What went wrong?

General Discussion
1

Nothing? Somethings? Everything?
When this game launched, it felt like it had the potential to have tremendous staying power. The sky was the limit; the player base was there, the excitement was there, nothing on the market like it (other than TF2 but that was old).

Overwatch had a captivating look, crazy potential for lore, fresh mechanics, and likable character personalities. I feel like when the game launched, the gaming community had something special, players from a range of different games (FPS, MMO, MOBA) had gravitated toward the game.

I feel like Blizzard themselves had no idea what they truly had created, because it could have continued to be #1ā€¦

But something happened, something drove (and continues to drive) the player base away. Queue times have been increasing steadily for months now. Sure we can say ā€œother gamesā€ but if a game is captivating enough, it can still be extremely popular.

So what happened? Why was the longevity for this game thrown to the waste bin? Why did it feel more like a short term investment cash grab, then a long term video game with a long term platform to establish a community?

What went wrong?

17 Likes
2

They started to listen to DPS players too much. The change that really started the downhill roll was when they wrecked hog. It set the precedent for the massive mistake of a rework done to Mercy.

35 Likes
3

One of the factors is the community has quickly turned in on itself, choosing to stick by a tribal ā€œus VS themā€ mentality.

53 Likes
4

My breaking point was the OWL. But thatā€™s just me.

19 Likes
5

#Brigitte

Post must be at least 20 chars. Mmmkay.

8 Likes
6

I love OWL but it destroyed Overwatch, the fact that they put some of overwatch employees to help with OWL left the game with no updates, a lot of bugs and unfinnished products.

23 Likes
7

Can it all really be blamed on the community itself?

8

No (Hence ā€œOne of the factorsā€), but people who instantly go ā€œX people are ruining Y aspectā€ arenā€™t helping. You end up with the stigmas seen around certain characters or even roles, which drive people away from the game.

7 Likes
9

OWL. They used it way too soon and focused on it hard = less content from core game

10 Likes
10

SHIMPUR !

OWL and no loreā€¦ you know one of their selling points was lore and characters and this gameā€™s lore and characters are getting stale. The last comic we got was that yeti hunter stuff, whereā€™s part 2 of that bastion comic? Or how about a comic about Brig? Or the great adventures of Jack and Ana feat. Reyes? Or a comic about the omnic crisis and how big it was (a way to stick their toes into some grim dark tones) orā€¦

7 Likes
11

ā€œreee Dps players!!!ā€

ā€œThey nerfed my hero and stole my lunch money!ā€

18 Likes
12

My theory is that they have already sold the game to everyone interested so they donā€™t feel like trying anymore.
Releasing troll characters like Hammond to troll the community and pushing innovations only when OWL needs them is already alarming.

6 Likes
13

Donā€™t play hog. Try again.

5 Likes
14

They never started walking, and running might as well be a myth.

Basically the pace of updates to the game, lore and balance changes as well as the quality of said updates and balance changes are still incredibly slow and sometimes lackluster.
With little/no large updates, strange balance choices and constantly decreasing dev-community relations, paired with a self destructive/incredibly divisive community it was doomed to lose a lot of attention given time.
Some could be blamed on Blizz, some on us, and some on a push to E-sport before the game was fully stable.

It really seems to be an unfortunate perfect storm of doing too much and not enough at the same time.

7 Likes
15

People began to whine for idiotic reasons, and nerfs were given to heroes that didnā€™t need them, like Roadhog and D.VA.

Or Sombra back in may.

Nerfs just feel like kneejerk reactions these days because someome got killed by that hero and refusing to switch even though the game encourages you to SWITCH.

6 Likes
16

Roadhog needed a lot of bugfixes too :smiley:

17

Iā€™d argue the problem was how long it took them to make changes.

If they had nerfed hog, but changed him to his PTR state. In a month or two. Would have been fine.

The Mercy stuff? The problem, to me, wasnā€™t that they changed her. The problem is that theyā€™ve been working on her for a over year. And havenā€™t really ever gotten to a point where sheā€™s balanced, fun to play as, and fun to play against.
And that this was wasting a lot of time that could have been spent on fixing other heroes.

9 Likes
18

Balance changes are way too slow and thereā€™s no new content to make up for it. Iā€™m still hooked on the game because of the LFG system and customs.

Overwatch League is cool but it doesnā€™t appeal to a lot of the playerbase.

I have a theory that perhaps they are understaffed? They currently have 15 job openings for the Overwatch team, and 9 internship openings as well.

2 Likes
19

I wasnā€™t aware hog was unable to kill support players. I remember one of the largest complaints was ā€œIā€™m trying to heal my team but this one roadhog keeps hooking meā€

5 Likes
20

I was never bothered by any of the character introductions or maps.

I liked playing the game less after Mercyā€™s rework because she was my first character i picked up, and they decided to remove the best ult in the game (mass res) - instead of saving reworks for those ults that could not make an impact. Imagine if they decided the Dva bomb has too much of an impact and instead they gave her a single target bomb instead? It felt wrong to me (I know Iā€™ll get arguments about this - Iā€™ve heard them, itā€™s fine and done - Iā€™m only expressing that was a tipping point for me)

After that, the balancing act seemed to become more difficult in general, but i did continue to play a lot. I also donā€™t like that most of the time characters are reined in instead of buffed up to balance, which makes it feel like you are being ripped off as opposed to improved all around.

While i love OWL, it has obviously sucked a lot of their resources for the past couple years, and I hope now some time will be devoted back to the game so we can enjoy fresh content again - 2 over-recycled seasonal events this year cut my enthusiasm for playing the game by over 1/2 despite the wonderful skins. That said, Retribution was incredible - and if it wasnā€™t for that event I probably would have stopped completely.

2 Likes