Canceling the PvE mode isn't going to help them fix Overwatch 2. That thing doesn't need more people working on it's core multiplayer. It needs entire philosophy overhauls. Anyone still playing at this point is probably a diehard competitive. It has zero appeal to new players. I don't think adding a PvE mode would have fixed it, but it would at least be something fun to do in a game that's lacking anything fun.

As far as them keeping Overwatch 1 alive, I'm of the opinion that there's actual no tangible difference between Overwatch 1 and 2. The game wasn't better off with lootboxes or a 6v6 comp. The turn on Overwatch started before the sequel.

EDIT: Reading Tamoor's interview in full, it seems like the plan is to incorporate the initial idea for PvE in a way that makes more sense for a "Live Game". Which, yeah, could be fun and bring in new players. They seem to be making some bigger promise with season 6, but so far, the game hasn't delivered with any of that stuff.

There was a moment in 2018 where I put the game down after playing for a couple of hours, and despite having a good time thinking “I’m probably never playing this again”. I feel like I already got everything I could have out of Overwatch, and new heroes / modes really don’t do it for me. I hate saying never, so if the promised PvE mode had been delivered and a lot of people I trust were saying it was pretty great, then I would have at least checked it out. But realistically, Blizzard was never going to release something that would have brought me back to the game in a significant way.

My group of friends is very much OW diehards, and they don’t seem moved in either direction by this news.

I think I would have dipped back in, since I've always enjoyed the characters and shorts they've put out, but get frustrated when 99% of the story of a game is relegated to side material rather than being in the main game. So with that in mind, an actual campaign seems like it would have helped people like me come back and maybe even try multiplayer again.

The last time I played, I wanted to try the new Symmetra, and ended up getting repeatedly stunlocked and killed, even after trying to switch characters and adapt. Everything I've heard about OW2 makes it seem like they're catering to the e-sports crowd, which is usually a good way to water down your game in the name of balance.

I'm kind of amazed they were going so deep with it. I thought people mostly wanted just a kind of slightly more in depth horde mode? Had no idea there was going to be all these different skill trees and basically an entirely new game. They should have maybe just scaled it way back.

Like I always thought the point of this was it was for people who liked overwatch and the characters, but didn't enjoy the very skill based pvp and maybe weren't good at it and just wanted to shoot at some mobs with their friends. Did they really need a whole new game for that?

Just looking at player numbers OW2 seems to be doing really well source. New content is regularly being put out, were people asking for single player content?

I feel like this poll is missing a major component that would have been decisive for me....which is whether it would be any good.

I have Overwatch 2 because I bought 1 so if they put out a single player mode and it got good buzz and reviews I would have tried it (honestly I would probably try it even if it didn't) and if I'd liked it I would have played it...as much as I wanted to. How can I answer whether I would play a mode when I have no idea how good it would be? That's like asking whether I would play a new Mass Effect game. Well I thought the answer was "definitely" because I actually really enjoyed ME 3,, but Andromeda came out, got bad reviews, and that changed to a "maybe" and I haven't played it yet even though it's on Game Pass.

Would I have played Overwatch 2 PvE? That would entirely depend on what it was and how good it turned out.

Yeah, absolutely. I find that stuff way more fun than team FPSs.

If I hadn't decided on a personal level to never touch a Blizzard property again, yes, I would've played the PVE mode. In fact I probably would've played the PVE mode exclusively as I really don't think Overwatch benefits from being 5-man teams. Fundamentally changing a PVP game's balance to make the moment-to-moment action easier to parse for commentators on forced e-sports league is a bad move.

It looked pretty cool honestly. I fell off Overwatch after a bunch of balancing was clearly based around the competitive scene, and when the team chat in general just started to get toxic. I had basically completely stopped playing around the time role queue was implemented. Overwatch 2 didn’t change enough to get me back in for more than a week or two, but this PvE mode looked like a good time with friends, and it’s a bummer that most of it is gone.

Dangling keys in front of me, to distract from their corporate interests in Chinese oppression, never did anything for me. So no, I wouldn't have played Overwatch 1.5 PvE. I didn't like the 1.0 mode, because like anything in that game, it's clearly an afterthought to produce more money and nothing else.

The only thing that would've brought me back is finally curating their player base, so that I didn't have to hear the most awful shit every game or, at the very least, not have to see a teammate's name being the literal N-word, but in fancy letters.

I just saw the Boston Uprising, you know the team that signed multiple groomers, make a bunch of edgelord tweets last week. It's very clear that shying away from toxic behavior, rather than leaning fully into it, is not in Blizzard's cards.

It doesn't surprise me that they walked back yet another "trust me bro" promise.

The whole point of OW2 was the PvE Hero mode. But them cancelling it doesn't surprise me because I now believe they had no intention of doing this in the first place. Just like Ubisoft has no intention of making Beyond Good and Evil 2. Sometimes developers will promise things to gamers just to get their support, only to let them down later. The whole point of OW2 was to relaunch OW1 as a 5v5 FTP game, instead of 6v6. They did that, people starting playing and saying the game is better for it. Mission accomplished.

Videogames and pro-wrestling: the only two industries where the bosses can just straight-up lie to consumers with literally zero repercussions.

@av_gamer: I get how promising a single player mode might benefit Blizzard by getting people to buy or play Overwatch 2, but how does promising Beyond Good and Evil 2 help Ubisoft? Does anyone buy other games because the same company is making a game they are interested in? I love Forza Horizon 5 but I haven't even bothered to boot up Redfall. Likewise Tears of the Kingdom is spectacular but I ain't paying full price for a Kirby remake.

