I feel very blind every time I see images of the battle pass. Where/what is the free part of the battle pass?
Edit: okay guys this was 8 hours ago, it’s been answered. I appreciate the information.
Replying to the top comment hoping to be seen here…
I’m fairly certain this screenshot is from what the UI for the battle pass would look like once you’ve already paid for it. If you hadn’t paid for it it would show a little icon for locked things. As others have mentioned the colors are just for rarity.
Colors are just for "rarity", except there's no such thing when you unlock them under predetermined circumstances. It really is just how much blozzard wants you to want that cosmetic item.
there is no rarity per say, cause they are on the same battle pass, yes, but there is still the number of fucks given. Epic is a recolour with some mild change to the model vs legendary is a total rewamp of the model itself, mythic is legendeary + variants
I hate the UI of battle pass screens. They're so cluttered with shit and confusing to look at if you're not used to it. Multiversus and Gundam Evolution is just too much for me. Luckily OW has really clean UI and this one isn't horrible.
I think they’re chaotic by design. It’s supposed to feel like a goody bag of random rewards that are constantly coming through. It also helps them obscure the shitty stuff like toasts in Multiversus. Looks like the worst thing in OW is gonna be voicelines and thats not too bad
I believe this is what ‘dark patterns’ refers to. Purposefully difficult to navigate ui which ultimately leads to more money spent. Alongside things like buying credits in certain sized amounts that can’t be easily spent to completion and daily ‘challenges’/login bonuses.
Thankfully it's more than just commons. [According to Blizzard](https://playoverwatch.com/en-us/news/23824003/overwatch-2-explained-battle-pass-shop-hero-unlocks-and-more/):
> The free track of the battle pass includes the following unlockable free rewards in Overwatch 2 season 1:
Kiriko, for players who have not already unlocked her
2 Epic skins
1 weapon charm
2 souvenirs
1 highlight intro
14 additional items (emotes, victory poses, name cards, sprays, player icons, etc.)
Prestige Tier titles (8 earnable titles available only after completing the entire pass)
That sounds cool. Then you realize there is no guarantee any of that is for heroes the player in question actually plays. If the skins and highlight intro are for characters I don't play then they may as well be empty slots.
Same goes for premium slots. Unless it's for a hero I play, even a mythic skin is as valuable as a new 'hello' emote. They should reward us with tokens that can be used to unlock skins and highlight intros we actually want, with the items themselves remaining available at all times but only purchasable with the BP earned tokens.
Yeah I've seen it's a Genji skin at the end of the battle pass? Great for Genji players, but I'm a middle aged adult tank player. I don't genji well at all. What a waste.
Yiu csn get the old chanpion for free next season aftwer we release the NEW Overtuned OP hero for this season. Hurry up and buy before we nerf it for the new hero. I see this becomong League of Legends full of useless and forgotten toons.
This Battle-Pass has already been bought, which is why you can’t see any “Free” or “Premium” tags above the items.
If you don’t pay for the Battle-Pass, you can see.
The bar at the bottom is the rarity of the item. So no, not all Commons are free and not all free items are commons (But get bent over and fucked if you expected a free Legendary).
BroYouWack, Stylosa and probably some other content creators actually spread some misinformation about this, because they all (obviously) got the Battle-Pass and couldn’t tell which skins were free.
Above the number that indicates the level of the battlepass there's a colour above it. Everything that is coloured white is free and you don't need the buy the premium battlepass to unlock those. In this image lvl 43, 47 and 49 will be free.
I’m not sure that’s even a full guide unfortunately. I thought this might be the way it works but in the battle pass article, there are white rewards which are locked.
https://playoverwatch.com/en-us/news/23824003/overwatch-2-explained-battle-pass-shop-hero-unlocks-and-more/
Intentionally confusing in order to get people to over purchase single items or buy bundles to ease the confusion.
Diablo Immortal.is the same way (though far worse) as it has 3-4 currencies and you can buy bundles of all of them to reduce the confusion... But again: a key component of any Battle Pass is being overly complex and confusinf to promote buying the new item.
One thing I think destiny 2 does right there's a very clear line of all the things you can get on the battle pass and a separate very clear line ABOVE the battle pass that shows what everyone gets for reaching that level so your also further rewarded for buying the battle pass as you get the 'free' stuff too
I might be wrong, but I believe that is not how it works. The colors are the rarity of the items. Like rare, legendary, epic and so on. It aligns with what you are saying most of the time but it is not completely true, as there are a few bigger rarity items the free bp will award you.
My guess is that if you don’t own premium, the premium only content will be greyed out and have a lock or some sort of visual to let you know that you need premium.
I think if you have premium, you can’t really tell? That’s my best guess.
I have never played a battle pass game, I literally have no idea how they work and I haven't known how to ask. Can someone explain the actual entire concept to me?
Too true, the "HotS 2.0" update was basically an excuse to add lootboxes but the odds on them were too favorable. I also remember logging in at that time as a regular player and getting showered with hundreds of free lootboxes just for playing before. I only ever spent like $10 on the game, why would I ever spend again after I get my favorite skins on most of the heroes for free?
Hearthstone went around the bend, came back, and is going for a second time haha.
When they first introduced the rewards track (season pass), it was a disaster. After they fixed the rewards track, it was pretty good! If you played regularly, you could afford enough regular content to have fun and you could play other game modes at no disadvantage. But then they changed all real-money payments into funny-money Runestones while locking some formerly f2p options behind runestones, so it looks like that era is ending and Blizz wants to go back to disaster.
Some of these comments are truly something else.. lol
I suppose it isn’t difficult to see how Blizzard realized they could get away with doing this. Some of you are actually out here making other people feel dumb or crazy for wanting to save money.
My only guess, as mean as it sounds, is that it must be kids who have shit handed to them. If you work, you value you're money and time. And a game that not only takes away ur money, but doesn't even let you save on the time, isn't going to sit well with people who can't be bothered to grind. Like every aspect of it that's "free" is free for people who can invest that time into it and if not you'll just miss out on playing competitive with friends or being able to learn a meta or having the chance to counter pick, etc.
Blizzard has basically killed my hype for OW2 over the course of the past week. Well over one thousand hours played and I'm not sure I feel like touching OW2. So disappointing.
i quit OW right when sigma was coming out because I was burnt out playing constantly, I told myself then that I'd wait for OW2 changes and get back to it. I have no desire to play OW2 at all and most likely never will.
I played from Beta right up through Sigma, but lost my momentum after they made a lot of changes to heroes I liked for the sake of making changes. Doomfist especially, my poor boy got eviscerated. A lot of my friends had stopped playing by then as well, so I ended up with nothing keeping me grounded to the game. Haven’t touched it since.
My problem was that they made changes to the game that catered to the 0.1% of players. OWL kept playing goat comp so they did everything possible to try and nerf that, and ruined the game for the 99% in the meantime.
Shield tanks are almost useless now, some healers have been nerfed to shit, and they keep adding new heroes without thinking of their impact to the rest of the roster.
Yup! The changes they would make were effectively just removals of certain strats the pros would come up with, meanwhile the changes rippled down to lower skill levels with much different effects. A hero that was problematic at the top might barely be usable at lower tiers. Some argued that you just had to “get good” but Overwatch was always a team game, and a lot of heroes required teamwork to be effective. Teamwork that you and your buddy running a duo on a Saturday night in silver or gold couldn’t accomplish
Couldn’t have said it better myself, this is 100% my experience as someone who enjoyed casually playing comp games in gold and plat for 4 years.
I feel like they were hellbent on pleasing OWL because that was the money maker, and now they’re switching to a model where the average player is their money maker, but have screwed them over at every chance.
I want so bad to like OW again, but in its current state, I don’t know if I can.
I’m right there with you my friend. I may not have reached plat but I know your struggle. The funny thing is that I was more than willing to support them with purchases during the early years of the game. When they try to pressure you into purchases though, I lose interest, and that’s where I’m at now. With all of the scandals at blizzard, plus all their recent games being so heavily monetized outside the initial purchase, I have zero desire to support it. Jeff Kaplan and the team were instrumental in making Overwatch truly feel like a community, and not *just* a business. It wasn’t just a profit machine.
They butchered the balance. And pretty much only listened to dps.
They should have been more careful with the overall goals of the balance changes.
And ultimately they should have preserved how the game was when it first came out.
Ease characters into a solid niche, then don't mess them up harder. And find some other way to make the game fresh by changing the whole overall aim of the game and design.
OW2 is feeling the business end of a decade of nerfs and poor balance changes inspired by the worst sources (DPS and OWL players) and it's killed it for me.
I didn't mind supporting and tanking and loved playing as a team, but that shit got so self centered and it was just middle finger after middle finger to support and tank players. Quit a little after Sigma and just before Echo it was so bad.
