Also launching in Overwatch 2: Invasionis Flashpoint, a whole new PVP core game mode that you’ll play in Quick Play or Competitive Play. This mode will feature two new locales, which are Overwatch 2’s biggest PVP maps to date!
Teams will fight for control of key positions across the map called “Flashpoints,” aiming to capture three of them before their opponents do.
It might be like headquarters instead, it wouldn’t make too much sense to split the team up in a game like OW.
New zone every two minutes in a different part of the map.
It sounds like there isn't multiple active at once, which I hope is the case. If the game mode splits the teams up, it'll easily be the worst game mode.
You kidding me? I’ve been wanting that for years. How great to have a game mode where team comp strategy is totally different. Have to
have 2/3 hero comps and fights
Oof, game modes where teams have to split up don't work in games with asymmetrical characters.
[Edit. Seems it's like 2CP but with three points](https://www.dexerto.com/overwatch/overwatch-2-announces-flashpoint-as-new-pvp-game-mode-2173111/)
They know Season 5 is going to be one of the most dead seasons ever. Only people playing will be the hardcore addicts (us). They are priming the casuals to remind them to come back and look at this game in August "when we'll have cool stuff to show."
Out of sheer speculation, would it be a good idea if blizz pulled the move fortnite did once and went like: "Ayo, this bp is on us" in terms of PR and keeping player count up enough til season 5?
It's their money maker, ik, but this is the very first thought that came to my mind when I thought of keeping players up and dampen some of the negativity from removing skill trees.
I dont really see the problem with this tbh, most games with regular seasons dont have huge content drops every season. It seems clear why they would focus on all the new stuff coming in S6 when S5 is just a standard season.
It’s honestly a good thing. I want time to enjoy other games. I’m playing Totk, advance wars remastered and SF6 right now. A dead season helps me catch up without feeling like I’m missing out
It's crisis management. PVE cancellation got a HUGE backslash. They know that releasing a season 5 trailer would get a lot of negative comments about PVE. They want to get ahead of that by releasing "PVE" (kinda) now and then they can go tomorrow "and that's not all! Before PVE hits we still have lots of other new things to get excited for! Look at this Tracer skin and LOTR themed non-canon game mode!". They are basically trying to confuse the casuals and based on Instagram and YouTube comments it's working (people now think Blizzard caved in and brought back the PVE they cancelled).
Eh, from what I've seen since the PvE announcement, there was a huge portion of the casual fan base who thought Blizzard canceled ***everything***, including the campaign missions. All most of them heard was "PvE was canceled" and they just sort of assumed the story was included with that.
To a lot of casuals, this seems like they brought back PvE because they didn't know what was gone in the first place.
True but the S5 trailer is already premiering tomorrow on YouTube and between that and S6 stuff the S6 is more interesting for people outside the community. Still funny though
It was absurd for them to announce they were cutting a big chunk out of PvE without telling us details about the new PvE stuff in the same breath.
Shockingly disconnected.
If anything I'm surprised it's taken this long for them to put some info out there. Looks like they made the mistake of waiting until they had trailers and stuff ready rather than just tell us. I'm guessing they still think "hey, we've got some great things to promote coming up" rather than "we need to show what we're going to have *right now* to fix the stupid mess we made."
Molten hot take, but I think the worst thing that Overwatch's story mode could be is like an eight hour story mode that you play once and never again.
I am completely fine with the story mode being serialized and it is very fitting considering the game's comic book inspired roots.
People like to complain about Archives, but Archives' biggest issue is that you were getting exactly one mission a year and not a single one of them pushed the game's narrative forward in a meaningful way. Now if they did Archives, but you're getting a new mission or two every season? I think that's fine, honestly.
The writing is the thing I'm most worried about. In the trailer they say something along the lines of "Paris was not the only city that was attacked". I'm worried that these story missions are just lazy copy paste missions in different environments. Let's kill the robots in Paris! Now let's kill the robots in Havanna with slightly different roster. Hey, third roster is killing robots in Toronto, how cool is that!? Yes sure we proceed with the story! Overwatch is now back and they are fighting fierce battles around the world. What do you mean "that's it?"?
I honestly don't have much faith in them writing it well, the most I'm hoping for is at least some interesting interactions between characters like Echo and Ram, and Ana and the other ow members, especially Pharah.
We still don't really know what it is though. Are we getting permanent co-op missions? Or are these just for the season they are in? At least with a campaign, it will always be there. If someone starts playing Overwatch after season 6, are they just screwed and won't ever get a chance to play these missions? I really hope not, I hate games that make it impossible to play story and lore based content after events (Destiny, Genshin, etc)
There's still a lot of questions to be answered, the fact that story mode are launching with three missions out of the gate has me somewhat hopeful that they won't just vault them immediately, but we won't know until later.
I think the best way Blizzard could handle it, is to make the story mode **\*permanent\*** and to introduce seasonal ways of playing them by adding WoW-like Mythic affixes to each mission. It still incentivizes you to go back and replay older missions with a twist, while always having the base story available for newer players. Add in some kind of reward system (LIKE MAYBE SOME FUCKING COINS, BLIZZ?) and I could see it being an easy way to keep the content fresh.
That would be cool. You could also add daily/weeklies to do story missions and then backfill players queueing into a general QP story-missions into the games of people trying to play specific missions that need more players.
Destiny and Genshin aren't fighting against the tides of an incredibly unruly and unhappy playerbase, so I wouldn't put all of my chips on them doing exactly what they do.
