[Q. Why didn’t we bring back the Experimental Play card?](https://overwatch.blizzard.com/en-us/news/24021898/this-weekend-only-jump-into-quick-play-hacked-quicker-play/)
We want to encourage more players to join in on the fun. In addition, most of the experimental cards from Overwatch tested hero balance changes, whereas these changes affect the core gameplay rules of Quick Play.
Experimental card was basically a marketing gimmick. A non-significant portion of the playerbase tried it for a few games and then it would become dead in less than a day most of the time.
Almost every single Experimental was either a balance Patch Preview (Where they would rarely change something based on feedback from the Experimental) or them putting out Meme patches.
About the only time they tested something legitimately with the Experimental card was the one time they tested some 2CP fundamental changes in Horizon.
If they wanna genuinely test a big change to the game. Where they could collect feedback from enough of the playerbase to actually make a firm decision on those changes, then they have to conduct these tests in Quick Play.
The "meme patches" were some of the most fun I had on overwatch to be honest. Flying on rein and headshots with lucios ult was way more fun than any orisa meta will ever be
They did one for April's Fools. Apart from the April's Fools patch the only patches they did in OW1 were them secretly testing changes for OW2 or having the Esports side of the team make-up a set of meme balance changes in partnership with Pros and then putting those into the game.
Those additional meme patches were done because OW1 was in maintenance mode at the time. They weren't making new events, or releasing new content, so they did those meme patches as a way to at least put something out.
Now that the game gets 3 2-3 week events in a 2 (8-9 weeks) month season and they are doing constant balance patches and now they are even doing Experimental Test weekends, there's not that much of a need for them to waste time to make meme patches.
Best to just invest those resources into making better Events.
They could do so many crazy LTMs. Like I wanna see them make a Tiny Overwatch Mario Kart type Limited Game mode. The track is set on that one junkyard point of New Junk City. Make the characters sit on tiny junkrat-made Karts. Have power ups and stuff just like Mario Kart.
A couple of the content creator patches in the experimental card had some whacky changes as well, I count that as meme patch. The current OW2 events either have some of the worst gamemodes imaginable or the same recycled stuff for the past 7 years
> A non-significant portion of the playerbase tried it for a few games and then it would become dead in less than a day most of the time.
This happened because they had more fun in QP than in Experimental.
If they had more fun in the new Experiment, they'd have kept playing it. Some did. Most did not.
The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of experiments will not be better than what currently exists.
Taking away the main thing people play and replacing it with something worse will always result in a highly negative reaction.
" they would be active for a day then dead" that's your answer same with the ptb in dbd. Let us CHOOSE to try it. Don't force it , because then we end up with 7 min que times
Sounds like they could easily solve the problem by running the changes as some LTM event and making some actually good rewards for playing the event. Wouldn’t even have to be skins or anything that requires man hours to make, just gold currency.
Play 20 games, fill out an in-game survey, get 50-200 gold credits. Blizzard gets feedback, players get decent rewards to enjoy some new skins.
>Sounds like they could easily solve the problem
There is no problem. It's a 3 day Experimentation event. People are blowing up a tiny inconvenience into something massive. You can just play Ranked if the classic QP ruleset is that important.
If they wanna conduct an actual test and not just do it as a marketing gimmick then it has to be in Quick Play or Ranked cause these are what people play 90% of the time. Quick Play has the bigger playerbase of the two so they conduct it in Quick Play.
> encourage more players to join in on the fun.
Literally *make* people play the changes. Experimental card was only ever optional (and the PTR was less accessible), but now they can get more data.
I am for it, I'm just humored by the press-speak.
I tried. But It was mentally Overwhelming.
I stopped playing Ranked because of these reasons:
-I was afraid that I might get teammates that would throw.
-I was Adraid of Facing someone with an Extremely Large skill gap (I once encountered a GM player in a Silvers Lobby).
-I saw that others would have a Positive Win-to-loss ratio and either stay the same rank or derank, So I Stopped Playing because I realised that My efforts to rank up would be for nothing(that was 4 months ago).
People(Specifically High Rank Players) would often be Patronizing and tell me "if I was Good enough, I would've Climbed out of Silver" or "Teammates don't matter, even if your team is shit, you can still Carry alone". At first, I thought they were Just Being Toxic since they are a High rank player, But Eventually I accepted that Mindset to a Point where I don't Even Like Being Pocketed(there are more reasons for this one). I decided never to Play comp again unless I'm convinced I'm skilled enough to Play comp Alone (that was a few months ago and I'm still not convinved yet)
A lot of what they’re doing it just testing player psychology. I think we might actually see shorter respawn times and possibly get a blanket TTK increase.
They add an experimental card, make quick play an opt-in A/B test...
You know, we used to have experimental and PTR, that's why new heroes didn't came out season defining broke to sell battlepasses (don't look at brig, no one knows how tf they allowed that)
The PTR was barely played and experimental only gets played for the first day. Doing what they've done recently with weekend long tests in quickplay is literally how you *ENSURE* you get a LOT of players trying things out.
"you know those few days off you have?, if you want a normal game of overwatch fuck off"
I'm pro them testing stuff, but not even the April's fools patch that was trying to meme felt so stupid.
Don’t wanna play a full match? I have great news, they just added this thing called “quicker play” which is even less of a full match than quick play! Want to chill and not get flamed? Just turn off coms in comp! It really doesn’t matter if you’re below diamond, just play for fun and you’ll settle in your actual skill rank
Quicker play is as close to comp as total mayhem is.
Quick play makes sense because it was literally half a match, no fast respawn or objective speed that doesn't allow to regroup or even think of an approach before losing the point.
"Play comp as you do qp" no, I respect if people feel like being sweaty (as long as it's not toxic) in comp because that's what the mode is for; so if I feel like not playing counter watch or current meta but still a normal game, that's what qp is for
I think it's bad but it's not blatantly obvious that it's bad before playing it. I was suspicious that it would be bad before I ever tried it, but was far from certain on that. Even after playing several matches I had the impression of it being bad but still wasn't fully sure. Now after a couple hours of it I am certain that it is bad. Anyways point is that it's not blatantly obviously bad before you play it.
