So, I think I’ve realized what’s wrong with Overwatch. It seems like the game was targeting a niche audience, but then the developers tried to change the game to fit as wide an audience as possible. If it sounds like doing that is a bad idea, its because it is.
Lately I’ve been seeing people say “tanks are the problem” or “tanks just can’t exist in a game like this”. These same people ignore one fact: Overwatch’s initial audience was enticed by the idea of Tanks in an FPS, among other things, and greatly enjoyed the tanks in this FPS while we had them.
Understand, I know Overwatch sold extremely well. I don’t mean to say “niche” to mean “10 people bought the game, but man did they love it!” I mean relatively niche as in “there will always be more people playing games like Cod than hero shooters”.
The issue isn’t the tanks at all, its trying to contort a game like this to compete with the likes of Call of Duty or Titan Fall 2. That’ll never work, just like twisting Call of Duty to be like Overwatch would never work. I guess my biggest problem is people trying to change the past to say “It was always a core issue with the game! No one enjoyed rolls like Tanks and Supports, people just want to go pew pew”, when its just not true.
And the worst part? I don’t think its possible for OW2 to succeed now. Off the bones of a niche game, you’re going to try and make some twitchy pew pew shooter where only the DPS can have fun, so therefore every character has to be more DPS like, and the defensive options have to be dramatically cut? I just don’t see this working out based on what blizzard said and what we’ve seen of it.
I guess the second worst part is people saying “OW2 will be good! Why don’t you think it will be!” while ignoring all the reasons people have for thinking it won’t be good.
OW will succeed because it has a massive core fan base. A game that spawns an e sport, comics, streamers and merch doesn’t just vanish really. The initial new content and obvious enrichment for streamers to come back and make more content which will boost popularity will make it successful
That’s…that’s what they’ve been doing. Their mission is to turn OW into Valorant 2 but with personality. It hasn’t really been working out that great for them. Because people, you know, can just go play Valorant.
They are; it’s called OW 2. No evidence most players want just shooty characters, there are plenty of options and yet the player selections often are anything but that. Seems they hit that point pretty well. FWIW, when I scan down the DPS list, I see a lot of shooty, but isn’t that what you want? 50% of the playerbase is hardcore Tank/Support currently. Seems more than a niche when at its high point that number was working pretty consistently.
Well, I did say it was niche. I would even say categorizing OW as a pure shooter is just setting everyone up for confusion and disappointment. In the game I’m making, there’s a lot of shooting, but also a lot of melee combat. Is it still a shooter?
The answer is technically yes, but if I say “I’m making a shooter”, it’ll be confusing.
That’s the point I was getting at. I don’t think its possible to do that since you’d be doing it off the bones of a shooter with moba elements. That means you have to have characters with larger health pools which are made to play differently, but you’re branching it out to an audience who don’t want that.
You can’t turn Reinhardt into a shooter character, it just won’t work, but a 1200 HP shield likely won’t work either. It won’t even be enough to get Reinhardt to his target before its broken and he’s feeding. So what do you do?
And that “fringe group” is the original player base of Overwatch. You may think “Well its time for you to go so that the NEW player base!” but has that ever worked in any industry? Can you name an industry where the initial consumer base was successfully pushed out and replaced with new consumers looking for a different product?
Right! And by doing that, more people are leaving by the day, people are incredibly unsatisfied with the way Tanks are in the game, and NO ONE likes how the shooter characters are getting preferential treatment. They buffed McCree, Soldier 76 and what not in hopes that the FPS lovers would come running. They didn’t.
How in the world could the “mythical ideal” never exist when it did? The first people who bought the game said “I like this”. Bam. Mythical idea made real, and they pushed it away for dollar signs.
I think it’s perfectly reasonable to lose 1-2% of playerbase, if that gains you 5% more, or prevents losing 5% more.
Bottomline, if your analysis can’t account for the downsides of abysmal queue times, and you only look at “Big changes are bad because not everybody is going to be happy about it”.
Then it’s kind of a pointless argument to make.
Is the mythical amount of players who don’t actively want to go for kills, and dutifully sits back and provides nothing but heals or damage blocking.
You’re talking about less than 5% of the playerbase, and acting like they are 50% or greater.
No. It is the complete opposite. They made a game so more ppl to like it and buy it and once when everyone bought it they trying to push it as an fps esports by focusing on the mechanical aim aspect.
Why would Overwatch be competing with CoD when they’re both published by the same company?
Making heroes “more DPS-esque (DPSque?)” isn’t turning the game into CoD. Most of the combat in CoD is carried out with fast-firing, bullet-shooting guns, and the rest of it with slow-firing, bullet-shooting guns. Overwatch, however, has a myriad of weapons (and even more abilities on top of that). Genji will still have his shuriken, Mercy will still have her staff, Reinhardt will still have his hammer (heck, it seems he’ll actually get to use it more often).
While true, what I mean is an objective-based shooter that has characters with unique/exclusive abilities. The closest to that–aside from Overwatch and Paladins–is “XDefiant” (maybe that Gundam game, as well).
Valorant, CoD, and R6S are grouped in the same category of purely search-and-destroy (defuse bomb). I don’t know about TF2 (never really saw gameplay of it).
Apex is a BR.
Battleborn was more in line with Destiny or Borderlands
overwatch is what it is…and the people that havent been able to come to grips with that (be it they want it to be more fps-y or more moba-y, or the stuff below) have left and what not and the people that can deal with it have remained due in large part because at the end of the day - its still a damn good game…
…with flaws like any other game out there…the biggest of which is the community role breakdown and the problems that poses (in terms of team aspect and queue times now that theres RQ)…frankly its not really avoidable…dps will always be more attractive…122 is a plus in this regard as it is actually a move that reflects the community the game actually has…
but basically ALL the other stuff…ie the balance, matchmaking, the so called “lack of content”, etc…are either community exaggerations, super subjective, present in just about every other game out there, or not something that can actually improve much or would change much…
like i said…people can either deal with it or they cant…in which case it bears reminding - nobody is forcing you to play…
Firstly, remember that I said “seems like”, its completely fine if you don’t want to accept the comparison. Secondly, OW would be competing with Cod for the same reason Pepsi-Cola makes multiple soda types: they cast the widest net to reap in the most money.
In my example, I used “competing” to mean “both of these are on the market” and not “one is trying to destroy the other”. Therefore things like this:
Is both wrong, AND unrealistic. Overwatch is a game competing with Cod for sales, but no matter who wins, Activision gets the dough. That’s the truth in the matter.
No, that’s the favoring DPS above all that makes it seem like 95% FPS and 5% moba. Remember, “feels like” and “is” are two different things, but they both must be considered. If I made a game with 95% moba mechanics and 5% shooting mechanics, but it FELT like mostly a shooter, what matters then?
I hope they pump out more comics & shortmovies again when OW2 is released. 
