Just wanted to throw this out there for the “Locked heroes aren’t a problem because they’re easy to grind!”
You can only work on 1 hero challenge at a time. Each hero takes 35 wins, which averages out to 70 games. Even playing QP (because for some stupid reason, playing comp is less efficient for unlocking heroes due to longer game times), game + queue averages at about 15 minutes. So for each hero, it takes about 18-20 hours to unlock.
With 5 new heroes for people to unlock, this means it’d take around 100 hours of grinding to get them. Or… you can just buy the heroes from the store instantly.
As the game continues going on, this number will go higher and higher, and we currently have no indication that Blizz is going to reduce the grind. Around this time next year, when there’s 3-4 more heroes, it’ll be closer to 160-180 hours total, and you’re not allowed to play arcade games for this progress,e ither. If the game keeps going for the next 5 years, new players will have to grind 400 hours if they want to unlock all the heroes.
And of course, if you lose more often than not, or if you play competative, those numbers jump much higher. Let alone, new players have to do even more hours of grinding to unlock the base hero set, too.
Can we please stop the “Just unlock them, it’s easy!” narrative? The longer this game goes on, the bigger the grind gets, and the more of an advantage people get when they’re willing to buy heroes with cash instead of time.
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A brand new player with nobody unlocked would and should need to spend that much time and get familiar with the large cast and everyone’s kits
I’m not defending locking heroes, I just don’t think there’s this hypothetical player out there who starts playing OW2 brand new and is like “I NEEEED TO PLAY ALL 36 HEROES NOW AND HAVE ACCESS TO EVERY SINGLE ONE NOW”
It’s a slow process of trying new heroes and roles out, and slowly getting more unlocks over time as they get familiar with the amount they already have.
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“New heroes” As in soujourn ram kiriko and life weaver do not take 36 hours lol
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You do realize the 100 hour grind is also ignoring the almost 40 hour grind new players need to do to unlock the rest of the base cast, right? I don’t think a 140 hour grind is a very reasonable thing to expect in order to be on equal terms with your opponents, but w.e.
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Heroes should not be locked behind the Battle Pass, period. No pay walls, no grinding to level 55, no grinding to level 45, no playing crazy amounts of games for “hero challenges”, no “first time user experience”.
Never. Never lock heroes like this again. It’s completely unacceptable, and it has been since last October.
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Yes, and I don’t really think your hour amounts are set in stone. There’s plenty of 3 to 5 minute games that you win/get winstreaks etc
Paladins last time I played, started new accounts out with 5 heroes plus 3 or 4 extra on a rotating “free for the month” ones, and I never felt like it was too restrictive.
I found a hero I wanted to unlock, and had fun saving up some credits and getting them after a few hours of work, and I had a new toy to play with as I tried to unlock the next one, and so on
Again I’m not defending locking heroes but I’m saying not everyone thinks its the end of the world, some ppl are perfectly fine with grinding to unlock them (It’s actually a fun aspect for me personally)
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you have to play the game to unlock the characters so you can build your experience in the game with al characters while unlocking the next as a new player.
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It still baffles me that the OW1 roster is mostly locked. And the ones available kinda have no rhyme or reason.
Like if it was all new heroes on (ones not part of the release) I could see it, some of them did get some of the strongest kits following. But that’s not the case.
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First, you forgot Queen.
Second, the math is simple:
35 wins = average of 70 games.
Game + queue = average of 15-18 minutes.
70 game X 15-18 = 1050 -1260 minutes / 60 = 17.5-21 hours
17.5 - 21 hours X 5 new heroes = 87.5 - 105.
Accounting for the fact that people do, in fact, play comp games which are often twice as long (if not more), people do often lose more than they win, and people do often play arcade games, 100 hours is actually a low ballpark estimate for how long it will take to unlock all 5 new heroes.
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wins count as double no? and I don’t even have 105 hours on my alt and I have all the characters so how do I have all of them?
There’s also super long overtime games, times when queues are more like 10 minutes than 2, and several other compounding factors. 15 minutes is a very reasonable approximation of how long it will take for each queue + game, and the big issue here is, if you play comp, you’re almost doubling that number.
If anything, if we’re limited to “genuinely new player,” genuinely new players also tend to lose a lot more than they win, which means the numbers are actually even worse, since my calculations assume a 50% win ratio.
Paladins was designed around locked heroes and has a draft system and no swaps. That makes it much less restrictive when you don’t own everything. Games where you can swap to counter are far more problematic when it comes to hero ownership.
No, wins count as single. Losses count as nothing. The challenge is “win 35 times”. And if you started with the OW2 3 heroes, that lowers the grind tremendously–let alone, starting by skipping the “new player experience” grind helps too. Numbers are also skewed depending on how often you win–which alt accounts tend to win a lot more than lose. A 60% win ratio reduces the grind heavily, for example.
If you were to run the statistics on this, the real numbers would be closer to outliers of something like only 40 hours for people who have the combination of low-duration games with high win ratios and low queue and 200 hours for people with high-duration games and low win ratios and high queues. But the numbers I presented are more indicative of a mean rather than a full range of possibilities.
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It’s a real shame that the huge majority does not seem to be against it. The game industy really educated players to accept and even be good with 100% unacceptable things.
Well I guess that counts for many other things in life, too…it’s so sad…
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I started in S3 and now have 340 hours in QP and you described my experience. I saw what I had to do to unlock all the characters and it never bothered me because there was so much to learn anyway. I didn’t stress about JQ, Kiri, Ram, or Soj locked at all.
There are so many hereos anyway; to be honest, it gave me something to focus on because I’m not interested in comp. (Not enough extrinsic motivation)
I spent the first 30 hours playing Lucio anyway. I love that hero.
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That’s awesome, Lucio is a fun hero and one of my favorites. I don’t play him much these days, he’s not great in recent metas and I enjoy other supports more right now. But he’s pretty cool.
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I still don’t understand locked heroes.
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I never agreed to locked heroes. Its tactic to open people’s wallets. If I were a beginner I would stop playing this game. I am not one of those people who enjoy grinding for this that should already be unlocked.
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i kind of dread getting a new account. if i ever get perma banned i kind of wonder if ill just quit altogether or try to level a new acccount
That’s kinda balls if the only heroes a newbie ends up liking are those at the end of the grind like Echo though
I would and I did when I played paladin.
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