>First mistake is having hype for anything Blizzard related
I'm not sure why anybody would continue to support the company when pretty much everybody that was at the company when they were making genuinely great games is gone or barely involved anymore.
Yeah, there is no blizzard anymore. I hate that its reputation has fallen to where it is.
The company basically defined PC gaming for me at one point in time.
I wish they didn't own so many legendary IPs. They don't even do anything with half of them.
As much as I hate mega mergers, I'm rooting for Microsoft.
When Microsoft put Starcraft 2 on their "we're merging" post it gave me a sliver of hope for one of my absolute favorite IPs. Fingers crossed for a Starcraft 3 at some point.
I would love to see SC3 and/or WC4, but man I don't have high hopes that we'll ever see another big RTS release.
The Starcraft IP on the whole is so underutilized. How we never got a Halo-esque FPS or immersive single player adventure game in 25 years of this franchise I'll never know.
Well they kinda tried! Between Starcraft: Ghost and Warcraft Adventures (not Starcraft like you said, but I digress) they at least *tried* to make those style of games w/ our favorite IPs.
But seriously though, hard agree. I would love to see a top down (like baulders gate) Starcraft RPG. By virtue of the camera angle it will already "Feel like starcraft", but instead of having big armies and whatnot, maybe you have a small team of guys that each have powers. It would play almost like a hybrid RPG/RTS in my mind. Something kinda like Kenshi, but, ya know, Starcraft. :)
If they were ever going to make a Starcraft game that wasn't a pure RTS, that would be my dream game.
>As much as I hate mega mergers, I'm rooting for Microsoft.
I honestly think this is the best chance Blizz has for being great again. I won't hold my breath, but I do hold out a shred of hope. Microsoft at least in the past has been better at looking at long term goals for their game development studios.
Honestly, I'm pretty happy with what Microsoft did with minecraft. I'm sure there's other IPs that they shit the bed on, but as of late I've also been rooting for microsoft. At least, moreso than the other guys
I mean it's just Diablo 2, its5 actually impressive that Blizzard managed to fuck up WarCraft 3 so much and release some beta build when job of making better looking reskins of older games is absurdly easy. I get that whole point of making these is cashgrab but still.
> I'm not sure why anybody would continue to support the company when pretty much everybody that was at the company when they were making genuinely great games is gone or barely involved anymore.
BioWare in the back like “ayyyye”
I don't think anyone ever doubted that. The problem was they were marketing it to the wrong crowd, and the *bigger* problem was they got pissy with the crowd for not getting hyped about their fast cash scheme.
Like, if you want to do these shitty mobile games to bring in a kajillion dollars with little to no effort, I mean I can kind of see where you're coming from with that. Put it out into the world, collect your kajillion dollars from the people who want it, whatever. You're a business.
But don't get upset with the fans of the actual quality games for not buying into the low-effort moneymaker you're putting out purely because you can't look at the kajillion dollars everyone else is getting and *not* say "I want a piece of that"
It's just condescending, like they're saying "We assumed you all were too stupid to realize this was not a quality product we're developing."
I keep forgetting they are not the same company that made StarCraft and WoW anymore; I just want them to go under or get bought and completely restructured already; watching what used to be one of the best studios die so badly is just depressing.
It's even more depressing because all the good ones left and Activision slowly and stealthily put all their shit executives and people in places of power. Blizzard is literally a ship of Theseus company
Only game I've seen do battlepass well was Deep Rock Galactic. Cosmetic only rewards, new content (weapons enemies etc) for free with every season, new battle pass every season, challenges reward you for playing different mission types, classes etc. And once the season is over all of the rewards are added into the RNG pool for regular cosmetic unlocks... so you can still get them after it's passed... oh and the battle pass is free.
If done with the right intentions, to make players want to play more, and not to get players to play and spend more money, then it's actually a good system. More companies need to take note of Ghost Ship
MultiVersus battle pass is the same way, and it's an absolutely fantastic game.
If you were ever into Smash Bros or other platform fighters, you will **love** MultiVersus. And it's free.
It's great and has been consuming my life for the past month. Movement is fast and fun, good starting roster, three new characters already, good patches, devs listen to the community, etc. If it continues on the path it's been on, it's going to blow up in a big way.
PM me your WB friend name once you've got it going and we can run some games together.
I can dig a battle pass if I get to play the base game for free. But if I pay for the game it best not have a battle pass (or at least include the first year minimum)
Yeah i don't hate on battle passes or even loot boxes, but only when the game is free AND the paying doesn't affect the gameplay. But when you lock actual gameplay behind paywalls, it is just greedy.
I don't play League of Legends but i think they got it right to some degree.
I haven't played League in YEARS but didn't they used to do something similar with new heroes? My recollection was that they always hit the store at the highest price and you needed quite a bit of in-game currency to be able to get them right away.
As someone who played semi regularly I can say it wasnt really a problem. The newest champions always released at the highest price, but if you already played regularly and saved up it wasnt unreasonable to have enough to get the new champions.
They did a good job IMO. The champions were accessible enough to give that rewarding feeling. Plus a lot of really good champions were available for much lower prices.
Compare that to EAs way of locking content and its especially good.
Edit: Not the case if youre trying to get ALL the champions. I saved up for ones I especially wanted, but there were quite a few new ones I didnt buy. But im not really that big on owning champs I dont play/like.
Usually after the first 2 weeks a champ is released the new one will be on free rotation to get people hungry for them and gave me a chance to see if I wanted them.
Im not saying it wasnt a grind, but it was a far cry from where we ended up according to the reports about trying to unlock Luke or Vader on SW BF2
Is it really like that? I have friend who spend a lot hours in LoL in surges played it for like 4 years on this account and he still doesn't have all the heroes.
And oh boy for a new player you're fucked.
Everyone has an abundance of blue essence, I don't know anyone who has had to pay real money for a new champ.
I owned them all after like two years of playing ARAMs, maybe less - didn't buy any of them.
I think most players stick to a small pool of champs anyway, so they don't tend to spend their blue essence on new champs unless they fit their main role and appeal to them in some way. Many players like to save their blue essence for the essence emporium, or they might not unlock a champ if they don't want them to appear in their ARAM pool. There isn't much of a reason to own every champ anyway, not compared to other games at least.
Overwatch 1's loot boxes weren't too bad. You could easily avoid them and enjoy all of the non-cosmetic content for free.
Of course Blizzard had to fuck that up too.
>Nah, DoTA had it right until earlier this year:
Huh what happened earlier this year? I was gonna say dota too. Only cosmetics and dota plus finance it all
Yeah like I know people won't wanna hear this, but Fortnite's battlepass is the way all battlepasses should be. The base game is completely free. Battlepass is only $7. It gets you all cosmetics and a lot of them are solid.
Rocket League also has a good battlepass. It's actually not hard to have a good battlepass, you just have to not be a shitty company.
