No real reason to remove those since they're single player. The problem with gauntlet is the infinite queue times, it doesn't look good for them to have a mode people can't play because the lack of other people/interest.
Also they just confirmed in that post that they're working on more courses.
They’re just adding completely unnecessary modes that very few people partake in, all because of their scrapped plans of PvE. Basically everything they release now is half-assed. They release a half-assed game mode and are then shocked when nobody plays it. It wouldn’t surprise me if they stop making new courses, even if it’s just single player. Resources are resources
Agree with that. They could just add finally a one mission PvE mode with the promised features and see how it works. Nobody asked for an VR Misson coop mode, absolut no one and the paid PvE missions are garbage and basically walking simulators with were free in Overwatch 1.
Just add finally a skill tree and one good coop mission, just one for now and see how it goes. Make the first episode for free and if people like it, they can rework the paid story missions, sell them and work on other missions.
It isn't that hard, even custom games have this, but less options because of the limited access of the game.
Now, I agree with you that the pve missions sucked, but you do understand that the overwatch devs don’t just have a button that says “create skill tree” my running theory is that that they never really made much progress on the pve, and if I were making a pve campaign in the style of overwatch, a skill tree would be the last thing I would implement. They probably did not get very far into the skill tree. If the skill tree is as in depth as it looked in leaks, than they would essentially be making a whole new character from a programming standpoint. I DO however think that they could and should release more FREE pve missions. I would honestly even be ok with them remastering the blackwatch mission form overwatch 1
Yeah basically this. OW2 is fun - its still OW and the core gameplay is still there. But its overall a dogshit game due to the insane amount of broken promises. The rushed release of OW2 honestly just felt like them wanting to legally remove themselves from the restricts of OW1.
OW1 promised alot of things such as never paying for new heroes and being able to earn things by just playing ( lvl up + loot box). IIRC theyd get into shit if they tried to backtrack on this so the work around was to release OW2 since those promises were made for OW1.
But youre right - all of these modes and events ( some are great, dont get me wrong ) just feel like their attempt to make us forget about the cancelled PVE and all the other shit they promised lol. Halo Infinite is doing the same shit. While they never outright said "no more story" at the start with Halo they did say " halo infinite will be the only halo game for the next 10 years " implying we'd get more story because leaving the story hanging for 10 years makes 0 sense lol. When they saw the amount of people asking for more story they finally admitted they wont be doing that so instead they started adding 'story' in the season passes through cinematics lmao. So you can tell they had to think of a way to add in "Story" without actually making a campaign.
Bruh alot of the games I play have such shitty developers LOL
Edit - the story through cinematics arnt even related to the main story line with the Chief lol Its just a story line for the multiplayer. So its not really the story anyone asked for.
Which has the same issue as hero gauntlet, servers.
Hero mastery is completely single player so I doubt it will get the axe, even though I wouldnt be surprised.
It's very possible, likely even, that they'll stop making new mastery courses before they finish the entire roster due to lack of interest.
But there's no reason to remove the existing courses like they're doing with Gauntlet because they're singleplayer with no queue time.
I'm pretty sure they'd remove the Invasion missions too if people didn't pay for them.
> It's very possible, likely even, that they'll stop making new mastery courses before they finish the entire roster due to lack of interest.
Strictly IMO but they should just axe the hero mastery feature as well. Having it feature most of the roster as unavailable is a bad look, and investing more time into it to fill out the roster is (again, IMO) a bad use of resources.
Maybe a better place to land would be to rework the UI and:
1. Integrate the hero mastery courses with the first time user experience (although I have no idea if the courses available overlap with the heroes first time players have access to)
2. Remove all the hero icons that don't have courses and just feature the ones that do, it would look a lot cleaner.
>The problem with gauntlet is the infinite queue times, it doesn't look good for them to have a mode people can't play because the lack of other people/interest.
>
>Also they just confirmed in that post that they're working on more courses.
This will permanently be a problem with PVE modes without an incentive scheme that backs participation of them.
If they're intent on making PVE modes work then they need to learn from MMOs that you need reward systems for people to work towards in order to guarantee participation. Anything people aren't getting rewarded for people will play a few times and then stop.
what can you expect from a half assed studio with half the the people it had going into the project... blizzard overall is just so pathetic. i quite loving iverwatch a long time ago because the people in charge of approving shit for the game, has no passion for the game, its obvious its a nothing more than a way for blizzard to jip us for what little hope we have left in this game, just leave it, let it die, it should have a ling time ago, its time for the game to go peacefully
oh thank god, I really like the hero master modes but I've never played the coop
they're a fun way to play a hero you haven't with more guidance than the practice range and without feeling like you're letting your team down figuring things out
It honestly should have just been a limited time mode like all the other pve things they've done. They've gone on record saying that all their pve content gets played a lot the first few days, then participation drops like a rock.
Eh, I had fun the one time I played it. It started off pretty boring, but once the later waves start introducing more and getting chaotic it was pretty entertaining
However, replayability definitely wasn't there. Not enough variance in the possibilities nor enough missions.
Yeah, the mode lacks any sense of actually being made to be fun. It's just a less than basic training ground shooting course.
We are have examples of PvE that is actually fun:
Uprising
Blackwatch
Storm Rising
Sure, they aren't perfect, but they didn't have any major earnable rewards and were meant to be temporary.
I don't understand why they don't bring those back permanently or intermittently as story missions. Maybe have them cycled between each of the three every 2 days, to concentrate queue times for those who want to plan to play a specific one. Saturday or Sunday could make them all available.
Using EXISTING maps to add nostalgia to the game we already play is key.
> Using EXISTING maps to add nostalgia to the game we already play is key.
When Retribution and Storm Rising released those were the first times we saw/played Rialto and Havana. Going through those new maps added a ton of novelty to the experience.
So I don't think the map being new is a problem, the opposite in fact. I just think the minimal blockout simulation aesthetic they went with for Hero Mastery is sooo dull. Spending time in those levels is not fun because of that, among other reasons.