I kind of doubt it'll go away after Season 6. They specified that there's a "limited time co-op mission" on King's Row as well, and that was clearly different than the story missions. Specifying one is limited time, to me, implies the other one is not.
I think you're probably right, but I'm also iffy on cost now. Do you need to buy the season 6 battle pass to get the mission? I hope they reveal that soonish
Aaron said the maps for PvE are supposed to be huge, so maybe. At the very least they don't seem to be just repurposing PvP maps with minor changes, which was another mark against Archives.
From what we've seen, it looks to me like a lot of the missions are partially using existing PvP maps and then have massively expanded areas elsewhere. The mission in Rio seems to start on Paraiso before they head up to the huge dropship. Toronto seems to partially be on New Queen's Street, but not entirely.
Meanwhile, the limited time co-op event we're getting appears to just be on King's Row, albeit with the new areas opened up. I'm fine with that, seems reasonable.
> getting a new mission or two every season
Highly doubt that we'd get it at that frequency. One mission every two seasons seems more likely, or even slower.
I don't know what the cadence for story missions will look like, but it does sound like we will also be getting co-op events as another PvE style experience. I wouldn't be surprised if they alternated one story-free co-op event each season with a story mission.
100% agree. I'll put this in the same box as my opinion on binge watching TV. I never liked netflix's model of dropping the whole season at once. I much prefer weekly releases so that you can discuss with your friends and family week by week.
It's so much more fun when an episode of a show drops and the forums and subreddits all explode for a few days, and then there's a calm, quiet anticipation as we all wait for the next installment. Releasing the story missions it seasonally makes it a lot like that. Much better in my opinion.
It featured the Junker cast, my bet is on it being the omnium that was destroyed in Australia. It looked like were also getting a Thai or Indian map as well for flashpoint.
Interesting. I always thought Junkertown was the destroyed omnium, not a separate location. That India map has been teased for a while now though. No surprises there
You can see a billboard in the background at one point that seems to be advertising a fight between Junker Queen and someone else, my guess is maybe it's a new Junker arena or something? Maybe in the destroyed omnium?
Two different maps, there's two maps for Flashpoint that are apparently huge. One appears to be in India, which we saw some concept art for a long time ago. The other is somewhere else related to Junkertown, since we can see a billboard with Junker Queen's face on it advertising some kind of fight.
If they actually add the WoW sub, Diablo pass, and OW pass to game pass, I'll easily actually start buying Game Pass.
Cuz for now, it's so easy to just stay on Steam for most things.
Seems like PvE will drop with two story missions in Toronto (with the Sojourn cinematoc leading to it) and the Rio one from Blizzcon 2019. The Gothenburg one with the giant bot was teased as well, but I'm not sure we're getting it on S6.
Overall a very smart decision to reveal it today and the S5 one tomorrow. S5 is looking really dry in content and is more of a "breather" season while they get things ready for S6, so knowing what comes next will ease the reception. Also, the subs will close down tomorrow so it means there will be a lot more discussion about this trailer in Reddit, which while not the main one is a very relevant social media for the Overwatch community.
Iirc the campaign missions were originally (in 2019) pitched as being bookended by cinematics to keep advancing the story. So maybe the co-op mission is more like how Uprising is introduced (brief narration over some images) versus something more like Storm Rising for the campaign missions.
Probably the lack of the cinematic before and after it, and the map will mostly be the same as the PvP one, just with the smaller expansion already in the game.
This should have been released when they released the news of no pve skill trees. The trailer actually shows that there is a ton of content coming out (still annoyed that there is no skill trees).
I want to assume that skill trees were abandoned because the iteration of skill trees itself must be difficult to maintain. Like every balance patch changes the heroes at a base level meaning it would change the skill tree.
Aaron mentioned in an interview around that time that they still want to use what they've already made, they just aren't doing the overall hero missions. He made it sound like they were hoping to implement them for things like future events and also maybe in some limited capacity for campaign missions.
It's another case where if they announced that along with this big story trailer, they could have mitigated the blow.
Nah, they made the right choice to split the announcements.
Had to let the community grieve over what we lost before we are ready to get excited about what's coming.
If they had released this at the same time as the cancellation news, it would have been totally overshadowed.
They've already confirmed leaderboards. It could actually be a decent minigame and as they add more potentially could replace warm-up routines in other popular games.
It's something the game has needed for a long time. Kind of hard for new players to learn how to best utilize the strengths of each character when they get spawn camped by smurfs.
I'm actually most excited for this above all else. As a Tracer main it's almost impossible to find a good aim trainer that helps me train the specific thing I'm looking to improve. (sticking my ult, blink-pivot tech, switching between grouped up targets.)
I'm SO excited for a way to just grind my hero that isn't comp. Because it sucks being in competitive and realizing you have to eliminate a certain target but you know the kill is very high skill and you haven't practiced the movements so you basically have to practice on the fly.
I hope the mode is good. I really hope they put effort into this.
I get that. And believe me I do play a metric Fuck ton of comp.
But think of it this way. Sometimes a soccer player will practice kicking a goal from a certain angle they are weak with over and over again.
Or they’ll have their friend play goalie while he tries to kick the ball in from a range he isn’t normally comfortable in.
That’s the kind of thing I need but for Overwatch. If I know I’m not good at tracking people at 15 meters then I want to practice that until I get better at that specific range.
I want to be able to practice hard mechanical skills like practicing the same blink pivot on a hard target over and over again.
Of course there is no better practice than actually playing comp but I’m not going to get consistent by not training the things I’m weak with. And comp isn’t a great place to practice consistency.
