They can't even implement all of the features that were in OW1. Basically they forked a version off at some point and re-implemented all the menus and such, but they haven't been able to get all the features working. In game, players still have voice lines about being on fire, but there's no on-fire meter or display in the scoreboard. For the first two seasons, there was a glaring alignment error where the player lists were displayed at the start of a comp game. Everything is just barebones basic.
This is how I feel most games are setup now and you're getting a proper feel for it just by examining what little 'gameplay' there is. It's either a basic as fuck game if it's not open world and if it is open world it's usually a giant empty space and both are usually the pre-quisites for adding content later rather than releasing it as a full game.
I think almost all major titles are going this way now and they make the grind the minimum acceptable they can get away with in order to keep the players around playing the game and keeping it alive. The smart sociopaths behind all of this are realising that in order to maintain any kind of playerbase they're probably going to have to go completely free to play now that even normie gamers are largely wising up to their scam. They seem to be offering tidbits of free 'DLC content' or cosmetics to reel new players in because The Sims 4 went free and then I saw on epic they were doing a free give away for some minor content.
Very much the case as others have described with Star Citizen of giving away free samples in order to get the drug addicts hooked and acting like they're offering a true service. Little to no gameplay improvements or changes will be put into place. Good luck getting any real content from these studios now, it's all about collecting shit and waving your e-peen around so you can boast about a shitty skin you got that you paid $10 for when I know for a fact the artist barely spent 10 minutes of work on it.
I think though possibly the most insulting way they've been dealing with these releases is how they never fucking fix anything even if it's some blatantly glaring problems. Not talking about Overwatch 2 specifically of course but with gaming in general.
Gonna take this opportunity to plug a rather affordable game I found recently that has very tight game design:
Dungeons of Dreadrock
It's been a while since I played a game that felt that focused and polished. It isn't big or complex but it does its core gameplay very well as a dungeon crawler puzzle game.
Having read some of their server code, I can understand why. They used a very technically interesting and efficient, and therefore difficult to understand and modify, code architecture. On top of that, all the smartest engineers at the company from 2006-13 were working on it, which means it's incomprehensible to the blue hairs still working there.
That's fascinating, do you have any links? I'd like to take a look as I enjoy looking at old school code. This would pretty much confirm my prejudice that these companies are often working on extremely out of date internal software/code which is why they never release anything truly new and they won't spend the money to get to modern standards which indie devs are slaughtering them with.
Unfortunately not, I had source access because I was working at Blizzard at the time on the Heroes servers (RIP in pepperoni).
The code was actually really cool and interesting, you just needed a Master's level of understanding in C++ and software engineeering to read it. I apologize for bragging, but I was one of very few people left at the company who had that when I quit.
The biggest insult here is that the bar is slow low that even Fatshark was able to clear it, but Blizzard couldn't. And Fatshark is one of the kings of both incompetent coding and hating everything fun in their game to the point of not allowing you to play anyway they don't like via patches.
We hired so many activists, no one knows how to LUA script missions and events anymore.
They can't even implement all of the features that were in OW1. Basically they forked a version off at some point and re-implemented all the menus and such, but they haven't been able to get all the features working. In game, players still have voice lines about being on fire, but there's no on-fire meter or display in the scoreboard. For the first two seasons, there was a glaring alignment error where the player lists were displayed at the start of a comp game. Everything is just barebones basic.
This is how I feel most games are setup now and you're getting a proper feel for it just by examining what little 'gameplay' there is. It's either a basic as fuck game if it's not open world and if it is open world it's usually a giant empty space and both are usually the pre-quisites for adding content later rather than releasing it as a full game.
I think almost all major titles are going this way now and they make the grind the minimum acceptable they can get away with in order to keep the players around playing the game and keeping it alive. The smart sociopaths behind all of this are realising that in order to maintain any kind of playerbase they're probably going to have to go completely free to play now that even normie gamers are largely wising up to their scam. They seem to be offering tidbits of free 'DLC content' or cosmetics to reel new players in because The Sims 4 went free and then I saw on epic they were doing a free give away for some minor content.
Very much the case as others have described with Star Citizen of giving away free samples in order to get the drug addicts hooked and acting like they're offering a true service. Little to no gameplay improvements or changes will be put into place. Good luck getting any real content from these studios now, it's all about collecting shit and waving your e-peen around so you can boast about a shitty skin you got that you paid $10 for when I know for a fact the artist barely spent 10 minutes of work on it.
I think though possibly the most insulting way they've been dealing with these releases is how they never fucking fix anything even if it's some blatantly glaring problems. Not talking about Overwatch 2 specifically of course but with gaming in general.
Gonna take this opportunity to plug a rather affordable game I found recently that has very tight game design:
Dungeons of Dreadrock
It's been a while since I played a game that felt that focused and polished. It isn't big or complex but it does its core gameplay very well as a dungeon crawler puzzle game.
Having read some of their server code, I can understand why. They used a very technically interesting and efficient, and therefore difficult to understand and modify, code architecture. On top of that, all the smartest engineers at the company from 2006-13 were working on it, which means it's incomprehensible to the blue hairs still working there.
That's fascinating, do you have any links? I'd like to take a look as I enjoy looking at old school code. This would pretty much confirm my prejudice that these companies are often working on extremely out of date internal software/code which is why they never release anything truly new and they won't spend the money to get to modern standards which indie devs are slaughtering them with.
Unfortunately not, I had source access because I was working at Blizzard at the time on the Heroes servers (RIP in pepperoni).
The code was actually really cool and interesting, you just needed a Master's level of understanding in C++ and software engineeering to read it. I apologize for bragging, but I was one of very few people left at the company who had that when I quit.
That's exactly what it is.
How else do you explain being incapable of making a Vermintide/Darktide clone?
The biggest insult here is that the bar is slow low that even Fatshark was able to clear it, but Blizzard couldn't. And Fatshark is one of the kings of both incompetent coding and hating everything fun in their game to the point of not allowing you to play anyway they don't like via patches.
Virtue signaling does not sell games? Next you are going to tell me that there is not an infinite amount of money for ESG and DIE!