Certainly, but I’ve no doubt you also want to convince others to see things from your perspective. I agree with you on a number of things but this bashing doesn’t help your case or his.
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Smaller dev teams aren’t working on Overwatch.
We’re talking specifically about the OW team.
You admitted you have absolutely no direct knowledge of the inner workings of the game’s code, the engine, the responsibilities and lives of the people who work on the game, contracts, scheduling, budgets, anything of the sort.
But yet you still feel qualified to believe that you know enough to say “they’re too slow.”
I haven’t worked on a game, but I have worked in a professional film environment where a piece is developed through cooperation of people with multidisciplinary skills, and I directed my own little animated short once. I had to schedule everything, direct a small crew, animate on it myself, prepare for and solve technical and personal set backs, scrap and redo things to fit within the timetables.
It’s hard work to work in that kind of production environment. You know what kind of responses I got from people who have no idea what it takes to do work in that kind of environment?
“You’re going in on another Saturday?! You should be ahead of schedule with how hard you work!”
And that was for a little minute and a half cartoon. To work in on a video game, which includes the added obstacle of programming, that is in constant development, with the same setbacks I described above, must be a nightmare, especially since you can expect to be worked almost inhumane hours due to crunch time culture.
The stress must be compounded on when you have people who are totally ignorant about what it is you do acting like they know better than you.
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No, in the real world where popularity doesn’t measure value. More people are playing CoD than Shadow Of The Colossus, doesn’t make it lesser.
But you are very set in your rather high horse ways, so I’ll leave you to it. I’m glad you can enjoy something I can not, but I expect more from triple A devs. I do hope you love the game for a long time to come, and it doesn’t die soon.
Just a word of advice, don’t blindly praise devs for making games, it’s their job. They dedicate years of their life to it by choice.
Anyway, have a good day, and I’m going to go play some of the worst games ever made, like Earthbound.
You might have a leg to stand on if Blizzard had promised you all these things before you bought the game, but the fact of the matter is YOU bought the game knowing what it was without any guarantees or promises for ANY of the things that they are now graciously delivering, to you, for free at that. Ana and Sombre didn’t even EXIST when the game released, and we’re only just now learning that they’ve been working on an LFG mode. You act as though you’ve always been entitled to these things, but you PAID for this game when it had NONE of them nor any promise of them. You should be grateful and pleased.
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A few reasons.
-OW isn’t Blizzard’s only ip that they’re currently engaged with. We’re not really certain how their team is split and how many are also having to devote time to multuple games at once
-All changes go through multiple stages of testing, among the devs themselves, the QR team, maybe back and forth a few times before going to PTR, then an undetermined amount of time before going live
-OW is a massive project. Smaller games (which is generally what smaller dev teams are handling) have a lot less moving parts. For every change you’re implimenting to a hero in OW, you’ve got 26 other completley unique heroes to test them against, as well as all the maps and modes. Testing for every single possibility takes a lot of time.
-This is especially true if it requires the creation of a new hero or map, where something has to be conceptualized, modeled, textured, given skins, animated, testing their animations and hitbox against all heroes, testing all heroes’ animations and hitboxes against them, etc etc.
-We have absolutely no clue what kind of red tape may or may not be behind the scenes delaying development.
-Blizzard is balancing this game for multiple playerbases at once. Not only do you have to consider it is on 3 different platforms in the form of PS4, Xbox, and PC, but then you consider the different ranks as well as professional players. It’s not an easy thing to do
-The playerbase is pretty consistently split on what they want because, well, they’re a collection of individuals. A balance change might please half the playerbase and tick off the rest. I don’t work at Blizzard so I don’t know how they go about implementing player ideas into a game but I imagine when you’ve got so many people divided on an issue it makes moving forward risky. I mean they couldn’t even do a charity event without people whining
So those are a few reasons development and balance might take a while, and that’s based off my pretty limited current knowledge of creating a big budget game. I’m sure someone with more insider experience could provide some more examples but that’s what I can think of off the top of my head
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I don’t need your advice, I’ve been a gamer all my life, long enough for it to stain me as a person.
Game design is my only ambition, and in my time as a gamer I have seen the very worst and very best developers have to offer.
The OW team have done nothing to warrant the filth that gets sent their way.
It’s just depressing to think one day that will be me, 40 and grey, spending years of my life working on a game, for it to go live and have 20-somethings rip it apart.
Not having any concept or understanding how or what goes into making a game.
Not realising that the simple fact of it all RUNNING, of a game WORKING AT ALL is a borderline miracle.
