Absolutely this. I don’t see how the expect to entice a big audience in and retain them when they’re literally disincentivising people to start/return after the first couple of seasons. Sure, they’ll probably get a big player spike at launch… but half those people are going to try it, realise it’s pretty darn similar to OW1 which they already left cos they got bored of it, and drop it. And other people will try it, then jump to the next hot game. And then there’s the players of the original game who are disgusted with what OW has become and turned they back on it.
A petty cash grab which spits in the face of the original game, and I have zero faith in it lasting long term. I only hope that enough PvE has time to come out that something actually happens in the lore, though I’ll probably just be watching videos on it rather than playing.
They do not plan to make it like this. But new heroes are supposed to be banned from competitive mode altogether for 2 weeks altogether so that people can get unlock them using BP
From the blogpost -
New heroes, starting with Kiriko, will not show up in Competitive modes immediately. We plan to debut Kiriko into competitive play after the first two weeks of Season One. The purpose here is two-fold: our team will take this time to monitor and tune new the new heroes’ performance while players learn how new heroes play; and it gives players some additional time to unlock the new hero before they become available in Competitive modes.
If that’s the case, then having the heroes locked or unlocked doesn’t matter, no? If people are not going to play them anyway, why lock them? He was the one that said locking heroes would be bad for the game. Now they’re trying to justify it in any way possible. They also admitted in one of those articles that it’s because it will make money. If the hero is OP, people will learn that hero. The meta determines the most popular picks and the heroes people want to learn. If you watch mL7 and he only plays Kiriko, you might want to learn how to play her. If you get your tail handed to you by a person playing Kiriko, you’re going to want to play Kiriko, so you will pay for her. I wish I could find the interview, but there was one where someone was talking about how they eventually put you in matches that you have a higher chance of losing because it incentivises you to either play more, to get better, or try to buy whatever skin they have, because you associate that skin with skill. Now it will be heroes. I bet people without Kiriko will see more matches against higher skilled Kiriko players than those that have her.
You are already coming up with excuses why you won’t be able to climb when OW 2 comes out.
What’s your SR?
Cause I bet after about 30 or 40 matches you’ll already be at the next rank lower assuming you play at all in October.
That’s what the issue is. Everyone is still in MMO build-a-comp mode and can’t break that mentality. That’s why people got so mad over the beta cause having to win 1v1’s was a thing.
Kiriko can only do significant damage with critical hits. In the silver/gold lobbies most of these doomers probably play in a Kiriko would be lucky to land a single body shot a quarter of the time with that kunai more or less ding a person with two headshots in a row!
Lmao, what a shortsighted answer - the kind of thing a 12yo would say.
OP is not alone in their opinion, and if they decide to stop playing I assure you a large percentage of players will think the same and also leave. Will you care at that point, when there’s no one playing anymore and OW2 is short lived like many before it?
Don’t place your entire life’s worth on a number in a video game. Take a step back my guy. The number on my bank balance and the number on my credit score are way more important than an arbitrary number on a video game.
That was a side note, and example of a predatory business practice that will take place to sell a hero to people who don’t know it’s happening. I rarely lose 1v1’s. I have too many hours in aim arena, mostly on Hanzo, sometimes Cree. It has nothing to do with me or my ability in the game and everything to do with fairness for everyone that will come to, or return to, the game. Overwatch will always be an “MMO build-a-comp” game. Nothing they can do will change that. The maps, modes, and heroes (tank, support, dps) are built for that. 5v5 doesn’t make it any less so. The only difference is that you have one less tank to hide behind. TBH, I was kinda glad they were making the team less reliant on tanks standing there with a shield. I did great in the beta and I was very much looking forward to playing OW2 before this hero lock nonsense. It was also great to have a scoreboard, since I always topped damage/heals/etc and finally people could see that. I only returned it because of the lock. Took 2-3 days to get a response from Blizzard.
I just don’t want a bunch of people cancelling my game just cause they got salty over 10 dollars so then I’m forced to play a camper royale if I wanna keep playing video games in my free time.
For some people, yes. But not for everyone. And that’s the point Aaron was trying to make. Even IF all heroes are unlocked, not EVERYONE is going to gravitate to those heroes.
So maybe all 4 supports in your match have Kiriko unlocked, but if only the 2 on the enemy team are willing, comfortable, and able to play her, what benefit was there to having her unlocked? It’s still not an equal playing field because your team won’t plaay her. So for those two people, she may as well be locked.
