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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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’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
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.