Why are people saying PvE lost it's replayability?

General Discussion
1

So I know everyone is super emotional about this now. All I want is your point of view, and I will give you mine.

What they scrapped are talent trees and hero missions. I am sad about the talent trees as it sounded like a cool feature, but they only work with hero missions, which brings me to my second point.

Everyone in this forum is saying that hero missions are the core of PvE replayability. However, hero missions are essentially procedurally generated missions on every map with varying enemies and objectives. For example:

  • Survive x amount of time.
  • Collect batteries.
  • Defeat a powerful enemy.

As a game creator, my experience with proceduralism is as follows. If you offer the player a sandbox where they can build their own way to play, the game can be fun and successful. Look at Minecraft, for example. The replayability of Minecraft does not come from its procedural world. The world is just a stage. You create your own story. You can build a house, try to survive, play with friends, etc. Creativity is the key selling point, and playing the game how you want it.

Letā€™s take No Manā€™s Sky as a counterexample. When the game was released, there was no building mechanic, no multiplayer, and repetitive gameplay loop. Once you knew how enemies moved, how to farm, etc., there was nothing more to do. The game only started to thrive once they added features that allowed players to build their own adventure.

So where does this lead us? The Overwatch devs cannot add infinite variety in the modes. You are playing the game how they want because the hero missions force different rules upon you. This is proceduralism at its worst, and itā€™s my guess as to why they scrapped the mode. After you played the ā€œcollect batteriesā€ mode once, it will become boring.

I actually think the Story Missions have higher replayability. This is if PvE is done right. Look at Left 4 Dead, for example. They had a (fairly plain) campaign, but people put thousands of hours into the game. If they do Archives 1.2, this is not PvE done right. But after rewatching the feedback from BlizzCon 2019, the PvE feels much better than Archives.

So what do you think?

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2

I have thousands of hours in L4D hehā€¦

Completely ignored the campaign mode and pretty much played versus mode exclusivelyā€¦

Back 4 Blood failed because they didnā€™t have a highly replayable PVP mode like L4Dā€¦

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Hahaha same :smiley: I am also fairly competitive, and enjoyed the PvP, but i have a lot of friends who donā€™t. So we played a lot of PvE too and it never got boring.
And most Players in Left4Dead are playing PvE.

About Back4Blood thatā€™s certainly one point, but the game was just bad Tbh :stuck_out_tongue:

Also HOLY **** how did you read the complete text in like 10 seconds? :joy:

4

Why replay and try to master an Overwatch mission in comparison to something like a Left 4 Dead campaign when at the end of the season it will all just be thrown away? And that assumes OWā€™s PvE will have nearly the skill ceiling as L4D - which you can easily solo a campaign in if youā€™re good enough. You cannot solo an Overwatch PvE mission cause ofc they love to use bullet sponges and time limits.

5

If i understood it correctly we will get a Lore Archive. So the story missions will be released every season and the amount of missions will increase as a live service.

About the solo run: Fair. I did finish Retribution on Legendary solo as Reaper. But i assume PvE wonā€™t be so easy. Overwatch is a team game though, on the contrary to most valve games. If you take TF2 for example, it is similar to overwatch but much less focused on teamplay.

6

Not every mission has or will have self healing high damage heroes - try beating one as Winston, Reinhardt, Tracer, or any other future popular hero without a reliable self heal. In left 4 dead you can play your favorite character with your favorite weapon just fine. Damn if only we had something that could make up for that like skill trees or upgradesā€¦

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7

Iā€™m not sure if you missed the part where they said no more skill trees to make your own build and diversify playstyles. If I ever played OW2 PvE it would be to experience crazy builds.

The only thing that would have gotten me to play PvE was unlocking skills and building a character using the skill trees.

The fact that you could playthrough with multiple builds on multiple heroes is pretty much where the replay-ability was.

I would not have done as many playthroughs of BL and BL2 as I have done if the only incentive was the story. Same with Diablo games.

The lack of a sense of progression is what makes something less repayable. They have essentially removed the features that provide that progression and now we are going to keep getting cut and paste short missions like the ones from OW1 that in their entirety feel exactly like the silly side quests you allude to in your post.

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8

I mean I loved retribution and all the other pve thingsā€¦ but after some time was boring to repeat the same thing over and over and overā€¦ point of the story was to add some depth to the lacking loreā€¦ now the only things that are left for the lore are the hero interactionsā€¦

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9

The thing that will be a little oofy is the fact you cannot change any current hero abilities. So, even if it was intended to be played multiple times, you already know about the hero abilities and there will be a ā€œmetaā€ each time.

