I feel like a weekly update from the devs would go a very long way to boost and maintain player morale. The situation is obviously not okay right now, but that’s no reason to pull back and provide even less updates. Transparency is becoming the norm from gaming companies today and blizz seems to be heading in the opposite direction.
A simple update template could be relatively informal and cover:
General development update on OW2
General comments on the state of OW1 including current balance. (I think everyone would be happy to have more information about why some characters are balanced the way they are and what kind of interactions are intended by the devs)
Responses to common comments in the forums over the past week.
Being more transparent and providing regular updates will help align us with the devs and help us to be more understanding when things aren’t working right and give us something to look forward to keep us engaged. Right now it just feels like a bad relationship. Invested 1000’s of hours and basically getting the silent treatment. And a stupid patch that ignores problems in the current live game.
If you want to know what a weekly report would look like, here is what you do:
“This week we continued working on both the campaign and PvP aspects of OW2. Work on the campaign continues well but to avoid spoilers that is all we will say. On the PvP side we did some iterations to heroes while trying to update a few areas on old maps. We look forward to showing you specific gameplay details soon.”
“For OW1 the numbers continue to show that OW1 is balanced across all ranks. We will continue to monitor these numbers and make any adjustments as needed.”
That is what you would get every week to the point where it would become a meme by the 3rd week.
I think they were planning to be more open about what was going on but then the whole lawsuit thing came down, I imagine there’s a lot going on behind the scenes which may be why nothing has happened
Not that I’m justifying it, Blizzard have been far from deserving any justification, that being said the developers are just employees and things aren’t their fault
The thing about giving specific PvP numbers for OW2 is that they are likely changing so often that by the time they record and put out the video they have probably changed again so all you are doing is giving outdated information and anything more than a week or two old would be completely useless for information related to OW2 PvP.
The PvE they obviously are not going to give out too much information on for fear of spoiling the campaign and the comments on OW1 will simply be that the numbers continue to support that OW1 is balanced and they will take steps should that not be the case.
There just is not really enough firm information, that one would want shared, to give out weekly updates.
There is an arrogance at Blizzard that was cultivated over decades of successes that they know better than anyone. This arrogance is what led to the demise of OW with repeated (even now) mishandling of the game, including this absurd notion of reducing skill requirements as time goes on for it’s games. People want to be challenged, that keeps people not making the game trivial. It’s like leaving Paris in, most people despise it, and even conceding to removing it from Comp and Pro play, they insist on leaving it in QP. No dev updates is just standard practice, they simply hold their playerbase in low esteem, the Great Unwashed that they think are there to do nothing but spend money on them because they are so great (in their minds).
The damage for instance to this game that Geoff Goodman in particular has done is beyond belief, I now expect nothing good from this team. They need to listen; listen to their players and listen to people telling them about things that simply don’t work and swallow their ginormous pride a bit. An example is removing the AOE healing from Brig; in the XP card currently, replacing this with packs, which if they nerfed the range considerably and buffed Brig for close in melee slightly, would be the best version of Brig in the game. But no, they are so damn arrogant they won’t do what makes sense.
Geoff Goodman quite frankly needs to be removed ASAP and replaced, and this lower the skill requirements philosophy needs to be flat out reversed.
TBH I feel what you are describing and your example given also suit that change on Mei with no freeze. Imagine all interactions between her and tanks being gone. Zarya won’t need to save bubbles for herself or teammate who got frozen to cleanse the effect and deny her value, D.va won’t have to be extra cautious and avoid getting frozen in order to be able to eat Blizzard, Reinhardt can’t be punished for agressive and reckless play if he drops his shield.
It’s just a dumb direction they wanna take the game…
It doesn’t have to be what the current numbers are. It could be an overview of what happened and changed during the week. It’s more about engaging with the community and giving us something somewhat interesting than providing on the fly exact stats that arent useful to us yet anyway.
That’s what I’m getting at partly. This being a way that they can open up a dialog with us players on a regular basis.
It’s for mobile play. OW is just being primed as a game for mobile kiddies to play on; simplified mechanics, 5 v 5, smaller maps, etc. all are a move for mobile. I for one was thrilled to hear the game likely wouldn’t launch until late 2022 at the earliest, I get to enjoy the real OW for a bit longer before saying good bye. I doubt I will do more than play the PVE some for OW 2.