They have done a lot wrong.
“Do you guys not have phones?”
They have lost touch with their customers in such a deep way that is rarely seen in the corporate world.
So before anyone says: “They can’t”… I just want to say this is a thread asking how they can. What would they have to say tomorrow, and what content would they have to start releasing to get this ship sailing in the right direction?
MAJOR EDIT: You guys are remarkable. Seriously, the ideas flowing in this thread are actually REALLY good. I hope some blue comes here and reads them.
Apologies my friend, but I don’t think, at the end of the day that they can.
Although I will answer your question.
Blizzard needs to become more transparent in how they operate.
Example: If Blizzard is going to make changes due to Overwatch League, just come out and own it. Don’t hide behind a curtain and make up sad excuses to rationalize why you are doing things.
I think this should be the standard of the practice.
I will repeat though, I don’t think with any change they will be what they once were. It may be past the breaking point at this stage to be honest.
New events (Or new content for our old events instead of releasing nothing aside from skins)
A custom map maker with unlimited amount of players custom games.
A gamemode with something more than 6 players on each team (Like big team battle from Halo)
A new balance team, or hire someone whos a seasoned FPS developer.
Faster hero release cycles
Interacting with the community more.
Make the PTR worth using, like giving a golden lootbox if you’ve played a certain amount of hours on it through games.
Use the PTR for actual testing.
Dev streams, where they drop golden lootboxes for random people in chat at times. Review fan art work, videos, show off what they’re doing…anything, please
slightly expanded events (ex: in the new year event, maybe make an event for 2 teams of 3 instead of two teams of 6, Halloween terror, make an alternative event for the castle interior with the already released Halloween skins for new villains, etc. make it more like a wow raid. Just small new events that could be dynamic ).
stop alienating casual players. Find something else that can be used to shake up OWL’s metas and watchability, maybe a lockout system or something, but casual players bring in majority of lootbox revenue and shouldn’t feel the overwhelming pressure/toxicity of a competitive community they’re not even a part of (which is why I suggested 1. and 2.) stop gutting entire heroes with large fan bases to shake up the OWL meta.
“OWL is already started, so we back focusing the base game again. We plan to fix and balance a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h,i,j,k,l,m,n,o,p,q,r,s,t,u,v,w,x,y,z and we will do revert on some characters that we admit we failed in reworking them, and rework some characters that already too far changed to do a revert.
And here’s our secret project. A game new mode that will change your experience completely with overwatch, not a miniscule story about the sexuality of a character.
And we’ll change our ways communicating with you starting by discussing things with the players in our official forum rather than outside media. We guarantee it will be differently handled than we used to do.
So prepare to get excited!”
Season 9 was the last season that the Simpsons was funny. It lost its soul by grinding through writers who were never in touch with the love of the individual characters.
Instead, they got writers who were looking for an opportunity to grow in the industry, which results in a more sterile environment who dont really know the characters for whom they write.
A similar sterilization occurs in gaming, wherein upon release of an IP which is very strong takes a much bigger effort to maintain when people are replaced with those who are by their nature, not as intimately in love with the product for which they develop.
Not sure about the other Blizz games but for Overwatch they could start by giving us something new each event, preferably PVE modes that hopefully forwards the lore to keep things interesting.
They could release a server of Overwatch Classic, much like they are doing for WoW in summer. Just re-release the original files.
Mass Rez
Hog hook 1.0
Scattuh!
Genji techs
Permanent teleporter
Need more scrap!
Could serve as a fun little excursion for people a bit fatigued with the current patch of the game, and could also provide an opportunity for people to recognize the little improvements that have been added to build up the once-beloved game.
Frequent content updates would also bring me back👍
But for people who need more, it’s mostly trust back. Mobile games and such shouldn’t be the focus, so we need to see a shift in priorities for blizzard as whole.