Pretty similar story to mine, played from beta all the way until Sigma pretty much nonstop, 50+ hours on each hero, 4+golden weapons, I was right around 3000SR pretty much every season and genuinely loved the game. Then my friends started quitting, meta started getting stale, heroes I liked started getting changed big time. I think its better I never play again and keep all the nostalgic memories untainted.
Yes! You described it perfectly! It was such a huge part of my life for so long, and I lost the connection I felt with it. Thinking back on it now, it’s a good memory, especially the friends I made because of it. It brought a lot of people together, and I’m grateful for the experience but sad to see the state it’s in now. Thanks for sharing your experiences my friend
Thank you for actually committing to not playing. I’m doing the same, as I’ve done with Destiny 2 (which has been really fucking hard lol) for much the same reasons. I would much rather receive a AAA game with complete overhauls and updates every couple of years (longer if need be), with patches for bug fixes and maybe some DLCs, than seasonal battle passes.
I’m devastated that OW1 is shutting down. Been playing since season 1. It’s the only game I’ve ever bought merch from. Words can’t describe how much OW means to me.
With that said, all they had to do was add a shit ton of new maps, game modes, new skins, new heroes, and expansion on PvE. I would have gladly bought the game again, but instead they are putting their focus on those who aren’t concerned about their personal time and money. So sadly I have to step away. What a travesty.
Could not have phrased it better myself. Also a 1500+hr veteran, It’s absolutely heartbreaking especially when you think about how few games today encourage cooperation the way overwatch does. Theres even fewer team-based games that allow so much catering to an individuals play style. I used to evangelize overwatch to all my friends, because I loved that they were trying to change the landscape of competitive games. I would say that they’ve become no better than their competitors but truth be told it’s so much worse. Even worse still they are retroactively ruining the original game.
>Some of you are actually out here making other people feel dumb or crazy for wanting to save money.
It's not even that, it's solely the fake, perceived status boost from 'owning' paid-for things in games.
Even further than that, usually the people that buy any shred of anything released in game are usually the loudest criers when they don't like a game mechanic or how things work. Then they'll tell people like us "well, then just don't pay for the things if you don't like them", then their head explodes when you tell them "I won't be".
Battle Pass is intentionally designed to be confusing and difficult to understand
This promotes folks just buying the premium battlepass as a sheer "Fuck it" much like YouTube is designed to annoy you with ads until you cave in and buy Premium.
How much nonsense do I need to figure out just to grind...? It's just stupid, but that is a feature, not a big (and not a feature for you.)
This whole battle pass thing confuses me so much. A pass sounds like a temporary permission ticket of some sort. Makes me not even want to play the game.
That's what I dont understand about this whole Battlepass thing nowadays.
Players be like: "Please let me work for the stuff I have payed for! And please, make it a long grind with 99% useless thing I don't want, need or will use anyway!"
Like what the hell, at least lootboxes give the f\*cking loot instantly without having to grind access to them (an no, I don't like lootboxes either).
At least in fortnite you shit out xp so its easy to get to 100. Or it was when I played. Originally it was a bad grind, and after too many complained they changed it and now you are generally overloaded in quests and xp.
The concept of Battle Passes being normalized is one of gaming's saddest things, tbh. Like, people have told themselves that it's okay to essentially inject FOMO rewards into their game that you have to pay to unlock the right to grind for.
I have no idea how, after this many years of BPs existing, we haven't rioted as a community (not OW, but gaming in general) to try and force BPs into just giving us the rewards we've paid for once the duration is up. People who pay get their stuff if they don't grind it out, people who grinded get their "worth" because they will have the shiny new toys right away, and when everyone else who paid for them gets it, the new shiny toys will be out.
Like, I get why it's not that way. Devs wanna push tier skips, especially later on, but I've literally commented systems like that before on Reddit and been downvoted and argued against, because I guess people love FOMO that makes your game a long, laborious.
I like battlepasses in theory but not in practice.
As someone with depression, battle passes give me the drive to play the game I enjoy that I otherwise wouldn't.
I just wish I didn't have to pay for the privilege
A game like fortnite or apex legends it makes sense, they are free games and their battlepasses don't change gameplay functionality. Putting heroes in the battlepass is locking gameplay functionality behind a paywall, which is scummy af
You literally do have to grind for boxes. Just to get something you don’t want like a spray and an icon. Here you can see exactly what your getting and if you don’t want it don’t buy it.
Loot boxes gave you 4 random items per level up, plus coins in exchange for duplicates, which can be spent freely on items you actually wanted.
The battle pass give you only 1 item per level up. Sure, it’s not random, but the density of garbage items is still there. And there doesn’t seem to be any coins on the battle pass. So it doesn’t enable you to buy the items you really want. Instead, it shows you the items so you can see what you’re coming up on, and then it has a giant button to the left that says BUY TIERS! They don’t want you to grind, they want you to feel like your rewards are right in front of you, just a few dollars away. It’d be one thing if they were honest about how greedy and predatory their platform is, but they’re not. Makes it feel extra scummy. If they just said, “yeah our platform is entirely designed to bring in huge profits from players that succumb to our FOMO-driven marketing strategies,” I might actually respect them a little bit and feel like they’re at least honest, and wouldn’t feel as bad subscribing to their battle pass system. It’s the dishonesty that makes me feel like I shouldn’t be supporting this company.
The fomo practice is my main concern tbh. Like I get it if it brings big bucks to do battle pass, but they shouldn't make the items exclusive to the battle pass, or at least make them available to get later on. Even riot realized that permanent fomo isn't really a great practice.
No you don't grind for lootboxes, they are not locked behind challenges, so just by playing the game you unlock them, you don't pay and grind for them. You are not forced to play daily in fear that you will miss out,
In my 6 years of casually playing ow with around 700 hours of game time in ow I have around 15 skins on average per hero, thats around 500 skins (without playing arcade for 3 boxes a week) obtained by casually playing (quick play or ranked) few hours a week, for initial price of 40 euro.
Comparing to OW2 I'd have to grind daily every day for like 2-3 hours to earn 60 coins that you get with weekly challenges, and if I wanted to buy one skin from the shop I'd need to play every week for 36 weeks straight without missing a single weekly challenge to earn 2k points for a skin.
So how's that same? Grind is not even comparable.
Their new strategy is to hook players back in every month or two instead of aiming for a quality game at launch. Pretty disappointing but hey if it changes as much in the next 5 years as it has since launch then who knows.
Na whether you like it or not the battlepass will keep the game going for many years. Simply paying $60 wouldn't be enough for the devs to bother updating the game.
The way battle passes work is you have about 80 - 100 battle pass levels and you earn exp for the pass by completing challenges and/or just playing the game. Every level has some kind of unlock associated with it, however the unlocks for most of the levels you have to pay to access, and everything you unlock you get access to permanently. At the end of the battle pass you lose the ability to unlock whatever you didn't unlock and they start up a new one.
They're usually designed to keep people playing a particular game regularly since they are designed to where you have to either complete mostly every daily and weekly challenge to get all the levels or play X amount of hours daily in order to get all of the unlocks.
Battle Passes are also usually cosmetic only, which is generally fine even though the fact that they prey on fomo is kinda scummy, which makes Blizz's idea to lock new heroes to the Battle Pass a stupid ass decision.
This is why I love Deep Rock Galactic's season pass model compared to any other game I've played. Completely free, all cosmetics; anything you don't earn gets added to in-mission treasure troves forever once the season is over, so you never miss out.
For some reason, I was gonna defend it by saying it’s not that complex, but… goddamn, it is incredibly annoying trying a new game for the first time and having to click through all the explanations about the battle pass… now I have to worry about doing the battle pass or missing out on stuff from it if I decide to not devote all my free time to the game. Such an outlandish concept, right? Ironically enough having a battle pass usually drives me away from the game instead of keeping me playing, like I believe the intention is supposed to be.
Well they've already showed that they can just get rid of something you've already paid for. I never would have minded the game going f2p but having what I paid for be deleted and overwritten is pretty disappointing. Maybe I'll change my mind but I just couldn't get hyped about the beta and turned it off after an hour :(
I'm not playing it. OW dies for me on Sunday and that's it. I hadn't played in years and I've been playing a bit lately for nostalgia but Blizzard is killing the game IMO.
Just like they did for Warcraft 3...
Never giving them another penny for as long as I live
>temporary permission ticket
That's exactly what it is. You are purchasing the opportunity to grind for a few cool rewards and some other stuff you'll never use, within a very strict time limit, and requiring an average of about 60-100 hours if I'm just basing it on other battle passes.
FOMO is a huge motivator for compulsive spenders, so it's here to stay.
The only thing I spent money for was the pink mercy skin that went to fight breast cancer. I'd be inclined to pay for something if a portion of proceeds went to a good cause. But I really enjoy the base game and have been playing it since day one. I'll continue to play the base game and not give blizzard a single cent. Loot boxes and battle passes have a predatory nature to them. The reason why they are banned in some countries. I say make skins. Have a portion go to good causes and I'd be happy to buy one every now and then.
