50,000 reviews now. It’s a shame, I used to play OW1 a lot even after they stopped providing new content for it. Came to OW2 and I just couldn’t be arsed to grind for characters I don’t have unlocked. You need to win 35 games, and since there’s a basically forced 50% winrate that means you need to play 70 games to unlock a character each time. Wanted to play Ramattra, saw he’s locked, uninstalled and didn’t look back. The monetization is terrible. The balance feels worse than it’s ever been.
This wouldn’t be such a problem if they didn’t literally SHUT DOWN OVERWATCH 1 to shove people into the cash shop grind sequel
I know next to nothing about neither Ow1 or OW2, but from the sound of it they turned OW2 into a game focused on grinding, where you can pay to skip (part of) the grind. Is my assessment correct? If so they must’ve looked at War Thunder and taken that idea.
Yes. OW1 cost money, but you got all the content. The only paid service was cosmetic outfits for the different characters. You could buy loot boxes for cosmetics. But you had all of the characters, maps, game modes, etc available to begin with. You got the whole game, then could grind for cosmetics.
OW2 takes that and flips it on its head. The game is free, but each character costs money. The problem is that they shut down OW1, so now the players who owned 1 are having to grind for everything. They’ve also had some weird server bugs, with players getting indefinitely locked out of characters they already own.
Wait. I bought overwatch 1 but stopped playing a few years ago. If I go back into overwatch I would have to grind for characters that I used to previously have access to?
No, this applies only to characters released in OW2. All the original characters should still be playable for free.
Yep. The gameplay itself has no p2w or grinding in general, but now you have to grind to unlock characters. In OW1 you also used to get showered with cool cosmetics just for playing, in OW2 they turned it into a paid battle pass and a rotating cash shop where a single skin costs like $20 and F2P users get basically nothing. The thing is set up in a way to scam whales by selling them things that used to be free for hundreds of dollars.
I would still play if it were just cosmetics but now every time a hero releases you have to grind to unlock them.
Does that mean that it I were to start playing again I wouldn’t have my unlocked skins form OW1?
You would but anyone who didn’t has to buy them now. You still have to grind for new characters though.
Ah thanks! That’s good to hear, at least. My nephew told me about Overwatch 2 replacing Overwatch 1 and suddenly being unable to play it because his PC now didn’t meet the new requirements. I hadn’t played for ages, so I didn’t even know this had happened. Couldn’t they just have released a real sequel that people had to pay for… Or use this new model, fine, but leave Overwatch 1 as it was. -.-
Not at all. Theres no grinding in overwatch (1 or 2), at least in the traditional sense like you’d experience in an rpg. You just queue up into a multiplayer lobby and lock a character.
There are a ton of valid points to be critical about with OW2 and it’s new business model. One aspect that could be considered grindy is that new heroes are locked behind battle pass progression unless you buy the premium battle pass (in which case you unlock them early). I disagree with this practice, as it is the only aspect of PvP gameplay that is locked behind a paywall to get it sooner. Everyone should just automatically get new heroes imo.
In terms of the core gameplay, OW2 pvp is vastly improved when compared to OW1; they went from 6v6 to 5v5, eliminating one tank per team composition, so now it’s 1 tank, 2 support, 2 dps. This allows for much better feeling, fast paced, dynamic gameplay when compared to the late days of 6v6 - which was basically a shield shooting simulator with way too much CC. The game actually feels great to play again.
There’s for sure a ton of valid criticisms to levy against the game, but 99% of the hate circlejerk comes from people who haven’t played since 2017 if ever.
“Theres no grinding in Overwatch if you ignore the grinding in Overwatch”
There’s for sure a ton of valid criticisms to levy against the game, but 99% of the hate circlejerk comes from people who haven’t played since 2017 if ever.
Straight up delusional lmao holy shit.
Seems like at least 50000 people disagree with your assessment.
You’re relatively young aren’t you?
