Apex will strong arm Overwatch into going free-to-play

General Discussion
21

Apex? Oh look, another battle royal game. How did they think of that? How creative.

Ragtagg had a video that sums up battle royale pretty well for me. Scrounge around for a while, get kind of bored , die. Choose not to repeat.

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22

I expect it is guilds. Which given the server population where I am, it going to be as useful as LFG was.

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23

Oh boy, I can barely find any LFG anynore as it is, most of my friends have even been offline for weeks, this is certain to bring them back /s

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24

Yeah I haven’t played much but my friends already have one of them :PP

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25

Its 100% going to be a case of “too little, too late” for Overwatch.

The game isn’t fun anymore. Mostly due to terrible hero balance. A “guild system” will not bring me back.

I have no interest in playing Overwatch anymore. Apex is just way more fun. It doesn’t even feel like a battle royale. Its feels like a super fun hero shooter, Overwatch feels like a “try your hardest not to be one shot” game.

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26

During next Anniversary event or next Blizzcon OW will go F2P with complete rework of customization and loot system.

Mark my words.

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27

Ive played enough to unlock both with in game currency. Caustic is AMAZING! You can trap people in small rooms and gas them to death. Its hilariously fun.

28

With all due respect, you have absolutely no idea what it takes to “force” Blizzard do something like that.
The game is already cheap on a cycle of offers, it would be basically one of the 2 things a AAA company doesnt want :

  • Say no to money (for no reason)
  • Bring the F2P crowd into the game

Yeah the second is a thing. Making this a F2P will bring many people you dont want to be around in the first place. OW has a really really bad “new player” experience and making it F2P is going to make it worse (smurfs and cheaters/trolls/flamers everywhere with 0 consequences).

Im going to go with “Not gonna happen”, for at least this year.

PS: And no, Apex will have nothing to do with it, chill out and give this game a month … it has no impact on OW.

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29

Remind me of this post in 6-8 months.

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30

A major analyst predicted that the game was going to switch to f2p in the summer. Not sure of the details, but Stylosa covered it in one of his vids a couple months ago if anyone wants more info.

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32

I want Mirage and I’ll be happy ;]

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Yea, he is also tons of fun! Get bamboozled! :stuck_out_tongue:

Also, fun fact. The voice actor for Caustic is Soldier 76

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35

They really need another base lootbox content update

36

This forums man…

FYI: There is even more games than Overwatch, Fortnite and Apex.

The whole situation reminds me of my mom calling everything Nintendo lmao

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37

It wouldn’t hurt em. Everyone already own OW that wants OW.

38

It woudl make sense for OW to go f2p but on the other hand WoW still have monthly fees even after so many years.

39

REALLY? that’s pretty great lol

40

I am baffled how WoW didn’t go f2p years ago, considering it’s a very profitable model. Nobody wants to pay for subs anymore. People barely want to pay at all for multiplayer games.

They did slightly revamp their model, making only a sub necessary to play, so new players don’t have to buy the game itself, but still.

41

It’s not about say no to money. It’s actually about say YES to money. I don’t know why people think F2P implies no money…

OW has two income streams… licenses and lootboxes. Nowdays, lootboxes should be a “thing” just for new players and I don’t think average new users spend that much in lootboxes as in the price of the license. Also, there aren’t too much “new users”.

Secondary accounts doesn’t care about lootboxes but they did pay for a new account. So I’m pretty sure the money is mostly coming from secondary accounts.

So what we have is a very engaged community with a 3 year game. We are not capturing new users or very little % of them. We are just monetizing old users already engaged. The price of each license has dropped 500% from the launch (as expected in any 3 years game) and that has reduced the income of the game.

Game has also reduced the content, at least in new events (recycled or not event at all). Hero balances take LOT of time and Blizzard has recognized OWL took dev efforts from the game (spliting employees is a very common reason of lack of resources/money).

A 3 year old game with no new BIG updates loosing attraction at the gamer scene really fast now. You can check trends to see how much is dropping interest the game.
https://gyazo.com/80ea5eb1876886990e6ccd8734b86336

The game gain interest/users/relevance each time they add content and/or give a free week.

So basically what you is a game loosing interest making money from selling accounts (now in a VERY low price) so new users/accounts are not making THAT much money.

If you go F2P you will have:

  • Way more attraction of new users
  • Way more popularity

Then you can develop new income streams:

  • monetize the engaged community with seasons pass (to play ranked for example)
  • Pay for having new heros (2 weeks/4 weeks earlier) for quickplays (Most of the users that will bring you money play QP)
  • Sell exclusive skins, emmotes, etc…

Pros:

  • In that way you will be monetizing a very engaged community, now you are not taking any money from them
  • With this NEW money you can add real NEW content for new and old users
  • You can attract this F2P gamers that don’t want to pay for a license but for skins and emotes…
  • With the NEW content and been F2P OW will gain playerbase again
  • You can limit the people in ranked adding seasons pass or limiting the acces for people who bought a license (so this NEW people can’t reuin the game to the actual community)

There is no way OW could make less money been F2P in the actual state. Loosing traction is a killer situation for a game that need to sell licenses to add new content to keep alive the game. If you need to add new content periodically you need to monetize that with relevant products. This is not the case for OW right now and even they made money from the game the trend is negative now.

I’m in soudth america and in high elos sometimes it takes way too long to find a match an it’s never a balanced match. Obvioulsy that never happened in the first year of the game.

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42

It’s nothing special. Other games have ping systems that are as extensive as they game can allow. Inventory and gear isn’t a thing in many games, the relevant ping info would have no place in them.