Can Overwatch and Doom "fix" the shooter genre?

So we have these two high profile shooters coming out, and they both seem to be making big changes from the same shooter formula we've been seeing for many years. Doom does it for single player, and Overwatch for multiplayer. They stray from the common "left trigger right trigger" shooter formula that we all know and love(?) and choose to embrace a more high speed action gameplay.

Do you guys think either of these games will have an impact on the shooter genre or the game industry? Will we start seeing Overwatch clones and fast paced action shooters? Or will they end up like Team Fortress and Bulletstorm - innovative games that have a place in the genre but don't really have much competition or lasting effect?

I feel like fast-paced shooters at least were already back on the rise, it's just that DOOM is perhaps the most realised, as well as the one with the biggest budget. I don't really think shooters need 'fixing' necessarily, since there's a lot of variety out there, but I do hope DOOM will usher in more games of its ilk with the polish to match.

Mostly I think it's the growing trend of not chasing Call of Duty. Like @yummylee says though, trends were already going this way. Both examples are just great execution I think. Neither is incredibly innovative I would say or made some formula that can be copied.

I do think DOOM's campaign is pretty fresh in a modern sense though and would love more games to follow suit. In reality, it is pretty much just standard old school open FPS type levels but I don't think we've seen them like that in quite some time, even if we have seen faster shooters in recent years.

Overwatch I think just has great variety in mechanics with its characters but to me that's kind of hard to copy. I do think how it sort of hides the raw competitive numbers from the player and tries to make everyone feel positive about their play is something that could be in more games though.

You're saying that TF2 didn't have a lasting effect but praising Overwatch for innovation?

Not sure what effect Overwatch can have that TF2 wouldn't have already. Maybe the colourful art and the focus on hero characters? But that seems to have stemmed from the popularity of MOBAs.

As for Doom, it's hard to say. Hopefully people look at it and realize they don't need recharging health and slow set pieces. And more metal!

Ah yes, that flash in the pan Team Fortress 2

@ajamafalous: ok you got me there, I had no idea it still had so many players. But I was mostly referring to how nothing until Overwatch seemed to emulate it, not like how so many games seem to emulate CoD

I doubt it. Unless some indie developer comes up with a mega hit, the shooter genre still feels very much like a "big kids club" i.e. if you aren't an EA, Activision, Bethesda, Valve, or Blizzard -size company, you probably aren't making a notable shooter any time soon; and considering each of the companies i listed each have a very specific fps franchise under their belt, I doubt they'll be changing anything major up either.

Honestly, I think due to the success of these two games, Bethesda will look and go "oh wait there's clearly more room for multiplayer fps games and people still love good fps campaigns as it turns out. Time for a new Quake!" Other than that, I'd be genuinely surprised to see anything major come out of this genre any time soon.

The shooter genre is... doomed.

I'm liking Doom a lot, I should have a copy of Overwatch soon, and I bought Battleborn (and promptly put it on the shelf never to play again).

However I think I'll continue to be a left trigger right trigger guy on consoles for the long haul. Doom has been a great palette cleanser, no reload, no left trigger, strafing mayhem, but I prefer the 30 second loop of COD combat more, well the multi at least I don't play the single player that often.

Overwatch looks like it might be fun but I'm sorta anti "hero" games on basic principle, I like building a play style with bits and pieces, I don't like being given a preset one. I also don't like that I may want to play a certain way but the hero who plays that way may not do anything for me aesthetically.

I had this issue in BLOPS 3, I liked the way the HIVE guy played but his voice acting and his design was so unappealing to me I couldn't play with him.

Fix, maybe not. But, I think they breath some fresh air into the genre that was only going one direction. I think Doom shows how to recapture some of the old feel, some of the more humorous over the top elements while still being totally confident at what it wants to do. None of the early FPS games that have tried, aside from Wolfenstein, have captured the old feel in a new way.

I don't think anything was broken. Doom and Overwatch both did their type of shooter well. They're not changing the landscape or anything.

I anticipate another couple of years of various companies trying to topple Overwatch with new similar games, ala the post-WoW MMO boom.

I'd like to believe Doom's success will influence future FPS games, but I don't think it's enough of an OVERWHELMING success to really shape the genre. I bet we do see it influencing Indie shooter games though.

DOOM does nothing to move the genre forward, lot of what makes it good is in fact playing of old standards and doing it well. I even think Wolfenstein The New Order, was more innovative in how you can tell a story in an FPS.

