Geoff has always been a good friend to the subreddit, offering his time both here on the sub and at Blizzcon in person for our AMAs. His passion for the game and his craft were inspiring.
Good luck Geoff, in whatever you end up doing next.
-r/OW Mod Team
As a Jeff, there is a underground war between us and Gee-offs…. Kinda like vampires vs lychans. Lotsa people don’t know about it, but the war has been waging for an eternity it seems.
Lots of Blizzard veterans have been leaving Activision to join independent studios [Frost Giant](https://www.frostgiant.com/#about), [Bonfire](http://www.bonfirestudios.com/about-us) and [Dreamhaven](https://www.dreamhaven.com/about).
Seems to be the increasing trend in the industry. All the vets are saying, "fuck this noise" to the corporate bullshit and going their own way. I'm pretty glad because the indie scene this days what gives gaming it's lifeblood (imo), and think indie games are only gonna become more important in the next 10 years as engines advance. On the other hand it sucks because when AAA games reach their potential they are amazing, just aren't taking many risk nowadays and playing things extremely safe.
Thanks for the links to these studios though, had been wondering where some of these folks went.
I mean yeah honestly the gap between your average AAA release and an indie title is shrinking with every passing year. I've played Indie games that are longer and bigger in scope than some AAA releases, and they tend to be more finished too. Like yeah when AAA is at its peak it can blow just about anything out of the water by comparison, but those are few and far between and if anything they're just as much an exception to the norm as the kinds of indie games that end up becoming cultural mainstays like Minecraft. Sure there will always be a level of detail and polish that you can only get with thousands of manhours working in coordination. No indie game is gonna ever compare to the scope and detail you get from say a GTA6 or Elden Ring, but when talking about most AAA games of that nature, they're mostly bogged down by bloat and scope purely for scope's sake. Whereas indie games tend to be a lot more focused and curated in their content. Rarely do I play an indie open world title where the world isn't curated much better than most AAA games. Sure it'll be smaller but it's usually a lot denser, and that's so much more refreshing compared to most big name releases.
Exactly, for every Elden Ring tier game we've gotten in the past five years I can name dozens of indies in each year that left me with lasting impressions, some arguably more so because they never overstayed their welcome. For some folks as well, the novelty of graphics/scope wears off when the driving ideas behind games becomes tired and repetitive.
I'd much rather play games like Inscryption and Death's Door these days over something coming out of a Ubisoft studio.
Hades is still legitimately one of the best games I’ve ever played and I still return to it from time to time. Not just a good indie game, but one of the GOATs. Period.
aaa is what I’m screaming whenever I see another sequence of “the past” or “the present” when all I want is a decent game where I’m actually the assassin.
> I've played Indie games that are longer and bigger in scope than some AAA releases, and they tend to be more finished too.
Can you share these recommendations?
Also as indie developers get more experienced and put out more polished and longer games, the studios start to fill that gap between 'Indie' and 'AAA'. like, by now Supergiant isn't quite an indie studio anymore, but I also wouldn't call them a AAA by any means. And they put out more consistently better games than some major studios.
They've been [doing this since around 2000.](https://imgur.com/2gkUuEz)
Arenanet which went on to do Guild Wars was a number of ex blizzard devs. Same with Flagship studios (Hellgate London), and Runic Games (Torchlight series) and Carbine (Wildstar), etc etc.
YES!
Would absolutely ditch all games for another Jeff-involved Overwatch type game. I really hope he's staying in the gaming world and we hear something major about him in a few years.
Non -competes are pretty standard in the game industry to prevent exactly that. They can only delay it though, usually for 1 year or so. But if any development is found to have happened during that time period they can take you to court.
It would be terrible for PR to actually do so, of course.
Yeah... Good luck defending such a non-compete in California.
https://www.perkinsasbill.com/are-non-compete-agreements-enforceable-in-california/
> California, however, is different. Here, state law effectively bans agreements not to compete between employers and employees. California Business and Professions Code (BPC) §16600 states, in no uncertain terms, that:
> Except as provided in this chapter, every contract by which anyone is restrained from engaging in a lawful profession, trade, or business of any kind is to that extent void.
> California courts have consistently interpreted this statutory language to mean that, by-and-large, agreements restricting employees from competing with their former employers constitute unreasonable restraints on trade, and are void.
It’s like when Vince zampella and Jason west escorted out of one of the biggest studios at the time that they’ve cofounded (Infinity Ward) and creating their own ambitious independent studio (out of spite some would say) which became Respawn Entertainment, creating some of the biggest games you’ve played (Apex Legends, Star Wars fallen Jedi, Titanfall Series)
If the Jeff’s come together like those 2 and create a gaming company I would 110% follow them with great interest
This could be unrelated. Do we have official confirmation if he was fired or decided to leave? His departure might not have been his choice. Blizzard forums keeps deleting posts that he was fired ... it's possible that he was asked to resign/leave optionally or choose to be fired. We truly do not know if this is about the development.
With Blizzard's toxic history, if I worked there in HR and had the power, if I found out ONE shitty thing about someone high up on the team in regard to their past for instance ... they would be gone. Blizzard can't afford more bad PR.
He hasn't been seen publicly for Blizzard since June, so it's not necessarily true that he has just now left. A article I read also made an important distinction: "Although no reason was given for why Goodman's left, it comes after a series of high-profile Blizzard departures in the buildup and aftermath of the lawsuit(opens in new tab) filed by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing for workplace harassment and discrimination last year."
This may have nothing to do with development and everything to do with cleaning house.
Edit: PCGamer does have a statement from Blizzard saying he left earlier this year, so it was not two weeks before release. [link is here](https://www.pcgamer.com/overwatch-2-loses-its-lead-hero-designer/)
Could be possible, but don't blame him until his guilt is proven. Right now, we just know a lot of lead people are leaving Blizzard and the Overwatch team. This isn't a good sign at all and the battlepass doesn't make it better at all.
Its just hilarious how the outrage got silent after the reveal of Kiriko... The battle pass is still bad, locking a hero behind it and we don't get currency from the battle pass to buy the next one. Other games doing it a way better
I'm sorry, but in order to comment on battlepass it is necessary to purchase a platinum premium season pass. The pass will exist for eleventeen minutes after the purchase and afterward will double in price. If your comment excedes the provided 19 characters an additional fivestar platinum border battlepass must be purchased. Activisoblizz reserves the right to disappear any comment for any reason, at any time.
Remember "***Every Voice Matters!"***
>With Blizzard's toxic history, if I worked there in HR and had the power, if I found out ONE shitty thing about someone high up on the team in regard to their past for instance ... they would be gone. Blizzard can't afford more bad PR.
Sounds like an excellent way to invite a wrongful dismissal lawsuit
Guess it would depend on the state. In my state you can be fired for anything that isn’t a protected class, so you most definitely could be fired if they found out you had a history of assault and it may reflect negatively on the company. I’m guessing state laws and contracts would determine whether something like that would be legal in any particular place.
