“We’re more than aware we need to get it out,” an internal Activision Blizzard source said. “So the word is the dev team has been told to lock in the features the game has, get it fixed and get it shipped. We’re looking to get it out before the Summer of 2022.”
To me, the wording here implies that Activision is FORCING Team 4 to release the game earlier than they want. In my opinion, locking down the features the game has suggests that they planned for more and just had to cut it off early to finish it off. I fear the game’s features will not be fully fleshed out and I pray it won’t be a buggy mess.
Yep, same happened with cyberpunk where the investors and ceo of cd project red pushed the developers to release the game despite the warning that it wans’t ready to be released yet.
well in a way they are damned if they dont, damned if they do. seems like people are fed up with blizzard to begin with and the leagues coaches seem worried and sponsors are probably like they rather sponsor something else.
its their own fault tho with mismanagement and all
I fear the game’s features will not be fully fleshed out and I pray it won’t be a buggy mess.
Funnily enough, you compare this to Cyberpunk, but Cyberpunk had the opposite problem; the devs kept adding more and more stuff, and never bothered to make sure it actually worked before moving on to the next new thing. And management just let them, causing the years of delays until Corporate told them to stop. If they didn’t that game would probably still being development.
Way it sounds to me, the OW2 is basically done, but the devs keep thinking up new heroes or maps or Hero Missions and wanting to implement them and telling ActiBlizz “Almost done, come back later”
I honestly find this part of the story troubling too. speaking is Activision and not the developer, and this makes the expectation of OW2 very controversial. It is very true that we have been waiting for 2 years now for a game that shows mainly rework info rather than innovations, exaggerating its hype. but it is also true that just as the OwLs have had bad luck in recent times (covids and scandals), we absolutely cannot deny that internal development has not been affected as well (reorganization of work at home, difficulty in hiring new professionals in the sector for the project, the organization of the game at 5v5, the extra work on the replacement of the name McCree …)
Honestly after years of empty content … why do I have to risk finally finding a reworked product but probably with a lot of postponed features just because there is a great rush to start the e-sports sector? OW2 has always meant the ban on ‘we’ll add it later’ to the needs that we all always say: “this thing had to be there from day one”. if OW2 takes time, why do you have to risk ruining everything by stating that “lock the features” to release the game?
damn, Ow2 should be out first of all for gamers who play, not viewers who watch! we absolutely do not need to risk finding ourselves with another W3 Reforged in which the promises have become … promises of future updates (never arrived because the project was abandoned).
Ow2 must arrive complete first. not to be updated because “we didn’t make it in the end”. I understand that the videogame market is not as calm as it once was in which you can have the luxury of having more times, but there must be humanity to admit that it has been a difficult year even for the developer to maintain their timing for various reasons . to be wrong is the e-sport that remains active, not the developer who is not ready to return to giving a functional game. after his bad development choices since 2016, of course. But the OwL from 2019 were already dysfunctional and ready to have to stop and be patient. GG, Activision. Great moneys, bad devs, huh? (obviously I mean the good ones left in the company).
This is how pretty much all AAA games are these days. This is the market norm. Devs are often already overworked and player demands are rising and rising. They want higher quality games with better graphics and more content released sooner. So, games get pushed out early and are straight up unfinished.
If you want to pre-order a game, cool. Just know that you’re doing it for the pre-order bonuses ONLY because you won’t be able to play your shiny new game for weeks.
honestly, it’s good that they’re forcing it out finally. normally, i’m 100% against rushing a game out before the devs are done, but you can only make people wait for so long. year 1 of OW was fantastic, in year 2 was light on new content, as the dev team said they’d be working on a ton of new stuff for year 3. then year 3 came along, and it was all about OWL. and then when year 4 came around, they announced OW2. since, then, we’ve had almost no real content. patience has run thin. they can get the new stuff out now, or they can wither and die in the same death spiral they’ve been in for years.
Good. I’m tired of playing the same games for over five years. Give em a swift kick in the pants. I would rather get a smaller game every two years, then wait forever. Dragon Age is currently killing my soul with a so far a nine year gap with no release date in sight. I’m getting old, just release the games, dang it.
Cyberpunk was a little different.
After CDPR found out they had Keanu, the suits basically made them tear the entire game down and rebuild it around him, it later came out.
They originally wanted Cillian Murphy to play Johnny and there’s even concept art online of Silverhand before they had anyone in mind.
This OW2 leak doesn’t sound like that, it sounds like they have a pile of finished content, and they have to tighten some of it up for a proper launch.
I said this is another thread but that is not what that means.
To give a simpler explanation, let’s ask a simple question: what are the core features of OW2 without which the game will not be released? I would say that is the improved engine, new heroes, campaign, and hero mode. Now that is not ALL the features of OW2. I went into how companies would generally decide on the other features in my other post so I wont copy it again.
What this means for OW2 though is that the core features are nearing completion and they have a timetable for release so now it is time for the Overwatch team to look at all of the other features that COULD be in the game (in my other post I used the example of improved replay feature, clans, customizable icons, and lets say workshop improvements), none of which you would be willing to delay the game for, and decide which features are going into OW2 and which are going into future patch content. This is a GOOD thing and something every game deals with.
Concdering ow2 is gonna premanently replace ow1, i think a better analogy would be a WC3 reforged situation. Which wouldnt be outta place given the company involved is the same. Honestly i prefered the idea it was gonna come in 2023 rather than earlier than expected
I mean it’s not like activision has other franchises where getting the next game out as fast as possible is more important than putting….out….a ….quali……
It probably won’t be buggy but it will surely be lacking in content.
The game will just never comes out if they are waiting on the OW team to finish it.
Keep in mind this team already has reputation of having their previous game canceled.
They just got lucky that the PvP game that they could salvage actually turned to be addicting.
Whilst I would absolutely not want the game to feel unfinished at launch, I also feel like some studios commit far too many resources into development & lose track of their vision of what the game should be on launch. A game could be stuck in development for years on end because of it and there’s no guarantee it’ll be good when it finally does gets out the door.
Games like Anthem, Destiny & Cyberpunk were poorly managed before their launch. The companies overseeing these games didn’t put their foot down quick enough, the devs didn’t have a concise vision of what the game should be and the players suffered as a result. Other games, such as Halo 2, could have easily gone down the same route had the publishers not been more demanding.
