You mean subjectively. Which I understand, wasn’t going to please everyone.
True, this was a big game changing feature…
You know what happened after F2P?! Kids got accounts cause it is free. Now the game is full of players under 18. Because no one pays for the game, there is more cheating and swearing in chat. Ban and reporting is max level. OW1 was failing that is why they made OW2 and gave promises that they didn’t keep. You say there are many more players in the game but for some reason game doesn’t find players who are same level. You cannot see smurf accounts anymore cause they left the game. Most of them are ready to move on to another game if it comes out. People who have alt accounts are players like me. I made accounts just to see what my actual rank is. Because my main account is ruined cause of horrible match making.
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No, i meant objectively, because the majority of veterans have long since left the game due to the monetization swap and business model swap. This is a fact, albeit you’re afraid of facts, last time i checked.
It was a popular QoL feature they had no reason whatsoever to remove.
No point debating anything with this fella. He’s gonna gaslight you to hell and back. It’s what he does. 
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So subjective then. Some people didn’t like the changes, and rightly stopped playing. You are confusing your dislike for something as fact.
I don’t necessarily disagree with you on what you dislike, but that is just our opinions. It being “ruined” is only a personal perspective.
I know, such a massive feature, clicking on someone you thought did well base on out of context numbers. Huge stuff.
One day you will actually use that correctly and not dilute its meaning completely.
Everything you say here is right. It has attracted more players, most likely younger players as there is no money barrier for entry, which you would expect to bringing younger players who don’t have much or any disposable income.
And that is a good thing. You need volume of players to make online multiplayer games to work. And if you charge a premium at the door, you are just going to end up gatekeeping the game. Which, as OW1 proved, isn’t a sustainable model.
This part. People will agree with you. Doesn’t mean they are right.
Well the moment you bring in numbers from the game to back you up you can argue it becomes objective, Splash isnt being subjective as they still play the game, showing that on a personal basis they like it enough to play / be active in the forums.
However a drop in player base is a fact, a hard number, undebatable, and this is objective.
As somebody who started playing as a minor, I think gatekeeping it was a bad choice, as there are a plethora of other games that the playerbase could be playing instead if the game was locked behind a paywall. Yes these little kids can be annoying, but remember you will get sensible kids who are respectful, you will get kids who can play the game better than many of us on this forums.
On the other hand I have seen people into their 20’s and 30’s using language that is unacceptable. I played a game a few weeks back where a man whos voice I could pinpoint to 20s-30s told a child to kill themselves. Adults can often behave way worse than the younger audience.
The removal of the paywall can be up for debate, I believe personally it was a good thing, as if it was paid I would never have paid for it.
You can cry all you want that it let brats into the game, but people with money can also be entitled brats too.
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Indeed. And if that has happend, someone would be able to show it.
If someone decided player numbers as stable, stale, stagnant, so so, fine, anything like that, that would mirror every site I’ve seen trying to collate numbers.
But people having an opinion in a game is purely subjective. If they stop playing, they are just acting on that subjective view.
Lots of people have stopped playing that’s true. But so many more new players have come, thanks to decisions like going F2P. They have to keep appealing to the younger players, as they are the ones that will grow with the game (in theory)
You’ve clearly never had a toe inside the gaming industry so let me fill you in on something.
It’s not always about how you show it, but how you put two and two together with a bit of logic and experience on the subject.
When a game as well as its developer goes through scandal after scandal, it loses players. There is no two ways about it. That’s just a solid fact.
The first wave of people leaving, came with the release of OW2 itself. Followed by even more people leaving when they broke the news about the cancellation of PVE, then there was the Steam release followed by the Steam reviews. That showed us that people were furious and used Steam as the only place they could actually review the game and its developers etc, which also makes it highly probable that even more people left.
Overwatch 2 has been mismanaged from day 1 and is still being mismanaged, and people don’t tend to stick around to play mismanaged games, especially not the F2P kind.
Free to Play games will always bleed players, despite regular influxes of new players, because the amount of new players won’t be able to balance the scale. The game will always lose more players than it gains due to the nature of the monetization and business model they use.