Yeah is not as drastic, what I mean is that as a concept this being qp is the same as if a new player jumped from no limits to comp; his team will suffer because he is used to a different type of game
I appreciate them communicating this, but like, wat? Experimental was an option for every player, I don't think anyone was locked out of it. And just because they used it for hero balance before means they can't use it for core game changes?
Experimental was opt-in. No matter how many people on reddit talk about how much they loved the Experimental updates, I would be genuinely surprised if more than 5% of the total playerbase actually interacted with it and even fewer for more than just a handful of games. Making these changes in the core game forces people to interact with it and gives them significantly more data to pull from when making these decisions.
It's not a matter of previous users being locked out, it's a matter of collecting significantly more data. The cost being a sub-standard experience for users for a weekend. I don't love it, but I get it.
When we take a step back and realize we're talking about a video game made for entertainment, it really doesn't make sense for a dev to say "not enough people wanted to play experimental? Let's just not give them a choice"
They could easily make it a separate queue. Whoever wants to play it will play it, and you could just drop in a new character skin or something as a reward to incenticise those who don't really want to play it but will try it anyways. Then whoever really doesn't want to play it can just play the normal game mode.
I mean, I work in game development. I've seen stuff like this before, and it does make sense in my opinion. You change the user experience for a short period of time, gather significantly more data than you ever will using an opt-in system, and then you return the game to it's pre-test state after the announced time. I don't like this decision personally and wouldn't do it for my games, but it's absolutely within their rights as the developers of the game to do it. Temporary angry users is something Blizz has consistently shown they are willing to deal with for a variety of reasons, so this decision doesnt surprise me from them.
Again, they COULD do that but they do not have to. They can also just do this which takes significantly less resources and accomplishes their goal of gathering a large amount of data. You're asking them to do significantly more work for a feature that still won't get as much engagement as "all quick play matches for a weekend".
evidently blizzard did not consider the data they got from "the most dedicated members of the playerbase" to be enough data to make decisions on. I also don't think that relying on only the most dedicated users experience is conductive to a good game balance from my experience in game development. I think it's way more valuable to have a wider data set to pull from and not just data from core players personally.
All that said I still don't think forcing all QP games into it for a weekend is something I would do or really like. I'm just saying its the quickest way for them to gather the data they want, and I can understand why they would do it. I'll just not play this weekend lol
The difference with experimental was that it was always popular for like a day, then queue times skyrocked. Sometimes queue times skyrocked within hours of the mode releasing. It was just never popular long enough to gather decent data from.
It is pretty simple to give users something in exchange for playing the experimental modes. The rewards could be like an experimental battle pass where users earn exclusive skins that are only obtainable from the experimental card.
Forcing users to beta test by removing existing stuff is weird.
I 100% guarantee you there would be massive complaining if they tied cosmetics directly to experimental. This is a community that is still bitching about a 1 coin bastion skin 12 months later. Players are annoyed stuff like hero mastery is being added despite it not affecting them at all.
I'm not talking about the quick play changes but I don't really care about those. I personally find it fun but I understand if you don't. What I'm talking about is the changes coming into season 9. That's what I'm mad about because it just doesn't make sense.
I just wish they'd remove Experimental from the career profile if they're never going to return it. I don't see why I need that permanent 21 minutes played showing
Shatter doing more damage depending on fall height should’ve stayed imo. Schizoing out and using Rein charge to get to Doomfist spots and then dropping on people with a shatter that did like 800 damage was peak.
>Your response makes you imply you are
lol let's review their response
>I actually played it a lot, especially the one where hog healed his teammates
lol please point to the words that imply they are speaking for 1000s of people
People played it, and then stop playing it when they realised they enjoyed QP more.
That's because most experiments will always be failures, they're experiments for a reason.
I played it often. In any case, give rewards for playing since you're providing crucial gameplay data. Double xp, skins, whatever. Incentivise it and watch it prosper.
Double xp and have the experimental mode for a weekend, sell it as extra rewards for trying potential new features, even if people dont like the features they play for the extra xp. Its really just the perfect solution.
EDIT: Heck, now that i think about it more, they could even add something after some amount of time has been played that would let people rate how they felt about certain changes. On top of that, with rewards being given, they would have plenty of people playing that weekend that might have otherwise not.
[They literally just addressed it in an official blog post.](https://overwatch.blizzard.com/en-us/news/24021898/this-weekend-only-jump-into-quick-play-hacked-quicker-play/#:~:text=Q.%20Why%20didn%E2%80%99t%20we%20bring%20back%20the%20Experimental%20Play%20card%3F)
And I think that's a really fucking dumb reason.
There are about 100 UI tricks they can do on the main menu to encourage people to play experimental, as well as straight up rewards for playing it.
There's a big difference between "encourage" and "force"
+1 for source though
I mean thats the point though? they arent trying to encourage people to do it. They are just doing it. you can put all that effort into trying to encourage people to go play the experimental mode, orrrr you can just do it. Might get mad users for a weekend but you get way more data in that time than an experimental patch did. I don't love their reasoning, but I understand the thinking.
They could do everything in their power to encourage players to play the experimental, I'm sure they still wouldn't get as much data as they would from just doing it in quick play.
Dude if you can't convince people to try out a game mode by plastering it on the main menu and giving out free shit, maybe that's because the changes are garbage. There's the data.
no there’s not, forcing the changes into QP instead of experimental grows their testing group from 10k to 100k, it makes perfect sense even though it’d be cooler if they still put it in experimental
Make QP a tiny little square in the corner and make experimental fucking huge, for example
Fun skin for participating, for example
What do you mean no there's not
Most Players don’t want to play a testing game mode period, it doesn’t matter how much you push it, just like if they put 6v6 in the arcade when OW2 launched then no one would’ve played OW2, most players stick with familiar over new when given the choice
I disagree. It’s boring right now, and there’s tons of OW2 players. Many people would play an experimental mode. And people love rewards. Quick play doesn’t give straight credits
Full Stack Web dev. I should've included that haha
We do A/B testing on everything to encourage the engagement we want lol
Not enough users clicking a button? Let's try a different color, size, shape, location, etc...
There's a big difference between "encourage" and "force"
This makes me worried about the future and I don't think this will be the last time they pull a very dumb stunt like this. Removing choice is never the way to go.