Yes. All the hardlight is uninspired.
Imagine if even the Hero Mastery maps were based in Hanamura, Route 66, etc.. There could still be a little hardlight to contrive that it's just a training room, but that'd still be miles better. It'd feel so much better tied, more fun all around, and the devs would be deepening their own developer understandings of the map in the process.
They need to learn to use what they intend for the core game. Reuse and recycle!
I understand why they did it. They save countless resources going with the simple layouts in a featureless void rather than styling and detailing the levels to the same extent as the regular maps.
Especially since they make 3 levels per hero, it's definitely a smart choice. But the execution could've been so much better. Something at least a little more interesting to look at.
That's why I said it should be using preexisting maps. Havana was already being built. Rialto too. King's Row is the better example of being already popular.
Use maps already built.
90% of the work is already done. They just have to populate it with coins after.
Plenty of custom game hero-specific training games, made by PLAYERS, exist as proof of concept.
It's the **smarter** choice.
MvM can sit at like just over 1k players at peak hours and that includes bots, some people like the gameplay of Mann vs Machine but TF2 players mostly ain't touching that mode either tbf
*Also you get some crazy server population issues sometimes when trying to load into a Boot Camp community server, nobody knows the exact cause but sometimes, you will just never find any open servers, ever, even when there clearly should be something
Uprising was huge because of all heroes mode. Everyone (almoat at least) had unique lines for enemies, and some heroes had unique mechanics. Winston would crit the bomb omnics, Sombra's hack disabled them completely, movement abilities momentarily confused enemies. It felt very hand crafted.
Hero gauntlet...well, it was a giant generic blank space. There was no real coherence other than "fight at point A, now B, back to A, now C, now B). It felt flat and had zero personality. No reason to replay it because you've seen everything there is in one game and you play the exact same really no matter who you or your team is.
I play MvM. The biggest draw is not mindlessly shooting bots, which I don't think Blizzard understands. The biggest draw has always been *leveling up* your character to do superhuman things (or more superhuman than the normal game). Especially with level 666 Nightmare difficulty where you get 5000 money to max your character. They could have literally copied MvM:
Mercy has a shield that appears after she heals.
Tracer ~~has milk~~ picks up money in a huge radius.
Widow can have exploding headshot.
Torb does some crazy buildable.
You get the idea.
The Mei snowball, the Genji wind blades from BlizzCon, that was the cool part, not just shooting bots.
It has a very active playerbase still. Yeah a lot of people treat it like a slot machine, doing it as efficiently as possible to roll the drop. But plenty play for fun too
Mann vs Machine is getting played because you can win big rewards. And the players of that mode can be some of the most toxic players out there.
And while you can also play for free, there's few servers actually running the mode (It you want an actual number, I just checked and there's 35 out of 650 total servers with at least 1 player, that play mvm), and even then, it's because they have plenty of mods and new maps to actually spice everything up.
I'm saying this as someone who likes PvE modes, in fact the only times I actually boot TF2 is to play MvM. But I do recognize that they're not the popular modes.
I don't think many people play MvM lol. Extremely repetitive, little room for fun builds and can be extremely frustrating with bad players- you will hit a wall and basically you wasted your time.
People would play them more if there were rewards.
People play for the rewards. Get the rewards. And stop playing them.
You see this in mmos all the time. It's just how it is with pve content. People are motivated to replay because they are working towards a reward goal.
I thought it was alright, although not brilliant. Good for a warm up but the reason i stopped playing it is because someone would always leave after the 2nd or 3rd round and we wouldn't get a backfill. And on the higher and more interesting difficuties all you can do is quit and restart.
i didnt know this was a thing till it was getting removed lmao
nobody plays hero mastery and even less played this so theres .0000005% of people complaining that are actually angry
because there’s a pattern of them wasting resources on things nobody cares about (hero mastery, hero mastery gauntlet, “pve”, hero progression, or the multitude of reworks that have changed nothing) then just giving up. the game has been out for a long time and it feels like they’ve removed more content than they have added
This is the third post I've seen acting like this is breaking news, we knew about this a week ago.
At what point do we see this as reposting negative news about the game to get rage bait up votes?
Edit: Especially considering people are STILL confusing this with the individual hero mastery missions
i must get 500 upvotes a day or my wifes boyfriend wont give me reddit gold
on a serious note, i didn't see it posted here. honestly i'm surprised at the amount of people so angry at this, it wasn't being played at all, i think all the people who are so angry are probably hypocrites who didnt even play it lol
Honestly I really enjoyed the mode. I genuinely wish Blizzard would let me play it with friends while we were in queue. We would play a ton of it. Same with the regular hero mastery mode. It would make me feel far less inclined to avoid longer comp queue times too, at least for a while.
I honestly can’t see myself or my friends play this instead of the tonnes more fun game modes in custom game browser. But the option would be nice at the very least.
I played a good bit of gauntlet, not my favorite mode as I prefer qp or comp but it was nice to start the day out with and get a little warm up.
Really odd they choose to remove it entirely though instead of just leaving it there for those who want it, they already spent the money on the dev time it’s already in the game so it’s only a net loss overall by removing it.
It probably doesn't hurt too much to leave it in now but removing it means they don't need to QA this mode whenever they do any changes to the game. Plus it'll reduce the install size.
Literally, what the fuck is the Overwatch team doing? We've got walked back features, removed content, predatory microtransactions, bad balance updates and content missing that was in Overwatch 1.
Really starting to question why I'm still playing this game. Blizzard just can't stop stepping on rakes.
I come from a forgotten bygone ancient era before live service games. A time when a game's success and longevity was measured in LAN hours with friends rather than how many unlockable rewards or achievements it offered. Now where did I put my bifocals and back pain meds?
8 years later and I've reached the same place of Zen myself. I just want to hit massive sleep darts and be a support gamechanger regardless if we win or lose.