I don't think Overwatch does anything really original either, its just a damn good refinement of something that largely was a thing, which is what Blizzard does wwell.

I also am very offended by the notion that Team Fortress didn't have any lasting effect, its still got a strong user base almost 10 years after release. I still think its one of the best MP shooters ever made.

Why do people have this idea that Team Fortress 2 didn't do very well? It still plays great, I like it more than Overwatch in many regards, but as Overwatch is totally new I'm enjoying that game too.

I'm a bit saddened over the fact, that people seem to have forgot about Superhot when talking about shooters this year. Of course it was only a downloadable indie game, but I had really fun time with it. That together with Doom and Overwatch has really made shooters shine up this year (though I guess one could argue that SUPER.HOT. was more of a puzzle game than a shooter)

If anything, I just hope those games prove not every FPS needs to chase that stale Call of Duty money train to be successful.

The fact that Bulletstorm failed so miserably is a huge shame. That was hands down a really great game. Some of the dialog was ehh but the campaign was great with some really beautiful level design and highly varied gameplay. Most importantl it was a ton of fun to play. The marketing was shit but man what a shame.

There's nothing to fix. There are good examples and bad examples to be found in every genre. For every 1 good action movie there are 10 awful ones. Same could be said for comedy, drama, open world games, cover shooters, platformers, puzzle games, etc.

I sure hope so! Doom and Overwatch have refueled my stagnant love for the genre. There was a good 3-4 years where I thought I just didn't like shooting anymore.

I just pray to god that Overwatchs terrible tick rate doesn't become accepted the way Blizzards awful matchmaking has. It's been a very very long time since I played a twitch based game that had this much bullshit in it, but somehow people seem fine with it.

@grulet: Superhot feels more like a puzzle game than a shooter though and it's very unique in what it does that there's not much to copy from it.

It was very much like The Darkness.

i honestly ask myself how ANYONE could still like call of duty. Black ops 3 was atrocious coupled with shady dlc practices theyve adopted since AW.How could anyone run the same stagnant loop that hasnt changed since 2007 i will never know. The part i dont understand is its not a deep game like counter-strike or dota to warrant such a devout following(maybe not everyone cares about depth i dunno)...i guess people really just like left trigger right trigger. I hope to God shooters run as far away from that style as possible.Lawbreakers looks like a good way to modernize arena shooters too, as opposed to Dooms loadouts and such.

It shows that the big shooters don't all have to be modern military with ADS. The bigger franchises are seeing that too with extra movement in CoD and now BF going World War I.

Although a suspicious number of shooters are going the hero way. Either with hero classes or some light hero abilities.

Some people find it fun. It's not a stretch. I think Black Ops 3 was the best CoD has been in a while. I've been playing Counter-Strike and Unreal Tournament for 15 years, Battlefield for 13 years. A game staying the same isn't a negative for me. I play certain games for specific reasons. There's a market for different types of shooters.

You can't understand how anyone can like something that you don't? There are plenty of games that aren't for me, but I get that people like what they offer. Not everyone is looking for the same thing. I'm starting to dislike unlocks more and more (Battlefield is the worst offender at unnecessary unlocks), and something like UT is more appealing these days. I totally get the appeal of CoD though. It's constantly rewarding you and the matches are short enough to keep feeding that pleasure zone of the brain. CoD is great at what it does. You might not like what it does, but that doesn't make it bad. If people didn't find it fun, they wouldn't buy it. CoD didn't ruin shooters. The problem is publishers and developers not being creative enough (or unwilling to take risks) to make anything new, so every game's multiplayer mode has been trying to copy that formula. It pleases nobody, because CoD players have CoD and people that don't like CoD don't want that style. We can't blame the one doing it well for the copycats doing it poorly.

Time Splitters HD will lead the revolution.

Until then I'm more than happy with Doom and especially Overwatch

Totally, that game was the most fun I've had with a shooter since CoD4 (before Overwatch).

You guys are right about TF2, I played it at launch with the Orange Box and I agree with everything you guys say, the game is amazing. I'm not a fan of where they went with it, I.e hats and extra weapons and stuff, but still a fantastic game. The thing is, I don't think it is a good example of proving that making a colorful innovative shooter can sell. You can't assume people bought Orange Box for TF2 alone, and the game is F2P now so its a little different. But Overwatch is a full AAA retail game, people will buy it for that specifically unlike the Orange Box. I was trying to say that this is going to be an example for other publishers that you don't have to make a left trigger right trigger military shooter to sell like gangbusters.