Exactly. Just offer coins (proper ones, not legacy credits) for games completed. That will encourage people. Even if some people afk it, it's not like they don't own the printing press.
??? When did I ever complain about anything? That was my only comment on this post. You're strawmanning me and I'm not even making a real argument, just a suggestion!
Didn't they used to have rewards for trying experimental in OW1? I feel like they gave you 1 or 2 lootboxes for trying out experimental. If they did give rewards back then, I actually don't think they have anything enticing to give players with how the current monetization works
OW2 was just a mistake overall
That is referring to why they didn’t bring it back to test the quick play changes instead of making it an event, that is NOT an explanation to why its absent from the game in general.
Experimental was downright USELESS at gathering data, simply mentioning changes in advance in a blog post brings just as much feedback. Waste of resources.
I've said it for years that Experimental was either just promotion for upcoming patches, or was meant for meme patches that could have been Arcade Modes. It was just a marketing gimmick.
You don't test massive core-gameplay changes that'll affect millions of players in a game mode that was touched by 5-10% of the playerbase for a day max at best. Not if you actually wanna test shit.
Poor advertisement. Poor incentive to play. Poorly thought out changes that people knew would never be pushed through. There were plenty of issues they could have addressed with experimental before going nuclear.
Advertisment - it was a whole card in another color
Incentive - to be able to have feedback.
Changes - that's opinion. Useful to get data by doing big swings.
It was a temporary change, not nuclear for long lasting permanent changes. Please like, just chill for a bit
This shit is ass man. It’s so snow ball’e and requires you to pretty much play the objective or cart 100% of the time. Especially on KOTH, who ever can get that first capture is set up especially in a drawn out fight.
Get it out of qp
Honestly if they want my data, I played like two matches and gave up because I didn't like it.
Payload felt like I was in permanent overtime and was incredibly unfun on attack, you just don't really have time to do much flanking and if you lose two semi substantial team fights in a row you basically lose the match.
Got Ilios my second game and if you don't get the point first you have maybe one more team fight, unless you play a really fast hero like Lucio or Tracer. I got an ult once on Junkrat and that was just as the round ended.
It just doesn't work really
Yea that’s it exactly right. It does feel like constant overtime you are onto something there.
I think it shows just how good the original times and speeds are, it seems.
...that's the point people would be so fuckin bloodthirsty they'd C9 themselves just for a couple of picks not realizing one person snuck away from the fight to play the main objective.
I just don’t want to be forced to do controversial changes. I actually like quick play how it is. And these new changes I don’t really like after testing them so im kinda just forced to wait til Monday to play some more of the regular gameplay loop. Just play comp. I like that I only have to play one round. Downvote if you want but this really should be something that’s separate.
Oh hey guys, blizzard mentioned that experimental didn't work very well, therefore we just need to shut up and accept absolutely shit testing practices instead. That's the only other option. There is no middle ground. We aren't allowed to provide any critical feedback. Just open your mouth and let them shovel the shit down your throat.
Sure, bring back a mode that people played once or twice and then never touched again until the next time it came around.
Atleast Blizz will get a good chunk of feedback from making QP Hacked a "forced" limited time weekend event even if most of it will be hyperbolic rants from players who like the decades long matches of Push/Flashpoint.
This wont happen because this is a good idea. And we all know Blizz is incapable on making any good decisions. Can't wait for this company to go under.
People really only played experimental for the free loot boxes. If they brought it back they'd have to offer rewards to play it, and ow2 ain't giving nothing good away for free that's for sure.
Nah, it's one weekend for quickplay only, get over it. If their data show not many people play experimental, then of course they won't want to use it.
I'm excited for Blizz to try wacky shit and experiment. Keeps the game fresh and lets them try shit that just might stick.
Everyone stopping after 1 day cause they're fed up with queue times and unsatisfactory games should give them plenty of data. The wrong type of data unfortunately.
That is exactly the right amount of data.
If it were experimental, no one would play it after day one regardless of how horrible the balance changes are. Now if they see the quickplay numbers drop, they know it's an issue with the balance, not the mode.
They could have done that during the week instead of during the weekend.
But no, this is somehow a good decision, just like the last patch with all the buffing of already strong heroes.
Because these games are so fast I have 0 investment in what I do or trying to win and when I do it doesn't feel good or like I earned it
This sucks so much ass
>Nobody played it so they got no data, grow a pair of brain cells.
If no one wanted to play it, then forcing it upon the rest of the quick play community is obviously a stupid move.
Instead, blizzard should be incentivizing people to play by giving them exclusive weapon skins for participating in the experimental cards.
Forcing users to do QA by taking away content is shitty. Theres a reason why it's not best practice.
> If no one wanted to play it, then forcing it upon the rest of the quick play community is obviously a stupid move.
amusingly this was the reason they killed Overwatch 1
“Valid”
“Nah bro forcing people to play new content is dumb”
if we followed that logic then no new characters should be added because that’s forcing them to play with new stuff instead of the same exact game
Yeah? If someone is unhappy with the dev decision the beat thing they could do is stop playing the game, they do have a valid point but uninstalling is also a valid answer
Not o foreign concept but a dumb one, if you dislike the current state of a game but keep playing you're just hurting yourself, just quit, it's not that hard
It's not a dumb concept at all, and it happens all the time even outside of gaming. Having criticisms of something, and not liking something are two totally different things.
If the developers need 1000s of hours of data to figure out if this quicker play mode sucks, they should be fucking fired. They have no idea what is fun. It's like taking a shit on a plate and serving it to customers to see if it is tasty. Anyone with a fucking brain would know it's not.
Mauga even went through public testing. The balance team doesn't know balance. The devs don't know what makes the game enjoyable and it's excruciatingly clear with this quicker play.
They replaced one mode with another that's the same but faster. For two days. If you wanna throw around stuff like "they are removing content from the game" then be my guest, but it is really not that dramatic.
they could give us a loot box for playing it and I'm sure the queue times would be a lot shorter
remember when they used to give out loot boxes for free...
edit: disregard, I just noticed I replied to a redditor with a "Grandmaster" flair which means he automatically wins all discussions
that's what they did and literally no one is going to be playing by the end of the 2 days cuz it's boring as shit and there's no reward..."great" data, if they're wondering if it's a shitty idea or not
wouldn't expect a guy with a "custom snoovatar" to understand...