Ana is good in just about any situation, but if Moira became meta somehow, there is still not a chance in hell that I would play Moira. You could offer to buy the next 10 battlepasses for me and I would still say no. And the same goes for Kiriko or Mauga or whoever is released. Just watching the reveal of Kiriko’s playstyle was enough to tell me I won’t be into her. She’s Genji-lite but support, and I can’t play Genji to save my life. I prefer slower paced, less aggressive playstyles, so does it really matter if I have her unlocked or locked in the end if I’m not gonna play her anyway?
Like I get your secondary point about it being about money and whatever, but a company is gonna do what they’re gonna do because ultimatly they aren’t a charity and profits are the goal, so if it’s not this, it would be something worse like having to pay for maps or making all new heroes fully paywalled, no free track grind at all. Or both.
You think I want Overwatch cancelled, or that it will get cancelled, because people make a fuss? That’s not going to happen. People making a fuss causes changes. Blizz will not miss the money from heroes being in the pass. They are treating this game like something it’s not and they are going to lose in the long run if they stick with it. This isn’t fortnite or apex or valorant. This game didn’t start F2P and a lot of people already have their minds made up about it. What they’re going to do is drive away the players that stuck with it all these years and when the flavor of the month gamers leave after the initial influx, the people that kept it going won’t be there anymore. Nobody wants to grind a core part of any game, especially a game they don’t care about.
It’s not just about this one hero. It’s all future heroes and all future players and returning. If they gave everyone Kiriko free, but still stuck to this model, I’d be upset. Most people don’t want to grind for core mechanics. If it was a different kind of game where character choice didn’t matter, like many of the ones they’re trying to base this model on, it wouldn’t matter. But it’s not like that. The character 100% matters. I don’t love playing reaper, but I’ll swap reaper if monkey won’t leave my heals alone. At one point, before I became a decent at it, I hated hitscan, but I still swapped to keep pressure on a Pharah if nobody else would. The same situation will apply as more heroes come out.
As far as them doing worse, part of why I’m taking a stand against it now and trying to be loud about it now is because I fear that’s where it will go. I don’t think it’s Blizzard specifically, but the ActiBlizzard board members and Bobby. It’s absolutely why Jeff left and why I think we’ll see Aaron leaving too eventually. Look at Diablo Immortal. What they did there is just downright disgusting, but it made them money. Mobile market doesn’t care, but PC gamers do. They’re going to try that here eventually, and it’s going to kill whatever game they bring it to. I 100% believe Overwatch is disposable to them and if they could get away with it, they would lock every hero behind a pay-only pass and not think twice.
It really is sad that so few people are able to think ahead like you in this thread. Those corporates have done a „good job“ educating thier audience.
Some of the answers here are really hard to read. What they are reading/understanding out of your well placed arguments/facts is letting me lose more and more of that little hope I have left for our world. This goes far beyond gaming…never forget → corporates give a damn about you and me and they will do everything they can think off to draw more money out of our pockets! The real perversion in all of this that they managed to make people feel good about it! Let that sink in….
I said Blizzard’s pockets, not this game. I started playing WoW ($60?) in 2007. I bought many of the expansions ($40 each) and paid a $15/mo subscription for years, I bought D2, D3, I bought the packs, I bought hearthstone packs and cards, I bought OW for $60, I’ve spent well over $1200+ (stopped counting there) on OW merch and collectibles.
Imagine a world where Blizzard released enough content for it to be called an expansion, charged a full box price for it and then repeated every 1-2 years.
You know…Like games used to be. Back before they morphed from focusing on high quality content that could justify paying up front into barely passable garbage that relies on microtransactions to exist at all since nobody would a pay box price for such a small amount of low quality “content”
And I get that. But their data reveals that very few people will actually do that. You’re a good teammate and I’d definitely endorse you and you’re for sure a better person than I am for swapping, but the reality is most people won’t swap to the best counter or the mirror hero, most might make a lighthearted attempt at countering, but the reality is the people who play this game are very hero-focused and are unlikely to be willing to swap for some reason or another.
And that goes 10-fold for new players. They will be brand new to the game. They will have 36 new heroes to learn even before considering Kiriko. So even if she were free for all, what are the odds that every single one of those new players will even enjoy Kiriko enough to play her seriously? And even if you can prove without a shadow of a doubt that 99% of them will, that still proves that it still won’t be equal ground for everyone.
Again, hopefully they’ll turn away from this sorta thing because it is annoying to have to unlock heroes, but I don’t actually believe it truly affects the competitive integrity of the game any more than it does letting noobies into the competitive mode with as little as 14 hours total playtime, or the masses of smurfs.