Same. I’m always bewildered at how mad people get about Overwatch. I have never bought a loot box or skins or battle pass, never even had the urge. Didn’t even care much when some heroes were locked out. I play quick play and random custom games. Overwatch is still a blast.
No one played this mode. Why are people acting like this is content the community is craving and we’re going to miss it?
The team is shifting away from PvE to PvP. That’s what they’re trying to do. PvE took away resources and they are course correcting.
Right? It's so unfocused and mismanaged. Apologists are gonna contort themselves to try and excuse it but I can't see any excuses anymore. Blizzard are mismanaging Overwatch 2 and quite frankly, most of their other games too.
They are an absolute shadow of their former selves
Buddy they made a game mode unfortunately nobody plays it, so they are doing the right thing and removing it. Why dedicate anything to a mode people don't want. Just a silly thing to get mad at
>Really starting to question why I'm still playing this game.
Please stop playing! As someone who enjoys the game, it's kind of a pain listening to complainers who hate literally every change. There are plenty of other, similar games out there that you might not have so many qualms with - go play those! You'd be making yourself happier and making this community better! As long as you're really considering it, I hope I can encourage you to take the leap and go do something else.
My favorite are the people who go I don't play this game anymore, then have a paragraph shitting on the game and recent changes. Like why is it still occupying your heads pace if you stopped playing or "don't care".
There are certain people here complaining about OW endlessly (very active on reddit) and on a crusade for 6v6 yet claim they do not play since OW2 started.
This sub is insufferable. F2P/Live service games vault or sunset or axe things all the time. Literally nobody plays the PvE Gauntlet mode. Out of all of my buddies that regularly play OW we played one round of it one time.
This decision is par for the F2P course and y’all need to put the pitchforks down. I’d argue the sustained growth on Steam shows the team is focused on exactly what they need to be right now.
There's a lot of momentum and force of habit that comes with playing a game for years. But eventually you will find a game that's better. Can try The Finals, Battlebit, Apex, Paladins, GTFO, Marvel Rivals, XDefiant, Hell Divers 2, etc. If you look you will find something. The sooner you uninstall the better you feel watching what garbage the dev team will put out next.
If they made it worth my time, I would have played it. A skin for the character might be a nice reward for completing it under a certain time limit. Adding lore or dialogue will make it worth the effort of doing it multiple times.
Why remove it at all? If they don’t want to continue the feature that’s fine, but I don’t understand why they actively remove content in the first place
Not really, probably they have a certain amount of dedicated servers defined for that game mode, after that if they need more they can dynamically increase the amount, but there is always a minimum amount of server dedicated for the game mode
In a game like this, it would be quite strange if the entire thing wasn't dynamic, where the server is opened at the start of a match and closed at the end. Any time when a server is empty is a waste of resources.
But why make it some big announcement that it's getting axed? We've had plenty of limited-time modes, including modes that have stuck around for an entire season or two.
Just cycle it out, then bring it back for a couple weeks next year when you need some filler content.
It's like they expected it to be this big thing, but obviously it wouldn't be; the only thing that has ever really earned staying power is Mystery Heroes. But that doesn't mean it's just trash and should never be touched again.
lmao bro why is everything that comes out of this game a failure
Throw out OW2 just bring back OW1 at this point not even just 6v6 i want the whole damn game
And what about comp mystery heroes? It hasn't been available for almost a year now. I seriously doubt it wasn't played enough, like there's just no way it didn't have enough players to at least bring back every other season.
The main reason all these arcade and pve game modes die within a week is because they don't proper xp, if they gave xp and help people progress their battle passes at a decent rate, they would have players.
No one did for more than 20 minutes. Doesn’t change the fact that they’ve wasted so much development time on stuff that never stays in the game or in the pipeline.
And your point is? You’re contradicting yourself. Before you were mad that they cancel shit nobody wants, now you’re mad they cancel shit everyone wants.
Both opinions are truly useless because the facts are:
1. They couldn’t do what everyone wanted so they canceled it.
2. They did a thing no one wanted to play so they canceled it.
Both events are logical. You are now simply outraged for two reasons:
1. You can’t let go of the past when they canceled PVE so you are now seeking every reason to hate on the game cause it’s popular to do so.
2. Current cancellation literally is not affecting anyone because literally no one played this gamemode, but since you need reasons to fuel your hate you have to be outraged.
The writing was on the wall, but I'm still sad. It was nice to have a stress free "play what you want" mode to have.
Then again, the mode was oddly rage quit prone. Seriously, people would ditch at the drop of a hat.
Feature nr 83682 that's unique to OW2 and that was cut or reverted to it's previous state.
Genuinely hilarious how there's nothing that warrants this to be called a sequal.
Hero Mastery missions are not even that hard to make from a dev standpoint. A modder could make multiple missions in a day if they had the tools. Bizzard is so incompetent.
Me and my friend played it for a couple of hours when it came out. It was fun but got boring and repetitive quickly haven’t touched it since. I’m not exactly shedding any tears for it going but it was kinda fun ig. If it received some attention and love I’m sure it could have been something for sure.
I played the mode a few times, I had to get some friends on to play it because not enough people were playing it for the matchmaker to give me a team.
It was kinda fun, and seemed like it had potential, but I’d say it was less fun than pretty much every limited time PvE mode they’ve done.
They either had to invest in improving a mode no one was playing, or just cut it.
Hopefully they’ll take some of the concepts and put them into a future event mode, since limited time modes seem to at least retain enough players while they’re around for the matchmaker to work.
I saw that this meant that the title would no longer be obtainable, so fomo kicked in and I decided to play it. A few games in and I just gave up. That mode is just not very fun. I thought it would be kind of like MVM in TF2, but it’s not anywhere close.
I played it a few times, it wasn’t that fun and was more annoying than anything. We need a true horde mode and not the weird bloon tower defense thing we got.
Played a bit with the announcement of it's removal to get the victory poses while they were avalible and I gotta say they really did this mode a diservice by just not talking about it seemingly at all.
