Ryannumber1gamer

It depends on how they do it IMO. If it's just like a Team Fortress 2 F2P situation where the whole game is available with no problems, I think that would be great, especially since it would make Overwatch infinitely more accessible for things like Game Nights and such. But I don't want them to start fundamentally pulling shit like other games of this sort where they lock off the heroes and demand you to unlock them. I think Heroes of the Storm had such a system, and in a game like Overwatch where it's so heavily reliant on hero flexibility and countering other choices. If you were locked to certain heroes, it'd IMO - be a total nightmare, especially if balance changes ended up screwing with someone you did have, and you learnt. I do feel like Overwatch is eventually going to have to go Free to Play at this rate. Even OW1's client as I said could do with some kind of fresh coat of paint. As much as I know they're putting all developmental efforts towards OW2, I'd still like them to take some time both porting the engine over to PS5/Series X (even if it's either OW1 or OW2's engine, but as we know - OW1's client will be merged into OW2, so getting it onto next-gen consoles would both be good future-proofing, and a good way to freshen things up). On top of Free to Play, the biggest thing IMO would be cross-play. COD's been implementing it for awhile, and it's done a fairly decent job by letting the player decide if they want all-around cross-play (IE - playing with console and PC players), or if they want it to be solely console-based (PS5/Series X, etc). That would certainly help bolster the playbase too.

I frankly want better game balancing. Ever since they got rid of the skill level requirements, match-making has been a complete and total shitshow in every aspect. As a gold border player with so many hours on the game, I absolutely should not be getting matched with people who are under level 50. Not to mention that team balancing is often quite often than not - a complete shambles. I've had tons upon tons of matches where there were silver to platinum border players all all matched into the enemy team, while my team has all bronze border players. They decided to get rid of the skill-based matchmaking to get faster queue times, but idk man. When the matches have degraded so utterly horrendously in quality as a result, it's not particularly good.

I'm still probably going to play OW2 because I'm a sucker for PvE, and that's primarily what I want from the game. That said, the way they decided to handle things has been horrendous. I played a lot of Overwatch and must have at least 1000 hours put into it from launch, and I've been playing it less and less, only really hopping on for events (primarily the challenge event skins). The game's just been lacking in content, and it's harmed it as a result, especially since they refuse to add anything more to OW1, due to saving it for OW2. I feel like they should've been planning some meaningful changes to happen, and that still needs to happen with OW2 receiving a delay. If it's going to take upwards of a year, if not even longer to get OW2 onto PS4, Xbox One, PC, and so on, then get a PS5 and Xbox Series X port into development for OW1, give us some haptics, some adaptive trigger support, etc. Series X and Series S recently got a update for 4K/60fps or 120fps/1440p, and yet PS5 is still rocking the same blurry 1080p graphics at 60fps. Put out Sojurn already, we know she's finished. God, even this year's Archive event only had three new challenge modes compared to last year's six. There's been zero meaningful content added to Overwatch in forever. Even this year's Archives skins aren't even the usual lore-based ones we get that gives us something relating to the characters, they're just crappy historical skins that could've just been thrown into an Anniversary event. I don't really think it's hard to argue that Overwatch 1 has just continually been getting worse and worse since they decided to focus on OW2. The only major changes it gets anymore is balance changes. With no new heroes or maps, almost no new content for events, and no gameplay improvements to issues that's plagued the game for awhile, it's just become a tedious mess to play. The most interesting thing they've done in ages was the April Fools event where they put out a ton of ridiculous and broken changes, like making Mei a tank, letting Sigma and Zenyatta fly, and such.

That uh...that doesn't bode well. I mean his replacement is at least someone who's been with the team for a long time, but given Jeff was the one who had to fight tooth and nail to get OW2 as a free upgrade for all OW1 players, it's worrying that he's leaving, especially mid-development.

