Chapter 441: The Road That Cannot Be Traveled
Chen Mo stepped down from the stage and returned to his seat.
Zhang Xiaokong frowned slightly and said in a low voice, "Chen Mo, didn’t you talk too much? You laid out all the key points of *Overwatch*’s success. Aren’t you afraid of being copied?"
Chen Mo smiled. "It’s fine. I have confidence in *Overwatch*. Besides, this is an exchange meeting. There are correct views and wrong views. Everyone improves through discussion."
Zhang Xiaokong still felt something was off, but since what Chen Mo wanted to say was his own business, he didn’t press further.
Chen Mo felt a bit helpless. *I deliberately adjusted the range of the Intelligence-Reducing Aura to avoid the indie game designers in the back rows. How come you guys seem to have been fooled by me too?*
*Could it be that my current skill level has reached a point where I can casually fool people without needing any props?*
……
What Chen Mo said was half true and half false.
Using the process of elimination, you could indeed narrow down the correct options. But it was also possible that, after eliminating everything, you’d find that this road simply couldn’t be traveled.
The path Chen Mo described—the path *Overwatch* had taken—was exactly such a road that was actually impossible to traverse.
By "impossible to traverse," I don’t mean it would fail, but rather that it could never achieve the global popularity of MOBA games.
Although Blizzard made some mistakes in developing and promoting *Overwatch*, what about others? No one else could perfect the idea of "FPS with skills" either.
*Overwatch*’s success relied on excellent character designs, story backgrounds, and cultural depth—all of which were Blizzard’s strengths.
If other companies wanted to copy *Overwatch*? They couldn’t even match its cultural depth. So Chen Mo wasn’t worried about being copied at all, because no one else could do this type of game well.
*Overwatch* indeed had many problems, and Chen Mo knew them well. But from the current design philosophy, these problems were unsolvable.
For *Overwatch* to become a flawless competitive game, the core issues to solve were balance and tactical diversity—which were essentially the same problem.
The specific manifestations were: slow updates, lack of content, easy to get bored with, rigid team compositions, poor low-rank experience, and so on. All of these stemmed from the same root cause.
Under *Overwatch*’s existing game mechanics, there were optimal or near-optimal hero compositions.
So-called balance didn’t mean both sides could pick the same lineup and call it fair. Otherwise, why would MOBA games have ban/pick phases? Everyone could just blindly pick the strongest heroes of the patch and go wild, right?
In *Overwatch*’s "payload/capture point" modes, certain team-oriented heroes became indispensable. In 6v6, this directly locked down composition flexibility, causing heroes to squeeze each other out of playtime.
The reason Soldier: 76 and the "Reinforce the Empire" combo had such different fates was that their damage output stability and capability were never on the same level.
So, could you quickly produce multiple heroes through mass output and balance them well?
Almost impossible. You could release heroes quickly, but the more heroes you added, the harder balance became—far harder than in MOBA games.
This was mainly due to *Overwatch*’s gameplay system. In MOBA games, there were rich map mechanics and growth systems, allowing for early-game heroes, late-game heroes, split-push heroes, and other specialized characters. A late-game hero might be weak early but invincible late, and players still had ways to counter them, so it wasn’t a problem.
But in *Overwatch*, there was no economy system or map mechanics that enhanced combat power. Heroes had no growth, making it impossible to distinguish between early-game and late-game heroes.
In this situation, certain specialized heroes couldn’t exist, and even if they did, players wouldn’t use them. So, constrained by the game mode, balance was very hard to achieve.
If Hero A’s damage output was just 1% stronger than Hero B’s, players would pick A over B.
In a limited 6v6 lineup, players would meticulously select six heroes that maximized team fight potential—like Reinhardt, Zarya, Ana, and Lúcio. Such a lineup would steamroll over any flanking heroes.
You want Genji or Tracer to dive Ana? She’d counter with Sleep Dart and Biotic Grenade, plus Zarya’s barrier to mess you up completely.
With a lineup like that, who needed mobility? What good were Genji, Tracer, Widowmaker, or Hanzo’s wall-climbing or wall-hacks?
So, no matter how many new heroes or mechanics were introduced, pro players and regular players would always find the six strongest options. The problem of rigid team compositions was nearly unsolvable.
All because *Overwatch* had no growth or economy systems.
Of course, adding growth and economy systems wasn’t necessarily the right move either. This was an FPS game where fighting happened constantly; there was no option to safely farm or split-push. Once snowballing was allowed, would the losing side get crushed without any chance to fight back, causing the match to lose suspense too early?
No one knew until it was tried, but clearly, solving one problem would create another. In Chen Mo’s previous life, Blizzard hadn’t perfected *Overwatch*, and no company could perfect this kind of game mode.
It was a dead end that "looked beautiful."
So, Chen Mo chose a different path, turning *Overwatch* into a purely entertainment-focused game, avoiding excessive competitive development that would drain its fun prematurely.
Turning *Overwatch* into a globally popular competitive game was an impossible task in itself. Obviously, Chen Mo wasn’t going to say that.
He hoped that designers from big companies would all rush to copy *Overwatch* and end up crashing and bleeding.
……
This year’s lectures and exchange meetings felt somewhat dull, because Chen Mo had stolen all the spotlight.
Many people were discussing the success of *League of Legends* and *Overwatch*, speculating whether they represented future development trends.
Clearly, both games could be called phenomenal. *League of Legends* was also gaining strong momentum overseas, not just domestically. *Overwatch*, though not yet officially promoted abroad, was bound to be a huge hit overseas based on its inherent qualities.
What about other games? Only *Prosperous Tang* and *Three Realms* had some fighting power, but in terms of buzz and player enthusiasm, they fell far short.
Many designers were speculating: would Chen Mo achieve legendary status at this awards ceremony?