I haven't played most of the Overwatch 2 maps that have been released since I abandoned the game two years ago, after season four (we're in season 17). I can't describe a single part of Suravasa, New Junk City, Runasapi, Aatlis, or Samoa. I've only played Hanaoka and Throne of Anubis because Stadium mode forced me to.
I didn't want to learn a new Overwatch 2 map right after coming back. But even if I wanted to, I couldn't. The map I play in with the random people who always flame my terrible Soldier: 76 skills is picked by everyone in the match, and nobody ever votes for these new maps. I've played over 30 games in the last two weeks, and in none of them have the players picked anything other than the same nine-year-old maps, such as Route 66, Eichelwalde, King's Row, and the occasional Nepal or Illios.
Nobody wants to play the new maps, and neither do I. It's also rare for me to see players using Venture, Hazard, Illari, and other recent heroes, so my teammates mostly stick to Mercy, Reaper, Zarya, and the older characters. From my anecdotal experience, very few Overwatch 2 players are in love with the new heroes.
Did Overwatch 2 need that much new content? Even though we usually tell developers of our favorite games that we want new maps, items, and characters, I'm convinced many of us don't. We want a sign that our favorite game isn't abandoned.
Rocket League once had alternate arena layouts, which were slightly different from the standard rectangular stadiums with round edges. The very first version of Neo Tokyo, released in 2016, had elevated sides. Wasteland, another unique arena, was slightly tilted so that the ball would always roll center. It took about a year for developer Psyonix to remove both maps from game rotation because "non-standard map layouts [had] been a hot topic of debate within the Rocket League community", they wrote in August 2017. Both maps, along with all others with an alternate layout, ended up removed from casual and competitive playlists, renamed, and sent to extra modes that are hyper-casual. So, when players got the unique new content they asked for in Rocket League, they discovered it wasn't quite what they wanted.
Counter-Strike 1.6 proves we don't always want new content to stay engaged with a game. Hundreds of thousands of nostalgic players are in the game every month, with an average peak of 7,000 concurrent players in the last 30 days, all this with the current Counter-Strike 2 being free. StarCraft 2 is still around years after its glory days ended. Even Heroes of the Storm, which I thought was dead, is active after being in maintenance mode for the last three years.
Do we players really want new content, or did we get used to the constant flow of updates because developers push it?
Live service and online games still need minimal upkeep. Occasional balance updates, bug fixes, and character and map rotations are welcome so that we don't play the same game every time, especially when a character or item is so overpowered you can't have fun without it. If there's randomness everywhere in the game, such as in rogue-likes, then updates are much less needed.
Multiplayer titles that don't have campaigns and missions are the ones that I'm convinced don't need a lot of new content all the time. These are mostly competitive, like Overwatch 2. Genshin Impact, Diablo 4, and single-player or co-op games need new content, so we don't give up on them. But if the point of a new character or long mission is to keep us playing and returning every day, maybe to complete a battle pass like it's a chore, this update ultimately caters to developers, not players. There are dozens of new games coming out every day, so we don't need this new content to have fun. It's easy to replace a stale gacha with a fresh one. Devs and publishers know that, and that's why they fight so hard for our attention with new content.
The other downside of new content is when it becomes overwhelming. I feel that the most with Pokémon TCG Live, which I play casually. Whenever I take a break for a few months, all my decks feel like trash, and I don't know what to play anymore, which either forces me to spend time farming new cards or to accept that my deck is terrible and will probably be destroyed by the new ones.
That's part of why I don't want new content in the online games I play. I don't want to play a game for fear of missing out on a battle pass, and I know I won't return to a game just because a new map or hero is out. If I like the game, I like it. At the same time, I can keep playing a game for weeks without ever seeing new content just because the game is simply fun.
I really want your opinion in the comments, though. Would you keep playing your favorite online or live-service game if it never got new content again?
The post Do we really want more content in our online games? I don’t appeared first on Destructoid.
