Neither apex or valorant have heroes behind battlepasses.
In apex, it’s really easy to be sitting on a ton of tokens to buy heroes. But heroes don’t really matter as much in apex (unless pro / high tier play), there isn’t a notion of countering.
Valorant hero unlock are more grindy and abilities do be very important in Valorant. But the notion of counters is much less present. Any character in a single role will generally fill the same job. (Smokes all have smokes, initiator have flashes / blinds,…)
Hero pick is much more crucial in OW, as not picking the right hero (or not having it) means you can be at a severe disadvantage. As many people mentioned, abilities are much more important in ow, while gunplay is what define apex / valorant.
[Apex and valorant had heroes behind battlepasses]
Apex doesnt have a system like that; you can either buy new legends with points you earn in game, or buy them upfront. But, considering how generous the legend tokens are, you almost always have more than enough for the newest legend the day they release.
Valorant has a somewhat battle pass system, except it isn’t locked behind a time limited pass like OW2 is
That and the games mentioned above are cenetered around guns and not legends themselves. If the new hero is OP and you can’t switch to a new hero to counterpick, then that puts you at a major disadvantage
Wow you really don’t understand do you? Casuals don’t want to grind this game like a part time job every season in order to just TRY the new content. Good cosmetics for new heroes will be locked behind battle passes unlike the old game where only premium OWL cosmetics or pink charity mercy were the exception. Now players are only losing immediate access to new features in exchange for forced play time or money. It’s not about privilege, it’s a downgrade. If a game has to push you to keep playing it with chore weekly challenges and battle pass levels instead of just by being fun it’s already following the wrong path.
Game models following the money always benefit splergers and the corpos foremost, with the majority of the playerbase being treated as a secondaries for not subscribing with their wallets or no-lifing their game. If you actually payed attention you would know that loot boxes were fine and greatly favored the players. The real reason the suits are pushing the pay2play model are because the devs ran off most of their playerbase and need a big payout again for Bobby’s investors to make up for six years of constant buffoonery. Locking content behind the battle pass was never needed to benefit the game or to keep content flowing. It’s all about making as much money as possible regardless of how many players disapprove of the new model. The fact that there is no older OW1 anymore for players to even go back to is salt on the wound. Hence the outrage. It’s not a choice for them, their game got replaced with this.
There’s something the old heads in family used to say if any kid said something along the lines of “But Billy and Jimmy got turbo electro-shock nipple piercings!”:
“If Billy and Jimmy jump off of a bridge will you follow?”
Those games have characters that are extremely interchangeable. You don’t really need abilities in either Apex or Valorant as the most important thing will be the gunplay.
Overwatch is not like this; the guns are actually pretty lame when you think about it. The abilities are what usually make a match, and because of that, the characters are way less interchangeable. You sorta need them.
OW’s roster has always been free to use after purchase of the game. That’s like half the purchase, the entire roster as it was and were to become.
Suddenly flipping it where new heroes can potentially be strait up unobtainable behind a ridiculous grind or strait up paywall is predatory to begin with, and disrespectful to the fanbase to finish.
Even if you grind it out you can still loose sr and rank in competitive game because teammates haven’t yet unlocked the crucial meta character needed to counter the enemy team. This is a team game (not a single player), the whole premise of the game relies heavily on character picks and counter picks and abilities are important.