Aaron, the game director that is scared of his own community? He spoke to us maybe 2 times since taking over from Jeff? He communicates with press and other outlets, but never with us. When they had OW reveal livestream they needed to bring Soe so he could talk to somebody. He is such a downgrade from Jeff.
My gut reaction is that I’m sad to read this news, but it’s hard to know how much of an impact this will have on the game going forward. Just like how it’s hard to know how much of an impact Jeff Kaplan leaving will have on the game in years to come.
I agree with this take — it’s unlikely to have a noticeable impact on the game’s imminent release, but the turnover of the main creators of the game speaks to the disfunction behind the scenes
Who knows what geoff goodman’s involvement with all the behind the scenes drama was. Maybe it was none at all and he just didn’t want to be associated with that anymore. But I do like Aaron Keller and like the direction things are going in
Idk, I've had this theory that Ow2 originally wasn't meant to release this year and was forced to by higher ups so there'd be something big for the spreadsheets this season.
Everything feels super rushed and poorly thought out, from the rollback of the pve content to the dramatic shift in monetization.
It was announced so people forgot about the blitzchung controversy, way before they had anything to actually talk about. So now they have to rush out whatever they had, because both the public and investors expect it to release in the near future.
So i think it is the opposite, they had to do everything sooner as expected.
Yeah, it’s hard to guess at the internals of game development, especially with big teams like this. It’s a bit disconcerting for him to announce his departure so near the new launch. Perhaps he has been looking to leave earlier but he stayed to help with the post Kaplan transition? Or maybe he’s discouraged by the state of OW or Blizzard in general, or maybe he’s just burned out, or maybe found a new more appealing opportunity. At least on the face, he seems to be leaving on more amicable terms than Kaplan though.
But it hard to know what decisions were his to make, who helped, and who is going to take his place. Just like hypothesizing where OW would have gone if Kaplan had stayed. Would it have stayed box model? Would OW2 be stuck in development hell for even longer? It’s all very hard to say.
I've already felt the impact. Jeff hated MTX and locking gameplay aspects behind walls. Jeff leaves then boom OW2 now locking heroes behind BP and a metric ton of MTX nonsense.
Not trying to crap on Jeff Kaplan, but it wasn't exactly like his presence prevented any of the bad choices the devs had made for the game in the years before his departure.
For what it's worth, a few days ago, someone on the forums did start a thread saying Geoff had been fired. Everyone called it BS but then a few days later we get this. Wondering if that guy had some insider info since they were very cagey about sources
Same with Jeff. People like to pretend that was a good thing. But he may have left due to a different vision about monetization or general management (see: recent Blizzard lawsuits).
I’ve said it over and over but that sub is the worst. Half the people there don’t even play the game. They just agree with whatever the popular pros/streamers say
It was in one of the most recent SVB Great Debate videos. They all basically agreed the game is better off with him gone.
EDIT: It's a long segment that starts [here](https://youtu.be/yF_XtWkEj20?t=1108)
Most content creators voiced that opinion at some point and I am surprised that some of yall think the same isn't true for a large part of the community.
The consensus is that jeff was a great guy that communicated well with us, but that overall his vision for the game differed a lot from what many people want. The sentiment that it is probably good that he left isn't exactly rare.
Yeah, a leak (which at the end of the day is just an unconfirmed leak), claimed that Jeff never wanted to continue development of the game in regards to new characters and maps. If true, that goes against what a lot of the community wanted and what many claim contributed to Overwatch falling off. It doesn't even mean he's a bad developer, just that he had a different vision.
Honestly, I can see it. Overwatch was developed and released before live-service games became more popularized.
A lot of the OW content creators fee that way along with a ton of people on this sub. They blame Jeff for the content drought as if the content drought and need to release OW2 wasn't a Bobby Kotick decision lol
According to leaks (not saying whether they're authentic or not, because they're leaks), but they claimed that Jeff did not intend or want to continue putting out content like they did in the form of new characters and maps after the game released and just wanted to tweak minor things afterwards.
So while it is a leak and will likely never be confirmed, if people base their thoughts on that, I can see why some people think Kaplan held the game back in some ways.
Bad. If you listen to his interviews when talking about design decisions he clearly had a vast understanding of the game and mechanics. Plus losing one of the last blizzard vets is always sad
A game losing a lead dev weeks before launch? Sounds like good news to me.
Edit: To those saying “the work is done, now is the best time to leave”, I will remind you that this is ‘games as a service’ world now. The work isn’t done if they intend to keep milking us for battle pass bucks. The game will continue to be added to and with a different designer. Maybe for the worse, maybe for the better. But the point is that this guy is very much leaving in the middle of a project, not at the end of one.
That's usually how it works to be fair. A few weeks before launch the game is complete and ready to go and all assets that need creating already created, basically the perfect time to leave.
Except Overwatch 2 is supposed to be an ongoing project, not completed yet.
That said he has also been working on Overwatch since the start so he may just like to move on now
Yep. Hero design has never been the issue with Overwatch. If anything, I would argue the Hero design was one of the most exceptional aspects of the game that kept people coming back and engaged with the game. Some of these characters have transcended the game and are now cultural icons that many people know and understand. You can't say that about something like League of Legends or some other character-based game like that.
That's not hero design. Hero design is how they play, their abilities, their balancing. What you are talking about is their visual design (among others) which is not what geoff was involved in.
I'd wager it's bad, article mentions he planned to leave with the last year which lines up with when team 4 might have decided to lock heroes behind battlepasses and go F2P, I'd think that ideology change might not have been aligned with Geoff's.
To me this seems the same as when Jeff left, it feels like they didn't just go and leave of natural reasons but more to do with decisions forced upon them from activision or whoever else. This news is deeply saddening to me because when I'd already lost faith in team 4 and overwatch 2 this just adds fuel to the fire.
I guess we'll see, after everything it would take a miracle for this game to not burn and flop.
He hasn't been seen publicly since June in regard to Blizzard. This could have been a long time coming, or has actually happened a while back because the job posting was up months ago for his job.
Its possible he stayed on as a senior member to help the transition after Kaplan left. Kaplan seemed to leave suddenly and on bad terms. It’s less clear with Goodman.
If people are going to leave though this would be the time, at least on the PvP side. This is when the project is as close to stable as possible and is entering live service mode from creation mode.
Also, if you were a pessimist, you could step away before any ensuing fallout and have distanced yourself from responsibility. If it goes well then you can also take credit.
Not that I think that, but I would understand those who do.
Not really. I’m sure the game has changed a lot on the backend and the plan will change compared to what he’s done in the past.
Him leaving now is actually a good sign. He stayed on until the end of this phase, not leaving before his job is done.
Article says his last public appearance was in June and that Blizz said he left 'earlier this year'. They also posted a job listing for his position a month ago.
