For reference as to why this request:
We get these nearly every other day and it’s not going to stop. It’s not about a temporary season issue or a bad start, but a fundamental design flaw in OW2(mainly the 5v5 problem).
I myself wrote an excruciatingly long study of the problem:
Which most people won’t read because it’s the length of an arm, but it covers nearly all the issues in OW2, so I’ve been using it as a reference. I actually encourage people to refer to part or all of it in case someone can’t put the finger on why OW2 feels lesser.
The conclusion of that study is that OW2 will not be salvaged as an “Overwatch” game. It can only break down one way or another, and won’t have what made Overwatch unique and special.
Since overturning the core design of OW2 will not happen, I’d like to have OW1 back as a service, either as a special mode of OW2 or on its own as it was a few months ago.
Before anyone says “never gonna happen, not possible”, allow me to state my job: I’m a freelance programmer/consultant who has worked for many clients, many fields, and many technologies, from game making to devops to web and more. So I do understand what is possible and is not.
The only rule when it comes to business is that as long as you’re paid an acceptable amount of money and you can do it, you will.
Can they do it? The servers were live not 2 months ago on a global scale. Turning that back on is not impossible by any stretch. No company deletes their infrastructure, they just power it down and cease to maintain it. 2 months of low/no maintenance isn’t even an issue. Having OW2 and OW1 online at the same time is also not an issue since people won’t play OW1 and OW2 at the same time. You will get load on one or the other.
As for the money, if they could build this entire shop for OW2, they can have either the same for OW1 or implement OW1 back in OW2 as a “Legacy” mode. Or they can make a monthly subscription model for the OW1 live service and put it up just like it was and still rake in money monthly.
From a broader business view, there is a strong cause for it too. Activision is ultimately a service provider, they provide OW to get money. Do they make more money with OW2 than with OW1? I’d wager that temporarily yes, but it won’t last.
OW2 has been dropping players extremely fast. I refer again to my earlier analysis on the game as to why. Many historical players are increasingly disinterested, or outright disgusted, by OW2. The potential new pool of players will get frustrated with OW2’s design just as fast as they would’ve with OW1, and will drop out within the next months as well, if not weeks.
OW2 will lose both its old playerbase and gain next to no new players. I am betting all my money on it, this game will keep seeing a downward curve in terms of players, and its player pool will fall faster than OW1’s if it had kept going unmaintained.
Since Activision, as a for profit company, only cares about money and couldn’t care less about the players, I’d like to suggest this KPI to the OW management and commercial department: take the monthly player counts, income from said player counts, and make projections on the loss of players in the next 6 months.
projected_downturn_coefficient = (month1_active_players - month2_active_players) * 100 / max_monthly_active_players
month3_active_players = month2_active_players - (month2_active_players * projected_downturn_coefficient)
money_month3 = month3_active_players * median_income_by_player
month4_active_players = month3_active_players - (month3_active_players * projected_downturn_coefficient)
money_month4 = month4_active_players * median_income_by_player
…
(yes I mostly work with Python nowadays, sue me)
Compare that theoretical curve to the real curve in your data. In a healthy game, this simplistic projection would not equal the actual playerbase, because the game will shed the users that don’t really like it and keep the users who do.
It would take between 3 to 6 months to go from a massive non-committed playerbase to a smaller, niche, highly committed playerbase that will keep to the game for years, like OW1. And this committed playerbase would dwindle very slowly.
I’m betting all my money that the player count will be equal or worse than this curve, because there is no committed playerbase to be found for OW2. This “experiment” of blending Overwatch with a generic FPS doesn’t work and won’t find its public. It will just keep being in freefall until the game is actually dead, not meme-dead with hundreds of thousands of players but actually dead and full of nothing but regrets.
When does this curve bring in less income than an OW1 with a subscription service, or an OW2 that actually implements a legacy mode for QP and Comp and lets the OW1 playerbase stick around? If it’s in 6-8 months, that’ll be too late. By then, the entire playerbase will have left and OW as a whole will be in ruin. People who leave a game and find another place to waste their time don’t come back.
Every day that I’m spending on these forums wanting OW1 back, I’m losing interest more and more. I want to play the game, not come get vindicated that tons of people agree with me that OW2 just ruins Overwatch. I want to forget my life troubles by playing, not do my job for free by publicly analysing this game from both the business and game design standpoints.
Of course I don’t expect this topic to really reach the OW management. I think it will be buried quick, but just like my last one, I write is an archive for the future. Either OW2 cancels its poor gameplay decisions (not happening), either it throws a bone to the OW1 playerbase and lets us have our game, even if it gets 0 updates and they want more money for it. I’m not extending my hand hoping for Activision to shake it for the next 6 months.
Make a business offer that’ll let us have our game back, or see us go for good.