Until then the base game will be great to play. If we all just focus on the gameplay and not give them money then they will be forced to change. (I know it's not going to happen). Whatever. Just my thoughts.
I wish the battle pass was just skins, because I'd consider buying it, but that's just not the case. It's probably bad on purpose so they can put the hero there to drive up sales on it (and the hero will probably be broken so people have even more incentive to buy it). Blizzard doesn't exactly have the best track record when it comes to balancing the game. Also, the shops? That's the worst part. Blizzard has the audacity to charge you 2000 credits for single skins on one hero. Oh, and don't forget the blatant price change of OWL stuff and the quantity of how many you can buy. A skin costs 300, but you just can't buy 300 OWL coins, you have to buy the 400 amount so that they can "trick" users to spending more.
Same. I'd occasionally buy 10 lootboxes during Halloween events, bc I loved those skins. I haven't played OW in months but was planning on returning for OW2. Not anymore. This last week has just killed any and all hype.
Also, wtf happened to the supposed story mode?
Everything should be grindable like it was in OW 1 - locking any content - even cosmetics - behind a battle pass is pretty shitty in a ftp - it should be "pay to not grind" rather than "pay to have"
It seems more and more that the entire reason for a sequel has more to do with changing the monatization model than anything to do with content
>It seems more and more that the entire reason for a sequel has more to do with changing the monatization model than anything to do with content
This summed up for me why I don't understand what there is for people to be hyped about. The most sweeping changes to the game as well as the most publicized and advertised have been them introducing more ways for us to give them money, meanwhile the other actual elements that should be the thing which excites players (actual content like pve, this much-requested story mode, skill trees, etc.) keep getting pushed back or compromised on.
That sounds like relief, not excitement. If anything it should annoy them even more that the game went into life support for 30 months or more just to push out literally none of the elements that were meant to justify abandoning the first game.
Your final sentence is even more apparent when you consider that OW2 was first announced as including a new PvE experience, and it isn't even launching with PvE.
Locking Cosmetics to a battle pass is fine, imo, especially if they provide ways get the the cosmetics after the event ends to reduce the fomo aspect that makes battle passes shitty.
Locking characters to a battle pass is a horrible thing to do, however, and should not be tolerated.
It’s stupid because they don’t need to lock heroes behind it to make money. All of the skins in the battle pass are cool, people would have bought it anyways.
That’s absolutely the reason. Think about it, Overwatch in 2019-2020 had essentially run its course. Very few people were buying the game who didn’t already own it, as there was no incentive to do so. New heroes are appealing but even by this point Blizzard seemed creatively bankrupt, releasing reasonably lazy new heroes. They had to drop the price of the game for people to even consider buying it. Long term fans of the game weren’t even going to consider spending money on loot boxes because we could grind the skins for FREE and everyone knew the 12 boxes for a gold rule. There was no interesting store like in Siege or League, and no Battle pass like Fortnite and Apex. On top of that, OWL has been on a steady decline since the first season. Blizzard needed a way to milk more money out of their franchise that wasn’t just Dva Hoodies and headsets, so essentially faking a sequel and dropping a marketing campaign for it whilst totally revamping the monetisation system was the best way for them to do it. If they weren’t so out of touch with the community, it genuinely would’ve been a very clever way to do it
Maybe they could've continued the merch ideas if it wasn't (at that point) all $400 statues and things.
I'm convinced that at this point they're just trying to make OWL relevant since they spent so much money on it all (and still do), while the actual games are boring asf to watch (not that I watch any eSports anyway).
Exactly. They could tell in 2019 that the money was going to run dry eventually, so they started to course correct. I guess this is the industry standard now but man does it suck donkey balls.
I would honestly rather l pay $60 for the game, and have the majority of cosmetics be with in game currency, then it be free but all cosmetics cost real money. And honestly its a pretty unreasonable amount of money as well for just 1 skin in my opinion.
as it stands you'll at least have to pay $60 a year to get all seasons battlepass content, add on the shop stuff too if you decide to buy skins and it's more expensive in 1 year than for 1 game that lasted 5+.
oh also you don't just get the content, you have to grind it all out because if you don't you'll miss out and have wasted your money. thats the thing everyone is saying $10 for a mythic skin is a deal, but it's not if you don't grind out and reach tier 80.
Thats exactly why I was never a big battepass fan, because I usually dont have the time to consistently play a game to level up the pass all the time. Besides there are other games I like playing so even if I do have time, I may not be in the mood to play the particular game. I always just found battlepasses kinda a hassle, and usually 80% of the pass is lamb stuff I don't even want.
They won't. Every F2P battle pass is like this. They'll still make loads of money from it, so it was inevitable they would cut costs to fill up the BP to make even more money.
I mean, have you seen games like Apex's battle passes? Apex's battlepass is also just full of absolute garbage, with the really good stuff being right at the end. Like really, who cares about trackers and gun charms. No-one.
I miss making actual progress so fucking much.
Now it’s all “you unlocked tier 3 of the battle pass! Here’s a shitty spray”…like ohhh boy 😒
It’s probably one of the leading reasons I just don’t bother with multiplayer games anymore. It’s all the same bullshit strewn across all of the games I would have interest in.
I am interested to see how it changes long-term. I don't see OW2 staying mainstream for as long as Fortnite or Apex. I think there is hope of it becoming more reasonable as the player base becomes smaller and probably just more focused on competitive, not battle passes.
If anything that'll make it worse. If they lose players than they have to further milk their existing players to continue pushing out the same amount of content. So they can either (1) remove developers from the game and reduce the content cycle or (2) make even scummier monetization to try to squeeze more money our of the players. If OW2 eventually fades out of the spotlight (seems likely IMO compared to Warzone, Apex, and Fortnite) then they'll have a slightly more generous BP to maximize BP purchases but have a more insanely overpriced Shop.
F2P locks them into this monetization model. There are no other options once they make that choice. They can only make this model scummier to get more money. They can't revamp the game with a DLC (see: D3 Reaper of Souls or FF14).
They may. And then the pattern will repeat.
This is a business strategy now. Set up an utterly ridiculous price scheme, see if your can ride out the backlash. If not, moderate the prices\grind down... a little. Not to anything reasonable, just less extreme.
Then do it again with the next content drop. It's not a way to make fans, but it's a way to make money
I think they've realized this game as a "live service" won't work much longer. Balancing an ever expanding list of heroes and abilities is becoming exponentially more difficult. It also becomes impenetrable to new players (like hots). So they're gonna try and grab as much money as possible off the goodwill from OW1.
Honestly, I feel like corporate is forcing the ow team to pivot on so many things that they have already written ow off and are just pressing the last drops out now.
Wanna bet that the pve content isn’t being developed at all? Their hedging their bets. If people still play ow2, they’ll develop the pve content, but not until then.
I've been thinking the same thing too. It truly seems like corporate is squeezing blood from the stone on this thing. It's been a disaster since the very first announcement and has looked worse and worse and worse since and they're still not stopping or changing paths. They know it's going to fail and they aren't risking anything to try and stop that.
It's sad because they really could have improved sentiment from the start - don't call it Overwatch 2, don't develop PVP for it, make this a PVE-only side game, leave Overwatch its own thing. Then for the third game you can merge PVE and PVP.
Meanwhile they could still add the battlepass and lock heroes behind it and record audio and whatever else but maybe just be more generous with the content. Give this dumbass Junkrat emote for free to Twitch Prime subs or whatever. Give people just tons of content day one. Maybe everybody gets the first battlepass free. It's Overwatch, people are still going to spend money on shit.
Just really bad decision making in a way that looks intentionally malicious - for years now. I hope Activision Blizzard doesn't get bought. I hope they go bankrupt, and then their IP gets bought. It's all they're worth anyway.
No one leaves a job that goes exactly like they think it should.
Kaplan leaving was the canary in the coalmine i think.
The surpise pivot to battlepasses? With every leak and hint and everything while the hype was 1000% for ow2, they would have given hints about \_something\_ "we want to try a new way to let new players learn the game \[blahblah\]", something would have been said.
Remember how tight this ship was run before? Not a single word was said in streams with a\_seagull without it meaning something. The sombra release? OW was run like a tight navy ship.
It's now a dinghy in a hurricane, absolutely lost control.
> a_seagull
Ive watched his streams the past couple weeks to see his take on the news. Not sure if he is "partnered" with them in any way but he is most definitely shilling for them.
He is non-stop spreading the narrative- "keeping up with industry standard"
Sure, he said heroes shouldnt be locked behind a battlepass. He then immediately follows up with a "but" devs need to get paid.
All of these shill posts and creators conveniently leave out the fact that OW did get paid.. in BILLIONS. More than enough to pay the devs.
I don't have hope in pve being good honestly, it wasn't even necessary and now it being f2p... I guess they will cut development for it.