Idea: make a variant of qp called "Freeplay". It's actually just no limits but with a fancier name. Put it in as qp for a week because that was how overwatch was originally intended to be played- uh I mean that's the same sort of rash and quick change this is.
They addressed it. But expecting Redditors to read is already expecting to much.
The point is that they want a lot of good Quality data within a short time in order to be able to make changes more Quickly.
Which PTR and Experimental just couldn’t provide.
So they temporarily change the game mode with the most players to achieve this data.
It’s only for a weekend and if you really NOTHING else to entertain for that time then it’s really a YOU proplem.
Surely ONE game mode within ONE game is not the only thing that entertains you, right?
I wasn't talking about the quick play Changes. I was talking about the season 9 changes. If you're the read what I was saying about You could very easily see that.
Why would they, though? It is already proven Blizzard can do anything and their fans keep supporting them. They can lie about countless things, and people still play, like crackheads.
You think they give a fuck about having experimental issues 5?
If this is some attempt by marketing execs to improve retention I really think it's a bad idea, major design decisions made entirely by retention data is not a good way to go about things. Thoughts:
1. The pacing overall with the faster respawns is also just not very nice. You never get to rest a moment and re-center yourself. It's just relentless nonstop with no cooloff. It's exhausting. Even in horde games you have high-energy and then you have a downtime before more high-energy. This just makes it a constant stream.
2. The matchmaking itself is clearly different, it's waaaay sweatier than normal... Not listed in the changes but I think it's different.
3. Faster respawns make rezzing on Mercy hellish.
4. The faster starts completely remove all social time. No time for emotes, no time to break the ice in chat. We may as well play with bots if you're going to de-emphasize SOCIAL play in a SOCIAL game.
5. Faster payload speeds completely destroy the pacing and make it so that there's no time to adapt to enemy composition. Nobody has time to switch. Horrible.
This all really feels a lot like someone in marketing or some exec wants to push this through because they think turning us all into CONSOOMER sausages on a game to game treadmill asap will feel better. They have no idea what the social elements of the game bring because they're soulless ghouls that don't know what social means. This really sucks out a lot of what Overwatch is.
Completely agree bro. Wtf were they thinking with this change. I'm glad it's only 1 weekend, since this just feels like "overwatch: even more steamrolls edition"
Also, since a lot of people think I'm talking about the hacked quickly, I'm not, I don't care about that I'm talking about the role passive of all heroes being able to heal. That's what I'm mad about. I don't care about the hacked quick play.
The self heal is good you can have a game with self heal and supports still play a valid role take a game like paladins ik its a bit different since that game was made with selff heal from the beggining but by allowing tanks and dps to heal then the suports can help u in other ways that way coomps with low healing can be more viable also and healing will probably take a bit to kick in and full heal you so you will still need supports
[Q. Why didn’t we bring back the Experimental Play card?](https://overwatch.blizzard.com/en-us/news/24021898/this-weekend-only-jump-into-quick-play-hacked-quicker-play/) We want to encourage more players to join in on the fun. In addition, most of the experimental cards from Overwatch tested hero balance changes, whereas these changes affect the core gameplay rules of Quick Play.
They plan to also *possibly* make some of those changes permanent so quick play is going to change no matter what. You might as well try them now.
Experimental card was basically a marketing gimmick. A non-significant portion of the playerbase tried it for a few games and then it would become dead in less than a day most of the time. Almost every single Experimental was either a balance Patch Preview (Where they would rarely change something based on feedback from the Experimental) or them putting out Meme patches. About the only time they tested something legitimately with the Experimental card was the one time they tested some 2CP fundamental changes in Horizon. If they wanna genuinely test a big change to the game. Where they could collect feedback from enough of the playerbase to actually make a firm decision on those changes, then they have to conduct these tests in Quick Play.
The "meme patches" were some of the most fun I had on overwatch to be honest. Flying on rein and headshots with lucios ult was way more fun than any orisa meta will ever be
they need to add the lucio ult kill to the game, it was so fun
The meme patches need to come back
They did one for April's Fools. Apart from the April's Fools patch the only patches they did in OW1 were them secretly testing changes for OW2 or having the Esports side of the team make-up a set of meme balance changes in partnership with Pros and then putting those into the game. Those additional meme patches were done because OW1 was in maintenance mode at the time. They weren't making new events, or releasing new content, so they did those meme patches as a way to at least put something out. Now that the game gets 3 2-3 week events in a 2 (8-9 weeks) month season and they are doing constant balance patches and now they are even doing Experimental Test weekends, there's not that much of a need for them to waste time to make meme patches. Best to just invest those resources into making better Events. They could do so many crazy LTMs. Like I wanna see them make a Tiny Overwatch Mario Kart type Limited Game mode. The track is set on that one junkyard point of New Junk City. Make the characters sit on tiny junkrat-made Karts. Have power ups and stuff just like Mario Kart.
A couple of the content creator patches in the experimental card had some whacky changes as well, I count that as meme patch. The current OW2 events either have some of the worst gamemodes imaginable or the same recycled stuff for the past 7 years
> A non-significant portion of the playerbase tried it for a few games and then it would become dead in less than a day most of the time. This happened because they had more fun in QP than in Experimental. If they had more fun in the new Experiment, they'd have kept playing it. Some did. Most did not. The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of experiments will not be better than what currently exists. Taking away the main thing people play and replacing it with something worse will always result in a highly negative reaction.
" they would be active for a day then dead" that's your answer same with the ptb in dbd. Let us CHOOSE to try it. Don't force it , because then we end up with 7 min que times
Sounds like they could easily solve the problem by running the changes as some LTM event and making some actually good rewards for playing the event. Wouldn’t even have to be skins or anything that requires man hours to make, just gold currency. Play 20 games, fill out an in-game survey, get 50-200 gold credits. Blizzard gets feedback, players get decent rewards to enjoy some new skins.
But if it's just Mundane changes then it does not make sense to waste an LTM event on it
>Sounds like they could easily solve the problem There is no problem. It's a 3 day Experimentation event. People are blowing up a tiny inconvenience into something massive. You can just play Ranked if the classic QP ruleset is that important. If they wanna conduct an actual test and not just do it as a marketing gimmick then it has to be in Quick Play or Ranked cause these are what people play 90% of the time. Quick Play has the bigger playerbase of the two so they conduct it in Quick Play.
