its been a month (basically)…i wrote down a few things ive noticed and thought id share here for community…but more importantly for devs to hopefully change a few things…
first and foremost i will not be mentioning balancing or matchmaking or hero bugs as those are things that are discussion points ALL THE TIME regardless of what they do - even after years of the game being around and having been worked on…that people are currently complaining about those things is the LEAST shocking thing about OW2 so far…so with that in mind…
my notes on OW2 thus far (1 month):
GAMEPLAY CHANGES
frankly i have few issues with the change to 5v5 itself…im enjoying the core gameplay…
and ive enjoyed the new heroes and the play of the roles themselves…yes that even includes supports (exception - dps DO NOT need a passive)
push is ok…but i wouldnt necessarily call it an improvement over assault (id be ok with bringing it back)…
love the new maps (blanket statement)…having said that the MAP POOL decision is absolute hot garbage…and with or without them the time of day variants should still be thrown in randomly
gameplay loop/drive to play - with no real rewards to speak…be they progression systems or cosmetic…there can be a lack of desire to play at times…at least compared to OW1 anyway
NON-RQ GAME MODES
AN ABOSOLUTE NIGHTMARE AND NEEDS ADDRESSING!!!…the most objectively broken thing in the game right now…because of how tanks now work, every non-RQ game mode is basically BROKEN…i dont like game mode specific balance changes…but something like hero limits needs to happen as it is absolutely GAME BREAKING (you already have an option for it in custom…should be as easy as flipping a switch)…
OQ/QPC dominated by team with most tanks…just go look at top 500 for last 5 seasons compared to this one…there is no “open” in OQ right now…its play tanks or nothing else…something which OQ never was even back in goats era (you know…3 years ago)…hell i didnt see goats not once in past 15 seasons of OQ (My perfectly normal OQ experience Part 15)
MH devolves into spawn camp sessions as soon as 1 team gets 2-3 tanks…and thats on top of the stacking issue the game mode already had (case in point my last MH game today…such a fun round being spawn camped the whole time - FX1BP3)…
FFA is almost unplayable if you arent a tank…
TM - laughs in zarya…
i barely see any devs talking about this situation…but its BAD
MONETIZATION
complete and utter garbage…it is shameful and disgusting…the definition of AWFUL
this was number 5 on my top 20 OW2 game needs a YEAR AGO
hero on bp is AWFUL - doesnt apply THIS season but it cant be emphasized enough
too much filler (what purpose do souvenirs serve again?)
some need rethinking (team kill - challenges should depend more on what YOU do imho)
some need better tracking (role mastery - win 10 with 2 roles - ok how about showing us our progress then)
arcade challenge shouldnt be a thing…it was one thing to have 3 optional lootboxes…its another to essentially require playing in the arcade in order to completely the weekly challenges for premium currency (and i say that as someone who spend most of his OW1 time in arcade)
frankly game mode specific challenges in general should not be required…why force people to play something they might not enjoy…put those on a seperate category altogether…weeklies should be something closer to the ones we have for doing X dmg or X healing…let people just play the game how they want to
EVENT
the new wrath of bride game mode is great…nice variation from previous junkensteins…but not very replayable honestly (especially with basically zero rewards)…so i hope thats not indicative of future PVE… theres supposedly progression systems and such as well…but for this event it was a bit of a bummer
see above for monetization…but what a let down…from amount of cosmetics…to the quality…absolutely ridiculous prices…just awful
MENUS
canceling a queue/changing role is not easy sometimes (like no cancel button)…especially if grouped
MISSING FEATURES
i couldve sworn we were going to get an option for favorite/random skins - it was definitely there during the beta…what happened?
i miss the cards after matches - have something pop up after the potg…hell scoreboard even…something
endorsing enemy team is gone
QOL
health packs need waaaaaaay better visuals (have to get right next to it to be able to see how much time is actually left)
highlight intros have no sound still…at least not when you go to your highlights menu to watch them
theres no indicator that a replay has notes…like you can write them…but theres no way of telling you wrote one
anyway…ill keep jotting stuff down as i see it…overall im enjoying the game itself…the monetization is major fail though and easily the WORST part of the game…and it along with a few other things in there (like the lack of borders and the post game cards and such) are a major reason why we have the games biggest issue overall imo…it just feels very unrewarding…which is sad because i think theres a really good game to be had underneath the surface
if youre saying to yourself…hey Baja this looks a lot like your week 1 summary…its because most of this is from there…blizz has barely done anything about any of them so most of it is still here
I find non-QP modes interesting because I never play arcade games except specialized ones balanced around modes. Archives. Junkenstein. Mei brawl, etc.
