PVE: Less replayability, more story

General Discussion
1

If we look carefully at the small special events of Overwatch 2, we can notice that they all have within them small and large technical analyzes on how PVE could have been managed… in replayability;

  • Wrath of the Bride: Advance on a pre-existing map, dividing areas and building bosses to defeat to advance to the end;
  • Battle for Olympus: Abilities adapted to a theme and community ranking to encourage an online objective (remember? the champion who obtained the most kills would receive the statue in ilios);
  • Starwatch: Management of a story between two teams of players who would ultimately decide the outcome of the story (victory for the empire);
  • Battle against the Demon Lord: a giant player against 4 other heroes, with the involvement of the workshop creators;
  • Underworld: a small return to the Archives experiments with modifiers;
  • Trials of Sancuary: skill and stat upgrades in arenas;
  • Concert Clash: collecting points with your teammates and a little boss (junkrat);
  • The Great Beast: Collaborate with an AI against the enemy AI and its players;
  • Cosmic Crisis: Create a situation of betrayal that divides the team by creating unexpected adversaries. + modifiers

they are all quite interesting experiments on the single element but… in the end they all failed. No one stayed to play it continuously, just time to make their own achievements. or just because you knew they were limited-time modes. I mean that none of them find a real solution to the problem that has been created on PVE: it is not replayable enough to guarantee the presence of players at any time. The Season 6 PVE servers are empty today, and they won’t fill up tomorrow or in a year. And as a result people will get bored with the usual AI proposed in those only 3 missions.

So what really disappointed us about PVE in the end? in my opinion the lack of the talent tree is not a bad thing, because in the end Trials of Sanctuary also offered it but it wasn’t anything that replayable, it would only have delayed the emptying of the story mode servers. I simply have one conclusion on this:

we wanted a story, not replayability.

I’m sorry but this is what happened: people weren’t sad because you don’t actually play with 4 people… but because the PVE was so short that it didn’t feel interesting. And it will NEVER be replayable if the fundamental requirement is 4 players before actually being able to enjoy the story of this video game universe. Let’s take Starcraft for example, a Blizzard excellence both in terms of story mode and multiplayer: story and multiplayer are fantastic precisely because they are separate, not strictly necessary to each other.

In an alternate universe, I would have liked another type of story mode for Overwatch:

  • Default single player campaign, no queues waiting for other players on 4 different difficulties;
  • Do I want to play with friends like we did in archives? I will be the one to invite them into the party, and only that factor will change the difficulty of the AI (technology very similar to cuphead when you include a second player);
  • Sell me directly a narrative expansion pack full of missions and narrative, just like Starcraft expansions do. Even if it’s not the most replayable thing in the world, I can at least say I enjoyed the story of these characters.

Sorry, developers: I totally understand what you tried to do for replayability, but it won’t work. the gamemodes you proposed are only temporarily fun, but they all end around achievements, and no one really manages to enjoy what they propose at their own pace. I’m SURE that the entire Starcraft community hasn’t replayed the story campaign who knows how many times, but they were so fascinated by the story campaign that it didn’t detract from its multiplayer at all. The same goes for the Diablo community. Why does Overwatch have to get stuck on the totally obsessive need to have 4 players to have a story? and do it in so much time because it is an ftp that is analyzing all the possibilities to revolutionize cooperative replayability? in my opinion the interest in the lore is being irreparably damaged, and now the time spent experimenting with a replayable solution has become too excessive. I say this as a fan of the franchise: perhaps it’s time to simplify things and that if there is something to sell… let it be a story that can satisfy those who play it, not 15 $/€ for rooms because there aren’t enough of them of players to be able to use them

2

Depends what sort of pve experience you were looking for

If you just want something with a deep narrative you run through once or twice, then obviously you would want a more story driven pve. Invasion is what that is and most people dont care for it. You play through it and then move on

However i feel most people want replayable pve even if it maybe compromises that story. The Trials of sanctuary hands down was the best pve they have ever done because it had the power progression systems which gave your gun and each ability new effects. People wanted to play more to try each heroes new upgrades.

Now imagine that x50, that is what the pve skill trees were supposed to be on a much larger scale and i think is just proof if they had stuck to their original ‘hero mission’ idea it would have been a success. Being able to make diverse hero builds that completely reshape how a character plays is how you create replayability. Having synergies between heroes kits is how you create dynamic gameplay.

For instance, rein firestrike having a skill called froststrike that makes it freeze the enemy instead. + mei having a passive skill which increases her damage by x% to frozen targets. Immediately you have started a freeze build that creates a synergy between heroes for new and diverse gameplay variety.

