Why did overwatch succeed where lawbreakers failed?

Competitive Discussion
1

This is a question i wonder about a lot.

I’ve watched enough lawbreakers vids to see that the game has a much higher skill cap and better depth than overwatch.

One thing I would say it lacked is good character design. However, is the real reason it failed because it was catering to the skilled elite as opposed to pandering to the masses (which sorry to say, is what overwatch does).

Is there no room for creating a game that rewards skill better? are skilled players so rare that a game that caters to them will just naturally have so few players that the game fails?

many people on this forum, including me, have not cared for the continual addition of low skill characters into the game, yet is this what is necessary to maintain good player numbers in a game?

I’m a bit depressed at mankind…the best fighting game I ever played was smash brothers melee, yet it got replaced by sequels with lower skill caps because the developers wanted the game to be more accessible.

Is there no way to have an esport with a high skill-cap game because you need a low-skill ceiling to let the casuals play?

I’m sorry but the truth is lawbreakers took about 10 times more skill than any given character in overwatch, yet no one wanted to play it.

And every game I find that accidentally was created with depth ends up having that depth removed in the sequel to increase accessibility to the game.

why can’t you just have certain techniques, skills, rulesets, and even balance changes to characters be based on the skill of the players in the given game.

For example, instead of choosing between having junkrat broken at mid level and adequate at top level
or good at mid level but useless at top level, why not have his stats change as you go up the ladder?

Is it really bad to balance the game separately for low SR players and high SR players?

Because I don’t see anyway to have enough players for an esport scene without balancing for the lower rank players, yet in order to truly have a game of beauty at top level play, you need to be creating a game for the top level scene.

As a developer, I know that blizzard could make a better esport game…but if it can’t get the player numbers necessary, that esport will just fail like many before it.

2

Well for 1 the company behind OW is worth billions and marketed really well.

3

Well, GM/T500 and OWL are the lowest percent of players. A game wouldn’t survive on them alone.

4

2 simple reasons.
1: overwatch was out before lawbreakers making lawbreakers just another overwatch clone like many of the other games like overwatch out there right now. that came after overwatches release.
2: the company hosting/who made it. are a garbage company. nexon is not known for being the best when they release a game to NA or the EU, there market dimagraphic is over in SK china and japan the company is based some where in asia and they maket to them rather then the NA or EU demagraphic. so a game that does super well over there might not do well over here.

all in all i wouldnt play lawbreakers personaly. becuse to me its just another clone of overwatch. much like a few other games, so why play them when i can play overwatch

5

I never considered Lawbreakers to be an actual clone, but rather Unreal Tournament modified to fit the trend Overwatch set (seriously, it became an arms race on who can make the best class-based shooter after Overwatch put the nail in the coffin on TF2).

Here’s how Lawbreakers failed in terms of attracting players (not in order, and some weigh more than the other in terms of impact on how it failed):

1.) Lack of marketing in quantity: You can have a massive billboard, but if your pamphlets, ads, and promotion is severely lacking, its not gonna go well.
2.) Does not welcome casuals in the marketing when it came up: When the marketing did come up, it really shouted “git gud” so much and casuals don’t like being challenged that way.
3.) Cliffy B himself: He’s cocky, he speaks his mind out too often, and despite being a legend for Unreal Tournament and Gears of War, there are still WAY more people who don’t know him for who he really is and why he acts like an a@#hole, when he’s just being brutally honest with his opinions, and he doesn’t sugar coat.
4.) Nexon’s reputation: Self-explanatory
5.) Release date: Its not really because it was released almost a year later, it was released at a time that not alot of people are at home.

The gameplay is basically a tad bit Tribes Ascend due to verticality and how you last in the air (plus zero gravity), but mostly Unreal Tournament, and both I absolutely adore… but this kind of gameplay in a shooter caters to people who gamed hardcore (when it comes to FPS) in the 90’s and 2000’s. This is also why Quake Champions is struggling as well. The gameplay is from an age (that I desperately miss) where you really have to think on your feet (because you move at a thousand miles per hour, basically), where game sense and mechanical skill have to basically match each other in order to thrive (know the map, know the movement mechanics, and even know the time, as well has crosshair placement and readjustment via tracking and flicking, you have to know all in order to thrive).

And here is how the game failed on the gameplay aspect (again, not in order, and some weigh more than the other in terms of impact on how it failed):

1.) Game modes: Seriously, its almost all the same.
2.) No ranked mode on release: If you market it as hardcore, might as well delay the game a bit more and then release the game with competitive mode.
3.) Skill floor is higher a hundred times than Genji’s skill ceiling: I ever so slightly exaggerated that, its maybe 80 or 90 times higher than Genji’s skill ceiling… and that’s just the skill floor of the game in general.
4.) Quake Champions exists: There are people who want a refresh on Arena shooters, and thats the one they want. Plus, Unreal Tournament is still a thing, and for free… despite the sheer lack of dev support.

