6 ms·

I'm not sure i 100% grok the OW2 backlash we're seeing at the moment. It's a f2p game and has a middling reward model for the battle pass. That's pitch fork w

by w0m 4y ago

I'm not sure i 100% grok the OW2 backlash we're seeing at the moment. It's a f2p game and has a middling reward model for the battle pass. That's pitch fork worthy now?

ajkjk 4y ago
The OW2 backlash was "you re-released a game with almost no changes for a bunch of money and you want us to just.. buy it?" Although to be fair I guess that's what CoD does every year. Hmm. But Blizzard has been spending its goodwill for years. Ever since, I think, ever WoW expansion was worse and more pay-to-win than the last.
- danaris 4y ago
  Do they brick all previous iterations of CoD whenever they put out a new one? My understanding is that they shut down the OW1 servers after OW2 came out...
  - pests 4y ago
    A day before OW2 came out!
  - goosedragons 4y ago
    No they don't. They aren't even shutting down the free to play CoD: Warzone 1 when 2.0 releases. I can still play CoD games I bought on PS3, online. But somehow OW1 had to go.
- streblo 4y ago
  > "you re-released a game with almost no changes for a bunch of money and you want us to just.. buy it?" Except it's free to play
  - ajkjk 4y ago
    Oh yeah true. But i think everyone felt they were just being screwed with though.
  - belval 4y ago
    Someone who didn't pay for OW1 might have no ground to complain, but in my case I paid for OW1 which now doesn't exist and I am left with OW2 which locks away any kind of progression unless I pay. It's a bait and switch and the community is rightfully angry. If they wanted to make a f2p OW they could've released OW2 as a standalone, except they knew no one would have migrated so instead they killed the old one.
  - gwill 4y ago
    heroes used to be released and everyone would get them. now there's a pay/play a LOT to unlock mechanic. same goes to cosmetics.
bastardoperator 4y ago
I think most people expected more and instead got less is the gist of the situation. I'm pretty surprised they released a game with less features, the same maps, and didn't deliver on many of the promises.
- willis936 4y ago
  Indeed. I played a final 40 hours of OW1 just before OW2 came out then played 40 hours of OW2. 5v5 in its current state has problematic balancing issues, but I will set those aside with the assumption that they'll eventually be fixed. I will also set aside the total destruction of the metagame as that is their business department's plan. The real scandal with OW2 is that they removed all performance feedback. No more being on fire, no more end-game cards where you could give kudos to a player on either team. In its place is nothing and there is no business justification for it. Defeats are crushing, victories are hollow. No levels or loot boxes. I can't ask my friends to come back and play because it's just bad. I'm just not going to play anymore.
jchw 4y ago
One thing notable about the way Blizzard has been operating lately is that they remove the existing thing when updating the old thing. I've heard you automatically get "upgraded" to Warcraft III reforged if you have it installed and are logged into Battle.net. I hear Overwatch 1 is similarly wiped out and no longer playable. The thing that's weird is, I don't think this is normal at all. On Nintendo's end, you can still play Splatoon 2 just fine even though Splatoon 3 came out, even on multiplayer. Multiplayer games often have a long life after they're superceded, even if it's a smaller contingent. If you boot up Quake 3 Arena or Unreal Tournament 2004, you can see there are still players online pretty much always, even if it's a small contingent. The only good reason I can think of for utterly axing old games is so that you don't have to compete with them. Why buy Reforged for $40 when you could get the original better Warcraft III on GoG? (You can't, of course; you can only get Warcraft I and II on GoG, at least now.) In case of Overwatch, they WOULD have to continue to run the servers. But surely, the majority of players would switch to the new game anyway, right? My opinion should be taken as a grain of salt because Warcraft III is one of the last games I really liked that much from Blizzard, to be honest. But still, something stinks over at Activision Blizzard, and it's somehow not just Bobby Kotick.
- tylerhou 4y ago
  I think there is a reasonable explanation for removing OW1. Queue times were already a huge problem (which is a large reason why they moved to one tank, as nobody wanted to play tank). Keeping around OW1 would have fragmented the player base and would have hurt the OW2 launch. That said, there are plenty of more cynical reasons why Blizzard removed OW1 which are likely also true…
  - gigaflop 4y ago
    I have no sources on hand and no desire to find any, but I think that OW2 was a partial refactor of OW1, if that makes sense. They'd always planned to sunset OW1 for the release of 2. Ages ago, there was a large update to OW1, which I believe had something to do with 'readiness' for OW2 in the form of major engine changes, etc. Nothing was really new after that patch, but it was massive, and may have actually been a full reinstall. Memory is flaky there, and I don't want to look for details while at work. I'd bet $1 that the megapatch (and patches since) would have been designed with OW2 in mind, since OW2 took a long time in the oven. Extrapolating a bit, I think of it as running the OW2 engine in OW1 compatibility mode, or something.
gigaflop 4y ago
The original Overwatch would release new heroes for free, and cosmetics for that hero would be available for random drops/purchase just like any other cosmetic item. In OW2, the new heroes are on tier 55 of the battlepass, if you're a free-to-play user. If you buy the pass, you unlock the hero for play instantly. As far as I know, there is no word on hero availability for those who do neither, for when the pass duration runs out. Having played the first game, the monetization model of the second feels like a slap in the face. They've added new categories of worthless junk cosmetics to pad things out. It feels like they looked at other battlepass models, and threw a bunch of random shit together to pad it out. But hey, if you don't want to grind too much, you can always buy the Battlepass +20 package, and knock out the first 20 tiers instantly!