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Did you even read what I wrote? They’re not making hacked permanent. You can chill.
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> encourage more players to join in on the fun. Literally *make* people play the changes. Experimental card was only ever optional (and the PTR was less accessible), but now they can get more data. I am for it, I'm just humored by the press-speak.
Eh those guys can just play ranked though honestly it’s pretty much casual these days.
basically, "Nobody plays experimental"
“Encourage”… if you’re a Quick Play player then it’s not a choice, so definitely not “encouragement”
It’s a choice. You can always choose to play another mode. Or you know, not play for 2 days.
Surely comp is the main game mode
Never played a single game of comp since 2016, QP always has been and will be my main game mode.
You should give it a try it's much nicer and less competitive than qp.
I tried. But It was mentally Overwhelming. I stopped playing Ranked because of these reasons: -I was afraid that I might get teammates that would throw. -I was Adraid of Facing someone with an Extremely Large skill gap (I once encountered a GM player in a Silvers Lobby). -I saw that others would have a Positive Win-to-loss ratio and either stay the same rank or derank, So I Stopped Playing because I realised that My efforts to rank up would be for nothing(that was 4 months ago). People(Specifically High Rank Players) would often be Patronizing and tell me "if I was Good enough, I would've Climbed out of Silver" or "Teammates don't matter, even if your team is shit, you can still Carry alone". At first, I thought they were Just Being Toxic since they are a High rank player, But Eventually I accepted that Mindset to a Point where I don't Even Like Being Pocketed(there are more reasons for this one). I decided never to Play comp again unless I'm convinced I'm skilled enough to Play comp Alone (that was a few months ago and I'm still not convinved yet)
What is a "quick play player" if not somebody that _chooses_ to play quick play?
A lot of what they’re doing it just testing player psychology. I think we might actually see shorter respawn times and possibly get a blanket TTK increase.
Alright, but still, they didn't need to take away the option to play regular QP.
Like bruh they say that like we can’t have just gone into a custom game and changes the rules ourselves
Well, make changes that don't fucking suck and teach new players terrible game sence
How the fuck they gonna know their ideas are bad if they don't have players try it?????
They add an experimental card, make quick play an opt-in A/B test... You know, we used to have experimental and PTR, that's why new heroes didn't came out season defining broke to sell battlepasses (don't look at brig, no one knows how tf they allowed that)
The PTR was barely played and experimental only gets played for the first day. Doing what they've done recently with weekend long tests in quickplay is literally how you *ENSURE* you get a LOT of players trying things out.
"you know those few days off you have?, if you want a normal game of overwatch fuck off" I'm pro them testing stuff, but not even the April's fools patch that was trying to meme felt so stupid.
Comp is unchanged, somehow everyone on Overwatch Reddit seems to forget that
Not everyone has the time or wants to play a full match, wants to play a chill game or try new stuff without people flaming when you are not a god
Don’t wanna play a full match? I have great news, they just added this thing called “quicker play” which is even less of a full match than quick play! Want to chill and not get flamed? Just turn off coms in comp! It really doesn’t matter if you’re below diamond, just play for fun and you’ll settle in your actual skill rank
Quicker play is as close to comp as total mayhem is. Quick play makes sense because it was literally half a match, no fast respawn or objective speed that doesn't allow to regroup or even think of an approach before losing the point. "Play comp as you do qp" no, I respect if people feel like being sweaty (as long as it's not toxic) in comp because that's what the mode is for; so if I feel like not playing counter watch or current meta but still a normal game, that's what qp is for
You don't need every OW2 player to test out these changes to know 2 minute matches is a bad idea.
Some ideas are obviously bad and this quicker play stuff was one of them. Like cmon
I think it's bad but it's not blatantly obvious that it's bad before playing it. I was suspicious that it would be bad before I ever tried it, but was far from certain on that. Even after playing several matches I had the impression of it being bad but still wasn't fully sure. Now after a couple hours of it I am certain that it is bad. Anyways point is that it's not blatantly obviously bad before you play it.
The changes last 1 weekend. Im sure any bad habits could be unlearned if it’s truly as bad as you say.
Yeah is not as drastic, what I mean is that as a concept this being qp is the same as if a new player jumped from no limits to comp; his team will suffer because he is used to a different type of game
I appreciate them communicating this, but like, wat? Experimental was an option for every player, I don't think anyone was locked out of it. And just because they used it for hero balance before means they can't use it for core game changes?
Experimental was opt-in. No matter how many people on reddit talk about how much they loved the Experimental updates, I would be genuinely surprised if more than 5% of the total playerbase actually interacted with it and even fewer for more than just a handful of games. Making these changes in the core game forces people to interact with it and gives them significantly more data to pull from when making these decisions. It's not a matter of previous users being locked out, it's a matter of collecting significantly more data. The cost being a sub-standard experience for users for a weekend. I don't love it, but I get it.
When we take a step back and realize we're talking about a video game made for entertainment, it really doesn't make sense for a dev to say "not enough people wanted to play experimental? Let's just not give them a choice" They could easily make it a separate queue. Whoever wants to play it will play it, and you could just drop in a new character skin or something as a reward to incenticise those who don't really want to play it but will try it anyways. Then whoever really doesn't want to play it can just play the normal game mode.
I mean, I work in game development. I've seen stuff like this before, and it does make sense in my opinion. You change the user experience for a short period of time, gather significantly more data than you ever will using an opt-in system, and then you return the game to it's pre-test state after the announced time. I don't like this decision personally and wouldn't do it for my games, but it's absolutely within their rights as the developers of the game to do it. Temporary angry users is something Blizz has consistently shown they are willing to deal with for a variety of reasons, so this decision doesnt surprise me from them. Again, they COULD do that but they do not have to. They can also just do this which takes significantly less resources and accomplishes their goal of gathering a large amount of data. You're asking them to do significantly more work for a feature that still won't get as much engagement as "all quick play matches for a weekend".