@baofu: You are basing this entire thread on the assumption that left trigger, right trigger, shooters are inherently a bad thing we need to move away from to "save the genre" or something. I mean heck, Doom is a left trigger right trigger shooter with some gimmicks but that is not what makes it amazing though, it's the entire package. Overwatch has pretty simplistic gameplay and fairly lackluster level design but it's the whole package that makes it appealing. Millions of people will buy Battlefield 1 and Infinite Warfare and enjoy the hell out of those games too.

The only thing that Doom and Overwatch showed other developers is something they already knew: if you make a good game it will be a hit. Although despite critical acclaim I'm curious how just financially successful Doom will end up actually being. Overwatch has a continued revenue stream in the form of those loot boxes but Doom is a one and done sort of deal that a lot of people will wait on until some serious sales come around.

There was never anything wrong with it

^ i think that's correct. there are two major components that IMO will make these games successes- 1) pedigree gets people in the door (blizzard has a reputation for rock-solid games, and doom is DOOM) and 2) well-executed gameplay will keep them there. i don't think either are doing anything particularly innovative, unless you consider stripping down games to their essence and having an extremely strong sense of what the end product should and (perhaps more importantly) shouldn't be.

as to long term influence- i don't know. you can't buy reputation, and you can't put lipstick on a pig if the game feels bad. that's not to say people won't try- but it's not like others weren't already making team/class based shooters and back-to-the-90s throwbacks before. like @humanity essentially said- these games are simply providing a new quality product to an audience that never really went away.

No, I don't think there are here to "fix it". Not that I think there are nothing to fix, but neither of them is trying to be subversive, just really good examples in their own right.

However, if other publishers take notes from them and decide they are the next trend to follow, I would not call it a negative.

One weird thought I've had is that Nintendo, out of all companies, can take cues from Doom and Wolfenstein. Nintendo used to be on the top of their goddamn game when it came to bringing their franchises into the modern age, with stuff like Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime and Link Between Worlds being great examples of that.

And even though they have put out a quality release recently with Mario Maker, a lot of their recent products have had a real 'Eh, good enough' vibe to them, such as Star Fox Zero and the new Mario Tennis. Both of those games are almost complete copies of their Nintendo 64 counterparts, disappointing a lot of fans who were expecting more at this stage. Nintendo's got to figure out how to fix this. Maybe LoZ on the NX/Wii U will be a return to form, who knows.

As an aside, god I miss old TF2. There's just something very gawdy about how an average match looks now. I know it's probably a major factor in keeping the game alive, but I think that cosmetics changed the game for the worst. Let's not even talk about how the weapon skins still tank the framerate for no particular reason.

Overwatch is overrated. Not in the sense that it is not as good as people say, but in the sense that it isn't as unique and groundbreaking as people say. I've played Overwatch, and listening to the Bombcast they name several things they think Overwatch is doing 'uniquely' that Destiny was doing a year ago. Granted, I'm in love with Destiny, but shit has been out there that is not Overwatch and not Doom. Overwatch is a little easier to get in to and less harsh on poor performance which is why they stuck with it long enough to see what makes it great. Unlike Destiny which is admittedly hard to get into (heck, it took me like 40 forced matches for quests before I started liking it) and punishes poor performance. Doesn't necessarily mean one is significantly better than the other. It just means you were able to see what one game did as opposed to the other.

The only thing that Overwatch does that other shooters do not is be immediately accessible and easy to play. I went back to Destiny pretty quick myself, I know some people stuck with Overwatch. To each their own as always, but it's not as unique to play as people claim.

I haven't played in like 2 years but, destiny became a class based shooter??? I played a little pvp when i first got it, but it all seemed pretty standard stuff and nothing like overwatch or tf2 type games.

@oursin_360: I think the valid point hidden in there is that, like the crew said on the bombcast, I personally don't see overwatch having much legs on consoles. It's a PC ass PC shooter and that kind of static team based shooter never hung around for long on consoles.

So the idea that overwatch might have a lasting impact on shooters is not credible. People might copy the end screen thing and the accecibility features but the gameplay style? Maybe with F2P games on PC but in the larger gaming industry? Nope.

