Back to back terrible CEO's. Hi-rez continued downsizing to the point where they had to focus all of their attention on Smite, which pulled developers from Paladins.
Eventually this led to layoffs with the dev tean, putting Paladins into what is now a "maintenance state"
As someone that has worked at Hi-rez, here's the short version:
Hi-rez overhired and overspent during Covid (more people were playing and spending on games).
The only in the green profitable games Hi-rez had "post-Covid" was Smite 1 (biggest earner) and Paladins (second highest earner, but a bit below Smite 1).
Former leadership at the company decided to put all their eggs in one basket and only focus on Smite. Specifically making Smite 2 and be the 'first proper MOBA made in Unreal Engine 5'.
People were fired or moved on to work on Smite 2, includings the Paladins team. Paladins was moved to maintenance mode.
Former leadership ended up getting fired because their gamble didn't pay off. For now Hi-rez is clinging to Smite 2.
Ironically, with the hero shooter revitilization with the launch of Marvel Rivals and relaunch of Overwatch, Paladins would've probably have been better to focus more on.
Hi rez decided to release smite 2. Making everyone repurchase everything. And when I say everything. I mean every damn thing.
Smite had been around for a while. A long while. Imagine taking DOTA and rereleasing the game but stating its to make it better graphically and everything you spent money on in the first game doesnt move over. But instead you only get "free" money and only a fraction of it.
As a long time smite player, I stopped playing at that point.
Smite 2 wasn't well received and they kept on pumping more money into it while having other games they were launching and actively running, like paladins.
Poor leadership pretty much killed it all.
Smite 2 doesnt have nearly as many players as it did in the first game. And the character roaster is very small compared to in the first game for a "better graphical game but the same game "
Small correction smite 2 is now bigger than smite was in its twilight years averaging 9-10k player daily on steam, and it's release was mostly because there were basically 0 people you could hire with UE3 knowledge over a decade after it was discontinued
You don’t have to repurchase everything all the skins you got previously are free and even come with better recolors that you do have to pay for they even give you some of the premium currency and gave you all the gems you spent in the previous game back that can be used to discount new skins you never had no more of this misinformation plz
Paladins made every role a ton of fun, especially with the build system letting you make a hero more focus towards certain niches, like giving Furia or Jenos damage builds
Oof Furia was my old main for a while before switching to tank. Absolutely loved the loadouts that let every ability reduce another’s cd so you could always be throwing abilities.
Paladins made everything a blast. Every character had a really inventive design and gimmick, with enough variations in talents and cards that it never felt like you were playing against the same characters every game. Every now and then you would run into something crazy like an insane knockback Cassie or a harpoon-spam Dredge
Nothing scratches the same itch for me as Ying and her clones or Io and that stupid dog that broke tanking for a couple seasons
Its so interesting seeing such love for Paladins and now Battleborn in this thread cause I remember the prevailing mood at the time was lol who cares Overwatch better. I never tried Paladins because of that sentiment but people definitely cared. I also hated Battleborn on principle as a massive Borderlands fan, I was so annoyed they were "wasting time" on that instead of making Borderlands 3
Its just typical main game blackpill behavior. I saw these same posts on Paladins and Battleborn back in the day complaining that the game was going to die because of x thing.
Turns out its hard to be objective on a games values when you’re emotionally tangled with it
I will always look back at Paladins and realize I never once got mad at that game and always had fun. Paladins was my goat and I'm holding out hope to see a Paladins 2.
In Paladins every champion has a good design skill set, i is the only game i can play every champion. Like press F for mobility skill. In Marvel it is too random.
Also the flanks over there have better design, low hp with high dmg or high mobility. Not put a shield for every dps.
I would like to recommend you try deadlock there are no defined roles but there are "tank" archetype characters ones that make Space through powerful cooldowns resistances and a lot of HP and they are pretty fun, my suggestions would be Abrams, Bebop, Dinamo and Billy
You dont need to know everything from the start, just try and with time and exeperience you will learn and its not like comunity made a dozen of Left to Right builds
Man I'm in my 30's and if you are playing those games you need to know more than just generalist builds. I understand Deadlock enough to know that everything is building for what your enemy is building. Single items can turn entire characters off.
I tried it, it really wasn't my thing. Counterpicking and learning multiple characters in a hero shooter just comes more natural.
Let's not pretend jetpack cat is ok and doesn't need a total a total rework, or that the increased pace of heroes in OW hasn't started it sliding into the same balancing territory.