What I liked about the skill trees idea-wise is no one personā€™s hero would be the same. You could run a Tracer with a fire trail or Rein with a bubble shield or S76 with a poison flask instead.

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10

Isnā€™t L4D replayed so much because of its ā€¦ PvP elements?
I havenā€™t played it in years, but I specifically remember that both teams had human players. Sure it wasnā€™t a clear cut PvP game, but still PvP&E I guess.

We already have a pretty good idea of how Story missions will go.
They will probably be similar to the archives missions. So they will be fun for a bit, but ultimately have not a lot of replayability.
Talent trees would have been a big part of making the PvE aspect replayable

11

No i didnā€™t miss that, as i was writing in my post :slight_smile:
So you are more of an RPG style gamer who enjoys unlocking and getting more and more powerfull over time.
That is completely fair, and i get why the removal of the skill tree is hurting you.

Keep in mind though, the skill tree was never intended to use in the campaign.
It was only for the hero missions, which is the whole argument of my post.

The concept of hero missions are boring. Because there is no point unlocking more powerfull skills if the tasks are repetitive and not fun.

12

with how they invisioned hero missions, there were objectives you worked on and at the end you gain points to progress a heros talent tree, you could mix and march those talents and create loadouts that could alter your experience on each mission, and thus this is a big key to its replayability.
story mode will probably be like archives, lack of progress torwards anything, you only work for high scores on leaderboards, less replayability because of that. I hope that they at least add the option to play as any hero in that mode like archives so it becomes less repetitive, the new junkerstein mode suffered from that.

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Actually the biggest Player Base of Left4Dead was PvE. The game was primarily known for its PvE mode.
As there are Overwatch Players in this forum, i get why most of you played PvP, i also fairly enjoyed this part of the game. And i would love it, if they added the possibility to play enemies in the future. But we will see. Primarily we will get a PvE Mode.

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14

I really donā€™t care about PvE in this game. There are far better PvE options.

It was just my 2c

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15

So, part of the issue for me is that there is very little information regarding what comprises a ā€˜Hero Missionā€™ versus a ā€˜Story Missionā€™. Based on the 2019 demo, perhaps incorrectly, I presumed the entire package together looks something like the Battleborn co-op model. Those missions were replayable based on the advancement of the character, potentially overpowering the content via powers or gear, and ability to return to it over time to apply different powers and tactics.

I interpret the dropped ā€˜Hero missionsā€™ to be the overall connected campaigns with the system. Story beat, gameplay, story beat, gameplay, boss encounter, story beat. Mission over, start next chapter. If you get tired of chapter 1, you can move on to chapter 2, etc. Grind out a couple of daily horde mode ā€˜eventsā€™ in between more complex story missions.

What I am interpreting the overall change to be is that they are now just taking slices of the overall campaign they can salvage and creating intro, gameplay, outro, and then placing them throughout the year like special events. There is no official statement on whether these will be permanent additions or seasonal content.

If you give me a book, I want to read it from front to back. I want to be able to re-read chapters that get my interest and chew them over in new context. The revelation from yesterday does not answer whether that is possible - the examples in existence of implementation of these ā€˜eventsā€™ is that they are limited time and then potentially gone forever.

The concern, founded or unfounded, would be comparable to having a story run in a comic book and then having the publisher take back and then burn each months issue after they release the next one.

16

So, you are more concerned about the lack of communication? Same here.
Thereā€™s a lot of stuff that remains unclear.

However, considering the current outrage, I believe they will address these issues in the upcoming developer update. A significant portion of the anger stems from misunderstandings, lack of communication, and, to be honest, people clickbaiting with headlines like ā€œPVE IS CANCELED.ā€

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17

I think youā€™re right that there are many examples and ways they could make a game replayable. The Halloween had little fun Easter eggs and scores that players could replay and they can always iterate on them in the future.

However, I think for me Iā€™d still be bummed about it because the underlying issue is that event games or whatever they implement are temporary. Even if something is fun and exciting, itā€™s just for that duration. Itā€™s not something I could take my time with or pour my time into at my own pace at anytime. We might not be able to play it again in the future. These types of games encourages us to participate in the limited time and try to make the most of it. Of course, with the hype around it, an incentive for purchases. Itā€™s not quite the experience I look for in a PVE game. I still like the PVP and will likely continue to play that but when it comes to PVE I like something I can do on my own whenever I want.

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18

Hero missions are supposed to be gamemode with random objectives

Story missions are linear and with the same objective and characters. Itā€™s not replayable

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19

The mechanics of this game are not designed for PVE.

20

Because Blizzard axed the feature which was slated to provide a huge amount of the depth for the PvE. Simple as that.

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