@oursin_360: I didn't say Destiny is the exact same as Overwatch. I said the bombcrew praised Overwatch for certain aspects that are also in Destiny and have been since the start. That's different. There are no hardcore classes, but the three classes and nine subclasses total are still very different.

For example, Jeff and Brad saying you can hear certain sounds that makes you acknowledge someone is using a Super or using a certain weapon or ability: that's classic Destiny, that's not a new thing in Overwatch. That is what Destiny did. It was the first game I played that did that, I do not know if it invented it. But all the different Supers make very distinct sounds that make people react in different ways. Various weapons had different sounds that made people react in different ways.

It was super cool to experience that. But it sounded like the bombcrew had experienced that for the first time with Overwatch.

I'm not sure what others take from Overwatch. It is basically a more up to date, MOBA-influenced team shooter in the vein of Team Fortress 2. I think the smart thing they did was they took a lot of how TF 2 evolved with inventory and such and put it into a more digestible format that drew in the casual audience again. But if you're trying to copy what they did, you'd need to look at how much effort Blizzard put into character design and sort of organically getting the cast over with the Internet community in advance of the game coming out. That is somewhat external to the game to a degree, and if anything, I think it's the lessons from what they did there that would be more applicable to other games than anything specific to the FPS genre.

As for Doom, it might depend on sales. It's hard to get a read on the FPS genre at times. The sales figures at times suggest the genre is losing steam, and yet Battlefront moved 13-14 million copies and Black Ops 3 was the most successful CoD game ever IIRC. I expect most developers to continue to chase a piece of the big multiplayer shooter pie more than copy what Bethesda is doing. I mean for as well as Saints Row the Third did, you didn't exactly see a mad rush to make Saints Row clones. You could a return of not having to reload, and I hope a lot of games copy the Doom/Metroid Prime jumping mechanics. Then again, it took over ten years for anyone to really do FPS jumping as well as Metroid Prime did, so I'm not holding my breath.

Admittedly it's been awhile but I don't remember anything like that, unless it was added later. I didn't care for the pvp in destiny, it felt unbalanced and too much like halo-lite. I do remember dudes jumping in with supers out of nowhere and killing me, the supers kinda felt out of place in the pvp to me though and the weapons didn't feel all that balanced for it. (but that could have all been ironed out since i played).

I'm not sure where this whole convo is coming from as i haven't listened to any podcasts recently, but Overwatch is unique in that all characters feel different and serve a distinct role(even within characters with the same roll) I think that's cool I may hate shield guy but i can play as Dva and both serve as tanks but feel completely different. I've never played TF2, but that feels pretty fresh to me for a PVP game. Usually when i think class based i think co-op. Classes in destiny were pretty much different special and slightly different jump ability from what i remember. You can roll a squad of titans(or whatever they were called) and win or a squad of warlocks, it never seemed to matter much.

@oursin_360: It was always there. It probably felt unbalanced to you because Destiny has a meta. There are loads of weapons and not all of them are good at everything. There is such a thing as weapon choice depending on what distance you intend to engage, if you're going for precision shots or body shots and so on. To be honest, you probably had the wrong tool for what you were trying to accomplish. The Supers are all very tactical considerations. Each can be countered by another different Super and all of them have weaknesses besides their strengths.

The truth of the matter is, Destiny is hard to get into. It takes some dedication to understand it and get good at it. Overwatch doesn't have that. It is streamlined to what it is. There is no guesswork on which guns you should use or which perks to choose. You're just the character you chose and go. It is part of the reason Destiny is more for me. Besides requiring more in depth knowledge which I enjoy, you also have so much more stuff to tweak to your liking. It's not a knock against either game, really. Overwatch is quick access fun and Destiny is more of a long haul customization one. Depends what you're into. It does make me slightly sad that the crew never really got into it, apparently. It sounds like they might actually enjoy it if they did. Although I'm not saying 'you should have put more time in', it is what it is. They didn't want to force themselves through the first hours of learning it and that's valid.

As for Overwatch being unique because of character classes, it's not. Several other games have been and are doing that. Team Fortress 2 is exactly that. From what I hear, it might even still be the better one.

@oursin_360: TF2 was very similar, but Overwatch has evolved nearly every aspect of what TF2 did and as a result it feels very fresh. Overwatch could have totally been a Team Fortress 3. It's just a great step forward for that game type.