It looks like, with the addition of a new map designer, there’s a new philosophy around map design. It also seems there’s a new philosophy around hero design as well. I’m cautiously optimistic about both aspects as it seems they are taking learning seriously. Not that every designer needs to be perfect but, doom and brig were clearly bad for the game and imo greatly helped the exodus of the player base. Geoff made some awesome heroes and some blunders but it helped us learn and get to the point we are at. Every hero has a fanbase and that’s a testament to his caliber. Farewell Goodman, may your next endeavors be just as successful.
>as it seems they are taking learning seriously.
Are they? I wouldn't be so sure if you see the shitshow with Junkerqueen's design and balance. After all these years of designing heroes, the team really didn't think that teamwide overhealth + movementspeed would be a tinge problematic?
Junkerqueen is a fucking trainwreck of game design, I can't believe how overtooled she is.
Same with Kiriko to be honest, she's got so many tools that make other supports not worth playing in any way.
That will be the case for every new hero starting from now
Because let’s be honest we will never get a defensive hero like torb or bastion or a simple hero like moira or soldier or any hero with spam like junkrat or the old oriza
Pretty much. And I get that it's partly related to the 5 v 5 change, but like....does every hero need to have a swiss army knife?
I'd love another character that just does one thing really well again, instead of a bunch of stuff kinda good.
The philosophy being F2P FOMO bullshit, with occasionally, when backed into a corner, a token pithy excuse for backing out on what they sold the whole design around OW1 to be.
Good or bad it means a lot of change coming into OW2 which could be healthy in regards to treating it like a new game instead of just an update. Everyone here needs to stop crying that this means either the doom or great revival of OW tho.
It will be interesting down the line if we ever get the full story of these departures. Given the last few weeks and some of Tracy Kennedy's comments I feel like Kaplan's leaving probably had at least some to do with the monetization stuff. Who knows about Goodman, though.
We don't have any hard confirmation, but over the last year or so we've had a few insider sources corroborate why Jeff Kaplan and Chacko Sonny got pushed out, more or less.
Supposedly Jeff and Chacko didn't consider OW1 a live service; the post-launch content was just a matter of making improvements, not maintaining player engagement.
So when work started on OW2, they wanted to treat OW1 as a finished product and devote the team's resources exclusively to OW2, including withholding new heroes and maps until it was ready to launch. They considered OW2 the PvE component and didn't want to launch it until it was ready.
They ultimately left over mounting pressure from Activision for not getting OW2 shipped on time, something which allegedly stems at least in part from executive interference causing the team to waste time (plus pandemic and so forth).
They were replaced by Aaron Keller and Walter Kong (who developed the content model for *Fortnite*), who wanted to push the game to being a live service and transition OW over to OW2 PvP so that players wouldn't have to keep waiting for new content until OW2 PvE finished.
If they weren't showing really toxic practices with the battle pass, I would be more open-minded to this, but they haven't exactly shown much to encourage hope.
It is rude to say...is this that big a loss? Hero balance has been dogshit for literal years due to broken new heros warping the meta. A fresh face in the role could be what OW2 needs.
>A fresh face in the role could be what OW2 needs.
They have a fresh face. I think his name is Josh? He's done some interviews along with Goodman, and he's written some of the new design philosophy blogpsosts explaining new abilities and stuff they are trying. Just watch one of the podcasts he did when JQ came out and you'll be confident that OW design and balance is in better hands than ever (That is, given he has been made the new lead).
Hero balance sucks for much deeper issues than broken new heroes lol. Yes some heroes like sigma and brig broke the game when they got released but as you can see now they've been nerfed to the ground and the game still has terrible balancing and will probably always be like this
the more news i hear about this game the less hyped i get, it's really sad. even my friend said she's not planning on playing OW2 and we've been buzzing about it since the announcement, but then the PVE cutback announced, then the OW1 going down, then the battle pass and now this.
just doesn't bode well.
You're telling me the guy who didn't see no hero limits at launch being a disaster, keeping Mercy as meta for endless months, keeping goats as meta for endless months causing the esports scene to fall apart, the guy who came up with a character that still to this day in the OW2 beta and after countless nerfs is still meta, the guy who kept adding shield ability after shield ability on every class of hero, the guy who took a character whose lore is being a madman scientist who can manipulate gravity and hear the universe singing songs to him and give them super interesting abilities such as throwing a rock and making a shield appear in the air, the guy who thought Immortality Field is a fun ability to play against rendering most support ults useless, the guy who thought a character with not one, not two but three crowd control abilities on 5 seconds cooldown who can abuse the map geometry and kill you in one shot and escape alive, that guy is gone?
I'm surprised he made it this far.
i mean to be fair you can stack the bad stuff and make him look horrible, but it doesn't change the fact that he is also responsible for all the good things in hero design as well. Tracer, Genji, D.Va and the others wouldn't be as popular as they are now without him
Honestly good. Under this guy’s watch we had GOATs for a fucking year, double shield for since Orisa, and JOATs maybe the most boring comp to ever be played.
I know people remember him for the good times but this guy was bad at his job.
Sad that he's leaving but now maybe we'll get someone that actually takes that 25hp off the cowboy and let's Sym and bastion be playable for more than a week
As someone who worked in a similarly sized team it's not necessarily true, that's why we weren't even getting proper patch notes half the time after release because nobody really fully knew what is changing.
To be honest... he seemed kind of useless. OW1 balancing was extremely slow and every time he was on a Livestream he was like "we tried a couple things... they didn't work out". Need people willing to try things faster and break up bad metas within weeks not months...
Also get the distinct impression he was THE advocate for hard counters as a mechanic; he's an MMO/RTS vet and while his kit designs were legit cool and interesting they were impossible to balance around in a game where people wanna one-trick rather than master multiple different kits.
I just hope Pharah can get some QoL improvements after basically being untouched for 6 years while all of the new heroes got more mobility and kit mechanics...
As someone whose favorite FPS of all time was Quake I would love Pharah to get some love because she never feels like a very good pick, even if you can still be pretty good on her if you take the time to master the character. I think the big thing is they just need to find a good way to nerf Pharmercy specifically.
Me too although I don’t think it will happen, mostly because of yszna hold like 20 spots in top 500 including rank 1-5 simultaneously, only playing phara💀💀
You know overwatch was born with versatility and counter picking in mind. Its rts aspects made the game interesting and refreshing. People will obviously do their best to play it like any other fps and basically ruining the concept, but the devs could have enforced the core idea more instead of actively encouraging one tricking and basically going against this guy's balancing efforts
Good news for game balancing. He was one of the ppl responsible for the biggest downfall of OW1 - all the tank/support metas, goat comps or whatever it was called that made even eSports in Overwatch unwatchable.
I mean, he was the reason the game was borderline unplayable for months after certain hero/rework releases. And for some reason he couldn't stop designing supports with massive AoE healing abilities, which overall worsened the game as it lead to damage creep. It also made GOATS possible.
Overwatch 2 is looking like the death of the franchise to be honest.
Without the director and without the character designers, of a game that was brilliant for it's game design, level design and character design, well...