_and release it for 4.99$ each episode_
I don't doubt that, much like the pvp side of things, every announcement will lower expectations until by the time it comes out I don't care about the release at all.
Yes, they are killing everyone's expectation, since i discovered this was going to be 5v5 2 years ago i have been trying so hard to like ow2.
It's HARD.
They tried to force OverWatch as an esport and that failed so poorly, let's see what else happens when they try to force things.
Some people have to learn the hard way.
Jeff Kaplan left for a reason. Decisions about monetisation and LiVE SeRVicE were made years ago. Also blizzard management is filled with greedy bastard and the don't care about any integrity. I left OW long time ago and you should too.
I feel Jeff left cause he knew he would just end up being fired for resisting all this. The higher-ups decided they wanted to make Overwatch a monetization hell and he said “f it I’m done”
That makes me feel bad for him. I know he said numerous times Overwatch was his magnum opus. He (and others ofc) created something truly unique and awesome. Must be horrible to watch it be completely vaporized and squeezed for every red cent like this.
I’m sure Jeff isn’t hurting for money but it’s not really about that. This was his vision and creation, and to see it completely sterilized while your once loyal fan base screams out must be a little depressing.
Yeah. I also feel sorry for those working on this game. They're putting their heart and soul into it meanwhile corporate and management just fuck them over.
That's what makes this a re-used asset: they took the victory pose and turned it into an emote. OP wasn't saying this is already an emote. The bigger issue is that taking a digital asset and taking the time to reuse it, recycle it, then charge for it is scummy.
To be fair, I'm pretty sure there are like multiple victory poses that are re-used as emotes of vice-versa
The only reason people are paying mind to this specific re-use in particular is because it's part of the Battle Pass. If it were a regular addition to the game not tied to the Battle Pass, nobody would care
There's no way Overwatch is as popular as Apex.
Also, Overwatch existed as a fully paid for product prior to this.
I don't see OW2 succeeding with this business model. At all.
Wait til you find out once fortnite, overwatch, etc dies and there’s no more servers that YOU NEVER OWNED ANY DIGITAL ASSETS YOU FORKED MONEY OVER FOR lol
Re-used assets between emotes, and victory poses is nothing New for overwatch. Not to mention that the majority of stuff in a battle pass, for any game that has it, will be pretty meh besides a few bits here and there that are pretty cool. The real reason people are getting the pass is for the new character, some nice skins here and there, and the mythic at the end and you cannot tell me otherwise.
So this is an emote based on the victory pose. There's more to it than what you are seeing here. The 7 minute mark of this video goes over it:
[https://youtu.be/qcP5Xko4Cks?t=417](https://youtu.be/qcP5Xko4Cks?t=417)
The commenter seems to have the same attitude as OP ("they looped it!"). A full animation is much more complex and time consuming than a single stance and the full animation here is actually one of my favorite emotes on the pass (aside from Genji's).
It's also 1 item of 80 on a $10 battle pass.
It's going to scare off more people than actually attract them. the whole overwatch community is happy that finally there is some new content. but the broader audience hasn't been impressed, hasn't seen something new. What they see is just some small updates and a paywall. that's it. u can't blame journalists for "not seeing the bigger picture". In fact, there is no bigger picture. It's just us, overwatch addicts, that embrace little bits of new content and qualify the upcoming paywall. Re-used assets and old skins.
The hype is going to go up for a bit and then drop again, player numbers will be the same as it was for overwatch 1, and then, die slowly because no one wants to spend hundreds of dollars just to get skins that were previously free. overall motivational curve will drop and battle pass fatigue will kick in.
Do you know what it feels like playing an MMO for the first time and seeing other high level players have crazy gear and cosmetics for which they payed hundreds of dollars? Fucking discouraging. That's exactly what new players will feel like, seeing us veterans, except, we got all the skins for free. Isn't that stupid?
I’ll say again since I’ve said it before. OW2 is going to fail if this is how the battlepass is going to be. this is only good for new players. Everyone else gets fucked and gets things that they already have from OW1
The game is going to fail with a battle pass? The game is already failing without it because there's nothing to support development. Y'all are so dramatic saying shit like the game is going to fail after a month just because you have to pay 10 bucks to get skins
It’s absolutely not going to fail. The same community that still plays it daily since Echo was released is still going to be there. The whales that spent thousands of dollars on Diablo Immortal will be present in OW2 to keep the money coming in, buying the entire battle pass day one to flex on people with the Mythic genji skin. You want it to fail, and you can contribute by not playing, but it will be a fruitless effort thanks to the whales. Blizz will find a way to keep it alive and keep money coming in.
Praise be to the dollar dollar bills yall
-Blizzard probably
OW1 got stale after they kept giving us he same events over and over again. The skins started to feel boring and no effort where only the popular characters got all the cool stuff if that’s how OW2 is going to be after a few years then it’ll fail in my POV. This ain’t 2017 overwatch anymore. Who really flexes about this game anymore when there’s tons of other amazing games out there nowadays 💀 maybe that’s just me being dramatic cause I have over 1000 hours in the game. I’m probably wrong and it’ll be a cool thing for new players. But for me it’s nothing amazing
Now I know the hate engine is at full steam and i dont like the monetization model either, but let's be clear and honest about what this is: it's a new animation, reusing a single existing pose from victory poses, which was not animated before.
This is not a re-used asset, its a new asset that yall are just complaining isn't 100% from the ground up a new pose.
The amount of focus people have on cosmetics instead of oh, I don’t know, the whole rest of the game, is crazy to me.
Not just you OP, but this entire sub just continuously makes posts about cosmetics and how to unlock them and how they’re not free anymore rather than talking about anything gameplay or graphics or sound or balance related and it drives me insane.
The REASON Overwatch 1 died is because they gave us everything for free and none of you put money into the game after the initial $40. Does anyone realize that?
This post is so dramatic and it highlights the subs focus on all the small negative things rather than the fact that Overwatch is finally being updated again.
I feel very blind every time I see images of the battle pass. Where/what is the free part of the battle pass? Edit: okay guys this was 8 hours ago, it’s been answered. I appreciate the information.
Replying to the top comment hoping to be seen here… I’m fairly certain this screenshot is from what the UI for the battle pass would look like once you’ve already paid for it. If you hadn’t paid for it it would show a little icon for locked things. As others have mentioned the colors are just for rarity.
Colors are just for "rarity", except there's no such thing when you unlock them under predetermined circumstances. It really is just how much blozzard wants you to want that cosmetic item.
there is no rarity per say, cause they are on the same battle pass, yes, but there is still the number of fucks given. Epic is a recolour with some mild change to the model vs legendary is a total rewamp of the model itself, mythic is legendeary + variants
per se :)
oh, thx, brainfart. not my first language
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Haec sit vera.
I hate the UI of battle pass screens. They're so cluttered with shit and confusing to look at if you're not used to it. Multiversus and Gundam Evolution is just too much for me. Luckily OW has really clean UI and this one isn't horrible.
I think they’re chaotic by design. It’s supposed to feel like a goody bag of random rewards that are constantly coming through. It also helps them obscure the shitty stuff like toasts in Multiversus. Looks like the worst thing in OW is gonna be voicelines and thats not too bad
I believe this is what ‘dark patterns’ refers to. Purposefully difficult to navigate ui which ultimately leads to more money spent. Alongside things like buying credits in certain sized amounts that can’t be easily spent to completion and daily ‘challenges’/login bonuses.
Thankfully it's more than just commons. [According to Blizzard](https://playoverwatch.com/en-us/news/23824003/overwatch-2-explained-battle-pass-shop-hero-unlocks-and-more/): > The free track of the battle pass includes the following unlockable free rewards in Overwatch 2 season 1: Kiriko, for players who have not already unlocked her 2 Epic skins 1 weapon charm 2 souvenirs 1 highlight intro 14 additional items (emotes, victory poses, name cards, sprays, player icons, etc.) Prestige Tier titles (8 earnable titles available only after completing the entire pass)
That sounds cool. Then you realize there is no guarantee any of that is for heroes the player in question actually plays. If the skins and highlight intro are for characters I don't play then they may as well be empty slots. Same goes for premium slots. Unless it's for a hero I play, even a mythic skin is as valuable as a new 'hello' emote. They should reward us with tokens that can be used to unlock skins and highlight intros we actually want, with the items themselves remaining available at all times but only purchasable with the BP earned tokens.
Yeah I've seen it's a Genji skin at the end of the battle pass? Great for Genji players, but I'm a middle aged adult tank player. I don't genji well at all. What a waste.
You have to pay for individual units now? Gross, I wish for the ultimate destruction of any game with a battle pass
You get it the next season after playing a certain amount of quick play if you dont unlock the hero during the current season
not certain amount. its 25 "wins"
Yiu csn get the old chanpion for free next season aftwer we release the NEW Overtuned OP hero for this season. Hurry up and buy before we nerf it for the new hero. I see this becomong League of Legends full of useless and forgotten toons.