Yeah it’s a wonder to me why anyone would ever continue to play overwatch 2. 1 was fun for a time and I played a single match of 2 to realize that they ruined the game and never went back. The game died when 1 was shut down because 2 was never going to be successful with how shit it is.
Fuck everyone that played OW2
How stupid do you have to be to see this train wreck coming and still contribute.
Hopefully after OW2 and Diablo 4, people finally stop downloading Blizzard games.
OW2 is great. F2P, no loot boxes. I will continue to buy the Battle Pass as long as I play the game. I started playing OW in 2017.
I personally have no problem with the monetization, but the balance is really, really bad.
I really don’t need another subscription in my life
So don’t? You get the new hero like a month or so later then. I haven’t put a dime into ow since I bought it. You don’t need the cosmetics. Let the dumb whales fund the game.
Have you played OW before? I can’t imagine a hero which wasn’t OP on release, fuck that game and it’s P2W subscription
Picking lifeweaver at his release was widely considered throwing.
Yeah, but honestly I don‘t think it ruins the game. Sure, it’s not the best idea, but I don‘t care too much. I actually care more about the fact that the gameplay currently sucks and is completely different to Overwatch 1. 5v5 and the overall balancing sucks.
The balance of OW2 is way better than OW1 though. OW1 was a boring shield-shooting simulator for the last 2 or 3 years of it’s life.
That’s not the balance, that’s the gameplay. There are still balance problems like the era of Mercy damage amping.
And while they’ve solved the CC and barriers problem, they’ve made teamfights too swingy. With only 5v5 and a single op tank, teamfights are often basically over after a single death or a single Rez. Especially for the tank. That’s just too much pressure, so nobody wants to tank anymore.
Shields were too strong in OW1, so much so that the meta revolved around having two shield tanks. How is that not a balance issue?
I agree there’s too much pressure on the tank currently, but I’ll definitely take that over the problems 6v6 OW had.
Good. They ruined the game. I paid for it and Now I need a battle pass to unlock the 2 champs? Blizzard, eat a sack of shit. Free Hong Kong. Fuck the CCP
Uh. You don’t need to pay for the pass to unlock the new heroes. They’re at the end of the free tier, and in the following seasons there’s an easy street set of achievement-based challenges to unlock older new heroes.
So you don’t have to pay for the heroes, but you will get them a month or so later than the paying players.
I mean it’s a huge downgrade from OW1 where they were available the moment they launched, but it’s easier than getting your desired weapon in tf2.
my first time saying this here, but FUCKING BASED
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They are referring to the Blitzchung incident, when China illegally took full control over Hong Kong before their agreement to let it be autonomous expired. During the mass protests a Hong Kong esports player voiced support for the protests on a Blizzard livestream for an event and was banned from the tournament and was forced to forfeit prize money he already won: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitzchung_controversy
Edit: also, disapproval of the CCP =/= dislike of/racism towards Chinese people
So there’s a problem with the American company freely associating with who they want to? That’s anti-free market!
That‘s not „anti-free market“ at all. People can buy from whoever they want and if they think that this is bad, they can freely choose to not buy anything from Blizzard.
Yeah fuck the free market, too.
Fuck everyone
Free markets include the freedom not to buy a product for any reason or for no reason. What you’re talking about is establishing a class of people who are free to act according to their conscience, and another class of people who are not.
There’s no need to shoehorn in your dislike of Chinese people into this video gaming story.
Strawman flame-bait everyone. Please ignore.
Yes. Please ignore when things disagree with major Western narratives everyone. Wouldn’t want the worldview that was fed to you challenged.
Account was only made two hours ago and is immediately saying provocative things… 🤔 Totally not a troll.
Taiwan number one
Not to be crass but
Now I need a battle pass to unlock the 2 champs?
Wasn’t this known before the game came out? Why would you buy the game if you knew this was going to be the case?
OW2 is free, they’re probably referring to buying OW1 only for them to shut it down and rerelease the same exact game but with battlepass characters.
Okay but we got like 5 years of free updates for OW1. If they had an option to play 6v6 and locked out the new characters, that would basically be “the game you paid for”.
