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It's worth noting that their last game - i.e. not a remaster or whatever - was... Overwatch. Five and a half years ago.
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Nov 7, 2021 05:33
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Blizzard is more or less entirely coasting off of industry cred and good will from an increasingly aging and shrinking fanbase and now they're being sued into the dirt over their abominable work practices and abuse scandals so they're trying to distract from the lawsuits by whipping out promises as fast as they can, but 1: they've been doing as much work as Valve has on making new stuff and B: the classic Activision mismanagement means it's cannibalizing things people want to add too many cooks to products they can't ship in time. Like they took the team behind the Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1+2 remake from the Activision parts of the company, cancelled all further work on anything else and shoved them into Diablo to make Diablo finish faster even though it's very arguable there's any actual work done at all on all of the various Diablo projects. And when I say Diablo I mean they're now working on all of the Diablo 2 and 4 stuff in addition to people who've been doing that for years. Until the theoretical seeds of games can be brought to fruition they're just deckchair shuffling as much as they can to placate people without actually addressing the things they're currently facing government lawsuits over, hence the removal of whatshisnuts' self insert in WoW and changing the World's Oldest Cowboy's name but not like actually doing anything.
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Nov 7, 2021 06:21
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megane posted:It's worth noting that their last game - i.e. not a remaster or whatever - was... Overwatch. Five and a half years ago. To be fair, if better managed, a stable of Starcraft 2/Diablo 3/WoW/Overwatch/Hearthstone/HotS as an roster stable of games could have kept the company looking golden for a long time. Who would need to make new games when supporting those games would make them hand-over-fist money for years to come? Turns out the only ones they got right on that list for any amount of time after 2016 were D3 and Overwatch. Both of which they dropped too early to focus on sequels that have since been trapped in Forever Hell while both have continued to run on maintenance mode for years now instead of enjoying any kind of meaningful active support to keep the hype going after the Necromancer/Echo. I mean, I guess D2 Ressurected... happened. That was a thing. For people who didn't learn their lesson from Warcraft 3 Reforged.
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Nov 7, 2021 06:25
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I forgot what the response to d2 remastered was. All I remember was the praise Vicarious Visions got for not botching it ala blizzard.
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Nov 7, 2021 11:16
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Its the best thing they've released in 5 years and it launched with a lot of problems that they managed to fix the worst of within a month and a half of release but its still got a login queue, albeit a drastically shortened one, random crashes on Nvidia systems, and uses way more resources than the game probably should so while its better than any sane person would have expected, its not exactly great
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Nov 7, 2021 13:09
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OW was supposed to be a self sustaining esports game. it was supposed to be bring esports mainstream viewers. This is why the OW2 transition is so weird. Edit - This just made me realize something. Them moving to 5v5 has been baffling to me, but I bet it’s not about fun, but about watchablility cosmicjim fucked around with this message at 13:37 on Nov 7, 2021 |
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Nov 7, 2021 13:31
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cosmicjim posted:OW was supposed to be a self sustaining esports game. it was supposed to be bring esports mainstream viewers. This is why the OW2 transition is so weird. It's not really that weird, given that peak OW popularity was from the "I want to kiss Junkrat" crowd, and that OWL has kind of self destructed already. The biggest mistake, in hindsight, was going after the esports dream in the first place, because OW was not a good game for that The second biggest was taking too long to execute on the story-heavy PvE shift. Everyone's long since moved on, and OW2 is still many years out (assuming it doesn't self destruct entirely)
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Nov 7, 2021 15:04
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Time Crisis Actor posted:
It goes back further than that. In the beginning Blizzard was founded. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move
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Nov 7, 2021 15:17
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Tankbuster posted:I forgot what the response to d2 remastered was. All I remember was the praise Vicarious Visions got for not botching it ala blizzard. You weren't paying attention then. Did you miss the servers being nearly unreachable because mandatory internet connection wasn't ready for nearly two decades of min-maxing multi-window play? Or Blizzard's 'fix' of patching in a queue system to the server before submitting a patch for consoles, effectively locking them out of the game? Or the general instability of the servers erasing inventories and entire character profiles?
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Nov 7, 2021 16:10
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Father Wendigo posted:You weren't paying attention then.
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Nov 7, 2021 16:21
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Ryanbomber posted:The biggest mistake, in hindsight, was going after the esports dream in the first place, because OW was not a good game for that I disagree, the competitive side of overwatch with an actual team was some of the most fun i've ever had gaming. Their main problem was not knowing how to do it in the first place and continually making lovely decisions regarding it.