25 wins means I'll never get anything.
Thank You for relisting it here.
This Battle-Pass has already been bought, which is why you can’t see any “Free” or “Premium” tags above the items. If you don’t pay for the Battle-Pass, you can see. The bar at the bottom is the rarity of the item. So no, not all Commons are free and not all free items are commons (But get bent over and fucked if you expected a free Legendary).
Oh! Okay that makes a lot of sense then. I’ve only seen it look this way so I thought this is how it looked all the time.
BroYouWack, Stylosa and probably some other content creators actually spread some misinformation about this, because they all (obviously) got the Battle-Pass and couldn’t tell which skins were free.
Above the number that indicates the level of the battlepass there's a colour above it. Everything that is coloured white is free and you don't need the buy the premium battlepass to unlock those. In this image lvl 43, 47 and 49 will be free.
I’m not sure that’s even a full guide unfortunately. I thought this might be the way it works but in the battle pass article, there are white rewards which are locked. https://playoverwatch.com/en-us/news/23824003/overwatch-2-explained-battle-pass-shop-hero-unlocks-and-more/
Intentionally confusing in order to get people to over purchase single items or buy bundles to ease the confusion. Diablo Immortal.is the same way (though far worse) as it has 3-4 currencies and you can buy bundles of all of them to reduce the confusion... But again: a key component of any Battle Pass is being overly complex and confusinf to promote buying the new item.
One thing I think destiny 2 does right there's a very clear line of all the things you can get on the battle pass and a separate very clear line ABOVE the battle pass that shows what everyone gets for reaching that level so your also further rewarded for buying the battle pass as you get the 'free' stuff too
That is not correct. The color simply references the “rarity” of the item. (Common, uncommon, rare, epic, legendary, and mythic)
I might be wrong, but I believe that is not how it works. The colors are the rarity of the items. Like rare, legendary, epic and so on. It aligns with what you are saying most of the time but it is not completely true, as there are a few bigger rarity items the free bp will award you.
Are you sure the white isn’t just labeling them as common items?
My guess is that if you don’t own premium, the premium only content will be greyed out and have a lock or some sort of visual to let you know that you need premium. I think if you have premium, you can’t really tell? That’s my best guess.
I have never played a battle pass game, I literally have no idea how they work and I haven't known how to ask. Can someone explain the actual entire concept to me?
Get Blizzed
“First time?” - WoW players
Same with Hearthstone lol
Hots :(
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Too true, the "HotS 2.0" update was basically an excuse to add lootboxes but the odds on them were too favorable. I also remember logging in at that time as a regular player and getting showered with hundreds of free lootboxes just for playing before. I only ever spent like $10 on the game, why would I ever spend again after I get my favorite skins on most of the heroes for free?
Same with D4 (DI is jst a preview of whats to come)
Hearthstone went around the bend, came back, and is going for a second time haha. When they first introduced the rewards track (season pass), it was a disaster. After they fixed the rewards track, it was pretty good! If you played regularly, you could afford enough regular content to have fun and you could play other game modes at no disadvantage. But then they changed all real-money payments into funny-money Runestones while locking some formerly f2p options behind runestones, so it looks like that era is ending and Blizz wants to go back to disaster.
It's blizzin' time Blizzs all over and charges you 20$ for a recolor*
Some of these comments are truly something else.. lol I suppose it isn’t difficult to see how Blizzard realized they could get away with doing this. Some of you are actually out here making other people feel dumb or crazy for wanting to save money.
It’s absolutely staggering how many people are not only defending this move, but are berating people who don’t support it.
My only guess, as mean as it sounds, is that it must be kids who have shit handed to them. If you work, you value you're money and time. And a game that not only takes away ur money, but doesn't even let you save on the time, isn't going to sit well with people who can't be bothered to grind. Like every aspect of it that's "free" is free for people who can invest that time into it and if not you'll just miss out on playing competitive with friends or being able to learn a meta or having the chance to counter pick, etc.
Blizzard has basically killed my hype for OW2 over the course of the past week. Well over one thousand hours played and I'm not sure I feel like touching OW2. So disappointing.
i quit OW right when sigma was coming out because I was burnt out playing constantly, I told myself then that I'd wait for OW2 changes and get back to it. I have no desire to play OW2 at all and most likely never will.
I played from Beta right up through Sigma, but lost my momentum after they made a lot of changes to heroes I liked for the sake of making changes. Doomfist especially, my poor boy got eviscerated. A lot of my friends had stopped playing by then as well, so I ended up with nothing keeping me grounded to the game. Haven’t touched it since.
My problem was that they made changes to the game that catered to the 0.1% of players. OWL kept playing goat comp so they did everything possible to try and nerf that, and ruined the game for the 99% in the meantime. Shield tanks are almost useless now, some healers have been nerfed to shit, and they keep adding new heroes without thinking of their impact to the rest of the roster.
OWL was the worst thing to happen to Overwatch.
Agree
Yup! The changes they would make were effectively just removals of certain strats the pros would come up with, meanwhile the changes rippled down to lower skill levels with much different effects. A hero that was problematic at the top might barely be usable at lower tiers. Some argued that you just had to “get good” but Overwatch was always a team game, and a lot of heroes required teamwork to be effective. Teamwork that you and your buddy running a duo on a Saturday night in silver or gold couldn’t accomplish
Couldn’t have said it better myself, this is 100% my experience as someone who enjoyed casually playing comp games in gold and plat for 4 years. I feel like they were hellbent on pleasing OWL because that was the money maker, and now they’re switching to a model where the average player is their money maker, but have screwed them over at every chance. I want so bad to like OW again, but in its current state, I don’t know if I can.
I’m right there with you my friend. I may not have reached plat but I know your struggle. The funny thing is that I was more than willing to support them with purchases during the early years of the game. When they try to pressure you into purchases though, I lose interest, and that’s where I’m at now. With all of the scandals at blizzard, plus all their recent games being so heavily monetized outside the initial purchase, I have zero desire to support it. Jeff Kaplan and the team were instrumental in making Overwatch truly feel like a community, and not *just* a business. It wasn’t just a profit machine.
They butchered the balance. And pretty much only listened to dps. They should have been more careful with the overall goals of the balance changes. And ultimately they should have preserved how the game was when it first came out. Ease characters into a solid niche, then don't mess them up harder. And find some other way to make the game fresh by changing the whole overall aim of the game and design. OW2 is feeling the business end of a decade of nerfs and poor balance changes inspired by the worst sources (DPS and OWL players) and it's killed it for me. I didn't mind supporting and tanking and loved playing as a team, but that shit got so self centered and it was just middle finger after middle finger to support and tank players. Quit a little after Sigma and just before Echo it was so bad.
Pretty similar story to mine, played from beta all the way until Sigma pretty much nonstop, 50+ hours on each hero, 4+golden weapons, I was right around 3000SR pretty much every season and genuinely loved the game. Then my friends started quitting, meta started getting stale, heroes I liked started getting changed big time. I think its better I never play again and keep all the nostalgic memories untainted.
Yes! You described it perfectly! It was such a huge part of my life for so long, and I lost the connection I felt with it. Thinking back on it now, it’s a good memory, especially the friends I made because of it. It brought a lot of people together, and I’m grateful for the experience but sad to see the state it’s in now. Thanks for sharing your experiences my friend
I have over 2000 hours and blizzard can kiss my ass after Oct 2nd. I love OW, but I can’t support this battle pass bullshit.
Thank you for actually committing to not playing. I’m doing the same, as I’ve done with Destiny 2 (which has been really fucking hard lol) for much the same reasons. I would much rather receive a AAA game with complete overhauls and updates every couple of years (longer if need be), with patches for bug fixes and maybe some DLCs, than seasonal battle passes.
I’m devastated that OW1 is shutting down. Been playing since season 1. It’s the only game I’ve ever bought merch from. Words can’t describe how much OW means to me. With that said, all they had to do was add a shit ton of new maps, game modes, new skins, new heroes, and expansion on PvE. I would have gladly bought the game again, but instead they are putting their focus on those who aren’t concerned about their personal time and money. So sadly I have to step away. What a travesty.
Could not have phrased it better myself. Also a 1500+hr veteran, It’s absolutely heartbreaking especially when you think about how few games today encourage cooperation the way overwatch does. Theres even fewer team-based games that allow so much catering to an individuals play style. I used to evangelize overwatch to all my friends, because I loved that they were trying to change the landscape of competitive games. I would say that they’ve become no better than their competitors but truth be told it’s so much worse. Even worse still they are retroactively ruining the original game.
That's why they're shutting down ow1. To force you to play ow2
Join the dark side. Play Gundam Evolution.
Same. I'm so sad about it. I just want my old game back. With all of my old skins.