- pests 4y ago
  > no word on hero availability for those who do neither, for when the pass duration runs out. I heard some rumors that hero's will be unlockable via challenges in seasons after they were released.
- kmeisthax 4y ago
  The funny thing is, Overwatch 1 monetization wasn't any better. They were notorious for popularizing[0] loot boxes in paid games and got flak for it. [0] Not "inventing". TF2 was the OG "loot boxes in paid games" game, and mobile F2P was already awash with loot boxes.
  - gigaflop 4y ago
    Blizzard made it big, EA followed suit, and we ended up with lawsuits over loot boxes :)
  - the_doctah 4y ago
    >The funny thing is, Overwatch 1 monetization wasn't any better. That's patently false.
    - AlexandrB 4y ago
AlexandrB 4y ago
I quit OW when role queue was introduced. It felt like Blizzard was forcing a certain "meta", and while it might have been necessary for high-level play it seemed awfully restrictive at n00b level I played at. It didn't help that Mercy, who I played a lot, was balanced to be "not fun" around the same time. For me OW2 commits the same major sin that Warcraft 3 Reforged did. Replacing its predecessor with no option to play the older game as it was. I understand not wanting to split the community, but if someone doesn't like OW2's 5v5, or monetization, or whatever, their only option is to quit. Also, given that OW2 made every cosmetic more expensive to acquire, it's only natural that people would draw comparisons and get mad.
riversflow 4y ago
(sorry for the rant, but it's really all I can do at this point, and I really like[d? :( ] OW) in the time since OW released, it has been on a long timescale average my most-played game. There are some other good points in sibling comments, so I won't address those. The biggest problems I have are(in order): 1) It seems like they have moved from a Skill Based Match Making algorithm to an Engagement Optimized Matchmaker, or at least tipped the balance much farther away from skill based match-ups, and it really shows. Way too many games are a complete route one way or the other, and even in Competitive mode games are now often very uneven, where they used to be fairly balanced, and evidence suggests that they are using a stats based skill adjustment system rather than something like Elo that is based on wins. This would make using a non-skill based matchmaker for "Competitive" possible, and is evidenced by people getting placed in matches that have huge differentials in player rank even in metals ranks during primetime, something that virtually never happened in OW1 as far as I know. This is really sad, and there is really a lack of awareness about these new systems and how, frankly, predatory the new generation matchmakers are. I've been playing competitive FPS(though often not competitively per se) for half my life and I'm rapidly being driven away from one of my favorite things. It's upsetting. Most people like winning, but when it constant feast or famine it really really really starts to feel like the games you win were just the MM giving you a win, and not earned. 2) They deleted a AAA, critically acclaimed, Game of the year winning game that everyone paid for, and replaced it with a buggy, janky F2P one. They removed a fair amount of content, and have had to disable 10% of the roster in the first 6 weeks because it's so buggy. They did add some content, 3 new heros and a handful of new maps, but it just barely balances out what they removed. And that speaks nothing to all of the other stuff that they removed from the UI, like Group finder. It also launched with some of the worst netcode I've seen in a non-indy game, players would briefly jump around the map before snapping back, extremely distracting in a game that is heavily based on tracking. OW1 never came close to this level of ineptness. Even today they announced a last minute delay to a balance patch that they have been promising for over a month, that was additionally supposed to re-enable a hero that has been part of the game since launch of OW1. Supposedly this is because the changes to a live service style, where they can easily adjust the game from the server side, which were-I guess-going to be a part of OW2, either weren't ready at launch or shipped in an unusable state. But like, they could have launched OW2 as a F2P beta, and kept OW1 around until they had worked out the kinks, and then announced a sunset for OW1, or something they had already made it clear that OW1 was going to be replaced. Deleting a game that had an active playerbase of people who bought it and replacing it with a shittier, obviously half baked version, was a straight up dick move. Imagine if they did that to StarCraft when SC2 came out. 3) Meanwhile they removed one of the core features that got me to love Overwatch in the first place; it eschewed the "play to unlock" model that I have so learned to loathe as an adult, all heros and new ones were just part of the game. In OW2 new heros will be locked behind a battlepass. I have other problems with the F2P model, like it encouraging cheaters and low-investment players who don't know or care to learn to play a game that has significant depth around the cast of heroes(this is greatly magnified by the new Matchmaking which means that even someone who has >1000 hours will get in matches with them). And to really rub the salt in the wound, they have been able to keep the new player shop filled with (shockingly expensive to this millennial) content. It absolutely feels like a cash grab at this point, especially considering today's patch delay(the second for this patch). It's also grimly foreshadowing that the hero that is currently disabled was only disabled because of an interaction with the hero that is currently locked behind the battlepass that let the new, locked hero get out of the play area and wreak havoc. Previously they would have handled it in reverse, especially considering the nature of the interaction (the new hero can teleport behind teammates).