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Nov 7, 2021 19:36
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dogstile posted:I disagree, the competitive side of overwatch with an actual team was some of the most fun i've ever had gaming. "what if we decided to focus our league around *constant international travel* and move it from Twitch to YouTube and stop releasing content for it and have a plan of ????? when marketing our Korean players and have all our teams constantly shuffle players and have one team in particular treat Runaway so badly that half of them quit" I liked the most recent OWL season quite a bit and I think Jon Spector's doing a good job but boy oh boy did the league put itself in a hole
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Nov 7, 2021 19:57
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I'm not a fan of the OWL or how it's been run, but the real problem was stopping all content to focus on OW2. The game died due to lack of support and hype more than anything else.
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Nov 7, 2021 20:00
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:I'm not a fan of the OWL or how it's been run, but the real problem was stopping all content to focus on OW2. The game died due to lack of support and hype more than anything else. it's really a killer decision -- I'd say in hindsight but it was bad to begin with. Beforehand it was like "Overwatch has balance problems, but check out this new hero!" and now it's just "Overwatch has balance problems, but check out these new heroes that come out seemingly every week in its competitors" They stopped releasing new heroes and their progress on the lore -- which is what casual OW fans, of which there are disproportionate amount, are concerned with -- has been basically nonexistent. those big tent cinematics are cool and all but they should have been cranking out other poo poo from Day One. On top of that you have the seasonal events, which could have given reasons for people to come back and play if they weren't the same thing over and over again for years. Summer Games could have had Genji races, Widow/Ashe target shooting, Wrecking Ball bowling, Junkrat dodgeball, all kinds of poo poo, but instead it was five years of a significantly less fun version of Rocket League where you can't forfeit if it's 8-0. It's really a masterclass in how to throw away an early advantage.
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Nov 7, 2021 20:12
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Wait. Sorry, count me in as someone who hasn't paid attention to the D2r release, did they really force mandatory online play for a game that can be played solo? Is it just like an unranked/ranked mode where you can play unrestricted offline if you don't care about leaderboards or whatever, or is it online no matter what? I know a lot of games force this and I should be used to it, but also, D2 is from an era where games largely didn't force this, so...
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Nov 8, 2021 02:39
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There's definitely an offline mode that you can play even when the servers are having issues, but I'm not sure if you still need to be connected to the internet to make it to that point.
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Nov 8, 2021 02:49
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Tiny Myers posted:Wait. Naw, I got D2R as a gift. It lets you know when it's connecting online, and if the queue is full it asks if you want to play offline or wait to connect. I've also played it when my internet was completely out. To Splinter's point, you can be completely offline and the game still let's you play the offline version thankfully.
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Nov 8, 2021 03:48
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Just to hit this point a little more, League or Legends has a whole-rear end show out now and Overwatch never even came close despite arguably having way more recognizable characters!
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Nov 8, 2021 23:12
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Pattonesque posted:Just to hit this point a little more, League or Legends has a whole-rear end show out now and Overwatch never even came close despite arguably having way more recognizable characters! And its a p good show
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Nov 9, 2021 01:31
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black.lion posted:And its a p good show from what I hear! and like look at this poo poo https://twitter.com/Vandiril/status/1457825989866758146 I know it's *brand* poo poo but come on, Blizzard could never
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Nov 9, 2021 04:01
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Eh didn't the run up to overwatch catch a lot of eyeballs?
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Nov 10, 2021 01:45
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Tankbuster posted:Eh didn't the run up to overwatch catch a lot of eyeballs? The run up to Overwatch, and its initial run, felt like one of the biggest events in gaming. I don't even think its hyperbole to say that. It was the first major franchise from a legendary game studio in ages, the game had immense appeal at both casual and competitive levels, its characters cornered the public imagination, and it kicked off what felt like the first truly mainstream esports league. And then Blizzard failed to capitalize on any of that. The exception was chasing the esports dragon, but in true Blizzard fashion, their balancing left a lot to be desired. It honestly kind of feels like Riot is in the spot everyone thought Blizzard or Valve would be in around this time. If you told me that a video game studio would be cranking out some of the highest tier animation in recent memory, those two would've been my first bets.
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Nov 10, 2021 01:50
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People had been talking about the "blizzard should make an animated movie" for ages.
