Overwatch

World finals in sweden start tonight and run for 5 days. I'm gonna be heavily napping during thanksgiving activities. 4:30 am my time.

For anyone still playing, there was a Spotlight today to reveal plans for the new season, and year. The 2 is being dropped, game is just called Overwatch again. There will be year long story arcs that play out over the 5 seasons in a year with events, cinematics, and in game comics to actually try to tell a story. New season starts this coming tuesday with five new characters. One tank, two dps and two heals. Menu system is being overhauled, Stadium is being streamlined. Lots of new(ish) stuff, the new tank looks pretty interesting

Any goon skins?

In case of emergency, break cat glass

5 All at once next week and 5 other during the year. The omnic detective looks interesting.

Marvel Rivals really took their entire Lunchables..

After playing Overwatch for years, I completely dropped it once Overwatch 2 came out because it killed Overwatch for no good reason, and was all around a worse version of Overwatch.

These changes seem promising, but it's too little too late probably. Overwatch as a franchise had the potential to become a major franchise with animated movies or TV series, with a huge potential for worldbuilding, but as usual Blizzard took too long to do anything and messed up, it's probably too late now to salvage this.

It's ironic to see other companies stealing ideas from Blizzard and implementing them better, that's usually Blizzard's modus operandi.

Despite all the bullshit accumulated around Blizzard and Overwatch over the years, I'll admit I still look fondly at the Overwatch cinematics (the CGI ones mostly, the comics-style short stories aren't as interesting in my opinion. And the OW2 trailer was amazing).

Seeing 5 or 10 more heroes coming doesn't make me hopeful, there's way too many already, a lot of them feel redundant, and a lot of them are just virtue-signaling dumps because they really wanted to make a gay black autistic robot so kids can feel represented. Blizzard should focus on a much tighter group of characters, OW1's initial roster was just fine for the stories they told in the cinematics and comics, it didn't need 50+ characters except to just make people pay for them of course.

I hope there's a way it can transcend its limited potential as "just another team shooter" and go the way of animated films, Mario is doing great movies despite having a story thin enough to fit on a post-it note so I'm sure Overwatch can work, but probably best with as little Blizzard involvement as possible, this company poisons everything it touches these days.

Runnen said:

as usual Blizzard took too long to do anything and messed up, it's probably too late now to salvage this.

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I don't play much myself anymore, but I watch Flats talk about it abit; but essentially OW due to Rivals has made some really good changes that has solidified it's hardcore player base to stay, and the casuals drip feeding back in.. while napkin math in regards to which one is doing better, he deducts that OW > Rivals in terms of playerbase.. a sorta healthy competition that ow is better for.

I was personally a huge fan of the 5v5 format change, and was happy to see they finally got hero bans.. the sorta last thing I really ever wanted for them was to increase their hero release window; so its nice to see they're going for a 5?(10 this year) instead of a 3 per year versus Rival's 8? which is awesome to look forward to, even if I don't play that often. With the amount of games coming out.. OW needs more flare to compete in regards to relevancy and it'll make the casual audience foam at the mouth.. Hardcore will bitch about balance, ect.. but the average player could care less of meta picks.

I thought the new cinematic in idea was cool for world building.. but something about Vendetta's face just wasn't doing it for me.. the rest of her design was fine.

But i'm over here sipping on deadlock, so w/e; if I have enough people within my circle to jump into OW, I will.. otherwise just watching from a distance. Imo, a hero based game lives by its expansive pool of characters; stagnate that, and the game dies.. specifically in regards to the casual base.

gauze said:

the sorta last thing I really ever wanted for them was to increase their hero release window; so its nice to see they're going for a 5?(10 this year) instead of a 3 per year versus Rival's 8? which is awesome to look forward to, even if I don't play that often. With the amount of games coming out.. OW needs more flare to compete in regards to relevancy and it'll make the casual audience foam at the mouth.. Hardcore will bitch about balance, ect.. but the average player could care less of meta picks.

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The problem with the release of more heroes for Overwatch as opposed to Marvel Rivals is that for Marvel you have literally hundreds of established characters from Marvel lore and they each have their own established fanbase, even if it's very niche someone will be happy that their favorite character from comics is coming.

For Overwatch, all the characters are "original" creations and as such, they need to grow a fanbase by being interesting and/or having an inspiring backstory and/or design. Which works with most of the original roster I think, but then you begin to have redundant characters since they feel obligated to have almost every character be an amputee with bionic limbs and on the LGBTWTSFBSSPST spectrum, it's just tiresome.

I'm mostly talking about the story issues of having so many characters and a lot of them being completely one-dimensional virtue-signaling token minority stand-ins. I understand the need to have more and more characters to allow for more diverse gameplay, though I feel a lot of them are quite redundant with only minimal variations in gameplay that could have been solved by giving a tighter roster of characters (such as the original roster) a spec system akin to WoW talents, instead of adding more characters like "Oh this one is like Roadhog but his hook HEALS instead of hurting!"