Update: Sony went back on their decision and have decided the PS3 and Vita stores will remain open! https://blog.playstation.com/2021/04/19/playstation-store-on-ps3-and-ps-vita-will-continue-operations/

You managed to get through the worst era of the comics in one piece, congrats! It's been a long, long time coming, but Penders is finally out of the picture! Let's celebrate with a final rounding out of thoughts on his bullshit. I've a lot to say so I'll leave my thoughts on #160 for another post, lets make this one a final outing for Ken. I actually didn't know that Ian had to spruce up this script before leaving, and I'm just imagining him knocking his head against a table, trying his damnest to at least imply Sonic isn't this gigantic asshat. I could see him adding things like the "You know me better than that" to try to say - "Of course Sonic wouldn't just leave an injured Hope there!", but like, there's only so much you can do when Penders has stacked the deck so far in the direction of jerkass Sonic. What frustrates me is - in my opinion at least - this is severely out of character for Eggman. If the Neo Metal Sonic legion was directly targeting him at the moment, I could absolutely see him panicking, or at least being nervous (Think how Eggman and Wily were ridiculously panicked in Worlds Collide when Sonic and Mega Man began turning the tide on the Roboticised Masters, and the two doctors had to literally begin denying a potential failure on the horizon, because they know how these things usually turned out). Eggman IMO would not be sitting here trying to bolster up the GREATEST THREAT THEY'VE YET FACED!!! - and complaining about how he had nothing to do with it, he'd be using it to bolster his own ego. He'd be talking about how - of course the Metal Sonic Squadron is out of control, those Knothole hacks attempted to steal his genius designs, his ingenuity! While Eggman is so clever, and so smart as to have protocols in place to ensure Metal Sonic remains loyal to him, those idiot inventors over at Knothole couldn't even keep a few tin-cans in line! Hell, Eggman would probably be laughing about how Knothole deserves this fate for stealing an Eggman concept (despite the pathetically lame excuse that Eggman doesn't have a claim to the concept). Just...imagine if this was written by a competent writer. Like imagine Ian writing this story arc, knowing full well he was going to portray Max as the absolute scumbag he actually is later down the line. Imagine the actual potential here. Given that Rotor and Max were forced to make these robots by Max, you could've easily used this to show that in some ways, King Max and Eggman aren't so different, especially as warring factions. The Kingdom of Acorn is always portrayed as the morally upright group fighting against the evil Eggman, but imagine the potential if Max had forced the Knothole inventors to build this squadron of Sonics as his new secret weapon, a literal army of obedient robots, as strong, as fast, and as capable as Sonic himself, all under King Acorn's beck and call. Imagine the irony of the "morally upright" side being the one to betray the image of their greatest hero, betray the mourning and trust of their princess, and betray quite a few of the values they're supposed to uphold. Imagine the fallout of this under a more competent writer. Imagine Sally finding out that during a time of severe heartbreak and pain for her, her father had secretly commissioned war machines in her dead boyfriend's image to go out and wage war on whoever Max damn well pleased. Imagine Sally finding that out and saying enough was enough and cutting ties with Max once and for all. Imagine Eggman getting a fucking kick out of the "morally heroic Freedom Fighters" taking a page out of his book and creating loyal robotic killing machines, capable of forcing anyone into line if they disagreed with Max. Imagine Sonic realising that the king he fought so long to save and protect had officially lost his fucking mind and did something like this. Like we all joke about this being the GREATEST THREAT THEY'VE YET FACED!!!! - but under a competent writer - yeah - it legit could have been. Imagine the Neo Metal Sonics being as strong, as fast, and as capable of the regular Sonic due to being designed by Charles and Rotor knowing Sonic a lot more than Eggman. Imagine a Iron NICOLE scenario where A.D.A.M discovers and takes control of them all, using them to utterly destroy Knothole, and then reveal that Max was the one who commissioned them with the intent of winning the war with them, and using them to ensure no one else would fuck with the Kingdom of Acorn, forcing a mourning Charles to do it as well. Imagine Sonic and Shadow having to fight tooth and nail together in order to put them down, but still not being able to save a large chunk of Knothole. Imagine Eggman using this to further convince Shadow that the Kingdom of Acorn is corrupt, and Shadow made the right decision to work with Eggman! There's so much that could've been done here!! This could've legitimately been a massive game-changing arc, a huge turning point in the war where Eggman gets a massive win on the Kingdom of Acorn without trying, simply because a power-hungry Max had decided he was going to step his game up. Imagine seeing this legitimately paid off with Sonic, Sally, and the Freedom Fighters realising that the Kingdom of Acorn isn't as different from Eggman as they were lead to believe, and becoming completely and totally disillusioned with it. Imagine that whole metal ceremony again where Elias and Max and everyone has set