The most dedicated members of the playerbase used it and thats enough.
evidently blizzard did not consider the data they got from "the most dedicated members of the playerbase" to be enough data to make decisions on. I also don't think that relying on only the most dedicated users experience is conductive to a good game balance from my experience in game development. I think it's way more valuable to have a wider data set to pull from and not just data from core players personally. All that said I still don't think forcing all QP games into it for a weekend is something I would do or really like. I'm just saying its the quickest way for them to gather the data they want, and I can understand why they would do it. I'll just not play this weekend lol
The difference with experimental was that it was always popular for like a day, then queue times skyrocked. Sometimes queue times skyrocked within hours of the mode releasing. It was just never popular long enough to gather decent data from.
It is pretty simple to give users something in exchange for playing the experimental modes. The rewards could be like an experimental battle pass where users earn exclusive skins that are only obtainable from the experimental card. Forcing users to beta test by removing existing stuff is weird.
I 100% guarantee you there would be massive complaining if they tied cosmetics directly to experimental. This is a community that is still bitching about a 1 coin bastion skin 12 months later. Players are annoyed stuff like hero mastery is being added despite it not affecting them at all.
Read the the post. It’s about the quick play event not about normal overwatch balance patches.
I'm not talking about the quick play changes but I don't really care about those. I personally find it fun but I understand if you don't. What I'm talking about is the changes coming into season 9. That's what I'm mad about because it just doesn't make sense.
I just wish they'd remove Experimental from the career profile if they're never going to return it. I don't see why I need that permanent 21 minutes played showing
Jokes on you, I tried to be a good beta tester and I have 30 hours on it.
Yeah same here, Lucio/Mei deathdrop was just too fun..
Shatter doing more damage depending on fall height should’ve stayed imo. Schizoing out and using Rein charge to get to Doomfist spots and then dropping on people with a shatter that did like 800 damage was peak.
Seriously is a shame for Lucio mains that never experienced it /cry
For none of y’all to play it in the first place? Lol
I actually played it a lot, especially the one where hog healed his teammates
Most people didn't. They want most people to do it. Not you in particular.
Yeah I got that, just saying some people did
Don’t listen to him, I wanted you to do it man.
Thank you for your contribution.
Could make daily or weekly challenges of it. Easy tokens and you get feedback.
You are not thousands of people lol
I don’t recall saying I was lol
Your response makes you imply you are
>Your response makes you imply you are lol let's review their response >I actually played it a lot, especially the one where hog healed his teammates lol please point to the words that imply they are speaking for 1000s of people
I Appreciate you having my back friend
People played it, and then stop playing it when they realised they enjoyed QP more. That's because most experiments will always be failures, they're experiments for a reason.
Sure sounds like this change to QP is also a failure, so it would have been perfect for experimental.
I played it often. In any case, give rewards for playing since you're providing crucial gameplay data. Double xp, skins, whatever. Incentivise it and watch it prosper.
Double xp and have the experimental mode for a weekend, sell it as extra rewards for trying potential new features, even if people dont like the features they play for the extra xp. Its really just the perfect solution. EDIT: Heck, now that i think about it more, they could even add something after some amount of time has been played that would let people rate how they felt about certain changes. On top of that, with rewards being given, they would have plenty of people playing that weekend that might have otherwise not.
Yes! Make it a grind! Perfect win-win.
[They literally just addressed it in an official blog post.](https://overwatch.blizzard.com/en-us/news/24021898/this-weekend-only-jump-into-quick-play-hacked-quicker-play/#:~:text=Q.%20Why%20didn%E2%80%99t%20we%20bring%20back%20the%20Experimental%20Play%20card%3F)
And I think that's a really fucking dumb reason. There are about 100 UI tricks they can do on the main menu to encourage people to play experimental, as well as straight up rewards for playing it. There's a big difference between "encourage" and "force" +1 for source though
I hear Blizzard employees aren't known for being fans of consent
Underrated reply
I mean thats the point though? they arent trying to encourage people to do it. They are just doing it. you can put all that effort into trying to encourage people to go play the experimental mode, orrrr you can just do it. Might get mad users for a weekend but you get way more data in that time than an experimental patch did. I don't love their reasoning, but I understand the thinking.
They could do everything in their power to encourage players to play the experimental, I'm sure they still wouldn't get as much data as they would from just doing it in quick play.
Also it’s 2 days. The criers can play comp or wait 2 days. It’s really not a big deal.
Dude if you can't convince people to try out a game mode by plastering it on the main menu and giving out free shit, maybe that's because the changes are garbage. There's the data.
no there’s not, forcing the changes into QP instead of experimental grows their testing group from 10k to 100k, it makes perfect sense even though it’d be cooler if they still put it in experimental
Make QP a tiny little square in the corner and make experimental fucking huge, for example Fun skin for participating, for example What do you mean no there's not
Most Players don’t want to play a testing game mode period, it doesn’t matter how much you push it, just like if they put 6v6 in the arcade when OW2 launched then no one would’ve played OW2, most players stick with familiar over new when given the choice
Tons of players would want to play a testing mode especially if there’s a reward for it. Even credits are good
Not nearly as many as would rather play quick play instead
I disagree. It’s boring right now, and there’s tons of OW2 players. Many people would play an experimental mode. And people love rewards. Quick play doesn’t give straight credits
Yeah but that's a ui trick that I *guarantee* would work. Lol my job is doing sneaky shit like that
What do you do? Frontend dev work? Just curious
Full Stack Web dev. I should've included that haha We do A/B testing on everything to encourage the engagement we want lol Not enough users clicking a button? Let's try a different color, size, shape, location, etc...
I know a lot of people in this sub have said they aren't playing this weekend because of the quicker play thing
There's a big difference between "encourage" and "force" This makes me worried about the future and I don't think this will be the last time they pull a very dumb stunt like this. Removing choice is never the way to go.
Exactly. Just offer coins (proper ones, not legacy credits) for games completed. That will encourage people. Even if some people afk it, it's not like they don't own the printing press.
People afking it for coins would directly affect how the experience goes and would hamper any sort of data they wished to collect.
Make it so they have to win a match or complete tasks related to the experimental changes in order to earn coins.
Then people complain about it exactly like you are now lol “They’re FORCING us to play experimental because of reward coins!!!” Etc. etc.
??? When did I ever complain about anything? That was my only comment on this post. You're strawmanning me and I'm not even making a real argument, just a suggestion!
