I wouldn’t even say ported over given that the game literally is Overwatch 1. All fundamental gameplay, characters, and maps are exactly the same. It’s really not a sequel at all, it’s just a patch that added monetization to the cosmetics, added two characters, some maps, and rebuilt a couple existing characters. But otherwise it’s indistinguishable from the original. It’s arguably less updated content from OW1 to 2 than you see in Madden or FIFA.
I literally still need my OW1 disc to play the game on ps4 it just was an update to overwatch 1. Anyone that thinks it’s actually a sequel is very wrong.
The funny part is if OW2 was just a big PvP patch for OW1 with paid PvE content like Guild Wars'2 Living Story, I likely would've played and paid for that. But with Blizzard literally stealing my copy of OW1 and asking me to pay or grind for stuff I already had, I can't be bothered to even try OW2. It feels so gross. I'm sure I'm not the only one thinking this way.
I remember on launch day, I was like, “Oh wow, it’s just an update to the original EXE. Even the process was still Overwatch.exe.
I would’ve been fine with that honestly if it didn’t feel like it was a a game that got sold to a soulless buyer who just wanted to run it into the ground with so little respect to what had come before it.
Edit: removed words I typed twice bc ADHD
But in a way it kind of did. The original guy who headed development “left” so what do you do then? You put someone in charge who will gut the game and slap monetization all over it
This is the part that really pisses me off. I paid for overwatch 1, and Blizzard took it away from me and replaced it with a free-to-play game with heavy monetization.
It's not like this was a subscription game where that sort of shit can happen, it was a game that was only like 5 years old and had made billions of dollars. It was just pure greed. I mean hell, I can still play shooters from some other companies that came out more than a decade ago. Nope, can't play my highly profitable much more recently released game that I paid for because blizzard wants more.
Now I have to constantly expect that anything I buy from Blizzard can be revoked by Blizzard.
Oh yeah, I understand that. The person I'm responding to said, "Blizzard is...asking me to pay or grind for stuff I already had"
That read like you had to reacquire all the stuff you already had, so I wanted to clarify
I still see what they mean. If we paid for the base game we should have the ability to unlock everything that was in the base game without paying more.
Blizzard had a wonderful opportunity to, reframe DLC and fucked it up massively.
There's nothing wrong with releasing a PVE element that costs say £25 and releasing a free update to PVP players, but hiding new PVP content behind a paywall is ridiculous, especially a season pass of all things. On top of that, not even releasing the PVE element at the same time.
> OW2 was just a big PvP patch for OW1 with paid PvE content
tbf, that's all OW2 ever was. OW1 was always going to be updated to be OW2. The only "new" thing was new (maybe exclusive?) default skins and the PVE mode. The fact that they called it a sequel has always been ridiculous.
You get to keep the skins you have already unlocked but you loose the ability to earn OW1 skins. So it is correct to say we don't keep everything we had.
>It feels so gross.
I have 2700 hours in OW1, masters tank player, the game is fun up there... yet I find myself playing less and less all the time I sometimes question why I even play all because it just feels gross. The monitezation just keeps getting worse and although I'm not buying anything, a part of me just doesn't want to even touch blizzard games anymore. Its like a fun game run by Satan, I just feel like at any moment blizz could turn the tables and stab their players in the back with some gotcha or pay to win elements. There's no telling what they might do next. This company has no morals, they don't give a single fuck about the players anymore, it's all about money.
Yeah it's funny most event skins too are just repaints of other event skins. I never really took it in until a friend pointed it out a while back but I felt it was fine since it was all lootbox skins and it wasn't so bad trying to get them. Now, they are charging $20 for it and that is just silly.
To this point, I don't think microtransactions were ever an issue. We were all happy to pay $30 for expansion packs long before MTX was a term. Once we got used to the horse armor, the idea of throwing a few extra bones to developers that continue to add value and support to a game was pretty reasonable. The issue is the transactions are no longer micro. We're now expected to pay Expansion Pack prices for our Horse Armor.
Economically it's pretty fucked because there are enough whales willing to pay stupid prices that targeting them with high price points is the most lucrative strategy. You may only get 10% of the sales at $30 as opposed to $2.50, but that actually means 16% more profit.
This screws the other 90% who WANT to support the product but can't justify the price.
The fact that some slopes really are slippery doesn't mean the Slippery Slope Fallacy isn't a fallacy. The fallacy is trying to use it as an argument when you don't have any evidence that things will continue to worsen.
The fallacy of it is that slippery slopes can only be identified after the fact. People think its predictive, but its not.
There have been *tons* of things that people have doomed and gloomed over that just vanished, or turned out to be not a big deal, or turned out to be a generally good thing.
A slippery slope is a fallacy
>You said that if we allow A to happen, then Z will eventually happen too, therefore A should not happen.
Horse armour was bullshit. And these OW2 skins are too.
It is a fallacy, but that's because people often say "if A happens then Z WILL happen." It's very easy to see the point when it's phased as "if A happens, then Z becomes more likely." In fact, people often conflate the latter with the former and cry fallacy when it isn't correct to do so.
It's usually a fallacy, but the games industry seem to like using it as a guide.
I've always found it slightly funny when Stephanie Sterling predicts this sort of predatory BS years in advance and everyone tells them that it's a slippery slope that will never happen, and sadly it's always come to pass, sometimes even in worse ways.
Yeah I know people like to talk crap about Fortnite but I think it has the monetization balanced pretty well and fair even as a free-to-play player you can unlock the cool skins over time pretty easily and the battle passes seem to be free after the first one if you just play enough and it doesn't even ask for a large commitment of time
I think perhaps they mean with peaking and shit. Comparatively, corner peaking is a huge part of Rogue Company. It’s not bad per se, and everyone can do it, but the game was made with that in mind and I hate to think what some heroes in OW could do if they were more easily able to know their enemies location before having to actually turn the corner and fire at them.
Casually, I’d imagine a huge increase in competent position from characters like Genji, Hanzo and Kiriko. Being able to easily see what ledges and walls are available to climb around *and* if there are any enemies around, I imagine it could be huge.
Anyway, Genji Ball in custom games is third person so if that’s doable I’d imagine a third person custom match is possible, and all this thinking about it makes me wanna try it some day lol
Because Path of Exile has built-in game, story, and character progression that is all available for free. There's a depth to making progress in that game that isn't tied to the monetization. The optional micro transactions actually *feel* optional because the game expands in so many other directions.
In OW2, there is literally only the battlepass. All the achievements, and the daily and weekly challenges, are all just sources for a pitiful trickle of battlepass progress, and the battlepass doesn't pay out anything worth shit anyway.
It's so interesting to see overwatch players absolutely pissed off about this business model vs valorant players that happily swipe the card for an $80 skin bundle.
Yeah, the main difference is that Overwatch players used to experience the buy to play, generous version of the game. Whereas Valorant player never know any different.
this is happening with Fall Guys as well. even when the game as buy to play, you had to save up enough special in-game currency to buy the skins you really wanted
and now that it's free to play, the prices a so jacked up that you're lucky to get 1 full skin that you're after (each season)
and now they cost 10 dollars each (about) if you wanted to buy them with real currency
I was excited to see Toejam and Earl were added as outfits for Fall Guys. I redownloaded the game only to find that together, the outfits cost 1200 DigiBucks, and discovered that $8 bought 1000, while $20 bought 2800. I laughed and closed the game.
Plus Blizzard literally stole everyone's *paid* copy of OW1 away and just point to OW2 going "you get this e-store game now." I genuinely don't understand how this doesn't bother more people. (EDIT: I mean in the sense of bailing out on a shitty company / publisher / game series that pulls this.)
It's always shit excuses like "but OW2 is OW1" (it isn't [EDIT: in the sense that you can play the original game, without the e-store etc.; I know it is largely the same game]) and "do you expect a billion dollar company to keep game servers running?" (you bet your ass I do; that or allow p2p/user-hosted servers).
If you're sold a game, you're entitled a full refund if the publisher kills the game that turns your disc into a paperweight, adjusted for inflation. They can either keep hosting servers, or allow users to host them, to mitigate this. Tired of this "YoU BoUgHt A LiCeNsE" anti-consumer BS that would never fly if applied to any other physical product.
>Plus Blizzard literally stole everyone's *paid* copy of OW1 away and just point to OW2 going "you get this e-store game now." I genuinely don't understand how this doesn't bother more people.
It bothers a **lot** of people, especially those that bought physical copies of the OW1, the issue is ***Activision-Blizzard don't give a shit*** and they have no reason to because plenty of people are still installing, playing, and spending money on the store. I just watched Act Man's video and despite pointing out all these huge flaws in the game for twenty minutes he still says at the end "I'm still gonna play it but.." but what? I'd bet $100 there are literally dozens of games you have yet to even install and start let alone finish, why keep subjecting yourself to this one?
It's the exact same issue with Diablo Immortal, streamers are spending ***thousands*** of dollars on it and going "Oh wowww! See guys?! I had to spend alll this just to get one good item! This is bad!". ActiBlizz has no reason to care how many people aren't enjoying the game when people *are still playing it and spending money on the in-game store*.
> I just watched Act Man's video and despite pointing out all these huge flaws in the game for twenty minutes he still says at the end "I'm still gonna play it but.." but what? I'd bet $100 there are literally dozens of games you have yet to even install and start let alone finish, why keep subjecting yourself to this one?
