Is overwatch going to die?

General Discussion
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Is Overwatch Going to Die?

This is a serious debate I’m trying to have. I play on Xbox, I’m currently ranked top 500 on support. I was a gold border, 4 stars in overwatch one. It’s my favorite game of all time. I love the franchise, and even more so I love the characters. It seems like overwatch is more dead now then it was was before.

All the people I used to play overwatch with up and quit once the second came out. They all said it sucks and the first was better(tbh I think they just aren’t very good at it). Everywhere I look though it’s all negative opinions on the game. Even me who has been playing almost non stop since 2018 I think this is the lowest hours I put into a season ever since then.

I was even on the Xbox store and there was a free gundam game, every review was saying how much better this is then overwatch 2. Overwatch has barely over a 1 star out of 5 on Xbox and less then 3/10 on majority of review websites. A ton of streamers have already stopped playing

I still love the franchise a ton. I’m having fun in overwatch 2, I just think it needs some balancing tweaks, but is this game on its last thread? Are we already past the point that this game will ever get a real sequel

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Well I don’t think it will die any time soon, there are too many players playing as long as people keep playing and enjoying it will never die

Look at even older gamesfor example Runescape is a 21 year old game 79k players on the old school version, TF2 15 year old game currency has 86k players

I wouldn’t worry too much, a lot of people love this game, just because it doesn’t have Roblox/Fortnite/Minecraft numbers doesn’t mean it’s going to die

I’ve played DCUO that have 2000ish players online and honestly it was great, but queuing for the lower level things can take forever unless you ask someone nicely in the chat to queue or have a friend to do the duos with.

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Well yeah, OW would die someday. And I think there won’t be OW3 if OW2 fails.

The question is when. We might also need to define “dead”. Starcraft 2 ie has still tournaments but the game doesn’t receive real updates anymore.
Same goes for Team Fortress 2 : still top 10 games played on Steam but no significant update beside Halloween.

So about updates, I think we can expect something like 1 year at least, unless there’s a massive crash (an other game coming out or just a total disaster communication/gamedeisgn wise).

About players, its harder to know. I guess people are getting hyped by season 2. Hype can be expected for PvE and season 3, maybe 4. The season 5 and beyond are more uncertain.

Seeing whats going on with Heart of the Storm and Starcraft 2, you can expect servers to be up for a longer time though.

Right now, the game is in a weird spot where OW1 veterans are spiting all their anger for no real reason beside “its different but not what like we wanted” ; and newcomers are just learning the game. I think with time, angry veterans would leave and become minority ; OW2 will have its own community and then, we’ll see how it will go.

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For as many the number of people who defend some of the changes, there are many more who despise the changes.

I hate the 5v5, to me it takes away the strategy, the team work. No one plays it like a team game anymore, it’s just ‘pocket, shoot, brawl, win/lose’. Because of one less tank, flankers get free real estate on the backline. DPS got an insanely OP hero that has not been tweaked yet to better balance them. Tanks are all brawlers. This game might as well be DPSwatch because that’s what the game wants to be; all action, all running and gunning.

I liked Overwatch because it was different, it was a breath of fresh air. Where everyone else was contending to be the next CoD or Halo game, Overwatch was something unexpected, something we hadn’t had since TF2 came out. Then someone thought it’d be great to basically make it a CoD but with roles.

Moving on from that, the most egregious atrocity to grace our sights is the horrendous monetization. It’s so greedy and scummy to take something that was once free and lock it behind not just a paywall, but a greedy paywall. $7 for a gun buddy? $20 for a crappy skin? Really? And the Battle Pass, the thing that’s been done to death has reared its ugly head into yet another game trying to scoop out every last penny from your bank account.

I hated it when Halo Infinite was announced to having it and I hate it now. It would be fine if it wasn’t trying so hard to be like Destiny’s BP system. Where sure, a few things are free, mostly crap you don’t want, but the stuff you do want you have to pay $10 for. (Don’t get me wrong, I understand at the end of the day it’s a business and they have to make money. But game developers made their quota and then some before this BP and free to play system, this has just made them realize they can abuse so many tactics to hopefully fill their pockets faster before their game hits the ground and explodes.)

Next we have the cosmetics, none of them have caught my eye. No one cares about voice lines, they’re just something to annoy people by being spammed. Sprays I don’t think most care about either. And what about these weird holographic trophy things? I certainly don’t care about them. Most I ever cared about were skins and emotes.

TL;DR Everything about Overwatch 2 feels like a massive downgrade, a slap in the face of loyal players who’ve been here since 2016. All so they can fill their pockets or give someone the middle finger at the expense of their own image.

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Are there chances to save this from being just another F2P cashgrab that exists in the world?

Yes.

