There's always an issue that comes before microtransactions for multiplayer games, and it's one that almost every one of them suffers from – long queue times to get into games. While in the best of cases, you might not get into a game on the day it launches. Sometimes these issues can go on for months, and may require server upgra
I’ll keep working on improving my tank skills, but overcoming that anxiety is arguably a harder obstacle than getting good at the game in the first place. Please gamers, I just want to play D.Va and not get shouted at for no reason. Stop being so stinky and grumpy.
Part of the tinkering feels like vanity too. In Horizon Forbidden West , Aloy was too chatty when she was alone , remarking that items will be sent back to storage (somehow?) and repeating the same few lines over and over. People said it was annoying, so it was taken out. But surely they knew it was annoying? Surely part of the point was to make Aloy endearing in this way? I’m sure people think Aloy shutting the hell up is an improvement, but mostly it just feels like fixing something for the sake of it. It doesn’t feel like developers have the license to be creative and eccentric if a few people joking around online is enough for the studio to mandate changing the game. Gaming is becoming more risk averse, not less, in the presence of a constant safety
In the run-up to the Resident Evil 4 remake, fans have been sharing their favourite Easter Eggs online. The game was full of strange little quirks, both accidental and deliberate. After the mine cart section, there’s a skull which, when interacted with, will give you piles and piles of money. Some claim these are the takings from the enemies slain in the aforementioned cart level, others that the money was there regardless. I’m not sure if it will be back in the remake, but I’m leaning towards ‘no’ - it just seems a bit too silly for games these days to keep
Being a tank is scary. You need to lead the way, make the decisions, and be the driving force for your team that encourages them to push forward and claim victory. I’ve written about the role in Final Fantasy 14 and how it will never be for me, but Overwatch was an exception.
I mean, I shouldn’t be afraid of disappointing random strangers in a game of Overwatch 2, or worrying they think less of me because I don’t know how to stop feeding as D.Va or suck at hooking folks with Roadhog. If being tank is thrown at me when I queue for all roles, I stick to a reliable hero who is fairly hard to fuck up - like Orisa. She moves slowly, but has plenty of hit points and abilities designed to deflect attacks and heal your allies. Doomfist, Sigma, overwatch2Tactics.com and Zarya are a little more varied, and I’d need to practice standing a chance at not sucking so bad. But with only a single tank role to fill and a fairly toxic player base, outside of playing against AI and mucking about in the firing range, that opportunity has been taken away.
Of course, the problem is ours as much as theirs. When I was a kid I tried to move the truck to get Mew. I can’t remember where I heard it. These days though, our access to the internet and sprawling growth of online communities means myths are never formed and secrets are always shared. The Mei bug is not just a gimmick a few kids found that slowly makes its way through groups of friends, but is instantly broadcast by the biggest Overwatch accounts, leading to everyone knowing it, everyone spamming Mei, and Blizzard feeling it has to step
Others in the replies agree, and feel that switching off chat doesn't even put players at a disadvantage. "In my experience, only about 10% of comms in Gold and below are productive callouts," says TallAfternoon2. "The other 90% is either toxicity, or someone telling people to switch characte
Mei has recently been pulled from Overwatch 2 for two weeks because players were using her wall to reach places they weren’t meant to. Maybe this is too much to tolerate at the highest competitive levels, but mostly I just think ‘who cares?’. Didn’t they just nerf Mei out of existence anyway? Is it really that big a deal that you can mess around on some m
Everything must be realistic, atmospheric, and other vague adjectives taken from focus groups and written on white boards. It might remain as a callback, but if it does it will be an exception to the rule. Any of these sorts of things left in by mistake tend to be taken out immediately because players having fun in their own way isn’t part of the developers’ vision. Any way you find to exploit something, even in a single-player experience where no one else is impacted, is viewed as a mistake to be fi
Live-service games tweak heroes all the time, of course. Hanzo, for example, is likely to get a nerf soon. But this doesn’t feel like a typical tweak to the meta, and instead like Blizzard has changed Mei just because. It’s not only her gameplay that has changed either - it’s her look too, and that’s another major letd