I mean, I hate the 5v5 too, but I can’t say I didn’t get my money’s worth for OW1.
“Got my money’s worth”
Seriously, why do people bend over backwards to justify getting shafted by companies. The game was active and still running, they yanked it to try to make more money off OW2. They could have left it running and just stopped making new content for it, but they were greedy.
Unless they’re paying you to go around posting support, you are a sucker trying to justify getting shafted by corpo greed.
Okay let’s not go nuts with the revisionism. Ow1 was NOT active. In fact, judging by my (admittedly anecdotal) queue times, ow2 is a lot more active as I’m waiting usually a quarter of how long I would have waited in 1.
Also side note, but I find it hilarious how both narratives of “this is the same as ow1!” And “They deleted ow1 forever” are being run with simultaneously lmao.
I’m just old enough to remember when you bought a game and that was the whole game, not the game plus years and years of free content. I paid like $30 for OW1 at the first anniversary (or was it second? whichever), then didn’t drop a dime into it. Got a bunch of new characters and maps and balance tweaks for free after launch. For other games that would be DLC, or back in the '90s paid boxed expansions.
Yes, OW2 has been a big let-down. If I had to pay up-front for it? I wouldn’t. I haven’t put a dime into OW2 and I won’t because of the company’s problems.
But in terms of its relationship with OW1? I’m mostly a satisfied customer. I can still play Overwatch, I still have all the drops I got in OW1, and I got many years of complimentary loot in OW1.
Now, would I have preferred to get stuff at the rate I did in OW1? Of course. But I’m also realistic that this isn’t a sustainable business model, especially if they want to go f2p. Also paying for random loot boxes is increasingly illegal in many places, so no matter what they had to switch to a cash shop at least partially (but afaik random drops would’ve still been legal, but still - sustainable business model, remember?)
My biggest complaint is that they didn’t keep OW1 (2-2-2 with weaker tanks) as a mode in the arcade of Ow2.
How exactly does this justify modern games just being disappeared by their publishers?
I loved Battleborn, but it wasn’t long until it shut down, and when it did, everything went. Even the story campaign! It’s gone! Forever!
That is NOT ok.
If you bought a game on CD back in the day, would you be ok with the copy just disintegrating the day some arbirary timed license expires?
Or if a piece of music you got as a digital file, had a fixed number of times it could be played, and then never again. Once all the copies in existence are used up, poof, gone forever, never to be heard by anyone ever again?
No, we can’t require companies to support systems forever, but if they decide to stop running the private parts of the infrastructure, they shouldn’t get to just press delete. It should be open-sourced. Even if the game itself remains proprietary, meaning you have to buy it, the infrastructure to actual play it doesn’t have to.
And when games themselves stop being sold, they should, and could, legally become shareware. Instead we have dragons sitting on their piles like Nintendo, actively preventing access to content which cannot in any legal way be played, at all.
And it’s happening faster and faster! OW1 is now gone forever, and games like Destiny straight up remove older content, meaning new players who want the full experience can eat shit and die.
It didn’t even need to be open-source, it used to be normal for closed-source games to offer free server binaries for anybody who wants to run their own server. Yes, I 100% agree with you there, I just don’t feel the need to single out Blizzard for this when it’s the whole industry… More than that it’s every industry onto this online-only bullshit. Everything from Microsoft office to a freaking John Deere tractor is now cloud-based software.
I’m old enough to remember when community servers were a thing and you could continue playing your favourite multiplayer game a decade later
I’m old enough to remember when you bought a game and then you had the game, and you played it when you wanted to because you own it. I miss owning things. This whole thing where you actually bought a single, revocable, non-transferrable license to use the thing rather than buying the thing is kinda horseshit.