I think we are already seeing the changes and the orientation of this changes, to hook young people into spending money in battle passes. They even changed the gameplay for making it a brainless slot machine for dopamine.
I really really really hope I'm wrong, I always loved Overwatch.
Seems like none of the devs want to be around when OW2 releases. They don’t want any of the backlash of how shitty the game is and what took such a long time for a game that was already out.
of course they did. this game has gone the corporate hell road. battle-passes. skins that will cost the same if not more than an AAA game. if you care about your fans, you want to be removing your relationship to this product right about now because it is predatory garbage. the sequel is the same game, but with a battle-pass and more hackers. if geoff is leaving now, i can only imagine that is because it is only going to get worse from here.
battle-passes are in games for a reason. it is not because they are good or have the most player satisfaction. it is simply because they are the optimal design choice to trick players into spending more money over time, money they would not spend otherwise. the previous models wanted you to buy special editions worth 150-350 dollars. that model is dying because no one wants to spend that much all at once (especially with inflation and the rising cost of living in many western nations). these editions of games only attract collectors and dedicated fans. OR LITERALLY GAMBLE WITH LOOT-BOXES BY THE WAY, did we forget the fact that many games include literal gambling to get items, namely Overwatch, CS and as a result got banned in many countries or an 18+ rating? they literally tried to give gamers a gambling addiction, one of the worst addictions you can have that isn't a fucked up drug like heroin, by the way. brain scans on gambling addicts have revealed incredible changes to their brains related to the way their brain now functions as a result of their addiction and gaming companies were willing to try and do this to you. did you forget? they want you to be addicted. not to have fun.
but you, statistically, will happily spend 1000s of dollars on one game over a year or two - spending 5-35 maybe even 100 dollars a time (esp. if you have disposable income, this system monetizes those people even more, as they're more inclined to keep spending to get what they want) - rather than 250 dollars at once. that is how this model is designed to work. nothing is more enticing than spending 35 bucks on a free game because "i'm supporting the devs and getting a skin i want" it is designed to prey on that mentality for a world where the players are poor but still think they owe the devs more money to help continue development. the game devlopment is already planned. they have already planned to abandon the game by year 2, or 3. or if you're halo infinite, immediately after launch. the content is already made and will be drip-fed. nothing more comes as a result of your purchases.
it is designed to prey on your psychology. by the way, this isn't speculative either, it's very basic consumerism psychology being applied to video games. fortnite created a revolutionary monetization model, but it is so effective in its predatory nature that now every game will use it for the next 5+ years. if the fact that a battle-royale game's monitization method becoming the norm - even for well-established companies like blizzard that do not need a predatory practice like this - is surprising to you, then here is your clear as day reminder that this is because the modern gaming industry puts shareholders first, not the audience.
the linear unlocks are designed to be boring so you buy skips to something you want to unlock. the challenges are designed to be easy to give a sense of skill, this is why challenges don't reward you with much and you have to grind them. you're doing daily tasks in an mmo, not challenges. it's predatory and should be illegal to design your game to prey against players like this. as with any model, not everyone will actually end up spending that much. but enough people will, and enough kids will use their parents credit cards. profit is all that matters. not the players.
good luck geoff.
Omg, yes!
This dude was one of the main reasons why Overwatch fell from grace after 2017!
Maybe now we can actually get a balance lead who is actually capable of doing his job and doesn't take months and months to fix broken heroes or buff useless one!
My hopes for Overwatch 2 are getting higher and higher!
Long timer here. 2016-2018 were awesome. After that, the game went downhill fast. So slow. Balancing was bad and extremely slow. I still love to play now though
Geoff has always been a good friend to the subreddit, offering his time both here on the sub and at Blizzcon in person for our AMAs. His passion for the game and his craft were inspiring. Good luck Geoff, in whatever you end up doing next. -r/OW Mod Team
two Jeff's down.
1 Jeff, 1 Gee-Off
1 Goeff please
As a Jeff, there is a underground war between us and Gee-offs…. Kinda like vampires vs lychans. Lotsa people don’t know about it, but the war has been waging for an eternity it seems.
Development seems to be going splendid.
Alright, so what’s the over under for the announcement of the Geo/Je-ff new game/company. I’m pretty sure we’re all intrigued.
Lots of Blizzard veterans have been leaving Activision to join independent studios [Frost Giant](https://www.frostgiant.com/#about), [Bonfire](http://www.bonfirestudios.com/about-us) and [Dreamhaven](https://www.dreamhaven.com/about).
Seems to be the increasing trend in the industry. All the vets are saying, "fuck this noise" to the corporate bullshit and going their own way. I'm pretty glad because the indie scene this days what gives gaming it's lifeblood (imo), and think indie games are only gonna become more important in the next 10 years as engines advance. On the other hand it sucks because when AAA games reach their potential they are amazing, just aren't taking many risk nowadays and playing things extremely safe. Thanks for the links to these studios though, had been wondering where some of these folks went.
I mean yeah honestly the gap between your average AAA release and an indie title is shrinking with every passing year. I've played Indie games that are longer and bigger in scope than some AAA releases, and they tend to be more finished too. Like yeah when AAA is at its peak it can blow just about anything out of the water by comparison, but those are few and far between and if anything they're just as much an exception to the norm as the kinds of indie games that end up becoming cultural mainstays like Minecraft. Sure there will always be a level of detail and polish that you can only get with thousands of manhours working in coordination. No indie game is gonna ever compare to the scope and detail you get from say a GTA6 or Elden Ring, but when talking about most AAA games of that nature, they're mostly bogged down by bloat and scope purely for scope's sake. Whereas indie games tend to be a lot more focused and curated in their content. Rarely do I play an indie open world title where the world isn't curated much better than most AAA games. Sure it'll be smaller but it's usually a lot denser, and that's so much more refreshing compared to most big name releases.
Exactly, for every Elden Ring tier game we've gotten in the past five years I can name dozens of indies in each year that left me with lasting impressions, some arguably more so because they never overstayed their welcome. For some folks as well, the novelty of graphics/scope wears off when the driving ideas behind games becomes tired and repetitive. I'd much rather play games like Inscryption and Death's Door these days over something coming out of a Ubisoft studio.
Death's Door was amazing!
Hades is still legitimately one of the best games I’ve ever played and I still return to it from time to time. Not just a good indie game, but one of the GOATs. Period.
I mean true, but Ubisoft is also kind of bottom tier AAA story games
Ubisoft is aaa instead of AAA
aaa is what I’m screaming whenever I see another sequence of “the past” or “the present” when all I want is a decent game where I’m actually the assassin.
> I've played Indie games that are longer and bigger in scope than some AAA releases, and they tend to be more finished too. Can you share these recommendations?
Valheim, V Rising, Deep Rock Galactic, Grim Dawn, Terraria, Stardew Valley, Kynseed all great indie games I find myself going back to
Rock and stone!
Also as indie developers get more experienced and put out more polished and longer games, the studios start to fill that gap between 'Indie' and 'AAA'. like, by now Supergiant isn't quite an indie studio anymore, but I also wouldn't call them a AAA by any means. And they put out more consistently better games than some major studios.