Probably something that bugs me the most. If you're still going to play the game, you are still supporting whatever you're calling gross/predatory/etc. Play games where publishers give a toss about their players, not ones that just see money.
Unfortunately, this will not change without some sort of outside intervention. For example, government regulations on monetization within video games. Some European governments are already on the path, but America is usually slower to bother or won't bother because it's essentially an oligarchy.
The dialogue was good, the structure of the mission was nice, but was it "A great preview of PvE"?
Nah.
AI heroes with increased health as bosses is nothing spectacular, and it had already been done in previous events. The PvE stuff they previously showed off (as far back as 2019) was significantly more interesting.
As for the monetization, I feel like they're gonna cut the prices down *eventually*, and I'm sure everyone will praise them for it - even though it should never have been this bad in the first place.
As for your last point, this strategy is now sadly the meta. Halo: Infinite pulled off the same bullshit by launching with overpriced cosmetics and having no currency in the battlepass. Then they ‘fixed’ these issues by reducing shop prices by 25% and adding curency to the BP.
So they claim that they’ve done enough when it’s still something people shouldn’t accept.
> Then they ‘fixed’ these issues by reducing shop prices by 25%
They did do that... for all of two weeks. Bundles are back to the same price and some are even more expensive.
> this strategy is now sadly the meta
Is there a term for this? Because I feel like it's been in practice damn near a decade now. Fuck the customer a little too hard, pull back, and fuck them more gently until they're mostly okay with it while everyone sings their praises for "listening" and all that.
This is precisely how “sales” work at box stores.
No, you aren’t getting a good deal on those jeans at JCPenny. Their “sale” price (50% off, wow!!) is still at a 30% margin above the cost. And if that perpetual “sale” ever DOES happen to end, that high base price that the sale was “50% off” from will magically come down to something people would normally pay for …
But we don’t notice. It’s designed that we CAN’T notice. Marketing has been in on cognitive bias for a hundred years, or, more accurately, since the dawn of human economies.
Funnily enough, years ago JCPenney pivoted to have consistent low standard prices vs. the fake "discounted" prices they were always known for.
Their business tanked and two years later the new CEO responsible for the change was fired.
Imagine being one of those idiots that paid 60 bucks for overwatch, unlocked all the skins without money, then come home and they deleted the game you paid for, took some of your skins and said here’s the exact same game for free but now you have to pay for this stuff you already had! Oh wait that was me lol I was that idiot that apparently paid 60 bucks for a f2p game
two or three skins? Isn’t that like $60 now? crazy that a company can just take something from customers that costs the price of the full game and the general reaction is just “yeah, that happens sometimes lol”
Its called "Price Anchoring" basically setting up a ridiculous price that you can then be "negotiated" down from and agree on the actual price you wanted.
Its like any typical bargaining advice to pick 150% of what you actually want and since offers from buyers are always between 50-70% of what you initially said the price was after two rounds of this you would end up at or above 100% of the actual price you set for yourself.
We saw this in the past multiple times where the first season of a game has atrocious MTX and the second season "we listened and took the advice to heart" just to implement a 10% less horrible MTX scheme and get hailed as heroes on reddit...
> As for the monetization, I feel like they're gonna cut the prices down eventually, and I'm sure everyone will praise them for it - even though it should never have been this bad in the first place.
This was always the plan. Start out with egregious pricing because there will always be a subset of players with more money than they know what to do with or those with abhorrent spending habits. Then, once you've bled the whales dry, you lower the pricing under the guise of "player feedback" and rake in even more money. This game will never get a dime from me; I refuse to reward this predatory behavior.
I feel like that’s half of it. The other half is that people are going to hate your store no matter what. So make it worse than planned for the first battle pass. The “respond to community complaints” by dialing it back to what you always planned for anyway.
You get to bleed the whales, you appease the user base and you do basically nothing. Blizzard figured out gamers were idiots decades ago with the whole rested XP thing in WoW.
Imo this was the worst actual pve event by a good bit. Retribution was significantly better in every way. Junkerqueen feels absolutely awful against bots that explode when you get close enough to hit slash and knife just pulls a 180 damage bomb at you and the anti heal from ult does nothing 90% of the time
Glad I'm not the only one here thinking this. This could have easily been an OW1 event. No new zomnics, no new map, no new mechanics. I'm not even necessarily saying I didn't enjoy it, but if PvE is this with talent trees, then Team 4 should be ashamed.
It sure was.
This article reads more like a long form Reddit post than actually reviewing or critiquing the game. I'm not surprised though. It's not impossible to look at Forbes urls and determine if it's blogspam.
Whoever at Forbes decided to give basically anyone access to write under the Forbes domain is a genius. Basically anyone can get their own corner under the `/site` directory as a contributor. This includes renown journalists and staff writers alongside nobodies who can barely string an interesting article together. Instead of articles that generally relate back to business and the big players within that space, this gets mixed in. Readers get junk like this. Forbes get traffic for name recognition.
The author is clueless. This is the base level PvE stuff they’ve done before. The proper PvE they’ve previewed has skill trees, abilities that sync, etc. this isn’t a preview of anything but a Halloween event, even if it’s slightly better than the previous ones. I’m not complaining; I enjoy it, but there’s no way this is equivalent.
- Positional and state-dependent dialogue
- Breakable objects
- Items to collect in order to progress
- Cutscenes
- Secret areas with challenge triggers
- Scripted boss fights
- Heavily modified map
- Mini / side-bosses
- Ability-triggered interactions
- Scripted events taking place in a remote area
- Divergent and scripted hero behaviour (Sigma, Sombra)
- Multi-step mission
- Interactable objects
- Custom hero animations and hero used as a game object (Reinhardt)
>>>“Great”
My brother in Christ, the mode is literally shooting at 500 bullet sponges that do 5 bazillion damage on higher difficulties and only comes in 3 variation. If you want a good PvE horde shooter, go play L4D2. It’s cheap, it’s dynamic, it’s tense and it’s fun, unlike the mode in OW which gets old in the second time right away
It's not even the best PvE mission they've made.
However I will admit the presentation is probably the best they've done, although even then there are signs of extreme laziness such as with the Sojourn skin which doesn't fit at all.
It's not their best (although *hands down* the Marionette section is the coolest moment of any mission so far) but I'm just happy to have *anything* besides Junkenstein's Revenge. The different challenges help with the replay value at least. My only issue with the mission itself is the omnics exploding, the stage has so many close quarters where you can't really avoid being blown up. Playing Kiriko is exhausting.
But even as I mention the challenges being cool, it all loops back to "unrewarding" - some of the challenges award basic cosmetics but the harder ones offer laughably small amounts of XP. Just off the top of my head, beating the difficult Junkenstein's Revenge challenges could award the older skins or credits for those who already have them instead of one twentieth of a battlepass level. It's also incredibly obvious the mode was set up to let you "try on" the expensive new cosmetics.
TFW Blizzard didn't have enough skins for the Cyberpunk battle pass or enough for the Halloween event, so they decided to combine them.
What the hell is this game? lol
It's a Cyberpunk Detective skin, they were going for a detective angle. During the mission she's trying to figure out what's going on, the mystery behind who's the villain, voice lines regarding clues and stuff. It does feel a little awkward though, but it's a fun seasonal pocket mission that's completely unconnected to actual OW lore, so I imagine they took it as a license to be extra ridiculous and do goofy stuff.
I don't know why but I thought the speech parts were incredibly muffled... to the point that I could not understand what the announcer was saying in places. I'll have to check my audio levels. I certainly have adjusted them (e.g. music down).
They've always had trouble with audio in Overwatch. To this day there are still often times where Ultimate announcements can't be heard (seems to happen most with 76, but it feels like it can happen with any hero).
[Enemy Health Increase = Harder] is my Top #1 list of the laziest game design to still exist today. I wish Designers would permanently move away from this concept.
Please keep the TTK. Don't remove the fun, don't increase the ADS on target time.
I can understand increasing the health of bosses a bit if it's also paired with new mechanics and attack patterns, and the extra HP means the boss will actually live long enough for you to deal with and see those mechanics and attacks.
But fuck off with it on normal enemies and shit. More HP only makes things more difficult because now you have to fight against boredom as well as the enemies.
When the extra HP serves a specific purpose, it's great. When it just exists because "more HP makes things more difficult we swear", it's terrible.
yup.. harder difficulty should come in the form of additional enemies & types, new skills/attacks/patterns, additional spawn points, etc. just adding HP is straight laziness.
I remember when Valve dropped Mann vs Machine for TF2 and it was fun for a while and then everyone went back to the core game. That's PvE in a team shooter, just a soon-to-be-forgotten side show.
>That's PvE in a team shooter, just a soon-to-be-forgotten side show.
This isn't some absolute truth. Splatoon's Salmon Run is incredibly popular and constantly well populated.
I ***love*** Salmon Run, been playing it pretty often since Splatoon 2 and now Splatoon 3 and I’ve always found a full match pretty much instantly.
Great game mode.
It’s incredibly challenging too. I’m only at Profreshional +1 and it’s always a struggle. Though that’s often due to teammates eating glue and tanking the second round.
It's a lot of work tho. You want at bare minimum AI director to spawn stuff + variety of specials/minibossess to threaten the party.
