Overwatch 2 - Battle Pass, Shop, Hero Unlocks, and more

[StillMcfuu]

Its less content than we would have got if they just kept updating Ow1 at a regular pace.

I agree, both Sojourn 67 and JQ would have been a ton of fun in 6v6 and we should have had them for awhile now. Ow2 going to a BP wouldn't seem so bad if a whole bunch of at "launch" content wasn't just withheld OW1 content under the guise of getting it for free.

[Toppy]

I agree, both Sojourn 67 and JQ would have been a ton of fun in 6v6 and we should have had them for awhile now. Ow2 going to a BP wouldn't seem so bad if a whole bunch of at "launch" content wasn't just withheld OW1 content under the guise of getting it for free.

really makes you wonder what they've been doing all these years when all they can do is show us the stuff we should have got anyway with an ongoing content team

I'm sure when called on it they'll hide behind covid, again.

[StillMcfuu]

really makes you wonder what they've been doing all these years when all they can do is show us the stuff we should have got anyway with an ongoing content team

I'm sure when called on it they'll hide behind covid, again.

No one is calling them on it, most of the forum players are walking away from the game and the other half are the f2p simps who won't be around that long anyway. I highly expect new characters to start being way OP just to keep the f2p crowd engaged, because if the character they spend money to unlock isn't OP they stop spending money.

[Lodreh]

Not a fan of Battlepass systems in general... prefer to pay money and actually get something not just a block of time to unlock something. That being said... it looks like it will average out to about $50-60 a year to play a game that was free from subscriptions since release. Still I get it... the cost of goods keep rising just hate these FOMO gimmicks to get people to play. If you make a good product people will play anyway. Just the ramblings of a tired old gamer.

[Guyviroth]

The interesting part is in the third picture. Right-hand side, you see you require 10,000 XP to go up one tier, at least at Tier 55.

I haven't played OW for a long while, but I recall vaguely that a win nets you around 2,500-3,000 XP. Assuming that every tier requires 10,000 XP, you would need around 160 wins to reach Tier 55. That... seems like a lot.

[ThatsOurEric]

The interesting part is in the third picture. Right-hand side, you see you require 10,000 XP to go up one tier, at least at Tier 55.

I haven't played OW for a long while, but I recall vaguely that a win nets you around 2,500-3,000 XP. Assuming that every tier requires 10,000 XP, you would need around 160 wins to reach Tier 55. That... seems like a lot.

So in a vid that Bellular showed, there are weekly "quests" that you can do that will give you around 5k upon completion.
All of them require you to win though, so that's definitely going to bring back a lot of the major toxicity the game had.

[Guyviroth]

So in a vid that Bellular showed, there are weekly "quests" that you can do that will give you around 5k upon completion.
All of them require you to win though, so that's definitely going to bring back a lot of the major toxicity the game had.

Well fucking OOF, then. I can imagine that being horrendous as crap if they end up making the new heroes either OP as shit upon their release, or if they require a certain counter than no one is playing. Gonna make winning games all the more difficult.

[ThatsOurEric]

Well fucking OOF, then. I can imagine that being horrendous as crap if they end up making the new heroes either OP as shit upon their release, or if they require a certain counter than no one is playing. Gonna make winning games all the more difficult.

Aaron Keller (the game director) stated that they were reeling back on the rock, paper, scissors element of Overwatch so it's
more free for player choices. Still doesn't mean there aren't going to be heroes for optimal situations and or are somewhat
natural "counters" that offer counter playstyle to others, but since we do get all the original heroes, it's unlikely that there
will ever be a new hero released that doesn't require at least some of the original cast to counter or to be effective against.

[Guyviroth]

Aaron Keller (the game director) stated that they were reeling back on the rock, paper, scissors element of Overwatch so it's
more free for player choices. Still doesn't mean there aren't going to be heroes for optimal situations and or are somewhat
natural "counters" that offer counter playstyle to others, but since we do get all the original heroes, it's unlikely that there
will ever be a new hero released that doesn't require at least some of the original cast to counter or to be effective against.