Overwatch did something very smart by looking at the character-driven stuff in MOBAs and using that for their shooter. TF2 had classes with wildly different play-styles, but they established an initial character/class roster and then changed their roles via obtainable items instead of adding entirely new classes. I think the Overwatch method is much better, where they'll add new heroes to play and they'll come with their own distinct style. Blizzard took the one thing that interested me in MOBAs and removed the MOBA from it, which is great for me.

Overwatch also focused the maps and gameplay down to 6v6 which means each player has a way bigger impact on the outcome of the match. To me this is much more fun and keeps me way more invested. In TF2 if you got into a 24+ player server then there was a decent chance that you just wouldn't affect the flow of the match very much. In Overwatch you can change heroes and completely change the momentum of the game.

To some extent I'd say Quake 1 was the first to really do that, which I guess is not too surprising when you consider they got Trent Reznor to do the sound design - all weapons have very distinct sounds, and it's equivalent of the "super" - the Quad Damage - was accompanied by a sound effect both when activated (audible to all players) and when a player with quad damage fired their weapon. That's a touch that many of the competing multiplayer shooters at the time and after it didn't have.

I actually think the sound thing is taken from MOBA's straight off, they all have that extremely noticeably, distinctive sound when someone uses an ultimate.

I also think Overwatch kind of feels a lot more like a MOBA the more you play it, as opposed to TF2. Yes, there are very similar mechanics, but in TF2 if you are good with a class, it will almost always work out. In Overwatch, certain heroes are just awful, awful against certain others, and you have to learn the matchups about who is strong against who, and act accordingly. Which I feel is very much like a MOBA. Its also similar in how certain heroes work together with their abilities, and really working together and synchronizing ultimate's can completely win a game. I have a few thousand hours in TF2, and Overwatch doesn't exactly feel like a replacement, as instead another thing.

Don't mean that in a bad way either, many, many more actiony games have tried to take inspirations from MOBA's, but none have really been successful. Overwatch showed restraint, staying close enough to an FPS, and just borrowed some core ideas from the genre.

This is really only a discussion if we're exclusively talking about consoles. The PC has been offering a wide range of single and multiplayer shooters of all varieties for a good number of years now. Literally any kind of shooter I can think of that I want to play is available currently on PC whether it's singleplayer or multiplayer. Hell, I can even find games I wouldn't have thought of playing like Verdun or Superhot.

That's one of the benefits of having the "AA" mid-range market on a platform and why we're missing out on so much great content and innovation on consoles compared to say the PS2 gen. There are so many great multiplayer shooters on PC right now that I can't even pick one to focus on like I did back in my Counter-Strike 1.6 days. My skill level may only stay at moderate for all of these games, but that's okay with me.

If anything, Overwatch and Doom are late to the party. (More so in the case of Overwatch) I think Doom really managed to carve out its own unique identity. Overwatch isn't even the first to do the "MOBA Hero inserted into a multiplayer FPS" rising subgenre. As for other developers jumping onboard, I think most developers have learned by now not to attempt to emulate Blizzard. It never works out.

Yes, exactly this. This is actually one of the main reasons I don't personally like Overwatch: the class interactions are very rock-paper-scissorsy, akin to hero interactions in something like Dota. A huge part of Overwatch is counterpicking/switching classes. It's one of the things I love most about Dota, but it's absolutely the opposite of what I'm looking for in a shooter. I want to lose a 1v1 because the other guy out-shot me, not because he out-ability'd me. In TF2, if you're a really good Soldier or Demo or whatever, you could play literally 100% of your time as that class and never have an issue. Classes still have advantages and disadvantages in TF2, but it's more about differences in playstyle than countering other classes. TF2 is more like a fighting game in that way in that the better player will generally still win the engagement 90% of the time.

Um...what? There isn't anything wrong with the shooter genre and both those games don't really do anything new. Honestly, the freshest FPS games the last few years for me are Rainbow Six Siege and Titanfall. He'll, even Battleborn has a more unique hook than Overwatch.

I think this just further teaches people to stay away from stuff like Overwatch. Unless you are blizzard you aren't going to be be trying to push into the realm of that now. (Not unlike dota and lol, although, most haven't learned that.)

Judging by how battleborn crashed and burned, and I am sure other will too if they try.

But that Overwatch isn't all that and is kind of succeeding by being pretty decent and being by blizzard.