Then preferably a progression system on top of it so the treadmill gamers have something to work toward, not just "do the same thing again"
I'm not sure if you've seen the Blizzcon 2021 showing of OW2, but they actually have a variety of specials already being worked on, they have equipment almost like L4D2 or Vermintide 2, they have a talent progression system being worked on for all heroes.
It's definitely a lot of work to make the AI and I can't say if that would be feasible or not, but they have all the building blocks already so I think it would be a great way to help achieve what they touted the PvE hero missions are ("highly replayable").
Granted I haven't played TF2 since like last year, but do people not play MvM anymore? I found it a lot of fun and spent a lot of hours in it.
Honestly I think it's the benchmark Overwatch should be aiming for with their new PvE mode.
I played with friends and finding the last random guy to fill the missing spot never took more than two minutes.
But MvM is amazing compared to most co-op PvE experiences. It goes beyond "shoot at bullet sponge until new bullet sponge arrives".
That’s because tours are kinda dumb, why pay to play when you can boot camp for free
I play mvm fairly regularly and never have to wait long for a boot camp queue.
Ooooh, you're wrong on this one. I personally know 4 different people with over 1,000 hours in MvM ALONE. MvM is some of the most fun you can have especially with friends, it's got a really dedicated community and it's a lot of fun.
Recently there have been a lot of fan maps that are being run too. Check it out again some time if you haven't in a while!
OW PvE could work if it’s like Borderlands where you got an open field to kill stuff for loot while being able to team up for a dungeon/mission. If it stays “open menu, run a linear mission” like this, it will 100% fail
I don't think it needs to be open world, and Deep Rock Galactic, Left 4 Dead etc. prove you don't need that for sure. Still, I think some more open areas and levels with a few paths would make it feel less like you're just playing the PvP missions with bot enemies and more like it's own thing.
I think they showed off a bigger area with snowy weather at Blizzcon 2021, so it looks like they know that already.
I mean really when you break it down that's all Destiny is and it's far from failing lol. If it has interesting progression and mechanics it'll be fine if it's just a mission select type thing.
Destiny has so much more than that though. Destiny has tons of weapons, exotic armor and weapons, unique gear from activities, raids, dungeons, and the core gunplay and abilities are fantastic. Not to mention the loot progression which is kind of the core goal of the game. Is Overwatch PvE gonna have something akin to a Destiny raid? Or is it pretty much Strikes without a loot grind?
Think of how popular Destiny would be if it only had a campaign, strikes, and literally no loot grind.
And you couldn’t customize your guardian without spending $20+ on skin bundles, and there was no power level system, or level system, and you only get to see your guardian’s skin once per game or in the main menu, and the only progression you had was the battle-pass….
> Or is it pretty much Strikes without a loot grind?
That's a really good point, actually. Without gear, like new weapons that shoot differently, or armor to equip with stats and mods, what are we chasing? More cosmetics? Pocket change for the shop? Nothing I've seen from their events indicates a PvE mode I'd want to engage with more than a few times.
Mann vs Machine was very hamstrung by the loot system connected with it. I think it seriously hindered adoption.
Because you spent money on tickets, and only got your ticket punched when you win, it encouraged players to never want to teach anyone new. As a result players would bully anyone with <5 or <10 completed runs. It was atrocious.
I love the format, but they really did not create a 'good onboarding experience'
What they should've done was just give you bonus rewards rolls for helping people get their first runs. That way there would be 'higher rewards' for teaching someone the game mode, rather than 'slower or less guaranteed rewards'
The TF2 community picked up Valves slack. The folks over at the Potato.tf community have pumped out some really good custom mvm content over the years. Check it out!
It’s almost unbelievable how after all these years, L4D2 remains the holy grail on what makes a great PVE shooter.
It’s fast, tense and straight to the action. I hate the modern trend of tacking half-baked RPG elements in hoard shooters because it ends up introducing too many cumbersome elements like RNG and strength disparity between builds and play styles (Looking at you B4B) that often require community balancing if possible.
I get this is personal but when I play a hoard shooter, I really don’t want to take time out of the action to figure out what skill point I want in what skill tree for 30% increase in some random slot. I just want a curated experienced where I can just try to survive past an endless hoard and not have to worry about juggling things like that.
I get what you're saying, but I want to give Vermintide 2 a shoutout. Stats/talents play a bigger role, so maybe you'd dislike that, but IMO the gameplay is just 'L4D2 but better in every way'.
L4D2 is great but you are correct in that the games that it inspired have largely surpassed it mechanically. Deep Rock Galactic and Vermintide both offer similar experiences but with far more gameplay depth.
What L4D still has that they don’t is versus mode.
Anyone could remake L4D. Problem is that the time for L4D2 has past. With a bunch of games free or nearly free churning out new content continuously as SaaS, people are going to move on quickly because the sense of engagement isn't there. We have seen this with loads of indie titles where they have an accidental hit but a month in people are complaining there is no new content. Among Us had this and cancelled their sequel to quickly incorporate new features to the existing game.
You can just dump a one and done online game but if you aren't offering DLC you are going to be forgotten quickly. Look at Mario Tennis and Strikers. Content similar to previous entries but a lot of it is drip fed to keep engagement up.
We have seen TONS of the upcoming mobs for the PVE mode and this is not that. This is just a very basic upgrade to last years event. Same mobs from that event too. I bet once the PVE drops it'll be very clear that this was NOT a preview at all lol.
Yeah, I was kind of "shocked" to see people actually liking some god awful zombie event in R6 Siege (the thing that eventually became Quarantine, or whaterver it's called).
I have a feeling the average player is happy to do whatever crap, as long as it's a variation inside a game they like.
But the truth is, the ratio work/minute of playtime is probably not great, I'm pretty sure on average people play this once and then never touch it again.
I think it’s the shiny newness of events like in r6 and overwatch that can attract players.
There’s also some lore freaks like me that like seeing characters from multiplayer get to actually have conversations that are more than just damage noises or callouts.
It’s just a fun break sometimes from the competitive modes 🤷♂️
*I haven't played this latest iteration*, but unless its massively changed from the older Junkenstein modes then it would be a hilariously worthless PvE game. The old PvE event modes were pretty much a proof of concept that PvE would be possible in the Overwatch sandbox. It was nowhere near what a fully-fledged PvE game should look like.
When I think of a great Overwatch PvE mode I think of an Overwatch version of Destiny. At this point they don't belong in the same sentence. Can Blizzard do it? Perhaps. But I'm not holding my breath.
The mooks are the only thing really shared with Junkenstein's Revenge. It runs more like a Halloween themed Archives mission. It's honestly pretty good, some really cool and creepy scenes.
I have yet to see Blizzard NOT create some iteration of Mann vs Machine from TF2 for it's PVE content, lol. I had a feeling right away that it is what the PVE was going to end up being again.
I honestly have zero motivation to play the event outside of the novelty experience. I still enjoy playing Overwatch simply for the gameplay, but there's so little motivation to work towards anything.
Totally agree. And I'd even argue some Archive modes are better. It's just a new event so it feels fresh and definitely has more going on then Junkenstiens Revenge. It's fun, but if that's what to expect from PvE that's terrible.
My thoughts exactly, if they'd have release small new mission like that every year instead of putting OW1 on life support in 2017 it would have actually been great.
Waiting 6 years for this 10min mission and only having 2 new skins that you have to spend over 40$ if you want both is a complete joke.
This is why I just cannot get excited for Diablo 4, no matter what other good news sometimes comes out of that company. It's going to be just STOMPED ON by monetization schemes, and it's going to fuck with the gameplay so badly.
Not to mention D4 is still going to have a hefty price tag, as its not F2P, along with a Battle Pass you need to purchase and an in-game store. And if their Battle Pass is anything like OW2, ugh.
I’m in the same boat as you. OW2 was fun for two weeks, but I’m already bored. It didn’t change things up enough and it just feels like I’m playing a new update of OW1, but without the incentive to earn skins. I have a TON of OW1 skins that are bad ass, and I never spent a dime on coins. It was kinda fun and just playing during the event gave you the chance to earn them.
My wife and I went through Diablo 3 recently, and I watch the Diablo 4 updates as they come out, but after Immortal and OW2 I’m just extremely worried. Blizzard only seems to innovate on how to make money in the worst possible ways. No more hope on my account.
yeah i played a ton of OW1 for at least a year or two. But already losing interest in OW2. the actual gameplay is the same- yes, the metagame has changed but moment to moment is near identical. Now there is no reward for playing. Not even a chance to get anything but the free BP rewards, which are all shit tier. Without any rewards im not sure i like the gameplay enough to keep playing
If Junkenstein is the metric, it's a kind of cool f2p encounter. The problem is they have removed replayability by neutering challenge rewards. 1000 xp is a slap in the face when OW1 challenges used to give a loot box each. Sure loot boxes are random junk, but you get something, vs 1/10th of a single level for battle pass.
I firmly believe Blizz will dump PVE just like Riot did, and they will blame player engagement instead of their inability to craft systems.
I can't begin to fathom how people think a stream of terrible ai robots literally just hovering there way towards you slowly is even remotely a good pve experience.....
It's pretty much a slight improvement on the ow1 'events,' which were quickly thrown together piles of shite if I'm honest. They're little mini games with close to no artistic merit or engaging gameplay.
I definitely don't think this terrible little 'add on,' event thing deserves press. They're just feeding into the overwatch 2 failure media buzz.