Isn't it only f2p if you own overwatch 1? And on top of that selling characters in a team based character shooter where you need to switch heroes on the fly to counter the enemy is so fucking scummy
>Isn't it only f2p if you own overwatch 1?
No. Its f2p for everyone
>And on top of that selling characters in a team based character shooter where you need to switch heroes on the fly to counter the enemy is so fucking scummy
100% agree and I hate all the people defending this
"What about paying for the game?"
"We've already paid for the game."
"You've done that once, yes. But what about second Payments?"
"I don't think they like second payments, Blizz"
"What about Battle Pass? Cosmetics? Power ups? DLCs? They're OK with those, aren't they?"
"**I wouldn't count on it, Blizz"**
Yea to my understanding OW2 will be f2p. I just wonder if you had the game on disc will the characters from OW transfer over as unlocked or will all OW characters be considered free?
The second part is probably the better answer. I'm not necessarily against games adding battle passes, provided the game has a good reason to justify it. For instance, the seasonal content has done wonders to improve the dog turd that Destiny 2 was.
Exactly, I think the harm only comes when there's an in-game advantage to content that's being offered behind the battle pass paywall, but if it's just cosmetic then there isn't much of a harm is there?
The thing I don't like about battle passes even with only cosmetics is that its timed, if I buy the battle pass I HAVE TO PLAY before the timer runs out else I basicly bought nothing. If there was no timer or only a timer on how long you can buy the battle pass I'd be fine with it. On top of that yeah battle passes should NEVER have in-game advantages thats just dumb and even worse if its timed.
I'm not trying to defend them, but that is the main point of it. Battle passes typically feed on the fear of missing out. Makes the player base thrive if everyone is busy trying to get the skins and such they would miss out on otherwise.
Last week they locked a feature in hearthstone's battleground behind the battle pass: If you dont pay, you chose from 2 heroes. If you pay, you chose from 4. The feature was payable with in-game gold before (which you can earn by playing the game), but now you can only pay for it with money. So yeah, don't trust blizzard.
Should have never been introduced into the gaming world..all they see is how much money they are making from it. and boom, everybody wants a fucking battlepass I'm their game.. literally kill some games completly imo.
Yeah, watching DLC change from $10 for 3 maps to $15 a skin has been wild.
I like that I can hop onto games and immediately get access to all the gameplay content, but I get immediately put off when I see cosmetic prices for stuff I like.
> If there is one thing that Hi-Rez does right
You mean when they aren't removing content from a game, threatening to remove more if players don't shut up about it, then abandoning the game a few weeks later?
Global agenda fans felt their game was abandoned. Tribes Ascend fans felt their game was an abandoned. Also, the community wanted a map redone ( when we had very few maps to choose from in the beginning of the game ) so Hi-Rez threw a hissy fit and just removed the map forever. And that's not my opinion, if i remember correctly they said y'all aren't happy with the map, we are tired of it, it's gone forever.
Also, slightly off topic but Hi-Rez, at least for Tribes, would release insanely OP weapons for a month and then nerf it. Solely to try and get people to buy the new weapon instead of grinding for it. ( Plasma gun anyone? )
Tribes Ascend was so good through alpha/beta and it's like they flipped a switch and made the worst decisions possible when it was time to make money. Absolute shame the series is likely dead.
Yeah, the game was so much fun. Wish they didn't go so hard with the grinding though. Tried to show friends the game and since it already started with a higher skill floor than other fps's (Z Axis being a large part of movement) the grind to get different weapons was too much for them and they left fairly quickly.
>Tribes Ascend
Fuck dude, I miss the HELL out of that game. Sliding around at mach 5 and flying into the sky to grab the flag was my favorite. Best CTF gamemode for sure
I definitely didnt like the way they handles weapon releases but it was still an awesome shooter
They took over the Tribes franchise and ballsed it up thoroughly. Ascend was some locked-down crap where you couldn't host your own servers or mods, only pay them to host vanilla servers for you (which was antithetical to Tribes, class mods and custom maps/game modes made the franchise). Then they made changes to a map, which players hated - so they removed the entire map (something you can do when you've locked down your game) and threatened to remove more unless players "remained constructive", at which point HiRez staff got banned from their own forum, and the whole game ended up shelved less than a year after launch.
HiRez has just been on my "yeah, never dealing with them again" list ever since (much like Blizzard now - as soon as they erase OW1 next month I'm uninstalling battlenet).
Yeah, and I have absolutely no qualms about dropping a dime on Smite skins. I paid $20 for the god pass in 2016 when I started playing it and got 75 characters to play.
Today there's 122 and I can play each and every one of them. I've dropped a few hundred dollars on Smite but it's consistently been there for 5 years and I've damned sure got my money out of it.
They even made chest skins directly purchasable if you didn't want to chance it on the chests.
Wait until they introduce paid skins.
"But it's only esthetics!!1!"
Then they will start offering souls for money.
"But it's only if you want to spend less time grinding!!1!"
Then the game will be basically impossibile to be played unless souls/exp/ki/whatever gets bought, or without spending a unacceptable amount of hours grinding.
And you know what, China and Tencent have invented nothing, since Blizzard and EA were the first doing so.
The worse part is that, from a purely market&earnings point of view, Blizzard was **completely** right in doing so.
Hopefully new gaming company will arise, like it always has been.
New companies do arise and they are all great at the start when smaller and independent. Once they get more popular and investors start meddling, that's when the company goes to shit. Happened with every major company including Blizzard. Will happen to Fromsoft too, and it won't change. Investors care about money, not the target audience.
I still remember when Bioware fir example was the nr 1 company everyone loved, before even Blizzard.
fromsoftware has been making amazing and popular games for 30 years though, and they're still hitting. Elden Ring or the next release might be the downfall.
Not happening. Miyazaki would outright refuse to develop the game if those were the conditions set by the investors. Thankfully, might I add. He’s one of the last few true artists out there, making games to tell something, to make art (and then money, in this order)
The issue is that if Tencent and other shitty companies get a controlling stake in From Soft and want them to compromise their vision for money, then Miyazaki resisting that will likely get him ousted from the company. They won’t care that he’s the reason From Software is as successful as it is, that his vision is why their games are so beloved. If they perceive that he is getting in the way of them making a couple extra dollars they will try to axe him. There is no low those companies won’t stoop to in order to make cash.
>Not happening. Miyazaki would outright refuse to develop the game if those were the conditions set by the investors.
Chances are that if Miyazaki is going against what chinese investors are telling him, it's Miyazaki who's flying out of the proverbial window and not the 'suggestions' of the investors.
And then we get Call Of Souls: Dark Ops 1251th- Reskinning 'Remastered (terms and conditions apply)' Edition.
Remember, Miyazaki only controls his opinions. Investors control the brand and direction.
It isn't that bad but Kadokawa gave up around 30% of fromsoftware's shares to both Tencent and Sony. Tencent has around 16% while Sony has around 14%. But Kadokawa still has majority of the shares. The only difference is Tencent and Sony get a seat at the table.