up this whole song and dance to "award" Sonic (apologise for screwing with his image), only instead - Sonic doesn't show up. Charles and his family could be at the ceremony, wondering where he is, but Charles has a look of total guilt, knowing he hurt his nephew by taking part in this affair. The final pages of the issue could be something like Sonic inside the abandoned Freedom HQ, looking around and realising that this is what he and his friends spent so long fighting for, a corrupt kingdom that's doing shady bullshit that's just as bad, if not even worse than Eggman. If you want to be more optimistic, perhaps have the other Freedom Fighters show up, realising the same thing, but also showing that despite their utter disgust with what Max did, they'll still continue to fight for what they believe is right, not what the Kingdom of Acorn believes is right. Like, this whole deal with the Neo Metal Sonics, and their true creators should be a really big deal, and yet it's practically all shrugged off. It's amazing how much of a waste it is. God, I hate this story arc. This honestly remains as one of the most infamous moments of bullshit for me with Penders. Like the most blatant attempt to turn Shadow into Knuckles 2.0 after the fact. It's time for Shadow to begin discovering his random magical mystical chaos bullshit! First off, let's not ignore the fact that this is not Chaos Control, Ken. Chaos Control is an ability in which the user uses a Chaos Emerald to warp time and space in different ways, let it be via teleportation, freezing time, or ripping open portals in time/space itself. Chaos Control is just not a catch-all term for "doing whatever you damn well please". This is on the level of the DBZ Big Green dub being convinced that literally every. single. attack. is a Kamehameha somehow. Kaioken? Kamehameha. Going Super Saiyan? Kamehameha! Final Flash? Kamehameha! This is only slightly better than the 4Kids X dub being convinced that Chaos Control is the name of Eggman's base in the first 10-15 episodes or so. Secondly, I hate the usage here. It's literally just a Deus Ex Machina button. Shadow gets to stop big threats. Why? Uh, uh, Chaos Control! Sonic is getting his ass utterly beaten by these robots and yet Shadow just magics them away. What an utterly wasteful, lame, and lazy excuse. Just like Chaos Knuckles and the rest of that bullshit. God, I am so thankful Ken just fucked off after this. We dodged multiple bullets here. Again, just imagine if this was written by someone better. This whole ceremony could've been a sham, an attempt by Elias (Actually Max - who convinced Elias) to make a big showing of Sonic as their greatest hero in order to both try to get Sonic back on their side, and to appease the public who now know that their king isn't a particularly good person. It would actually fit then. This isn't a ceremony to promote Sonic and give him this big hero's celebration, it's a sham. A senseless, pathetic attempt to save face. They do it, and invite Sonic, assuming he'd attend, but Sonic doesn't. I hate this, there's so much potential here to have Sonic finally go closer to his game counterpart by calling into question how good this "authority" is, and they just don't. The perfect set-up for this scenario and Penders plays it straight because god forbid he actually say "No, Max was wrong, completely and entirely". No, no. Sonic goes along with it because "GoOd iNtEnTiOnS!!!!!!. I'm so sick of this, how many times do we have to do this song and dance? No, good intentions doesn't excuse you from being an absolute shit. Especially when your "good intentions" are very likely not good. Literally so much of Penders' absolute bullshit can be summed up with: I love how Ian just got rid of the whole Gentlemen at Arms thing like...three issues later? It's just great how Penders' last big "hoorah" that would've made Sonic an official part of the Acorn Kingdom's authority was just no-sold. I said it once, but I'll say it again - this is just absolutely awful, on all fronts. I sincerely hate everything about it. Ignore the obvious fact that Charles is being a massive creep and pulling a Locke by spying on Shadow (sounds familiar, doesn't it?) - but let's look at this from another angle. Sir Charles - on the orders of Max - made a legion of robotic killing machines, using his supposedly dead nephew's image. The same man who expressed deep guilt and sorrow for his role in creating the Roboticiser and enabling Eggman's takeover. The man who was one of the few good parental figures in the series, who always cared for Sonic, and the Freedom Fighters, and here he is, having been ordered to shit on his dead nephew's image. Does Charles show remorse for this betrayal? Guilt? Nope! "YoU hAvE yOuR sEcReTs, aNd wE hAvE oUrS, bEtTeR iT sHoUlD sTaY tHaT wAy!!!!!!". He acts like this is a good thing, that this horrible thing he did to his nephew, and then kept a secret from him, and said secret then biting them ALL on the ass and attacking them all was somehow a good thing! It cannot be said just how much damage Penders did to Charles as a character before he finally pissed off. So much so that I think this should be imagined as non-canon because even in a single issue, it portrays Charles as a selfish prick who abused his dead nephew's standing and image to create an army of killer robots, and when it all backfired on them, he couldn't even show any remote remorse for it and acts as if it's somehow a good thing. BECAUSE ONCE AGAIN: I don't even have anything to say on the backup story because it's just generic set-up for shit that