Or rein has an alternate option where firestrike now sets enemies on fire. Now if you also play a mauga with rein suddenly he is always critting enemies with his passive cus theyre on fire.

That is the type of replayability that makes people keep playing pve. Not a good story

3

the halloween diablo pve was the best they ever made imo. i wish it’d come back sometimes. i liked how it added new effects to existing abilities

4

I want more replay-ability than story.

It feels pointless to play them now since they don’t unlock weekly challenges maybe two of them. They is nothing to progress. If you look at other pve they are unlockables has you keep playing.

Other reason would be the AI is just same. Same routes and everything is so predictable.

The main reason i stick to playing pve in OW1 is due to lootbox.

5

but you are talking about the talent tree seen in Blizzconline 2021. And objectively there is a problem with it because it has become too more ambitious than was really necessary: practically Overwatch had to propose more technologies and variants for 32 heroes (now 39) than Diablo 4 does on its day one with only 5 characters to choose from :grimacing:. And there I understand that it was an excessive step to propose, because it literally means seeing so many technologies that risked being repetitive for some heroes (electrical effects, frost, explosions, etc.) but also too many technologies that then seemed taken from the same heroes or even that they anticipated things that would then be used for new heroes.

the new heroes are a perfect example of how many technologies vary: Illari pylon? a variant of Symmetra’s turrets but with healing without radius. Mauga? literally exploits the incendiary technology originally developed with Ashe. Ramattra? evokes a barrier with a mix between Mei’s technology (icewall) and the old anchored barrier of Orisa.

But I agree that they could at least grant the original talent tree seen at blizzcon 2019, when the additional skills were only 3 and trial of sanctuary demonstrated the validity of discovering those additional technologies with simple variations (even if a little visually messy).

but in the end what did we solve with Trial of Sanctuary? that objectively it was nice to explore the skills but once this exploration was over it went back to being an arcade waiting to be turned off for the event. But imagine if it were instead something perpetually active to play a story: the servers would still be empty. :face_with_diagonal_mouth:

and who satisfies this search for replayability in the end, if the story still remains in the “overwatch is back” but zero narrative developments on the comparison with the talon or the big boss ramattra? This is why I think the comparison with Starcraft is perfect: a game that perhaps doesn’t have the same need for players, but still creates a plot and an atmosphere to become attached to, if the story is satisfying because it is objectively satisfying. make it excessively short and you just get empty rooms of people who won’t even let you discover the variations of the interactions because the AI is not optimized on other heroes (so the price of your package doesn’t even pay for that auditory experience). does this make sense? in my opinion no.

everyone loses in this hope that the game will optimize its replayability technologies, and since the last Blizzcon even with an embarrassing admission that they are back to the point “how do we make PVE more engaging so that it doesn’t always feel empty?” :thinking: the answer seems to be still testing with even fewer aesthetic resources on the field: those cooperative hero modes that will arrive in mid season 9. And ok, let’s try, but what guarantee do you give so as not to empty the PVE after a month, a year, 10 years of life? none, because the absolute necessity is “you need 4 real players to play, unless you want to play with an AI that is too stupid for the higher difficulties”.

this is another excellent point, but driven by a stupid monetization / statistics regime: weekly achievements that are too easy to achieve means less time with players in the game and above all poor success in managing the (already low) flow of free coins. So if it really has no value from a collecting perspective (i.e. getting coins)… you might as well have made me spend real money on real narrative experience, single player or not.

6

Nah the devs were just pretty lazy lol. If diablo 4 can make skill trees with 100’s of abilites and passives, with each piece of loot having unique gameplay effects, the ow devs could have easily made a skill tree for each hero

Most of the skill tree talents they showed were just number boosts anyway. Reinhardt getting extra barrier health etc. They would only have had to add a couple gameplay diversity options per ability per hero. Most of which abilities they showed off years ago.

• Firestrike being able to freeze or burn
• Charge being able to multi pin or he can gain health back while charging
• shield allowing him to brig stun or get drastically more hp
• earthshatter in an aoe or deal massive dmg

We already saw mei’s 2 different ice block skills where it could turn into a ball or freeze nearby enemies upon exit.

Hanzo sonic making his arrows lock on to the target or making him do more damage to that highlighted enemy.

Genji blade creating projectiles or maybe they could have added an option where it resets the ult timer per kill.

Most of it was already done years ago

7

The best replayable PvE FPS(TPS) I’ve played was RoR2. Its progression curve was just amazing, but still PvP is much better.

I think it’d be great in OW PvE when all roles become more pure and tanks have sorta aggro control ability just like in RPG. Organized combat is the biggest selling point what PvE can offer imo.