I have neither 300 years, nor over £10k to drop on all their ‘content’.
Blizzard can eat my entire 
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This is false. You could get more skins from buying 20 loot boxes (20$) than only getting to buy one skin (1900 == 20$)
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False. A game, regardless of it’s monetisation strategy, is almost always created with the express purpose of being enjoyable. If your argument is “you should have to pay to enjoy the content!” then congrats! You’ve implied that overwatch, with its free to play model, should be unenjoyable. That’s ridiculous so I’m going to assume it’s just a mistype.
Being immediately dismissive of those who you see as childish will stop you from seeing how much harm this monetisation is doing to the game; plus, you’re addressing “the community” and then describing only a smaller subset of the players who are actually raising issues with the monetisation. It’s a sweeping generalisation of a much larger group with much more diverse opinions than just “everything should be free forever”.
Disagree. The earnable premium currency is mostly in line with the rate of battlepass acquisition tied to new hero release. If you complete every weekly challenge in a season, you’ll earn 540 coins; that’s 1080 coins every other season, which is just enough to unlock the premium battlepass. If you time this right, you can buy the premium battlepass alongside every new hero release (the exception being that we’re getting two new heroes in a row for seasons one and two, which is in line with the Watchpoint Pack giving you 1bp and 2000 coins).
The shop exists as a secondary service; Blizzard knows people love the overwatch skins, and hope they’ll be willing to purchase them. Thus, they price them highly in order to generate revenue off what they believed to be a highly sought-after product.
I’m not entirely sure what your point is here, but you mention in a later comment about the cost of lootboxes; but what you fail to remember is that duplicates gave currency too. For example, I earned (for free) enough coins in the last week or so of OW1 to unlock Vampire Hunter Brigitte, which had a cost of 3000. If legendaries still had that 3x cost for new releases, then that would translate to 5700 of the new premium currency, which would take 11 seasons, or 99 weeks to earn now. That’s roughly 1000% of the time taken in OW1 to earn these things in the same time period.
I’m not going to suggest that skins should be easily acquired for free, but to imply that they’d have the same rate of acquisition, and the same cost associated to that, is just disingenuous.
I’ve explained before in other posts, but the key flaw with this argument is that it makes less money, not more.
This is an anecdotal example just to highlight the math, but hear it out.
Lets say “whales” make up 5% of the playerbase. This is the percentage of players who are willing to spend essentially any amount of money on the game; you could charge $60 for a skin and they’d spend it.
Out of the rest of your playerbase, 25% are “free to play”. Be they unable to afford skins of any cost, or uninterested in spending money on your game, or just otherwise unwilling, these players will never spend a cent on your game unless the products literally cost next to nothing - these are players who you’d have to price everything so low for that it’s not worth it.
A further 20% are competitive-only players; they play the game for the competitive gameplay loop, and have very little interest in cosmetics - but they’re willing to spend money on things that might give them an edge in the competitive scene (eg, hero releases in the battlepass).
This leaves roughly half of your playerbase in the “desired consumer” section; players who are willing to spend money, but only if it doesn’t cost too much; you have to make them feel as though the product is worth it.
The current system prices out the majority of this “willing” consumer base. While you might see more purchases during the high-hype period of the game’s release, expect the number to go down; this is simply because hype correlates to the number of people willing to spend money.
So lets say you have 20% of the playerbase, who we’ll say have 10,000 players total, who are willing to spend $20 on a skin every month. With 2,000 players, that’s $480,000. Wowzers!! But that’s a lot of money to spend on a single item, so they’re only willing to buy that one item at a time.
If you price the skins down to $5 each, more people are willing to buy the skin in the first place; you’re probably getting the full 50% of the “willing” market; we can also assume that about half of these players would be willing to buy multiple skins a month, so we’ll say 25% spend $5 a month, and 25% spend $10 a month; the whales always spend $20.
With 2,500 players spending $5 a month you get $150,000
With 2,500 players spending $10 a month you get $300,000
With the whales making up 500 players, you get $120,000
That’s a total of $570,000; an increase of almost $100,000 over the current system.
This is a lot of anecdotal numbers to highlight two economic facts; firstly, when people have to pay less for a product, they are more willing to do so - even if they wouldn’t otherwise be interested. And secondly, people are more willing to pay the same amount of money for multiple products as opposed to a singular “luxury” product, if they don’t see the “luxury” product as worthwhile.
The current system treats skins as luxury items, but they have no associated material cost, and there’s no scarcity involved with them; the only element that plays into it is the FOMO, which has been dramatically reduced as fewer players have access to the new skins in the first place. This ties in to buyer’s psychology, and the social aspect of skins, but I’ve waffled enough about this in this reply and I’ve already mentioned it in other posts before, so I can explain if you want, but basically people like being able to talk about skins as being cool, not as being costly.
People know it’s done purposely, but it’s the differential they find to be the issue; for a legendary that costs 1900 coins, you’d have to buy the 2200 coins pack seven times, getting 300 “leftover” coins each time, before you “earn a skin” from this excess. It’s a “discount” that is barely even worth considering because you have to spend $140 to even see the benefit of it
$140 is around double the cost of a new AAA game, with most being priced at $60 to $70; again, what you say sounds correct, but when you apply the actual figures to it, it falls through.
