Blizzard reveals new shooter called "Overwatch"

[79wjd]

The trailer should've been at 60fps :unsure:

[NotCthulhu]

I am officialy aroused.

[Mistersprinkles]

The incredible lack of information contained within this reveal is disappointing.

 

more or less, this can be summed up on one short sentence:

 

"WE MAEK NEW GAEM!"

 

That sums it up. Just another TF2 as far as I can see. I won't be buying it.

[Misanthrope]

Fuck this I want the starcraft ghosts FPS

[Astralify]

FPS... ugh...

[Paranoid Kami]

Looks a lot like TF2, but more childish. Not interested.

[crystal6tak]

Kotaku has a breakdown of all the classes in videos. Check them out:

http://kotaku.com/every-class-in-overwatch-broken-down-1656107355

 

I don't know why you guys call this TF2. I've played TF2 and this is not anywhere like it. The only thing they share is each class has their own unique purpose. There are slightly similar classes but the overall game is completely different. I see them mashing up a ton of extremely overpowered classes together hoping they would all balance each other out. Very interesting. Hopefully they can successfully balance them all, or else this is gonna be a mess with everyone just constantly dying and whining.

[DeViLzzz]

As soon as I saw the video for a short period of time I was like this is going to be Blizzard's TF2.  I wonder how much hats will cost in this game?  

[Psykomantis00]

This interests me. 

[Nick Paviour]

potential new game to be excited about, move away from the generic samey shooters. Love the colour pallet in this game too.  

[ttam]

Looks like a good game to pass some time

[Ethanololol]

It's so bright and pretty! I adore the art style. It looks really fun to boot.

[AlexGoesHigh]

Swedish Engineer confirmed!

 

10/10! 

ok not really but i agree about TF2 look alike, it was also my first impression when i saw the trailer.

Signing up for Beta.

Speaking of Beta, i find it funny that This NEW game is in beta while HOTS is still in Alpha....>_>

i heard they were moving to close beta before the end of the year, don't remember where i read, it was either PCG or polygon but i guess by the time overwatch became availible, HOTS could be in open beta or close to release

[Carpenoctem]

i heard they were moving to close beta before the end of the year, don't remember where i read, it was either PCG or polygon but i guess by the time overwatch became availible, HOTS could be in open beta or close to release

 

January 2015

 

http://media.heroesnexus.com/attachments/1/528/heroespanelnew_0065_layer-2.jpg

[Kamil]

It has potential, depending on how much content it has and whether they plan to support it with more after launch. I feel like Blizzard has a fairly solid track record for adding new things to their games (both free and paid) but I don't really play any of them so I could be wrong there.

If they have a lot of maps, constantly add more maps and characters, and use TF2's "anybody can host a server with any mods" policy it could definitely be successful as long as they use either an up-front cost or VERY CAREFULLY designed F2P model. I doubt subscription-based would work (and it's very unlikely anyway) and F2P games that last are one in a million.

[Ren]

Hopefully they can successfully balance them all, or else this is gonna be a mess with everyone just constantly dying and whining.

Isn't that the case with most/all competitive games (or FPS in particular)? /s.. Edit: Long read incoming..

Really, though. Let me try to tell you guys something that you probably don't know about balancing in games with many dynamics to it. I'm an avid DotA 2 player/spectator and I'd say I understand the game to a moderate degree. But even if you don't, you can see the balancing effects of it (in some ways to a lesser extent)..

The game has 107~ heroes/characters, all with slight similarities but for the most part are completely different and are played differently for that reason. Balancing that many characters is almost impossible. As of the last 5~ patches (6.80, 6.81, 6.82, 6.82b/c, all within a short timeframe of eachother), the game has been teetering on the edge of a blade in terms of balance and you know what makes me sad? Right now, the game is so close to a fine balance between every hero in the game that you almost can't go wrong with what you play. It's all in how skilled you are, sort of anyway.

My point is that even if you achieve perfect balance in a multi-class/race/whatever competitive game, you won't be happy. Starcraft 2 is another example I can use. You've got 3 races and they're all different because the units, buildings, upgrades and build orders are different. However, those efficiencies can be reduced by a lesser-skilled player or magnified by a god. So they balance, and it falls back and forth between the races unless a nigh-impossible perfect balance is achieved. If that ever happened, the game would be boring.

I had more fun in DotA 2 when it was less balanced and the weaker choices were more obvious than the current state of the game. Right now it's too balanced. I literally went from racking up 800-900 hours in 3-4~ months on Steam alone, not counting me watching tournies on twitch, to maybe 50 hours in a week or two at most.

Same thing happened for a lot of people with the classic java-based, browser MMO RuneScape. You had 3 combat types and they were all different. They started to make it so they were more balanced for PvP and PvM, so eventually people abused their skill at playing and the efficiencies provided by using hybrid combat. Then they fine-tuned it to the point where everything was either perfectly even or one was outright the best and nothing else worked. It destroyed the game, people stopped playing in the masses every time this happened. And despite what some people think, the game was huge at one point (not exactly WoW-level at the time but it was easily top 10).