A bit too many abbreviations for me, had to actually start the game before I figured it was Mystery Heroes (rarely play anything but comp, qp or custom if I play).
But yea, they need to do something about the other modes, watched a friend play Total Mayhem and obviously the enemy team picked Zarya and the payload ended up being contested for 20+ minutes before they managed to get her off.
I think this one might actually get changed, probably just gonna lower it to like level 45 or something.
I think the PVE will be like this 100%, obviously a bit more fleshed out, and drip fed content obviously.
I have zero faith in them changing anything about the bps…they only care about the bottom $ at this point and despite public outcry I guarantee you people are moving the needle in the direction they’re interested in
Dude non RQ gamemodes are seriously so broken. They put no effort into balancing at all. They did less than the bare minimum and were completely lazy with it. They just changed it to 5v5 for the sake of changing things and forgot about every single gamemode that is made for 6v6, not 5v5. The non RQ gamemodes are all built for 6v6 and they just completely ignored that for some reason and didn’t even bother putting any effort into balancing anything besides role queue. I mean if youre gonna make the game 5v5, atleast think about it, dont just brainlessly do it. They should nerf tanks to have less health like they did in ow 1 where it was a non issue or add some sort of penalty for having multiple tanks, or straight up limit tanks (like no more than 2) in game modes where you can have multiple tanks like in arcade and ESPECIALLY IN OPEN QUEUE. Its so absurd how they decided to implement 5v5 but forgot that almost every single gamemode outside role queue is built around 6v6 and that these changes break almost every other gamemode, but they are too lazy to balance it so it probably wont happen im sure they wont even bother. It sucks though for people who like to play arcade and open queue and cant play it anymore since its an even worse version of goats (in open queue ranked mostly but sometimes when people decide to go that multiple tank comp in arcade it is also abysmal, I personally don’t like shooting at 4 tanks forever.). Look at the leaderboard on open queue, every single person plays tank. You cant even play anything else, or you just get dominated. its really not fun playing vs 4 tanks or even worse 3 tanks 2 healers every game (Thats what comp open queue is like). Even deatchmatch, no limits, total mayhem arcade gamemodes get annoying when theres all tanks with the buffss they got in ow 2…
Even the map lighting changes sucks. They really just want to change things for the sake of changing things. The contrast in the colors in ilios that were like white, blue, green fit so well. That map was so well designed, but now theres too much orange on my screen. There is too much visual clutter on my screen too (Like the enemies being healed you can see it and its just annoying like theres too much yellow and orange colors on my screen), and excessive orange colors? Some maps were the lighting they were for a reason. The dorado night time map also looked pretty with the old lighting, the new one has too much orange, and also the decorative lights are on for some reason even though its day time? Don’t even get me started on the night time eichenwalde. Have you guys seen zaryas beam on eichenwalde? It literally blinds you so that you cannot see anything else, I actually got a headache after playing vs zarya on eichenwalde since her beam is so bright on that map (This is a bug maybe?? I HOPE?? It needs to be fixed ASAP because I literally couldn’t see anything at all her beam was too bright on the night time map). We are stuck on the same poorly lighted maps and we don’t even get the choice of having the lighting randomized which sucks. I don’t think they should change the lighting by season, they should just randomize the lighting everytime atleast if they are going to put these garbage changes that clearly have not been tested and have very little thought put into them. You can’t just change things and hope they work, you need to actually think about it and test out all the bugs.
Still have on fire voicelines but no actual on fire icon? Shows how lazy they were with it. No LFG for some reason? Cant see ranks in competitve (and no dont say its because of toxicity because having 1 tank and the scoreboard implementation has lead to even more toxicity)? No info on the ranking system for competitive. No cards at the end of the game. Terrible, greedy monetization. I could go on for so long about these things and how they are actually removing content for some reason. Like this game could be so much better I don’t see why they removed all of that.