You also completely neglect to acknowledge the battlepass throughout this entire post; either you’re using your challenge coins for skins, meaning you’re spending $60 a year on the battlepasses, or those challenge coins are used to buy every other battlepass reducing the cost to $30.
The battlepasses for f2p models are always the primary source of reliable income, and in my opinion, the OW2 battlepass is pretty fair; but that cost of $30 a year by default is already enough for me to be hesitant to spend more on skins, and certainly not when that skin is $20; there are bigger things in my life than forking over that much for a singular skin.
If the skins cost less, more people would be willing to buy them, and they’d be more willing to buy more at a time; plus, the old skins would start generating revenue again, after essentially earning nothing for the last three or four years. As it stands, people aren’t going to be as willing to fork over $20 for “old” content, which is a huge missed opportunity to earn back on old cosmetics.
Whether or not you personally feel the system is “fair”, the monetisation is inherently stupid. It outprices much of the market that would otherwise be willing to fund the game, and has sunk the reputation of the game downwards once more; so much of the discourse surrounding the shop is that the prices are unreasonable (and for a time, were illegal) which is terrible for a new game. You want people to talk about how much they like it, not how it’s a mathematically proven mess.
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No one ever has ever stated that they wanted something for free. Never has that ever been the case and the argument has likely been constructed as a straw to “bust” by the whales and Blizzard pros.
The entire issue with the F2P model is that the company controls everything. They control how much things are costing, how much it takes to get the items and the entire aspect of what is supposedly “free”. They also advertise it as “free”, so they can get people in and get as many people hooked as possible. Then they hit them with the pay-wall, and even lock the core game components behind a path that they control. So you can either spend hours on a long boring grind, or magically get the hero by paying Blizzard.
They entice people to get hooked, they control the access to everything in this game and ensure the “free” parts are as obnoxious and tedious as they can be, just to get people to fan the creditcards. That’s what make this F2P model predatory and greedy as F.
The worst part is that Overwatch 1 earned Blizzard money, more than enough to actually support and hold the game afloat. But it wasn’t as much as ActivisionBlizzard wanted, and since they control everything Blizzard does, Overwatch 2 was born into the F2P model we have today. All in the name of max profit.
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Did Bobby threaten you to say good things about the monetization?
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shekels have been wired into your account
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But you have to consider a proportion of impatience and gratification to make a good monetization. “impatience” is what pushes you to buy without being a patient player or a person who doesn’t have much time to devote to the game but has money to save time in prizes. In OW1 this principle was mainly based on a pre-BP market: you buy access to the online service (and not the game as many believe) and collectibles are a random fortune in lootboxes. Can’t find what you want? buy more randomness. times have now changed in battle pass (real exclusives in game that are repeated after a few weeks) and in game dropping without lootboxing.
but why are these logics wrong in OW2? For four simple reasons:
- you can’t sell the BP as if it were literally the only bundle worth buying while the rest of the “standard” content costs more than a true exclusive. I’m not saying the legendary skins, but just think about the fact that for a voiceline you have to pay 100 coins that you don’t earn even after an intense gameplay of a week: pure madness.
- You cannot resell old content to new users at four times the price and impose a real shop ban where blizzard itself decides how and when you have to buy. there have been halloween skins that were not available for the whole event dedicated to them, and in some countries (the netherlands and australia) it is really illegal to sell bundles with discounts without the possibility of buying the item separately (and “randomly” just when this info was running on reddit blizzard he changed his mind);
- You can’t pretend that monetization is really good while the free collecting flow discourages you from getting even just 5% of your main content in a year of faithful gameplay. It is not rewarding and the amplified gallery becomes just a useless, huge and heavy amount of GB installed in your console / PC. and this problem is already present for the “recolor” OWL skins;
- in no game is a digital product created once and sold as if there was a craft profit for blizzard artists and modelers. This happens for exclusives or in games where there is really a huge scarcity of content in your gallery. And you know what? OW has all content produced in 6 years and can’t really pretend that it has released all of this now, as if it has NEVER earned anything from OW in 6 years of llootboxing and smurf accounts. perhaps less than his debut, but between less and nothing there is a big difference;
You don’t necessarily need the return of lootboxing, but at least honest monetization does. maybe creating a silver drop that is valid only for the gallery obtainable by playing, letting the impatient whales buy these coins as they always did with Overwatch and with games like HotS. the latter failed not because F2P, but because he didn’t bet enough blizzard looking at moba figures like League of Legends.
I’m sorry to tell you, but your legitimate argument for Blizzard to sell REAL exclusives at even more prohibitive prices in the future: does a standard skin cost $ 20 and does the community accept it? then a true exclusive must cost $ 50. There is no such thing in any game. Not with this degree of “aesthetic optionality” with too many GB of data in the gallery. SIX Years of contents, remember this.
It actually just isn’t fair. It doesn’t matter what game or company it is. These models are in fact terrible and are not necessary to provide content to a game forever. These companies have billions of dollars, they can easily make new content forever if they choose, it’s just that everyone naturally will choose to make more money over providing a fair, fun, or good experience.