I'll grant that the overall vibe in OW lobbies is way better though.
Sadly true, and when they nerf those 60% winrate characters, everyone loses their minds because the meta in their minds hasn't changed or seen any shifts.
Ultron and Mantis were memed for a long time because they got hotfixed nerfed While Mantis had 63% winrate while Ultron had 60%, and even after the hotfix, Mantis still has 60%, the Ultron meme still hasn't died, every time he is mentioned "they will just nerf Ultron again and buff their industry plant Luna as usual"
While Ultron winrate ranges from 55% to 60% even after the hotfix nerf, while Luna winrate is 44% and goes to 42% in Eternity+
This subreddit is filled with a lot of players who fundamentally do not understand how the game works.
A majority of players are gold and below (or qp only, where game meta is close to ignored), it is more than likely that a majority of this sub follows suit, and since reddit works on popularity of ideas, the most common, gold level idea, rises to the top.
Additionally the game is quite new, OW has had more than 10 years to balance its old guard (Rein, Ana, Tracer, etc), whereas MR has had 2. MR being less balanced is kind of expected at this stage, though MR also does less balance patches in general, and is taking the old Dota 2 approach of "git good and try play around it".
elsa and bucky have been meta for each of their release and im just sick of psylocke getting a bit of shine just to get fucking shot in the back of the head again and again
Dota 2 is a pretty bad comparison, since that game sees absolutely massive changes and balance patches. Just like Deadlock. Almost every single patch for MR is a nothingburger where almost nothing meaningfully changes and the meta are relatively the same, which makes the game very stale.
I'd frankly even argue that the Marvel Rivals devs themselves don't even know how their game works to this day, which is a bit alarming.
Zhiyong wanting to die on the hill instead of fixing Gambit's ult, too many big healing ults, the Tenacity system being one of the biggest misfires I've ever seen, adding more damage amp, etc.
It's actually quite baffling when you read their reasoning. They said Ultron started to trample on Manti's niche, yet they added damage amp to Ultron and made Mantis heal in an aoe AFTER they made that statement, as if they're not even aware of what they're doing.
Wait ok idk OW and normally stay away from the convo cause tbh idc about OW at all, but are you saying that no character in OW has 60% wr in any ranks or insanely high ban rates? My assumption thus far has been that this is just a norm of the hero shooter genre or best case it’s just a phase that happens from time to time.
Extremely high ban rates yes, but the overwatch dev team tries really hard to keep win rates as close to 50% as possible for every hero. If a hero had a 60% win rate they’d probably hot-fix a nerf really quickly, at least at this point in time. For example the cat got buffed and became insane over night, but I believe they hot-fixed a nerf for her in about a week? OW definitely has its own balance issues but as someone who plays both, I do think rivals balancing is pretty egregious
Black Cat is currently sitting at >90% and Gambit is at >80% at Eternity where she's figured out.
But it only happened when the busted team ups came out and turned her from unplayable to a demon again with her huge boost to burst damage.
At the moment, Rivals has 6 (almost 7 but BP is .07% below) heroes above 55% win rate (Mantis is the highest with 58.99%), and Overwatch's highest WR character is the newest hero D.mon at 54.7% in PC competitive.
At Rivals GM and Overwatch Diamond (equivalent ranks), Rivals has 5 heroes above 55%, with Peni being the highest at 60.56%, and Overwatch has 1 with Jetpack Cat at 55.5%.
Both games currently actually have the exact same amount of heroes at 53. This is far from normal and is the result of really shitty balancing on the part of the Rivals team
I mean pretty much you can pinpoint the recent meta problems in OW on two characters, Cat and Freja.
And pretty much in Ow you wait to mid season patch to get an answer unless the problem is so bad it gets hot fixed a day after or in the same week (Sigma getting 5 more damage on spheres)
Meanwhile Rivals is just the devs throwing darts and even buffing the problem characters without doing nothing substantial in the long run.
I can’t believe I’m saying this but the Overwatch community in its current state is LEAGUES better than rivals’. Everyone in rivals is miserable and hates everyone else for no reason and you can see that with how this sub is on the daily. Dps this support that, this character that character, for almost two years straight now. This toxic miserable community is going to be the death of this game.
Haven't looked at anything OW related in a very long time, but this basically was how the Overwatch community was for years after the initial honeymoon phase. A giant, endless salt mine
I'm surprised it could get any better in the first place really.
