Launch the game with complete nonsense like paid heroes and having to do terrible tedious challenges to earn coins, leave it in that horrible state for a year and a half, fix those problems, and suddenly the community is cheering about how “Overwatch is saved” even though there are still $19 skins in the game, something that never would have been acceptable if they didn’t have these other “fixes” to distract us with
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No they’re just idiots and thinking these idiots are smart enough to do anything is giving them way too much credit
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Nah, just Kotick being Kotick.
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Everything is part of keikaku.
Good/bad changes happening to Overwatch is just a reflection of their company. Good changes are probably being made now because they can afford to, and/or the company merger has changed the company culture for the better.
Nah, they did it all with D4 as well.
They just pushed too hard with their GaaS profiteering bs and now it’s biting them in the behind, so they’re floundering to try and recover what they can.
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I personally believe more that old devs sabotaged the code of the game somehow so new devs would get trouble trying to fix it and thats why it released with so many game breaking bugs.
Or more probably all devs left and there was no one at Blizzard that knows how their spaghetti code works.
And regarding the monetization changes probably the game was bleeding players like crazy and Blizzard is trying to appease people.
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Imo kinda. But not so the devs can get brownie points.
some of it was just Jeff being too old school for his own good. Treating OW, the worlds most successful asset flip, like a stepping stone for the PvE game he wanted to make instead of it’s own new successful thing, was a massive fumble.
But most of it was so the ActiBlizz corporate guys who know their days were numbered could succ as much value from the IP as possible while they could, so they did every shortsighted “I want money NOW” play they could. The buyout was announced in early 2022, but the top guys knew it was coming way before that, enough to influence a lot of OW2’s development and monetization.
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The heroes in the pass does more to harm the game than greedy $19 skins. At least this way Overwatch can actually improve, and that’s worth celebrating. Besides, look at it this way: its Blizzard admitting they were wrong. Maybe we’ll get 2CP back as well if they’re feeling so humbled.
Don’t get me wrong; its not like I think we should fall to our knees and praise blizzard for doing what they should have done along time ago. However, thinking “overwatch is saved!” due to them actually going back and making things right doesn’t seem all too bad. Even if its a bit premature.
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It’s almost like there was some really horrible man… who was in charge of everything, who wanted Blizzard to be generating maximum profit for years and years, who was known for putting his fingers in various pies to get what he wanted.
And now that he’s gone, Blizzard is able to shift things around and start doing what they wanted to do from the get go.
This was advice I read online. The customer has a strong urge to complain, so you give them something obvious to complain about that is easy to fix. Otherwise you have to actually change stuff.
I never did that myself but I can see how it can work.
Been saying that the whole time.
I might actually forgive them for the state of Symmetra if this actually happens. Please Blizzard.
It was sort-of sabotaged, but not really.
It was ‘sabotaged’ by Bobby Kotick who didn’t understand what Overwatch actually was (this is well documented) and just wanted to turn it into Call of Duty, with a yearly release cadence and microtransactions to boot (this is pretty well documented). Overwatch 2 as we got it is the compromise.
It was ‘sabotaged’ by Jeff Kaplan who spent years of development trying to build a PVE game instead of maintaining the live PVP game that they had, in the hopes that he would be able to one-day drop the PVP FPS altogether and turn Overwatch into an MMORPG (again, this is well-documented).
The ‘fixing’ that is now happening is because Bobby Kotick is gone and Blizzard’s new management is full-steam ahead on Overwatch 2 as a PVP-first game. For the first in years (probably since late-2016, early 2017), Blizzard has a single focus on the live Overwatch game and there isn’t someone within trying to undermine Team 4 while they try and make the game better.
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This makes me sick more than anything.
It’s like being held up in the street at gunpoint and asked for your money. Then when they get the persons money they give it back and be like "Look at me giving this person their money back, Aren’t I really nice! "
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Blizzard is NOT Aizen 
Nah.
Just a mix of terrible game direction by a lead designer who has little experience in FPS titles. Not entirely Keller’s fault, but he has made some awful decisions, S9 changes being one of them.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it was revealed that the team was purposely making OW2 bad in the hopes that they don’t have to work on it anymore. Being forced to design a title that was left in the dust and shut down by executives must be demoralising.
Yes, yes my man. Finally something we can agree on.
It is about pushing the bar as high as possible until it stops making money and has to be lowered.
More like it was sabotaged by their old CEO, and it’s in the best interest of the new ones to fix such.
More like activision saw how big the call of duty model is and forced it on team 4. PVE was like burning money and they probably thought it would offset the cost.