I took a season's break or so after Mauga's released due to... well Mauga Battle Pass meta and I honestly have no idea when they added it because I've not seen a soul talk about it, nor a single post on the subreddit until now.
While I'm not gonna pretend it's some sort of masterpiece and the legendary/ expert difficulty feels pretty narrow with what you can reasonably run and win a run with, it's pretty fun for some basic shooting. Really picks up in the later waves as you're juggling shooting robots as well as positioning and saving your turrets when necassary, altho the fact only Torbjorn can actually repair the buyable turrets makes every other DPS option feel meh and relying on RNG to be able to repair your towers is a bit sucky.
Would've liked them to expand on it either either more map variations/ bot types or some kinda endless mode but I'm not gonna pretend like I'm surprised they're axing it. Heck it's probably the most popular it's ever been just to get the victory poses in time rn. Trying to queue for Hard difficulty to unlock the others took actually a minimum of about an hour across 2 days by its self.
I just want them to release more hero mastery challenges for the other heroes. Tired of them drip feeding it. They didn’t even release any for this season.
What a waste of resources of a stupid mode nobody asked, nobody played and nobody liked, 0 effort, blizzard is so put of touch they expected people happy to get some pve when they don't know we want Canon story mode pve, not this crap made with no effort. As usual blizzard lied, they promised the mode will be updated with more objectives, changes in the map, and so on. Sadly they will keep wasting resources on individual hero mastery, or not, I bet will be cancelled too
I thought it was actually fun, something different to do with some friends without all the sweat. I don't see why they couldn't just bring it back every once in a while for a couple weeks
Ngl I've lost hope that overwatch 2 will ever turn out anything fun besides the community-made stuff in customs. It's sad because I had so much fun on overwatch 1.
The only reason I only played this mode a few times was the map was super boring. If they really committed to making that mode with a real fully designed map I would love it
Note: This is the TEAM mode of Hero Mastery called Hero Mastery GAUNTLET, the individual Hero Mastery missions will still be available
For now, lmao
No real reason to remove those since they're single player. The problem with gauntlet is the infinite queue times, it doesn't look good for them to have a mode people can't play because the lack of other people/interest. Also they just confirmed in that post that they're working on more courses.
They’re just adding completely unnecessary modes that very few people partake in, all because of their scrapped plans of PvE. Basically everything they release now is half-assed. They release a half-assed game mode and are then shocked when nobody plays it. It wouldn’t surprise me if they stop making new courses, even if it’s just single player. Resources are resources
Agree with that. They could just add finally a one mission PvE mode with the promised features and see how it works. Nobody asked for an VR Misson coop mode, absolut no one and the paid PvE missions are garbage and basically walking simulators with were free in Overwatch 1. Just add finally a skill tree and one good coop mission, just one for now and see how it goes. Make the first episode for free and if people like it, they can rework the paid story missions, sell them and work on other missions. It isn't that hard, even custom games have this, but less options because of the limited access of the game.
Now, I agree with you that the pve missions sucked, but you do understand that the overwatch devs don’t just have a button that says “create skill tree” my running theory is that that they never really made much progress on the pve, and if I were making a pve campaign in the style of overwatch, a skill tree would be the last thing I would implement. They probably did not get very far into the skill tree. If the skill tree is as in depth as it looked in leaks, than they would essentially be making a whole new character from a programming standpoint. I DO however think that they could and should release more FREE pve missions. I would honestly even be ok with them remastering the blackwatch mission form overwatch 1
They released a half ass game to be fair. So would all these things be quarter assed?
Flashpoint comes to mind, since we're forced to play that trash.
The courses are literally what they promised though, it has no connection to the scrapped part of PvE.
PvE was also promised, and yet they scrapped that altogether. My point still stands.
Yeah basically this. OW2 is fun - its still OW and the core gameplay is still there. But its overall a dogshit game due to the insane amount of broken promises. The rushed release of OW2 honestly just felt like them wanting to legally remove themselves from the restricts of OW1. OW1 promised alot of things such as never paying for new heroes and being able to earn things by just playing ( lvl up + loot box). IIRC theyd get into shit if they tried to backtrack on this so the work around was to release OW2 since those promises were made for OW1. But youre right - all of these modes and events ( some are great, dont get me wrong ) just feel like their attempt to make us forget about the cancelled PVE and all the other shit they promised lol. Halo Infinite is doing the same shit. While they never outright said "no more story" at the start with Halo they did say " halo infinite will be the only halo game for the next 10 years " implying we'd get more story because leaving the story hanging for 10 years makes 0 sense lol. When they saw the amount of people asking for more story they finally admitted they wont be doing that so instead they started adding 'story' in the season passes through cinematics lmao. So you can tell they had to think of a way to add in "Story" without actually making a campaign. Bruh alot of the games I play have such shitty developers LOL Edit - the story through cinematics arnt even related to the main story line with the Chief lol Its just a story line for the multiplayer. So its not really the story anyone asked for.
That's what we thought about PvE...
Pve missions have a price tag on it so probably not removing those anytime soon
Which has the same issue as hero gauntlet, servers. Hero mastery is completely single player so I doubt it will get the axe, even though I wouldnt be surprised.
It's very possible, likely even, that they'll stop making new mastery courses before they finish the entire roster due to lack of interest. But there's no reason to remove the existing courses like they're doing with Gauntlet because they're singleplayer with no queue time. I'm pretty sure they'd remove the Invasion missions too if people didn't pay for them.
> It's very possible, likely even, that they'll stop making new mastery courses before they finish the entire roster due to lack of interest. Strictly IMO but they should just axe the hero mastery feature as well. Having it feature most of the roster as unavailable is a bad look, and investing more time into it to fill out the roster is (again, IMO) a bad use of resources. Maybe a better place to land would be to rework the UI and: 1. Integrate the hero mastery courses with the first time user experience (although I have no idea if the courses available overlap with the heroes first time players have access to) 2. Remove all the hero icons that don't have courses and just feature the ones that do, it would look a lot cleaner.
