No man’s sky: “We made a terrible game, lets fix it for the next 10 years”
OW2: “We made a GOTY of 2016, lets make it terrible game in the next 10 years.”
No man’s sky in 2025: “Lets announce a new game.”
OW2 in 2025: “What if we add 6v6 back?”
72 Likes
OW the game is great; it’s the community’s expectations that are the problem. Once people realized the game was an in-depth competitive experience even in its unranked mode, they started complaining for years trying to change it instead of learning how to play. They love the characters and aesthetic, but most people are not into competitive games. I wish they’d find games they do like instead of trying to make this one worse to suit their own preferences.
14 Likes
hell a lot of that was by request…people helped quite a bit in turning it into a competitive (not fun) experience
9 Likes
How do you mean? I know the game felt casual at first when nobody knew how to play yet, but I think it was always meant to be played competitively.
3 Likes
as in…people asked/requested/begged for many of the changes that drove the game away from the very thing theyre complaining about now…people wanted “fun” abilitities removed…people wanted more/rigid structure…people wanted “balance”…
and so the game moved away from being fun
(competitive life cycle in a nutsheill)
18 Likes
but its only 2024. what calendar are you using?
2 Likes
Well hello games had 4 dudes when they launched nms and maybe 20 now. Bliz has everything: pr, hr, multiply outsource, free coffee and snacks and no Jeff … figures
Bella attempts edgy doomposting for likes as per usual… nothing to see here lol
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this is why i like you bella
big lol
big facts
2 Likes
I more so get the vibes that the developers wanted it to be more casual, but the suits wanted their esport.
Early OW has some very questionable design if you wanted a tightly balanced competitive game. We even saw it with OWC which removes the whole “nobody knows how to play” part. A lot of heroes were also designed to appeal to people who weren’t very good at shooters and didn’t typically play them.
The game also launched without the ruleset used in ranked modes. I know ranked was added fairly quickly, but if it was that central to the design philosophy of the game you’d think it would be there from day 1. At least the ruleset used, even if they wanted to give people 1-2 months to learn the game before launching full blown ranked.
Then we saw the game balanced around competitive metas that never mattered in casual modes.
5 Likes
In early interviews Kaplan was proud that people identified with character design over power levels and constantly touted decisions being made in the name of “fun”. Even recent interviews have stated they want it to be both competitive and have content for casual players.
Anecdotally, no one I know got into this game for the competitive experience. In fact, they played it because it had low skill options.
(Looks like Cyonan had similar thoughts.)
7 Likes
I guess that’s true. I think what they really wanted was to play how they wanted AND have an environment conducive to that. Like they only wanted to play DPS but also wanted tanks and supports to help them do that, so role queue was born. Then they got upset about tank combos countering them, which is part of why 5v5 happened.
I think they wanted to be competitive soon from launch and just started with the template of Team Fortress 2. Mercy, for example, works so similarly to the Medic from that game. I don’t think she was designed specifically to appeal to non-traditional FPS players as much as her archetype was worked into Blizz’s vision for a diverse slate of play styles.
It’s true that OWC exposed lots of crazy balance issues from launch heroes. I think they just had to release what they had and couldn’t know how to balance it competitively without seeing how players would use the tools they were given.
2 Likes
I agree with this.
But at the same time, there’s really no escaping this balancing philosophy that’s been crippling Overwatch 1/2 nearly a full decade between 2 people’s vision.
MR is the most utterly unbalanced piece of hero-shooter… but they somehow managed to build around it so it doesn’t always feel like it (especially when you’re diamond+).
I’ll give it some doubts, this is their first season. They could still utterly cripple themselves in the future.
But as it is, the devs got their head straight in not making RQ at least.
2 Likes
I think a ton of us are eagerly awaiting that first balance patch LOL.
Cause MR might be able to actually answer some of OW huge standing problems, or at least provide a different perspective.
As it is, banning Hela/Hawk might be easy but it doesn’t solve the problem that they’re still heavily busted. Hawk might be due to season buffs but Hela alone is an outstanding problem, and she two-shots instead of one.
I’m also on the opinion that if Hawkeye gets nerfed, Widow might actually take his place as I feel that no one runs her due to getting used to her first as well as there being better options (Bucky might be another problem in the future.).
The first came to my mind is the QP leaver punishment
Making a casual mode more competitive is a good way to kill a game IMO
Here’s the thing, OW had a vision and grappled with both executives and various player mentalities before settling on “let’s make the game the players want to play”
It sounds good on paper, but they abandoned whatever vision the OG had for a new one based around a community that doesn’t know what they want and will viciously attack anything they get when they ask for it. Overwatch is like an experiment where devs and a community work together to develop the game, but the community simultaneously has WAAAAYYY too much sway and yet is also never satisfied
No Man’s Sky on the other hand said “yeah, okay, we didn’t live up to your vision OR ours and we can do better than that” so they made the game more game and just cranked out updates and proved the concept was more than an idea, it could be a reality. Yknow, the thing EVERYONE said Blizzard should be doing after Blizzard announced they were gonna go dark for X years and develop a sequel to a 3 year old live service that oopsie wasn’t intended as a live service
Even if we set aside the heroes who were arguably just Team Fortress clones you’ve still got heroes like Symettra, Winston, and Reinhardt who didn’t require mechanical aiming skill.
Or characters like Bastion who a new player could dominate with but was generally considered a throw pick on anything above gold, and no serious attempts were seemingly made to ever change that during OW1’s lifespan.
Sym still needed mechanical aiming skill, more than most other heroes, in regards to her secondary fire.