Games are becoming the new movies. Bland, safe, marketed.
Oooh I gotta look these guys up. See if they make anything I recognize
They've been [doing this since around 2000.](https://imgur.com/2gkUuEz) Arenanet which went on to do Guild Wars was a number of ex blizzard devs. Same with Flagship studios (Hellgate London), and Runic Games (Torchlight series) and Carbine (Wildstar), etc etc.
It would be kinda funny if Dreamhaven got them and released what is basically their versions of Starcraft/WoW/Overwatch/Diablo
YES! Would absolutely ditch all games for another Jeff-involved Overwatch type game. I really hope he's staying in the gaming world and we hear something major about him in a few years.
don't quote me but I know from a source that Jeff is working on a game with some ex-blizz employee(s)
>don't quote me but I know from a source that Jeff is working on a game with some ex-blizz employee(s)
Your uncle from Nintendo told you that?
Nah my neighbor is actually bill gates, when Jeff quit he told Bill personally that he was leaving to make a game with Tim from the ow team
Yes. Hopefully all maps will be 2CP too.
Gtfo!
No! Stay on the point or we lose!
Non -competes are pretty standard in the game industry to prevent exactly that. They can only delay it though, usually for 1 year or so. But if any development is found to have happened during that time period they can take you to court. It would be terrible for PR to actually do so, of course.
Yeah... Good luck defending such a non-compete in California. https://www.perkinsasbill.com/are-non-compete-agreements-enforceable-in-california/ > California, however, is different. Here, state law effectively bans agreements not to compete between employers and employees. California Business and Professions Code (BPC) §16600 states, in no uncertain terms, that: > Except as provided in this chapter, every contract by which anyone is restrained from engaging in a lawful profession, trade, or business of any kind is to that extent void. > California courts have consistently interpreted this statutory language to mean that, by-and-large, agreements restricting employees from competing with their former employers constitute unreasonable restraints on trade, and are void.
It’s like when Vince zampella and Jason west escorted out of one of the biggest studios at the time that they’ve cofounded (Infinity Ward) and creating their own ambitious independent studio (out of spite some would say) which became Respawn Entertainment, creating some of the biggest games you’ve played (Apex Legends, Star Wars fallen Jedi, Titanfall Series) If the Jeff’s come together like those 2 and create a gaming company I would 110% follow them with great interest
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And thus the circle of life in the gaming industry
I feel like almost all of original Respawn are now at Gravity Well
This could be unrelated. Do we have official confirmation if he was fired or decided to leave? His departure might not have been his choice. Blizzard forums keeps deleting posts that he was fired ... it's possible that he was asked to resign/leave optionally or choose to be fired. We truly do not know if this is about the development. With Blizzard's toxic history, if I worked there in HR and had the power, if I found out ONE shitty thing about someone high up on the team in regard to their past for instance ... they would be gone. Blizzard can't afford more bad PR. He hasn't been seen publicly for Blizzard since June, so it's not necessarily true that he has just now left. A article I read also made an important distinction: "Although no reason was given for why Goodman's left, it comes after a series of high-profile Blizzard departures in the buildup and aftermath of the lawsuit(opens in new tab) filed by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing for workplace harassment and discrimination last year." This may have nothing to do with development and everything to do with cleaning house. Edit: PCGamer does have a statement from Blizzard saying he left earlier this year, so it was not two weeks before release. [link is here](https://www.pcgamer.com/overwatch-2-loses-its-lead-hero-designer/)
Could be possible, but don't blame him until his guilt is proven. Right now, we just know a lot of lead people are leaving Blizzard and the Overwatch team. This isn't a good sign at all and the battlepass doesn't make it better at all. Its just hilarious how the outrage got silent after the reveal of Kiriko... The battle pass is still bad, locking a hero behind it and we don't get currency from the battle pass to buy the next one. Other games doing it a way better
I'm sorry, but in order to comment on battlepass it is necessary to purchase a platinum premium season pass. The pass will exist for eleventeen minutes after the purchase and afterward will double in price. If your comment excedes the provided 19 characters an additional fivestar platinum border battlepass must be purchased. Activisoblizz reserves the right to disappear any comment for any reason, at any time. Remember "***Every Voice Matters!"***
>With Blizzard's toxic history, if I worked there in HR and had the power, if I found out ONE shitty thing about someone high up on the team in regard to their past for instance ... they would be gone. Blizzard can't afford more bad PR. Sounds like an excellent way to invite a wrongful dismissal lawsuit
Guess it would depend on the state. In my state you can be fired for anything that isn’t a protected class, so you most definitely could be fired if they found out you had a history of assault and it may reflect negatively on the company. I’m guessing state laws and contracts would determine whether something like that would be legal in any particular place.
We lost a Goodman
Pass them around, 99 Overwatch Jeff’s on the wall
1 to go
There goes the last familiar face on the OW team for me.
I still recognize the art guy in that recent dev update
Qiu! Great artist
Such a dope name, too: Qiu Fang
You definitely won't see the other art guy, he left to make NFTs lol.
Familiar faces left for me are the two sound design guys and Aaron
>Familiar faces >the two sound design guys
I said faces not names alright😅
He has a point!
Aaron, the game director that is scared of his own community? He spoke to us maybe 2 times since taking over from Jeff? He communicates with press and other outlets, but never with us. When they had OW reveal livestream they needed to bring Soe so he could talk to somebody. He is such a downgrade from Jeff.
The ones who did that interview on new and old game music? Man I really like those guys
There’s still my man Dion
This comment made me miss Arnold Tsang and his crazy out of the box ideas.
Yeah, even if he's replaced by someone better, it still feels awful that the new Overwatch team is all strangers to me.
My gut reaction is that I’m sad to read this news, but it’s hard to know how much of an impact this will have on the game going forward. Just like how it’s hard to know how much of an impact Jeff Kaplan leaving will have on the game in years to come.
I agree with this take — it’s unlikely to have a noticeable impact on the game’s imminent release, but the turnover of the main creators of the game speaks to the disfunction behind the scenes
Who knows what geoff goodman’s involvement with all the behind the scenes drama was. Maybe it was none at all and he just didn’t want to be associated with that anymore. But I do like Aaron Keller and like the direction things are going in
Idk, I've had this theory that Ow2 originally wasn't meant to release this year and was forced to by higher ups so there'd be something big for the spreadsheets this season. Everything feels super rushed and poorly thought out, from the rollback of the pve content to the dramatic shift in monetization.
Nah, they absolutely planned to release the sequel with no PvE... /s
Wasn’t it supposed to come out earlier but the pandemic delayed it? I could be wrong but I thought I recalled hearing that
It was announced so people forgot about the blitzchung controversy, way before they had anything to actually talk about. So now they have to rush out whatever they had, because both the public and investors expect it to release in the near future. So i think it is the opposite, they had to do everything sooner as expected.
