Wondering because personally I can’t stand them as I hate having to feel like I have to play a game that I no longer want to play in order to get cosmetics I want. They for me don’t reward me for playing, but on the contrary, penalize me for not playing when I don’t want to play anymore I feel.
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I remember Fortnite’s battle pass requiring people to do some really tedious stuff on top of playing the game, too, like get ten kills at this specific spot that nobody ever goes to or travel to place on map then travel to other place on map.
Have fun camping out in the middle of nowhere or playing Walking Simulator™.
Even if it doesn’t, then there’ll be ninety-nine levels that reward tat while the actual, coveted prize is locked behind the hundreth level. Zzz.
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Fortnite battle pass? there is something going up my [blank]
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Typically you can get certain cosmetics from lootboxes, though usually not the skins that are in the battle pass that year.
Well year, rather month, though it’ll probably be locked by year or half a year.
I like them because they respect your time and if you dont quit for months or just play 2 hours a week they are easy to complete and you get a ton of value for your money.
Like it or not the FN batte pass is the best I have seen in any game. They are with 8 bucks per 3 months cheap and refinance themselves if you complete it (you can buy the next one with the currency you get). Some people grind them even out in the first 2 weeks so thats also doable.
I really hope Blizz looks at Fortnite when designing the pass.
You can also ignore it and just wait a week for the next quest to come up. I for one played FN for a while and completed the pass with just half the quests done and playing 4 hours a week maybe.
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I can’t stand them. Sometime last year I did make a post about monetisation practices such as battle passes being predatory to consumers and while these days I would have included more arguments against battle passes specifically, I stand by it.
Battle passes are often in free-to-play games which if you ask me is a detrimental direction for Overwatch to take. Hello Smurf City and also Low Quality City because now any 8 year old with an internet connection can join your Ranked match. Yuck.
…Yet if Overwatch 2 costs money to buy, in the long term you’re paying the same amount of money (presumably) for less as you do not have access to all the cosmetics (and potentially more…) outright. And no, the fact that the current cosmetics cost in-game money doesn’t invalidate my argument - The cosmetics don’t go anywhere if you don’t have the coins. Even seasonal cosmetics make a return yearly. In a team game with heavy competitive elements, what would they even do for battle pass quests? Any “Play X Hero” or “Do X Action” could very well spoil matches regularly. “I can’t switch to counter the Pharmercy because I need to play a match as Junkrat for this quest!”
I know there is also a real money element to many battle pass systems as well, which would be egregious to implement. If the gaming community at large is willing to pay monthly for a game they already bought outright, we’re screwed. And if that would be for a free-to-play Overwatch, I already outlined why I hate that idea.
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Well… “predatory” is not the word for a BP model because you get what you see when you play the game somewhat regulary. Lootboxes and other random things are predatory because you dont know if you get what you want and putting money in until you get it.
OW players are spoiled AF because the current monetization of the game is bad. There is no reason to put money into OW1 as soon as they introduced dup protection and a way to buy event skins with credits. Its good for the players sure but that does not pay the devs no matter how much they made in the first years. They need to continuesly make money for support a live service game. Look at Fortnite, League of Legends or Apex.
I really hope OW2 goes F2P because otherwise there will always be this problem with pay to play and F2P methods to get more money.
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Agree 100%. Everytime a thread like this comes up, I just want to ask OP “have you ever bought a loot box in your life?”. It’s supposedly a live service game but the devs don’t really make any money after the initial purchase which is why they made OWL in the first place. They have no incentive to update the game and it’s surprising it lasted this long.
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I’m fine paying for things, but I’m not fine feeling like I’m being penalized for wanting to play something else.
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Chart from most to least scummy
- lootboxes
- battlepasses
- direct purchases
With that said. A battlepass in OW is going to be worse than lootboxes assuming you own everything till this point. A battlepass is probably going to be more grindy than getting the stuff from boxes.