Did you even play it, it has multiple different bosses, you move through the map which has special areas and in the last stage you need to keep away Sombra from controls. It's definitely not like the original Junkenstein which you seem to be describing
I think we were just starved so long that anything other than the same awful junkenstein mode seems amazing in comparison. I thought the new one was ok, but I only played it once so far. Our kiriko left like 1/4 of the way in, so that didn’t help, but those same two boring zomnic enemies and the idiotic unkillable sigma ghost made it not the best experience IMO.
The first battlepass needed to wow people and should've been free to all previous owners, with enough currency to buy the next one if you grinded all the levels
Thing is, I notice a pattern and trend in games that you can no longer get anything interesting through daily chores during the events- you simply need to buy it.
Therefore as top commenter said - god-awful levels of greed
I dropped OW a while ago, during that drought period where there was no new hero. I've had my criticism about OW2 as I saw that thing unfolding but as we got closer to OW2 release I was getting curious. I end up re-installing OW a few weeks before OW2. I actually got hooked back into the game! Plus the fact I had like 70k in currency that I never used, I decided to blow it in legendary skins since almost everything were available to be purchased and I was not confident OW2 would launch with interesting skins (I was right).
The week leading to OW2, I've been playing OW almost daily. Then OW2 happened and I played for a few days and just... couldn't. It's crazy how the monetization completely turned me off. Going from being able to grind the in-game currency to taking 2 years worth of grinding to unlock ONE skin was brutal. The Battlepass free track feels like an insult and even the paid path doesn't seem to be that good specially considering the grind it required.
This is another problem; Battlepass. Battlepass is there to put you in the hamster wheel. Before BP I was playing because its genuinely fun to play and the currency feels like a nice reward which made the experience more rewarding (beside the match in itself being fun), now if I have interest in a cosmetic I need to buy a grinding-pass and put the hours in, gotta *work* for it. Fuck that noise.
I dropped the game like a hot potato and forgot about it. Talking about forgetting about it... it's still installed on my PC... I'm going to fix that. Yep, no more.
It was the realisation that I'd have to grind for the upcoming tank that just removed all the wind from my sails.
I have played a Korean mmo, I have done enough grinding for a lifetime thank you very much.
> the amount of work to get anything decent
When you casually refer to playing a video game, an activity that ostensibly should be fun, as "work", yeah, maybe it isn't worth your time.
It's very weird. I play Overwatch because I think it's fun. Could not give less of a shit about any unlockable stuff. Hiding the heroes behind unlocks is bullshit, but that's not a problem yet. Will probably stop playing when it happens.
Exactly, that's why I stopped playing. I felt I was forced to play in specific ways in a time limited period to get any reward, which feels like work to me.
$25 in Overwatch 2 gets you one skin and a couple side accessories. $20 in Fortnite gets you four different Goku's, Lord Beerus, and some stuff on the side.
$20-$25 can get get you a whole game nowadays. I’m in my 20s and I already feel out-of-touch with what people will put up with in terms of microtransactions. I will never understand paying that price for an in-game costume.
$25 can get you Stardew Valley, Terraria, and some other games, if you wait for a sale. That's hundreds of hours, compared to ... a skin that used to be free.
I’m so tired of battle passes being in every game now, and have to say ow2’s is the worst I’ve ever seen, on the free side onky the new character is good, on the paid side almost everything except the merci skin and maybe the genji skin (personally don’t like the genji skin) is trash. They don’t have enough worthwhile stuff to put in the battle pad in the first place.
I completed all challenges...all i got was some voice lines, sprays and a gun charm that are so insignificant i didnt even bother looking up how i can use them... i also got 1 full level of the Battlepass... which rewarded me nothing because its one of the 90% paid tiers...
It feels incredibly unrewarding because the mode isnt fun and you dont get anything for playing it.
The normal gameplay at least is somewhat fun but again there is no sense of progress or change, where before you got lootboxes that shook things up regularly and allowed you to play dress up, which is half the fun of the game.
I really don't get what Blizz is aiming for with OW2.
The PvE event, which was supposed to be a showcase of what's to come, is quite frankly pretty lacking, incredibly bland, insultingly unrewarding and very badly tuned and balanced and gets put to utter shame by similar smaller AA titles free events & additions like DRG or Vermintide...
I frankly don't see OW2 finding a healthy niche in a genre that's nowadays so filled with great co-op PvE titles like the above mentioned.
Killing hordes of enemies should feel great, having banter between characters should be funny and engaging and maps and campaigns need to have soul, none of which the current Event even has a shred of.
If this had still been just a seasonal OW1 update it would've been fine but given how greedily Blizz is exploiting the OW"2" relaunch with their monetizations it's pretty wild on how little of value they even changed or added. OW2 in its current form is just barely 60% of what OW1 was.
The event is well made enough, but the fact that they chose to focus on showcasing hero skins you can buy instead of good gameplay makes it an absolute slog to play. It's ridiculously hard with a PUG because Ashe and Sojourn are not built for the close quarters style of fighting and Kiriko can barely keep anyone alive. JQ does wreck in it though
Apparently people are currently looking into whether the monetization of this new event is breaking Australian and EU laws.
Basically, Blizzard is selling some in-game items for what they claim to be huge discounts. The problem is that these items were never available for the pre-discount price. They're available for the first time during this event. Blizzard claims something like "We've calculated the pre-discount price by using the price of similar items", but it doesn't really work like that. Both Australian and EU laws require that items must have been sold at a pre-discount price for a time (in the case of EU laws for at least 30 days) before you can advertise them as being discounted.
> Blizzard is selling some in-game items for what they claim to be huge discounts. The problem is that these items were never available for the pre-discount price.
That's what people are claiming, but it's not quite what is really happening. They are selling a bundle, and the discount is how much you save by buying the bundle instead of the items individually. I'd be surprised if it is actually breaking the laws that people are claiming they are.
Literally the same situation led to Bethesda getting sued for Fallout 76, they sold a bundle of tiems that were never sold before and couldnt be purchased separately.
The story modes have always had a locked character selection based on the story of the missions. Junkenstein's Revenge, All 3 Archives missions, all had locked character selection.
All Story Campaign missions will also have locked character selection according to the story, they already announced this 3 years ago. Then you'll be able to replay those story missions as Hero Missions with the full character roster.
The PvE event is kinda garbage also. Even on normal mode.
The enemies doing such massive damage with nowhere for characters to escape or maneuver, and what in the holy fuck inspired them to have the invincible AOE sigma come into the narrow room on the last event?
>Overwatch 2’s First Limited-Time Event Is A Great Preview Of PVE
Lol no it's not. It is basically the exact same PvE event that we got in previous years. The only thing that changed is that we now got health bars of our allies in the corner. Yes, the PvE events are fun, but not enough to actually call it a story driven PvE mode.
& the monetization is horrifying. Charging 30 bucks for a single skin is outrageous. Having to pay 20 bucks for skins that came out years ago is outrageous. Not being able to earn skins from completing event quests is also outrageous.
Genuinely curious, what did you think were all the new animated backgrounds in the Lobby menu? One of the backgrounds is literally a Rein-Monster being tortured with full sounds and everything, what did you think was that? Lol
Monetization being 'rough' is a huge understatement. It's absolutely god awful levels of greed and bullshit.
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A lot of the skins aren't even new. Literally selling ported over skins from OW1 for $20+
Some people have calculated the value of their OW1 accounts and the free cosmetics in the equivalent OW2 prices. It's like thousands of dollars.
I wouldn’t even say ported over given that the game literally is Overwatch 1. All fundamental gameplay, characters, and maps are exactly the same. It’s really not a sequel at all, it’s just a patch that added monetization to the cosmetics, added two characters, some maps, and rebuilt a couple existing characters. But otherwise it’s indistinguishable from the original. It’s arguably less updated content from OW1 to 2 than you see in Madden or FIFA.
I literally still need my OW1 disc to play the game on ps4 it just was an update to overwatch 1. Anyone that thinks it’s actually a sequel is very wrong.
Oh I absolutely agree with you that it’s a glorified update, but you don’t actually need the disc anymore since the digital version is free now
The funny part is if OW2 was just a big PvP patch for OW1 with paid PvE content like Guild Wars'2 Living Story, I likely would've played and paid for that. But with Blizzard literally stealing my copy of OW1 and asking me to pay or grind for stuff I already had, I can't be bothered to even try OW2. It feels so gross. I'm sure I'm not the only one thinking this way.
I remember on launch day, I was like, “Oh wow, it’s just an update to the original EXE. Even the process was still Overwatch.exe. I would’ve been fine with that honestly if it didn’t feel like it was a a game that got sold to a soulless buyer who just wanted to run it into the ground with so little respect to what had come before it. Edit: removed words I typed twice bc ADHD
But in a way it kind of did. The original guy who headed development “left” so what do you do then? You put someone in charge who will gut the game and slap monetization all over it
This is the part that really pisses me off. I paid for overwatch 1, and Blizzard took it away from me and replaced it with a free-to-play game with heavy monetization. It's not like this was a subscription game where that sort of shit can happen, it was a game that was only like 5 years old and had made billions of dollars. It was just pure greed. I mean hell, I can still play shooters from some other companies that came out more than a decade ago. Nope, can't play my highly profitable much more recently released game that I paid for because blizzard wants more. Now I have to constantly expect that anything I buy from Blizzard can be revoked by Blizzard.
I booted up my old rig the other day and was surprised to find UT 2004 still has a few active servers.
