[StableAlkyne]

I miss community-hosted servers in games.

Nowadays it's all servers that are only run by the developer, who could just flip a switch tomorrow and tell you "Remember that $80 you spent on Game 1 few years ago? You're gonna have to pay up again for Game 2. Also we're turning off the servers for Game 1."

[pests]

Overwatch 2 was odd because it was only half that.

"Remember that $80 you spent on Game 1 a few years ago? Well, you get Game 2 for free. Also, were turning off the servers for Game 1"

It doesn't sound as wrong but the community still hated it.

[Jochim]

> It doesn't sound as wrong but the community still hated it.

It only seems odd if all context is left out.

Blizzard's whole pitch for Overwatch 2 is that it would introduce single player and co-op PvE content. It didn't do that.

Overwatch 2 was much stingier with rewards for gameplay than Overwatch 1.

Overwatch 2 started locking new heroes behind a paywall, where they'd previously been entirely free in Overwatch 1.

Overwatch 2 charged much more for it's items, and limited specific items to bundles in an attempt to force players to spend much more than they would for the item itself.

Overwatch 2 made multiple changes to balance, that weren't always well received.

The sad thing is that people seemed fairly excited for PvE Overwatch. That excitement was strangled through a combination of hubris, corporate greed, and an inability to deliver.

[spondylosaurus]

There've been PvE missions for a few months now. I think part of the reason they were initially cut/delayed was because of all the shakeups at Blizzard after so many people left and/or got fired for misconduct.

Also, you mention unpopular balance patches, but "Blizzard sucks at balancing" has been a complaint since the early days of OW1 :P I remember when the first Mercy rework dropped... and the Bastion rework... and everything about Brigitte...

[Jochim]

> There've been PvE missions for a few months now. I think part of the reason they were initially cut/delayed was because of all the shakeups at Blizzard after so many people left and/or got fired for misconduct.

The missions they released have nothing in common with what was discussed. PvE was meant to have persistent hero levelling, skill trees, and a proper story. What they eventually released wasn't far off what would've been a seasonal event game mode in the past, in addition to being laughably expensive and horribly broken.

> Also, you mention unpopular balance patches, but "Blizzard sucks at balancing" has been a complaint since the early days of OW1 :P I remember when the first Mercy rework dropped... and the Bastion rework... and everything about Brigitte...

The OW2 changes went beyond a broken hero. They made fundamental changes to the way the game is played with the reduction in team size and changes to tanks.

[pests]

All this.

I discovered OW1 a year before it was ended. I was addicted to this game like I haven't been since I was a teenager. I would sleep and dream of the music.. it was bad.

OW2 came out and it instantly changed things. Tanks were no longer fun to play. I haven't played a single game of OW2 in almost 10 months.

[pests]

They are only a glimpse of what was promised. They're void of humans and filled with bots now. No replayability and just a learning down.

[pauldenton]

Do they have custom map support yet? Most of my time in TF2 was not spent on official maps. It seems like server browsers have been disappearing since the jump from MW1 to MW2, where the quality of the PC experience is dampened for the sake of making it more like the console experience.

[pests]

Nope. Custom game modes and all that exist solely on existing maps or the testing plane/box maps.

The cloest Overwatch has ever gotten to a custom map was when a (offical) OW map designer was desinging a level with his viewers on Twitch one day. Blizzard than later suprised everyone by putting it in the game for a limited time.