I've learned over the last few years that I should take whatever Blizzard says with a pinch of salt. I can buy that they'll reel it in, but by how much I am uncertain and will not get my hopes up over it.

To be honest, I've hated OW for a while now, especially when they added Wrecking Ball into the game. Such an annoying fuck to deal with. That, and I'm still waiting for a Greek hero to represent Ilios. Feels bad when even the moon has more representatives than Greece.

[Fortress of Arrogance]

BP being an incredibly stupid call aside, OW2 was in development for what, 5 or 6 years now?
And all the development amounts to 2 new heroes, 1 or 2 maps, and a bunch of PvE content, which is to be released even later still?
Am I missing something?

[Kathranis]

really makes you wonder what they've been doing all these years when all they can do is show us the stuff we should have got anyway with an ongoing content team

I'm sure when called on it they'll hide behind covid, again.

We know it was Jeff Kaplan and Chacko Sonny that decided to stop development on OW1 to focus entirely on OW2 from insider leaks over the last year or so. They considered OW a complete, finished product and not a live service.

They got pushed out by Activision over the failure to get OW2 completed (by all accounts it was the PvE component that kept expanding and getting reworked, dragging out development time) and they promoted Aaron Keller to replace Kaplan and hired the guy who designed the Fortnite seasonal model to replace Sonny.

They pivoted towards making it a live service and pushing the new heroes and PvP changes through to the live game ahead of the PvE components because OW1 had gone for almost three years with no new content at that point.

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BP being an incredibly stupid call aside, OW2 was in development for what, 5 or 6 years now?
And all the development amounts to 2 new heroes, 1 or 2 maps, and a bunch of PvE content, which is to be released even later still?
Am I missing something?

I'm not sure when they started development but it was actually only announced in late 2019, so three years since announcement. Feels like way more.

3 new heroes and 6 new maps. Doomfist and Orisa are also basically new heroes now, reworked from the ground up. Another new tank hero is coming out in December.

[TheRevenantHero]

Honestly... i would rather the developers are honest about it and push it back. Deadlines are stupid and blitt learned that in the last two years.

Why do you think we still have no idea when DF comes?

In OW case i see it more in terms of we get PvP earlier because it is done PvE still takes a bit to cook.

Also it is F2P soooo... we cannot demand anything anymore. And they told us quite some time ago, that the PvE part will come later.
Also also i did not Expect ANYTHING this year so i am happy with what we got for what it is.

Again, the pve campaign was promised when it was announced. They outright lied to everyone. It's pretty clear it wasn't actually planned to launch with the rest of the game.

[korijenkins]

It shouldn't be half-baked considering a pve campaign was promised to launch with OW2. There is absolutely no fucking excuse for how they're handling it. OW2 was announced 3 years ago. I don't understand how you can possibly defend this.

It's a Blizzard unpaid attorney. Anything they do he's going to defend as "just business, don't be impatient xd"

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This seems like a great upgrade from Overwatch 1 where the new characters were playable by everyone on patch day. I sure am glad Microsoft is here to correct course /s

[TheRevenantHero]

It's a Blizzard unpaid attorney. Anything they do he's going to defend as "just business, don't be impatient xd"

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This seems like a great upgrade from Overwatch 1 where the new characters were playable by everyone on patch day. I sure am glad Microsoft is here to correct course /s

Blizzard was like "Microsoft really likes when people utterly destroy their IPs. Just look at Halo Infinite! So we should totally do something equally asinine with OW2".

[Darkeon]

I mean, let's not be disingenuous here. You might say it's not enough stuff to call it a "sequel," but it's the biggest content drop they've done since the original OW beta by a pretty wide margin.

The interesting and significant changes are on the withheld PvE side of the game.

If the beta is to show of any example of what we'll get on release, it's not that big of a drop.

[wushootaki]

My questions is, for people that have already bought things like the battlepass and the pack that they've been offering --- explicitly because the game said it would be launching with PvE ---- How is it legal?

Is it because "Oh, its coming?"

Still seems like false advertising.

It is pretty ridiculous.

