Is the Dev-Player relationship permanently damaged?

General Discussion
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What I mean is…

If Overwatch 2 releases, and it’s great and amazing etc, will the playerbase still view devs the same way?

Note: I’m talking about the Overwatch team devs; this topic has nothing to do with the scandals/abuse/lawsuits surrounding other departments at Blizz, which OW has no connection to aside from naming McCree after an old WoW/Diablo employee

Will they view Aaron the director the same way? Who has essentially said “hi Im the new guy in charge and there’s crossplay coming”, then commented over a prerecorded OW2 match with heroes and bounced, never to be heard from again since then (by us)

Will we still feel betrayed for having been strung out and left in the dark for years and years, like we’ve had absentee parents for so long and playing on maintenance mode abandonware

It’s like, imagine you have a parent who promised you an amazing camping trip, just you and them, but they left and you never heard from them again except the occasional ups package they send a small gift card or other present in randomly.

And they promised they’ll return one day and bring you on that camping trip. But you’re left alone. Soon you stop hearing from them alltogether, and all you get is the occasional gift card in the mail that you use to get food with, or maybe use it for a month of netflix or something

If that parent finally returned one day, years later and brought you on the camping trip…would your relationship magically be mended? Would everything be A-ok from then on?

I think this answer would be different for everyone. That’s why I’m starting a discussion

I know sequels need development time. I know they’re trying with communication by getting two community managers in here.

But it just sucks when other games have roadmaps, have target release years, have the actual devs talking to us/making videos, and players don’t have to rely on NDA leaks and streamer discord leaks in order to gleam some hint of info that keeps our hope from dying out

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people are expecting too much to be satisfied with w/e product comes out of all this development time…the game is already at a point where it cant live up to expecations

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Im gonna be honest. Even if OW2 will be the greatest success of all eternity, i would still hate how the devs and Acti-Blizz overall treats their playerbase.

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The devs of Blizzard are all awful so yes.

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the ppl at blizz are literal abusers. so yes perma damaged. and that isnt even talking about how they have treated their playerbase and their games
also remember h0ngk0ng a few years ago? yea :clown_face: :clown_face: :clown_face:
definetly not a symbol of freedom

and inclusion

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I should’ve specified, I’m talking about Overwatch team devs, who have literally no connection, implications, or part in the ongoing lawsuits or abuse scandals, except that McCree was named after a WoW/Diablo dev from the past

It’s grossly unfair to umbrella lump OW team with the WoW team and have them inherit all the allegations and stuff

The OW team themselves, low level members, were the one who pushed to change McCree to Cassidy because they didn’t want to be connected with that BS anymore

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So? The answer is not to give the devs very low expectations as that is actually incredibly insulting and patronizing to a team that prides themselves on talent and high polish.

If it’s good, the loyal playerbase’s perception will be based on their actions in maintaining the game. It would not make them head-over-heels for the devs, but perhaps reset sediments to a neutral place that’s receptive and not closed off – a second chance if you will.

Personally, I believe that the PvP is going to be a hot mess for OWL in the early build. The devs will get slapped in the face with over-nerfing peel especially with one tank missing. With the nerfed healing, weaker damage mitigation and more brawler tanks, we are just going to see mindless zerg rush strats that would never work if a critical peel threshold was met.

I don’t see an out to Winston, Mei, Lucio, Zen, + flex dps in the current OW2 Meta. Winston and Mei can use their barriers to rush to point and melt anyone there in literally 2-4 seconds (150 dps in total alone with piercing beams) .

You can poke at them, and eventually win the teamfight, however Overwatch is objective based. Pharah + Ashe may be able to wipe the team after 20 seconds, but they will move the objective every 20 seconds per team wipe. Nobody can contest them in close quarters. Also the Zen + Lucio combo prevents ult spam as a win condition. Mei’s ult is very powerful on objectives.

And that situation just applies to Push and escort. On KOTH, they will auto win. If the game had higher peel or a second tank, this zerg rush strat would suck as the two tanks can mitigate their damage for long enough and kill them. A single tank will be overwhelmed, and squishies would have to avoid cleaving beams so they don’t get melted.

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my point was that no amount of “great and amazing” is going to be enough to repair the relationship…people are going to require “more” regardless…so the state of things after it releases is still going to be “youre not doing enough”

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Which are mostly… former WoW devs you mean? So they had most likely part in it too.