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The only game i played with battle-passes is Paladins. I reached few levels to get some stuff but i did not get the content i needed. Am i missing something.
Atleast with OW lootbox i get something so i’m not sure if i should get excited for bp or not.
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I don’t like battlepasses whatsoever.
I’m not going to pay for something then slog through things I don’t need to get to things I do want, by doing specific things. I already have a full time job so there’s no need for me to have a second job in a video game and have to pay for it no less.
I’m a person that plays to win, I’m not going to want to switch to X character or get X amount of kills in a certain way to make progress. When I’m playing, I’m focused on doing what it takes to win, not going on quests that may actually put my team at jeopardy to lose.
With the current OW system, I’ve had the game since the pre-order days and have not spent one cent on lootboxes and I have all of the regular + event skins except for these six new remix skins. And I play nowhere near the amount of time as others as much as I love this game. Anyone that plays the game will have enough coins to buy the skins before the end of an event, if they didn’t already unlock it via a lootbox already that you get from leveling up - playing how you want without jumping through any hoops like other games out there.
On top of that, I got every OWL Legendary skin as soon as each was released, plus about 7-8 OWL team skins without spending a cent on them, plus have a stash of 3000+ tokens by watching the streams. Now tell me how many games out there give you the opportunity to get the best looking skins out there by far (to me) without spending any money. Yet people love to blindly complain about the tiniest of things without any thought whatsoever.
Me, I’m grateful. I will gladly pay for the Overwatch 2 PvE as my gratitude even though I’m more of a PvP person. So again, nah, I don’t like battlepasses at all.
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I’ve never bought a BP. Don’t really know how I feel about them, but enjoy your claim that you’ll somehow insert this digital purchase inside yourself.
I know of a game where the battle passes are stored so anyone can buy them if they didn’t previously, or complete if they bought it before
If bought as archieve is a slight price increase (like from 5 to 6.5 dollars) so its more convenient to those who where at the time of the battle pass, but also respects your time
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turns games into work rather than a game
AND even worse - have convinced people that its the only way for games to exist in order to continuously receive content…which is utter BS…we will continue to receive the same amount of content we always have…for possibly a price now
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I’d argue they are actually predatory. They’re time limited which triggers some people’s fear of missing out and if you fall into that trap you now have a second job which is to grind the content you paid money for. If you don’t grind it fully it makes you feel guilt because you’ve “wasted your money”.
On top of that most of the time battle passes are full of low-effort content to make them look like you’re getting a lot for your money. Apex Legends is especially scummy when it comes to this with their loading screen background rewards and extremely low-effort abstract skins.
Whether you like it or not the actual monetization comes from smurf accounts. A pretty big percentage of the people I know have 2 accounts and some have more than 2. While the devs aren’t making money from lootbox purchases they’re more than making up for it by selling the same game to the same person multiple times.
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I like battle passes that basically refund the points needed to buy it if you finish the entire pass… that way you can buy the next one for free.
This is how cod does it… so hoping ow will do it if it actually does end up getting a battle pass.
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Battle passes are garbage. Two things you can do.
Wait for a game to release, and get the information needed so you make an educated purchase (things can and will change at times) or avoid that game.
Speaking with your wallet will always be more powerful than talking about how much you hate something and still putting time and money towards it.
These conversations are important, but we have an idea of what to expect from OW2.
Your second choice is to make the purchase, be upset about it and continue to feed the corporate machine profiting off us in ways that can be scummy.
Hold yourself accountable for whatever choice you make, because these companies will use whatever methods are the most effective to get money out of us.
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I hope OW2 has the same monetization model OW1 has. The less money out of my pocket the better
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Good or not, it’s way better than the OW1 100% lootbox based monetization. With a pass at least I know exactly what I’m getting for my money where with boxes I can get lucky and open a skin I want in 1 box or open 50 and get neither the skin nor enough currency to buy it.
1 Like