Players punished once again because Blizzard had shitty internal issues and couldn't sort them out.

[Ghost of Cow]

My questions is, for people that have already bought things like the battlepass and the pack that they've been offering --- explicitly because the game said it would be launching with PvE ---- How is it legal?

Is it because "Oh, its coming?"

Still seems like false advertising.

It is pretty ridiculous.

Players punished once again because Blizzard had shitty internal issues and couldn't sort them out.

Ah yes, the armchair attorneys coming out of the woodwork with their learned legal opinions.

[FelPlague]

Holding back 2 heroes and maps for years does not excuse the lack of content for OW1. And judging from the beta, they've barely balanced anything for 5v5, which mean they essentially removed a role from the queue and sat on their hands. Don't be fooled, this isn't a lot of content here.

They already explained it.

originally they were holding back overwatch 2 wanting it to launch with the PVE, but after a long time they realized that was unfair, and they would just have to seperate it, so PVP is coming out now, and PVE will come out later, they felt it would be ready far earlier then it was.

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My questions is, for people that have already bought things like the battlepass and the pack that they've been offering --- explicitly because the game said it would be launching with PvE ---- How is it legal?

Is it because "Oh, its coming?"

Still seems like false advertising.

It is pretty ridiculous.

Players punished once again because Blizzard had shitty internal issues and couldn't sort them out.

They said it would not be launching with pve like what 8 months ago?
literlaly when they announced overwatch 2 beta was on the way.

[Kaleredar]

really makes you wonder what they've been doing all these years when all they can do is show us the stuff we should have got anyway with an ongoing content team

I'm sure when called on it they'll hide behind covid, again.

My impression of the OW team is that it's very, very small. So small that they contract out seasonal skins to other studios/artists to make them, rather than being able to find enough work for artists in-house to produce them as well.

Which is ultimately Blizzard's fault for not leaning into what has been one of their most successful IPs in decades, not just in the number of people playing but in the cultural cache that it held.

To wit, I work in the 3D industry, and while we don't work on an FPS like OW or in the art style Blizzard does my coworkers and I still produce assets in a fundamentally similar way. And upon seeing what they released with the "beta" for OW2, I have no idea what people sat down at their desk every week day for 8 hours a day for three years and produced, especially considering that many of the maps that they showed (which is where the bulk of the work would have gone, asset-production wise) had previously been shown off in some state of completion at the announcement.


Tack on top of that the almost non-existent build up to release for OW2. Leading up to OW1's release we had cinematics, comics, and new gameplay videos coming out periodically to build the hype and get people involved. But beyond the initial OW2 cinematic and the one for the Junker Queen, there's been pretty much nothing.

[StillMcfuu]

They already explained it.

originally they were holding back overwatch 2 wanting it to launch with the PVE, but after a long time they realized that was unfair, and they would just have to seperate it, so PVP is coming out now, and PVE will come out later, they felt it would be ready far earlier then it was.

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They said it would not be launching with pve like what 8 months ago?
literlaly when they announced overwatch 2 beta was on the way.

I know their reasoning, it's really not much more than a bottled excuse. The state pvp is in is not indicative of a pvp state that had been done and polished 2 years ago (when pve dev woes started) and then had a further 2 years of internal development.

They really did a piss poor job with OW1 and now OW2 pvp. They could have easily made and tested changes within OW1 cycling things in and out as they are seen to work or not and then come Oct5 they could have dropped the F2P patch that updates all OW1 into an OW2 state and changed the model to battle pass. And continued with plans. If the last 2 years of overwatch were Sojurn 67 and JQ getting released with changes to a less CC game, maybe a new mode, balance changes and tests, etc... no one would bat an eye at Oct5 and the implementation of battle passes. Hell they'd probably be welcome as it would be a more regimented new content/skin/map/character schedule and all the players wouldn't feel like they've been ignored for 2+ years and now Blizz is going to drop a ton of changes which a good majority aren't even welcome and people are largely pessimistic on how it will work out.

It's just been real piss poor project management. Surprisingly poor honestly.