by w0m 4y ago

I'm not sure i 100% grok the OW2 backlash we're seeing at the moment. It's a f2p game and has a middling reward model for the battle pass. That's pitch fork worthy now?

ajkjk 4y ago

The OW2 backlash was "you re-released a game with almost no changes for a bunch of money and you want us to just.. buy it?" Although to be fair I guess that's what CoD does every year. Hmm. But Blizzard has been spending its goodwill for years. Ever since, I think, ever WoW expansion was worse and more pay-to-win than the last.

danaris 4y ago
Do they brick all previous iterations of CoD whenever they put out a new one? My understanding is that they shut down the OW1 servers after OW2 came out...
- pests 4y ago
  A day before OW2 came out!
- goosedragons 4y ago
  No they don't. They aren't even shutting down the free to play CoD: Warzone 1 when 2.0 releases. I can still play CoD games I bought on PS3, online. But somehow OW1 had to go.
streblo 4y ago
> "you re-released a game with almost no changes for a bunch of money and you want us to just.. buy it?" Except it's free to play
- ajkjk 4y ago
  Oh yeah true. But i think everyone felt they were just being screwed with though.
- belval 4y ago
  Someone who didn't pay for OW1 might have no ground to complain, but in my case I paid for OW1 which now doesn't exist and I am left with OW2 which locks away any kind of progression unless I pay. It's a bait and switch and the community is rightfully angry. If they wanted to make a f2p OW they could've released OW2 as a standalone, except they knew no one would have migrated so instead they killed the old one.
- gwill 4y ago
  heroes used to be released and everyone would get them. now there's a pay/play a LOT to unlock mechanic. same goes to cosmetics.

bastardoperator 4y ago

I think most people expected more and instead got less is the gist of the situation. I'm pretty surprised they released a game with less features, the same maps, and didn't deliver on many of the promises.