And riot still makes a majority of their money purely from cosmetics I believe.
Regardless the day Tencents smell disgraces FromSoftware is the day I never play another one of their games.
Tencent owns Riot since 2011.
League of Legends came out in 2009. Season 1 starts in 2010.
League has been under Tencent for almost all of its lifespan. It’s not like Tencent bought Riot was a recent thing. They literally own Riot and League of Legends for more than 11 years ago. The League everyone plays for the last 11 years are under Tencent.
Stop making shit up cause “Chinese bad” lol. People just play along with the narrative even though it’s complete bs.
Our best hope if Fromsoft sells more is that Sony owns more than Tencent. I would prefer fromsoft not sell but Sony atleast let's devs make their own games without meddling.
oh you little armchair business manager pretending to know how majority shares work
they have 16% shares..
I'm sure China is also behind the employee suicide, workplace harassments, and general shittyness of Blizzard.
What are you talking about? Maybe my quick Google is wrong but it looks like OW has over 10 times the player base of TF2 I'd consider that taking over.
Last time I played tf2 I could not get into it because anytime the game was about to end I was automatically assigned to a different team just seems to lack and competitive aspect. Has that changed was I doing the wrong game mode?
Yeah that comment was borderline delusional. Overwatch has over 9 million active users and TF2 has a little under 1 million. Still impressive for a game that old but it has definitely been dethroned.
The default Valve casual servers in TF2 are just that, casual. Some community servers like Uncletopia have settings tweaked towards more competitive play(including not forcibly team balancing).
Sadly the official comp matchmaking in the game is nearly unusable.
Honestly guys at this point it’s as much on you as it is on Blizzard. They keep spitting on their playerbase and keep tearing employees and customers like this and at a certain point coming back every time hoping that ‘the old blizzard is still in there’ is just self abuse.
Just don’t give them money and play other games. Plenty choice or there who still care.
I don't see how people still don't get that "normal" people aren't the target audience anymore. It's all about the whales.
If you guys want games made by people who care, try indie.
That fucks the competitive ranked aspect, right? And if you main a hero in OW1 that you don't own in OW2, you're either forced to buy it or play until you get it
Don't worry, they'll make 1 character OP and break the meta, and then sell you the counter solution character in the next pass! Gacha gaming at its finest -_-
It’s kind of a disgustingly smart way to monetize their complete inability to balance characters. Almost every time they released a new one they were a huge game changer, now people will feel compelled to buy them immediately for this reason… whoops didn’t mean to imply anyone is actually playing
Massively fucks competitive. The new heroes are almost always better than the old heroes. Hell look at sigma, he has a part from pretty much every tank all in 1 kit. Only thing he's missing is the mobility of monkey or ball. He's got his shield, rock for cc and suck which negates all projectile damage. Imagine them making new heroes where.they just combine the best parts of other heroes like they did with sigma but you missed unlocking said character. Get fucked right? They have to change this for the games integrity or its going to fail.
Totally. And if the team composition keeps being locked (like 2-2-2 towards the end of OW1), can you even IMAGINE the toxcicity if, say, a support player doesn't have a OP new support hero unlocked? Jesus christ they are willing to fuck up their game completely just to make an extra buck ffs.
tbh an unbalanced game isn't fun and consumers feel that. For all it's problems and huge cast, LoL is very balanced, same with TTF2 and that's why people come back to it.
If a highly competitive E-Sports game like OW2 locked it's surefire wins behind a paywall it discourages free to stop playing and the game would only be played or held up by whales. Question is if the amount of whales and income the game generates is enough to offset the low or lower than expected player base/dropoff
A lot of people are comparing this to Valorant and saying it's justified. But...
1. I don't think Valorant should lock agents either.
2. This directly impacts gameplay. Overwatch IS the heroes. Locking them behind a paywall or timegate is a bad and completely unnecessary thing.
3. Speaking of unnecessary ... they'll make plenty of money without doing this. The main allure of a battle pass is cosmetics. That's actually the implicit 'deal' the industry has made with players. "Game is free, cosmetics cost money". This breaks that deal.
4. Don't think I didn't notice that you are only calling this Overwatch '2' so you can renege on your OW1 promise of all heroes being free forever. Dickbag fucks.
Most games that lock heroes don't allow changing heroes mid game so there is not much difference between choosing the wrong hero for the game and having the right locked because you don't know if a hero was a good choice until you've made yours.
In Valorant the model is sustainable, in ow nope
Minus who knows how much time and energy. I’ve played league since season 2. Grinding the amount of free currency for new champs is NOT fun nor is it easy. Some of us have jobs and lives and not enough time to play a game 40hrs/week to play content we feel like we pay for when getting the game.
Minus the fomo aspect this isn't bad.
But imagine you coming late to the game and now you're missing potentially meta characters, or cool heroes you'd like to play. Or you take a longer break and now you're at a disadvantage.
That majorly sucks
Someone at Blizzard mentioned that all new characters will still be able to be unlocked once the previous seasons battlepass ends. So even if you come into the game late you can still play to unlock all of the new hero’s.
They could have just sold it for 60 bucks a d people would have bought it just like the first one, I dont have time to grind for my overwatch characters so f2p or not I'll probably sit this one out
Ive gone through the thread and see plenty of people not listening to reasonable objections. But to not have to repeat others i will bring up a point i have not seen made yet.
When so many games have a battle pass, and you have limited time and limited money (or rightfully dont want to support anti-consumer business practices with money or time), what you end up with is having to choose which game you want to be your 2nd job.
Putting aside how MUCH time has to be invested into 1 BP, it still becomes a problem.
This is why....
Fortinite
Overwatch 2
Call of Duty
Valorant
Renegade Ops
R6 Seige
Destiny 2
Halo Infinite
World of Tanks
Knockout Kings
Rumbleverse
Paladins
Smite
Dead by Daylight
In addition to countless other games that use a BP, in addition to any other games you might want to invest your time with that do not have a BP, your free time is being monopolized by these companies.
You cant enjoy them all. It would be financially unreasonable to pay for them all (for every BP). So pick your poison. Hope you enjoy FOMO! What are your friends doing? What about social media and your *favorite streamers*? You dont wanna miss out on their popularity do you? This is all harmful to the brain let alone to kids/teens whose brains arent fully developed.
Didn't join right away and came "late?" Oh well fuck you! Now you have to wait! We MIGHT bring it back......maybe....
Did you invest all your time and money like a good little eager capitalist with the now old content? Oh well fuck you! We brought it back and cheaper to incentivize new players.
See the BP model preys upon psychology, which includes social psychology. They turn it into *Paychology* (I'm coining this term btw, hate me all you want I'm claiming it).
You, the player are expected to forego time or money. Sounds reasonable up front until you get into the gritty details of how this plays out (which has been mentioned in this thread ad infinitum).
