I have absolutely no faith in OW2 being ready any time soon

General Discussion
1

So Overwatch League is starting in 5 months, and Blizzard have said that it’ll be played on an early build of Overwatch 2. It’s likely that the OWL players will be practicing on it for a while before then.

In my opinion having the Overwatch 2 they’ve spoken about ready so soon seems unrealistic at best. There have been several big changes announced that drastically change how the game will be played. The big ones are that tanks are going to be more like brawlers, CC is going to be restricted to tanks and Ana, and obviously 5v5.

However nothing I’ve seen in gameplay reflects the severity of these changes. When I look at recent gameplay I don’t see Overwatch 2. I see 5v5 Overwatch 1 with some minor balance tweaks.

With a tank removed the entire dynamic of the game has changed. There’s a whole player missing, a lot more focus on the remaining tank and the rest of the team has less defence to work with. Yet all we’ve seen from tanks so far is a few cooldowns tweaked, extra charges on abilities and some number changes to health and damage.

The tanks are just the same old heroes. Heroes like Ball and Roadhog haven’t yet been equipped to deal with the full focus of the entire enemy team, and most of the others don’t seem to display this new brawler quality they’re meant to have. So at the very least it looks like they’ve overpromised what is going to happen to tanks, or they’ve got 5 months to make major changes to single tank to fit this new vision.

And they’re still working with highly experimental ideas this late in development, like Doomfist being a tank, which effectively means building him again from the ground up. We’ve heard before that some heroes took upwards of six months to develop, and that was in a static game. I imagine it’ll be a nightmare in a game where literally every single aspect of it is still undecided.

It really seems like the Overwatch team has got their work cut out for them in the next few months and I don’t think they’ll manage it. Major changes to seemingly all of the tanks, still a bunch of damage characters that they don’t know what to do with, making it all work smoothly with dozens of existing and planned abilities, and finally the balancing and fine tuning. And as we’ve seen from the Sombra changes, their idea of balanced can be wildly different from what real players experience.

If delaying again is an option then that’s almost certainly going to happen. But if it’s not, I think we’re going to see this Overwatch 1.5 play out in Overwatch League and it’s just going to dampen everyone’s opinions of the game even more.

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2

Eh. I’m expecting a q3/q4 2022 release personally.

3

Well, they could be further along than shown, but I suspect there will be some devs working through the holidays.

Either that, or OWL goes to OW2 with a limited roster and slowly adds revamped characters as the season progresses. Which should sow some absolute chaos for season 5.

4

im gonna say itll be late 2022 / early 2023. and it wont be available on previous gen consoles (thats why im worried about fh5, and other new titles coming to xbox one/ps4)

5

Well their goal, as stated by Aaron Keller, was to have the 32 currently established heroes ready for the season 5 league (maybe with new heroes if they are ready by then). I cant tell if its achievable, heck i wonder if we will get more news on the changes this month.

Though as for the new hero part it kinda contradicts with what AndyB said on the fact we might not be hearing about new heroes until we are much closer to launch. So either launch is closer than we might think or AndyB is correct and plans might have changed in that regard.

I tried to ask about this in the past but neither answered.

6

Current gen versions coming later might be more likely, since the game’s been in development since before they were released. And there’s no loss in playerbase, since PS5/XBSX can play PS4/XB1 games anyway

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There’s also the fact that the pvp portion of OW2 is essentially a free update/upgrade even if you dont buy the pve portion.

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yeh but my point is with consoles, is that theres MUCH less power on the last gen ones. they came out in 2013-2015 (i think). and considering how much more there is in ow2, it might be a lag fest. like cyberpunk.

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Had forgotten about the commitment to have the full 32 ready for OWL season 5. Hope they are much further along than they’ve shown then. Otherwise, OWL going to be a mess with half the roster designed around 6v6.

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The Devs are way further in their internal builds compared, what we saw. I think they have iterated and tested a lot already and currently working on polishing, bug fixing and recording the reworks for the public. What AndyB already stated is that the Hero rework reveals are part of OW2’s PR.

I’m pretty sure that the next reworks we might see are Cassidy and Moira. Orisa, Sigma and Doomfist reworks are probably getting revealed at February. What we already know is that not all heroes are getting major reworks (look at Brig and Mei as example, which have gotten some smaller changes. Even if the changes are smaller than the big reworks, they changing the way how the hero is played.)

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11

It shouldn’t be that difficult.

Just solve the problem heroes, and the ones that can’t be solved, just nerf them until they aren’t mandatory picks for high ELO.

Which mostly just applies to Widow/Hanzo/Tracer/Doom/Ball.

Everything else that’s underpowered, just fix it later.

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I assume it is. They discussed about some CC changes and such not shown in the pvp livestream/pvp showcases and some new designs have had been unintentionally leaked in behind-the-scenes(Like Moira, Bap and Torb) or have had their concept arts teased in the past (most notably 76).

If some leaks/rumours are true, the new heroes and the pve campaign are quite ready. I think they are keeping them closer to launch for spoilers reason (for the campaign atleast) or because they are very much subject to changes (new heroes)

Though given how sojourn was already shown/revealed, its baffling how relucant they have been to show more of her.

13

I might say, my opinion is astonishingly similar to yours.

14

And nothing is going to change that.

15

This might be a blessing in disguise given recent events.

1 Like
16

They made the extra work for themselves, they made their bed, now they lie in it. Limiting the team to one barrier tank would have been better.

Also under this alternate route, they could have used the additional time to give heroes reworks and dramatic power shifts to make their unique playstyles more enjoyable.

4 Likes
17

Cool?

I’d rather them wait until it’s ready.

Keep in mind… we’re dealing with most companies being short staffed due to covid, not to mention the law suits Blizzard is facing. That is definitely hampering things.

If you’re not cool paying OW1 until then, just find a new game and chill until OW2 drops. Ez

18

Well apparently Overwatch 2 has been delayed, and the message kind of implies it won’t be ready for 2022. So that should be enough time to fix all these issues, if they’re planning to.

I wonder what this means for OWL, though

1 Like