I’m still playing decades old games with years and years of free content because they have community server support, a modding community working on new stuff for the game they love. Like I would be with wc3 if they didn’t kill it.
they give people like you some bullshit maps or a playable guy in-between thousands of dollars worth of microtransactions and you let them walk all over you, take your game away after a couple years. You’re the reason that old business model of just releasing shit isn’t profitable. Even if you’re not the sad sack buying shit you’re the grease keeping the machine going. Fuck what you’ve done to our hobby man.
o7
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If they wanted to make a free OW2, they should have actually made an OW2 and left the original alone instead of tearing it down and putting a new coat of paint on it
Personally I’d be happier if I could.
I went from playing a lot when it had a lot of updates, to rarely when it stopped. And now never playing with the complete disrespect blizzard has for the players after 2 was released.
OW2 is free to play, people brought Overwatch 1 but it was completely patched over with OW2 and it’s new monitisation.
unlike Baldur’s Gate 3, absolutely everything about this game was designed specifically with microtrans in mind
Oh my God, you can’t just say microtrans. The proper terminology is “gender dysphoric little person”
Actually that’s the wrong use of that word in this context. It’s actually a “queer questioning point of sale system” he’s talking about.
No no no thats also wrong, it stands for micro transmission. Ya know for small vehicles.
Even you got it wrong! They were talking about the micro figurines for transformers! How you could miss that!!!
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could be short for microtransient, and then we’re talking about little hobos… and who doesn’t want to talk about little hobos…
sweet has POS been reclaimed?
No, you complete and utter point of sale.
https://www.pcgamer.com/how-blizzards-reputation-collapsed-in-just-3-years/
Blizzard used to be great. Now they are awful.
They’ve been awful since Activision got involved. I knew that was the end the day the news broke, people told me I was wrong. I wish.
Also they sexually harassed an employee to suicide. That tells you all you need to know.
Blizzard has been on a downward trend for a lot longer than 3 years.
They were always awful. See: StarCraft Ghost
Haha yeah I remember that one :) That one really surprised people actually. Before that they had a good track record…
As it fucking deserved, honestly.
Fuck Blizzard, shutting down OW1. Pieces of shit.
Good, they absolutely fucking butchered the game just to sell cosmetics and heroes.
Say what you will about the monetization strategy - there are a lot of valid criticisms to make - but the changes made to the core gameplay with OW2 and moving to 5v5 made the game infinitely better to play.
5v5 with reduced CC and shields >>>> late stage OW1
Hard disagree. Late stage OW (post 2020) was pretty balanced after they nerfed double shield. Now the game is too chaotic and more dependent on DPS than it ever has been. Also they seemed to have doubled down on burst damage and one-shot heroes, I want to shoot whoever thought Soujourn was a fun addition.
I played OW1 as my main game from launch to 2-3 years ago. I came back for OW2 then quit again after a month or two…but…
Late stage OW fuckin sucked, man. If you were a tank player who didn’t play hog you were basically solo tanking the whole game while your co-tank (hog) went flanking. Things may have been different in top ranks but the It was absolutely the least fun era of OW1 for me.
OW2 at launch was an unbalanced mess for sure but things felt great after the sojourn nerf. Every character is viable for like the first time ever.
Late stage OW1 meta was double shield, the worst meta. Also they removed Sojourns oneshot
I never really played dps, but i did enjoy to just annoy double shields as bastion. Never seen so much rage in my life
There were decent metas for sure after double shield got nerfed, but the game just feels better with 1 tank imo. Teamfight wins are more consequential and fights don’t drag on as long. There’s more space opened up for solo carrying.
A criticism I have is that tank counter picking has become more powerful than I would like.
I can’t imagine going back to 6v6 anymore. The trade offs are super worth it imo.
PS yeah Sojourn was busted for way too long. She’s in a pretty good spot now though. They also dialed back Widow’s effective range and obviously got rid of doom 1shots.
I’ll join you in downvote land. I wholly agree.
Playing tank the last 2 years of OW1 was fucking miserable. I exclusively played tank since season 3 but it made me quit. I’ve put OW2 down, too, but yeah…gameplay wise it got fun again (once they nerfed sojourn).
