Worth the watch because the video shows up some unseen information from years back, and partly explains what changed in meantime, what complete idea was, and why it changed mid way.
32 Likes
Tbh I feel like they had no clue what to do with the PvE from the start especially after the PvE stuff that has been shown off.
Seemed more like “people like the archive missions so lets make them pay for those”
41 Likes
I think they spent 2 years trying to make mechanics that worked for PvE and PvP and realized you can’t have heroes that play the same in both modes without sacrificing the best design for either.
3 Likes
I mean, we all here don’t like streams, pro-players and content-creators (take that with a grain of salt)
But Seagull really has some valid points and every time I hear something like Seagull pointed out right now, it rings Cyberpunk deep behind in some part of my brain.
2 Likes
Yes, Seagull’s video is very good. It lays out perfectly why and how we got to where we are today. I think that almost everyone agrees that we would have liked to have had a full sequel with PvE and PvP released together.
The other option that he didn’t talk about that might have happened is if they chose to abandon the PvE altogether, and just put OW1 on life support like SC2 and Warcraft 3 with just the occasional balance patch but no new content to speak of. That might have pleased a number of players, but the game would have definitely become a niche game.
The decision they finally made was disappointing, but I think we have a good base to build upon. Hopefully they can eventually deliver, and all of this angst will just become a happy memory. But at this time, there is no way to tell.
4 Likes
The way I see it.
August 7th, 2021
August 28th, 2021
September 3rd, 2021
They didn’t start working on PVP until about September 3rd 2021.
And that had about 2 months of vacations, and 3x Kotick scandals, and it had to be ready for Alpha in April 2022.
That’s 224 days, about 160 weekdays, and about 115 days that weren’t vacation days.
Minus however many weeks were messed up by “Kotick weeks”.
14 Likes
the archive missions were more or less them taking the PVP engine/maps and basically jerry rigging them with enemy basic A.I. behaviors, triggered by what is otherwise normal map progressions.
The core is no different from what most other shooter campaigns are built off of.
The only major issues was the fact that their was no customization, no really out their hero/enemy interactions. At least outside of stuff that was already in the game like the rien charge.
Like once you played the mode once or twice theirs no real reason to go back to it, unless you really want to get those harder difficulties/trophies a try.
Ow2 would not only have more extensive modes to mix the game up, but more unique enemy types that would have different interactions between heroes. Like the licker style enemy that traps and slowly pulls you in for a melee one shot, requiring you to either priorities the enemy before it can snatch someone. Or play keep away depending on your pick.
Like for reaper this would be almost a none issue punishing the fact that it’s bringing him closer to the target with wraith. While Widow would need not panic and get the headshot beforehand.
With more customization options in saw how a hero does damage, CC, effect certian Hp types, or even move.
Like we saw a talent that lets soldiers healing pods follow him and actively push back targets away from him. Allow you to customize him around a defend the payload from being attacked kinds of situations.
5 Likes
All depends on how good PVE is going to be, albeit it’s very worrying that they’ve not showed anything for such a long time.
Don’t think PVP is going to take the franchise back to 2016 heights even with F2P model, so they probably made the right decision to release it early to at least appease the existing fanbase (although monetisation is still poorly executed).
4 Likes
Summary:
They promised us more in 2019 so where is it?
My Answer:
A lot of things happened. If they would still hold to the old plan and not split PvP and PvE and did not plan to bring out PvE is smaller packs, we might have to wait until 2030 for anything.
Edit after the video:
I was very close. The PvE idea was stupid for a PvP game with a big audience and competitors on the market. They killed OW1 because they wanted to make a new game but were so ambiguous that it would have took 10+ years for it to finish. So they turned the ship around to not let the players wait 10+ years for something. 3 years was already to long.
1 Like
Seagull pointed out one key thing that should have happened: separation of the PVP and PVE development teams. If that had happened, PVP could have continued to be supported for the past three years (still would probably ended up over monetized), and PVE could have come out as a separate game.
6 Likes
Thats the whole point. Many players said this and even CCs like him but they, as always, were late to implement that split.
To be fair, the only disappointing thing is that they released 3 of the new heroes instead of 6 at least. That would have been different. PvE is clearly the big chunk of OW2 and all the complainers about this PvP being “copy and paste” of OW1 are dishonestly pretending its not.
Weird at this point. Specially in this forum.
10 Likes
The disappointment is that OW2 was supposed to be the pve, and not this switch to 5v5 where balance is somehow much worse, there is a bigger gap between the good and bad heroes, the game feels degraded regardless of the improvements to the visuals.
The simple fact is that the pve didnt work out, again, and so they are trying to compete with the BRs and taking all their worst aspects.
I will honestly be surprised if blizzard delivers anything remotely close to the pve they promised us when it was announced.
7 Likes
People need to watch the video, if you only look at the title and thumbnail it’s actually not what it seems.
1 Like
Interesting, but he leaves out the epic disaster of deciding to throw a bunch of your paying customers in the trash with a poorly implemented SMS system that removes access to a game they paid for while Blizzard uses the excuse of it being a “new game” to try to justify removing access to a product you paid money for.
If they had just stuck to their plan of releasing the PvE as a paid expansion and leaving the rest alone, even releasing these PvP updates early without changing to F2P, everything would have gone so much smoother.
Instead, as soon as Kaplan was out the door, the vultures jumped in and forced terrible changes with zero care in the world for any loyal customers they screwed over in the process. Their terrible decisions killed massive levels of hype for the game and now have people worrying that the PvE business model is going to be a pay to win 
show or possibly an empty shell compared to what they had hoped for.
The biggest issue with the Overwatch team/modern Blizzard is that they have zero loyalty or care for the loyal fans that made them successful.
6 Likes
I am mostly worried about the replayability factor.
I am not convinced they can pull a pve that doesn’t get stale after just few runs.
4 Likes
As far as we know PVE part of the game will not be free, but will be a paid game, on the model of paid DLC.
I’d imagine it being some sort of Wow raids like system, but also not keen on the idea itself.
2 Likes
That was how it was originally announced. That was before they announced the change to F2P. When OW2 was first announced, they hadn’t yet decided to change their business model to F2P. OW2 PvE was going to be a purchased expansion essentially and OW2 PvP content was going to be “free” to people who already owned OW1, even if they didn’t purchase OW2.
OW2 PvE is no longer going to be a buy to play thing where you buy it once. It is also part of the F2P model and they are going to just release parts of it as seasonal content in OW2.
edit: I guess various articles still claim it is not clear if OW2 PvE is part of the F2P model or will still be a separate purchase, I thought they had clarified that in the F2P reveal but I guess it doesn’t actually say for certain.
i mean sure when they can pull of a borderlands for ow i would be happy. i really doubt these devs are capable of anything these days. and even then… you dont play borderlands 24/7. its nice to play a pve game 1-2 times and thats it.
I still can’t figure out how people are going to shoot at bots for years. I was bored of it after 15 minutes during the events.
8 Likes
I think the idea is that it’s supposed to be a lot more involved than just the limited PvE missions we had in OW1.
I mean, there are plenty of PvE shooters and some are very popular like Destiny or Warframe.
The fact that they’re now going to trickle that content out as seasonal instead of releasing it in the way that was originally planned does make me think it will feel much more limited and not live up to what we had hoped it would be.
3 Likes