Yeah. Fuck balancing. The idea behind you having to make a choice or being limited via what is left to choose from the character pool allows for much more balanced gameplay. Throw in some synergy, strategy and teamwork aspects to the game and you almost always fix the problems. Ironing out problems that remain untouched and modifying other things slightly with patches over time, as DotA 2 has seen and will (hopefully) always see, causes the perfect concoction of instability that makes things different enough to keep playing for a long time. Any day of the week I'd rather have that than the game sitting on a scale with devs saying that X needs to be equal to Y and Z forever. It's the only reason I keep playing DotA 2 honestly.

[rashdanml]

Balancing that many characters is almost impossible.

Not almost. It is. 

 

Balancing a game with only 4 classes is still fairly complicated, if they allow for countless variations through abilities, talent trees, etc. The number of classes isn't what makes it complicated to balance, it's the number of total possible combinations. You'll inevitably end up with some combinations that are really overpowered, many in between, and many that are underpowered. Trying to nerf the overpowered combinations can cause other combinations to become overpowered. 

 

Think of it like a see-saw, but with infinite sides to it arranged in a circular fashion. Balancing them all simultaneously is an exercise in futility. 

[Ren]

Not almost. It is.

I only said almost because perhaps in some very specific game, it's possible. I just haven't seen it .

Thanks for reading some of my post, your reply kind of summarized my 3,000 word essay. Glad someone else thinks of game balance in a similar way.

[rashdanml]

I only said almost because perhaps in some very specific game, it's possible. I just haven't seen it .

Thanks for reading some of my post, your reply kind of summarized my 3,000 word essay. Glad someone else thinks of game balance in a similar way.

I actually only skimmed it, but still.

 

Interesting how you mention RuneScape - that game probably had the simplest combat triangle before Evolution of combat and even then, Jagex was piss poor at balancing. Their idea of balancing was to tip the balance towards Melee combat to the extreme while ignoring Ranged and Magic combat entirely. Even now, the distribution of weapons and armor is tipped heavily in favour of Melee. Ranged and Magic required more movement to be really effective, but click to move made that cumbersome. 

 

The only way to really balance a game is to give everyone the exact same class and configuration, no upgrades of any sort. But that'll become stale fairly quickly since there's no variation. 

[LAwLz]

Not almost. It is.

No it's not. I can actually think of a 100% perfectly balanced game with 101 "classes".

You don't need perfect balance to make the game good. Extra Credits actually has an episode about why slightly imbalanced games can be better than perfectly balanced. Very good episode.

[Memphaestus]

I'm sorry. This looks like nothing original, and I've never even looked at TF. The trailer looked cool, but gameplay looks meh. I get that Blizzard is going for a wide audience that can be played on any system, but this looks like sub Diablo 3 graphics. Pathetic.

Overall, this looks like half a game to me, and confirms for me that Blizzard is no longer the Blizzard I remember that makes original, interesting, addictively fun to play, and highly polished games.

We need Blizzard North back.

[David_DE]

As a fan of class based team multiplayer games like team fortress 2 I think the gameplay of Overwatch looks quite fun.  

Nice and "timeless" art style, fast paced with a gameplay focuses on teamwork. Great!

 

But for "the first new ip after 16 years" the theme looks so generic. Random future people and gorilla with future tech mixed with random Robot, Reaper and a Dwarf?!  Sorry but they could have just gone down the Heroes of the Storm route and put in characters from there other universes and it would be less random and generic. 

 

So ... Gameplay looks fun, but nothing new. Setting: Meh

[FabulousOtter]

this looks like sub Diablo 3 graphics. Pathetic.

 

What about the 'gr4ph1x' do you find pathetic?

 

 

Overall, this looks like half a game to me, and confirms for me that Blizzard is no longer the Blizzard I remember that makes original, interesting, addictively fun to play, and highly polished games.

We need Blizzard North back.

 

Nothing is truly 'original' anymore. Until some genius comes up with a brand new genre not similar to anything else you will ALWAYS find comparisons to other games.

 

In this quote you complain about them creating their first new IP in 17 years even though you go on to say that you wished they would create something 'original' by which i assume you're referring to something that isn't a derivative of the warcraft universe. You also comment on Overwatch being, (by the way you've worded it); uninteresting, not fun to play and buggy/unbalanced even though the game has only just been announced and hasn't even reached beta yet, thus you have yet to see anything about it besides the few select clips of gameplay they showed at Blizzcon and/or gave to press.

 

 

For the love of god people, keep an open mind about something you have no idea about.

[Commander Llama]

Cool.  Nice to see a new IP at least.  I'll try it when it's in full release.  Hm, I guess Blizzard games are never in full release, they keep significantly patching their games for years and years.

[gunsman]

Having played a couple games at the con and attending both the overview and origins panel for this game, and seeing everyone's reactions, this is bound to be amazing. Absolutely loved the demo, even though our team lost horribly both games it was still fun and exciting. The team working on this game would not have unveiled it if it wasn't anything but fun to play.

As a side note, i am excited to see the heroes team bring overwatch characters into the nexus once overwatch is released, so much potential there.