After finalizing the next game, Chen Mo began to write the design concept draft of "Overwatch".
As a competitive game, the game content of "Watching Pioneer" itself is actually not much, whether it is in terms of the number of heroes, skill mechanisms, map elements, etc., it is much worse than those real big productions .
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 released, and Sombra and later new heroes will be added later.
In terms of maps, 12 maps are open, and Eichenwalde 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 have to be done, such as training mode, hero skin, box opening, eye-catching performance, social interaction, career overview, option settings, etc.
Others are changes to the game, and the biggest changes are mainly from the game mode.
In this regard, Chen Mo had 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.
Regardless of the competition, it is just the player's game 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 are very excited and excited when they first come into contact with this game, and feel that everything is so perfect, but after playing too much, they will feel a deep sense of powerlessness.
For many fish pond players, a very puzzling question is, what should I do to win when my teammates are not strong enough
What should I do to become stronger
In terms of gameplay, "Overwatch" inherits the gameplay of "Team Fortress 2", but it faces problems that "Team Fortress 2" has never faced.
If it is just a niche game, both "Team Fortress 2" and "Overwatch" can live very well, but if you want to replace moba games and promote this brand 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 is not capable enough to make it perfect.
As a fps game with skills, "Overwatch" combines the gameplay of moba games and fps games at the same time, but at the same time, many new problems have emerged.
Due to the different positioning and skills of heroes, the restraint between different heroes is too obvious. For example, Genji was born restrained by Winston. This kind of restraint is basically impossible to make up for with technology. This is completely different from the habits of players in fps games. 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, a slight numerical change will cause extremely serious consequences, so the balance of heroes is more difficult than that of moba games, which directly leads to slow update of new heroes, rigid lineup of high-end games, etc. question.
At the same time, Blizzard's preferred "warfare animal husbandry" iron triangle mode also reduces the fun of the game itself.
"Overwatch" is a game that is extremely dependent on the team, so some heroes that can provide a lot of benefits to the team, such as Reinhardt, Ana, Lucio and other heroes are very popular, and they are very popular no matter how they are hacked; while those who cannot Heroes that provide income to the team, such as Widowmaker, Hanzo, etc., will not be accepted by the team even if the player has a high level.
To put it simply, it is also 6v6, and all heroes are rated at 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 players' exploration and development of this game mode. In order to win, most players will force their own team to choose the best lineup, resulting in hero discrimination before the start of the game.
You choose to rebuild the empire? It doesn't matter whether you play well or not, I will spray you first.
("Rebuild the Empire" refers to the easter eggs that are triggered when Hanzo and Widowmaker are selected 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 not win.)
That's why the prevalence of 303 and 402 lineups makes this game lose both the fun of moba games and fps games. In addition, the version update is slow, the threshold of buyout system results in a small number of players, and the competitive mode is unreasonable All kinds of problems made the popularity of this game fade away quickly.
For Chen Mo, what he has to do is to avoid these defects as much as possible while inheriting the advantages of "Overwatch", so that this game can have a longer vitality on the vr side.
The core idea of the change is to completely abandon the competitive route and make "Overwatch" a game that is more inclined to the entertainment route.
The specific approach is that the ladder system will not be opened, and related events will not be held.
This might seem like a very ridiculous move, but it was the result of Chen Mo's careful consideration. In the process of making "Warcraft" and "League of Legends", Chen Mo is very aware of the role of the ladder system and ranking system in promoting this kind of competitive game. It can be said that for "League of Legends", high-end events are its most important. The supplementary part, fools don't do it.
But for "Watching Pioneer", the ladder system and related events do not have such a big promotion effect, but will have a certain negative impact on the game environment.
In Chen Mo's previous life, the "Overwatch" competition was in full swing, but there were two problems that could not be solved.
The first is the problem of viewing. This is the same as all fps games. It is a small problem, but it cannot be solved.
The second is the issue of lineup selection. Professional players will find after constant exploration that under the current game mechanism, 222 or 303 is the best lineup, some heroes are just not enough, and some heroes are basically useless.
This trend will quickly expand from competitions to high-end rounds, and then to fish ponds, affecting all players' evaluation of heroes, and will eventually lead to a situation where "rebuilding an empire combination will cause abuse".
Limited by the characteristics of this game itself, these two points are unsolvable problems. If you can't solve it, then don't do it at all. If you do it forcibly, it will only overdraw the life of the game and have a counterproductive effect.