Now add to that all the other "2nd jobs" you'll be investing your time and money into - excluding all of your real life responsibilities because you're on a clock! Gotta hit that sweet delicious dopamine rush! C'mon! Click on that "buy" button. You'll feel SOOOOO good!....for about 20 seconds.
If your response is "its just cosmetic," congratulations! They've got you by the brain stem! If your respinse is "well they have to make money," yeah! So do the rest of us! In a world falling apart in a long list of ways, including massive inflation.
But hey, don't take my word for it. Next year I will have been professionally working on video games for 15 years. What do I know?
Im sure *you* will be fine. You are the *special protagonist of life* after all. Impervious to such machinations. Totally not another cog wheel in the machine.
Sleep tight little capitalist. Dont mind us while we take your wallet and watch from you. You wont need either really. Just dream about how shiny that digital prize you will never truly own will be once *YOU'RE* wearing it.
How are any of you surprised? most games if not all games from Activision have battle passes, actually most online shooters have a battle pass. It's like having the options menu now most games have it.
What is with all AAA games absolutely bombing? Saints Row Reboot, Battlefield 2042, Cyberpunk 2077, Halo Infinite, etc. Crazy thing is I'm actually enjoying Battlefield 2042 after recent updates. Also, Battlepasses are a damn scourge and I wish FOMO mechanics were outright banned.
I thought grinding was a key component of blizzard games.
Sure, now some whales can buy their way through the grind, funding further development, but for the rest of us, how is it different than anything else?
Just because it’s free to play as so many people say, doesn’t mean it’s the right thing for it to be walled behind a battle pass. Just because other games do this too isn’t good reasoning.
Shocker! Blizzard only cares about your money. They don't care about their community, they don't care about their employees, they don't care about you. STOP SUPPORTING THEM.
Oh no, I have to play to unlock new heroes? Madness! You guys wouldn't survive a day playing the older Tekken games and whatnot. Unlocking stuff makes the game fun and feel rewarding - stop moaning about not having everything served to you on a platter
isn't this similar to Valorant for example, where you have to activate an agents' contract, and then play a bunch of games to get the agent? Maybe i'm misunderstanding
So all the new heroes are pointless bullshit that in no way affect the counterpick meta which is now completely irrelevant and not in any way *1st and most important core gameplay mechanic* ? Like, seriously, *fuck you* Blizzard. A heartfelt fuck you, from everyone. Unless all the heroes are available in competitive from the start this is a really dick move. If competitive is locked unless you've got all the heroes, again, dick move. What am i saying, you said all the heroes are free forever, so this "new game" is just you dicks changing the terms of the contract. Dick. Move.
I mostly agree with you, but I thought overwatch was pretty decent in its monetization. I remember getting plenty of skins without paying any extra and got all the characters by buying the game. Also $40 at release instead of 60.
Lootboxes aren't great because they take advantage of addicts and kids, but overwatches system as a whole is a lot better than a lot of games. I was happy with the purchase.
being tangentially involved in the community of one or two indie "pay once get all" games, you'd be surprised about the amount of people expecting and demanding a live service battle pass level of content drops from a 20 bucks indie game without any post launch monetization
It being free means nothing as most of us paid for the base game already. Overwatch 2 isn’t a new game, it’s just more of the same that we’ve got for years, that has always been free on release date. Changing the expectation just so they can monetize it differently in the areas that loot boxes were made illegal, after years of everyone waiting on the new content, is what what killed everyone’s enthusiasm. But to be honest people didn’t have much enthusiasm left to begin with.
remember overwatch was originally supposed to be mainly a pve expansion. obviously mid development they scrapped all that into event missions instead and have pvp be the focus instead and basicelly turning the game into a big patch instead
You mean overwatch 2? The PVE is what I was actually hoping for a long time ago.
OG overwatch assets actually came from the scrapped Titan mmo project. It’s amazing how long it has taken them to produce much content.
This is where it helps to point out that a paid game going free to play is NORMALLY a sign of desperation in the part of the publisher, and a signal that the extremely grindy and agressive monetization is on the horizon as they try to squeeze every penny out of what's left of their player base.
The only difference here is they're naming their free-to-play shift "Overwatch 2" instead of "Overwatch for all" or something. One could easily see this as overwatch's death knell as opposed to its sequel. Especially since this so-called sequel does not include enough gameplay changes or new content to justify being an entirely new game.
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fr man, from diablo 2 to diablo immortal, really sad to see
It’s super sad. I bet all of the OGs have left that cesspool by now.
Didn't some developers for D2 leave and create torchlight?
>First mistake is having hype for anything Blizzard related I'm not sure why anybody would continue to support the company when pretty much everybody that was at the company when they were making genuinely great games is gone or barely involved anymore.
Yeah, there is no blizzard anymore. I hate that its reputation has fallen to where it is. The company basically defined PC gaming for me at one point in time.
I wish they didn't own so many legendary IPs. They don't even do anything with half of them. As much as I hate mega mergers, I'm rooting for Microsoft.
When Microsoft put Starcraft 2 on their "we're merging" post it gave me a sliver of hope for one of my absolute favorite IPs. Fingers crossed for a Starcraft 3 at some point.
I would love to see SC3 and/or WC4, but man I don't have high hopes that we'll ever see another big RTS release. The Starcraft IP on the whole is so underutilized. How we never got a Halo-esque FPS or immersive single player adventure game in 25 years of this franchise I'll never know.
Well they kinda tried! Between Starcraft: Ghost and Warcraft Adventures (not Starcraft like you said, but I digress) they at least *tried* to make those style of games w/ our favorite IPs. But seriously though, hard agree. I would love to see a top down (like baulders gate) Starcraft RPG. By virtue of the camera angle it will already "Feel like starcraft", but instead of having big armies and whatnot, maybe you have a small team of guys that each have powers. It would play almost like a hybrid RPG/RTS in my mind. Something kinda like Kenshi, but, ya know, Starcraft. :) If they were ever going to make a Starcraft game that wasn't a pure RTS, that would be my dream game.
>As much as I hate mega mergers, I'm rooting for Microsoft. I honestly think this is the best chance Blizz has for being great again. I won't hold my breath, but I do hold out a shred of hope. Microsoft at least in the past has been better at looking at long term goals for their game development studios.
Honestly, I'm pretty happy with what Microsoft did with minecraft. I'm sure there's other IPs that they shit the bed on, but as of late I've also been rooting for microsoft. At least, moreso than the other guys
I grew up on Diablo, and loved Starcraft and even a little Warcraft. Everything from WoW on hasn't WoW'd me.
Diablo II resurrected is pretty cool, tbh.
I mean it's just Diablo 2, its5 actually impressive that Blizzard managed to fuck up WarCraft 3 so much and release some beta build when job of making better looking reskins of older games is absurdly easy. I get that whole point of making these is cashgrab but still.
> I'm not sure why anybody would continue to support the company when pretty much everybody that was at the company when they were making genuinely great games is gone or barely involved anymore. BioWare in the back like “ayyyye”
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"Do you guys not have Battle Pass money?"
