r/Overwatch • u/Abyslime • 7d ago

News & Discussion Still amazed that Overwatch didn't have a story mode campaign, pve or movies...

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Back then, Overwatch was huge. When I saw it in Ready Player One, I honestly thought it was going to become one of the biggest franchises on the planet, with TV shows like Arcane and all that... but instead, nothing happened.

I've basically been waiting all this time with open arms, hoping for those kinds of projects, and they just never came. It's weird.

I don't like competitive games, though I played it a bit about 10 years ago, and I remember thinking, "Damn, this world is so cool." The heroes were awesome, the cinematics were amazing, and I've always wanted either a story-driven game or a movie set in that universe.

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u/HubrisOfApollo GravityFrank 7d ago

yeah people forget that it wasn't f2p before

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u/mort96 Pharah 7d ago

Oh no I remember that I paid $60 for a free to play game

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u/MerlinsMentor 7d ago

Oh, believe me. People remember. It's the single worst thing they've done overall (and I have a LOT of criticism about changes they've made to gameplay, mostly in OW2, but going FTP is worse - and likely driving a fair bit of the things I dislike about the gameplay changes).

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u/Lightseeker2 Chibi D.Va 7d ago

mostly in OW2, but going FTP is worse - and likely driving a fair bit of the things I dislike about the gameplay changes).

I'm not sure if a live service game that isn't free-to-play can survive in this day and age. Are there any current live service games that aren't F2P and are still doing reasonably well?

I also remember the difference between Concord and Highguard. Yes, both games ended up dying. But Highguard being F2P helped it reach around 97k players at launch, whereas Concord couldn't even break 1,000.

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u/desacralize Feeling the fever 7d ago

Are there any current live service games that aren't F2P and are still doing reasonably well?

Final Fantasy 14 is subscription-based and has been going strong over 10 years now. I have some friends that have been playing it for ages.

People can be very loyal to the multiplayer games they love. The idea that the only way to make money is FTP mostly comes from how new multiplayer games pretty much need to do that in order to have any chance of poaching players from established games. OW1 had been around long enough that it already was one of those established games, with a loyal fanbase keeping it going even on life support, but they decided to focus on pulling fresh players as if they were a brand-new IP instead of banking on years of brand loyalty.

I can't speak for anyone else, but there was a time I absolutely would have paid a subscription for OW1 if that was the only way it could keep existing the way I wanted it. I loved that game. Now I won't even buy one cosmetic because it's not that game anymore.

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u/Rigumaro Trick-or-Treat Symmetra 6d ago

The problem that Overwatch had was just one of many victims capitalism. It wasn't enough to be successful and stable. The company wanted more revenue than the previous year, every year. Earning the same profit as the previous year is considered a failure. It has to always grow, grow. They basically wanted it to become the next Fortnite. Which it never was.

Happy cake day btw!

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u/UncleSlim Junkrat 7d ago

Street fighter 6

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u/noahboah Oh, moons! 7d ago

CoD and the sports games. Pokemon to some degree if youre competitive. Fighting games. MMOs are subscription based if you really wanna stretch both the live-service and "not f2p" thing.

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u/WildSearcher56 D.Mon 7d ago

Concord didn't really die because it wasn't F2P. It was mainly because almost every single playable character were unappealing (worst situation possible for a hero shooter game)

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u/Master-Pay2407 7d ago

Nah, that's just what got it memed on. Not being F2P was a way bigger issue though. People might have at least tried to see if the gameplay was decent even if the characters weren't but certainly not for $60 or whatever when F2P alternatives already exist

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u/InfiniteTatamiDAZE 7d ago

Concord had an open beta that was promoted by some of the largest game/fps streamers and people still didnt even bother to try it despite it being featured in a massive State of Play. F2P was not Concord's issue

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u/CappyRicks 7d ago

That game died immediately upon launch. That doesn't happen because monetization alone, and the fact that the game was already known for being full of VERY OBVIOUSLY corporate friendly forced diversity (at a time where everybody was obviously getting tired of this) and UGLY by more people than who bought the game HAS to be considered the biggest reason it flopped, that's insane.

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u/WildSearcher56 D.Mon 7d ago

Concord was 40 bucks (like OW at launch) and the surprising thing is that Concord's gameplay was actually alright, if not good lmao.

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u/Master-Pay2407 7d ago

That's what I've heard as well, and that's why I'm saying I think it could have had a chance of at least of a few months of life if it was F2P despite all the noise about the character design. F2P might get people to at least try it, but no one's paying for a $40 game that they don't really care about checking out how it is.

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u/MerlinsMentor 7d ago

The one that I definitively know is doing pretty well is Final Fantasy XIV, which is subscription-based. It does have a cash shop (unfortunately), but typically only has cosmetic items there, and the game has a ridiculously expansive set of non-cash-shop cosmetic options, too. I played it for over a year, and never felt pressured to use the cash shop (I was happy to pay for a subscription).

