Ex-Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan has described the events which lead up to his decision to leave Blizzard in 2021.
  • deliriousdreams@fedia.io
    4·
    8 days ago

    It doesn’t seem like it’s the fault of the dev team that overwatch didn’t make X money. I used to love overwatch but it went through more than one iteration of balancing and changes that turned fans off the game long before the pandemic and the e-sports league BS. Those changes always felt forced, like the dev team wasn’t making them because they made game play better but because they were under pressure to make the game “balanced” to bring in more players.

    The thing about bringing in more players is that those players are going to be at a disadvantage when playing against higher ranked players and after awhile there were not enough low level players to balance teams with. it’s really messed up bring level 11 and playing with level 100 players.

    • favoredponcho@lemmy.zipEnglish
      1·
      7 days ago

      For me, I was fine with most of the character rebalancing. It made the game interesting and there were a lot of characters that had poorly thought out mechanics early on. I quit more because the game went from one clearly built out of love by Jeff and the developers to one trying to monetize its user base and have broader appeal. The OW1->2 transition made no sense and was botched. The one tank per team change was also pretty drastic and polarizing.

      I also think Jeff’s recent criticism of the game being too team centric is a very valid one. I could never get past platinum tier on competitive because without having a regular group or at least turning on your mic to coordinate, your teammates skill levels are too random to consistently progress. Once you start doing well, they pair you with people who have been doing worse and that knocks you back down after a few rounds no matter how well you play. I also hate playing with my mic on or unmuted teammates because there is inevitably some hard edged personality who kind of ruins things and takes the fun out of it for me. However, you really do need to communicate to win after a certain skill tier with the way the game is built and the way team balancing works.