Finally, there’s the fact that there is literally zero incentives for new players to continue playing after the first week or two, as they are met with a notification for the shop, every single day. In order to retain players and attract new players, there need to be an incentive to keep playing. This game has no such incentive. In fact, it has far more in terms of deterrents in the form of cheaters and smurfs ruining the experience for new players, which also plays into the game bleeding players.
So no, this isn’t just subjective or ‘wild guesses’, it’s based on experience working with online games as a tester as well as within marketing and sales. Call it an educated guess if you will, and that makes it far more objective than your constant gaslighting people into thinking the game is doing great, which is also hypocritical, considering you demand others provide you with proof, when you can’t even back up your own claims that the game is doing great.
I also want to point out that player retention and attraction is far more important for a F2P live service game with the monetization and business model OW2 has, than a buy to play title like OW1 was. Yet another fact.
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Got to love the persistent misuse of “gaslight” as a way to attack someone.
You’ve just listed your takes and opinions on somethings and called it objective.
I get it, you don’t like how the game is going. That is cool. But don’t claim it is “ruined” as fact. That isn’t objective. It is subjective.
Now. I don’t disagree with pretty much all of your gripes with the game. But you and I not liking something doesn’t mean it is ruined. It just means we no longer like it.
Correct… But… Over the mass playerbase if there is mass bleed you can objectivly say its ruined.
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Agree. If being the key word there.
Other than fluctuations you’d expect. Up at the beginning of a season (even more so if there is a new hero), down as the season goes on (probably more so this season as they did the mid-season patch early, so people know it is a bit of a dead season now). It has been pretty stationary for a long time.
They are going to have to do something pretty big, either positively or negatively, to really change that.
That being said, I doubt they can increase the player base much more than it peaked at. The market isn’t growing, but the options are. So if anything it should steadily decrease at some point.
I’d expect, short term at least, a drop when Rivals releases. If that game turns out to be a winner, then it will be hard for OW to pull that back. If Rivals turns out to be a lot of hot air… Then OW will probably just trickle back up to similar numbers to where it is now.
There is also Metacritic, I think OW2 has 1.6 rating on it out of 10. Seriously low for what should be a AAA game… Blizzard royally ruined their opportunity to make a better game rather than inferior mess.
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Yeah, which i’m not surprised with at all, really.
They’ve got one dude working as lead hero designer, who used to work with Hearthstone and never even touched an FPS before. Then there’s the big boss himself who’ve worked on WoW before joining Team 4, again, never worked on an FPS before. Then there’s the new guy who worked on Destiny and LoL, and we all know how those games ended up…
Take that on top of Koticks horrid leadership, there’s a reason this game got ruined.
Heck, even the majority of shills who used to defend this game at all cost have long since left and now, even content creators are starting to move on to other games. Creators who exclusively only streamed Overwatch i might add.
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Of course I am right. And people agree with me. I play this game for 8 years. How can I be the same with someone who started playing today? I do not want to be the carry of the whole team.
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Are you working for Blizzard Roku? It feels like that. It seems you are the only one here enjoying and agreeing on the changes they make.
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You’re he same MMR, that’s why you end up in the same lobby. If you’re playing ranked, they will have at least 8 hours of play behind them, they aren’t “new”
F2P was the best move they’ve made. They’ve made lots of moves since that I’ve thought are utter garbage.
ChatGPT error?
I personally wouldn’t say that. Introducing F2P only created a lot more accounts because people can make countless amounts without having to pay anything. In my sincere opinion, I believe it’s one of many downfalls, including the rise of cheaters and smurfs.
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I suppose, if I thought like someone trying to gatekeep… Then yes I can see why new players coming to a game would be an issue,
But they will have seen it as numbers and money. So, with that hat on, it was clearly the best choice to make.
If you do some searching round other games, everyone is experiencing an uptick in cheaters atm. So it is a wider issue, even CoD multiplayer is having a big issue right now, so it isn’t just a F2P problem. Seems to be a gaming society one.
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No game puts you anywhere. I play with silver and new players and I am gold1. I do comp and I win every 2 of 3 matches. MMR works like a swamp as I told in another topic. You get drained together with others and you end up matching lower ranks than yourself. Broken.
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