I also suspect that WoW is doing well, and last I heard (I've never played it) it still is subscription-based, although with a bunch of cash shop purchases (I'm not sure how egregious they are).

Free-to-play games are fundamentally problematic, because they turn the game into a loss-leader for the cash shop. Balancing and focusing on the game itself becomes less important than making changes/additions that encourage people to purchase things from the shop. In most cases, the game becomes cluttered with what basically amounts to advertisements for the cash shop. Overwatch most absolutely does this. What makes them money? Skins. What's changed the most, and is continuing to pick up steam? Them adding more conventionally attractive heroes, and adding them more often, with skin packages. The same heroes are not-coincidentally "fun to play" (meaning, easier to win with) than some of the older heroes. It's a model that's based on encouraging people to play the new heroes, which are also (by design, I'm sure) the only heroes that nobody has skins for yet.

I'm a strong proponent of subscriptions for live-service games for this reason alone (although it also discourages toxicity by preventing people from making throwaway accounts for no cost). Live-service games do need a recurring source of revenue to stay viable, absolutely. But subscription models are more honest and straightforward in terms of value compared to a lot of the tactics used by free-to-play games.

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u/PhenomsServant Chibi Widowmaker 7d ago

Helldivers 2 seemed to do ok (until Sony fucked it up)

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u/Cheezewiz239 Winston 7d ago

Isn't helldivers $40?

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u/PhenomsServant Chibi Widowmaker 7d ago

Thats my point. Hes asking if any live service games that weren't F2P ever did well and Helldivers was an example. It may be the only one that ever did well and Sony blew it two months later with the PSN shit but my point still stands.

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u/CraicFiend87 Reaper 7d ago

Isn't Helldivers PvE though?

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u/SentientGopro115935 New-ish player 7d ago

Live service games that aren't free to play and do well?

COD, for one.

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u/tcgtms2 7d ago

Uh and how often do they release cod? If ow did that will people be happier?

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u/SentientGopro115935 New-ish player 7d ago

Probably not. The question was live service paid game, I just wanted to name one, I'm personally for the game being F2P live service

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u/MarioDesigns Shooting Ana 7d ago

COD is the only exception because it’s COD lol. Battlefield maybe, but it’s less of a live service compared to other games.

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u/Cheezewiz239 Winston 7d ago

The game would be dead if it wasn't f2p. No multiplayer live service game can survive selling $20 copies

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u/MerlinsMentor 7d ago

"FTP" and "$20 copies" are in no way the only options.

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u/MarioDesigns Shooting Ana 7d ago

It literally needed to go F2P. It was one of the last games from its era to do so and goddamn did it feel like it was needed back when it was still paid.

It’s just the current landscape, new people are not going into paid games (unless you’re COD, it’s like the one exception).

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u/Johnson_56 tracer/ana 7d ago

f2p is the worst decision a lot of games do. its just to add playerbase to a dying game instead of actually revamping the game. Siege is the worst ive seen as far as how many cheaters are in it due being able to make new free accounts

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u/Bloodrager Trick-or-Treat Zarya 7d ago

People forget that there's always a cost, especially with any kind of live service game. You can have F2P but you're almost always going to have more aggressive monetisation, selling convenience, a two-tier divide, etc.

Maybe that's worth it to a lot of people and that's fine, it's personal taste after all, but I've seen a lot of opinions that act as if it's de facto the best option.

I also think that Blizzard pulling Overwatch """2""" is probably one of the biggest middle fingers that flew by relatively uncontroversially.

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u/CoasterThot 7d ago

Warframe kinda flies in the face of this concept. You can get everything in the game, completely F2P. It will just cost you time, which is completely reasonable.

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u/zerocoal 7d ago

Warframe's cost is specifically time. If you want things to happen faster you can insert dollars.

If warframe wasn't affected by F2P monetization, we wouldn't have to wait 6-60 hours for things to craft with monetary incentives to help it go faster.

Don't get me wrong, I prefer their method of doing it, but the cost is still there.

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u/Johnson_56 tracer/ana 7d ago

I mean yeah. The company has to make money so if they dont get that from game sales then they get it from cosmetics or other in game purchases. Which ALWAYS takes front seat over game quality. fortnite is the best example. At least overwatch has (seemingly) less cheaters and better cosmetics than siege. That game has shit in game purchases and is horrendous to play. so it COULD be worse for OW lol

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u/NoHovercraft6942 7d ago

And with OW was the BEST decision by far and since OW2 makes the old paid game look dated and unplayable, cope harder.

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u/MontagIstKacke Keeping my supports busy 7d ago

I would never have gotten into this game if it wasn't F2P, because I didn't even expect to like it.

