Overwatch 2 PVE needs replayability. It needs to be able to keep our attention for more than a day or until we complete it.
There is no game I have played that is better for replayability than Risk of Rain. Both games are great.
It just so happens Overwatch heroes fit the format of Risk of Rain survivors. Various characters that differ wildly. With 3 abilities and a Q ability.
Here is a modded run of Tracer in Risk of Rain 2: https://youtu.be/nxVLZaY3fRw
The beauty of the Risk of Rain format is that balance is irrelevant. You could make a horrible OP or Horrible underpowered hero and they would be able to function regardless. 99% of the power comes from the items you pick up. From movement speed to all attacks explode etc. Which means that basically whatever hero you throw at it, you could implement them very easily.
I just want to give some food for thought to the devs. I think it is an incredibly efficient, cheap and fun way to give Overwatch 2 replayability. Risk of Rain 2 was literally made by a single person. Imagine what you could do with an entire team.
Risk of rain is fun and all, but it doesn’t really get me excited to play.
For example, counterstrike is fun, but it’s not really cool or exciting to buy an AK.
By contrast, magic tcg is exciting when you think about how different a blue white control plays vs. green aggro. But it’s definitely not as fun to play.
I think with ow2 PvE, they really want to lean into 1) flavor, 2) cool builds, and 3) accessibility. Risk of rain can’t deliver 2 and 3 at the same time. That’s part of why it’s so fun, but also why blizzard wouldn’t use that format.
My main reason for suggesting Risk of Rain 2 is because I feel like it would be incredibly easy to implement. You could have it as a separate gamemode.
99% of the assets would already have been created in the initial creation of the PVE. So not much work is required and I do feel like it offers immense replayabilty.
Obviously its not fun for everyone but I still think it would be incredibly popular. Even now it has a large consistent playerbase, which is impressive considering it is an Indie game made by 1 person.
Having played and loved both and mostly ignoring this is about OW2, may I propose what I believe to be the perfect fusion of these two?
Slay the Spire.
Also I wanted the artifact of command back so bad and I was incredibly pleased when they brought it back as I made a point of never shutting up about it until they did, lol.
Risk of rain was the game that got me thinking that OW is, potentially, going to do far better as a pve title. I get that we all fell in love with the pvp, but how much of that was because that’s the only thing we’ve had to play for a long time. A fully realized pve experience with expressive and rich characters that have such fun kits? Come on, you gotta be trying hard to screw that up.