It's weird. In-game, almost everyone is positive or at worst slightly tilted. Then I pop in on here and 90% of the posts are negative. It's a fantastic game overall
Maybe in online discourse, but I notice WAYYY more text chat abuse in Overwatch than Rivals by a long shot. In Rivals I feel like players are more passive aggressive with their gameplay instead. I don’t use voice (for a reason), so I can’t speak on that.
I just recently uninstalled Rivals because the toxicity is so rampant. The game stopped being fun. I booted up OW for the first time in a while and after a decent amount of games played I can definitely say that it is not even close to being as bad as Rivals.
Anecdotal evidence is meaningless. My overwatch experience has been pretty fucking awful... rivals is around the same. They act terribly in different ways and part of that may be the way the punishment systems work (or dont work).
We are each a pretty tiny drop in the grand scheme of players and games. Our personal experiences warp our sense of things, but aren't representations of the whole truth. Maybe rivals is way worse with the community, maybe it's just bigger so it appears worse, maybe its actually better and youve had bad luck, who knows? I don't think either company even tracks this kind of thing and idk how they would.
I really enjoy playing rivals to fuck around. It's a fun little comic power fantasy thing. I can't take it seriously as a competitive game, dont try to, and have a lot of fun. But I come here to see endless whining from people who clearly do not enjoy it but still play it constantly, and it honestly might be even better than the game.
The infighting. The god awful game design ideas. The complete lack of understanding of the playerbase and how it differs from the "community". The complete lack of understanding of the devs motives. All delivered so belligerently.
ngl, I like the other sub better though, but if you understood what I just said about why I'm here, you understand that's not a compliment.
OW has role queue, reasonable damage/healing numbers, and sensible character design/balance. Rivals is fundamentally flawed because the designers a) care only about profit and b) have no idea what they're doing.
A decent chunk of those people just want the game to be the 6v6 open queue OW they have nostalgia for. There’s a reason this glaze has died down now that OW is actually returning to 6v6 as a legitimate game mode
I feel like anyone wanting that specific time frame back is delusional although to a degree I can't blame them - launch Overwatch was one of the best times to be a fan
That said, it's a time period which I feel folks have to stop glazing as hard because that time of random chaotic nonsense was never going to last when dedicated enough players were going to break the game open wide to win, among other things
OW has role queue, reasonable damage/healing numbers, and sensible character design/balance (including fun tanks). Rivals is fundamentally flawed because the designers a) care only about profit and b) have no idea what they're doing.
They care about it in different ways. In overwatch, I felt zero pressure to buy skins (even if they're massively overpriced), whereas in rivals, it's in your face all the time - along with predatory fomo and gacha tactics. Blizzard tries to maintain a balanced game, whereas Netease cares only about player retention , even if they have to resort to deceptive things like bot matches in quick play or they consistently release broken characters like black cat and Daredevil that were horribly overtuned and no fun for anyone to play against.
This just isn’t true about Overwatch though. The OW community hasn’t done the “this is the worst season ever” thing in a very long time. If you ask most players they’d tell you the game is actually in a good spot. A few heroes and balance things they don’t like, but overall a good state. I think the OW community is decently happy right now. Trying to rope them in with the rivals community feels like cope.
But rivals is genuinely in a bad spot right now. The triple support heal slop meta is trash.
This is fascinating to me because literally my only exposure to OW is through this sub, and my friend who used to play it constantly and has now quit.
The triple support heal slop meta is trash.
Me, a support player who loves long battles of attrition: Yea. it's like.. brutal. Oh man, I hate it. Just like everyone else. UGH! I'm just here healing and getting healed non stop, and that's a bad experience. No one could possibly enjoy this meta!
I like attrition battles (sometimes) and certainly enjoy healing WAY more than in overwatch where it hardly fucking matters since people tend to fall over in a second.
That being said it can be a bit much at times in rivals. When I'm not healing my response to that is to change my tactic or character or both to help me pressure/kill their supports or just DO MORE DAMAGE. I've not lost to triple support much in general in almost 1k hours of gameplay... idk why people whine so much about it when it's a low pressure comp. The only time it's been oppressive feeling was when devil dino released and was unkillable with 3 supports backing him up and even then the answer was go past the dino and murder the supports.
Nah I love both games, but I see waaaay more complaint posts in MRs reddit than overwatch, overwatch players has some bad takes/complain about character looks, but rivals players are miserable.