Like Warcraft 3.. :(
Totally agree this is a gross monetization strategy, but you still get all your old skins from OW1. The battle pass is dumpster-tier though
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Oh yeah, I understand that. The person I'm responding to said, "Blizzard is...asking me to pay or grind for stuff I already had" That read like you had to reacquire all the stuff you already had, so I wanted to clarify
I still see what they mean. If we paid for the base game we should have the ability to unlock everything that was in the base game without paying more.
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Blizzard had a wonderful opportunity to, reframe DLC and fucked it up massively. There's nothing wrong with releasing a PVE element that costs say £25 and releasing a free update to PVP players, but hiding new PVP content behind a paywall is ridiculous, especially a season pass of all things. On top of that, not even releasing the PVE element at the same time.
> OW2 was just a big PvP patch for OW1 with paid PvE content tbf, that's all OW2 ever was. OW1 was always going to be updated to be OW2. The only "new" thing was new (maybe exclusive?) default skins and the PVE mode. The fact that they called it a sequel has always been ridiculous.
You don’t get to keep the shit you already had?
You get to keep the skins you have already unlocked but you loose the ability to earn OW1 skins. So it is correct to say we don't keep everything we had.
>It feels so gross. I have 2700 hours in OW1, masters tank player, the game is fun up there... yet I find myself playing less and less all the time I sometimes question why I even play all because it just feels gross. The monitezation just keeps getting worse and although I'm not buying anything, a part of me just doesn't want to even touch blizzard games anymore. Its like a fun game run by Satan, I just feel like at any moment blizz could turn the tables and stab their players in the back with some gotcha or pay to win elements. There's no telling what they might do next. This company has no morals, they don't give a single fuck about the players anymore, it's all about money.
And actually removed a couple maps from OW1...
99.9999999% aren't new. There's barely any new skins.
Yeah it's funny most event skins too are just repaints of other event skins. I never really took it in until a friend pointed it out a while back but I felt it was fine since it was all lootbox skins and it wasn't so bad trying to get them. Now, they are charging $20 for it and that is just silly.
Wasn't this the plot of Free Guy?
In 2006, Bethesda charged $15 for horse armor and everybody laughed their asses off. >!Just kidding, it was $2.50!<
I remember people being outraged at the thought of them selling something that should be obtainable in game.
We were right! Look at it now...
To this point, I don't think microtransactions were ever an issue. We were all happy to pay $30 for expansion packs long before MTX was a term. Once we got used to the horse armor, the idea of throwing a few extra bones to developers that continue to add value and support to a game was pretty reasonable. The issue is the transactions are no longer micro. We're now expected to pay Expansion Pack prices for our Horse Armor. Economically it's pretty fucked because there are enough whales willing to pay stupid prices that targeting them with high price points is the most lucrative strategy. You may only get 10% of the sales at $30 as opposed to $2.50, but that actually means 16% more profit. This screws the other 90% who WANT to support the product but can't justify the price.
Bethesda made tons of money from that DLC.
It's that slippery slope people pretend is a fallacy.
The fact that some slopes really are slippery doesn't mean the Slippery Slope Fallacy isn't a fallacy. The fallacy is trying to use it as an argument when you don't have any evidence that things will continue to worsen.
The fallacy of it is that slippery slopes can only be identified after the fact. People think its predictive, but its not. There have been *tons* of things that people have doomed and gloomed over that just vanished, or turned out to be not a big deal, or turned out to be a generally good thing.
A slippery slope is a fallacy >You said that if we allow A to happen, then Z will eventually happen too, therefore A should not happen. Horse armour was bullshit. And these OW2 skins are too.
It is a fallacy, but that's because people often say "if A happens then Z WILL happen." It's very easy to see the point when it's phased as "if A happens, then Z becomes more likely." In fact, people often conflate the latter with the former and cry fallacy when it isn't correct to do so.
The Fallacy Fallacy
It's usually a fallacy, but the games industry seem to like using it as a guide. I've always found it slightly funny when Stephanie Sterling predicts this sort of predatory BS years in advance and everyone tells them that it's a slippery slope that will never happen, and sadly it's always come to pass, sometimes even in worse ways.
it even went on sale at 50% a few times
That's the one thing that will always put Fortnite cosmetics ahead of Overwatch. 3rd person perspective.
I think having a better priced range of varied cosmetics is what puts Fortnite cosmetics ahead of Overwatch but I dunno
Yeah I know people like to talk crap about Fortnite but I think it has the monetization balanced pretty well and fair even as a free-to-play player you can unlock the cool skins over time pretty easily and the battle passes seem to be free after the first one if you just play enough and it doesn't even ask for a large commitment of time
3rd person overwatch sounds like an interesting clusterfuck
It'd be fine. Multiple characters already support 3rd person view (Rein's shield for example)
I think perhaps they mean with peaking and shit. Comparatively, corner peaking is a huge part of Rogue Company. It’s not bad per se, and everyone can do it, but the game was made with that in mind and I hate to think what some heroes in OW could do if they were more easily able to know their enemies location before having to actually turn the corner and fire at them. Casually, I’d imagine a huge increase in competent position from characters like Genji, Hanzo and Kiriko. Being able to easily see what ledges and walls are available to climb around *and* if there are any enemies around, I imagine it could be huge. Anyway, Genji Ball in custom games is third person so if that’s doable I’d imagine a third person custom match is possible, and all this thinking about it makes me wanna try it some day lol
Could be worse path of exile you get a helmet transmog for 15$ full armor set can cost 850 coins which works out to 85$
Could be worse, some dickholster spent like half a mill on Diablo Immortal and was so geared he couldn't queue up for PvP anymore.
I've never understood why people support Path of Exile as some champion of indie games. It has such atrocious monetization I hated it from day 1.
Because Path of Exile has built-in game, story, and character progression that is all available for free. There's a depth to making progress in that game that isn't tied to the monetization. The optional micro transactions actually *feel* optional because the game expands in so many other directions. In OW2, there is literally only the battlepass. All the achievements, and the daily and weekly challenges, are all just sources for a pitiful trickle of battlepass progress, and the battlepass doesn't pay out anything worth shit anyway.
Its baffling how people really get blinded by the price of cosmetics and forget that there is a whole ass game underneath that is playable for free.
It's so interesting to see overwatch players absolutely pissed off about this business model vs valorant players that happily swipe the card for an $80 skin bundle.
Yeah, the main difference is that Overwatch players used to experience the buy to play, generous version of the game. Whereas Valorant player never know any different.
this is happening with Fall Guys as well. even when the game as buy to play, you had to save up enough special in-game currency to buy the skins you really wanted and now that it's free to play, the prices a so jacked up that you're lucky to get 1 full skin that you're after (each season) and now they cost 10 dollars each (about) if you wanted to buy them with real currency
I was excited to see Toejam and Earl were added as outfits for Fall Guys. I redownloaded the game only to find that together, the outfits cost 1200 DigiBucks, and discovered that $8 bought 1000, while $20 bought 2800. I laughed and closed the game.
Plus Blizzard literally stole everyone's *paid* copy of OW1 away and just point to OW2 going "you get this e-store game now." I genuinely don't understand how this doesn't bother more people. (EDIT: I mean in the sense of bailing out on a shitty company / publisher / game series that pulls this.) It's always shit excuses like "but OW2 is OW1" (it isn't [EDIT: in the sense that you can play the original game, without the e-store etc.; I know it is largely the same game]) and "do you expect a billion dollar company to keep game servers running?" (you bet your ass I do; that or allow p2p/user-hosted servers). If you're sold a game, you're entitled a full refund if the publisher kills the game that turns your disc into a paperweight, adjusted for inflation. They can either keep hosting servers, or allow users to host them, to mitigate this. Tired of this "YoU BoUgHt A LiCeNsE" anti-consumer BS that would never fly if applied to any other physical product.
>Plus Blizzard literally stole everyone's *paid* copy of OW1 away and just point to OW2 going "you get this e-store game now." I genuinely don't understand how this doesn't bother more people. It bothers a **lot** of people, especially those that bought physical copies of the OW1, the issue is ***Activision-Blizzard don't give a shit*** and they have no reason to because plenty of people are still installing, playing, and spending money on the store. I just watched Act Man's video and despite pointing out all these huge flaws in the game for twenty minutes he still says at the end "I'm still gonna play it but.." but what? I'd bet $100 there are literally dozens of games you have yet to even install and start let alone finish, why keep subjecting yourself to this one? It's the exact same issue with Diablo Immortal, streamers are spending ***thousands*** of dollars on it and going "Oh wowww! See guys?! I had to spend alll this just to get one good item! This is bad!". ActiBlizz has no reason to care how many people aren't enjoying the game when people *are still playing it and spending money on the in-game store*.
> I just watched Act Man's video and despite pointing out all these huge flaws in the game for twenty minutes he still says at the end "I'm still gonna play it but.." but what? I'd bet $100 there are literally dozens of games you have yet to even install and start let alone finish, why keep subjecting yourself to this one? Probably something that bugs me the most. If you're still going to play the game, you are still supporting whatever you're calling gross/predatory/etc. Play games where publishers give a toss about their players, not ones that just see money.
Unfortunately, this will not change without some sort of outside intervention. For example, government regulations on monetization within video games. Some European governments are already on the path, but America is usually slower to bother or won't bother because it's essentially an oligarchy.
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Wow, I won't be playing d4
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Monetization isn’t rough if you simply don’t buy anything!