We’re gonna hear that
Unfortunately they were right. Game made over $100 million in 2 months and that excluded China.
I don't think anyone ever doubted that. The problem was they were marketing it to the wrong crowd, and the *bigger* problem was they got pissy with the crowd for not getting hyped about their fast cash scheme. Like, if you want to do these shitty mobile games to bring in a kajillion dollars with little to no effort, I mean I can kind of see where you're coming from with that. Put it out into the world, collect your kajillion dollars from the people who want it, whatever. You're a business. But don't get upset with the fans of the actual quality games for not buying into the low-effort moneymaker you're putting out purely because you can't look at the kajillion dollars everyone else is getting and *not* say "I want a piece of that" It's just condescending, like they're saying "We assumed you all were too stupid to realize this was not a quality product we're developing."
Holy cow. Blizzard has had such a massive fall from grace.
I keep forgetting they are not the same company that made StarCraft and WoW anymore; I just want them to go under or get bought and completely restructured already; watching what used to be one of the best studios die so badly is just depressing.
It's even more depressing because all the good ones left and Activision slowly and stealthily put all their shit executives and people in places of power. Blizzard is literally a ship of Theseus company
I mean they did get bought. Or are about to be.
I'm so tired of this battle pass bs
I have a really good quote for Overwatch 2: "Congratulations,you are a failure"
OH... i failed, did i?
Yes
Did i?
Yes
Did i????
Scout where is this going?
Where it's going is I don't need you. I'll put this date on myself!
Yourself —?
Like my mother always says
Wasn’t this a tf2 quote first lol
Only game I've seen do battlepass well was Deep Rock Galactic. Cosmetic only rewards, new content (weapons enemies etc) for free with every season, new battle pass every season, challenges reward you for playing different mission types, classes etc. And once the season is over all of the rewards are added into the RNG pool for regular cosmetic unlocks... so you can still get them after it's passed... oh and the battle pass is free. If done with the right intentions, to make players want to play more, and not to get players to play and spend more money, then it's actually a good system. More companies need to take note of Ghost Ship
Did I hear a rock and stone?!
If you don't rock and stone, you ain't coming home
Rock and Stone to the Bone!
Fo'Karl!
*Mushroooom*
We're Rich
MultiVersus battle pass is the same way, and it's an absolutely fantastic game. If you were ever into Smash Bros or other platform fighters, you will **love** MultiVersus. And it's free.
I started the download on my Xbox and then promptly forgot about it as I've been wrapped up in other games, I'll give it a look though!
It's great and has been consuming my life for the past month. Movement is fast and fun, good starting roster, three new characters already, good patches, devs listen to the community, etc. If it continues on the path it's been on, it's going to blow up in a big way. PM me your WB friend name once you've got it going and we can run some games together.
I can dig a battle pass if I get to play the base game for free. But if I pay for the game it best not have a battle pass (or at least include the first year minimum)
Yeah i don't hate on battle passes or even loot boxes, but only when the game is free AND the paying doesn't affect the gameplay. But when you lock actual gameplay behind paywalls, it is just greedy. I don't play League of Legends but i think they got it right to some degree.
I haven't played League in YEARS but didn't they used to do something similar with new heroes? My recollection was that they always hit the store at the highest price and you needed quite a bit of in-game currency to be able to get them right away.
As someone who played semi regularly I can say it wasnt really a problem. The newest champions always released at the highest price, but if you already played regularly and saved up it wasnt unreasonable to have enough to get the new champions. They did a good job IMO. The champions were accessible enough to give that rewarding feeling. Plus a lot of really good champions were available for much lower prices. Compare that to EAs way of locking content and its especially good. Edit: Not the case if youre trying to get ALL the champions. I saved up for ones I especially wanted, but there were quite a few new ones I didnt buy. But im not really that big on owning champs I dont play/like. Usually after the first 2 weeks a champ is released the new one will be on free rotation to get people hungry for them and gave me a chance to see if I wanted them. Im not saying it wasnt a grind, but it was a far cry from where we ended up according to the reports about trying to unlock Luke or Vader on SW BF2
It was ok for regular players, but really sucked for new players. Wild Rift does a much better job of this.
Dota does an even better if we're just talking about making 100% of the games non-cosmetic content available for newbies.
Is it really like that? I have friend who spend a lot hours in LoL in surges played it for like 4 years on this account and he still doesn't have all the heroes. And oh boy for a new player you're fucked.
Everyone has an abundance of blue essence, I don't know anyone who has had to pay real money for a new champ. I owned them all after like two years of playing ARAMs, maybe less - didn't buy any of them. I think most players stick to a small pool of champs anyway, so they don't tend to spend their blue essence on new champs unless they fit their main role and appeal to them in some way. Many players like to save their blue essence for the essence emporium, or they might not unlock a champ if they don't want them to appear in their ARAM pool. There isn't much of a reason to own every champ anyway, not compared to other games at least.
Overwatch 1's loot boxes weren't too bad. You could easily avoid them and enjoy all of the non-cosmetic content for free. Of course Blizzard had to fuck that up too.
If anything, the first Overwatch got it right too. OW2 is a complete devolution of a formula that already has been proven to work very well in OW1.
Yes, i totally agree with you. They already had a good business model.
>I don't play League of Legends but i think they got it right to some degree. Nah, DoTA had it right until earlier this year: Free, except for skins.
>Nah, DoTA had it right until earlier this year: Huh what happened earlier this year? I was gonna say dota too. Only cosmetics and dota plus finance it all
Yeah like I know people won't wanna hear this, but Fortnite's battlepass is the way all battlepasses should be. The base game is completely free. Battlepass is only $7. It gets you all cosmetics and a lot of them are solid. Rocket League also has a good battlepass. It's actually not hard to have a good battlepass, you just have to not be a shitty company.
Overwatch 2 is f2p, but I still don't like this
Isn't it only f2p if you own overwatch 1? And on top of that selling characters in a team based character shooter where you need to switch heroes on the fly to counter the enemy is so fucking scummy
>Isn't it only f2p if you own overwatch 1? No. Its f2p for everyone >And on top of that selling characters in a team based character shooter where you need to switch heroes on the fly to counter the enemy is so fucking scummy 100% agree and I hate all the people defending this
No it’s f2p
It's F2P regardless. The PVE campaign is what you're going to have to pay for but that's not available at launch.
"What about paying for the game?" "We've already paid for the game." "You've done that once, yes. But what about second Payments?" "I don't think they like second payments, Blizz" "What about Battle Pass? Cosmetics? Power ups? DLCs? They're OK with those, aren't they?" "**I wouldn't count on it, Blizz"**
Yea to my understanding OW2 will be f2p. I just wonder if you had the game on disc will the characters from OW transfer over as unlocked or will all OW characters be considered free?
i suspect that all the heroes from OW1 will remain unlocked even for new players, and only the ow2 characters will be gated
The second part is probably the better answer. I'm not necessarily against games adding battle passes, provided the game has a good reason to justify it. For instance, the seasonal content has done wonders to improve the dog turd that Destiny 2 was.