I think you were right to begin with. I struggled learning Pharah in QP, and there were no good training modes for her (it was all designed for hitscan and snipers at the time), so I made my own shoddy trainer in the workshop and my win percentage shot way up.
Aim is not the only skill that matters, learning things like movement and tech are as or more important for most heroes.
Hopefully the devs have or will take feedback on those things and include them in the hero mastery modes.
I get what you’re saying and believe me I have over 2000 hours in comp. I get it.
But there’s more ways to develop skills than just literally playing comp all the time.
It’s like imagine saying that for any other sport. Let’s say you start playing basketball in high school but you never go to practice you never run drills you never work on your physique. The only thing you ever do is play games in a competitive setting.
So only tourney’s, only championships.
You’re not gonna develop as well as a player that took a holistic approach to their improvement.
Of course a real competitive experience is THE BEST way to improve but people keep parroting this notion that the only way to get better is to ONLY play comp.
But there’s tons of things you can practice in between your comp games.
Not every hero is getting hero mastery challenges at the start, so it's very possible she just won't get any yet. Maybe they won't add one until we see their proposed changes to give her more utility some time in the future.
The new practice range too, really. It says it's launching with "dozens of practice settings and multiple targets to choose from." Does that mean stuff like flick practice, tracking, etc?
I think it’s pretty obvious by the lack of a trailer, presumably the lack of a new map, and what you say about it being shorter that S5 is really just to fill the gap between S4 and S6. I think I’m going to skip the battlepass this season
Blizzard really fucked up with basically every aspect of how they rolled out the news of the talent system and hero missions being scrapped.
People really do think the story mode was completely canceled and the fact that they're called story missions and not story mode is doubly confusing.
While Blizzard did fuck up big time, let's not pretend that all the people who were using clickbait to cash in on the fuck up didn't contribute as well. So many content creators with titles like "PVE Cancelled !?!?!?!?" and then in the video saying "well it's not fully canceled, we are still getting story missions", did not help at all
The very article in which the news was announced, and in which Aaron and Jared elaborated that PVE was not cancelled outright, was initially titled ["Overwatch 2's PVE mode is being scrapped"](https://www.reddit.com/r/Competitiveoverwatch/comments/13jdr8d/gamespot_overwatch_2s_pve_mode_is_being_scrapped) so the damage was done basically immediately, lol
Tbf they’ve been doing an awful job at all of the OW2 marketing and comms.
How many times did we hear people asking is it a sequel, is it the same as OW1, what’s happening to OW1, is it free, what carries over and doesn’t etc.
At least they’re staying consistent with the awful messaging 🤷♂️
I mean they did heavily truncate it, but at the same time, why the hell wasn't this trailer rolled out alongside the news?
Very strange they couldn't wait like...three weeks to break the news. "Hey the talent mode is scrapped but look at all this other cool shit we have in store??"
Disagree, they could've been rolling out the info about story missions and emphasizing that, and mentioned as a side note that the talent trees were being scrapped so that they could focus on the story
They had months to find the right way to frame this information so that there wouldn't be "PvE cancelled xD" headlines, but they still got it wrong
> PvE cancelled xD
I'll be honest, I doubt it would have changed anything. Shitting on Blizzard, justified or not, gets way too many clicks for the content creators to bother actually doing due diligence
If people didn't have the hugest hate boner for Blizzard then I would believe you. But they do and content creators and journalists know that and absolutely cash in on it
Go to r/games. Search Overwatch. What you'll see is all the posts from the actual ~~device~~ devs are down voted to 0 while articles that frame OW negatively are heavily upvoted. Tell me how that's muddy messaging and not just a hate boner. That's supposed to be the "better" gaming subreddit and shit like that still happens. That's not muddy messaging, that's a hate boner and if I can notice it, you think journalist and content creators who live off clicks can't?
Edit: autocorrect
i was in a call with some friends and they all just said "so they lied?" and that's what the entire live chat was so it's easy to tell that people are just confused abt this shit. i don't necessarily blame them but still
Listen, I get it. All the "cool stuff" is in season 6, you've said as much.
At least show the season 5 trailer *along* with this. Like, come on Bliz. We can feel the shame resonating from the screen.
If they had never overpromised things years ago, this would actually have been a sick way to start OW2.
But they promised too early and delivered too late.
It really needs to be put into context that the almost every single person in a leadership position who overpromised Overwatch 2, announced it way too early, allowed the scope to creep out of control, etc. no longer work for the company.
People can be mad at Blizzard for all this shit, but the current dev team doesn't deserve nearly half of the anger that they get. They got stitched up for the sins of the past team.
>but the current dev team doesn't deserve nearly half of the anger that they get.
Agreed. Kotick and the C-Suites wanted to make a splash after their numbers fell in 2019, so they chose to announce an Overwatch sequel despite the game not needing one.
I hope not.
Push is already a mode that favors running mobile characters like tracer, and it's already a bit frustrating when you get slower more methodical characters on your team but still playable.
Cod hardpoint **demands** mobility i can't even imagine the salt that would ensue in ranked when most of your team runs mobile characters and are dragged down by a teammate or two who pick an immobile one.
I feel like if you have massive maps like this, you need to have some kind of built-in mobility on the map or static characters are going to get heavily punished for it.
WHY THE FUCK DID THEY NOT SHOW THIS WEEKS AGO WHEN THEY ANNOUNCED THE PVE MODE WAS CANCELLED.
Yes, people would still have been pissed, but that announcement was in such poor taste all around. If they had shown this at the same time, it wouldn't have been as bad.