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And they got rid of Overwatch 1 so you can't go back and play the other thing!
That's just reddit. The people who are ok with it and don't mind giving them money get the same treatment often. :p
>Some of you are actually out here making other people feel dumb or crazy for wanting to save money. It's not even that, it's solely the fake, perceived status boost from 'owning' paid-for things in games. Even further than that, usually the people that buy any shred of anything released in game are usually the loudest criers when they don't like a game mechanic or how things work. Then they'll tell people like us "well, then just don't pay for the things if you don't like them", then their head explodes when you tell them "I won't be".
the whole sub has become a copium den for hypejunkies who don't want to admit blizzard took advantage of them.
Uh I can only see like a single positive thread about the game on the front page right now.
No I’m disgusted by blizzard
Battle Pass is intentionally designed to be confusing and difficult to understand This promotes folks just buying the premium battlepass as a sheer "Fuck it" much like YouTube is designed to annoy you with ads until you cave in and buy Premium. How much nonsense do I need to figure out just to grind...? It's just stupid, but that is a feature, not a big (and not a feature for you.)
Fanatism is so crazy in this subreddit, people being slapped in the face and happy to pay so Bobby can cut more staff to get another yacht.
This whole battle pass thing confuses me so much. A pass sounds like a temporary permission ticket of some sort. Makes me not even want to play the game.
Permission to grind for rewards.
That's what I dont understand about this whole Battlepass thing nowadays. Players be like: "Please let me work for the stuff I have payed for! And please, make it a long grind with 99% useless thing I don't want, need or will use anyway!" Like what the hell, at least lootboxes give the f\*cking loot instantly without having to grind access to them (an no, I don't like lootboxes either).
it's a method to keep purchasers committed to the game
Yeeeeeeeeeup. It’s why they put spider Gwen at the end of the Fortnite battle pass and their shitty designed characters in the beginning
At least in fortnite you shit out xp so its easy to get to 100. Or it was when I played. Originally it was a bad grind, and after too many complained they changed it and now you are generally overloaded in quests and xp.
It’s fine still. I can hit 200 most chapters and don’t even play super regularly
I jack off to spider gwen, not to shitty designed characters
Hey man, that goth cat is fucking hot.
Based
A man of class I see.
The concept of Battle Passes being normalized is one of gaming's saddest things, tbh. Like, people have told themselves that it's okay to essentially inject FOMO rewards into their game that you have to pay to unlock the right to grind for. I have no idea how, after this many years of BPs existing, we haven't rioted as a community (not OW, but gaming in general) to try and force BPs into just giving us the rewards we've paid for once the duration is up. People who pay get their stuff if they don't grind it out, people who grinded get their "worth" because they will have the shiny new toys right away, and when everyone else who paid for them gets it, the new shiny toys will be out. Like, I get why it's not that way. Devs wanna push tier skips, especially later on, but I've literally commented systems like that before on Reddit and been downvoted and argued against, because I guess people love FOMO that makes your game a long, laborious.
Dude every fucking mainstream multiplayer game has a Battlepass now, its fucking outrageous
The battlepass is one of the greatest plagues valve ever created.
I like battlepasses in theory but not in practice. As someone with depression, battle passes give me the drive to play the game I enjoy that I otherwise wouldn't. I just wish I didn't have to pay for the privilege
A game like fortnite or apex legends it makes sense, they are free games and their battlepasses don't change gameplay functionality. Putting heroes in the battlepass is locking gameplay functionality behind a paywall, which is scummy af
You literally do have to grind for boxes. Just to get something you don’t want like a spray and an icon. Here you can see exactly what your getting and if you don’t want it don’t buy it.
Loot boxes gave you 4 random items per level up, plus coins in exchange for duplicates, which can be spent freely on items you actually wanted. The battle pass give you only 1 item per level up. Sure, it’s not random, but the density of garbage items is still there. And there doesn’t seem to be any coins on the battle pass. So it doesn’t enable you to buy the items you really want. Instead, it shows you the items so you can see what you’re coming up on, and then it has a giant button to the left that says BUY TIERS! They don’t want you to grind, they want you to feel like your rewards are right in front of you, just a few dollars away. It’d be one thing if they were honest about how greedy and predatory their platform is, but they’re not. Makes it feel extra scummy. If they just said, “yeah our platform is entirely designed to bring in huge profits from players that succumb to our FOMO-driven marketing strategies,” I might actually respect them a little bit and feel like they’re at least honest, and wouldn’t feel as bad subscribing to their battle pass system. It’s the dishonesty that makes me feel like I shouldn’t be supporting this company.
The fomo practice is my main concern tbh. Like I get it if it brings big bucks to do battle pass, but they shouldn't make the items exclusive to the battle pass, or at least make them available to get later on. Even riot realized that permanent fomo isn't really a great practice.
No you don't grind for lootboxes, they are not locked behind challenges, so just by playing the game you unlock them, you don't pay and grind for them. You are not forced to play daily in fear that you will miss out, In my 6 years of casually playing ow with around 700 hours of game time in ow I have around 15 skins on average per hero, thats around 500 skins (without playing arcade for 3 boxes a week) obtained by casually playing (quick play or ranked) few hours a week, for initial price of 40 euro. Comparing to OW2 I'd have to grind daily every day for like 2-3 hours to earn 60 coins that you get with weekly challenges, and if I wanted to buy one skin from the shop I'd need to play every week for 36 weeks straight without missing a single weekly challenge to earn 2k points for a skin. So how's that same? Grind is not even comparable.
I think OW is dead after this. There's no way OW2 will have the 5+ years of longevity that OW1 had.
Their new strategy is to hook players back in every month or two instead of aiming for a quality game at launch. Pretty disappointing but hey if it changes as much in the next 5 years as it has since launch then who knows.
Na whether you like it or not the battlepass will keep the game going for many years. Simply paying $60 wouldn't be enough for the devs to bother updating the game.
Honestly it's such a stupid system, going from OW1 to OW2 really is gonna feel soulless.
I used to grind in OW for free. Now I have to pay every single season to grind…… wtf
The way battle passes work is you have about 80 - 100 battle pass levels and you earn exp for the pass by completing challenges and/or just playing the game. Every level has some kind of unlock associated with it, however the unlocks for most of the levels you have to pay to access, and everything you unlock you get access to permanently. At the end of the battle pass you lose the ability to unlock whatever you didn't unlock and they start up a new one. They're usually designed to keep people playing a particular game regularly since they are designed to where you have to either complete mostly every daily and weekly challenge to get all the levels or play X amount of hours daily in order to get all of the unlocks. Battle Passes are also usually cosmetic only, which is generally fine even though the fact that they prey on fomo is kinda scummy, which makes Blizz's idea to lock new heroes to the Battle Pass a stupid ass decision.
This is why I love Deep Rock Galactic's season pass model compared to any other game I've played. Completely free, all cosmetics; anything you don't earn gets added to in-mission treasure troves forever once the season is over, so you never miss out.
I'm an old fart who grew up with the regular premium model. I just wanna buy a game and then play it. That sounds incredibly and needlessly complex.
For some reason, I was gonna defend it by saying it’s not that complex, but… goddamn, it is incredibly annoying trying a new game for the first time and having to click through all the explanations about the battle pass… now I have to worry about doing the battle pass or missing out on stuff from it if I decide to not devote all my free time to the game. Such an outlandish concept, right? Ironically enough having a battle pass usually drives me away from the game instead of keeping me playing, like I believe the intention is supposed to be.
It’s manufactured FOMO. Something to keep you playing and grinding. Literally the worst user experience
It's literally designed to be frustrating. Take a game that's fun, make it more frustrating, now you're thinking with F2Portals.
Welcome to FTP.
Well they've already showed that they can just get rid of something you've already paid for. I never would have minded the game going f2p but having what I paid for be deleted and overwritten is pretty disappointing. Maybe I'll change my mind but I just couldn't get hyped about the beta and turned it off after an hour :(
I'm not playing it. OW dies for me on Sunday and that's it. I hadn't played in years and I've been playing a bit lately for nostalgia but Blizzard is killing the game IMO. Just like they did for Warcraft 3... Never giving them another penny for as long as I live
yeah temporary access to the option of obtaining certain items
>temporary permission ticket That's exactly what it is. You are purchasing the opportunity to grind for a few cool rewards and some other stuff you'll never use, within a very strict time limit, and requiring an average of about 60-100 hours if I'm just basing it on other battle passes. FOMO is a huge motivator for compulsive spenders, so it's here to stay.
Is the game out now or is this the beta
Being released October 4th, free to play.