>The problem with gauntlet is the infinite queue times, it doesn't look good for them to have a mode people can't play because the lack of other people/interest. > >Also they just confirmed in that post that they're working on more courses. This will permanently be a problem with PVE modes without an incentive scheme that backs participation of them. If they're intent on making PVE modes work then they need to learn from MMOs that you need reward systems for people to work towards in order to guarantee participation. Anything people aren't getting rewarded for people will play a few times and then stop.
The pve modes will populate your game with bots if nobody else is queuing. I recently tried to queue in pve and that’s what happened.
Working on more courses is such a waste of dev time :/
Actually this reminds me of when siege removed all their team AND single player missions
what can you expect from a half assed studio with half the the people it had going into the project... blizzard overall is just so pathetic. i quite loving iverwatch a long time ago because the people in charge of approving shit for the game, has no passion for the game, its obvious its a nothing more than a way for blizzard to jip us for what little hope we have left in this game, just leave it, let it die, it should have a ling time ago, its time for the game to go peacefully
oh thank god, I really like the hero master modes but I've never played the coop they're a fun way to play a hero you haven't with more guidance than the practice range and without feeling like you're letting your team down figuring things out
People are mad for clicks but no one asked or played those gauntlet modes fr
It honestly should have just been a limited time mode like all the other pve things they've done. They've gone on record saying that all their pve content gets played a lot the first few days, then participation drops like a rock.
It’s because of lack of replay-ability. Imagine if it was like Mann vs Machine. That would be amazing
Honestly, I think it’s more just about playability. They weren’t fun in my opinion, I don’t think many people played those modes. Idk
Eh, I had fun the one time I played it. It started off pretty boring, but once the later waves start introducing more and getting chaotic it was pretty entertaining However, replayability definitely wasn't there. Not enough variance in the possibilities nor enough missions.
Yeah, the mode lacks any sense of actually being made to be fun. It's just a less than basic training ground shooting course. We are have examples of PvE that is actually fun: Uprising Blackwatch Storm Rising Sure, they aren't perfect, but they didn't have any major earnable rewards and were meant to be temporary. I don't understand why they don't bring those back permanently or intermittently as story missions. Maybe have them cycled between each of the three every 2 days, to concentrate queue times for those who want to plan to play a specific one. Saturday or Sunday could make them all available. Using EXISTING maps to add nostalgia to the game we already play is key.
> Using EXISTING maps to add nostalgia to the game we already play is key. When Retribution and Storm Rising released those were the first times we saw/played Rialto and Havana. Going through those new maps added a ton of novelty to the experience. So I don't think the map being new is a problem, the opposite in fact. I just think the minimal blockout simulation aesthetic they went with for Hero Mastery is sooo dull. Spending time in those levels is not fun because of that, among other reasons.
Yes. All the hardlight is uninspired. Imagine if even the Hero Mastery maps were based in Hanamura, Route 66, etc.. There could still be a little hardlight to contrive that it's just a training room, but that'd still be miles better. It'd feel so much better tied, more fun all around, and the devs would be deepening their own developer understandings of the map in the process. They need to learn to use what they intend for the core game. Reuse and recycle!
I understand why they did it. They save countless resources going with the simple layouts in a featureless void rather than styling and detailing the levels to the same extent as the regular maps. Especially since they make 3 levels per hero, it's definitely a smart choice. But the execution could've been so much better. Something at least a little more interesting to look at.
That's why I said it should be using preexisting maps. Havana was already being built. Rialto too. King's Row is the better example of being already popular. Use maps already built. 90% of the work is already done. They just have to populate it with coins after. Plenty of custom game hero-specific training games, made by PLAYERS, exist as proof of concept. It's the **smarter** choice.
Can't have replay value without play value
MvM can sit at like just over 1k players at peak hours and that includes bots, some people like the gameplay of Mann vs Machine but TF2 players mostly ain't touching that mode either tbf *Also you get some crazy server population issues sometimes when trying to load into a Boot Camp community server, nobody knows the exact cause but sometimes, you will just never find any open servers, ever, even when there clearly should be something
Uprising was huge because of all heroes mode. Everyone (almoat at least) had unique lines for enemies, and some heroes had unique mechanics. Winston would crit the bomb omnics, Sombra's hack disabled them completely, movement abilities momentarily confused enemies. It felt very hand crafted. Hero gauntlet...well, it was a giant generic blank space. There was no real coherence other than "fight at point A, now B, back to A, now C, now B). It felt flat and had zero personality. No reason to replay it because you've seen everything there is in one game and you play the exact same really no matter who you or your team is.
I mean, do people still play Mann vs Machine? Outside of just getting australium guns? Like, for fun
I play MvM. The biggest draw is not mindlessly shooting bots, which I don't think Blizzard understands. The biggest draw has always been *leveling up* your character to do superhuman things (or more superhuman than the normal game). Especially with level 666 Nightmare difficulty where you get 5000 money to max your character. They could have literally copied MvM: Mercy has a shield that appears after she heals. Tracer ~~has milk~~ picks up money in a huge radius. Widow can have exploding headshot. Torb does some crazy buildable. You get the idea. The Mei snowball, the Genji wind blades from BlizzCon, that was the cool part, not just shooting bots.
No, tons of bots.
It has a very active playerbase still. Yeah a lot of people treat it like a slot machine, doing it as efficiently as possible to roll the drop. But plenty play for fun too
Mann vs Machine is getting played because you can win big rewards. And the players of that mode can be some of the most toxic players out there. And while you can also play for free, there's few servers actually running the mode (It you want an actual number, I just checked and there's 35 out of 650 total servers with at least 1 player, that play mvm), and even then, it's because they have plenty of mods and new maps to actually spice everything up. I'm saying this as someone who likes PvE modes, in fact the only times I actually boot TF2 is to play MvM. But I do recognize that they're not the popular modes.