Whole lot of rose-tinted glasses about balance in OW1. Who the fuck was having fun in the Hog meta besides Hog players? And HOW LONG did that last? Part of that is because they diverted devs to OW2 but every balance change they made to make tanking more fun was a failure outside of giving Rein his passive.
OW2 is slightly worse than year one OW1 but so much better than the bullshit in late OW1. Am I gonna play it again? Hell no. But do I think people are giving honest reviews about the actual gameplay? Also no.
I’m morally opposed to their mtx model but it didn’t affect me as I never cared about skins. The thing that really made me quit was that f2p brought in a ton of young people and it became obvious that I was no longer the target demographic.
Playing tank was shit because they had shit tanks for a two tank meta. They didn’t need to remove the second tank, they could have rebalanced the tanks instead
Stop with the bad takes. If they actually worked on anything during the OW1 content drought that didn’t just make em a quick buck, we might have gotten a better experience. Someone higher up saw the dwindling player base and went with the cheapest and laziest way to squeeze a couple extra bucks from what’s left.
There was so much that could have been done to bring people back, but each time they’ve either done the literal least, lied, or axed it.
They went 5v5 cause it was the choice that had the least work required to get people to tank, but now if your tank is bad you’re pretty much going to lose. They could have kept 6v6 and reworked all the tanks kits.
Blizzard has made every choice so far that says Overwatch is going to be sunset. It’s sad to see something as great as OW1 turn into what it is now. Especially when there’s a lot that can be done to fix it the right way.
Makes me wonder how the current dev team feels about everything that’s happened and how they really feel about the decisions being made currently. Cause Invasion is pretty mediocre so far.
I cannot fathom all the people downvoting this comment. IMO it’s a more fun and dynamic game now. But also by objective standards: balance-wise more characters than ever are viable at tournament level, they removed 2CP by overwhelming request, 5v5 makes every individual more impactful (and 17% less likely to have a disconnect in a game), they got rid of bunker comps, and they drastically reduced the CC.
It’s so much better that I can’t believe the people downvoting this are actual players of this game. OW1 painted itself into multiple corners and then festered and struggled for years.
I say this as a big critic of the game too, and as someone who played since launch.
The people that say Shield Shooter 1 was better than Overwatch 2 are the same people that want lootboxes back
This guy gets it
Early stage OW1 beats them all though.
Ahh yes, 5 Winstons and 1 Symmetra, a man of culture I see
Removing a tank completely ruined the balance of the game. There’s no reduced CC, infact they added more. Shields was the only main problem, but they could have tried splitting tanks into main/off tank roles to stop double shields, but the whole freedom is what was great about the game, the game started going downhill when they added Sombra, then fell off a cliff with Orisa. They were adding new heroes for the sake of it and not because the game needed it and that is what fucked it.
The design philosophy now is to try and make every character feel strong to play no matter how horrible they are to play against, so people will buy skins for them (or buy the new heroes).
They objectively did reduce CC. All the biggest examples off CC were removed or nerfed heavily, like Cassidy’s flash, Brigs bash and Sombras hack/emp.
The flash was just replaced with a new long range nade that slows enemies and disables abilities, which is worse CC to play against than a stun if you got within 3m of him. Doomfist, wrecking ball still have entire CC kits, they added more CC to orisa, who now can push players, knockback players and pull players in and slow them. Junker queen pulls players, ramattra slows players, soujourn slows players, There is objectively more CC in the game, for every bit they removed, they added more. CC isn’t objectively a bad thing, the most annoying thing in the past was Mei, because she slowed you and froze you, now she just slows you. Being knocked about, slowed or abilities disabled is the most annoying form of CC to play against and that is what nearly every new champ has and what older champs have been reworked to.
Still annoyed they couldn’t find something to do about the sleep dart. And they buffed the freaking bear trap.
Reduced CC and barriers were good but 5v5 makes the game too swingy and puts too much pressure on the tanks.
Disagree. More room to turn fights with individual plays from all roles imo
That’s fine for comp, but it means learning a new hero involves completely screwing your team in QP for days.