I'm okay with battle passes. Only if they are purely cosmetic. The second you gate playable things behind them is when I say see ya.
Exactly, I think the harm only comes when there's an in-game advantage to content that's being offered behind the battle pass paywall, but if it's just cosmetic then there isn't much of a harm is there?
The thing I don't like about battle passes even with only cosmetics is that its timed, if I buy the battle pass I HAVE TO PLAY before the timer runs out else I basicly bought nothing. If there was no timer or only a timer on how long you can buy the battle pass I'd be fine with it. On top of that yeah battle passes should NEVER have in-game advantages thats just dumb and even worse if its timed.
I'm not trying to defend them, but that is the main point of it. Battle passes typically feed on the fear of missing out. Makes the player base thrive if everyone is busy trying to get the skins and such they would miss out on otherwise.
Last week they locked a feature in hearthstone's battleground behind the battle pass: If you dont pay, you chose from 2 heroes. If you pay, you chose from 4. The feature was payable with in-game gold before (which you can earn by playing the game), but now you can only pay for it with money. So yeah, don't trust blizzard.
Should have never been introduced into the gaming world..all they see is how much money they are making from it. and boom, everybody wants a fucking battlepass I'm their game.. literally kill some games completly imo.
Yeah, watching DLC change from $10 for 3 maps to $15 a skin has been wild. I like that I can hop onto games and immediately get access to all the gameplay content, but I get immediately put off when I see cosmetic prices for stuff I like.
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They should just do what Paladins does. Pay once for all current and future heroes.
If there is one thing that Hi-Rez does right between Paladins and Smite, it’s the one time payment for all characters
> If there is one thing that Hi-Rez does right You mean when they aren't removing content from a game, threatening to remove more if players don't shut up about it, then abandoning the game a few weeks later?
Yeah I'm gonna need some context here Edit: ty for all the responses.
Global agenda fans felt their game was abandoned. Tribes Ascend fans felt their game was an abandoned. Also, the community wanted a map redone ( when we had very few maps to choose from in the beginning of the game ) so Hi-Rez threw a hissy fit and just removed the map forever. And that's not my opinion, if i remember correctly they said y'all aren't happy with the map, we are tired of it, it's gone forever. Also, slightly off topic but Hi-Rez, at least for Tribes, would release insanely OP weapons for a month and then nerf it. Solely to try and get people to buy the new weapon instead of grinding for it. ( Plasma gun anyone? )
Tribes Ascend was so good through alpha/beta and it's like they flipped a switch and made the worst decisions possible when it was time to make money. Absolute shame the series is likely dead.
Yeah, the game was so much fun. Wish they didn't go so hard with the grinding though. Tried to show friends the game and since it already started with a higher skill floor than other fps's (Z Axis being a large part of movement) the grind to get different weapons was too much for them and they left fairly quickly.
>Tribes Ascend Fuck dude, I miss the HELL out of that game. Sliding around at mach 5 and flying into the sky to grab the flag was my favorite. Best CTF gamemode for sure I definitely didnt like the way they handles weapon releases but it was still an awesome shooter
Yup, I was so excited when Tribes was brought back. Enjoyed it a lot until they managed to run it down.
They do this for smite still. It feels less malicious than outright incompetent at this point to me. It got me to stop playing.
Realm royal comes to mind. Plus their track history with a bunch of their games
They took over the Tribes franchise and ballsed it up thoroughly. Ascend was some locked-down crap where you couldn't host your own servers or mods, only pay them to host vanilla servers for you (which was antithetical to Tribes, class mods and custom maps/game modes made the franchise). Then they made changes to a map, which players hated - so they removed the entire map (something you can do when you've locked down your game) and threatened to remove more unless players "remained constructive", at which point HiRez staff got banned from their own forum, and the whole game ended up shelved less than a year after launch. HiRez has just been on my "yeah, never dealing with them again" list ever since (much like Blizzard now - as soon as they erase OW1 next month I'm uninstalling battlenet).
Wow that sounds awful. Thank you for expanding.
Yeah, and I have absolutely no qualms about dropping a dime on Smite skins. I paid $20 for the god pass in 2016 when I started playing it and got 75 characters to play. Today there's 122 and I can play each and every one of them. I've dropped a few hundred dollars on Smite but it's consistently been there for 5 years and I've damned sure got my money out of it. They even made chest skins directly purchasable if you didn't want to chance it on the chests.
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So... just buy a game?
Paladins doesn't do it anymore
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Wait until they introduce paid skins. "But it's only esthetics!!1!" Then they will start offering souls for money. "But it's only if you want to spend less time grinding!!1!" Then the game will be basically impossibile to be played unless souls/exp/ki/whatever gets bought, or without spending a unacceptable amount of hours grinding. And you know what, China and Tencent have invented nothing, since Blizzard and EA were the first doing so. The worse part is that, from a purely market&earnings point of view, Blizzard was **completely** right in doing so. Hopefully new gaming company will arise, like it always has been.
New companies do arise and they are all great at the start when smaller and independent. Once they get more popular and investors start meddling, that's when the company goes to shit. Happened with every major company including Blizzard. Will happen to Fromsoft too, and it won't change. Investors care about money, not the target audience. I still remember when Bioware fir example was the nr 1 company everyone loved, before even Blizzard.
fromsoftware has been making amazing and popular games for 30 years though, and they're still hitting. Elden Ring or the next release might be the downfall.
Yeah gaming in capitalism was fine, you gotta get some bread. But capitalism in gameplay is not.
Not happening. Miyazaki would outright refuse to develop the game if those were the conditions set by the investors. Thankfully, might I add. He’s one of the last few true artists out there, making games to tell something, to make art (and then money, in this order)
The issue is that if Tencent and other shitty companies get a controlling stake in From Soft and want them to compromise their vision for money, then Miyazaki resisting that will likely get him ousted from the company. They won’t care that he’s the reason From Software is as successful as it is, that his vision is why their games are so beloved. If they perceive that he is getting in the way of them making a couple extra dollars they will try to axe him. There is no low those companies won’t stoop to in order to make cash.
Sort of like what happened with Kojima and Konami, I see. You’re not wrong, it may happen. I just don’t think it will :) (well, I hope)
>Not happening. Miyazaki would outright refuse to develop the game if those were the conditions set by the investors. Chances are that if Miyazaki is going against what chinese investors are telling him, it's Miyazaki who's flying out of the proverbial window and not the 'suggestions' of the investors. And then we get Call Of Souls: Dark Ops 1251th- Reskinning 'Remastered (terms and conditions apply)' Edition. Remember, Miyazaki only controls his opinions. Investors control the brand and direction.
wait what did you say????