willis936 4y ago
Indeed. I played a final 40 hours of OW1 just before OW2 came out then played 40 hours of OW2. 5v5 in its current state has problematic balancing issues, but I will set those aside with the assumption that they'll eventually be fixed. I will also set aside the total destruction of the metagame as that is their business department's plan. The real scandal with OW2 is that they removed all performance feedback. No more being on fire, no more end-game cards where you could give kudos to a player on either team. In its place is nothing and there is no business justification for it. Defeats are crushing, victories are hollow. No levels or loot boxes. I can't ask my friends to come back and play because it's just bad. I'm just not going to play anymore.

jchw 4y ago

One thing notable about the way Blizzard has been operating lately is that they remove the existing thing when updating the old thing. I've heard you automatically get "upgraded" to Warcraft III reforged if you have it installed and are logged into Battle.net. I hear Overwatch 1 is similarly wiped out and no longer playable. The thing that's weird is, I don't think this is normal at all. On Nintendo's end, you can still play Splatoon 2 just fine even though Splatoon 3 came out, even on multiplayer. Multiplayer games often have a long life after they're superceded, even if it's a smaller contingent. If you boot up Quake 3 Arena or Unreal Tournament 2004, you can see there are still players online pretty much always, even if it's a small contingent. The only good reason I can think of for utterly axing old games is so that you don't have to compete with them. Why buy Reforged for $40 when you could get the original better Warcraft III on GoG? (You can't, of course; you can only get Warcraft I and II on GoG, at least now.) In case of Overwatch, they WOULD have to continue to run the servers. But surely, the majority of players would switch to the new game anyway, right? My opinion should be taken as a grain of salt because Warcraft III is one of the last games I really liked that much from Blizzard, to be honest. But still, something stinks over at Activision Blizzard, and it's somehow not just Bobby Kotick.

tylerhou 4y ago
I think there is a reasonable explanation for removing OW1. Queue times were already a huge problem (which is a large reason why they moved to one tank, as nobody wanted to play tank). Keeping around OW1 would have fragmented the player base and would have hurt the OW2 launch. That said, there are plenty of more cynical reasons why Blizzard removed OW1 which are likely also true…
- gigaflop 4y ago
  I have no sources on hand and no desire to find any, but I think that OW2 was a partial refactor of OW1, if that makes sense. They'd always planned to sunset OW1 for the release of 2. Ages ago, there was a large update to OW1, which I believe had something to do with 'readiness' for OW2 in the form of major engine changes, etc. Nothing was really new after that patch, but it was massive, and may have actually been a full reinstall. Memory is flaky there, and I don't want to look for details while at work. I'd bet $1 that the megapatch (and patches since) would have been designed with OW2 in mind, since OW2 took a long time in the oven. Extrapolating a bit, I think of it as running the OW2 engine in OW1 compatibility mode, or something.

gigaflop 4y ago

The original Overwatch would release new heroes for free, and cosmetics for that hero would be available for random drops/purchase just like any other cosmetic item. In OW2, the new heroes are on tier 55 of the battlepass, if you're a free-to-play user. If you buy the pass, you unlock the hero for play instantly. As far as I know, there is no word on hero availability for those who do neither, for when the pass duration runs out. Having played the first game, the monetization model of the second feels like a slap in the face. They've added new categories of worthless junk cosmetics to pad things out. It feels like they looked at other battlepass models, and threw a bunch of random shit together to pad it out. But hey, if you don't want to grind too much, you can always buy the Battlepass +20 package, and knock out the first 20 tiers instantly!

pests 4y ago
> no word on hero availability for those who do neither, for when the pass duration runs out. I heard some rumors that hero's will be unlockable via challenges in seasons after they were released.
kmeisthax 4y ago
The funny thing is, Overwatch 1 monetization wasn't any better. They were notorious for popularizing[0] loot boxes in paid games and got flak for it. [0] Not "inventing". TF2 was the OG "loot boxes in paid games" game, and mobile F2P was already awash with loot boxes.
- gigaflop 4y ago
  Blizzard made it big, EA followed suit, and we ended up with lawsuits over loot boxes :)
- the_doctah 4y ago
  >The funny thing is, Overwatch 1 monetization wasn't any better. That's patently false.
  - AlexandrB 4y ago