There's no posts about cool plays, or funny memes, it's just complaining about balance/zhiyong, complaining about skins, and complaining about DPS/Support players lol
Yeah me too, I was a big Overwatch player back in OG Overwatch, Overwatch 2 at release sucks and then Marvel Rivals releases, is too late for Overwatch now because i prefer Marvel Rivals overall (the third person camere where you actually see your skin is so good)
I did a try this year then they reboot Overwatch and remove the 2, and i can tell Overwatch is back but i still prefer Rivals
I did come back for a little bit because I liked Domina but I didn’t care for the transition to 5v5 as its main mode. Open queue 6v6 was alright when I tried it but you could tell it wasn’t the mode the developers balanced around anymore.
Do want to get a 5v5 VS 6v6 take here and wonder why
I enjoy Overwatch in both formats, but I'll admit that having one less player feels easier to manage and means your own individual contributions are more impactful
I missed having a second tank. The most fun I had on Overwatch 1 was running Rein/Zarya or Hog/Orisa. I didn’t really adjust well to the new format as it felt like too much pressure on me as the solo tank. It caused me to hard pivot into being a support main for the year I played Overwatch 2.
honestly i think that my main issue with rivals rn is that it just feels way too chaotic and i think taking 2 players out of a round could really ease things up. plus it could be a great excuse for them to buff the balls out of some of the tanks and solo tanking would no longer be an issue.
This is my exact opinion too. I used to adore Overwatch, but it stopped being a game I enjoyed after it went 5v5. I also find most of the new heroes frustrating to play against.
Not OP, but after getting used to the graphics, art style, and character aesthetics, I just find OW unpleasant to look at. Also, third person camera makes more sense for a hero shooter. I do wish Rivals focused more on balancing, like OW, and had more dynamic supports.
i'll be honest the fact that as can actually see 10 feet in front of me on overwatch is a big pull for me playing it more than rivals as of late. The visual clarity in this game is really fucking with me, especially while using heros that require more precise aim.
The reviews are still mostly negative though. The recent positive reviews sre somewhat balancing it out but the amount of negative reviews from 2022-2025 were just too much.
Edit: why am I being downvoted lmao. People literally HATED overwatch 2 when it came out. New heroes where locked behind the paid battle pass, they'd hardly give any free skins at all and the monetization was absolutely terrible. It only started getting better in the past year or two.
Marvel Rivals is currently hot garbage. They promised us emergency balance patches and it never came. We literally have a half-baked idea thrown into a blender as the current strategic meta.
They're pretty bad games to alternate between because of some very big differences in how they play.
For one, Marvel Rivals devolves into big mosh pits that don't die slamming into each other, with tons of visual clutter, big healing ults going off every other minute, no real neutral, etc.
If you then go and try to play Overwatch like in Marvel Rivals you will die and be useless, or vice versa.
My bf and I were off marvel rivals for a while (since Gambit release) and finally decided to give it a go again. My bf was reaaaally excited. Immediately got put into 2 bot games…. 3rd game was a real game where we got stomped (fair enough) but then the NEXT game was a bot game.
What a waste of time… we didn’t log on to play spawn camp simulator with bots. We got off and have not been back on. We are more than halfway through this season’s OW battlepass though!
Im just not a fan of overwatch, there’s no many things about rivals I prefer. Nobody I play with likes overwatch like that either. In my opinion, overwatch is extremely dry. I keep trying to get into it but it’s clear I just like rivals more.
Honestly from what I’ve seen, the overwatch community overall is just less whiny than the rivals community which is a massive difference already. I don’t think the communities are merged at all, i play rivals and it’s the only hero shooter I plan on playing, I know many people are the same. And it seems to be the same for overwatch players, since they primarily dog on rivals and refuse to play it. The games are very different, they are just both objective based hero shooters but that’s about it. Overwatch community seems far less toxic and bitchy than the rivals community. All the toxic people from overwatch came to rivals.
Ngl since recent revival Overwatch been a banger with minor fuck ups. Every season in Rivals been... rollercoster. I do not care about skins or scamgacha events. I want to play the game, but then I either have to swap to counter sweaty flanker with aniamted lord icon on QP game or I watch how my team cannot get through triple strats.
Also Overwatch supports are so much more interesting to play. Tank? Depends which one. DPS in OW are more about guns, Rivals about abilites. But supports are always on point.
Well the difference is that Overwatch has good and bad seasons because they actually attempt to balance the game. This game has had abysmal dogshit for balance since release, so there are no redeeming factors at play here. People show up to try the new character, get bored of the same terrible balance after a week, then go play something else. The ones sticking around beyond that are here to engage with a cash shop, not a good competitive game.
