Almighty Game Designer

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 much, whether in terms of the number of heroes, skill mechanisms, map elements, etc., it is much worse than those of the 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 are open, and Sombra and later new heroes will be added later.

In terms of maps, 12 maps are open, and 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 further, 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 skins, box opening, outstanding 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 has also considered a lot.

Strictly speaking, Overwatch is not a particularly successful competitive game. In terms of game balance, player retention data, event viewing, event popularity, and many other aspects, Overwatch is much worse than DOTA, LOL, and CSGO.

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

A core problem 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?

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 did not.

If it's just a niche game, both Team Fortress 2 and Overwatch can live very well.

But what if you want to replace MOBA games and promote this new game mode to the world and 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 good enough to make it perfect.

As an 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 been born.

Due to the different positions 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 make up for with technology, which is completely different from the habit of FPS game players. contradict.

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, slight numerical changes will cause extremely serious consequences, so the balance of heroes is more difficult than MOBA games, which directly leads to slow updates of new heroes and rigid lineup of high-end games, etc. question.

At the same time, Blizzard's preferred warfare animal husbandry 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 benefits to the team, such as Reinhardt, Ana, Lucio and other heroes are very popular, and they are very popular no matter how they cut; Heroes that provide benefits to the team, such as Widowmaker, Hanzo, etc., will not be accepted by the team even if the player's level is high.

Simply put, it is also 6V6, and all heroes have a score of 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 themselves to choose the best lineup, resulting in hero discrimination before the game starts.

Did you choose to rebuild the empire? It doesn't matter if you play well or not, I'll spray you first.

(Rebuilding the Empire refers to the Easter eggs that are triggered when Hanzo and Hei Bai are selected during the contract period. These two heroes are similar to snipers, and their gain to the team is almost 0, so many players think that as long as they are selected, they cannot win.)

Therefore, the popularity of the 303 and 402 lineups makes this game lose both the fun of MOBA games and the fun of FPS games. In addition, the slow version update and the buyout threshold result in a small number of players and an unreasonable competitive mode. Various problems have caused the popularity of this game to quickly subside.

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 the game can have a longer life on the VR side.

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

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

This might seem like a very absurd 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 the ranking system in promoting this kind of competitive game. It can be said that for League of Legends, high-end events are its important. Supplementary part, fools don't do it.

But for Overwatch, 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. Like all FPS games, this is a small problem, but it cannot be solved.

The second is the question of lineup selection. Professional players will find out after constant exploration that under the current game mechanism, 222 or 303 is the best lineup, some heroes just don't work, and some heroes are basically useless.

This trend will quickly expand from competitions to high-end games, and then to fish ponds, affecting all players' evaluation of heroes, and will eventually lead to the situation that rebuilding the empire combination will lead to abuse.

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