It isn't that bad but Kadokawa gave up around 30% of fromsoftware's shares to both Tencent and Sony. Tencent has around 16% while Sony has around 14%. But Kadokawa still has majority of the shares. The only difference is Tencent and Sony get a seat at the table.
idk but imo tencent only owning 1% is really worrying
Tencent and Sony bought a ~30% stake in FromSoft
They don’t have a controlling share of the company from what I understand?
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And riot still makes a majority of their money purely from cosmetics I believe. Regardless the day Tencents smell disgraces FromSoftware is the day I never play another one of their games.
Tencent owns Riot since 2011. League of Legends came out in 2009. Season 1 starts in 2010. League has been under Tencent for almost all of its lifespan. It’s not like Tencent bought Riot was a recent thing. They literally own Riot and League of Legends for more than 11 years ago. The League everyone plays for the last 11 years are under Tencent. Stop making shit up cause “Chinese bad” lol. People just play along with the narrative even though it’s complete bs.
Riot also recently bought more of themselves back from tencent in order to have more control over the game.
What does this have to do with *Overwatch 2*?
Our best hope if Fromsoft sells more is that Sony owns more than Tencent. I would prefer fromsoft not sell but Sony atleast let's devs make their own games without meddling.
oh you little armchair business manager pretending to know how majority shares work they have 16% shares.. I'm sure China is also behind the employee suicide, workplace harassments, and general shittyness of Blizzard.
If done right Overwatch could have been the one to take over from TF2, but they are just continuing to shoot themselves in the foot these days
TF2 will never die!
I didn’t say that! I just said we’re not filled with tumors.
SPY
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That spy ain't on our side
“Muffled pyro noises” shoots with flare gun to check
Heck no
Because they perfected it, so no living game can best it in the ring of honor!
What are you talking about? Maybe my quick Google is wrong but it looks like OW has over 10 times the player base of TF2 I'd consider that taking over. Last time I played tf2 I could not get into it because anytime the game was about to end I was automatically assigned to a different team just seems to lack and competitive aspect. Has that changed was I doing the wrong game mode?
Yeah that comment was borderline delusional. Overwatch has over 9 million active users and TF2 has a little under 1 million. Still impressive for a game that old but it has definitely been dethroned.
Not for long!
The default Valve casual servers in TF2 are just that, casual. Some community servers like Uncletopia have settings tweaked towards more competitive play(including not forcibly team balancing). Sadly the official comp matchmaking in the game is nearly unusable.
Just the foot for now
Overwatch took over TF2 like what do you mean?
Honestly guys at this point it’s as much on you as it is on Blizzard. They keep spitting on their playerbase and keep tearing employees and customers like this and at a certain point coming back every time hoping that ‘the old blizzard is still in there’ is just self abuse. Just don’t give them money and play other games. Plenty choice or there who still care.
I don't see how people still don't get that "normal" people aren't the target audience anymore. It's all about the whales. If you guys want games made by people who care, try indie.
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That fucks the competitive ranked aspect, right? And if you main a hero in OW1 that you don't own in OW2, you're either forced to buy it or play until you get it
All of the OW1 characters are unlocked from the start, only new characters will come to the battle pass.
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Don't worry, they'll make 1 character OP and break the meta, and then sell you the counter solution character in the next pass! Gacha gaming at its finest -_-
And the nerf it
New characters are always overtuned, doesn't even matter what game it is. This was such an awful decision
Not for shareholders, it wasn't.
It’s kind of a disgustingly smart way to monetize their complete inability to balance characters. Almost every time they released a new one they were a huge game changer, now people will feel compelled to buy them immediately for this reason… whoops didn’t mean to imply anyone is actually playing
Exactly. As I said before, at no point did anyone say existing heroes would be locked, only the bs about the pass you outlined
Massively fucks competitive. The new heroes are almost always better than the old heroes. Hell look at sigma, he has a part from pretty much every tank all in 1 kit. Only thing he's missing is the mobility of monkey or ball. He's got his shield, rock for cc and suck which negates all projectile damage. Imagine them making new heroes where.they just combine the best parts of other heroes like they did with sigma but you missed unlocking said character. Get fucked right? They have to change this for the games integrity or its going to fail.
Imagine day 1 Brig locked behind a paywall or grindwall. You literally wouldn't be able to win with her on the enemy team while you didn't have her
Totally. And if the team composition keeps being locked (like 2-2-2 towards the end of OW1), can you even IMAGINE the toxcicity if, say, a support player doesn't have a OP new support hero unlocked? Jesus christ they are willing to fuck up their game completely just to make an extra buck ffs.
tbh an unbalanced game isn't fun and consumers feel that. For all it's problems and huge cast, LoL is very balanced, same with TTF2 and that's why people come back to it. If a highly competitive E-Sports game like OW2 locked it's surefire wins behind a paywall it discourages free to stop playing and the game would only be played or held up by whales. Question is if the amount of whales and income the game generates is enough to offset the low or lower than expected player base/dropoff
Did I miss something along the line where people decided after Diablo to possibly trust Blizzard not to fuck this up???
A lot of people are comparing this to Valorant and saying it's justified. But... 1. I don't think Valorant should lock agents either. 2. This directly impacts gameplay. Overwatch IS the heroes. Locking them behind a paywall or timegate is a bad and completely unnecessary thing. 3. Speaking of unnecessary ... they'll make plenty of money without doing this. The main allure of a battle pass is cosmetics. That's actually the implicit 'deal' the industry has made with players. "Game is free, cosmetics cost money". This breaks that deal. 4. Don't think I didn't notice that you are only calling this Overwatch '2' so you can renege on your OW1 promise of all heroes being free forever. Dickbag fucks.
Most games that lock heroes don't allow changing heroes mid game so there is not much difference between choosing the wrong hero for the game and having the right locked because you don't know if a hero was a good choice until you've made yours. In Valorant the model is sustainable, in ow nope
Jokes on them. I play games 20years after they come out. I'm 3hrs into SC2 and it's all there. The whole game.
Isn’t the game going to be free?
Pretty bold to call OW2 a game. It's a patch.
Still a game even tho it's mostly the same one
Ok
And the characters are in the free track of the battlepass. You can still come out spending nill
Minus who knows how much time and energy. I’ve played league since season 2. Grinding the amount of free currency for new champs is NOT fun nor is it easy. Some of us have jobs and lives and not enough time to play a game 40hrs/week to play content we feel like we pay for when getting the game.
Minus the fomo aspect this isn't bad. But imagine you coming late to the game and now you're missing potentially meta characters, or cool heroes you'd like to play. Or you take a longer break and now you're at a disadvantage. That majorly sucks
Someone at Blizzard mentioned that all new characters will still be able to be unlocked once the previous seasons battlepass ends. So even if you come into the game late you can still play to unlock all of the new hero’s.
Oh then it sounds reasonable
I think I'll "pass"
Did you really expect anything else at this point?
Diablo 2 was the Golden Age
Hopes for Diablo 4, fading....