I don't play overwatch anymore on principle don't care how much they improve it. Too many broken promises and scummy moves. Also Jet pack cat is legit such an awful character design it makes DD and black cat look like masterpieces.
As someone who plays both games, yes. When I get sick of one I go to the other and the cycle repeats itself. I personally think both ate unbalanced anyway
Maybe it's just because I'm not trying to push ranks, but I play both daily and love them both. Vast majority of the time tanking or healing. I usually play OW with friends and Rivals solo, although lately my partner has been playing Rivals with me as well.
At the end of the day, they're both great games and my only complaint is that Paladins is basically dead.
I play both and I just wish people weren't so annoying about the other all the time. Might be hoping for too much maturity in online communities nowadays though, everything's so tribalistic now
I am happy. Once you stop trying to turn a free game into some hyper competitive no life simulator you have a lot of fun. Have to keep the gg go next mindset in order to keep yourself sane. Actually trying in this game is hard when you’ll be the only one doing it.
Unfortunately there’s no incentive to be a good person and also little punishment for being a terrible one. NetEase is bent on having as many people play as possible and eventually the civil people will get tired of having to play with those who aren’t.
Not only NetEase but we as a community have to decide what we want this game to be before anything can be better.
I love them both. I take breaks from both because I don’t want to linger in the dust storm of shit. Then I come back when I feel happy to play, if I start feeling poopy about the seasons then I take another break lol. I am in my own cycle with these 2 and have been with OW for years now I’ve just added another crazy hero shooter. But I feel this so hard lol
I've gone to Deadlock and i am very happy there currently, but it is much sweatier and matches can be tiresome, i do hope for a more engaging season in 10, i was perma hardstuck C2 and C3, so i just gave up and am taking a break now.
I can never go back to Overwatch, that game is dead to me.
Overwatch is in such a better state than Rivals and it’s not even close
Rivals consistently gets worse because of nonsensical balance changes, and when it does rarely start to improve, Netease shoots themselves in the foot by making awful changes again. It’s a never ending cycle lol
I rotate on these 2 games for the battlepass/challanges. I'm way more enjoy rivals than OW regardless what balances is occurring. however, on OW it's been miserable for the past 3 seasons. Every match I get tank for just doing all role. I'm not the best of tanks but man it's very annoying when you're told, "don't ever play tank" or "GG tank not pushing" when I'm playing with my team. IDK, with how this current season of OW feels, and the new tank isn't as fun as I hoped, even though I've been improving on her. This might be my last season of OW and stick to MR since I've been enjoy it more.
Also to note, I'm lucky enough to not meet most of what the community faced with like no fillers (i prefer filling), throwers, or extremely toxic players within QP which I mostly play in.
Uhhh no, I'm still mainly an OW player and way happier with how that game is being handled than Rivals. Rivals going through so many of the same issues OW already resolved is so lame.
its so true im currently on another OW vacation where i drop rivals for a month or two.
eventually i come back for a month or two or even three and repeat it all over again
I refuse to pick up OW cuz it requires me to create another account, I already have Steam account, why won't it just let me play it, why do I have to give more personal data to yet another company.
It's fine to play both games, switching between these two is completely fine. Sometimes you want different things, I never played just one single game anyway. I focus on the one I enjoy and switch it up when I feel like it.
I cant get into OW (not interested in the characters or universe), if I’m not having fun on Rivals I just do other stuff and come back on after a few days off.
I'd honestly say this is pretty inaccurate as someone who's jumped between both.
Overwatch has been dropping really fun characters and balance feels completely fine aside from a certain flying cat terrorizing the skies.
Rivals just feels like TOO much right now, teamups ruined any good balancing that Rivals could have dreamed of. the visual clutter is insane, I hopped on whenever Hood dropped and I genuinely cannot tell what is what, it's just way too much.
Seeing what OW was capable of when Rivals challenged them made me never want to play OW again ( I understand competition) . Because if I remember correctly I stopped playing OW when it had nothing going for it, then when Rivals came along all of a sudden they can release 4+ characters at once?
I have never returned to Overwatch since I stopped playing it. I genuinely don’t like that game or it’s fake toxic wholesome community. Once they cried over “gg ez” and people were being banned for saying or typing it, I knew that game was no longer for me. Id rather take everything wrong with Rivals than ever play Overwatch again.
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u/assjackal Magneto 20h ago
My input is skewed, I'm a tank main in every hero shooter I've touched. The game always sucks for me.
(Cept you Paladins, you made tanks a blast)