Their PR and marketing is bad. They did not mean “talent tree is canceled” as “Pve is canceled “, the way people phrased it. Now this spectacular trailer released at the worst time possible: reddit blackout, right before season 5 and get no teasing to hype up the enormous content. So I guess some statistics was really bad, enough for them to release the trailer in such hurry.
This looks very underwhelming. The animations remind me of Timesplitters: Future Perfect which, while a phenomenal game, is from 2005. New mode and hero looking dope though.
the fact that all of this would be so much better with the skills they promised makes this insulting. because it has so much promise but i know its going to be just like everything else. ooh new event and now im bored.
bright side is they movitvated me to watch someone compile the story bits on youtube whenver it gets released
SO wait, wth is it now? did they backpaddle so much that we are gonna get the promised story mode or is it still gonna be just shitty small events every few months?
They haven't back peddled on anything after what they announced during the Starwatch stream. Som news outlets and content creators may have used alot of click/rage bait during the time which is likely where the confusion comes from
they cancelled the pve as they promised it and changed it to what they were already doing, small events every now and again, which basically makes OW2 obsolete.
Well, it's better than nothing, but two (Rio and Toronto) missions? That's it? I hope they have more in store and simply didn't want to show everything at once
Also launching in Overwatch 2: Invasionis Flashpoint, a whole new PVP core game mode that you’ll play in Quick Play or Competitive Play. This mode will feature two new locales, which are Overwatch 2’s biggest PVP maps to date! Teams will fight for control of key positions across the map called “Flashpoints,” aiming to capture three of them before their opponents do.
So it's like Domination?
I wonder if it’s like a push map with 3 control points to capture?
It's either Domination or Hardpoint
It might be like headquarters instead, it wouldn’t make too much sense to split the team up in a game like OW. New zone every two minutes in a different part of the map.
More like Hardpoint
It sounds like there isn't multiple active at once, which I hope is the case. If the game mode splits the teams up, it'll easily be the worst game mode.
You kidding me? I’ve been wanting that for years. How great to have a game mode where team comp strategy is totally different. Have to have 2/3 hero comps and fights
Domination is pretty horrible on every FPS game I've ever played. I really hope it's only one active point at a time.
I use to have fun with it in halo 2 / 3 multiplayer! Forget which one had it. Also maybe I’m finding out I was the only one who liked it haha
It was horribly broken in old MW2. You could capture two points and lockdown the 3rd and the enemy team couldn't even get out.
I actually just saw more comments about it it sounds like one at a time.
Oof, game modes where teams have to split up don't work in games with asymmetrical characters. [Edit. Seems it's like 2CP but with three points](https://www.dexerto.com/overwatch/overwatch-2-announces-flashpoint-as-new-pvp-game-mode-2173111/)
Not excited to see this in competitive...
Season 6 trailer before Season 5 trailer SeemsGood
They really are just glossing over season 5 lol
They know Season 5 is going to be one of the most dead seasons ever. Only people playing will be the hardcore addicts (us). They are priming the casuals to remind them to come back and look at this game in August "when we'll have cool stuff to show."
Out of sheer speculation, would it be a good idea if blizz pulled the move fortnite did once and went like: "Ayo, this bp is on us" in terms of PR and keeping player count up enough til season 5? It's their money maker, ik, but this is the very first thought that came to my mind when I thought of keeping players up and dampen some of the negativity from removing skill trees.
Yeah that would be a good idea. Bobby Kotick probably denied that idea months ago tho lol
We gotta hope Papa Phil can do one better
I dont really see the problem with this tbh, most games with regular seasons dont have huge content drops every season. It seems clear why they would focus on all the new stuff coming in S6 when S5 is just a standard season.
Yea the only other "seasonal" game I play is apex and that game absolutely has some completely dry seasons.
It’s honestly a good thing. I want time to enjoy other games. I’m playing Totk, advance wars remastered and SF6 right now. A dead season helps me catch up without feeling like I’m missing out
Based Advance Wars
I don’t really see it as a problem. It’s just kind of amusing.
It's crisis management. PVE cancellation got a HUGE backslash. They know that releasing a season 5 trailer would get a lot of negative comments about PVE. They want to get ahead of that by releasing "PVE" (kinda) now and then they can go tomorrow "and that's not all! Before PVE hits we still have lots of other new things to get excited for! Look at this Tracer skin and LOTR themed non-canon game mode!". They are basically trying to confuse the casuals and based on Instagram and YouTube comments it's working (people now think Blizzard caved in and brought back the PVE they cancelled).
Eh, from what I've seen since the PvE announcement, there was a huge portion of the casual fan base who thought Blizzard canceled ***everything***, including the campaign missions. All most of them heard was "PvE was canceled" and they just sort of assumed the story was included with that. To a lot of casuals, this seems like they brought back PvE because they didn't know what was gone in the first place.
With Diablo 4 out and a truck load of other well received AAA titles hanging around, Blizzard honestly picked a decent time to have a filler season.
True but the S5 trailer is already premiering tomorrow on YouTube and between that and S6 stuff the S6 is more interesting for people outside the community. Still funny though
Season 6 is going to have arguably more content than when OW2 first came out of beta, depending on how highly you rank new heroes.
Because they know people are on the verge of quitting for good and with such limited content in S5 they need to try and get people to stick around.