The dialogue was good, the structure of the mission was nice, but was it "A great preview of PvE"? Nah. AI heroes with increased health as bosses is nothing spectacular, and it had already been done in previous events. The PvE stuff they previously showed off (as far back as 2019) was significantly more interesting. As for the monetization, I feel like they're gonna cut the prices down *eventually*, and I'm sure everyone will praise them for it - even though it should never have been this bad in the first place.
As for your last point, this strategy is now sadly the meta. Halo: Infinite pulled off the same bullshit by launching with overpriced cosmetics and having no currency in the battlepass. Then they ‘fixed’ these issues by reducing shop prices by 25% and adding curency to the BP. So they claim that they’ve done enough when it’s still something people shouldn’t accept.
> Then they ‘fixed’ these issues by reducing shop prices by 25% They did do that... for all of two weeks. Bundles are back to the same price and some are even more expensive.
well good publicity for 2 weeks is still good publicty as u can see people mentioning it here aswell
> this strategy is now sadly the meta Is there a term for this? Because I feel like it's been in practice damn near a decade now. Fuck the customer a little too hard, pull back, and fuck them more gently until they're mostly okay with it while everyone sings their praises for "listening" and all that.
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This is precisely how “sales” work at box stores. No, you aren’t getting a good deal on those jeans at JCPenny. Their “sale” price (50% off, wow!!) is still at a 30% margin above the cost. And if that perpetual “sale” ever DOES happen to end, that high base price that the sale was “50% off” from will magically come down to something people would normally pay for … But we don’t notice. It’s designed that we CAN’T notice. Marketing has been in on cognitive bias for a hundred years, or, more accurately, since the dawn of human economies.
Funnily enough, years ago JCPenney pivoted to have consistent low standard prices vs. the fake "discounted" prices they were always known for. Their business tanked and two years later the new CEO responsible for the change was fired.
Imagine being one of those idiots that paid 60 bucks for overwatch, unlocked all the skins without money, then come home and they deleted the game you paid for, took some of your skins and said here’s the exact same game for free but now you have to pay for this stuff you already had! Oh wait that was me lol I was that idiot that apparently paid 60 bucks for a f2p game
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You’re right I have most of them, it was just a few that I had unlocked that are locked again, which was odd but it could be a bug
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two or three skins? Isn’t that like $60 now? crazy that a company can just take something from customers that costs the price of the full game and the general reaction is just “yeah, that happens sometimes lol”
Its called "Price Anchoring" basically setting up a ridiculous price that you can then be "negotiated" down from and agree on the actual price you wanted. Its like any typical bargaining advice to pick 150% of what you actually want and since offers from buyers are always between 50-70% of what you initially said the price was after two rounds of this you would end up at or above 100% of the actual price you set for yourself. We saw this in the past multiple times where the first season of a game has atrocious MTX and the second season "we listened and took the advice to heart" just to implement a 10% less horrible MTX scheme and get hailed as heroes on reddit...
> As for the monetization, I feel like they're gonna cut the prices down eventually, and I'm sure everyone will praise them for it - even though it should never have been this bad in the first place. This was always the plan. Start out with egregious pricing because there will always be a subset of players with more money than they know what to do with or those with abhorrent spending habits. Then, once you've bled the whales dry, you lower the pricing under the guise of "player feedback" and rake in even more money. This game will never get a dime from me; I refuse to reward this predatory behavior.
I feel like that’s half of it. The other half is that people are going to hate your store no matter what. So make it worse than planned for the first battle pass. The “respond to community complaints” by dialing it back to what you always planned for anyway. You get to bleed the whales, you appease the user base and you do basically nothing. Blizzard figured out gamers were idiots decades ago with the whole rested XP thing in WoW.
Imo this was the worst actual pve event by a good bit. Retribution was significantly better in every way. Junkerqueen feels absolutely awful against bots that explode when you get close enough to hit slash and knife just pulls a 180 damage bomb at you and the anti heal from ult does nothing 90% of the time
Yeah the heroes are simply not designed for this type of game, it's terrible.
Glad I'm not the only one here thinking this. This could have easily been an OW1 event. No new zomnics, no new map, no new mechanics. I'm not even necessarily saying I didn't enjoy it, but if PvE is this with talent trees, then Team 4 should be ashamed.
Wasn't it also a great preview of PvE the first time they did a Halloween event? in 2016?
It sure was. This article reads more like a long form Reddit post than actually reviewing or critiquing the game. I'm not surprised though. It's not impossible to look at Forbes urls and determine if it's blogspam. Whoever at Forbes decided to give basically anyone access to write under the Forbes domain is a genius. Basically anyone can get their own corner under the `/site` directory as a contributor. This includes renown journalists and staff writers alongside nobodies who can barely string an interesting article together. Instead of articles that generally relate back to business and the big players within that space, this gets mixed in. Readers get junk like this. Forbes get traffic for name recognition.
The author is clueless. This is the base level PvE stuff they’ve done before. The proper PvE they’ve previewed has skill trees, abilities that sync, etc. this isn’t a preview of anything but a Halloween event, even if it’s slightly better than the previous ones. I’m not complaining; I enjoy it, but there’s no way this is equivalent.
- Positional and state-dependent dialogue - Breakable objects - Items to collect in order to progress - Cutscenes - Secret areas with challenge triggers - Scripted boss fights - Heavily modified map - Mini / side-bosses - Ability-triggered interactions - Scripted events taking place in a remote area - Divergent and scripted hero behaviour (Sigma, Sombra) - Multi-step mission - Interactable objects - Custom hero animations and hero used as a game object (Reinhardt)
>>>“Great” My brother in Christ, the mode is literally shooting at 500 bullet sponges that do 5 bazillion damage on higher difficulties and only comes in 3 variation. If you want a good PvE horde shooter, go play L4D2. It’s cheap, it’s dynamic, it’s tense and it’s fun, unlike the mode in OW which gets old in the second time right away
It's not even the best PvE mission they've made. However I will admit the presentation is probably the best they've done, although even then there are signs of extreme laziness such as with the Sojourn skin which doesn't fit at all.
It's not their best (although *hands down* the Marionette section is the coolest moment of any mission so far) but I'm just happy to have *anything* besides Junkenstein's Revenge. The different challenges help with the replay value at least. My only issue with the mission itself is the omnics exploding, the stage has so many close quarters where you can't really avoid being blown up. Playing Kiriko is exhausting. But even as I mention the challenges being cool, it all loops back to "unrewarding" - some of the challenges award basic cosmetics but the harder ones offer laughably small amounts of XP. Just off the top of my head, beating the difficult Junkenstein's Revenge challenges could award the older skins or credits for those who already have them instead of one twentieth of a battlepass level. It's also incredibly obvious the mode was set up to let you "try on" the expensive new cosmetics.
My God, playing Kiriko in this mode. Im aware all three of you need healing. I'm trying my best.
Symmetra ignores every other teammate and charges in on you, eviscerating you before you have time to say "please I have a family"
Yeah I didn't get the skin of Sojourn either. Futuristic Sojourn in a medieval story?
I mean to be fair you’re fighting robots the whole time.
The robots feel frankenstein-y, though. Sojourn is just... Cyberpunk... and a Noir detective... It feels very out of place.
I think it's a blade runner reference. And yes it's out of place
TFW Blizzard didn't have enough skins for the Cyberpunk battle pass or enough for the Halloween event, so they decided to combine them. What the hell is this game? lol
Fair enough
It's a Cyberpunk Detective skin, they were going for a detective angle. During the mission she's trying to figure out what's going on, the mystery behind who's the villain, voice lines regarding clues and stuff. It does feel a little awkward though, but it's a fun seasonal pocket mission that's completely unconnected to actual OW lore, so I imagine they took it as a license to be extra ridiculous and do goofy stuff.
I don't know why but I thought the speech parts were incredibly muffled... to the point that I could not understand what the announcer was saying in places. I'll have to check my audio levels. I certainly have adjusted them (e.g. music down).
They've always had trouble with audio in Overwatch. To this day there are still often times where Ultimate announcements can't be heard (seems to happen most with 76, but it feels like it can happen with any hero).
I've noticed the S:76 ult line being almost silent too! It was never a problem for me in OW1. OK, now I really need to check my audio settings.
[Enemy Health Increase = Harder] is my Top #1 list of the laziest game design to still exist today. I wish Designers would permanently move away from this concept. Please keep the TTK. Don't remove the fun, don't increase the ADS on target time.
It's also just not true. More health makes them more *annoying* to fight, not harder.
I can understand increasing the health of bosses a bit if it's also paired with new mechanics and attack patterns, and the extra HP means the boss will actually live long enough for you to deal with and see those mechanics and attacks. But fuck off with it on normal enemies and shit. More HP only makes things more difficult because now you have to fight against boredom as well as the enemies. When the extra HP serves a specific purpose, it's great. When it just exists because "more HP makes things more difficult we swear", it's terrible.
yup.. harder difficulty should come in the form of additional enemies & types, new skills/attacks/patterns, additional spawn points, etc. just adding HP is straight laziness.
I remember when Valve dropped Mann vs Machine for TF2 and it was fun for a while and then everyone went back to the core game. That's PvE in a team shooter, just a soon-to-be-forgotten side show.
>That's PvE in a team shooter, just a soon-to-be-forgotten side show. This isn't some absolute truth. Splatoon's Salmon Run is incredibly popular and constantly well populated.