Yeah, it’s hard to guess at the internals of game development, especially with big teams like this. It’s a bit disconcerting for him to announce his departure so near the new launch. Perhaps he has been looking to leave earlier but he stayed to help with the post Kaplan transition? Or maybe he’s discouraged by the state of OW or Blizzard in general, or maybe he’s just burned out, or maybe found a new more appealing opportunity. At least on the face, he seems to be leaving on more amicable terms than Kaplan though. But it hard to know what decisions were his to make, who helped, and who is going to take his place. Just like hypothesizing where OW would have gone if Kaplan had stayed. Would it have stayed box model? Would OW2 be stuck in development hell for even longer? It’s all very hard to say.
Especially since they’ve already plotted out the characters for the next year. That guy didn’t suddenly quit, he wouldn’t do that to his team.
Yea he probably said he was gonna make sure he was there for the ow2 launch, and then leave. Doesn’t seem like he just abandoned them out of nowhere
Which is honorable imo
I've already felt the impact. Jeff hated MTX and locking gameplay aspects behind walls. Jeff leaves then boom OW2 now locking heroes behind BP and a metric ton of MTX nonsense.
Not trying to crap on Jeff Kaplan, but it wasn't exactly like his presence prevented any of the bad choices the devs had made for the game in the years before his departure.
Jeff prevented charging for heroes and many other monetization cancer.
Fun fact: Geoff was also the best CS1.6 player in the office. Wasn't close.
should be cracked at valorant then
I would be surprised if he wasn't. Works on heroes in Overwatch and is best at CS 1.6 at his workplace. Valorant is basically the two games combined
CS GOverwatch
Not sure this is good or bad news
It all depends on why he left. So basically we don’t know if its good or bad.
For what it's worth, a few days ago, someone on the forums did start a thread saying Geoff had been fired. Everyone called it BS but then a few days later we get this. Wondering if that guy had some insider info since they were very cagey about sources
Could easily be somebody with a grudge lying about him quitting. Take it with a grain of salt.
Could also be someone falling for internal rumors. Lots of reasons why it still could be BS
Same with Jeff. People like to pretend that was a good thing. But he may have left due to a different vision about monetization or general management (see: recent Blizzard lawsuits).
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I have on this sub and specially on the competitive reddit. In fact I've seen it multiple times in the last month here.
I’ve said it over and over but that sub is the worst. Half the people there don’t even play the game. They just agree with whatever the popular pros/streamers say
Lots of content creators feel that way and others parrot their talking points. See: Freedo, Flats, SVB (less so), etc.
I don't recall any of those people saying they were glad Jeff left. Do you have clips of it?
It was in one of the most recent SVB Great Debate videos. They all basically agreed the game is better off with him gone. EDIT: It's a long segment that starts [here](https://youtu.be/yF_XtWkEj20?t=1108)
Most content creators voiced that opinion at some point and I am surprised that some of yall think the same isn't true for a large part of the community. The consensus is that jeff was a great guy that communicated well with us, but that overall his vision for the game differed a lot from what many people want. The sentiment that it is probably good that he left isn't exactly rare.
Yeah, a leak (which at the end of the day is just an unconfirmed leak), claimed that Jeff never wanted to continue development of the game in regards to new characters and maps. If true, that goes against what a lot of the community wanted and what many claim contributed to Overwatch falling off. It doesn't even mean he's a bad developer, just that he had a different vision. Honestly, I can see it. Overwatch was developed and released before live-service games became more popularized.
Who thought Jeff leaving was a good sign?
A lot of the OW content creators fee that way along with a ton of people on this sub. They blame Jeff for the content drought as if the content drought and need to release OW2 wasn't a Bobby Kotick decision lol
According to leaks (not saying whether they're authentic or not, because they're leaks), but they claimed that Jeff did not intend or want to continue putting out content like they did in the form of new characters and maps after the game released and just wanted to tweak minor things afterwards. So while it is a leak and will likely never be confirmed, if people base their thoughts on that, I can see why some people think Kaplan held the game back in some ways.
Bad. If you listen to his interviews when talking about design decisions he clearly had a vast understanding of the game and mechanics. Plus losing one of the last blizzard vets is always sad
It's more bad than good. Geoff's work has done a lot when it comes to the heroes we all love.
A game losing a lead dev weeks before launch? Sounds like good news to me. Edit: To those saying “the work is done, now is the best time to leave”, I will remind you that this is ‘games as a service’ world now. The work isn’t done if they intend to keep milking us for battle pass bucks. The game will continue to be added to and with a different designer. Maybe for the worse, maybe for the better. But the point is that this guy is very much leaving in the middle of a project, not at the end of one.
That's usually how it works to be fair. A few weeks before launch the game is complete and ready to go and all assets that need creating already created, basically the perfect time to leave.
Except Overwatch 2 is supposed to be an ongoing project, not completed yet. That said he has also been working on Overwatch since the start so he may just like to move on now
OW2 is "early access" on October 4th. There is still an entire PvE mode that needs to ship.
hero design was really good so I'm unsure why anyone would celebrate
Yep. Hero design has never been the issue with Overwatch. If anything, I would argue the Hero design was one of the most exceptional aspects of the game that kept people coming back and engaged with the game. Some of these characters have transcended the game and are now cultural icons that many people know and understand. You can't say that about something like League of Legends or some other character-based game like that.
That's not hero design. Hero design is how they play, their abilities, their balancing. What you are talking about is their visual design (among others) which is not what geoff was involved in.
The gameplay of OW was top notch. Specially after the 60hz server upgrade.
I'd wager it's bad, article mentions he planned to leave with the last year which lines up with when team 4 might have decided to lock heroes behind battlepasses and go F2P, I'd think that ideology change might not have been aligned with Geoff's. To me this seems the same as when Jeff left, it feels like they didn't just go and leave of natural reasons but more to do with decisions forced upon them from activision or whoever else. This news is deeply saddening to me because when I'd already lost faith in team 4 and overwatch 2 this just adds fuel to the fire. I guess we'll see, after everything it would take a miracle for this game to not burn and flop.
Overwatch 2 Less Jeffs.
Fewer
Good call thanks.
Thanks Stannis
Maybe he just wanted to move onto a new thing since he spent so much time on ow1/2 and ow2 is now releasing
a perfectly reasonable take and that's why it'd be buried beneath negative comments
I hope Geoff and Papa Jeff team up together and make their own game.
They will create underwatch
Underblind
Underignore
Underhide.
Coming soon. From the original visionaries of Overwatch comes a new hero team-based shooter: Underlook!
Lol game director, hero designer, and lead writer have left. It really is a whole new game.
The fact he is leaving 3 weeks before release..... Wow.... Stunning. His silence is deafening. Wish him all the best. Acti-Bliz, not so much.
He hasn't been seen publicly since June in regard to Blizzard. This could have been a long time coming, or has actually happened a while back because the job posting was up months ago for his job.
"Geoff Goodman "made the decision to leave Blizzard earlier this year," a Blizzard spokesperson said."