I probably played a thousand hours of Overwatch and really enjoyed my time, but the change to 5v5 felt like the coup de grace for me for the multiplayer, since I was a tank main and the removal of the second tank made it much less appealing for me (the awful new F2P economy didn't help anything, either). I played it for about a week when the 5v5 rolled out just to see how it felt, and then put it down and haven't touched it since.

Still, I was looking forward to the PvE mode, and would've dipped back in and at least tried it, maybe even gotten pretty into it if they did it well enough. Most of the games I play online nowadays are actually co-op rather than competitive, stuff like Monster Hunter, Deep Rock, Payday, that's just what my friend group generally prefers. So this announcement just means that I'll probably never touch Overwatch again.

Considering the language used when they first announced Overwatch 2, with stuff like how it was going to be a separate game that would be compatible with Overwatch 1's online multiplayer, how it turned out to just be an update to the Overwatch 1 client, and some of the language about how the original idea for PvE didn't fit into a "Live Game" in Tamoor's interview, I'm guessing that at some point early on in development a huge single player mode was probably a part of the plan for Overwatch 2, but then someone, probably not a developer, said "Yeah, but what if this game had a battle pass people could buy every 3 to 4 months". Priorities changed mid-development, suddenly features originally planned became infeasible in order to support a different business model, and you're stuck with a compromised product as a result.

It was set to be premium content, right? If so.. probably not. Overwatch PVP is the best it's been in a long time, so I think they got plenty of mileage out of the marketing. Which is all this is. Same with Counter Strike 2. This all makes sense if it brings new players in, and it does.

The idea that they had no intention of developing this to completion is wild to me. There's no way they wasted this much time and money just to sneak one over on us.

@bigsocrates: The point is, they had people believe they were making the game. They showed trailers and everything, then nothing. If they knew Beyond Good and Evil 2 wasn't a sound financial investment, they should have never promised it. But they did so, because a lot of gamers were getting tired of Ubisoft's recent style of games back then and they did this to keep them hanging on. It worked, at least for a while. Now Ubisoft is kinda back in the same boat. We'll see what happens when the new Assassins Creed is released.

@av_gamer: But they did so, because a lot of gamers were getting tired of Ubisoft's recent style of games back then and they did this to keep them hanging on.

I think people on forums are tired of the Ubisoft formula but everybody else definitely not.

AC Valhalla Becomes Highest-Earning Assassin's Creed Game To Date

Ubisoft expanding Assassin's Creed team by 40% over coming years

Beyond Good and Evil 2 isn't really a sequel the hand of fans wanted, it's an open world MP GAAS set in the BGE universe.

I would have loved the PvE but it just wasn’t meant to be. I think the people that think that overwatch is struggling are insane. Overwatch is as profitable as it has ever been. There are a ton of players in competitive and quick play. The game is incredibly strong. They will be just fine and make buckets of money on PvP. We will get great content even if it isn’t the PvE stuff we wanted.

Also, game developers don’t owe you anything, especially when the game you are playing is free. Play it if you want or don’t. The game is in a really great spot now and the developers are doing great. I wanted the pve but that doesn’t affect the great PvP that already exists. Diablo 4 is out soon pve for days!

I personally liked Valhalla and think it was one of the best AC games in the series, so it doing well doesn't surprise me. Still doesn't excuse Ubisoft leading people on with the Beyond Good and Evil 2 sequel their not ever going to make, IMO. And I remember the reactions to those trailers. Plenty of fans wanted it.

@av_gamer: People wanted BG&E. No doubt. What you have failed to explain is how saying it's in development when it's not benefits Ubisoft. You have the bait part but not the switch.

I think that Occam's razor here says that the simplest explanation is that Ubisoft cannot make smaller games anymore. They haven't been able to get Prince of Persia out, they haven't been able to get Skull and Bones out, their production pipeline is clearly messed up.

I think they intended to make Beyond Good and Evil 2 and it has been in production several times but it either got delayed like every game they make (especially those that are not Assassin's Creed or Far Cry) or got canceled at some point because they needed the resources elsewhere or it wasn't shaping up well or both.

When it was announced, I thought it would be interesting to check out. When OW2 launched without it, I assumed it was never coming. Companies don't go back to add PVE stuff to F2P games. I also thought their reasoning of, "you need 15 talents for 40 characters" (or whatever the exact numbers were) was kind of BS. They could have focused on 4 (or 5 since OW2 dropped to 5v5) characters for launch. Then, you add in characters over time.

Blizzard has dropped news that the new story content will require you to purchase a $15 bundle, that comes with $10 worth of currency and a skin.

It would appear that they've not only scaled the story mode back, but I assume this also means they have chopped it up in order to sell it in multiple installments across seasons and driven up the price by including currency for access to a battle pass or skins they've already made.

@brian_: So wait, they dropped the PvE mode, re-announced it, and now they're charging for it? Or were they always going to charge for it?

as far as I know, the first one

@sparky_buzzsaw: They were always planning to charge money for the story content. They've just gone from what I presume would have been one big mode that you'd only pay for once, to this scaled back thing, that you will probably pay for multiple times as they release new content, and probably be more expensive if you plan on buying it all.

@brian_: Oof! That sucks!

@sparky_buzzsaw: "Oof! That sucks!" is going to be the title of the tell-all book about the story of Overwatch whenever that comes out.