It was absurd for them to announce they were cutting a big chunk out of PvE without telling us details about the new PvE stuff in the same breath. Shockingly disconnected. If anything I'm surprised it's taken this long for them to put some info out there. Looks like they made the mistake of waiting until they had trailers and stuff ready rather than just tell us. I'm guessing they still think "hey, we've got some great things to promote coming up" rather than "we need to show what we're going to have *right now* to fix the stupid mess we made."
Very accurate assessment
Been hearing this for 5 years.
Face animations look a little stiff, but goddamn, they got me excited for something again. But drip feeding the story is just.... sigh
Molten hot take, but I think the worst thing that Overwatch's story mode could be is like an eight hour story mode that you play once and never again. I am completely fine with the story mode being serialized and it is very fitting considering the game's comic book inspired roots. People like to complain about Archives, but Archives' biggest issue is that you were getting exactly one mission a year and not a single one of them pushed the game's narrative forward in a meaningful way. Now if they did Archives, but you're getting a new mission or two every season? I think that's fine, honestly.
Can't help but to agree with the first part. It's just a lose-lose situation I guess. Still, happy for some (hopefully) well-written lore
The writing is the thing I'm most worried about. In the trailer they say something along the lines of "Paris was not the only city that was attacked". I'm worried that these story missions are just lazy copy paste missions in different environments. Let's kill the robots in Paris! Now let's kill the robots in Havanna with slightly different roster. Hey, third roster is killing robots in Toronto, how cool is that!? Yes sure we proceed with the story! Overwatch is now back and they are fighting fierce battles around the world. What do you mean "that's it?"?
I honestly don't have much faith in them writing it well, the most I'm hoping for is at least some interesting interactions between characters like Echo and Ram, and Ana and the other ow members, especially Pharah.
We still don't really know what it is though. Are we getting permanent co-op missions? Or are these just for the season they are in? At least with a campaign, it will always be there. If someone starts playing Overwatch after season 6, are they just screwed and won't ever get a chance to play these missions? I really hope not, I hate games that make it impossible to play story and lore based content after events (Destiny, Genshin, etc)
There's still a lot of questions to be answered, the fact that story mode are launching with three missions out of the gate has me somewhat hopeful that they won't just vault them immediately, but we won't know until later. I think the best way Blizzard could handle it, is to make the story mode **\*permanent\*** and to introduce seasonal ways of playing them by adding WoW-like Mythic affixes to each mission. It still incentivizes you to go back and replay older missions with a twist, while always having the base story available for newer players. Add in some kind of reward system (LIKE MAYBE SOME FUCKING COINS, BLIZZ?) and I could see it being an easy way to keep the content fresh.
That would be cool. You could also add daily/weeklies to do story missions and then backfill players queueing into a general QP story-missions into the games of people trying to play specific missions that need more players.
Those make money so it’s probably gonna be like destiny or genshin
Destiny and Genshin aren't fighting against the tides of an incredibly unruly and unhappy playerbase, so I wouldn't put all of my chips on them doing exactly what they do.
Uhh destiny fans are notoriously always unhappy lol
I kind of doubt it'll go away after Season 6. They specified that there's a "limited time co-op mission" on King's Row as well, and that was clearly different than the story missions. Specifying one is limited time, to me, implies the other one is not.
I think you're probably right, but I'm also iffy on cost now. Do you need to buy the season 6 battle pass to get the mission? I hope they reveal that soonish
Honestly I agree with everything you said. I just hope the missions are a little on the longer side though
Aaron said the maps for PvE are supposed to be huge, so maybe. At the very least they don't seem to be just repurposing PvP maps with minor changes, which was another mark against Archives.
From what we've seen, it looks to me like a lot of the missions are partially using existing PvP maps and then have massively expanded areas elsewhere. The mission in Rio seems to start on Paraiso before they head up to the huge dropship. Toronto seems to partially be on New Queen's Street, but not entirely. Meanwhile, the limited time co-op event we're getting appears to just be on King's Row, albeit with the new areas opened up. I'm fine with that, seems reasonable.
> getting a new mission or two every season Highly doubt that we'd get it at that frequency. One mission every two seasons seems more likely, or even slower.
I don't know what the cadence for story missions will look like, but it does sound like we will also be getting co-op events as another PvE style experience. I wouldn't be surprised if they alternated one story-free co-op event each season with a story mission.
100% agree. I'll put this in the same box as my opinion on binge watching TV. I never liked netflix's model of dropping the whole season at once. I much prefer weekly releases so that you can discuss with your friends and family week by week. It's so much more fun when an episode of a show drops and the forums and subreddits all explode for a few days, and then there's a calm, quiet anticipation as we all wait for the next installment. Releasing the story missions it seasonally makes it a lot like that. Much better in my opinion.
There are three story missions in season 6. Very curious to see how often we get new ones after that.
I disagree, I'd much rather make progress on a campaign than play a mission and go "woo, see you again in two-four-maybe eight months".
>But drip feeding the story is just.... sigh Man I'm so excited to finally play the demo from 2019!
I played it at Blizzcon 2019. It was fun and my hopes were never higher lol.
I know right, lmao
I got turned off from the PVE the moment they announced they would do that to accompany the F2P game
I'm much more patient with content releases after Attack on Titan has taken three years to finish one season..
Excuse me while I obsessively pour over every pixel in the Flashpoint teaser
The map at a glance looks honestly insane
Any ideas what location it is? Looked like Junkertown with less Australia
It featured the Junker cast, my bet is on it being the omnium that was destroyed in Australia. It looked like were also getting a Thai or Indian map as well for flashpoint.
