Overwatch 2 - Rule 34 boogaloo

I came outta my OW coma to look in on this the last few days. So…

Yeah. It’s just Overwatch. The only thing “2.0” is the game is now a service, a daily challenge grind, a season pass, and a $20+ skin storefront.

Yes, the main gameplay thing is 1 tank spot is now gone to make it 5v5 (2 support, 2 dps, 1 tank) and most CC is removed from the game. Thus it should feel like less of a dance looking for one side to to push and more like a traditional shooter scrimmage/ death pile. But, I argue that is, at best, a balance or patch tweak.

I guess some model or skin adjustments with a PvE sometime in 2023. So there is that.

But it’s pretty much an economic reboot, not a new game. It sad that nowadays loot boxes feel generous when they were an outrage 6 years ago. But now every game needs a season pass and to force you to play it daily in forced ways to finish the challenges to progress the pass. Gone are the days of playing a game how you want and when you want. And for it to be fun on its own merit. Not really, you could just not participate. And they continue to tempt me go back to sleep even if I suddenly have interest in what I missed that’s new since 2016.

Oh, another part of 2.0 is mandated mobile phone registration. Give Blizzard your cell, or move along. Oh and record your voice chat too. Both for toxic community concerns of course. Not anything suspicious.

Eh, maybe the typical modern service model was needed. It doesn’t look like much changed in 6 years. I’m on the fence, but not happy about what they did. I’m tired of every game wanting my money AND a not insignificant part of my daily free time.

I’ve said it in other threads, but if I have to choose a F2P poison, it will be battle passes all day over loot boxes. Both are a grind and operate on FOMO, but at least with a battle pass, the game is telling you exactly what you will get if you hit enough milestones. There’s no RNG gambling BS. Especially if the game charges an entry fee to play at all regardless of loot box/battle pass participation like Overwatch used to.

Of course my preference would be neither scheme and just sell cosmetics in the store straight-up, but that ship has sailed in gaming.

I used to feel that way, but that has turned recently. Very recently.

The main beef I have is when I realized that I am being told HOW to play each day. I have been playing Gundam Evolution which is a very close cousin of Overwatch, with shorter TTK, more mobility, and of course giant robots doing giant robot destruction-y things. I really enjoy the support roles there and especially the Mobile Suit that transforms for mobility while healing or dropping turrets. However, in order to progress the season pass as a working adult (limited time), I have to do whatever the daily, weekly, or beginner challenge gods tell me to do. This means do X with one of these 3 or 4 characters and Y with one of those other 3 or 4 characters. If I want to play with my buddy after work and be his pocket healer as Methus, I usually am ignoring season pass progression that session. Or I play some suit I don’t especially enjoy just to do X number of Y things. If I just want to just PLAY THE GAME, my time doesn’t count for (as) much. It’s a self imposed, but very designed and intentional killjoy.

Looking at early screens on Overwatch 2, it will be the same. Use Reinhart’s shield to block X damage today. Don’t like Reinhart or don’t feel like it is wise to just keep that shield up until you can’t absorb more? Too bad. Hey the Widow on my team has terrible aim. He must have some challenge to get X headshots with Widow. Dammit. So do I and I hate snipers. Yea. This is fun.

Besides that, I have fatigue. I generally have 2 to 3 season pass games demanding daily logins and challenges. This is getting to be a serious sink even if each daily set is technically short.

None of this will change. It is the new self imploding gold rush in gaming. Whatever comes next will be worse. I don’t have to like it though. And it may be enough to get me to pass on one more season pass game (Overwatch 2).

Sure the loot boxes mean you won’t get everything. That sucks too. Both suck. But now it seems like the game experience in the minutes I have during the day have been compromised just to inevitably collapse a few years from now to some new casino researched gimmick.

And…that required mobile number and recorded chat is creepy. Even if I too want less toxic behavior, it is still creepy.

Yeah that’s irritating for PvE games but for competitive that’s a deathblow for me. It’s frustrating enough when not playing a full premade team that you’re going to lose some percentage of games because of bad/incompatible teammates without the game “encouraging” them to be intentionally terrible.

I played OW a ton when it released because it was really fun to play. Whenever I catch myself playing a game to unlock a battle pass or whatever I get annoyed at myself and drop the game soon after. I might give OW2 a spin but I’m pretty sure the average player is so much better than me that I’d not enjoy it for long.

I don’t care for PvP shooters but I enjoyed OW enough to put in a few hundred hours over the years. Even dabbled with some ranked competition. I’ll give OW2 a shot.

OW has been my “I have ten minutes before the nex meeting” game since it released, thankfully I’m blessed/cursed with whatever personality tic that prevents any desire to get stuff in a video game, so I’ll just keep playing and screaming at the fucking Lucio to heal.

So if i just drop $60 to “pay” for Overwatch 2 as if it were a standalone game, how much of the ‘real’ game do I unlock?

Honestly, if battlepasses are just unlocking cosmetics, that’s cool… I don’t give a crap about that.

If it impacts actual gameplay somehow, that kind of sucks balls.

I guess for $60 that would be the first available battle pass ($10) and some cosmetics like 2 character skins ($20 each) and a miscellaneous bit for the last $10.

Don’t pay anything. Just play the game. It’s free to play, and if they’re not putting any game changing items behind the Battle Pass and it’s all cosmetic, you absolutely don’t need to spend a penny.

Yep, I’m done. I don’t own or use a cell phone. I didn’t get one for ranked Dota 2, and I won’t for this. When Ubisoft required a 2FA app for logins I could at least use Authy on desktop.

Blizzard is taking away a game I paid for and adding a security hole with SMS.

I encourage everyone to launch Battle.net and use Submit Feedback in the menu to complain. Then uninstall Overwatch.

Oh, I was misunderstanding then that there would be gated characters behind paywalls? Every character is available for new players?

Wow! That must pose some challenges, with how everything is these days.

If you didn’t previously buy and play the first Overwatch, then some of those characters will be locked behind a DLC purchase or a grind.

New characters will be released in the premium battle passes, or they also can be unlocked by free players with a hefty grind.

There’s no 100% paywall on the characters, but it sounds like the grind to unlock the new character through playing will be substantial.

As others have noted, you can grind everything out.

I will note here as a long time Apex player who had banked credits for years to be able to get new characters as soon as they released that it’s cool, but ultimately often superfluous to enjoyment of the game. The new characters almost always are a riff on what’s already there so it adds variety but not necessarily important utility to playing the game competitively.

As gamers, I think we need to start turning our brains off to the FOMO in these designs. You’re usually not really missing out.

Doesn’t every champion in Overwatch bring its own set of skills to the role you are playing? Sure, you could always play Mercy when you are a healer, but that doesn’t make it the right choice for every team composition, does it? Same for D.Va, Mei, Winston, Reinhardt, …

Some might play similar roles on a team, but they don’t bring the same skills to the table.

Or are the characters here only cosmetic skins for characters everyone can access?

Disclaimer: all I know about Overwatch is from watching my kids play it. I don’t play it myself.

I love how Apex handles things and I think that it’s a great example of a F2P game that doesn’t require money to fully enjoy (and I’m happy to pitch in money occasionally because I never feel like I need to).

But I think it’s not a great comparison to a meta driven role based game where players are encouraged to change characters mid match to counter the other team. I think it will feel a lot more frustrating to feel like you are in a situation where you need a hero to counter the other team and you just can’t use them. I never have that feeling in Apex because we build our team upfront and roll with it.

You are correct with your initial sentence. Different Overwatch 1 and 2 characters have different powers.