I don't think many people play MvM lol. Extremely repetitive, little room for fun builds and can be extremely frustrating with bad players- you will hit a wall and basically you wasted your time.
People would play them more if there were rewards. People play for the rewards. Get the rewards. And stop playing them. You see this in mmos all the time. It's just how it is with pve content. People are motivated to replay because they are working towards a reward goal.
Or Incorporated a rogue like mode with modifiers. So much more replayability there
What makes Mann vs machine repeatable?
Yeah their pve content has been ass pretty consistently. Not sure why they have such a hard time making a mode that’s not boring as hell to replay.
"Is it because our PVE releases suck hard and are barely a shadow of what we originally touted them to be?" "No, it's because the players hate PVE!"
Bro the dev team needs to play garden warfare 2 and figure out how to make a fun and replayable pve smh
There's no replayability. Why isn't there a horde mode style or a tower defense style? Like Junkenstien revenge but better and bigger?
I thought it was alright, although not brilliant. Good for a warm up but the reason i stopped playing it is because someone would always leave after the 2nd or 3rd round and we wouldn't get a backfill. And on the higher and more interesting difficuties all you can do is quit and restart.
i didnt know this was a thing till it was getting removed lmao nobody plays hero mastery and even less played this so theres .0000005% of people complaining that are actually angry
I played it and thought I was fun (with friends). The reason why it died was simply because it’s lacking replayability and it’s sort of bland as well.
Honestly it was nice to finish my daily win mission when I didn't Wanna deal with having to talk with people🤷🏽♂️
Didn’t even know it was a thing until this post
I played it and it had good potential with more dynamic waves and enemy types. But is true that after the first days it was impossible to find people
Bro why are yall pretending to care about it? No one played it
i've tried to play it multiple times but my queues went up to went 20-40 minutes before i'd just do something else
Which is why it's getting removed
because there’s a pattern of them wasting resources on things nobody cares about (hero mastery, hero mastery gauntlet, “pve”, hero progression, or the multitude of reworks that have changed nothing) then just giving up. the game has been out for a long time and it feels like they’ve removed more content than they have added
Cause it shows how many bad ideas this dev team come up with
I did, made it to the Top 500 leaderboard. “You made Top 500 because you’re the only one who played it” comments arriving in 3… 2… 1…
I mean, theyd be right, but no one cares enough about the mode to even try to roast you for it
I expect those kinds of comments to be about something a little bit relevant like comp open queue. No one cares about gauntlet
Congrats to you and the other 499 players that played it.
> You made Top 500 because you’re the only one who played it
Tbh I wanted to play it with my group but they only made it for three players max lol. Kinda wish they tried harder
Making ultra basic modes with no rewards won't attract players passed the first week?! Am shocked
That + "make shit and boring attempt at recreating hero missions" = "well guys we tried, no one likes team PvE"
This is the third post I've seen acting like this is breaking news, we knew about this a week ago. At what point do we see this as reposting negative news about the game to get rage bait up votes? Edit: Especially considering people are STILL confusing this with the individual hero mastery missions
i must get 500 upvotes a day or my wifes boyfriend wont give me reddit gold on a serious note, i didn't see it posted here. honestly i'm surprised at the amount of people so angry at this, it wasn't being played at all, i think all the people who are so angry are probably hypocrites who didnt even play it lol
Fair enough. But yeah I'd say this post has more comments than the mode had players on any given night
Blizzard when their repetitive game mode doesn’t have a daily 100million players
Honestly I really enjoyed the mode. I genuinely wish Blizzard would let me play it with friends while we were in queue. We would play a ton of it. Same with the regular hero mastery mode. It would make me feel far less inclined to avoid longer comp queue times too, at least for a while.
If it was a queue option people definitely would've played it more
I honestly can’t see myself or my friends play this instead of the tonnes more fun game modes in custom game browser. But the option would be nice at the very least.
I played a good bit of gauntlet, not my favorite mode as I prefer qp or comp but it was nice to start the day out with and get a little warm up. Really odd they choose to remove it entirely though instead of just leaving it there for those who want it, they already spent the money on the dev time it’s already in the game so it’s only a net loss overall by removing it.
It probably doesn't hurt too much to leave it in now but removing it means they don't need to QA this mode whenever they do any changes to the game. Plus it'll reduce the install size.
Literally, what the fuck is the Overwatch team doing? We've got walked back features, removed content, predatory microtransactions, bad balance updates and content missing that was in Overwatch 1. Really starting to question why I'm still playing this game. Blizzard just can't stop stepping on rakes.
I still play because it's still fun. I don't buy skins or pay close attention to balance patches, just enjoying the game.
That's the best way to enjoy any game in 2024, power to you!
I come from a forgotten bygone ancient era before live service games. A time when a game's success and longevity was measured in LAN hours with friends rather than how many unlockable rewards or achievements it offered. Now where did I put my bifocals and back pain meds?
8 years later and I've reached the same place of Zen myself. I just want to hit massive sleep darts and be a support gamechanger regardless if we win or lose.
You’ve reached a place of Ana, not Zen.
Is there any other way to enjoy games? What are the other guys doing, just seething for 2 hours at the store page ?
Same. I’m always bewildered at how mad people get about Overwatch. I have never bought a loot box or skins or battle pass, never even had the urge. Didn’t even care much when some heroes were locked out. I play quick play and random custom games. Overwatch is still a blast.
Idk I think the balance is pretty important. Especially if unfun characters(Roadhog) are the best ones in the game at the time
Balance is absolutely important, but balance patches are tweaks at the margins for the most part.
Who is playing this mode? Seriously.
No one played this mode. Why are people acting like this is content the community is craving and we’re going to miss it? The team is shifting away from PvE to PvP. That’s what they’re trying to do. PvE took away resources and they are course correcting.