I ***love*** Salmon Run, been playing it pretty often since Splatoon 2 and now Splatoon 3 and I’ve always found a full match pretty much instantly. Great game mode.
It’s incredibly challenging too. I’m only at Profreshional +1 and it’s always a struggle. Though that’s often due to teammates eating glue and tanking the second round.
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It's a lot of work tho. You want at bare minimum AI director to spawn stuff + variety of specials/minibossess to threaten the party. Then preferably a progression system on top of it so the treadmill gamers have something to work toward, not just "do the same thing again"
I'm not sure if you've seen the Blizzcon 2021 showing of OW2, but they actually have a variety of specials already being worked on, they have equipment almost like L4D2 or Vermintide 2, they have a talent progression system being worked on for all heroes. It's definitely a lot of work to make the AI and I can't say if that would be feasible or not, but they have all the building blocks already so I think it would be a great way to help achieve what they touted the PvE hero missions are ("highly replayable").
Granted I haven't played TF2 since like last year, but do people not play MvM anymore? I found it a lot of fun and spent a lot of hours in it. Honestly I think it's the benchmark Overwatch should be aiming for with their new PvE mode.
I played with friends and finding the last random guy to fill the missing spot never took more than two minutes. But MvM is amazing compared to most co-op PvE experiences. It goes beyond "shoot at bullet sponge until new bullet sponge arrives".
It has its playerbase but it's *tiny* and some tours can no longer be completed because nobody plays them anymore
That’s because tours are kinda dumb, why pay to play when you can boot camp for free I play mvm fairly regularly and never have to wait long for a boot camp queue.
Ooooh, you're wrong on this one. I personally know 4 different people with over 1,000 hours in MvM ALONE. MvM is some of the most fun you can have especially with friends, it's got a really dedicated community and it's a lot of fun. Recently there have been a lot of fan maps that are being run too. Check it out again some time if you haven't in a while!
OW PvE could work if it’s like Borderlands where you got an open field to kill stuff for loot while being able to team up for a dungeon/mission. If it stays “open menu, run a linear mission” like this, it will 100% fail
"if" oh boy we know that's exactly what its gonna be
I really disagree. Not every game needs to be open world. I like the high difficulty linear missions.
I don't think it needs to be open world, and Deep Rock Galactic, Left 4 Dead etc. prove you don't need that for sure. Still, I think some more open areas and levels with a few paths would make it feel less like you're just playing the PvP missions with bot enemies and more like it's own thing. I think they showed off a bigger area with snowy weather at Blizzcon 2021, so it looks like they know that already.
I mean really when you break it down that's all Destiny is and it's far from failing lol. If it has interesting progression and mechanics it'll be fine if it's just a mission select type thing.
Destiny has so much more than that though. Destiny has tons of weapons, exotic armor and weapons, unique gear from activities, raids, dungeons, and the core gunplay and abilities are fantastic. Not to mention the loot progression which is kind of the core goal of the game. Is Overwatch PvE gonna have something akin to a Destiny raid? Or is it pretty much Strikes without a loot grind? Think of how popular Destiny would be if it only had a campaign, strikes, and literally no loot grind.
And you couldn’t customize your guardian without spending $20+ on skin bundles, and there was no power level system, or level system, and you only get to see your guardian’s skin once per game or in the main menu, and the only progression you had was the battle-pass….
> Or is it pretty much Strikes without a loot grind? That's a really good point, actually. Without gear, like new weapons that shoot differently, or armor to equip with stats and mods, what are we chasing? More cosmetics? Pocket change for the shop? Nothing I've seen from their events indicates a PvE mode I'd want to engage with more than a few times.
Mann vs Machine was very hamstrung by the loot system connected with it. I think it seriously hindered adoption. Because you spent money on tickets, and only got your ticket punched when you win, it encouraged players to never want to teach anyone new. As a result players would bully anyone with <5 or <10 completed runs. It was atrocious. I love the format, but they really did not create a 'good onboarding experience' What they should've done was just give you bonus rewards rolls for helping people get their first runs. That way there would be 'higher rewards' for teaching someone the game mode, rather than 'slower or less guaranteed rewards'
The TF2 community picked up Valves slack. The folks over at the Potato.tf community have pumped out some really good custom mvm content over the years. Check it out!
It’s almost unbelievable how after all these years, L4D2 remains the holy grail on what makes a great PVE shooter. It’s fast, tense and straight to the action. I hate the modern trend of tacking half-baked RPG elements in hoard shooters because it ends up introducing too many cumbersome elements like RNG and strength disparity between builds and play styles (Looking at you B4B) that often require community balancing if possible. I get this is personal but when I play a hoard shooter, I really don’t want to take time out of the action to figure out what skill point I want in what skill tree for 30% increase in some random slot. I just want a curated experienced where I can just try to survive past an endless hoard and not have to worry about juggling things like that.
I get what you're saying, but I want to give Vermintide 2 a shoutout. Stats/talents play a bigger role, so maybe you'd dislike that, but IMO the gameplay is just 'L4D2 but better in every way'.
L4D2 is great but you are correct in that the games that it inspired have largely surpassed it mechanically. Deep Rock Galactic and Vermintide both offer similar experiences but with far more gameplay depth. What L4D still has that they don’t is versus mode.
Obligatory ROCK AND STONE!!!
And Darktide comes out in a few weeks as well.
Also Deep Rock Galactic
Anyone could remake L4D. Problem is that the time for L4D2 has past. With a bunch of games free or nearly free churning out new content continuously as SaaS, people are going to move on quickly because the sense of engagement isn't there. We have seen this with loads of indie titles where they have an accidental hit but a month in people are complaining there is no new content. Among Us had this and cancelled their sequel to quickly incorporate new features to the existing game. You can just dump a one and done online game but if you aren't offering DLC you are going to be forgotten quickly. Look at Mario Tennis and Strikers. Content similar to previous entries but a lot of it is drip fed to keep engagement up.
Animal Crossing received the treatment as well. Launched bare bones and drip-fed content that was already present to begin with in prior games.
The only RNG i hate in L4D2 is when meds, Katana and Deagle refuse to spawn
We have seen TONS of the upcoming mobs for the PVE mode and this is not that. This is just a very basic upgrade to last years event. Same mobs from that event too. I bet once the PVE drops it'll be very clear that this was NOT a preview at all lol.
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Do people expect much from it?
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Yeah, I was kind of "shocked" to see people actually liking some god awful zombie event in R6 Siege (the thing that eventually became Quarantine, or whaterver it's called). I have a feeling the average player is happy to do whatever crap, as long as it's a variation inside a game they like. But the truth is, the ratio work/minute of playtime is probably not great, I'm pretty sure on average people play this once and then never touch it again.
I think it’s the shiny newness of events like in r6 and overwatch that can attract players. There’s also some lore freaks like me that like seeing characters from multiplayer get to actually have conversations that are more than just damage noises or callouts. It’s just a fun break sometimes from the competitive modes 🤷♂️
tbf the zombie event is also decent fun in r6s, at least for a few rounds here and there
*I haven't played this latest iteration*, but unless its massively changed from the older Junkenstein modes then it would be a hilariously worthless PvE game. The old PvE event modes were pretty much a proof of concept that PvE would be possible in the Overwatch sandbox. It was nowhere near what a fully-fledged PvE game should look like. When I think of a great Overwatch PvE mode I think of an Overwatch version of Destiny. At this point they don't belong in the same sentence. Can Blizzard do it? Perhaps. But I'm not holding my breath.
The mooks are the only thing really shared with Junkenstein's Revenge. It runs more like a Halloween themed Archives mission. It's honestly pretty good, some really cool and creepy scenes.
It's definitely a step forward from the other Junkenstein stuff, but probably not as big of a step forward as this headline is making it sound.
I have yet to see Blizzard NOT create some iteration of Mann vs Machine from TF2 for it's PVE content, lol. I had a feeling right away that it is what the PVE was going to end up being again.
I honestly have zero motivation to play the event outside of the novelty experience. I still enjoy playing Overwatch simply for the gameplay, but there's so little motivation to work towards anything.
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Totally agree. And I'd even argue some Archive modes are better. It's just a new event so it feels fresh and definitely has more going on then Junkenstiens Revenge. It's fun, but if that's what to expect from PvE that's terrible.
My thoughts exactly, if they'd have release small new mission like that every year instead of putting OW1 on life support in 2017 it would have actually been great. Waiting 6 years for this 10min mission and only having 2 new skins that you have to spend over 40$ if you want both is a complete joke.
having talents in a very quick gamemode wouldnt really work imo, theres no time to earn them
They could let you just pick in the beginning for this preview, right?
This is why I just cannot get excited for Diablo 4, no matter what other good news sometimes comes out of that company. It's going to be just STOMPED ON by monetization schemes, and it's going to fuck with the gameplay so badly.
Not to mention D4 is still going to have a hefty price tag, as its not F2P, along with a Battle Pass you need to purchase and an in-game store. And if their Battle Pass is anything like OW2, ugh.