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Nov 10, 2021 02:37
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And then they made Warcraft: the Movie
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Nov 10, 2021 05:49
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Travis Fimmel couldn't carry that film, sadly.
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Nov 10, 2021 12:17
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The movie had blizzard writing. Amazing 10/10 spiritual predecessor to the blizzard writing process.
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Nov 10, 2021 14:55
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were there purple 'corrupted' people?
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Nov 10, 2021 17:26
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Green corrupted people, yes. The OG ones.
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Nov 10, 2021 17:28
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The Bee posted:The run up to Overwatch, and its initial run, felt like one of the biggest events in gaming. I don't even think its hyperbole to say that. It was the first major franchise from a legendary game studio in ages, the game had immense appeal at both casual and competitive levels, its characters cornered the public imagination, and it kicked off what felt like the first truly mainstream esports league. Yeah overwatch was basically a huge shift away from the gritty realistic war shooters that were the mainstay of the genre and at the time Blizzard was still well liked by most people. It started going downhill when they added a killfeed.
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Nov 10, 2021 17:52
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FAUXTON posted:Yeah overwatch was basically a huge shift away from the gritty realistic war shooters that were the mainstay of the genre and at the time Blizzard was still well liked by most people. It started going downhill when they added a killfeed. With just a slightly different direction, they could have alienated the calvins and carpes earlier and forged a new genre that isn't going anywhere. Just set the right expectations and don't try to compete with real shooters.
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Nov 10, 2021 19:55
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Sorry to hijack the thread with icky esports, but this might be of interest to you guys: the current OWL commissioner is moving to the Overwatch team as a Commerce Leader. I believe ths means he'll be in charge of licensing and brand strategy for Overwatch? https://twitter.com/Spex_J/status/1458512407458811904
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Nov 10, 2021 20:39
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Ignis posted:Sorry to hijack the thread with icky esports, but this might be of interest to you guys: the current OWL commissioner is moving to the Overwatch team as a Commerce Leader. I believe ths means he'll be in charge of licensing and brand strategy for Overwatch? Spector was p. good at his job so good news for OW as a whole I guess?
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Nov 10, 2021 23:28
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FAUXTON posted:Yeah overwatch was basically a huge shift away from the gritty realistic war shooters that were the mainstay of the genre and at the time Blizzard was still well liked by most people. It started going downhill when they added a killfeed. That Aesthetic thing is way underappreciated. Overwatch being mismanaged was atleast partial to the success of Fortnite too. Battle Royale and minecraft-ish mechanics helped for sure but PUBG didnt have that kind of success. Eitherway, for a while OW was the only accessible shooter with a cartoony superhero style aesthetic. I think the big focus on OWL helped too (which was a doomed to fail hubristic disaster from day 1, i mean 20 million dollar old sports buy in for a new franchise? lol). Blizzards perpetual incompetence and snail pace iteration when it came to balancing helped kill off the casual and comp scene alike.
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Nov 11, 2021 11:23
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Yeah, definitely. Pursuing the OWL wasn't what was bad. Blizard Blizzarding it up afterwards was, and frankly anyone who played WoW or HotS shouldn't have been surprised when the game's balance started going to poo poo.
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Nov 11, 2021 14:08
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At least the constant pushback of Overwatch 2 means we can continue to enjoy Overwatch for longer than we expected.
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Nov 11, 2021 14:19
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Define enjoy overwatch, because i seem to remember them dropping echo in and going "lol, later nerds" like she isn't the loving bane of tank players everywhere.
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Nov 11, 2021 15:24
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dogstile posted:Define enjoy overwatch, because i seem to remember them dropping echo in and going "lol, later nerds" like she isn't the loving bane of tank players everywhere. I play on PC but usually will go hog if she's bothering me too much and it works out. Landing the hooks is obviously the challenge
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Nov 11, 2021 16:28
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dogstile posted:Define enjoy overwatch, because i seem to remember them dropping echo in and going "lol, later nerds" like she isn't the loving bane of tank players everywhere. they nerfed echo afterwards but yeah she still just straight up deletes tanks
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Nov 11, 2021 17:49
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They could have saved this franchise if they just released a dating simulator
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Nov 12, 2021 05:01
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Ashcans posted:They could have saved this franchise if they just released a dating simulator Given how thirsty the internet is every time the summer games skins come up, I'd expect it to make a billion dollars on it's first day.
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Nov 14, 2021 14:12
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