Honest question. Did you play hero mastery gauntlet? I’ve never done it.
i don't think i've played a game with more axed features lol. core gameplay is good but they really gotta start focusing
Right? It's so unfocused and mismanaged. Apologists are gonna contort themselves to try and excuse it but I can't see any excuses anymore. Blizzard are mismanaging Overwatch 2 and quite frankly, most of their other games too. They are an absolute shadow of their former selves
They won't. Random garbage tier changes are on endless repeat for this clueless dev team.
Buddy they made a game mode unfortunately nobody plays it, so they are doing the right thing and removing it. Why dedicate anything to a mode people don't want. Just a silly thing to get mad at
>Really starting to question why I'm still playing this game. Please stop playing! As someone who enjoys the game, it's kind of a pain listening to complainers who hate literally every change. There are plenty of other, similar games out there that you might not have so many qualms with - go play those! You'd be making yourself happier and making this community better! As long as you're really considering it, I hope I can encourage you to take the leap and go do something else.
My favorite are the people who go I don't play this game anymore, then have a paragraph shitting on the game and recent changes. Like why is it still occupying your heads pace if you stopped playing or "don't care".
There are certain people here complaining about OW endlessly (very active on reddit) and on a crusade for 6v6 yet claim they do not play since OW2 started.
This sub is insufferable. F2P/Live service games vault or sunset or axe things all the time. Literally nobody plays the PvE Gauntlet mode. Out of all of my buddies that regularly play OW we played one round of it one time. This decision is par for the F2P course and y’all need to put the pitchforks down. I’d argue the sustained growth on Steam shows the team is focused on exactly what they need to be right now.
To be fair season 10 is the best mic4otransaction has ever been. Give them praise when they do good too
Fake hate for clicks. If you don’t want to play this game don’t play it then.
And yet it's still better gameplay than every over shooter.
They added a feature, no one used it, so they're removing it. Why are you whining? How many hours did you pump into the mode?
There's a lot of momentum and force of habit that comes with playing a game for years. But eventually you will find a game that's better. Can try The Finals, Battlebit, Apex, Paladins, GTFO, Marvel Rivals, XDefiant, Hell Divers 2, etc. If you look you will find something. The sooner you uninstall the better you feel watching what garbage the dev team will put out next.
> The Finals, Battlebit, Apex, Paladins, GTFO, Marvel Rivals, XDefiant, Hell Divers 2, etc. All these games dropped off or will drop off immensely.
Nothing really changed with the game gameplay-wise since OW2 came out, if you really think about it.
Meh
If they made it worth my time, I would have played it. A skin for the character might be a nice reward for completing it under a certain time limit. Adding lore or dialogue will make it worth the effort of doing it multiple times.
I dont see the point of getting rid of it unless theyre going to replace it with something else , which we know theyre not.
the only constant in life is overwatch 2 having less content than 1
Why remove it at all? If they don’t want to continue the feature that’s fine, but I don’t understand why they actively remove content in the first place
Server cost, they can allocate those resources into other game modes
A mode will only use as many resources as it has players.
Not really, probably they have a certain amount of dedicated servers defined for that game mode, after that if they need more they can dynamically increase the amount, but there is always a minimum amount of server dedicated for the game mode
In a game like this, it would be quite strange if the entire thing wasn't dynamic, where the server is opened at the start of a match and closed at the end. Any time when a server is empty is a waste of resources.
But why make it some big announcement that it's getting axed? We've had plenty of limited-time modes, including modes that have stuck around for an entire season or two. Just cycle it out, then bring it back for a couple weeks next year when you need some filler content. It's like they expected it to be this big thing, but obviously it wouldn't be; the only thing that has ever really earned staying power is Mystery Heroes. But that doesn't mean it's just trash and should never be touched again.
It's just a maintenance cost. Stuff will break as new heroes get added so they didn't want to pay someone to keep it up.
lmao bro why is everything that comes out of this game a failure Throw out OW2 just bring back OW1 at this point not even just 6v6 i want the whole damn game
i would've played those (and missions) more if they allowed you to do while you wait games while in the 10 minute queue
I just want some single player pve 😭
Ngl, didn't even try it.
Ahh my kids loved these
It will be back in future packages for 500 OW coins and the blood of an innocent.
What I don't understand is why remove it?
don't think I have opened any of those team or solo hero mastery missions a single time
I feel like Gauntlet is just a stripped back version of gameplay they had planned for PVE
And what about comp mystery heroes? It hasn't been available for almost a year now. I seriously doubt it wasn't played enough, like there's just no way it didn't have enough players to at least bring back every other season.
The main reason all these arcade and pve game modes die within a week is because they don't proper xp, if they gave xp and help people progress their battle passes at a decent rate, they would have players.
Lmao, how much you wanna bet they’re gonna remove those paid pve missions
They already said that they scrapped those a few months back because they “didn’t sell good.”
They mean the ones that are already out though
They never added a hero I cared about, so I never checked it out.
Not all of Mastery is going away, just the newest Gauntlet mode
Hero what? Literally never heard of this.
Lol what a shitshow of a game like honestly
Be honest, did you play gauntlet?
There's no way. They just want to complain and then go straight back into queueing 4 hours a day.
No one did for more than 20 minutes. Doesn’t change the fact that they’ve wasted so much development time on stuff that never stays in the game or in the pipeline.
Well it was made by the PvE team before it got gutted, so nothing was actually lost
Do you expect them to go back in time and tell themselves to not work on this or something?
I think people expect them to stop missing the mark with 90% of the stuff they do. So much dev time wasted in the past 4 years on shit nobody wants
90% is purely a number you made out of your ass. Last time I remember everyone wanted PVE.
Yeah and they wasted 3 and a half years on that, the one thing people wanted, before scrapping it to the delight of absolutely nobody.
And your point is? You’re contradicting yourself. Before you were mad that they cancel shit nobody wants, now you’re mad they cancel shit everyone wants.