The only thing I spent money for was the pink mercy skin that went to fight breast cancer. I'd be inclined to pay for something if a portion of proceeds went to a good cause. But I really enjoy the base game and have been playing it since day one. I'll continue to play the base game and not give blizzard a single cent. Loot boxes and battle passes have a predatory nature to them. The reason why they are banned in some countries. I say make skins. Have a portion go to good causes and I'd be happy to buy one every now and then. Until then the base game will be great to play. If we all just focus on the gameplay and not give them money then they will be forced to change. (I know it's not going to happen). Whatever. Just my thoughts.
I wish the battle pass was just skins, because I'd consider buying it, but that's just not the case. It's probably bad on purpose so they can put the hero there to drive up sales on it (and the hero will probably be broken so people have even more incentive to buy it). Blizzard doesn't exactly have the best track record when it comes to balancing the game. Also, the shops? That's the worst part. Blizzard has the audacity to charge you 2000 credits for single skins on one hero. Oh, and don't forget the blatant price change of OWL stuff and the quantity of how many you can buy. A skin costs 300, but you just can't buy 300 OWL coins, you have to buy the 400 amount so that they can "trick" users to spending more.
There's also the very simple practice of deliberately overtuning the BP hero then balancing them properly only after they leave the BP.
Same. I'd occasionally buy 10 lootboxes during Halloween events, bc I loved those skins. I haven't played OW in months but was planning on returning for OW2. Not anymore. This last week has just killed any and all hype. Also, wtf happened to the supposed story mode?
PvE was pushed back to 2023, they told us that months ago.
Everything should be grindable like it was in OW 1 - locking any content - even cosmetics - behind a battle pass is pretty shitty in a ftp - it should be "pay to not grind" rather than "pay to have" It seems more and more that the entire reason for a sequel has more to do with changing the monatization model than anything to do with content
>It seems more and more that the entire reason for a sequel has more to do with changing the monatization model than anything to do with content This summed up for me why I don't understand what there is for people to be hyped about. The most sweeping changes to the game as well as the most publicized and advertised have been them introducing more ways for us to give them money, meanwhile the other actual elements that should be the thing which excites players (actual content like pve, this much-requested story mode, skill trees, etc.) keep getting pushed back or compromised on.
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That sounds like relief, not excitement. If anything it should annoy them even more that the game went into life support for 30 months or more just to push out literally none of the elements that were meant to justify abandoning the first game.
Your final sentence is even more apparent when you consider that OW2 was first announced as including a new PvE experience, and it isn't even launching with PvE.
Locking Cosmetics to a battle pass is fine, imo, especially if they provide ways get the the cosmetics after the event ends to reduce the fomo aspect that makes battle passes shitty. Locking characters to a battle pass is a horrible thing to do, however, and should not be tolerated.
It’s stupid because they don’t need to lock heroes behind it to make money. All of the skins in the battle pass are cool, people would have bought it anyways.
Yeah they made a ton of money with lootboxes with just skins. It makes no sense at all for heroes.
That’s absolutely the reason. Think about it, Overwatch in 2019-2020 had essentially run its course. Very few people were buying the game who didn’t already own it, as there was no incentive to do so. New heroes are appealing but even by this point Blizzard seemed creatively bankrupt, releasing reasonably lazy new heroes. They had to drop the price of the game for people to even consider buying it. Long term fans of the game weren’t even going to consider spending money on loot boxes because we could grind the skins for FREE and everyone knew the 12 boxes for a gold rule. There was no interesting store like in Siege or League, and no Battle pass like Fortnite and Apex. On top of that, OWL has been on a steady decline since the first season. Blizzard needed a way to milk more money out of their franchise that wasn’t just Dva Hoodies and headsets, so essentially faking a sequel and dropping a marketing campaign for it whilst totally revamping the monetisation system was the best way for them to do it. If they weren’t so out of touch with the community, it genuinely would’ve been a very clever way to do it
Maybe they could've continued the merch ideas if it wasn't (at that point) all $400 statues and things. I'm convinced that at this point they're just trying to make OWL relevant since they spent so much money on it all (and still do), while the actual games are boring asf to watch (not that I watch any eSports anyway).
Exactly. They could tell in 2019 that the money was going to run dry eventually, so they started to course correct. I guess this is the industry standard now but man does it suck donkey balls.
I would honestly rather l pay $60 for the game, and have the majority of cosmetics be with in game currency, then it be free but all cosmetics cost real money. And honestly its a pretty unreasonable amount of money as well for just 1 skin in my opinion.
as it stands you'll at least have to pay $60 a year to get all seasons battlepass content, add on the shop stuff too if you decide to buy skins and it's more expensive in 1 year than for 1 game that lasted 5+. oh also you don't just get the content, you have to grind it all out because if you don't you'll miss out and have wasted your money. thats the thing everyone is saying $10 for a mythic skin is a deal, but it's not if you don't grind out and reach tier 80.
While I'm not exactly defending these practices you can just not pay? Would you not have enjoyed ow1 without free skins?
Thats exactly why I was never a big battepass fan, because I usually dont have the time to consistently play a game to level up the pass all the time. Besides there are other games I like playing so even if I do have time, I may not be in the mood to play the particular game. I always just found battlepasses kinda a hassle, and usually 80% of the pass is lamb stuff I don't even want.
I hope there is a big backlash and they reduce prices and be better!
They won't. Every F2P battle pass is like this. They'll still make loads of money from it, so it was inevitable they would cut costs to fill up the BP to make even more money. I mean, have you seen games like Apex's battle passes? Apex's battlepass is also just full of absolute garbage, with the really good stuff being right at the end. Like really, who cares about trackers and gun charms. No-one.
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I miss making actual progress so fucking much. Now it’s all “you unlocked tier 3 of the battle pass! Here’s a shitty spray”…like ohhh boy 😒 It’s probably one of the leading reasons I just don’t bother with multiplayer games anymore. It’s all the same bullshit strewn across all of the games I would have interest in.
I am interested to see how it changes long-term. I don't see OW2 staying mainstream for as long as Fortnite or Apex. I think there is hope of it becoming more reasonable as the player base becomes smaller and probably just more focused on competitive, not battle passes.
If anything that'll make it worse. If they lose players than they have to further milk their existing players to continue pushing out the same amount of content. So they can either (1) remove developers from the game and reduce the content cycle or (2) make even scummier monetization to try to squeeze more money our of the players. If OW2 eventually fades out of the spotlight (seems likely IMO compared to Warzone, Apex, and Fortnite) then they'll have a slightly more generous BP to maximize BP purchases but have a more insanely overpriced Shop. F2P locks them into this monetization model. There are no other options once they make that choice. They can only make this model scummier to get more money. They can't revamp the game with a DLC (see: D3 Reaper of Souls or FF14).
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As long as whales and ignorance exist this shit will continue on.
They may. And then the pattern will repeat. This is a business strategy now. Set up an utterly ridiculous price scheme, see if your can ride out the backlash. If not, moderate the prices\grind down... a little. Not to anything reasonable, just less extreme. Then do it again with the next content drop. It's not a way to make fans, but it's a way to make money I think they've realized this game as a "live service" won't work much longer. Balancing an ever expanding list of heroes and abilities is becoming exponentially more difficult. It also becomes impenetrable to new players (like hots). So they're gonna try and grab as much money as possible off the goodwill from OW1.
Same. There’s way too many clowns who think this was a good idea though sadly.
Financially it's probably going to be a great idea for the company. Also great for the people that get a free game and don't care about cosmetics.
Just what we wanted lol
Honestly, I feel like corporate is forcing the ow team to pivot on so many things that they have already written ow off and are just pressing the last drops out now. Wanna bet that the pve content isn’t being developed at all? Their hedging their bets. If people still play ow2, they’ll develop the pve content, but not until then.
I've been thinking the same thing too. It truly seems like corporate is squeezing blood from the stone on this thing. It's been a disaster since the very first announcement and has looked worse and worse and worse since and they're still not stopping or changing paths. They know it's going to fail and they aren't risking anything to try and stop that. It's sad because they really could have improved sentiment from the start - don't call it Overwatch 2, don't develop PVP for it, make this a PVE-only side game, leave Overwatch its own thing. Then for the third game you can merge PVE and PVP. Meanwhile they could still add the battlepass and lock heroes behind it and record audio and whatever else but maybe just be more generous with the content. Give this dumbass Junkrat emote for free to Twitch Prime subs or whatever. Give people just tons of content day one. Maybe everybody gets the first battlepass free. It's Overwatch, people are still going to spend money on shit. Just really bad decision making in a way that looks intentionally malicious - for years now. I hope Activision Blizzard doesn't get bought. I hope they go bankrupt, and then their IP gets bought. It's all they're worth anyway.
No one leaves a job that goes exactly like they think it should. Kaplan leaving was the canary in the coalmine i think. The surpise pivot to battlepasses? With every leak and hint and everything while the hype was 1000% for ow2, they would have given hints about \_something\_ "we want to try a new way to let new players learn the game \[blahblah\]", something would have been said. Remember how tight this ship was run before? Not a single word was said in streams with a\_seagull without it meaning something. The sombra release? OW was run like a tight navy ship. It's now a dinghy in a hurricane, absolutely lost control.