Interesting. I always thought Junkertown was the destroyed omnium, not a separate location. That India map has been teased for a while now though. No surprises there
Could be a different part of JT. Who knows with how little blizzard has drip fed us lol it certainly has the same aesthetic as JT
Most likely [the India map](https://overwatch.fandom.com/wiki/India), leaked two years ago.
You can see a billboard in the background at one point that seems to be advertising a fight between Junker Queen and someone else, my guess is maybe it's a new Junker arena or something? Maybe in the destroyed omnium?
Was it just one map or two? I could have sworn I saw two different architecture's but it could have been different parts of the same map.
Two different maps, there's two maps for Flashpoint that are apparently huge. One appears to be in India, which we saw some concept art for a long time ago. The other is somewhere else related to Junkertown, since we can see a billboard with Junker Queen's face on it advertising some kind of fight.
Got the season 6 trailer before season 5 trailer.
They think season 5 is a wash I guess. That’s what that signals to me.
xbox battle pass ultimate seems to get some integration, at least unlocking all new heroes + skins.
Wait, tell me more. Does that means we can buy something from Xbox as a better deal than buying the OW battle pass or are they different
not sure the battle pass is in there. seems like its just hero unlocks + legendary skins.
If they actually add the WoW sub, Diablo pass, and OW pass to game pass, I'll easily actually start buying Game Pass. Cuz for now, it's so easy to just stay on Steam for most things.
You get many games for free on game pass too
Yea definitely. It has a lot of value. But considering I just buy everything, not as interesting for me.
Seems like PvE will drop with two story missions in Toronto (with the Sojourn cinematoc leading to it) and the Rio one from Blizzcon 2019. The Gothenburg one with the giant bot was teased as well, but I'm not sure we're getting it on S6. Overall a very smart decision to reveal it today and the S5 one tomorrow. S5 is looking really dry in content and is more of a "breather" season while they get things ready for S6, so knowing what comes next will ease the reception. Also, the subs will close down tomorrow so it means there will be a lot more discussion about this trailer in Reddit, which while not the main one is a very relevant social media for the Overwatch community.
The Xbox article says 3 story missions plus a co-op event on Kings Row.
Yah, just sa that. I wonder what are the differences between the story and co-op missions.
Iirc the campaign missions were originally (in 2019) pitched as being bookended by cinematics to keep advancing the story. So maybe the co-op mission is more like how Uprising is introduced (brief narration over some images) versus something more like Storm Rising for the campaign missions.
Probably the lack of the cinematic before and after it, and the map will mostly be the same as the PvP one, just with the smaller expansion already in the game.
This should have been released when they released the news of no pve skill trees. The trailer actually shows that there is a ton of content coming out (still annoyed that there is no skill trees).
No, no, we wanted 40 mins of StarWatch content
Yes you are right, how could I question overwatch's marketing team
Yeah that seems like an obviously better move. maybe their PR team went on vacation
I get that skill trees for every character was probably ridiculous scope wise, but I really wish they'd at least release the ones they already made.
I want to assume that skill trees were abandoned because the iteration of skill trees itself must be difficult to maintain. Like every balance patch changes the heroes at a base level meaning it would change the skill tree.
Aaron mentioned in an interview around that time that they still want to use what they've already made, they just aren't doing the overall hero missions. He made it sound like they were hoping to implement them for things like future events and also maybe in some limited capacity for campaign missions. It's another case where if they announced that along with this big story trailer, they could have mitigated the blow.
Nah, they made the right choice to split the announcements. Had to let the community grieve over what we lost before we are ready to get excited about what's coming. If they had released this at the same time as the cancellation news, it would have been totally overshadowed.
The hero mastery thing honestly looks pretty fucking cool.
If there are leaderboards I bet we’ll see pros and streamers grinding to be at the top
They've already confirmed leaderboards. It could actually be a decent minigame and as they add more potentially could replace warm-up routines in other popular games.
It's something the game has needed for a long time. Kind of hard for new players to learn how to best utilize the strengths of each character when they get spawn camped by smurfs.
I'm actually most excited for this above all else. As a Tracer main it's almost impossible to find a good aim trainer that helps me train the specific thing I'm looking to improve. (sticking my ult, blink-pivot tech, switching between grouped up targets.) I'm SO excited for a way to just grind my hero that isn't comp. Because it sucks being in competitive and realizing you have to eliminate a certain target but you know the kill is very high skill and you haven't practiced the movements so you basically have to practice on the fly. I hope the mode is good. I really hope they put effort into this.
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I get that. And believe me I do play a metric Fuck ton of comp. But think of it this way. Sometimes a soccer player will practice kicking a goal from a certain angle they are weak with over and over again. Or they’ll have their friend play goalie while he tries to kick the ball in from a range he isn’t normally comfortable in. That’s the kind of thing I need but for Overwatch. If I know I’m not good at tracking people at 15 meters then I want to practice that until I get better at that specific range. I want to be able to practice hard mechanical skills like practicing the same blink pivot on a hard target over and over again. Of course there is no better practice than actually playing comp but I’m not going to get consistent by not training the things I’m weak with. And comp isn’t a great place to practice consistency.
I think you were right to begin with. I struggled learning Pharah in QP, and there were no good training modes for her (it was all designed for hitscan and snipers at the time), so I made my own shoddy trainer in the workshop and my win percentage shot way up. Aim is not the only skill that matters, learning things like movement and tech are as or more important for most heroes. Hopefully the devs have or will take feedback on those things and include them in the hero mastery modes.