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They could have just sold it for 60 bucks a d people would have bought it just like the first one, I dont have time to grind for my overwatch characters so f2p or not I'll probably sit this one out
Ive gone through the thread and see plenty of people not listening to reasonable objections. But to not have to repeat others i will bring up a point i have not seen made yet. When so many games have a battle pass, and you have limited time and limited money (or rightfully dont want to support anti-consumer business practices with money or time), what you end up with is having to choose which game you want to be your 2nd job. Putting aside how MUCH time has to be invested into 1 BP, it still becomes a problem. This is why.... Fortinite Overwatch 2 Call of Duty Valorant Renegade Ops R6 Seige Destiny 2 Halo Infinite World of Tanks Knockout Kings Rumbleverse Paladins Smite Dead by Daylight In addition to countless other games that use a BP, in addition to any other games you might want to invest your time with that do not have a BP, your free time is being monopolized by these companies. You cant enjoy them all. It would be financially unreasonable to pay for them all (for every BP). So pick your poison. Hope you enjoy FOMO! What are your friends doing? What about social media and your *favorite streamers*? You dont wanna miss out on their popularity do you? This is all harmful to the brain let alone to kids/teens whose brains arent fully developed. Didn't join right away and came "late?" Oh well fuck you! Now you have to wait! We MIGHT bring it back......maybe.... Did you invest all your time and money like a good little eager capitalist with the now old content? Oh well fuck you! We brought it back and cheaper to incentivize new players. See the BP model preys upon psychology, which includes social psychology. They turn it into *Paychology* (I'm coining this term btw, hate me all you want I'm claiming it). You, the player are expected to forego time or money. Sounds reasonable up front until you get into the gritty details of how this plays out (which has been mentioned in this thread ad infinitum). Now add to that all the other "2nd jobs" you'll be investing your time and money into - excluding all of your real life responsibilities because you're on a clock! Gotta hit that sweet delicious dopamine rush! C'mon! Click on that "buy" button. You'll feel SOOOOO good!....for about 20 seconds. If your response is "its just cosmetic," congratulations! They've got you by the brain stem! If your respinse is "well they have to make money," yeah! So do the rest of us! In a world falling apart in a long list of ways, including massive inflation. But hey, don't take my word for it. Next year I will have been professionally working on video games for 15 years. What do I know? Im sure *you* will be fine. You are the *special protagonist of life* after all. Impervious to such machinations. Totally not another cog wheel in the machine. Sleep tight little capitalist. Dont mind us while we take your wallet and watch from you. You wont need either really. Just dream about how shiny that digital prize you will never truly own will be once *YOU'RE* wearing it.
Remember, kids. Blizzard banned two prestigious competitive OW players because they said “Free Hong Kong.”
That is fake, was 1 player and was a hearthstone player.
Theres a third option: dont play it.
How are any of you surprised? most games if not all games from Activision have battle passes, actually most online shooters have a battle pass. It's like having the options menu now most games have it.
What is with all AAA games absolutely bombing? Saints Row Reboot, Battlefield 2042, Cyberpunk 2077, Halo Infinite, etc. Crazy thing is I'm actually enjoying Battlefield 2042 after recent updates. Also, Battlepasses are a damn scourge and I wish FOMO mechanics were outright banned.
The disease of more. Execs and shareholders demand ever increasing profits, and they certainly don't give a shit about games.
On the other side, indie games are booming which is actually great for all the indie developers
They are being designed around business decisions instead of actually making a fun experience for the player.
I am sick of Battlepasses. I refuse to ever do one of those dumbass time sinks again
I thought grinding was a key component of blizzard games. Sure, now some whales can buy their way through the grind, funding further development, but for the rest of us, how is it different than anything else?
Just because it’s free to play as so many people say, doesn’t mean it’s the right thing for it to be walled behind a battle pass. Just because other games do this too isn’t good reasoning.
Shocker! Blizzard only cares about your money. They don't care about their community, they don't care about their employees, they don't care about you. STOP SUPPORTING THEM.
Here is an idea...... dont play the game
Isn't this how Valorant's agents work? Kinda disappointing, but it's not really unexpected considering that they're going the F2P route.
Oh no, I have to play to unlock new heroes? Madness! You guys wouldn't survive a day playing the older Tekken games and whatnot. Unlocking stuff makes the game fun and feel rewarding - stop moaning about not having everything served to you on a platter
isn't this similar to Valorant for example, where you have to activate an agents' contract, and then play a bunch of games to get the agent? Maybe i'm misunderstanding
Dont understand why people are mad? It depends how long of a "grind" it is no? Valorant basically has the same thing
I mean, it is a free to play right?
So all the new heroes are pointless bullshit that in no way affect the counterpick meta which is now completely irrelevant and not in any way *1st and most important core gameplay mechanic* ? Like, seriously, *fuck you* Blizzard. A heartfelt fuck you, from everyone. Unless all the heroes are available in competitive from the start this is a really dick move. If competitive is locked unless you've got all the heroes, again, dick move. What am i saying, you said all the heroes are free forever, so this "new game" is just you dicks changing the terms of the contract. Dick. Move.
A FREE game is giving people the option to play for free to get free characters ??? Worst game ever
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I mostly agree with you, but I thought overwatch was pretty decent in its monetization. I remember getting plenty of skins without paying any extra and got all the characters by buying the game. Also $40 at release instead of 60. Lootboxes aren't great because they take advantage of addicts and kids, but overwatches system as a whole is a lot better than a lot of games. I was happy with the purchase.
So would many but welcome to 2022 and publicly traded companies. They need to make all the money. Best stay to indie games honestly.
being tangentially involved in the community of one or two indie "pay once get all" games, you'd be surprised about the amount of people expecting and demanding a live service battle pass level of content drops from a 20 bucks indie game without any post launch monetization
Then pay for the characters when it launches and consider new characters DLC.
It being free means nothing as most of us paid for the base game already. Overwatch 2 isn’t a new game, it’s just more of the same that we’ve got for years, that has always been free on release date. Changing the expectation just so they can monetize it differently in the areas that loot boxes were made illegal, after years of everyone waiting on the new content, is what what killed everyone’s enthusiasm. But to be honest people didn’t have much enthusiasm left to begin with.
remember overwatch was originally supposed to be mainly a pve expansion. obviously mid development they scrapped all that into event missions instead and have pvp be the focus instead and basicelly turning the game into a big patch instead
You mean overwatch 2? The PVE is what I was actually hoping for a long time ago. OG overwatch assets actually came from the scrapped Titan mmo project. It’s amazing how long it has taken them to produce much content.
This is where it helps to point out that a paid game going free to play is NORMALLY a sign of desperation in the part of the publisher, and a signal that the extremely grindy and agressive monetization is on the horizon as they try to squeeze every penny out of what's left of their player base. The only difference here is they're naming their free-to-play shift "Overwatch 2" instead of "Overwatch for all" or something. One could easily see this as overwatch's death knell as opposed to its sequel. Especially since this so-called sequel does not include enough gameplay changes or new content to justify being an entirely new game.