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I know how hard creating things is, even thought I’ve not broken into the professional level quite yet. But take the time they “fixed” Doomfist a week after he dropped, but they just recently made the same change to Genji, and hitbox reduction.
I don’t know Blizz, but it feels like they are just drip feeding their fans, and I’ve grown tired of it. I love Blizz, and I hope the game lives on for a long time, and I wish nothing but the best for the devs, despite my own issues with my own perception of the game.
You’ve been pretty respectful, thanks. I hope you have a good one, because this thread has run it’s course for me.
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Then stop playing…
“I’m almost done” “I’m just about done” “I’m thinking of quitting” blah blah blah no one cares especially the devs you already bought the game.
Save yourself some time and just quit don’t make a big deal about it don’t stress over it … just stop playing. It isn’t hard.
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And yet there are Free to play games online that have the same concept as Overwatch and update once a month if not more. Also, they have a smaller team.
Blizzard has no excuse for slow balance.
I mean there’s zero patience, and then there’s visual bug fixes to a hero that’s 2 months old instead of gamebreaking bug fixes to a hero that’s had them for 3 months (and some bugs are longer).
What are these gamebreaking bugs? That probably comes off as rude but I’m being sincere, as I have yet to encounter any myself (PS4 and PC player here, maybe Xbox bugs?)
These gamebreaking (for Sombra) bugs A list of Sombra's Many, Many Bugs (6), Now with more LOS Bugs! - #34 by Xaron-1831
Development is tricky. Bug fixing is tricky. Feature implementation is tricky.
I’ve seen these things done far more regularly for similarly complicated games. On the other hand I know games by other big developers that didn’t get fixes for years on end. I won’t judge Blizzard too harshly on these criteria - none of these things end up easy to implement.
On the other hand number tweaking for balance is not difficult. It may be difficult to get right but it’s not difficult to pass through a server. MOBAs get number tweaking for a roster of +100 dramatically more regularly (and dozens of small changes at a time). Then you look at how that affects pick and win rates, stats, damage, etc and you tweak as needed. Pros can adapt, and a more diverse meta is better for the longevity of the game. If we continue to have extremely limited character selection at top levels (which basically just means they work at bottom-mid levels when players who would climb faster learning someone else play them) I think it’s fair to think Bliz is not prioritizing balance. In a game marketed as competitive I consider balance the most important thing so given how infrequently it’s adjusted and its current state I don’t think its unreasonable to think its disappointing when we’re talking about flat number changes typically.
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I mean, you don’t have to play then? Go to the FTP games if you prefer.
I’m not trying to say Blizzard has no faults here, or that everything they do is perfect, but y’all are acting like they literally never do anything worthwhile and that the game is bad because some things you’d rather they focus on they haven’t. I’m a Mercy main, I have lots of reasons to be mad at the OW team, but I’m not. If I was I’d just stop playing and find something I like more, like a rational person.
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First you guys complain that you don’t have these features and when you get them you yell because it didn’t come fast enough? Really? I agree with things like Sombra taking too long to fix and balancing in general but complaining that it doesn’t happen and when it finally does you still complain like the gesture doesn’t even matter anymore is just wrong imo. It’s fine to complain about the slow pace of things like features and balance but don’t complain when you FINALLY get them. I’d rather they fix Sombra in 6 months then to never even touch her agian and leave her like this.
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So like, what about your life makes you feel like you should dictate how fast or slow a massive MMO game should update itself? I’m genuinely curious.
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Right? Like, what about the attitude of ‘Thanks for handing me this paper towel, you should have done it five seconds faster, you’re a jerk!’ makes you think I’d want to help you ever again? What is with these people???
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Update time is unnacceptable for such a huge game. They could easily do a balance patch/content patch every 2 or 3 months but they don’t because they are more concerned with making money off of loot boxes and OWL.
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You realize if this was any other game and you begged for changes to it the developer would ignore you right? How can you be so entitled that you feel the developer should rush these things for you, when other developers would never even bother with balance or reworks in the first place?
I don’t mean to be rude, but you should seriously consider everything this developer does a patronage. They don’t get paid for putting all this new stuff out for free.
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You say that it’s ‘unacceptable’ but like, - WHY? HOW? You act as if we have some precedent for Overwatch but I can tell you hands down that we do not. Blizzard is kind of the first business of it’s kind, they invented the MMO platform with WoW, THEY are the pioneers of how this is ‘done’ - So like… What the heck makes you think they should be doing this ‘faster’? How do you even know for sure that’s possible? What about your life, your expertise, makes you SO CONFIDENT to make such claims with literally no evidence, sources, facts, or logic behind it???