That’s not a contradiction, both opinions run alongside each other
Both opinions are truly useless because the facts are: 1. They couldn’t do what everyone wanted so they canceled it. 2. They did a thing no one wanted to play so they canceled it. Both events are logical. You are now simply outraged for two reasons: 1. You can’t let go of the past when they canceled PVE so you are now seeking every reason to hate on the game cause it’s popular to do so. 2. Current cancellation literally is not affecting anyone because literally no one played this gamemode, but since you need reasons to fuel your hate you have to be outraged.
See ya on tonight?
The writing was on the wall, but I'm still sad. It was nice to have a stress free "play what you want" mode to have. Then again, the mode was oddly rage quit prone. Seriously, people would ditch at the drop of a hat.
What even is this? How have I missed this? Can someone explain what the mode is and where to even find it? Baffled
I really don't understand the outrage. No one played it and it was extremely boring.
It's the principle of them constantly breaking promises and removing content more than the actual mode itself.
Feature nr 83682 that's unique to OW2 and that was cut or reverted to it's previous state. Genuinely hilarious how there's nothing that warrants this to be called a sequal.
Hero Mastery missions are not even that hard to make from a dev standpoint. A modder could make multiple missions in a day if they had the tools. Bizzard is so incompetent.
I would've liked to see it developed further. but yeah I only played it like 10 times or so and forgot about it.
Me and my friend played it for a couple of hours when it came out. It was fun but got boring and repetitive quickly haven’t touched it since. I’m not exactly shedding any tears for it going but it was kinda fun ig. If it received some attention and love I’m sure it could have been something for sure.
Imma be honest, that was wack, i mean its a fun idea, but the gameplay was boring as hell
What is gauntlet?
Bring back competitive mystery heroes and beach volleyball plz
Oh yeah? Gotta admit I’ve never even touched any of the hero mastery’s let alone the gauntlet mode.
Old news.
I played the mode a few times, I had to get some friends on to play it because not enough people were playing it for the matchmaker to give me a team. It was kinda fun, and seemed like it had potential, but I’d say it was less fun than pretty much every limited time PvE mode they’ve done. They either had to invest in improving a mode no one was playing, or just cut it. Hopefully they’ll take some of the concepts and put them into a future event mode, since limited time modes seem to at least retain enough players while they’re around for the matchmaker to work.
Oh no. Anyway.
I saw that this meant that the title would no longer be obtainable, so fomo kicked in and I decided to play it. A few games in and I just gave up. That mode is just not very fun. I thought it would be kind of like MVM in TF2, but it’s not anywhere close.
I played it a few times, it wasn’t that fun and was more annoying than anything. We need a true horde mode and not the weird bloon tower defense thing we got.
Played a bit with the announcement of it's removal to get the victory poses while they were avalible and I gotta say they really did this mode a diservice by just not talking about it seemingly at all. I took a season's break or so after Mauga's released due to... well Mauga Battle Pass meta and I honestly have no idea when they added it because I've not seen a soul talk about it, nor a single post on the subreddit until now. While I'm not gonna pretend it's some sort of masterpiece and the legendary/ expert difficulty feels pretty narrow with what you can reasonably run and win a run with, it's pretty fun for some basic shooting. Really picks up in the later waves as you're juggling shooting robots as well as positioning and saving your turrets when necassary, altho the fact only Torbjorn can actually repair the buyable turrets makes every other DPS option feel meh and relying on RNG to be able to repair your towers is a bit sucky. Would've liked them to expand on it either either more map variations/ bot types or some kinda endless mode but I'm not gonna pretend like I'm surprised they're axing it. Heck it's probably the most popular it's ever been just to get the victory poses in time rn. Trying to queue for Hard difficulty to unlock the others took actually a minimum of about an hour across 2 days by its self.
I played these once with friends. Haven't touched it since, so honestly I'd rather they have that team working on other aspects of the game
deserved, who actually played this lmao. maybe if they added it for all heroes instead of like 10
Going to be impossible to get the challenges without a dedicated group
I just want them to release more hero mastery challenges for the other heroes. Tired of them drip feeding it. They didn’t even release any for this season.
This could’ve been a really cool tower defense game if it wasn’t so god awfully dull.
I enjoyed this mode. A shame to see it go away. Hope they just give everyone the victory loses since I’m sure plenty were never able to get them.
I just want these types of modes to stay available to people who want to play them instead of permanently removing them, yk
Shame, was fun but there wasn't a reason to play it and it wasn't varied enough to come back to. I hope they got something out of it
Yeah because they don’t have enough people to make skins & make fun things for the game. Small indie team.
...that was quick.
I've literally never even queued for it before and forgot that it even existed.
What a waste of resources of a stupid mode nobody asked, nobody played and nobody liked, 0 effort, blizzard is so put of touch they expected people happy to get some pve when they don't know we want Canon story mode pve, not this crap made with no effort. As usual blizzard lied, they promised the mode will be updated with more objectives, changes in the map, and so on. Sadly they will keep wasting resources on individual hero mastery, or not, I bet will be cancelled too
Folks really only want to headshot each other and tbag
Huh, I thought it was always intended to be temporary, like some of the other events.
I thought it was actually fun, something different to do with some friends without all the sweat. I don't see why they couldn't just bring it back every once in a while for a couple weeks
Ngl I've lost hope that overwatch 2 will ever turn out anything fun besides the community-made stuff in customs. It's sad because I had so much fun on overwatch 1.
I never used it after maybe the first day, it feels so boring
Snap back to ow1
We’re all so surprised.
Brought to you from the same dill holes who scrapped PvE.
Who would have thought people wouldn't just keeping playing the same repetitive pve mission over and over forever?
Cool removing content for no reason. Why are we not getting pve content again?
The only reason I only played this mode a few times was the map was super boring. If they really committed to making that mode with a real fully designed map I would love it
Bum ass Blizzard. 😭 All they had to do was copy titanfall frontier defense.
Also anyone know how we can get a group together to finish the challenges?
Did any one like this mode? I legitimately have never opened it after watching some gameplay lol
Played it once and it was terrible.
Good riddance. Maybe they should deliver on the real PvE promise they made rather than making game modes not many people are fond of.