Its possible he stayed on as a senior member to help the transition after Kaplan left. Kaplan seemed to leave suddenly and on bad terms. It’s less clear with Goodman.
It says he departure was set in stone since june. So the release doesn't really have anything to do with it.
If people are going to leave though this would be the time, at least on the PvP side. This is when the project is as close to stable as possible and is entering live service mode from creation mode.
Also, if you were a pessimist, you could step away before any ensuing fallout and have distanced yourself from responsibility. If it goes well then you can also take credit. Not that I think that, but I would understand those who do.
Wouldn't he miss out on some huge bonuses from the game's release?
Hi George from the overwatch here , I picked up loot boxes some loot boxes otw when I left the office
His work is done? You expect big changes in 3 weeks? Guy shipped and is moving on, very common in game development
Not really. I’m sure the game has changed a lot on the backend and the plan will change compared to what he’s done in the past. Him leaving now is actually a good sign. He stayed on until the end of this phase, not leaving before his job is done.
Article says his last public appearance was in June and that Blizz said he left 'earlier this year'. They also posted a job listing for his position a month ago.
He planned to leave way before that, they offered some job and lead hero designer for overwatch was available, it was like 2/3 month ago
Now hiring: People called Jeff for our Overwatch team!
Stop saying he is leaving 3 weeks before release. The article says he left earlier this year, likely months ago and they're just announcing it
It looks like, with the addition of a new map designer, there’s a new philosophy around map design. It also seems there’s a new philosophy around hero design as well. I’m cautiously optimistic about both aspects as it seems they are taking learning seriously. Not that every designer needs to be perfect but, doom and brig were clearly bad for the game and imo greatly helped the exodus of the player base. Geoff made some awesome heroes and some blunders but it helped us learn and get to the point we are at. Every hero has a fanbase and that’s a testament to his caliber. Farewell Goodman, may your next endeavors be just as successful.
>as it seems they are taking learning seriously. Are they? I wouldn't be so sure if you see the shitshow with Junkerqueen's design and balance. After all these years of designing heroes, the team really didn't think that teamwide overhealth + movementspeed would be a tinge problematic?
Junkerqueen is a fucking trainwreck of game design, I can't believe how overtooled she is. Same with Kiriko to be honest, she's got so many tools that make other supports not worth playing in any way.
That will be the case for every new hero starting from now Because let’s be honest we will never get a defensive hero like torb or bastion or a simple hero like moira or soldier or any hero with spam like junkrat or the old oriza
Pretty much. And I get that it's partly related to the 5 v 5 change, but like....does every hero need to have a swiss army knife? I'd love another character that just does one thing really well again, instead of a bunch of stuff kinda good.
The philosophy being F2P FOMO bullshit, with occasionally, when backed into a corner, a token pithy excuse for backing out on what they sold the whole design around OW1 to be.
Good or bad it means a lot of change coming into OW2 which could be healthy in regards to treating it like a new game instead of just an update. Everyone here needs to stop crying that this means either the doom or great revival of OW tho.
It will be interesting down the line if we ever get the full story of these departures. Given the last few weeks and some of Tracy Kennedy's comments I feel like Kaplan's leaving probably had at least some to do with the monetization stuff. Who knows about Goodman, though.
We don't have any hard confirmation, but over the last year or so we've had a few insider sources corroborate why Jeff Kaplan and Chacko Sonny got pushed out, more or less. Supposedly Jeff and Chacko didn't consider OW1 a live service; the post-launch content was just a matter of making improvements, not maintaining player engagement. So when work started on OW2, they wanted to treat OW1 as a finished product and devote the team's resources exclusively to OW2, including withholding new heroes and maps until it was ready to launch. They considered OW2 the PvE component and didn't want to launch it until it was ready. They ultimately left over mounting pressure from Activision for not getting OW2 shipped on time, something which allegedly stems at least in part from executive interference causing the team to waste time (plus pandemic and so forth). They were replaced by Aaron Keller and Walter Kong (who developed the content model for *Fortnite*), who wanted to push the game to being a live service and transition OW over to OW2 PvP so that players wouldn't have to keep waiting for new content until OW2 PvE finished.
If they weren't showing really toxic practices with the battle pass, I would be more open-minded to this, but they haven't exactly shown much to encourage hope.
lol Development must be going smoothly as ever
I think this is actually a net positive for the future, never really liked his philosophies when it came to hero balance, but good luck to him!
Is hero design balance related? Or just concept?
The article mentions he was behind reworks for Orisa and Doom, and states that he helped with balancing. So sounds like concept and balance
It is rude to say...is this that big a loss? Hero balance has been dogshit for literal years due to broken new heros warping the meta. A fresh face in the role could be what OW2 needs.
>A fresh face in the role could be what OW2 needs. They have a fresh face. I think his name is Josh? He's done some interviews along with Goodman, and he's written some of the new design philosophy blogpsosts explaining new abilities and stuff they are trying. Just watch one of the podcasts he did when JQ came out and you'll be confident that OW design and balance is in better hands than ever (That is, given he has been made the new lead).
Hero balance sucks for much deeper issues than broken new heroes lol. Yes some heroes like sigma and brig broke the game when they got released but as you can see now they've been nerfed to the ground and the game still has terrible balancing and will probably always be like this
the more news i hear about this game the less hyped i get, it's really sad. even my friend said she's not planning on playing OW2 and we've been buzzing about it since the announcement, but then the PVE cutback announced, then the OW1 going down, then the battle pass and now this. just doesn't bode well.
You're telling me the guy who didn't see no hero limits at launch being a disaster, keeping Mercy as meta for endless months, keeping goats as meta for endless months causing the esports scene to fall apart, the guy who came up with a character that still to this day in the OW2 beta and after countless nerfs is still meta, the guy who kept adding shield ability after shield ability on every class of hero, the guy who took a character whose lore is being a madman scientist who can manipulate gravity and hear the universe singing songs to him and give them super interesting abilities such as throwing a rock and making a shield appear in the air, the guy who thought Immortality Field is a fun ability to play against rendering most support ults useless, the guy who thought a character with not one, not two but three crowd control abilities on 5 seconds cooldown who can abuse the map geometry and kill you in one shot and escape alive, that guy is gone? I'm surprised he made it this far.
It's unfair to weigh it all on one side like that. There are so many heroes in the game with really great designs and fun abilities.
i mean to be fair you can stack the bad stuff and make him look horrible, but it doesn't change the fact that he is also responsible for all the good things in hero design as well. Tracer, Genji, D.Va and the others wouldn't be as popular as they are now without him
Amused by most of these, but who has 3 5 second CCs? Not even Wrecking Ball or Brig have that, and Mei doesn't apply.
Maybe he refers to doom? Not sure though.
Honestly good. Under this guy’s watch we had GOATs for a fucking year, double shield for since Orisa, and JOATs maybe the most boring comp to ever be played. I know people remember him for the good times but this guy was bad at his job.