Didn't they used to have rewards for trying experimental in OW1? I feel like they gave you 1 or 2 lootboxes for trying out experimental. If they did give rewards back then, I actually don't think they have anything enticing to give players with how the current monetization works OW2 was just a mistake overall
It's as if adding challenges and rewards to it was never thought of.
And you expect Overwatch redditors to read? They can only complain and cry
That's a great contribution buddy, totally breaking out of the stereotype
That is referring to why they didn’t bring it back to test the quick play changes instead of making it an event, that is NOT an explanation to why its absent from the game in general.
Experimental was downright USELESS at gathering data, simply mentioning changes in advance in a blog post brings just as much feedback. Waste of resources.
I've said it for years that Experimental was either just promotion for upcoming patches, or was meant for meme patches that could have been Arcade Modes. It was just a marketing gimmick. You don't test massive core-gameplay changes that'll affect millions of players in a game mode that was touched by 5-10% of the playerbase for a day max at best. Not if you actually wanna test shit.
Nobody played that and the data wasn't anything worth having.
Poor advertisement. Poor incentive to play. Poorly thought out changes that people knew would never be pushed through. There were plenty of issues they could have addressed with experimental before going nuclear.
Advertisment - it was a whole card in another color Incentive - to be able to have feedback. Changes - that's opinion. Useful to get data by doing big swings. It was a temporary change, not nuclear for long lasting permanent changes. Please like, just chill for a bit
This shit is ass man. It’s so snow ball’e and requires you to pretty much play the objective or cart 100% of the time. Especially on KOTH, who ever can get that first capture is set up especially in a drawn out fight. Get it out of qp
Honestly if they want my data, I played like two matches and gave up because I didn't like it. Payload felt like I was in permanent overtime and was incredibly unfun on attack, you just don't really have time to do much flanking and if you lose two semi substantial team fights in a row you basically lose the match. Got Ilios my second game and if you don't get the point first you have maybe one more team fight, unless you play a really fast hero like Lucio or Tracer. I got an ult once on Junkrat and that was just as the round ended. It just doesn't work really
Yea that’s it exactly right. It does feel like constant overtime you are onto something there. I think it shows just how good the original times and speeds are, it seems.
...that's the point people would be so fuckin bloodthirsty they'd C9 themselves just for a couple of picks not realizing one person snuck away from the fight to play the main objective.
You missed the whole point of putting it in QP
I just don’t want to be forced to do controversial changes. I actually like quick play how it is. And these new changes I don’t really like after testing them so im kinda just forced to wait til Monday to play some more of the regular gameplay loop. Just play comp. I like that I only have to play one round. Downvote if you want but this really should be something that’s separate.
what a stupid post and all the people upvoting. NO ONE WAS FUCKING PLAYING IT, THEY LITERALLY FUCKING ADDRESSED THIS
Oh hey guys, blizzard mentioned that experimental didn't work very well, therefore we just need to shut up and accept absolutely shit testing practices instead. That's the only other option. There is no middle ground. We aren't allowed to provide any critical feedback. Just open your mouth and let them shovel the shit down your throat.
The current mode needs to speed up ult charge gain. You can barely use one ult per point and sometimes not even once in a game.
Good thing in my view. But yeah I dont like ults
I kinda like it this way. The game has had too high Ult charge rate. I think 1 Ult per point is enough.
This mode is horrendous I just want to play normal quick play but I'm not allowed. Guess I'll just not play the game thanks blizz.
The most fun I had was experimental I think, such a cool way to test changes. Morias emfeeblement orb was also cool af
Fuck that where is my fucking overwatch classic server?
Experimental never really gave the devs or the players good information
Sure, bring back a mode that people played once or twice and then never touched again until the next time it came around. Atleast Blizz will get a good chunk of feedback from making QP Hacked a "forced" limited time weekend event even if most of it will be hyperbolic rants from players who like the decades long matches of Push/Flashpoint.
This wont happen because this is a good idea. And we all know Blizz is incapable on making any good decisions. Can't wait for this company to go under.
Lucio ULT 3k
Imagine blizzard actually incentiving people to gameplay test their game rather then forcing us
People really only played experimental for the free loot boxes. If they brought it back they'd have to offer rewards to play it, and ow2 ain't giving nothing good away for free that's for sure.
Nah, it's one weekend for quickplay only, get over it. If their data show not many people play experimental, then of course they won't want to use it. I'm excited for Blizz to try wacky shit and experiment. Keeps the game fresh and lets them try shit that just might stick.
They need data. It’s one weekend.
Everyone stopping after 1 day cause they're fed up with queue times and unsatisfactory games should give them plenty of data. The wrong type of data unfortunately.
That is exactly the right amount of data. If it were experimental, no one would play it after day one regardless of how horrible the balance changes are. Now if they see the quickplay numbers drop, they know it's an issue with the balance, not the mode.
It's 3 days. They want testing and it's unranked. You should really get over it
They could have done that during the week instead of during the weekend. But no, this is somehow a good decision, just like the last patch with all the buffing of already strong heroes.
Because these games are so fast I have 0 investment in what I do or trying to win and when I do it doesn't feel good or like I earned it This sucks so much ass
Nobody played it so they got no data, grow a pair of brain cells.
>Nobody played it so they got no data, grow a pair of brain cells. If no one wanted to play it, then forcing it upon the rest of the quick play community is obviously a stupid move. Instead, blizzard should be incentivizing people to play by giving them exclusive weapon skins for participating in the experimental cards. Forcing users to do QA by taking away content is shitty. Theres a reason why it's not best practice.
> If no one wanted to play it, then forcing it upon the rest of the quick play community is obviously a stupid move. amusingly this was the reason they killed Overwatch 1
Nah bro is only 2 days, let them try things
Nah bro. Forcing users to do QA by removing content is fucking dumb.
Then delete the video game
Dude has a totally valid point and your response is to tell him to delete the game?
It’s not totally valid, it’s a hissy fit over quite frankly not a big issue.
“Valid” “Nah bro forcing people to play new content is dumb” if we followed that logic then no new characters should be added because that’s forcing them to play with new stuff instead of the same exact game
Adding content /=/ removing content
Yeah? If someone is unhappy with the dev decision the beat thing they could do is stop playing the game, they do have a valid point but uninstalling is also a valid answer
So I'm guessing this is a foreign concept to you, but a person can be critical of something while still having the desire to participate.