Also I wasn’t talking about that, but instead that even those OW devs don’t listen to the community at all. Just like the WoW devs. Same people.

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OW. WOW, OWL. hearthstone.
it doesn tmatter which one you pick, its all of blizzard that is corrupt and immoral
there is for sure good ppl in there but unfortunatly the enviroment is too toxic overall :woman_shrugging:

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I don’t think it’s completely irreparable, but OW’s management has been repeating the same mistakes instead of just listening and trying to do better. The latest patch was an avoidable disaster and there is a mountain of broken promises that they still refuse to address. Unfortunately it seems like they have no intention of acknowledging the community’s concerns, so if it keeps up then I wouldn’t be surprised if the game never recovered as a result of their treatment of the playerbase. The fact that they’re even starting to throw OWL players under the bus is quite telling.

I believe the trust of the community can be regained, but it would require immediate changes and a lot of commitment to doing better. Which at this point might be too much to ask for.

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The brand has been irreparably damaged, just like cdpr, and ubisoft.

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Yeah I think this illustrates how the developer-player relationship operates now…

Instead of a 2 way street like this:

Developers <--------> Players
(communication back and forth)

It’s like this for Overwatch franchise:

Developers
v v v v v
Players
(stuff trickles down to us. Only one way street)

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I know people want to spend endless posts out for boredom to hash a question, but simple fact is that the purchase by MS is a giant reset. The uninformed or overly emotional who do not understand you can’t blame people today for what others did in the past will still act out. They do that with anything.

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im use to that having played blizzard games since 2006 starting with world of warcraft

always the…

soon™

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The whole situations from july to september was a activision problem and ONE dev from blizzard named jesse mcree who worked on world of warcraft. Non of the devs that we have now except for aaron keller and possibly goodman. Were wow devs.

On top of that tracy kennedy (a overwatch dev that has only worked on overwatch) came out and said nobody on team 4 had done anything in fact team 4 knew nothing of the allegations because team 4’s work culture was such a good work environment. On top of that jeff acted like a shield. Shielding them “from corporate bs” as tracy said.

Chaco the senior producer left the dev team when he realised what was happening in blizzard outside of team4. So did jeff kaplan and the senior art person (forgot his name).

On top of ALLL of that the lawsuit stated 3 active people in the company specifically 1 wow dev (jesse mcree) bobby kotick and 1 activison dev working on COD. The rest of the lawsuit talked about toxic work culture in the activision side and the cosby suite( which happened wayyy before overwatch was released) . Which had devs from multiple game companies including blizzard. And almost all those devs werent working for game companies anymore. They had already been fired

So no you 100% wrong, team 4 is clear of EVERYTHING. Jeff is a good man and everyone should have boycott COD. But nobody actually did. People boycotted overwatch for no reason.

people should get informed before forming an opinion.

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Players are suckers leave ow2 being good even a few blue posts with actual answers from devs not CMs a week would have them sing praises on them.

And kids like Baja who defend them despite being abandoned would roll on the floor and worship them.

The only question here is are they willing to do that.

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Who remembers the good ol’ orange posts?

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i think that’s irrelevant… if history has taught us anything it’s that people don’t really care if devs weren’t doing a great job in the past if they are doing a great job now… blizzard was pretty much a nonexistent company for most people between the years of 2008 and 2016 (or 2013 if you’re into hearthstone) but as soon as overwatch came out they got back their reputation for industry changing games

sweetie that damages the relationship with the dev team whether they were involved or not i quit for 6 months i was so hurt bc of it i was like i stood by blizzard through everything and supported them believing wholeheartedly that they were the good guys and now i feel like an absolute fool

jeff didn’t really show up for a lot of videos for the last couple of years of his leadership either and blizzard likes to go dark when they’re developing something big as annoying as it is…

yes i will i feel betrayed that i stuck by the game and they could’ve fully supported the live service but they went off to make a sequel… the sad part is that i would’ve been more than happy to pay for pve content whenever it was ready instead of putting it in a bundle and waiting 4-5 years…

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Did you forget Jeff was a WoW dev too?

So the same thing Bobby did…?

Mhm, I’m sure that was the reason why they left and not the allegations.

  • None of the OW devs at anything to do with it.
  • Except of course Jesse.

Questionmark.

Except of course for one dev who was… kinda on the picture.

Sounds like copium to me.

You mean like you forgot Jeff was in the WoW team, haha. :flushed:

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