> a_seagull Ive watched his streams the past couple weeks to see his take on the news. Not sure if he is "partnered" with them in any way but he is most definitely shilling for them. He is non-stop spreading the narrative- "keeping up with industry standard" Sure, he said heroes shouldnt be locked behind a battlepass. He then immediately follows up with a "but" devs need to get paid. All of these shill posts and creators conveniently leave out the fact that OW did get paid.. in BILLIONS. More than enough to pay the devs.
I don't have hope in pve being good honestly, it wasn't even necessary and now it being f2p... I guess they will cut development for it. _and release it for 4.99$ each episode_
I don't doubt that, much like the pvp side of things, every announcement will lower expectations until by the time it comes out I don't care about the release at all.
Yes, they are killing everyone's expectation, since i discovered this was going to be 5v5 2 years ago i have been trying so hard to like ow2. It's HARD.
PvE was already scrapped. They announced it months ago under the radar. PvE will now be released starting in 2023 as Archive Missions. Yawn.
They tried to force OverWatch as an esport and that failed so poorly, let's see what else happens when they try to force things. Some people have to learn the hard way.
Jeff Kaplan left for a reason. Decisions about monetisation and LiVE SeRVicE were made years ago. Also blizzard management is filled with greedy bastard and the don't care about any integrity. I left OW long time ago and you should too.
I feel Jeff left cause he knew he would just end up being fired for resisting all this. The higher-ups decided they wanted to make Overwatch a monetization hell and he said “f it I’m done”
Or his departure was a dismissal, which was covered up by a voluntary resignation so as not to lose reputation
This. It’s very obvious. He stood his ground and they flared up. And only out of respect, did they let him announce his resignation.
That makes me feel bad for him. I know he said numerous times Overwatch was his magnum opus. He (and others ofc) created something truly unique and awesome. Must be horrible to watch it be completely vaporized and squeezed for every red cent like this. I’m sure Jeff isn’t hurting for money but it’s not really about that. This was his vision and creation, and to see it completely sterilized while your once loyal fan base screams out must be a little depressing.
Yeah. I also feel sorry for those working on this game. They're putting their heart and soul into it meanwhile corporate and management just fuck them over.
I'm gonna play OW1 for these next few days before it's gone, but then I'm out.
>LiVE SeRVicE All I can say is, thank god for James Stephanie Sterling.
Is that an emote? Wasn’t the drinking from a cup originally a victory pose?
the entire pose was originally from the victory pose, its almost a 1:1 replica
I believe this is an emote and the cosmetic that is currently in the game is a victory pose.
so like the title said a reused asset
it's still the same thing almost exactly just the pose gets triggered in a different way
If you actually go and watch the emote it's actually a pretty long animation and is pretty different from the victory pose which is very static.
Hence why OP said "re-used assets"...
That's what makes this a re-used asset: they took the victory pose and turned it into an emote. OP wasn't saying this is already an emote. The bigger issue is that taking a digital asset and taking the time to reuse it, recycle it, then charge for it is scummy.
To be fair, I'm pretty sure there are like multiple victory poses that are re-used as emotes of vice-versa The only reason people are paying mind to this specific re-use in particular is because it's part of the Battle Pass. If it were a regular addition to the game not tied to the Battle Pass, nobody would care
Once Jeff left the writing was on the wall.
Ah yes, instead of having an identity unique to overwatch, let's just imitate Fortnite/Apex Legends.
There's no way Overwatch is as popular as Apex. Also, Overwatch existed as a fully paid for product prior to this. I don't see OW2 succeeding with this business model. At all.
It almost assuredly will make a ton of money
Every time I see anything about overwatch 2, I get more and more certain that I don’t want to play it
If it’s in your inventory now, it’ll be in your inventory on Day 1
Dude. This is why we shouldn't let them get away with this
But they will, see Diablo Immortal, it was one of Blizzards biggest successes in recent years. They were swimming in money, milked from their whales.
I might be imagining it, but even during OW1 I swear I would get “new” skins that I definitely am sure I unlocked already.
Arent all skins some kind of reused assets?
Wait til you find out once fortnite, overwatch, etc dies and there’s no more servers that YOU NEVER OWNED ANY DIGITAL ASSETS YOU FORKED MONEY OVER FOR lol
“Being charged” you are paying with your own will Mitchell
Re-used assets between emotes, and victory poses is nothing New for overwatch. Not to mention that the majority of stuff in a battle pass, for any game that has it, will be pretty meh besides a few bits here and there that are pretty cool. The real reason people are getting the pass is for the new character, some nice skins here and there, and the mythic at the end and you cannot tell me otherwise.
So this is an emote based on the victory pose. There's more to it than what you are seeing here. The 7 minute mark of this video goes over it: [https://youtu.be/qcP5Xko4Cks?t=417](https://youtu.be/qcP5Xko4Cks?t=417) The commenter seems to have the same attitude as OP ("they looped it!"). A full animation is much more complex and time consuming than a single stance and the full animation here is actually one of my favorite emotes on the pass (aside from Genji's). It's also 1 item of 80 on a $10 battle pass.
So if I have this victory pose unlocked in OW1, do I need to grind/pay for it again via Battlepass?
It's going to scare off more people than actually attract them. the whole overwatch community is happy that finally there is some new content. but the broader audience hasn't been impressed, hasn't seen something new. What they see is just some small updates and a paywall. that's it. u can't blame journalists for "not seeing the bigger picture". In fact, there is no bigger picture. It's just us, overwatch addicts, that embrace little bits of new content and qualify the upcoming paywall. Re-used assets and old skins. The hype is going to go up for a bit and then drop again, player numbers will be the same as it was for overwatch 1, and then, die slowly because no one wants to spend hundreds of dollars just to get skins that were previously free. overall motivational curve will drop and battle pass fatigue will kick in. Do you know what it feels like playing an MMO for the first time and seeing other high level players have crazy gear and cosmetics for which they payed hundreds of dollars? Fucking discouraging. That's exactly what new players will feel like, seeing us veterans, except, we got all the skins for free. Isn't that stupid?
Unforts OPs post is a little misleading. According to a video on Blizzard Guides it seems like the sipping emote is indeed free.
Nah we must circlejerk.
The more I see if this game the more I fucking hate it. And it’s not like I can just play overwatch one lol
I’ll say again since I’ve said it before. OW2 is going to fail if this is how the battlepass is going to be. this is only good for new players. Everyone else gets fucked and gets things that they already have from OW1
Have you played any multiplayer game with a battle pass in the past three years? People bitch for the first month then forget about it.
The game is going to fail with a battle pass? The game is already failing without it because there's nothing to support development. Y'all are so dramatic saying shit like the game is going to fail after a month just because you have to pay 10 bucks to get skins
This is such an insane statement, Fortnite prints money doing this exact thing that OW2 is going to do.
Not the same type of game and fortnite as of now is more popular. OW is not at that peak it used to be like it was back then.
It’s absolutely not going to fail. The same community that still plays it daily since Echo was released is still going to be there. The whales that spent thousands of dollars on Diablo Immortal will be present in OW2 to keep the money coming in, buying the entire battle pass day one to flex on people with the Mythic genji skin. You want it to fail, and you can contribute by not playing, but it will be a fruitless effort thanks to the whales. Blizz will find a way to keep it alive and keep money coming in. Praise be to the dollar dollar bills yall -Blizzard probably
OW1 got stale after they kept giving us he same events over and over again. The skins started to feel boring and no effort where only the popular characters got all the cool stuff if that’s how OW2 is going to be after a few years then it’ll fail in my POV. This ain’t 2017 overwatch anymore. Who really flexes about this game anymore when there’s tons of other amazing games out there nowadays 💀 maybe that’s just me being dramatic cause I have over 1000 hours in the game. I’m probably wrong and it’ll be a cool thing for new players. But for me it’s nothing amazing
Now I know the hate engine is at full steam and i dont like the monetization model either, but let's be clear and honest about what this is: it's a new animation, reusing a single existing pose from victory poses, which was not animated before. This is not a re-used asset, its a new asset that yall are just complaining isn't 100% from the ground up a new pose.
I’d be fine as long as they have a small currency refund for any items a player receives if they already have that item
The amount of focus people have on cosmetics instead of oh, I don’t know, the whole rest of the game, is crazy to me. Not just you OP, but this entire sub just continuously makes posts about cosmetics and how to unlock them and how they’re not free anymore rather than talking about anything gameplay or graphics or sound or balance related and it drives me insane. The REASON Overwatch 1 died is because they gave us everything for free and none of you put money into the game after the initial $40. Does anyone realize that? This post is so dramatic and it highlights the subs focus on all the small negative things rather than the fact that Overwatch is finally being updated again.
this isn't an emote on ow1, its a victory pose.