OW2 is a terrible game with terrible monetization. You do not get rewarded for playing the game, the only luxury you have is you can hit play and hit exit and that’s about it. I don’t know how anyone mindlessly could sit here and just play to see “victory” or “defeat” forever but I certainly can’t. There just is nothing fun about that, there is no “gg go next” or whatever, it’s simply annoying. OW1 rewarded you for your time spent even if you lost the game. Nothing will ever beat that much.
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oh its fair by definition. same price for everyone and you dont need them for anything
People dont like it but that doesnt make it unfair lol
At a reasonable price *
Warframe. Your argument is nullified.
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I have played mobile games (an industry that is notorious for predatory practices) that have more reasonable monetization structures, and that make it possible for f2p to earn a lot of things through gameplay without grinding like it’s a Korean mmo.
Valorant literally charges folks $10 minimum for the lowest quality skins, and charges $30 for the more rare ones. On top of that they tried to push, and still do push ‘bundle deals’ for weapon skins, which can reach insanely expensive prices. Here’s a great example:
Let’s say I wanted to go and buy the Elderflame bundle as an Australian. That bundle included 5 upgradeable weapon skins, a charm known as a Gunbuddy, an Elderflame Card, which included a card, banner and icon and a spray. The price for said bundle? 9900 Valorant Points.
How much is 9900 Valorant Points? Well the most expensive points purchase you can get is 8530 VP pack in Australia, which comes with a bonus of 1220 VP, bringing the total to 9750 VP. How much does that cost me in AUD? $129.99
But it gets better! Because the VP pack is only offering me 9750 VP, the bundle collection cost me 9900 VP. So even spending $129.99 on the most expensive VP pack, it doesn’t give me enough VP for the bundle. I need to buy another pack of VP to get enough, so I need to spend an additional $7.99 for the cheapest VP pack, which will give me a total of 525 VP, which puts me over the amount I need by 375 VP.
The cheapest Valorant bundle was the Arcane bundle, that was 2377 VP, which I’d need to spend $38.98 to get ($30.99 for the 2175 VP pack, and an additional $7.99 for the 525 VP pack, since the $30.99 pack is just shy of how much I need for the bundle).
So yeah, nah, other free games do not treat their players better. Some might, but Valorant sure as hell doesn’t, and Valorant, along with Paladins, is Overwatch 2’s primary competitor. Apex technically competes as well, but that is a battle-royale, so not exactly the same genre.
Putting “hot take” in front of a stupid opinion doesn’t make it not stupid
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Yeah, this is BS. It’s not embarrassing to want there to be some form of incentive to play beyond just the game play. Yeah the game play is a core part of it and that has to be fun, but they’ve removed the ability to get skins, advancement beyond the battle pass, they’ve removed a whole lot of maps and effectively wrecked many of the modes that aren’t role queue because of how OP tanks are now. So they’ve chipped away at many levels of the fun, undercut almost all forms of advancement, and monetized nearly every other form of reward outside of a scant few things on the free track of the battle pass. Wanting to earn a reasonable amount of currency so you can get more than one skin per year is fair, and if they don’t see that then I’m sure they’ll see the repercussions.
“Is it fair?” is the wrong question.
“Is it a good value?” is the real question, and when compared to BPs of other F2P games, especially the grand champ of F2Ps, Fortnite, OW’s BP is stinking terrible.
Fortnite’s BP is $9.50 and refunds $15 in premium currency.
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nobody asked for free to play, nobody wanted overwatch 2 rushed to market to sell battlepasses and skins, the sequel was supposed to be PVE focused and bring back players that loved the characters but didnt want to play hyper competitive PVP. There is absolutely NOTHING fair about what is happening to Overwatch right now, it is literally being violated by grimey sleaze ball scumbags who see games not as an art form, hell not even as fun - but as a revenue generating asset to be exploited for profit.
Take a look at yourself man, you could have done anything today, and you decided to go online and defend the destruction of Overwatch.
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Imagine just wanting to spend $60 on a game instead of it being Free to Play. Such a wild entitled attitude. Going free to play is a benefit to next to nobody. The reality of F2P is you get less for more money. Consumers should not be playing defense squad for corporations for decisions that largely hurt them.
Maybe we should question the hyper-capitalistic nature of using psychological tricks like forcing people to have excess in game currency to encourage further spending. Maybe just because it’s been done other places doesn’t mean it’s okay anywhere. Frankly, I think banning premium in game currencies would do a lot of good for the industry. Regardless of if they jack the prices up or not as a result.
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Already disagree with this statement, Team Fortress 2/CSGO/Dota exist (I know there is more, but I’ve played Valve games more than anything else).
Table-scraps is all that is, it’s a illusion of choice, you aren’t earning anything.
In order to just get Epic skins, it will take you roughly 17 weeks, even longer, so I don’t buy this as a excuse, even just emotes will take you 8 weeks, while some games like TF2, will allow you to get free drops from just playing the game and has immediately usable stuff without the fuss.
its also no where near the level of other f2p games