Chen Mo's idea was to turn Overwatch into an entertaining game, maintaining the core of the game's fun factor.
First of all, he would remove the barriers to entry. The game itself would be completely free, only relying on skins, avatars, and other value-added services.
This was to attract as many players as possible, widening the depth of the fish pond, allowing most players' win rate and matchmaking experience to be closer to that of League of Legends.
Many players might think that forcing a fifty percent win rate was a stupid idea, but in reality, a competitive game that couldn't guarantee a fifty percent win rate was a disaster.
Not guaranteeing a fifty percent win rate would mean that players who were good at the game would keep winning, while newbies who weren't good at the game would keep losing. This would increase the loss of the fish pond, which was bad for the lifespan of the game.
Secondly, it would dilute the feeling of winning and losing, and strengthen the players' sense of growth.
For a competitive game, most players' main source of joy came from winning. While maintaining this as a foundation, it was also necessary to make the players who lost less depressed.
One of the problems with Overwatch in his previous life was that the players would lose for no reason. You might think it was because one of your teammates didn't play well, or their teamwork wasn't good, or the team composition wasn't good. In short, the system wouldn't tell you why you lost, and you wouldn't be able to figure it out yourself.
This directly caused many players to feel a deep sense of powerlessness after losing, and the negative feedback after losing could be described as explosive.
Chen Mo's idea was to record all the data of the players' champions throughout the game, not just damage, healing, kills, etc.
For example, Winston would give a comprehensive evaluation of the damage dealt, kills, number of deaths, damage taken, critical kills (killing the opponent's damage dealer or healer with better stats), critical damage (the amount of damage contributed to the critical kill), the effect of the ultimate skill (whether it was activated at the right time), and so on. Every match would be evaluated.
Every player would be able to see the data very clearly, and they would be able to tell which players were carrying the game, and which players were pulling the strings.
At the same time, kills would no longer be shared, and the situation of getting a gold medal for killing through kills would no longer exist.
Of course, since all the data would be made public, and it would be more detailed, the 'gold medal' setting would also be removed.
Moreover, this setting itself was meaningless, as most players wouldn't agree that getting a gold medal didn't necessarily mean you played well.
For players, choosing the same hero and seeing the changes in the hero's proficiency after every round was equivalent to a disguised form of encouragement.
For example, if you used Hanzo and performed well throughout the game, even though you lost the game, when you saw that you received an S-rank score and performed better than before, you would forget the unhappiness of losing.
Moreover, the rewards that the players received were directly linked to their performance and had nothing to do with winning or losing. As long as you played well, the loser would be able to obtain more rewards than the winner. This would dilute the feeling of defeat.
As for those who were noobs, they could also clearly tell what was wrong with them through various data.
For example, if a player chose Grim Reaper, after the game ended, the system would prompt: Your performance in this round is B, the number of times you used E skill to move is far lower than the average, the number of times you used shift skill to avoid damage is far lower than the average, the total damage of the shotgun at long range is far higher than the total damage at close range.
Combining these data, the system could determine that this player did not know how to attack from behind when he used Death God. After this player understood this, he would subconsciously improve his performance in these areas the next time he played Death God.
Winning happily and losing with a clear understanding, this was the only way for the majority of players to have fun in the game.
The last point was to open up multiple game modes.
One of the biggest problems with Overwatch was the 6v6 hero selection mode, which resulted in some team buffing heroes being much more useful than normal assault heroes, resulting in a stagnant line-up.
Chen Mo considered opening up five different modes for the players to choose from. Whichever mode had the most players would mean which choice was correct.
The first was the classic mode, all heroes were 6v6 and could not be chosen repeatedly.
The second was the FPS mode, where the players could only choose assault heroes. This meant that this mode would return to the fun of PFS games, where everything was decided by marksmanship.
The third was the ban mode, where each side could vote to ban three heroes. If the players generally felt that Sledgehammer and DJ weren't fun and didn't want the other side to have them, they could just ban them, which would prevent them from appearing in the game.
The fourth mode was the More Player Mode.
12. Could not be chosen again. The point of this mode was that the players had more room to mess around, which meant that many heroes would have more chances to appear in the game.
The problem with 6v6 was that there were limited spots, so for the sake of the team, two tanks and two healers were a must, leaving only two spots for the assault heroes.
In the competition for the Assault position, it was obvious that the heroes with higher damage abilities (such as Soldier 76) would appear all year round, while the heroes with weaker damage abilities had no chance of appearing at all. Even if you played well, your teammates would not trust you.
12.
With 12 people, the entire team could allocate more spots to the less popular heroes. For example, in a situation where the basic tank and healer were guaranteed, they could choose 76, Black Lily, Hanzo, Genji, and Grim Reaper at the same time. They could take care of sniping from the high ground, cutting to the backline, and dealing normal damage. This allowed more heroes to have room to appear.
The fifth was the promotion mode. When a hero reaches a certain number of kills or receives a certain number of assists without dying, they would be promoted, which meant that they could use their early game advantage to snowball.
Of course, the opponent could also get a stronger promotion by ending a kill combo.
Moreover, all the effects would be reset at the end of the current round, to ensure the fairness of the first match.
This was mainly to satisfy the individual hero players, so that they could experience the thrill of fighting one against five in the game.
Moreover, Chen Mo's Overwatch also had a stricter reward and punishment system.
Every player's performance in the daily matches would affect their overall rating. During matchmaking, players with similar skill levels would be given priority in the same match.
If a player's rating was consistently low, then they would be matched with weaker opponents.
If a player was reported by many players for being passive in the match, or for insults, then there would be a certain amount of punishment. Moreover, these players would be given priority in the same match, and in more serious cases, they would be locked in a small black room, and would only be released after a certain number of matches.
Of course, Chen Mo wasn't completely confident that these changes would be successful. But one thing was clear, Overwatch was a great game. It shouldn't just be as popular as it was in his previous life, but even better.
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