Yeah real hard to care with all the bullshit surrounding OW 2 and its PvE stuff etc. plus blizzard has been a dumpster fire since Diablo 3 launch.

Valderen said:

I wish I could try it again because I think it looks interesting now after a few years of not being great, but sadly for me Parkinson makes it impossible to play with m/b and I have zero interest on playing it with a controller. I'm fine doing solo or coop shooters with a controller but not a competitive game. I'd feel too much like a liability to my team.

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Might not be the same for you if you're in it for the team aspect, but perhaps if they manage to make a at least half-assed PVE game around Overwatch, you could play that. But there's probably better PVE shooters out there I guess.

Runnen said:

The problem with the release of more heroes for Overwatch as opposed to Marvel Rivals is that for Marvel you have literally hundreds of established characters from Marvel lore and they each have their own established fanbase, even if it's very niche someone will be happy that their favorite character from comics is coming.

For Overwatch, all the characters are "original" creations and as such, they need to grow a fanbase by being interesting and/or having an inspiring backstory and/or design. Which works with most of the original roster I think, but then you begin to have redundant characters since they feel obligated to have almost every character be an amputee with bionic limbs and on the LGBTWTSFBSSPST spectrum, it's just tiresome.

I'm mostly talking about the story issues of having so many characters and a lot of them being completely one-dimensional virtue-signaling token minority stand-ins. I understand the need to have more and more characters to allow for more diverse gameplay, though I feel a lot of them are quite redundant with only minimal variations in gameplay that could have been solved by giving a tighter roster of characters (such as the original roster) a spec system akin to WoW talents, instead of adding more characters like "Oh this one is like Roadhog but his hook HEALS instead of hurting!"

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Luckily for me atleast.. nobody I know personally who plays or have played cares about the story beats and put more on interesting gameplay offered in a shooter that is moba esq(pool of heroes with unique skillsets). While i'm sure there is a world where that specifically works in regards to a tighter roster; the game would have died due to fleeting interests since there is no sort of identity in a game based on the variety of heroes; but thats not say it couldn't have worked but tacking on more to a standing identity would have not been good design for something like this imo.

The idea of seeing roadhog and knowing what he does is pretty important to these kinds of games. They have already been notoriously terrible at balancing, it would have been worse if it went that route.. atleast with adding new heroes, they'll be days that quarter to half the roster is mid to low tier but you'll always have options ontop of people who soar or flunk on offmeta heroes. League is a decent example, i'm sure DoTA too..of its 100 something roster, only a quarter of them see above a certain percentage of play until either they release something that facilitates a synergy, rebalance, or new mechanic/item is discovered. More heroes is just another way of playing the same game in fresh new ways in predesigned rules.. which is where Rivals does really well in.

I'd say for a decent chunk of people, it's nothing to do with the player and their connection to the character via story.. but is how they play fun, are they strong, and/or do they look cool doing it. It runs into the sorta Valorant problem, where while maybe not as tight as you're describing.. the roster functionally works samesame.. and the only thing that are left are soyboys and girls playing it.. skill expression dissapeared, and player identity went with it.. it's too inbetween. In Rival's my experience has been that people are excited because of a long standing history but I know a few people that their favorite comic book character is x, but are absolutely playing something way different because of the mechanics of the character is more enjoyable.. for instance, my friend is a huge spawn fan.. and loves the fact Valkyre is in; but wouldn't touch that character with a tenfoot pole.. same with another friend who is a Cap fan through and through, hates the character in the game lol.. Deadpool aswell.

I do know someone who quit when Tracer is gay moment, but other than that the only people I know who cared about anything story were woman who played.. most of the guys I knew.. probably all the guys I know wrote it as a oh hey cool but does he kill? or does the thing

But I guess ultimately I can only speak for myself, I think the Cat looks fun to play.. Play's like Ivy from Deadlock w/o a damage build though ;c.. Soldier 69 looks fun as hell.. a sorta 76/Soulja crossbreed, and Kung Lao all look fun to play. And the fact they still haven't released a PvE mode while Rivals PvE mode recieved praise and the whole pivot to "2" was a PvE mode is criminal but /shrug

I think the only "story" I care about is the regional identity.. always thought that was cool. Was one of my favorite things about fighting games.. but the fact they didn't make Lifeweaver a kathoey was a missed opportunity.

Marvel surpassed them in total heroes recently, and every Marvel season has a story behind it. This is their answer to Marvel. Competition is good.

I've basically dropped this game since Arc came out. I'd rather play Marvel if I'm not playing Arc. Overwatch is kinda of a kids game anymore, and Marvel seems more of a grown up game. I'll stick with the game that gives nice T&A.

Edit: Marvel's monetization is a ton better than Overwatch's. I've earned a lot of paid skins for free just by playing the game. Even then, when I've bought a skin I haven't paid more than $10. I usually have enough currency to make up for the $17 or so they usually charge. You don't get to do that with Overwatch. Their skins are more expensive when compared to Marvel.