I have hundreds of hours in OW1 and about 40 in OW2. I will never play a blizzard game again. Blizzard lied about what OW2 would be. Broke the games balance , and now throw out battle pass after battle pass. The vitriol of the player base has intensified as everyone’s frustration increased. One of my most played and beloved games absolutely ruined.
I’ve been out of the loop on this game. I really liked the first one, it brought back a lot of team fortress 2 memories. How bad is the second one? The general sentiment is “bad”.
There isn’t really a “second one”. Overwatch 2 was just a patch with essentially two major changes. They changed the monetisation, making the game free-to-play and introducing the battle pass. An especially unpopular part of that is that new heroes now have to be bought with real money or unlocked through the battle pass. The other big change is the move from 6v6 to 5v5, which was controversial. There are definitely some positives, like getting rid of the “double shield meta”, which did make the game more fun. But there’s also more pressure and focus on the single tank.
The game is free and if you bought OW1 you still have all your stuff (cosmetics and all the non-OW2 heroes), so if you’re curious you can just check it out. Personally I’m still enjoying the game but there’s also a lot of valid criticism.
Idk if it's "bad," exactly, but I don't like it. I liked the meta for the first game way more, I miss the old 6v6 team structure, I don't like the changes made to my favorite characters, and the monetization is really sucky. It felt to me like they took everything that was wrong with the first game, kept it as is, and then took a bunch of the good stuff and made it worse. lol
But that's just my opinion, I know there are def people that like it. I only wish they'd release "Overwatch Classic" or something so that people who prefer OW1 can still play it--ideally with the lootboxes removed and a way to unlock character skins and stuff by playing those characters and progressing, but I'd honestly take just like a snapshot of the last stable release before the OW2 update. It was one of my favorite games and I just really don't like the OW2 updates. 😥
Aparently not – the store page doesn’t say it requires a third party launcher (which it says for EA and Rockstar Games), only that you’ll need a battle.net account, which you could create online. A journalist has also confirmed this on twitter, although I don’t have a link right now.
Can’t wait to watch the steam charts. I’d be especially interested once they put the other blizzard titles on Steam as well since then we can estimate the number of players per game out of the “monthly active users” they report in their quarterly.
Blizzard is desperate here. And if there’s one thing about the internet it’s that people are good as sharks for smelling blood in the water. It’s the objectively correct move, but it could still end up backfiring if people can actually SEE just how dead the game is, and leave negative steam reviews.
Also, who exactly is going to install it through steam? Almost everyone who was going to play Overwatch already has. There’s going to be a minimum of people who just don’t want to have any game launcher but steam on their pc and really wanted to play Overwatch but couldn’t stomach the battle . net client. If it gets steam deck certified that is the only draw I can really see aside from a smattering of casual new sign ups.
Sad days. This was my favourite game for a very long time and it feels like potential squandered on a level not seen until Musk came along and bought Twitter.
Edit: spaced out the battle net to not be recognized as a link
quarterly reports of MAU for blizz went from 45mil at OW2 launch to 27mil to 26mil and the last one has 10mil diablo 4 players. It may not be dead but it's hemorrhaging players like there's no tomorrow.
Launch quarter for OW2 also had a wow expansion launch but it sounds like it was mostly bought by the smaller, core fanbase who have kept playing. Either way, adding 10mil MAU in Q2 and not being able to get the number above Q1 via a new game does not speak well of their retention.
Blizzard is desperate here. Am I right in thinking this is the first time they’ve put anything on Steam?
Enjoyed Overwatch back in the day, i.e. when it was new; but really not a fan of them reducing team sizes to make it a more conventional “fit” with other ‘esports’.
I’ve played it on xbox recently. Initially loved it but after playing for some time I realised I was getting addicted and grumpy. On lower levels still enough players but I don’t trust the intentions of Blizzard and their matchmaking algorithm.
I haven’t actually played ow2 after a few tens to the low hundreds of hours I played in ow1. Is it true that they’re locking characters behind battle passes now?
Pay 10bucks every 4ish months to get the hero immediately
grind 45 levels of the free battlepass (note that the hero is locked in competitive for the first 3 weeks). Personally this takes me about 10hrs.
wait until the season ends and do some rather trivial challenges (essentially play a tutorial for the character and play like 20 games)
Personally I see it as a subscription based game, and 3bucks/mo is pretty fair imo. like all competitive MP games, it doesn’t really make much sense to play it unless you can play a fair amount of it.
This is pretty much in line with my experience. As someone who didn’t play Overwatch 1, the monetization through the battle pass really doesn’t feel all that bad, but I totally understand how people who played Overwatch 1 from the start would be unhappy with it.
I know it might not be a popular opinion here, but I play a lot of Overwatch and actually find it really enjoyable. It doesn’t feel like a dead game at all. Plenty of people playing, and really easy to find matches. Plus if you’re willing to use Bing for Microsoft Rewards (which if you’re not is totally fair) you can use that to get the coins for the battle pass rather than paying.
Miserable game design for something that is trying to get players to come back every few months for content releases. “You can’t play the new hero until you grind for it until you burn out or pay” is just not a compelling pitch to get people to resume playing your game.
It’s only going to get worse over time as the proportion of premium characters grows… 😐
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