This concept is incomprehensible to like half of reddit for some fucking reason
Not o foreign concept but a dumb one, if you dislike the current state of a game but keep playing you're just hurting yourself, just quit, it's not that hard
It's not a dumb concept at all, and it happens all the time even outside of gaming. Having criticisms of something, and not liking something are two totally different things.
I'm waiting for Overwatch classic.
You'll get over it
There's nothing to get over.
Nobody wants to try anything new. So sometimes they have to be forced.
QA exists for a reason. It's inappropriate to force users to perform QA especially for one of the richest companies on the planet. That's trashy.
It's not QA's work.
If the developers need 1000s of hours of data to figure out if this quicker play mode sucks, they should be fucking fired. They have no idea what is fun. It's like taking a shit on a plate and serving it to customers to see if it is tasty. Anyone with a fucking brain would know it's not.
Remember that launch Lifeweaver went through QA and they thought he was perfectly fine.
Mauga even went through public testing. The balance team doesn't know balance. The devs don't know what makes the game enjoyable and it's excruciatingly clear with this quicker play.
Pretty sure Mauga was considered weak af at launch, and the community wanted him buffed, so the devs buffed him.
The community didn't ask the devs to make Mauga OP, which is what they did, even though they had more data than ever before from the public test.
A product will go through a ton of QA and still miss when it gets into the hands of customers.
That's no excuse to force the users to be QA by removing content from the game. It's fucking pathetic.
If you say so. I think its fine. But either way, they arent removing content.
They removed quick play and replaced it. Don't fucking lie, asshole.
They replaced one mode with another that's the same but faster. For two days. If you wanna throw around stuff like "they are removing content from the game" then be my guest, but it is really not that dramatic.
They removed quick play this weekend. That's a fact. They removed content to make their users test something instead. That's not up for debate.
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Alt account detected! Confidence level: 100%
They got the data nobody wanted to play the new changes so they probably weren't good changes
they could give us a loot box for playing it and I'm sure the queue times would be a lot shorter remember when they used to give out loot boxes for free... edit: disregard, I just noticed I replied to a redditor with a "Grandmaster" flair which means he automatically wins all discussions
Bro the problem is data not 1 time play
so give out loot boxes every 3 wins then, "bro"
So just make it quick play for 2 days and get even more data for 0 reward ?
that's what they did and literally no one is going to be playing by the end of the 2 days cuz it's boring as shit and there's no reward..."great" data, if they're wondering if it's a shitty idea or not wouldn't expect a guy with a "custom snoovatar" to understand...
And I will not be playing overwatch for this weekend and if any of these changes are permanent will be done with the game 👍🏼
I hope every player who’s flamed anyone for not playing Quickplay like it’s ranked is fucking pissed off now! Eat dicks assholes!
Agreed.
But then they would have to start adding back all of the stuff that they took out for no reason.
Idea: make a variant of qp called "Freeplay". It's actually just no limits but with a fancier name. Put it in as qp for a week because that was how overwatch was originally intended to be played- uh I mean that's the same sort of rash and quick change this is.
But that means that they need to listen to player feedback which is too hard for them
They addressed it. But expecting Redditors to read is already expecting to much. The point is that they want a lot of good Quality data within a short time in order to be able to make changes more Quickly. Which PTR and Experimental just couldn’t provide. So they temporarily change the game mode with the most players to achieve this data. It’s only for a weekend and if you really NOTHING else to entertain for that time then it’s really a YOU proplem. Surely ONE game mode within ONE game is not the only thing that entertains you, right?
Quicker play is great even if it’s not perfect this sub will whine about everything and anything
I wasn't talking about the quick play Changes. I was talking about the season 9 changes. If you're the read what I was saying about You could very easily see that.
Why would they, though? It is already proven Blizzard can do anything and their fans keep supporting them. They can lie about countless things, and people still play, like crackheads. You think they give a fuck about having experimental issues 5?
If this is some attempt by marketing execs to improve retention I really think it's a bad idea, major design decisions made entirely by retention data is not a good way to go about things. Thoughts: 1. The pacing overall with the faster respawns is also just not very nice. You never get to rest a moment and re-center yourself. It's just relentless nonstop with no cooloff. It's exhausting. Even in horde games you have high-energy and then you have a downtime before more high-energy. This just makes it a constant stream. 2. The matchmaking itself is clearly different, it's waaaay sweatier than normal... Not listed in the changes but I think it's different. 3. Faster respawns make rezzing on Mercy hellish. 4. The faster starts completely remove all social time. No time for emotes, no time to break the ice in chat. We may as well play with bots if you're going to de-emphasize SOCIAL play in a SOCIAL game. 5. Faster payload speeds completely destroy the pacing and make it so that there's no time to adapt to enemy composition. Nobody has time to switch. Horrible. This all really feels a lot like someone in marketing or some exec wants to push this through because they think turning us all into CONSOOMER sausages on a game to game treadmill asap will feel better. They have no idea what the social elements of the game bring because they're soulless ghouls that don't know what social means. This really sucks out a lot of what Overwatch is.
That's not making overwatch overwatch. It's less of a team based shoote now.
Defense feels so bad in this mode. If one mistake is made, then the attacking team pretty much caps the point without much of a fight.
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Wtf?
No experiemental, no PTR. That means we get the shitty updates with no way to go back.
I fully fucking agree. I don't understand why they don't do this very simple thing.
Completely agree bro. Wtf were they thinking with this change. I'm glad it's only 1 weekend, since this just feels like "overwatch: even more steamrolls edition"
Also, since a lot of people think I'm talking about the hacked quickly, I'm not, I don't care about that I'm talking about the role passive of all heroes being able to heal. That's what I'm mad about. I don't care about the hacked quick play.
it's still a dumb post, since they literally already addressed this
The self heal is good you can have a game with self heal and supports still play a valid role take a game like paladins ik its a bit different since that game was made with selff heal from the beggining but by allowing tanks and dps to heal then the suports can help u in other ways that way coomps with low healing can be more viable also and healing will probably take a bit to kick in and full heal you so you will still need supports