AlexandrB 4y ago

I quit OW when role queue was introduced. It felt like Blizzard was forcing a certain "meta", and while it might have been necessary for high-level play it seemed awfully restrictive at n00b level I played at. It didn't help that Mercy, who I played a lot, was balanced to be "not fun" around the same time. For me OW2 commits the same major sin that Warcraft 3 Reforged did. Replacing its predecessor with no option to play the older game as it was. I understand not wanting to split the community, but if someone doesn't like OW2's 5v5, or monetization, or whatever, their only option is to quit. Also, given that OW2 made every cosmetic more expensive to acquire, it's only natural that people would draw comparisons and get mad.

riversflow 4y ago

(sorry for the rant, but it's really all I can do at this point, and I really like[d? :( ] OW) in the time since OW released, it has been on a long timescale average my most-played game. There are some other good points in sibling comments, so I won't address those. The biggest problems I have are(in order): 1) It seems like they have moved from a Skill Based Match Making algorithm to an Engagement Optimized Matchmaker, or at least tipped the balance much farther away from skill based match-ups, and it really shows. Way too many games are a complete route one way or the other, and even in Competitive mode games are now often very uneven, where they used to be fairly balanced, and evidence suggests that they are using a stats based skill adjustment system rather than something like Elo that is based on wins. This would make using a non-skill based matchmaker for "Competitive" possible, and is evidenced by people getting placed in matches that have huge differentials in player rank even in metals ranks during primetime, something that virtually never happened in OW1 as far as I know. This is really sad, and there is really a lack of awareness about these new systems and how, frankly, predatory the new generation matchmakers are. I've been playing competitive FPS(though often not competitively per se) for half my life and I'm rapidly being driven away from one of my favorite things. It's upsetting. Most people like winning, but when it constant feast or famine it really really really starts to feel like the games you win were just the MM giving you a win, and not earned. 2) They deleted a AAA, critically acclaimed, Game of the year winning game that everyone paid for, and replaced it with a buggy, janky F2P one. They removed a fair amount of content, and have had to disable 10% of the roster in the first 6 weeks because it's so buggy. They did add some content, 3 new heros and a handful of new maps, but it just barely balances out what they removed. And that speaks nothing to all of the other stuff that they removed from the UI, like Group finder. It also launched with some of the worst netcode I've seen in a non-indy game, players would briefly jump around the map before snapping back, extremely distracting in a game that is heavily based on tracking. OW1 never came close to this level of ineptness. Even today they announced a last minute delay to a balance patch that they have been promising for over a month, that was additionally supposed to re-enable a hero that has been part of the game since launch of OW1. Supposedly this is because the changes to a live service style, where they can easily adjust the game from the server side, which were-I guess-going to be a part of OW2, either weren't ready at launch or shipped in an unusable state. But like, they could have launched OW2 as a F2P beta, and kept OW1 around until they had worked out the kinks, and then announced a sunset for OW1, or something they had already made it clear that OW1 was going to be replaced. Deleting a game that had an active playerbase of people who bought it and replacing it with a shittier, obviously half baked version, was a straight up dick move. Imagine if they did that to StarCraft when SC2 came out. 3) Meanwhile they removed one of the core features that got me to love Overwatch in the first place; it eschewed the "play to unlock" model that I have so learned to loathe as an adult, all heros and new ones were just part of the game. In OW2 new heros will be locked behind a battlepass. I have other problems with the F2P model, like it encouraging cheaters and low-investment players who don't know or care to learn to play a game that has significant depth around the cast of heroes(this is greatly magnified by the new Matchmaking which means that even someone who has >1000 hours will get in matches with them). And to really rub the salt in the wound, they have been able to keep the new player shop filled with (shockingly expensive to this millennial) content. It absolutely feels like a cash grab at this point, especially considering today's patch delay(the second for this patch). It's also grimly foreshadowing that the hero that is currently disabled was only disabled because of an interaction with the hero that is currently locked behind the battlepass that let the new, locked hero get out of the play area and wreak havoc. Previously they would have handled it in reverse, especially considering the nature of the interaction (the new hero can teleport behind teammates).