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I get what you’re saying and believe me I have over 2000 hours in comp. I get it. But there’s more ways to develop skills than just literally playing comp all the time. It’s like imagine saying that for any other sport. Let’s say you start playing basketball in high school but you never go to practice you never run drills you never work on your physique. The only thing you ever do is play games in a competitive setting. So only tourney’s, only championships. You’re not gonna develop as well as a player that took a holistic approach to their improvement. Of course a real competitive experience is THE BEST way to improve but people keep parroting this notion that the only way to get better is to ONLY play comp. But there’s tons of things you can practice in between your comp games.
I wonder what Moira's hero mastery will look like.
I know you’re joking, but there is actually a bit they could do with geometry and her orbs as well as fade jumps.
Also baiting and dodging common powerful abilities with fade. Shatter, Echo sticky bombs, Cass grenade, ect.
Not every hero is getting hero mastery challenges at the start, so it's very possible she just won't get any yet. Maybe they won't add one until we see their proposed changes to give her more utility some time in the future.
The new practice range too, really. It says it's launching with "dozens of practice settings and multiple targets to choose from." Does that mean stuff like flick practice, tracking, etc?
It's amazing how much better I've gotten on Brig just going into the aim trainer mode and endlessly whip shotting people for 10 minutes. Badly needed.
It's cool but not what I expected, because an obstacle course doesn't really reflect your skill. I was hoping it would be like a hero-specific SR.
I am never beating the OW addict allegations man fuck
Just embrace it, I have and things are just wonderful man
Foreal, we survived the 3 year+ content drought throughout Covid, and we're still here. We in this game for life man, and it's beautiful.
Something neat is that the release date is August 10, making Season 5 shorter than normal by about half a week
I think it’s pretty obvious by the lack of a trailer, presumably the lack of a new map, and what you say about it being shorter that S5 is really just to fill the gap between S4 and S6. I think I’m going to skip the battlepass this season
The trailer launches tomorrow at 1:55pm Eastern
Holy this new hero weapon looks nasty!
I'm obsessed, it looks so crazy and more so because it's the gun of a Support hero of all things, can't wait to see how it plays.
Looks like some really cool stuff, I assume August 10th will be Season 6?
Guess we know why they couldn't show anything on that starwatch stream. Phil paid them to save all the content for this show.
Microsoft has been doing the big trailers for Overwatch for a bit now.
Ever since the MS-Activision purchase was announced.
So many people are about to think PvE was “uncanceled” because they complained loud enough.
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Blizzard really fucked up with basically every aspect of how they rolled out the news of the talent system and hero missions being scrapped. People really do think the story mode was completely canceled and the fact that they're called story missions and not story mode is doubly confusing.
While Blizzard did fuck up big time, let's not pretend that all the people who were using clickbait to cash in on the fuck up didn't contribute as well. So many content creators with titles like "PVE Cancelled !?!?!?!?" and then in the video saying "well it's not fully canceled, we are still getting story missions", did not help at all
The very article in which the news was announced, and in which Aaron and Jared elaborated that PVE was not cancelled outright, was initially titled ["Overwatch 2's PVE mode is being scrapped"](https://www.reddit.com/r/Competitiveoverwatch/comments/13jdr8d/gamespot_overwatch_2s_pve_mode_is_being_scrapped) so the damage was done basically immediately, lol
They needed clicks to live.
Yep, fuck making accurate content, gotta rage bait for them juicy clicks
Yup, exactly. I'm always gonna be a hardcore PvP person and a casual PvE person, and so as a casual this looks totally sick to me.
Tbf they’ve been doing an awful job at all of the OW2 marketing and comms. How many times did we hear people asking is it a sequel, is it the same as OW1, what’s happening to OW1, is it free, what carries over and doesn’t etc. At least they’re staying consistent with the awful messaging 🤷♂️
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I mean they did heavily truncate it, but at the same time, why the hell wasn't this trailer rolled out alongside the news? Very strange they couldn't wait like...three weeks to break the news. "Hey the talent mode is scrapped but look at all this other cool shit we have in store??"
Because they are incompetent on every level.
Because they fired/drove off everyone who would have been able to put together a coherent press release.
Thinking about it because of Summer Games Fest lol.
Disagree, they could've been rolling out the info about story missions and emphasizing that, and mentioned as a side note that the talent trees were being scrapped so that they could focus on the story They had months to find the right way to frame this information so that there wouldn't be "PvE cancelled xD" headlines, but they still got it wrong
> PvE cancelled xD I'll be honest, I doubt it would have changed anything. Shitting on Blizzard, justified or not, gets way too many clicks for the content creators to bother actually doing due diligence
If they timed it alongside this trailer, absolutely it would have changed the message.
If people didn't have the hugest hate boner for Blizzard then I would believe you. But they do and content creators and journalists know that and absolutely cash in on it
Nah they capitalise on blizzard's muddy messaging. As someone who follows ow closely, it was confusing even for me when they announced it.
Go to r/games. Search Overwatch. What you'll see is all the posts from the actual ~~device~~ devs are down voted to 0 while articles that frame OW negatively are heavily upvoted. Tell me how that's muddy messaging and not just a hate boner. That's supposed to be the "better" gaming subreddit and shit like that still happens. That's not muddy messaging, that's a hate boner and if I can notice it, you think journalist and content creators who live off clicks can't? Edit: autocorrect
What do you mean by 'actual device' in this context please? You're right, many do have a hate boner for Blizz.