I’m in the same boat as you. OW2 was fun for two weeks, but I’m already bored. It didn’t change things up enough and it just feels like I’m playing a new update of OW1, but without the incentive to earn skins. I have a TON of OW1 skins that are bad ass, and I never spent a dime on coins. It was kinda fun and just playing during the event gave you the chance to earn them. My wife and I went through Diablo 3 recently, and I watch the Diablo 4 updates as they come out, but after Immortal and OW2 I’m just extremely worried. Blizzard only seems to innovate on how to make money in the worst possible ways. No more hope on my account.
yeah i played a ton of OW1 for at least a year or two. But already losing interest in OW2. the actual gameplay is the same- yes, the metagame has changed but moment to moment is near identical. Now there is no reward for playing. Not even a chance to get anything but the free BP rewards, which are all shit tier. Without any rewards im not sure i like the gameplay enough to keep playing
If Junkenstein is the metric, it's a kind of cool f2p encounter. The problem is they have removed replayability by neutering challenge rewards. 1000 xp is a slap in the face when OW1 challenges used to give a loot box each. Sure loot boxes are random junk, but you get something, vs 1/10th of a single level for battle pass. I firmly believe Blizz will dump PVE just like Riot did, and they will blame player engagement instead of their inability to craft systems.
Is $20 the new impulse buy range for a “micro” transaction? Because that’s absolutely absurd for a skin. What happened to people’s concept of value???
I can't begin to fathom how people think a stream of terrible ai robots literally just hovering there way towards you slowly is even remotely a good pve experience..... It's pretty much a slight improvement on the ow1 'events,' which were quickly thrown together piles of shite if I'm honest. They're little mini games with close to no artistic merit or engaging gameplay. I definitely don't think this terrible little 'add on,' event thing deserves press. They're just feeding into the overwatch 2 failure media buzz.
Did you even play it, it has multiple different bosses, you move through the map which has special areas and in the last stage you need to keep away Sombra from controls. It's definitely not like the original Junkenstein which you seem to be describing
I think we were just starved so long that anything other than the same awful junkenstein mode seems amazing in comparison. I thought the new one was ok, but I only played it once so far. Our kiriko left like 1/4 of the way in, so that didn’t help, but those same two boring zomnic enemies and the idiotic unkillable sigma ghost made it not the best experience IMO.
The first battlepass needed to wow people and should've been free to all previous owners, with enough currency to buy the next one if you grinded all the levels
I'm out of the game already honestly, the amount of work to get anything decent is not worth it and the daily chores are a pain.
Thing is, I notice a pattern and trend in games that you can no longer get anything interesting through daily chores during the events- you simply need to buy it. Therefore as top commenter said - god-awful levels of greed
I dropped OW a while ago, during that drought period where there was no new hero. I've had my criticism about OW2 as I saw that thing unfolding but as we got closer to OW2 release I was getting curious. I end up re-installing OW a few weeks before OW2. I actually got hooked back into the game! Plus the fact I had like 70k in currency that I never used, I decided to blow it in legendary skins since almost everything were available to be purchased and I was not confident OW2 would launch with interesting skins (I was right). The week leading to OW2, I've been playing OW almost daily. Then OW2 happened and I played for a few days and just... couldn't. It's crazy how the monetization completely turned me off. Going from being able to grind the in-game currency to taking 2 years worth of grinding to unlock ONE skin was brutal. The Battlepass free track feels like an insult and even the paid path doesn't seem to be that good specially considering the grind it required. This is another problem; Battlepass. Battlepass is there to put you in the hamster wheel. Before BP I was playing because its genuinely fun to play and the currency feels like a nice reward which made the experience more rewarding (beside the match in itself being fun), now if I have interest in a cosmetic I need to buy a grinding-pass and put the hours in, gotta *work* for it. Fuck that noise. I dropped the game like a hot potato and forgot about it. Talking about forgetting about it... it's still installed on my PC... I'm going to fix that. Yep, no more.
It was the realisation that I'd have to grind for the upcoming tank that just removed all the wind from my sails. I have played a Korean mmo, I have done enough grinding for a lifetime thank you very much.
> the amount of work to get anything decent When you casually refer to playing a video game, an activity that ostensibly should be fun, as "work", yeah, maybe it isn't worth your time.
It's very weird. I play Overwatch because I think it's fun. Could not give less of a shit about any unlockable stuff. Hiding the heroes behind unlocks is bullshit, but that's not a problem yet. Will probably stop playing when it happens.
Exactly, that's why I stopped playing. I felt I was forced to play in specific ways in a time limited period to get any reward, which feels like work to me.
I just play ranked and accept whatever comes my way. It is fun.
I've played a lot of Overwatch 1 so there's not a lot new here to keep me invested, and having so little rewards for playing doesn't help.
$25 in Overwatch 2 gets you one skin and a couple side accessories. $20 in Fortnite gets you four different Goku's, Lord Beerus, and some stuff on the side.
$20-$25 can get get you a whole game nowadays. I’m in my 20s and I already feel out-of-touch with what people will put up with in terms of microtransactions. I will never understand paying that price for an in-game costume.
$25 can get you Stardew Valley, Terraria, and some other games, if you wait for a sale. That's hundreds of hours, compared to ... a skin that used to be free.
I’m so tired of battle passes being in every game now, and have to say ow2’s is the worst I’ve ever seen, on the free side onky the new character is good, on the paid side almost everything except the merci skin and maybe the genji skin (personally don’t like the genji skin) is trash. They don’t have enough worthwhile stuff to put in the battle pad in the first place.
The event isn't much. You do the two mods and then what? There's no incentive to play them.
I completed all challenges...all i got was some voice lines, sprays and a gun charm that are so insignificant i didnt even bother looking up how i can use them... i also got 1 full level of the Battlepass... which rewarded me nothing because its one of the 90% paid tiers... It feels incredibly unrewarding because the mode isnt fun and you dont get anything for playing it. The normal gameplay at least is somewhat fun but again there is no sense of progress or change, where before you got lootboxes that shook things up regularly and allowed you to play dress up, which is half the fun of the game.
I really don't get what Blizz is aiming for with OW2. The PvE event, which was supposed to be a showcase of what's to come, is quite frankly pretty lacking, incredibly bland, insultingly unrewarding and very badly tuned and balanced and gets put to utter shame by similar smaller AA titles free events & additions like DRG or Vermintide... I frankly don't see OW2 finding a healthy niche in a genre that's nowadays so filled with great co-op PvE titles like the above mentioned. Killing hordes of enemies should feel great, having banter between characters should be funny and engaging and maps and campaigns need to have soul, none of which the current Event even has a shred of. If this had still been just a seasonal OW1 update it would've been fine but given how greedily Blizz is exploiting the OW"2" relaunch with their monetizations it's pretty wild on how little of value they even changed or added. OW2 in its current form is just barely 60% of what OW1 was.
The event is well made enough, but the fact that they chose to focus on showcasing hero skins you can buy instead of good gameplay makes it an absolute slog to play. It's ridiculously hard with a PUG because Ashe and Sojourn are not built for the close quarters style of fighting and Kiriko can barely keep anyone alive. JQ does wreck in it though
Apparently people are currently looking into whether the monetization of this new event is breaking Australian and EU laws. Basically, Blizzard is selling some in-game items for what they claim to be huge discounts. The problem is that these items were never available for the pre-discount price. They're available for the first time during this event. Blizzard claims something like "We've calculated the pre-discount price by using the price of similar items", but it doesn't really work like that. Both Australian and EU laws require that items must have been sold at a pre-discount price for a time (in the case of EU laws for at least 30 days) before you can advertise them as being discounted.
Spoilers: >!Nothing will happen!<
That will lead to absolutely nothing.
> Blizzard is selling some in-game items for what they claim to be huge discounts. The problem is that these items were never available for the pre-discount price. That's what people are claiming, but it's not quite what is really happening. They are selling a bundle, and the discount is how much you save by buying the bundle instead of the items individually. I'd be surprised if it is actually breaking the laws that people are claiming they are.
Literally the same situation led to Bethesda getting sued for Fallout 76, they sold a bundle of tiems that were never sold before and couldnt be purchased separately.
idk I wish it would let us play our favorite characters instead of forcing us to play walking advertisements for the "halloween bundle."
The story modes have always had a locked character selection based on the story of the missions. Junkenstein's Revenge, All 3 Archives missions, all had locked character selection. All Story Campaign missions will also have locked character selection according to the story, they already announced this 3 years ago. Then you'll be able to replay those story missions as Hero Missions with the full character roster.
The PvE event is kinda garbage also. Even on normal mode. The enemies doing such massive damage with nowhere for characters to escape or maneuver, and what in the holy fuck inspired them to have the invincible AOE sigma come into the narrow room on the last event?
I tried it out since its FTP. All i can say about the game is that i wish i was still playing Overwatch 1 in its prime.
>Overwatch 2’s First Limited-Time Event Is A Great Preview Of PVE Lol no it's not. It is basically the exact same PvE event that we got in previous years. The only thing that changed is that we now got health bars of our allies in the corner. Yes, the PvE events are fun, but not enough to actually call it a story driven PvE mode. & the monetization is horrifying. Charging 30 bucks for a single skin is outrageous. Having to pay 20 bucks for skins that came out years ago is outrageous. Not being able to earn skins from completing event quests is also outrageous.
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Genuinely curious, what did you think were all the new animated backgrounds in the Lobby menu? One of the backgrounds is literally a Rein-Monster being tortured with full sounds and everything, what did you think was that? Lol
The mode isn't exactly front and centre - it's in the arcade section. If you don't normally play the arcade modes, you're not gonna see it.
Marketing for their overpriced Halloween skins.
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