will it die? yes , every game dies eventually
when will it die? no one knows 1 year? 10 years? no one knows
It could limp along with ~10,000 whales buying every last cosmetic they put out so I don’t expect it to ever die because those whales somehow exist.
I am frequently astonished at the things people would rather have than money…
As someone whos been apart of the tf2 community for nearly 14 years and spent many of those early years as a community developer.
Its not that simple…
Ow1 followed in the design philosophy footsteps of tf2… ow2 is attempting to follow the greed footsteps of tf2 that lead to its decline…
Over the years after going free, valve attitude twards the community shifted from one of respect and equality, to one of. “Your dumb so throw money at us because your dumb” theres a lot to this, way more than i can cover here…
Ow2 is attempting to follow that degenerative path… why? Well look at the state of tf2 over the last 6 years… no content, no attempt to fix abusable exploits and bugs… lots of bots and cheaters they do nothing about, but inspite of all of that, the tf2 playerbase continues to blindly throw money at it…
Blizzard is actively trying to chase away the good/smart people, while trying to pander to those who will blindly throw money around…
They are trying to establish that same cash grab cruise control…
Which is never going to work for ow2 for a multitude of reasons… the playerbase will just degenerate eventually reaching a point where everyone is playing deathmatch… but as long as they are blindly throwing money at blizzard thats a good thing
Is OW2 dying? No, but it is need of medical attention, as it’s bleeding players from several self-inflicted wounds.
Is it recoverable? Definitely, as there’s a solid game at its base.
Will it recover? If the current short-sighted management decisions continue, it’s unlikely. Some pretty big changes are need to reestablish and build long term customer loyalty. But it doesn’t look like current upper management has any interest in doing that. They’ll probably continue to slap band aids on the situation to try to maintain short term profits.
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It depends on what Ow 2 is bringing in 2023 and how long it will take them to keep the players interested.
Right now all that Ow 2 has going for it is that the game is an alternative for those that hate or sick of Valorant/Fortnite/Apex/CoD.
But the game is trending downward because so many bad balance decisions, direction of competitive, never addressing the role problem, the matchmaker, and too many issues with the store vs the bare bones content. My
Ow 2 is dead at being the popular new thing. PvE or a radical change has to happen to get it to be the shooter everyone talks about again.
Ow 2 isn’t dead it’s a little bit sleepy making everything slow to change. It needs to do more or the game will be worse than dead.
It will be forgotten
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Depends
First, define death… is it based on loss of concurrent players? Is it based on low viewership numbers on twitch? Is it based on queue times? Is it based on the servers actually closing?
The servers won’t close for a long time even if the game is functionally dead. There will just be fewer of them in the background.
Queue times are already really bad.
Twitch viewership drops when there are no drops, by a lot.
Concurrent players is still high, but this will only keep people interested if the new content is worth it.
As I see it, they have maybe 2-3 more seasons to make enough improvements that players want to stick around. Every season we go with bugs, high shop prices, a below average mediocre battle pass, lack of earnable rewards, bad matchmaking, etc. is one step closer to the end.
This game could be great! It has the roots of OW1, a great set of heroes, fun gameplay. But, they have to get the rest under control or people will bleed off and the game will eventually have only a small player base. The sooner they fix things, the more people they will retain vs have to earn back. The better the long term health of the game will be.
Their slow adaptability here is the most concerning thing because they need to change faster.
im honestly starting to feel like it is as the amount of toxic people has grown insanely high with ow2 like i try to report every single toxic person i can though i dont know if anything is actually being done about it
busting busting busting busting
Let the wait for a game be your guide.
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Not anytime soon if ever.
Understatement of the century. I played overwatch since May 2016 when “some balancing tweaks” was what the game needed at that time, too. Seven years later the game has since become powercreeped and warped beyond recognition. Hence the mass abandonment and lousy reputation.
Simple balance changes can’t fix 5v5 role queue. It’s simply not casual fun, nor does it have any competitive integrity either.
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Kinda depends if
- They solve queue times and matchmaker issues
- I could see OW2 failing if regulators block this Microsoft merger
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Overwatch did die Activision and Bobby killed it, Overwatch 2 is not Overwatch
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No, but will sink. Quickly tbh
This game is not for everyone and its ok. He’ll find his place and just stay there.
If anything, Jeff is the one that killed OW1.
I wasn’t talking about game evolution and companies behaviour.
My point was to tell people still do play TF2, its the community vibe that died. Back in the day, dedicated servers were made to bring people together. You ended by playing with the same players and eventually becoming friends.
Now, to me, its like OW2 : people still do play but barely talk, barely adapt, they just play to have fun and pay very few attention to other players.
Imo Blizz missed all the community part for ever. TF2 allowed people to do their own maps and later, their own balance and the update just went bigger and crazier. OW1 : no dedicated servers, so in Europe, the language barrier makes it hard to meet friends, no map tools, even less balance tools.
OW2 though is going in a good way : bigger updates, more regularly. We’ll see with the S2 patch notes how they listen to the community in terms of balancing. Maybe one day they’d accept whole suggestions like new map themes, new heroes themes/design (iirc Moira is based on a fan art suggestion)…
So it depends how we define “die” for a game. TF2 community is surely dying/dead. But the game is still played, servers are still up and running. OW2 has still some time to thrive or can already take a declining road… Future seasons will show us what option it is.
No that community still exists, its just gone underground and refuses to contribute to the game because of valves greed and tge cancerous playerbase
It’s not dying but people are disappointed, rightfully so.
Idk for anyone else, but I was used to a higher standard from blizzard. I preordered overwatch 1 and haven’t opened it until S2, because I was still enjoying another blizzard game. I’ve been playing blizzard games since broodwar.
To say the least, past several years blizzard has been one disappointment after another, both in game and news articles.
Then all the recent battlepass, locking new heroes, all the bugs, bad reworks, sojourn, etc. felt like blizzard lost it’s last pieces of what they once were and just became … generic.
So yeah I’m disappointed at blizzard because it used to treat me better.
It’s already dead to me. OW1 is gone and what we are left with is not OW, just a sad imitation that has stripped everything I enjoyed out the first.
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Yeah, I started playing Overwatch because I didn’t like the typical PVP games. I tried a lot of them and didn’t like how fast paced and aggressive they were and how they favored mechanical aim over everything else.
Overwatch was a nice casual experience for me. It’s not anymore. Now it’s a sweaty game just like CoD and all the others.
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