doesn't happen. Can essentially sum it up with "I'm sure he wouldn't pay off the set-up anyway, so bleh". Right, now let's get into the plans he had. I've already spoken at length about a few of them so I'll just go over ones I don't think I spoke about. First things first, I want to point out - Sally was actually fairly popular in the 90s. SEGA was more loose with continuities back then so they had no problem marketing the hell out of SatAM. Sally herself got a fair amount of merchandise and even a mascot outfit at a SEGA park, so yeah - it kind of makes sense why SEGA didn't want her killed off. They were still using her quite a bit back then. Secondly - imagine the horrid timeline where Sally was killed off and replaced with King Acorn entirely. It really goes to show how much Penders didn't care about Sally whatsoever, despite his claims to the contrary. He tried to kill her off and when it didn't work, he used her as a simple mouthpiece to either try to show her as a whiny spoilt brat who King Acorn would have to put into line, or a mouthpiece to defend King Acorn's increasingly awful actions. Bollers and editorial didn't do her many favours, but I will always take their take over what Penders gave us. How would this story even play out exactly? Like, Rotor sends Nicole back in time to prevent the destruction of the world, somehow...but Nicole allows the actions that Rotor and Cobar pins on Sonic to still happen? Did Penders just forget that Nicole was around for things he tried to blame Sonic for? Did he not realise it would mean jack shit? Also, I disagree with this being an issue where stuff happens because...it just wouldn't. Sonic goes back to the past and can't change anything, he returns and they send Nicole back...who still does nothing to change the past. It's the exact same as literally every other M25YL story, nothing happens, no one has agency, no one does shit, and we're expected to pretend it's somehow progress. I never thought I'd say it - but I think even this would be too petty for Eggman. When Eggman tries to personally screw with someone's life, it's typically because he perceives someone to have wronged him in some way, even utterly tiny and miniscule. For example - back when he had Nack attempt to kill Mina because he got her songs stuck in his head and took it as a personal attack. Was it petty and pathetic? Yes. Would it totally fit for Eggman to be that petty? Absolutely. Here, he'd just straight up be a cartoon villain, sending his robots to screw around with Charles' date for the kicks of it essentially. I could maybe see him do it if it meant somehow messing with Sonic in the process, but idk - it feels really silly for Eggman to concentrate his efforts into commanding his most powerful robot commanders to do something as silly as ruin a date. It feels a bit contrived. Oh hey look, it's Ken Penders' attempts to ruin my favourite Archie Sonic character, again! Hooray! Let's ignore the blatant hypocrisy at play that Penders has temper tantrums whenever someone else wanted to use his characters in their stories, but yet here he is blatantly misunderstanding Mina and Ash's characterisation (Ash wants nothing more than Mina's safety, why would he tease her about not charging head-long into danger? Mina on the other hand knows she's not good as a Freedom Fighter, but is exceptionally good at building morale and provide levity for those who can fight). There's so much wrong with the bare concept of the plotline that I don't even know what else to say. I don't believe these characters would do these things. He's blatantly ignoring their development (Amy especially, given she is an official Freedom Fighter at this point). Where the fuck would Ash even have a leg to stand in this debate? He isn't a Freedom Fighter, he doesn't risk his life, he's a manager. It's not only blatantly out of character, it doesn't make sense. Also, Amy too. Not only because she's already completed her arc, proven her worth, and became a official Freedom Fighter, but Amy could probably still handle Nic and Rouge easily lol. She's practically as good a fighter with her Piko Hammer as Knuckles. The idea that she still feels the need to prove herself to a fucking band manager of all people, plus would need Sonic and Sally's help in dealing with Nic the freaking Weasel is beyond ridiculous. Pretty much the only idea I think could've worked here, although definitely not under Penders. That said though, I'm kind of glad it didn't. Jules' robot design is really neat and unique IMO, especially when all of the Mobians were deroboticised. I really liked it when Jon Grey gave Jules that hat and scarf. Idk, there's just something neat about Sonic's dad being a robot, but still continuing on and doing his best for his son that's both unique, and fun IMO. This one just makes me laugh for two reasons. 