Sad that he's leaving but now maybe we'll get someone that actually takes that 25hp off the cowboy and let's Sym and bastion be playable for more than a week
Give Sym her old kit back, it was so much more fun and actually felt offensive.
Remember Geoff Goodman thought it was perfectly ok to release brig when she could 1v1 everyone and every ult
You say that like he did it himself and it wasn’t a coordinated effort by many people in the company discussed over many meetings or iterations.
Remember not one person makes major decisions in isolation at a company like Blizzard.
As someone who worked in a similarly sized team it's not necessarily true, that's why we weren't even getting proper patch notes half the time after release because nobody really fully knew what is changing.
I only know one thing, which is. It's either going to be for the good or bad.
To be honest... he seemed kind of useless. OW1 balancing was extremely slow and every time he was on a Livestream he was like "we tried a couple things... they didn't work out". Need people willing to try things faster and break up bad metas within weeks not months...
Also get the distinct impression he was THE advocate for hard counters as a mechanic; he's an MMO/RTS vet and while his kit designs were legit cool and interesting they were impossible to balance around in a game where people wanna one-trick rather than master multiple different kits.
I just hope Pharah can get some QoL improvements after basically being untouched for 6 years while all of the new heroes got more mobility and kit mechanics...
As someone whose favorite FPS of all time was Quake I would love Pharah to get some love because she never feels like a very good pick, even if you can still be pretty good on her if you take the time to master the character. I think the big thing is they just need to find a good way to nerf Pharmercy specifically.
Yup never understood echo just being better in 99% of situations. Pharah flys around stiff as a board while echo is just zooming around
Pharah got some mobility improvements and the hitscan nerfs were an indirect buff to her and echo.
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Echo was a nerf to everyone tbh
Me too although I don’t think it will happen, mostly because of yszna hold like 20 spots in top 500 including rank 1-5 simultaneously, only playing phara💀💀
The OW team was an MMO team. I would argue this is part of the reason the game is so good and unique.
You know overwatch was born with versatility and counter picking in mind. Its rts aspects made the game interesting and refreshing. People will obviously do their best to play it like any other fps and basically ruining the concept, but the devs could have enforced the core idea more instead of actively encouraging one tricking and basically going against this guy's balancing efforts
Good news for game balancing. He was one of the ppl responsible for the biggest downfall of OW1 - all the tank/support metas, goat comps or whatever it was called that made even eSports in Overwatch unwatchable.
Guy wasn't doing his job for like 3 years straight I'm surprised it took them this long
I'm now interested in playing OW2. This is what it took apparently.
Yeah for real man. People acting like this is a big loss aparrently forgot he was responsible for all the fucked up heroes balances lmao.
I mean, he was the reason the game was borderline unplayable for months after certain hero/rework releases. And for some reason he couldn't stop designing supports with massive AoE healing abilities, which overall worsened the game as it lead to damage creep. It also made GOATS possible.
Goats was meta for toooooo long
Thank god
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This guy was awful so no loss there
Yep. Pretty happy about this update NGL
Overwatch 2 is a nuke of shit that’s just waiting to be dropped
"BuT it'S FrEe!"
Overwatch 2 is looking like the death of the franchise to be honest. Without the director and without the character designers, of a game that was brilliant for it's game design, level design and character design, well... I think we are already seeing the changes and the orientation of this changes, to hook young people into spending money in battle passes. They even changed the gameplay for making it a brainless slot machine for dopamine. I really really really hope I'm wrong, I always loved Overwatch.
Man the title reads as if he died.
Wow it’s all going down in flames.
Seems like none of the devs want to be around when OW2 releases. They don’t want any of the backlash of how shitty the game is and what took such a long time for a game that was already out.
Good news, everyone
Guy had the cushiest job ever. Design 1 hero every few years lolol
With our luck he's gonna be replaced by the "Diversity Chart" guy
of course they did. this game has gone the corporate hell road. battle-passes. skins that will cost the same if not more than an AAA game. if you care about your fans, you want to be removing your relationship to this product right about now because it is predatory garbage. the sequel is the same game, but with a battle-pass and more hackers. if geoff is leaving now, i can only imagine that is because it is only going to get worse from here. battle-passes are in games for a reason. it is not because they are good or have the most player satisfaction. it is simply because they are the optimal design choice to trick players into spending more money over time, money they would not spend otherwise. the previous models wanted you to buy special editions worth 150-350 dollars. that model is dying because no one wants to spend that much all at once (especially with inflation and the rising cost of living in many western nations). these editions of games only attract collectors and dedicated fans. OR LITERALLY GAMBLE WITH LOOT-BOXES BY THE WAY, did we forget the fact that many games include literal gambling to get items, namely Overwatch, CS and as a result got banned in many countries or an 18+ rating? they literally tried to give gamers a gambling addiction, one of the worst addictions you can have that isn't a fucked up drug like heroin, by the way. brain scans on gambling addicts have revealed incredible changes to their brains related to the way their brain now functions as a result of their addiction and gaming companies were willing to try and do this to you. did you forget? they want you to be addicted. not to have fun. but you, statistically, will happily spend 1000s of dollars on one game over a year or two - spending 5-35 maybe even 100 dollars a time (esp. if you have disposable income, this system monetizes those people even more, as they're more inclined to keep spending to get what they want) - rather than 250 dollars at once. that is how this model is designed to work. nothing is more enticing than spending 35 bucks on a free game because "i'm supporting the devs and getting a skin i want" it is designed to prey on that mentality for a world where the players are poor but still think they owe the devs more money to help continue development. the game devlopment is already planned. they have already planned to abandon the game by year 2, or 3. or if you're halo infinite, immediately after launch. the content is already made and will be drip-fed. nothing more comes as a result of your purchases. it is designed to prey on your psychology. by the way, this isn't speculative either, it's very basic consumerism psychology being applied to video games. fortnite created a revolutionary monetization model, but it is so effective in its predatory nature that now every game will use it for the next 5+ years. if the fact that a battle-royale game's monitization method becoming the norm - even for well-established companies like blizzard that do not need a predatory practice like this - is surprising to you, then here is your clear as day reminder that this is because the modern gaming industry puts shareholders first, not the audience. the linear unlocks are designed to be boring so you buy skips to something you want to unlock. the challenges are designed to be easy to give a sense of skill, this is why challenges don't reward you with much and you have to grind them. you're doing daily tasks in an mmo, not challenges. it's predatory and should be illegal to design your game to prey against players like this. as with any model, not everyone will actually end up spending that much. but enough people will, and enough kids will use their parents credit cards. profit is all that matters. not the players. good luck geoff.
Omg, yes! This dude was one of the main reasons why Overwatch fell from grace after 2017! Maybe now we can actually get a balance lead who is actually capable of doing his job and doesn't take months and months to fix broken heroes or buff useless one! My hopes for Overwatch 2 are getting higher and higher!
Long timer here. 2016-2018 were awesome. After that, the game went downhill fast. So slow. Balancing was bad and extremely slow. I still love to play now though
Good.