year. I’d rather the game have fewer seasons but make each season actually change the game significantly by introducing a new hero every time. Its not like non-hero seasons arent already just filler and like we dont spend the entire season just waiting for the new hero.

I would much rather they release 4 seasons a year with each of those 4 seasons launching with a new hero, then every mid season they release a new map. 6 seasons with 3 of them being filler as we wait for the next hero is really bad design. It just means the game massively stalls in seasons without a new hero

  • Less modes. Scrap clash. Don’t even try to make it work. It should never have even made it past first concept. If it was up to me flashpoint and push would also stop being supported. No more new maps for them and retire the modes to arcade only. Focus support for the modes people ACTUALLY enjoy. Hyrbid, escort and control.

The Game has way too many modes not only in the standard format but across the entire game. We don’t need 4 different competitive formats + stadium + Qp + QP stadium + Arcade + whatever LTM is going on. There are way too many ‘ways to play overwatch’

When there are 10 ‘ways to play Overwatch’ what even is Overwatch. At that point its not a game anymore, its just a sandbox and loses its identity. Hearthstone went through the EXACT same thing

  • more format changes. I enjoy the idea of these wide sweeping bi/yearly format changes. Season 9. Perks. Etc. My biggest criticism is they are clearly way too scared to lean into it fully and it ends up being half baked. Both attempts to shake the game up they have massively scaled it back and ultimately it made little long lasting difference

They massively walked back the season 9 changes and basically undid the purpose of that major shakeup. Every season they take 1 step forward and then the next they go 2 steps back and undo what they did but make it worse. Why do we keep buffing healing, then buffing the dps passive, then buffing healing then the dps passive.

Perks could’ve been great if they actually had fully engaged with the idea. Instead a lot of the perks were WAY too safe and didn’t change the hero enough. If they had actually leant fully into this upgrade your hero idea, it could’ve been super fun and made every hero have these moments where they have the potential to be super broken. Instead we get stupid perks that give 10 extra ammo or actually are a disadvantage to use and it all falls apart. Like stadium, perks feel like a first iteration and there was no testing.

The game should have these major format changes every year to keep it fresh but the devs are not open enough to make a format system like this actually work. They are too slow to react to feedback and it grinds the game to a halt. Half the perks should have been changed/removed after their first full season being playable.

They had data and player feedback to tell them what was the issue with perks and they ignored it all until this upcoming season. That’s WAY too late in the year to be making simple changes and adjustments to perks. These should be the sorts of things that are looked at on a seasonal basis. If it was up to me most of the perk changes coming would have been done 2 seasons ago, and this mid year update instead of being just a perk balance update would have added an extra 3rd perk tier to the game to shake it up for the next 6 months.

The devs are multiple seasons behind what is expected to be happening in their game. Its took them 2 seasons to add a non-comp stadium when people were asking for that day 1. Again, too slow to react

Just my intial 3 wants