Is anyone else a little angry and concerned after having read Aaron’s Director’s Take in regards to OW2’s game engine? For those who may have missed it, we learned today that this new engine was implemented and optimized specifically for PVE, and PVP’s format was changed to 5v5 to reduce matchmaking queue times, but also to assist with performance across all compatible platforms.
What could this mean for the possible return of 6v6 modes? Well, if I’m reading this right, re-introducing the old format to this inferior game engine is going to be a real battle. Aaron admitted today that more characters on-screen with 6v6 will require jumping through multiple hoops from a technical standpoint, thanks to this ‘modified for PVE’ engine Overwatch 2 is stuck with.
Reflecting on that possibility, I’m just left soured all over again. This community has lost so much in translation from OW1 to OW2. So much unnecessary adjustment and last-minute crunch with no thought for the morrow, all so that Bobby Kotick could infect Overwatch with this depraved monetization scheme. Worse still, is the understanding that even if Team 4 does decide to explore 6v6 again, we might have lost the Overwatch experience for good thanks to the barriers of this rushed engine downgrade.
This is hardly a slam dunk for 6v6 enthusiasts. They promised a test several seasons down the line and spent the rest of the blog telling us why we should be grateful for 5v5 and not get our hopes up for 6v6.
That said, it’s at least something. I’m hoping they plan on taking this seriously and giving it the time it deserves, but we’ve been burned many times before.
Not particularly. I already expected that we would be dealing with 5v5 ever since it was announced. I understood that there was no going back, but I guess I was always a bit hopeful because I prefer 6v6 and always will. The expectation was that they would drop role queue if they ever wanted to go back and after reading the blog post, I lost all hope regarding that.
As for concern? That’s none of my business. They are the ones committed to trying to get whatever it is to work. I feel sympathetic.
It isn’t that the Engine was that drastically overhauled with Ow2 that is the issue.
It’s the end clients that run the game that will struggle, primarily the Switch and possibly even the last Gen consoles from MS and Sony.
The Team is already needing to cheat their way through development for the Switch now, adding more players to the game again likely would have the game struggle to reach stable 60 or even 30 FPS on those consoles.
They’d either need to abandon those ports altogether or find a way to significantly strip down the game without impacting player experience too much on those platforms.
Though honestly my opinion on the Switch port especially is that it never should’ve been a thing in the first place. I can’t imagine someone going on a road trip or whatever and have their first thought be “I want to play Overwatch on the go.”.
I am willing to understand that the Switch might be the preferred platform or only available one for some people, but from a development perspective I hate the entire Switch boom.
The question shouldn’t be “But can it run on the Switch” it should rather be “Should it run on the Switch”, the switches gimmick is to be easily taken around with the whole library Overwatch is an always online game which requires stable internet connection… those already are pretty much in conflict depending on where you live and the places internet infrastructure.
And it’s not like they’re only handling a couple of ports already, their efforts are already quite split.
Switch, PS4, PS4 Pro, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
The more ports they try to juggle the worse the games performance will become for the individual platforms because they can’t focus their development on anything really.
Yes. Good job modifying the engine for a game mode that was ultimately canceled. Makes you wonder why they even bothered with the change in the first place.
I play this game on PS5 only and all OW2 has been since Season 1 in terms of performance is a mess. Brick patches after brick patches. It all makes sense now. To this day, I can’t have a custom game without framedrops. I can’t have a match without framedrops at the loading screen and I often get poor performance when a lot of stuff is going on in the match, or when I’m connected to certain lobbies. The past 2 years, I’ve chewed trough hundreds of dollars of tests, trying new setups, screens, ISP’s, new consoles, cables to try to make the game run fluid, talked to sony, talked to blizzard, everything just to find out that yeah, they admitted now that the engine is doodoo. The best performance overwatch has on consoles rn is xbox one x and s, although the latter still has issues with things like widow infrasights. It’s cooked.
I just dont get where theyre having so many technical hang-ups or worries like customs games dont flawlessly and perfectly handle 6v6?
Id figure it would be behind the scenes issues with matchmaking and whatnot, but it seems they specifically point out performance with 12 characters on screen, like we dont already have proof ourself that 6v6 plays perfectly fine?
I have, personally, run into performance issues. Specifically when using Junes’ Space Laser and Kitsune Rush on PS5.
Those issues are probably rare overall; however, A-aron also mentioned that these newer heroes are more technically demanding.
I have no idea what is going on with the community test servers, but I could see Rammegatron’s suffering with Mauga cage fight causing some slowdown if paired with a Tree of Life or something.
The last hurdle I would have predicted was a technical bottleneck in the year 2024, but it makes so much sense given that they expanded OW to support various hardware.
They migrated from OW1’s engine to OW2’s engine to accommodate PvE, now that that has been scrapped. OW2 is QUITE LITERALLY - in every sense of the word - a downgrade.
I’m not a dev so the explanation may be beyond me but I just don’t understand how the current engine can’t handle 2 more players than the engine of OW1.
Newer engines run like crap, bc devs of these engines forget about optimisation and want to push the latest and greatest quality feature like ultra 4K or raytracing
Literally. I’ve tried to use HDR on Overwatch on my PS5 but it looks like literal dogwater, I’d almost get a seizure just by looking at it. 120fps is fine and nice if it was working smoothly, but that dynamic resolution range adaptation they’ve implemented just messes up everything and every patch, no matter how they’ve tuned it, added more and more problems. From a playstation perspective, the engine change made it worse for all existing versions of Overwatch 2.
Overwatch 1 on PS4, preferably PS4 Pro was smooth 60 Fps, no frame drops, less server issues, little to no input delay.
Overwatch 2 PS5 version on PS5 is 120fps but is a stutterfest. Any other modes than framerate mode are unplayable, framerate mode is as best as it could get and it’s still messed up.
Overwatch 2 PS4 Version on PS5 and PS4 feels like 30fps and has massive input delay, it’s literally unplayable.
and with all of these versions, server and crossplay related issues, no wonder is the game an absolute mess sometimes in terms of hit registration and lag compensation. Idk, man, they should’ve scrapped the console versions alltogether and make Overwatch 2 only for high end pc players that also have the money to spend 40$ on cosmetic items. It’s a shame.
Yep, the OW2 engine is a massive downgrade in every way.
They just let a random guy slap some extra rendering layers on top of the old engine, making the performance way worse in exchange for awful lighting and some extra textures.
Just more reasons to scrap OW2 and go back to OW1.
Everything they did with OW2 just made the game worse.
The whole point of upgrading engine was the pve and now with the pve gone there is no point to keep this unoptimized mess around. Not to mention even OW1 had more pve even when it wasn’t made for it. Just pathetic.