We keep going the way we’re going it’s not going to be anywhere near the “main” game for FPS players it used to be.

There’s also a possibility that the PVE part will be revolutionary and endlessly entertaining and “save” the game or at least the franchise… but since they keep doubling down on making parts of the game inaccessible and prohibitively expensive my hope is being slowly bled to death.

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It really depends on what you mean by die. And what others mean. Because moving to F2P means the way we judge the life of OW2 is different than how we judge OW1.

I think alot of people believe so long as a game has active players and is playable then it’s not dead. Which is why so many people would refuse to say OW1 was dead.

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tf2 , 95% of it’s players are bots farming items.

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I’ve been on this forum for about 2 month I think. This is like the Twentieth post about the game dying…

I’m an ex Eve Online player , a game that came out in 2003 and still going strong.

What does it have to do with OW2 ? People have been posting on Eve forum that Eve Online was dying since 2003. Fast forward to soon 2023 and guess what Eve has not died.

OW2 has flaw but its far from dying…

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It’s not that. Every game has people that say the game itself is dying. I’m fine with people saying that. It’s worse than people saying the game is “dying” they are saying the game sucks. Everywhere I look and talk to people everything is all negative about the game. It seems like nobody actually likes it

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The first was better because OW2 is not a proper sequel. It’s over-glorified content patch. It’s not enough of a new game. I feel like I’m playing a game I already played. When you first start playing OW1 you’ve got all the exciting new characters with their ults and new gameplay to learn. Sure the 5v5 changes the dyanamics a bit, but it’s still mostly the same damn game. And I don’t remember people in OW1 being this insanely toxic when I played.

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Lot of good thing with the game. But it has flaw. Matchmaking does get on my nerve more than unbalanced hero.

But even with the issues OW2 still a good game.

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Weird, if that was the case then all of my TF2 matches would be mostly bots

Also like how every time I bring up TF2 at least one person has to claim this “90%+” statistic which is far from the truth

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One day maybe, but it’s been “dead” or “dying” for 6 years and counting.

Unlike Lawbreakers though, you can actually still play this “dead” or “dying” game and engage with a very active community outside of the “dead” or “dying” game.

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The answer entirely depends on how you define “dying,” in the gaming sense.

Shut down servers? Unlikely anytime soon

Major player population loss, dwindling/non-existent hype, scaling back of devs resources & updates, and generally being pushed into maintenance mode? I think if they don’t course correct, yes, we’ll see it “die” in that way far sooner than it should. The hype issue is already well underway, and while we don’t have any reliable player stats, many folk’s anecdotal experiences seem to point toward faster-than-healthy population loss already happening as well.

I expect that Blizzard will attempt to resuscitate the title before abandoning it, so I wouldn’t be surprised if a PvP revival update (big overhauls to things like 5v5, roles, game modes, etc—essentially something on par with “OW2” release) accompanies the PvE release, similar to how the Destiny franchise saved its titles with The Taken King & Forsaken. If that doesn’t happen, or if PvE under-delivers, I do think Overwatch’s future is very, very bleak

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No, I don’t think so.

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If they don’t start doing MUCH MUCH faster balance adjustments, yes it will end up dead.

Sojourn should have had some nerfs by now but Blizzard is just dragging their feet. This is what will be the death of this game.

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You just answered you own question.

Overwatch is not popular with veteran “non fps players” who got into the game thinking it was their ticket to being good at an FPS without ever having to learn how to play an FPS.

They could be a tank that stands in one spot holding up a shield or a mercy one trick hiding in a corner doing nothing but healing or a junkrat chucking nades over a wall and win a participation trophy for doing something kind of like little league baseball where everyone wins a prize.

You’d get little player cards saying “yay Timmy you sure healed a lot that game!” and then gain some levels and earn a skin here and there. The game would say “you’re on fire!” when your team hit all of its ults at once to cap. Then you’d get POTG when you chucked a lucky DVA bomb into the crowd.

They forced people to git gud just a little bit and stopped rewarding people for doing nothing giving fake validation.

That is what the negativity is about.

Competitive grinders and newer players like the game.

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nice so we would aim-assist you if you played in our bronze5 lobbies.

ofc it’s going to die when they force this kind of diversity and inclusion.

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Player populations and current general sentiment hard disagrees with you. comp grinders and new players already have dozens of games that do what OW2 is trying to do but far far better and they will only stick around for as long as it takes for the next LCD shooter game to come out. Then you would have lost the people that cared about the game as well as the the ones you claim deserve to play it. Have fun with your queue times though, you deserve them.

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I’ve launched TF2 like some weeks ago, its not true. Yet nobody plays to win, no more teamplays and a lot of leavers. Since dedicated servers and communities have disappeared, the game is very close to OW2 QP today’s experience.