1. His ideas for Antoine and Bunnie were just awful. Imagine after all of the frustrating, bullshit drama we had to deal with between Sonic's return and Patch's reveal. We finally get them back together, and he wants to stretch the whole thing out for nearly 40 issues. Imagine the landmark issue of a Sonic the Hedgehog comic being a wedding of all things. God, imagine the awful things Penders would've done for drama too. I absolutely bet that he was gonna have Evil Sonic and Bunnie's relationship revealed to Antoine and we'd be shown first hand about the horrendous bullshit about Antoine needing to "forgive" Bunnie for it, despite the fact that Bunnie was manipulated into it. The very thought of Antoine having to "forgive" her for what happened to Bunnie being actual drama material disgusts me to my very core. 2. The idea of Snively doing this is absolutely laughable. Unless I'm mistaken, the last time we even saw him was when he originally joined the Freedom Fighters, and there, he had a very devious "Does this mean you trust me?" line. So now we expect that the self-serving guy who's only ever been self-serving is suddenly so good, and so selfless that he'd allow himself to die to pull this off? Really?? I'm just also going to save myself some time and say the following issue plan was dumb too. Sonic is broken up over Snively's death? Really? He's blaming the other Freedom Fighters because Snively died? Give me a fucking break. Oh yes, wonderful. Let's add someone else to the list of characters who get to pull rank on Sally and overwrite her authority. Sonic. Sonic. The guy who doesn't like coming up with plans and likes just working in the heat of the moment, he is the guy who now gets to overwrite Sally's authority. Yeah, here's how this should go. Sally issues a command to the Freedom Fighters in the midst of battle, Sonic attempts to overwrite her command, and yet can't actually come up with a plan of attack, and the others would laugh off the idea of taking commands from Sonic. That's not a knock on Sonic, but come. on. Sonic is not the tactician, he has never been the tactician, he goes in and works in the heat of the moment, and that's because he's fast enough to do that. The whole point of Sonic and Sally's dynamic is that Sonic is hasty, while Sally is a tactician. Both approaches have their merits, but the dynamic breaks when you remove Sally from the equation and suddenly decide Sonic should be some commander issuing out orders to the FF as if they were his personal battle squadron. At best, if this came up - I'd imagine a quick joke between Sonic and Sally where Sonic says something like "Heh, guess this means I don't have to listen to your orders anymore!" and Sally replies with a half-joking "When have you ever listened to my orders?". Just a quick mention of it where Sonic teases that while he'd technically hold rank over her, he doesn't actually care, because he never cared for authority anyways. I'm so happy that Ian got rid of the Gentleman at Arms shit three issues into his run. So, let me get this straight. Evil Sonic is going around, doing bad things and blaming Sonic for it. And instead of Sonic just stopping him, he needs to provoke a fight? What?? Why does Evil Sonic need to initiate the fight!? When has that ever stopped Sonic?! THE DUDE IS LITERALLY IMPERSONATING YOU AGAIN!! JUST STOP HIM!! WHAT IS THIS?! So, yet again - our heroic Sonic decides to be just as awful as Evil Sonic. He treats women as objects, people to be manipulated in order to get what he wants, with zero regard to their feelings, thoughts, or how it might effect them. Sure, Rouge would probably not care and go along with it, but that isn't the point. The point is Sonic is doing a horrible fucking thing. He would not only be manipulating Rouge to provoke someone, he'd also be cheating on Fiona while he's at it. It's funny for how much Ken likes to claim he's a feminist and how he tried to push for strong female representation, he has zero fucking issues having the heroes of the book use and manipulate them as simple objects without thoughts and feelings of their own in order to achieve their own random goals. This is disgusting. Utterly disgusting on all fucking fronts. And if this issue happened, I would be done. Archie Sonic would be an absolute scumbag of a character. This isn't a thing heroic characters do, this is villainous. Downright villainous, and it's no better than what Evil Sonic did. What a absolute trash-pit of an idea. Oh look at that. Yet another contrived reason to get Sonic and Knuckles into a fight, who would've thought. I guess with Shadow taking temporary leave, we had to find someone else to pick up the slack with pointless random fights. Let's ignore the fact Knuckles and the Chaotix have been working with the Freedom Fighters for ages. What is there even to say? You summed it up perfectly, I don't think Knuckles would care. If Station Square had actively invaded then and there and got away with the Master Emerald - then sure. But if that was the case, there is zero way a properly written Sonic would side with Station Square, he'd be helping Knuckles get it back. It's just contrived. Contrived garbage for the sake of making up contrived conflicts. It's amazing just how many bullets we actually dodged with Penders' leaving. Like seriously, it's downright amazing. Instead of the amazing revival and reinvention of this series Ian Flynn gave us, we could've had more and more of this absolute garbage. Out of all of these ideas, the only one I say is even feasibly alright is the one involving Jules, and even then, I sure as hell wouldn't trust Penders to do it any kind of justice. All of these ideas are just terrible, absolutely terrible. Filled with all of the awful tropes Penders' was infamous for during his tenure, and even some of those tropes are brought to their absolute extreme of horrendous here. But, that's all the more reason to be thankful these are scrapped plans, because Penders would never get the chance to use them. He left over SEGA not sharing the plans for Shadow the Hedgehog, and they took a chance on Ian Flynn, and that gamble paid off big-time. A new era has opened up for the Archie Sonic series, a new era that is consistently good all the way up to the end. The dark age was absolutely horrendous, but now it's time for a new dawn...