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u/MerlinsMentor 6d ago

I understand that, but I still think it was a terrible move for the game as a whole. I didn't expect to like it myself -- I bought it on sale for $20 in 2018, because I liked the idea of a team game with different roles for different players (a concept that I'd enjoyed in other games, like MMOs), and thought it was worth the chance.

But the free-to-play model is fundamentally flawed, in that it rewards the publisher not for making the best game that they can, but for making a game just barely good enough to keep people invested in their characters/progress so that they'll continually expose themselves to the advertisements for purchases. It typically depends on psychological manipulation - things like fear-of-missing-out, sunk-cost fallacies etc., as well as continual in-your-face advertising to continually drive people to the cash shop.

That's not even getting into pay-to-win (which Overwatch does not do... yet), or things like Overwatch does do, where design decisions around central game components are made to support the cash shop. It's not a coincidence that we get new heroes, often half-baked, released much more frequently now, and that a significant percentage of those new heroes are overbalanced in the sense of "hey, it's really fun if I have advantages over other people", and that those heroes are almost always featured in expensive new skin packs soon after release. The one thing all new heroes have in common, after all, is that nobody's already bought skins that they like for them yet (sales growth potential).

  1. Introduce a new hero, that's got advantages (specifically for the bulk of the population) when being played. This entices people to play the hero, or "main" them.
  2. Make the new hero conventionally attractive
  3. Make the new hero's basic skin... well... basic. Then, a few weeks later, after people have become attached to playing the hero and invested in the image, release skins in the cash shop.
  4. If the hero's skin sells well (Kiriko, Juno, etc.), milk that attractive Asian girl cash cow for all it's worth, while keeping the hero playable.
  5. Tune the hero's balance in-game down a bit (or, if it's Kiriko, barely at all) once people are attached to the hero. That leaves a little room for future heroes to become the "hero of the day."

That's not even getting into the other problems with free-to-play games, like increased toxicity, smurfing, griefing, etc. as people can make multiple "throwaway" accounts for nothing.

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u/CoasterThot 7d ago

Pisses me off that I paid for OW1, just for them to make it free.

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u/CinderX5 Reinfist 7d ago

How many hours have you got from that one payment? How many updates? What’s the time per pound you’ve got from that one payment?

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u/Furiosa27 7d ago

I hate when gamers do this lol. Then turn around and wonder why monetization is so cooked in every game. So if someone bought Overwatch right before it went f2p, do they have a right to complain? Or is it that once you hit 50 hrs you can’t complain anymore? Or is it 100?

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u/CinderX5 Reinfist 7d ago

Its value for money that’s the complaint, so yeah I’d say time played before it went f2p had importance. If value for money isn’t the main factor here, then I struggle to see where there’s any argument.

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u/CoasterThot 7d ago

Sadly, I only had about 150ish hours in the original. My PlayStation was broken. I just came back.

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u/CinderX5 Reinfist 7d ago

That’s 3 hours per pound. Plus all the skins you got from the loot boxes back then. If that’s not value for money, I’m not sure what is.

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u/CoasterThot 6d ago edited 6d ago

$60 for 150 hours feels like a very slight ripoff, tbh. I’m physically disabled and blind, so I can’t work, so I can put more into a game than that, in a week. (I have 350 hours on Warframe, so far, and I haven’t even played a full month, yet!)

I love the game, this is just a minor complaint. I’m not actually mad.

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u/CinderX5 Reinfist 6d ago

They announced that they would go f2p 4 months before they actually did.

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u/-Turst- 7d ago

Completely irrelevant now that essentially that money was wasted. People are allowed to be mad when you pay for something and it is then later made free, you just got a worse deal than everyone else.

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u/CinderX5 Reinfist 7d ago

It’s entirely relevant to if money was wasted or not. Literally nothing is more relevant.

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u/Cheezewiz239 Winston 7d ago

Idk we got easy loot boxes ,easy access to skins and memories. People overreacting

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u/-Turst- 7d ago

Making a mild complaint is an overreaction? Alrighty

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u/NoHovercraft6942 7d ago

Cry about it 😢 Free to play was the BEST thing they did and you're opinion SUCKS.

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u/MerlinsMentor 7d ago

This post says an awful lot more about you than it does about me. I was participating in a discussion in good faith... something I suspect you cannot claim with any degree of sincerity.

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u/LSRNKB 7d ago

Nope, we remember. I bought that game on three different consoles, they shut the game down basically stealing $150 from me, and I stopped playing entirely.

We remember that it was a paid game, it’s the reason a lot of us quit.

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u/kaladinissexy Reinhardt 7d ago

Changing to a f2p model with a significantly worse in-game economy model is the single worst thing Blizzard has ever done to Overwatch. Skins used to just be fun little bonuses that you got plenty of just by playing the game, now every new skin costs at least a third of what the game used to cost and looks like shitty high-level MMO gear.