If it were up to me? They went in the wrong direction to solve a real problem. There are twice as many DPS heroes, so do 2-2-4 (2 tank, 2 support, 4 dps) comps. Nerf ult generation across-the-board by about 25% so that you’re still getting the same number of ults happening per-game, spread across more players. And give more DPS heroes off-support powers like Soldier and Sombra. And do more to punish barrier-heavy play, like Symmetra does, or just nerf the barriers.
Offer a 1-1-2 (1 tank, 1 support, 2 DPS) mode for comp for people who want a really hardcore experience.
It’s currently at 10% positive reviews. I think once this chart updates in ~11.5 hrs, it will officially be the worst-reviewed steam game of all time: https://steam250.com/bottom100
blizzard is ass. i hope they go bankrupt one day.
As if there weren’t enough money behind Activision-Blizzard, Microsoft is about to buy them. You might as well wish for the oceans to dry up.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/11/23779039/microsoft-activision-blizzard-ftc-trial-win
I really hope MS doesn’t take a laissez faire attitude with Act-Blizz and actually take a real hands on approach. I know they’re not the best at handling things but there has to be some type of change for their studio.
Ironically the one thing MS seems to be great at is managing game companies. Granted, that’s by usually just leaving them the hell alone, so yea, im hoping they fire all the higher ups at activision and hand it to one of their other game companies
Which companies have they been great at managing?
I may have made my point badly, they are great at managing their gaming properties by not managing them. They usually just buy the company and let the people that made the game studio great keep doing what they do.
As opposed to someone like EA which takes the studio down to a BDSM basement and violates them like they are in a snuff film
“Why kill the golden geese” Microsoft probably
Maybe they’ll take care of the unending copy pasted walls of racial slurs in HoTS.
I didn’t realize they released it on Steam. They chose a terrible time. Remnant 2 is out, so is Baldurs Gate 3. Dead by Daylight has Alien expansion around the corner. They’re too late. But a good step. I hate battlenet.
It’s ironic they pulled a Battleborn.
DBD Alien is out.
Not out, on PTB
So close to out but not really
Oh, sorry. I live under a rock. It’s been very busy two weeks at work. 🥲
No worries. It was just a heads up. I only know because I watch Spooky Loopz.
Because it’s s shit game
From a shit company.
They earned their reputation pretty hard
They probably had it coming.
Is this the first game ever that Blizzard releases on Steam? Or I am wrong?
I know is highly unlikely but I hope they release their flagship games on Steam some day… For example Diablo IV.
I stopped playing when they did not let people pick the same heroes. Played more for the fun and the chaos. Did not care if I won as long as I was having fun but the game went the pro gamer route.
As an adult that can comfortably afford more than one game every six months, I forgot that Overwatch, Fortnite, and Apex Legends exist. The games that’ve released—,especially in the past 6 months—why would you even bother with BRP till?
Probably because normal people not that into gaming news and culture play those games and they kinda force you to play them too. It’s your job to steer them to deep rock galatic and indie gaming in general.
I personally think Overwatch 2 is a great game compared to OW1, especially for going F2P and removing the loot box. I have played OW1 since 2017 but since it is a paid game, none of my friends play it and we all played Apex instead when it came out.
Fast forward to 2022, they actually removed loot box (fuck gambling) and made it F2P. I have been playing OW2 almost every day since launch. Haven’t touched Apex a single time since then.
I never played ow1 but I did enjoy OW2. One of the few multiplayer shooters where I didn’t suck. However I noticed I got very frustrated by it and seemed to get addicted as well. Also noticed I enjoyed other games less. Stopped playing and feeling better now.
I liked the free lootboxes with chances of getting cool stuff than the damn $20 every couple months battle passes where you actually cannot get anything interesting without paying for it.
You liked getting free cool stuff, not the loot boxes. They can still give away cool stuff for free even without loot boxes but they chose to stop doing so and it sucks.
I think the Battle Pass is fair, it’s $10 every 2 months. It helps keep the game running. Overwatch 1 was going to die if they kept going with the old business model.