The sad part is that people who crave for a competitive Overwatch have other companies take their word, make it in their demands, yet almost no one played it. I guess its just that we have to remember that we’re at an era in which the casual market is what the devs look at now because that’s where the market is. Hardcore gamers don’t really give that much money to game devs, lets get real. This is why I’m livid, every day, when people try and argue with me that Overwatch is competitive in nature, when its balancing direction alone is evident enough on why its not. Also a part of me remembers the AWP nerf in CSGO, which honestly completely obliterated the playstyle of maybe one or two top-level players (KennyS and JW), because it wasn’t even an abuse, it was just good display of courage at best, and you could be punished easily for it.

6

I’ll tell you about why I didn’t even bother trying lawbreakers while it took me only a few gameplay videos of OW to decide to buy it even though I never played FPS before.

  1. Blizzard. I like their games. I trust them as a developer.

  2. Holy trinity. As someone who comes from mmorpgs genre, I freaking love the holy trinity. Sometimes I don’t even play a game if it doesn’t exist because I just love healing. I think being a healer/dps/tank is a character trait at this point. You pick a role and you fall in love and you get married and never cheat because you just can’t, trying to get with other roles is just a ridiculous notion.

I think lawbreakers had some sort of healer, but it still seemed more like a dps to me and like you could do without it.

  1. Art style. OW cartoony artstyle will hold up well. And this is personal preference: but I just hate all those sci-fi/realistic art styles so many fps have, it’s just…boring and been done a million times before.

  2. Characters, I’ve read the bios of the characters in lawbreaks and none of them seemed all that interesting tbh. OW characters seem more memorable and different, and you can tell in game, you don’t have to go on a website to figure out that Mercy is a (mostly) pacifist doctor who wants to save people.

  3. Oh and too much flying/jumping whatever the f*** is going on, I like to stay on the ground tyvm.

When choosing a game to play “Skill” isn’t everything.

“Continual addition”, we had two. 2 out of 6 heroes, do the math, and I wouldn’t say that brig is one of the easiest heroes in the game, she is around reins level actually. I get the impression that you definition of skill is aim, which may mean this isn’t the game for you. Aim ain’t everything in OW you should have realized that just from game play footage, even before you bought the game.

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7

lawbreaker looks like more of quake rip off rather than overwatch

and for why it’s failed , it’s look boring tbh

you just fly around and kill people while OW have different cool heroes and mechanics while lawbreaker all you do fly around and shoot people

how can you even compare overwatch to this meme ?

8

Lawbreakers is a different beast from Overwatch.

And simply put it, there’s so much competition. Mind you, if we look just from a quake arena style of game. We got already that with Quake champions, unreal tournament, and maybe TF2.

That’s also not including other fps games like CS, COD, battlefield, titanfall, and modded games.

Lawbreakers is already dealing with a huge saturated market, and unless it brought something new. There really isn’t much you can do.

In addition, Overwatch is blizz new IP in years as well as genuinely being fresh and exciting. Even from just colors, playstyle and all, it gives a far better feel to just play.

While I would say skill ceiling restricts a lot of Lawbreaker newcomers, Overwatch (Depsite criticism.), does have a point. Its better to make it accessible but the skill ceiling is there.

Again, while CS has some high skill ceiling, it has enough appeals for a large number of audience to pick up and start playing. Getting better is also rewarding and you can carry teams at times, so there’s that.

I see Overwatch thoughts and utilizing some of what CS is doing but because of its design which heavily relies on teamwork, its a much tougher ordeal because carrying is hard.

Honestly though, Blizz does balance to the OWL standards. Its just at times, they have to bite the bullet and balance more on the lower levels as well to keep people playing the game. You may hate it but its what keep Overwatch alive.

9

Lawbreakers isn’t a Quake rip-off, its just that Quake and Unreal Tournament look alike, but both play differently in terms of mechanical movement. If anything, Lawbreakers is a class-based Unreal-tournament.

And saying “you just fly around and kill people” is a really shallow and ignorant view. In Overwatch, if anything, its literally a simplified TF2. It just doesn’t “play” like a simplified TF2 because you literally have twice or three times the characters to play compared to TF2.

If anything, Overwatch is a meme… that has a pro-league that is anti-meme and maybe catered to Tumblr.

How Lawbreakers failed is that it came at a wrong time and catered way too heavily on the hardcore market when its been quite a long time that the era caters to casuals.

10

Blizz Succeeded by bringing in people who don’t play video games and balancing for them. Lawbreakers failed in general because everyone was already playing OW when it was still fun. If it were to release today there’d probably another exodus similar to fortnite.

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11

As much as I hate fortnite (or rather most third person shooters because I hate the feeling of a “disconnect” in perspective when it comes to shooters), its a show of how games like Lawbreakers should’ve been. Released at a time when people want something else but still within familiarity.