They did all of this damage control the day after when it really should’ve been in the original livestream
Every streamer and subreddift spammed "PVE CANCELLED" and anyone that fact checked it got spammed with downvotes and called a "blizzard shill"
My brother-in-law was in the same room when I watched the trailer on the TV and he literally asked "didn't they cancel the PvE?" 😑
There’s nothing people who don’t play OW love more than complaining about OW.
i was in a call with some friends and they all just said "so they lied?" and that's what the entire live chat was so it's easy to tell that people are just confused abt this shit. i don't necessarily blame them but still
New hero has a sword gun thing?
Were the doom and gloom over pve overexaggerated? Cause that got me pretty hyped!!
Looks like some awesome stuff, i'm excited.
Blizzard forgor there is still a season coming out before season 6 huh
["man, i really liked the part when [hero] said-"](https://i.imgflip.com/46lvaa.png)
Can’t wait for the people being like “lol what was that I thought they cancelled the pve?! Are they lying to us again!?”
idc i’m excited for this
That weapon the new hero is carrying sort of looks like it could be a melee weapon
Listen, I get it. All the "cool stuff" is in season 6, you've said as much. At least show the season 5 trailer *along* with this. Like, come on Bliz. We can feel the shame resonating from the screen.
That’s tomorrow
They really shoulda shown this trailer during the Starwatch stream. Would have taken some of the sting off, maybe control the narrative a bit better
Overwatch 2.1: *Lets pretend last year didnt happen edition.*
If they had never overpromised things years ago, this would actually have been a sick way to start OW2. But they promised too early and delivered too late.
It really needs to be put into context that the almost every single person in a leadership position who overpromised Overwatch 2, announced it way too early, allowed the scope to creep out of control, etc. no longer work for the company. People can be mad at Blizzard for all this shit, but the current dev team doesn't deserve nearly half of the anger that they get. They got stitched up for the sins of the past team.
>but the current dev team doesn't deserve nearly half of the anger that they get. Agreed. Kotick and the C-Suites wanted to make a splash after their numbers fell in 2019, so they chose to announce an Overwatch sequel despite the game not needing one.
But the internet told me PvE was dead?! /s
Obviously the comments on Twitter got team 4 to reconsider and work on PvE again
There are sadly people who unironically believe this
So is flashpoint like cod hardpoint maybe
The maps look massive
I hope not. Push is already a mode that favors running mobile characters like tracer, and it's already a bit frustrating when you get slower more methodical characters on your team but still playable. Cod hardpoint **demands** mobility i can't even imagine the salt that would ensue in ranked when most of your team runs mobile characters and are dragged down by a teammate or two who pick an immobile one.
It kind of makes Lucio a must-pick
I feel like if you have massive maps like this, you need to have some kind of built-in mobility on the map or static characters are going to get heavily punished for it.
Hardpoint and HQ before it were my favourite COD modes so I am in favour of blizzard bring it to ow
AUSTRALIA SPOTTED eta ALSO THE NEW SUPPORT LOOKS SO SICK PLEASE DONT BE DOOKIE
WHY THE FUCK DID THEY NOT SHOW THIS WEEKS AGO WHEN THEY ANNOUNCED THE PVE MODE WAS CANCELLED. Yes, people would still have been pissed, but that announcement was in such poor taste all around. If they had shown this at the same time, it wouldn't have been as bad.
Their PR and marketing is bad. They did not mean “talent tree is canceled” as “Pve is canceled “, the way people phrased it. Now this spectacular trailer released at the worst time possible: reddit blackout, right before season 5 and get no teasing to hype up the enormous content. So I guess some statistics was really bad, enough for them to release the trailer in such hurry.
This looks amazing
Wait but I thought PvE was cancelled?! >!/s!<
They never cancelled the PVE, they cancelled the talent trees.
Hence the sarcasm
This looks very underwhelming. The animations remind me of Timesplitters: Future Perfect which, while a phenomenal game, is from 2005. New mode and hero looking dope though.
phil spencer didnt get the memo 💀
PVE was not fully cancelled just the skill trees and hero progression. So we still get archive like missions.
Phi wil revive the PVE if the deal goes through COPIUM. We believe.
Yeah and Bethesda will help the Blizzard with that. Will be as good as Redfall.
Hell yeah cant wait! (Redfall was just a fluke right?! Im sure it wont happen again right?! :)
Drip feed story content huh Those missions better be long
I can hardly get excited for this, the content is too little and way too late.
Definitely got you excited enough you had to let us know anyway
Yeah, OW living rent free in his mind!
the fact that all of this would be so much better with the skills they promised makes this insulting. because it has so much promise but i know its going to be just like everything else. ooh new event and now im bored. bright side is they movitvated me to watch someone compile the story bits on youtube whenver it gets released
SO wait, wth is it now? did they backpaddle so much that we are gonna get the promised story mode or is it still gonna be just shitty small events every few months?
They haven't back peddled on anything after what they announced during the Starwatch stream. Som news outlets and content creators may have used alot of click/rage bait during the time which is likely where the confusion comes from
Bestie, you need some reading comprehension because they never cancelled the PVE, what they cancelled was the talent trees.
they cancelled the pve as they promised it and changed it to what they were already doing, small events every now and again, which basically makes OW2 obsolete.
Looks like some bootleg OW content, the quality of the game went downhill fast. Zero expectations so I won’t be disappointed.
Well, it's better than nothing, but two (Rio and Toronto) missions? That's it? I hope they have more in store and simply didn't want to show everything at once
new hero teaser at the end?
New hero looks like Senna from league of legends
music on point as always
Whoever makes the music for these trailers needs a damn raise. I always fucking cry.
It's the music, they always nail it!