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Comment by AlexandrB | Hacker News Reader

This analysis is probably correct, but it's also depressing as hell because Fortnite is a shallow, money-hungry game. Nothing like Blizzard's best work from the past (Diablo 2, Starcraft) that could be played for years with no "season passes" or other MTX.

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I don't think there will ever be another successful game without "season passes" or other MTX. Overwatch may be used as a singular reason in the industry why the old model doesn't work.

Fortnite can afford to keep artists and programmers on staff to develop a huge amount of content because they have consistent money coming in. This isn't the case for OW and I hypothesize this is why they struggled to crank out new content.

I must be getting old. I don't get why everyone's so obsessed with new content or the lack thereof. Overwatch is already huge compared to older FPSes, adding more characters actively makes the game even harder to balance. New maps are incredibly hard to get right (Paris, HLC, Havana...).

Quake3 is still one of my fav games. I could literally play the same map all day even.

I think it may be more that the content is getting stale too quickly. Like place once and done.

Maps get stale when they lack depth and an evolving meta. Map size, assets, etc are almost completely irrelevant.

Over watch gameplay and especially movement is largely the issue here.

The meta is almost completely dependent on the hero balance at the time IME though, outside of Havana always having snipers at the top levels.

StarCraft I meta evolved for decades even though blizzard stopped updating the game. It’s hard to get that kind of depth from a FPS game, but CSGO’s Dust II is iconic in part due to it’s constant refinement but also near perfect balance adds strategic depth when players explore subtle interactions.

I think you could revert Overwatch to the launch day build, and people would play it a lot differently now than they did back then. The community learning to play the game will happen no matter what balance changes show up on the backend; balance changes just force people out of their local maximum towards a new higher local maximum. But, you could do that without balance changes. Just try something new. There is probably a better strategy out there.

Not really. Blizzard's balance team is shockingly bad. Metas usually exist for huge periods of time (GOATS lasted over a year, as did moth, as did dive). It is repetitive to play the same maps, with the same heroes, for a year.

I hear that a lot. Why keep playing? Why play the meta? The onetricks seem to do well no matter what the meta is.

A lot of players feel forced to play the meta. Then a few don't, and the meta changes.

> I hear that a lot. Why keep playing? Why play the meta? The onetricks seem to do well no matter what the meta is.

To compete at anything means making the decisions that put a contestant in the best position to win. A "meta" is the most optimal team composition for a given map. To play off meta is uncompetitive.

> Then a few don't, and the meta changes.

This is not how metas change.

So why did the Orisa buff result in a Rein/Zarya meta? She wasn't in the meta before, she was changed, she wasn't in the meta afterwards -- but the meta changed. What's going on there exactly?

Sorry, if you can expand on which Orisa change you're describing I'd be happy to explain what happened in that meta. Nonmeta heroes get changed all the time and do not change the meta (unless they get changed enough to become meta heroes).

The no-crits-while-in-fortify change. Probably just a couple patches ago at this point.

Ah yeah. The Orisa change was actually mostly irrelevant to the meta at the time. The change that actually had an impact was the 2nd of 2 big Hammond nerfs.

At the time, teams were running Hammond/Sigma/Tracer/Echo mostly. Depending on the map, Rush (Rein/Dva/Mei/McCree/Lucio) was also viable. After the change in the patch you referenced, Hammond was no longer optimal so Sigma/Ball stopped being played in favor of almost fulltime Rush.

More recently Double Bubble has become popular (Zarya/Winston), but Rush is still played a ton and the dominant meta.

The patch notes for that patch can be found here: https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/overwatch/t/overwatch-reta...

Eh I mean. It's the biggest game in the world for a reason. It's shallow and money hungry to you, but a huge % of its players love it.

> Nothing like Blizzard's best work from the past (Diablo 2, Starcraft) that could be played for years with no "season passes" or other MTX.

The people responsible for that iteration of Blizzard no longer work there, is the problem.

> Fortnite is a shallow

Hate to take offense to this, but as someone who plays Fortnite competitively, it is absolutely not shallow. It's so much more than just another FPS.

I think Errant Signal has a great video [1] dissecting the appeal and breadth of content in Fortnite. It's not my cup of tea, but I certainly don't think you can call it "shallow". On the other side, Folding Ideas has a great video [2] (that the Errant Signal video references) dissecting the monetization systems in Fortnite and their negative aspects.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNukmNDq60Q [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPHPNgIihR0

Absolutely, I won't argue the dark patterns to get kids to spend their parents' money. It's kinda gross that it's simply the industry standard now.

I just know it's by far the most interesting competitive real time game I've played in years.

Can you expand on what about it is so interesting to you? My only experience with Fortnite is watching my 13 year old brother practice crazy fast building, and every time I can't help but wonder why they'd rather play that than Apex Legends. I sincerely don't understand.

Grinding fast builds helps you when you're fighting. :) Boxing someone and then editing a hole to shoot them is sort of "top tier" gameplay.

In general, not only do you have to shoot people as in a typical FPS, but you have additional defenses you can put up (builds), you can use those builds for mobility and gaining height quickly, Epic constantly rotates the weapon set, they add/remove mobility items all the time which forces you to change how you move across the map, and the map changes.

And then when I just want to chill there are all sorts of non-fight challenges and (relatively shallow) lore to chase down.

It's never not interesting, and if you like grinding and seeing your own skills and reaction times improve, it's all there

edit: I should link some videos.

1. One of the best players in the game right now getting 25+ kills in ranked play (ignore the rich kid chatter, he's 16 and already made nearly a million in comps which makes him insufferable sometimes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhTCEEeLvdk

2. One of the best teams placing 2nd in the last FNCS, what typical "endgames" look like in tournaments (lots of yelling): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLFCmOFAf_w

Monetization systems aside, the game development work on Fortnite is pretty innovative.

While Fortnite is one of the bigger games doing it, I don't think it's unique to Fortnite. Many games have seasons and constantly updating content. That's the bigger takeaway, not that Fortnite is successful with it.

Players will no longer stick around a year or more for new content. Back in the days when there was a dozen different games, maybe, but nowadays there's so much other content out there, why would someone play Overwatch for 4 years straight?

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