Almighty Game Designer Chapter 416: Overwatch with advantages and problems coexisting

After finalizing the next game, Chen Mo began to write the design concept draft of "Overwatch".

As a competitive game, the game content of "Overwatch" itself is actually not that much, whether it is in terms of the number of heroes, skill mechanisms, map elements, etc., compared with those of real big productions It's a lot worse.

In Chen Mo's plan, the content of the first version of Overwatch is roughly as follows.

In terms of heroes, the initial 22 heroes will be opened. Sombra and later new heroes will be added later.

In terms of maps, 12 maps are open, but Eichenwald and later maps are temporarily closed.

This is mainly to ensure the most basic game experience for players. If the game content is cut down, there will be too little, and the gameplay will be greatly affected.

In addition, some more critical systems are also required, such as training mode, hero skin, box opening, dazzling performance, social interaction, career overview, option settings, etc.

The other is the changes to this game, and the biggest changes are mainly from the game mode.

In this regard, Chen Mo has also considered a lot.

Strictly speaking, "Overwatch" is not a particularly successful competitive game. Considering many aspects such as game balance, player retention data, game viewing, and game popularity, "Overwatch" is much worse than DOTA, LOL and CSGO.

Aside from the event aspect, it is just the player's gaming experience. Overwatch also has many flaws.

One of the core problems is that this is a game that tries to eliminate negative feedback, but players get more negative feedback than most other games.

Players were very excited and excited when they first came into contact with this game. They felt that everything was so perfect, but after playing too much, they would feel a deep sense of powerlessness.

For many fish pond players, a very puzzling question is, what should I do to win without my teammates?

What should I do to become stronger?

In terms of gameplay, "Overwatch" has inherited the gameplay of "Team Fortress 2," but it faces problems that "Team Fortress 2" did not face.

If it's just a niche game, both "Team Fortress 2" and "Overwatch" can live very well, but if you want to replace MOBA games, promote this new game mode to The world, become one of the mainstream game modes?

Too difficult.

There are many reasons for this, but the core reason is that "Overwatch" itself is not a particularly mature game mode, and Blizzard's ability is not enough to make it perfect.

As a skillful FPS game, "Overwatch" has both MOBA game and FPS gameplay, but it also gave birth to many new problems.

Due to the different positioning and skills of the heroes, the restraint between different heroes is too obvious. For example, Genji was naturally restrained by Winston. This restraint is basically impossible to compensate by technology, which is similar to FPS games. Player habits are completely contrary.

In FPS games, as long as your marksmanship is good enough, you can solve most problems, but this is not the case in Overwatch.

At the same time, since the main gameplay of "Overwatch" is FPS, minor numerical changes will cause extremely serious consequences, so the balance of heroes is more difficult than MOBA games, which directly leads to the slow update of new heroes and high-end games. Rigid lineup and other issues.

At the same time, Blizzard's preferred "Warcraft, Animal Husbandry" Iron Triangle mode also reduces the fun of the game itself.

"Overwatch" is an extremely team-dependent game, so some heroes that can provide a lot of revenue for the team, such as Reinhardt, Anna, Lucio and other heroes are very popular, and how to cut is very popular; And those heroes that cannot provide revenue for the team, such as Widowmaker, Hanzo, etc., will not be accepted by the team even if the player is of high level.

To put it simply, the same is 6V6, and all heroes are rated 1 point, some heroes add up to 6 points, and some heroes add up to 100 points.

At the same time, the competitive mode has accelerated the players' exploration and development of this game mode. In order to win, most players will force their side to select the best lineup, which leads to hero discrimination before the start of the game.

Do you choose to rebuild the empire? Regardless of whether you play well or not, I will spray you first.

("Rebuilding the Empire" refers to the easter eggs that are triggered when Hanzo and Widowmaker choose at the same time. These two heroes are similar to sniper heroes, and the team gain is almost 0, so many players think that as long as they are selected, they will win Nope.)

That’s why the popularity of the 303, 402 lineup has made this game lose the fun of MOBA games and FPS games. In addition, the slow version update and the buyout threshold have resulted in fewer players and competition. Various problems, such as unreasonable mode, made the game's popularity quickly fade.

For Chen Mo, what he has to do is to avoid these shortcomings as much as possible while inheriting the advantages of Overwatch, so that this game can have a longer life force on the VR side.

The core idea of ​​the change is to completely abandon the competitive route and make "Overwatch" a more entertaining game.

The specific approach is to not open the ladder system and not hold related events.

This may seem like a very absurd move, but it is the result of Chen Mo's deliberation. In the process of making "Warcraft" and "League of Legends", Chen Mo is very aware of the role of the ladder system and the ranking system in promoting this competitive game~IndoMTL.com~ It can be said that for "League of Legends", high-end events It is an important supplementary part that fools don't do.

For "Overwatch", the ladder system and related events do not have such a big boost, but will have a certain negative impact on the game environment.

In Chen Mo's previous life, the "Overwatch" competition was once in full swing, but there were two unsolvable problems.

The first is the issue of viewing. This is the same as all FPS games. It is a small problem, but it cannot be solved.

The second is the question of lineup selection. Professional players will find after constantly exploring, under the current game mechanics, 222 or 303 is the best lineup, some heroes are not bad, and some heroes are basically useless.

This trend will rapidly expand from competitions to high-end rounds, and then to fish ponds, affecting all players' evaluations of heroes, and ultimately will inevitably lead to the situation that "the rebuilding of the empire combination will lead to abuse".

Limited by the characteristics of the game itself, these two points are unsolvable problems. Since they can't be solved, don't do it at all. If you do it forcibly, it will only overspend the life of the game and have a counterproductive effect.