Hate how you get nothing for your time now and how epics replaced legendaries for awesome skins since the mythics and shop skins are just kinda digusting to look at since you know they weren’t earned.
Tier skips? Overpriced digital goods that show no skill or dedication?
No thanks, I like earning my keep.
To those who earn BPs through weeklies, I salute you, but you still feed the money machine here as Blizz probably checks the numbers for premuim BP levels to see how “effective” their Battlepasses are. Its also a fake stat inflated to impress the investors.
Lootboxes were removed cause they were considered gambling in some countries and end up banned.
But I must say that you could grind lootboxes by leveling up your account or in arcade, so it was “play to earn stuff”. Now it’s “pay to get stuff” removing the need to play, and there’s the BP that is very predictable instead of having the element of surprise lootboxes had. Once you complete the BP you don’t earn much for future savings.
The grinding for lootboxes had an element of surprise, knowing I’d get stuff to increase my cosmetic collection or gold for future savings; tied to leveling up your account was way more incentives to play than now in OW2 where you can pay so you can save time not to play.
i’ll take neither. give me a full priced game with a proper progression system rather than drip feeding me content i’ve already paid for
people like to bash the current monetisation model, and they should because it sucks, but loot boxes weren’t any better. sure you could grind to get stuff for free but that whole model was just glorified gambling engineered specifically to hit that “happy chemical” in your brain and incentivise you to buy them. you might have self control but others with addiction problems or kids won’t
It was considered gambling because Blizzard sold them. If they just bring back account progression and give lootbox rewards for leveling up or even just give out free lootboxes in the BPs, it’s no longer gambling if you get the box for free because even if it’s trash stuff, it’s still free trash stuff and you didn’t have to pay for it.
I really would just rather have better coin gain. Lootboxes were okay, but after you had everything (a la me), they just became either dust collectors or you opened them when the new events came out so you could get fresh ones. Now with all the new stuff they’re adding, yeah, it might be nice to have them back, but I could go either way. This is also presuming they wouldn’t change up the odds more to make it less likely you’ll get anything of worth…
60c/week is chump change. Just increase it.
Day 1 Loot boxes in OW were a joke. You got duplicate items, I don’t believe you got coins to buy things and so on. That said by the end of OW1 it had some of the most generous loot boxes in any game I have ever seen.
You got coins for duplicates, you got free boxes for arcade wins, endorsement levels and so on. Start of each new event you’d get a legendary box that had a guaranteed legendary in it and so on.
Compare that do OW2. You get like 30 coins per week if you max out all the challenges (which is not particularly easy as they are spread across several game modes you may or may not like to play). It takes something like 3 months of maxing them out to get enough for one legendary skin, which may or may not be available in the shop as they are on “rotations”.
OW2 has been out for almost a year I think and Junkerqueen still has default skins on my account. I have never won any skin for her for free and I really can’t be bothered to spend $20 or more on the junk skins the shop has for her.
I think the BP system really pushes people to only care about a few hero’s, and not try to “collect them all” any more. I would imagine other than all the free Ow1 skin we keep getting a lot of people run around with default skins.
Loot boxes had their share of problems, but Battlepasses are the most toxic and predatory marketing practice currently employed by gaming companies. Absolutely hate them. Blows my mind how people have begged to the point where they are in pretty much every online game these days.
So, if I was given 2 choices, either we keep Battlepasses or we go back to the old loot box system, then yes, I absolutely desperately want loot boxes back.
The loot box system was so consumer friendly. People who played the game a decent amount could easily get all the skins they wanted for heroes they played. Ppl who played quite a bit would have all the skins.
Loot boxes are trash and they should never… ever… return to Overwatch or any other video game. Let’s be clear about something, they encouraged gambling, that affected both children and those individuals who were dealing with gambling addictions.
And let’s be clear about something else and this needs to be emphasized.
Just because YOU managed to get all your cosmetics for free, that doesn’t mean everyone did.
Blizzard notably made over $1 billion dollars from loot boxes alone by 2019. Which means plenty of people were buying them. You can even find ancient posts on this forum of people admitting that they spent hundreds of dollars on loot boxes for the chance to get what they wanted.
In fact it was actually quite common for people to spend around $20 on loot boxes just to earn the cosmetic they wanted from said boxes. So keep that in mind when you look at shop prices, because for a lot of people who bought boxes, they spent $20 or more on them just for the chance to get what they wanted, where as now it’s just $20 to get exactly what they want.
Just a collection of random old content (OW1) with a rare chance at dropping new content (OW2). If you already have the items the lootbox gave you, you’d get a small coin cache instead, similar to how duplicates worked in OW1.
There’s nothing wrong with players having the option of spending money if they choose to. And as long as this option is there, there will always be whales who shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars to get what they want with minimal game time.
What you’ve described isn’t a criticism for lootboxes, it’s a criticism of microtransactions as a whole.
But back in OW1 if you had a day off you could blast out some Overwatch and get some skins completely for free. You could play for 2 hours and probably level up at least once. If you did weekly Arcade or queued for Tank you could get more free lootboxes that way. You could play for 2 hours and come away with 2-4 lootboxes easily. You had something to show for it. Maybe you didn’t get what you wanted, but try again tomorrow, or next week. Again, for free. And maybe those limited skins disappear and you lose your chance. That’s ok, because they’ll be back this time next year and during the anniversary event! Where you have another chance! To earn them for free!
Now? Play for 2 hours and you’ll have nothing to show for it. Maybe a tiny amount of coins that’ll take months before they amount to any value at all. Maybe a pathetic souvenir or a mediocre voice line.
Unless you pay! Then you’ll get the good stuff! The cool skins and the emotes and the highlight intros! And if you miss them, if you’re busy this month or just don’t have very long to play often, then you’ll miss out forever . Oh, ok, maybe not forever. We may return then later on. In the shop in a bundle where we also force you to buy 3 other items you literally could not care less about for the price of the entire Battlepass where you could have got them the first time
In NO universe is this preferable. The F2P player has FAR less opportunity to earn cosmetics in OW2 than OW1. Even if lootboxes made more money than Battlepasses and the shop (which, I doubt is true if you loot at player by player basis) there was a massively increased opportunity to earn cosmetics without having to pay. That opportunity is almost entirely gone now.
This is a common argument I see from people defending loot boxes: “They ‘could’ have gotten stuff for free.” but they didn’t, because as already stated, Blizzard made $1 billion from loot box sales.
Not $1000
Not $10,000
Not $10,000,000
$1,000,000,000
So everyone calling the previous system ‘consumer friendly’ is full of crap, because it wasn’t consumer friendly, it was predatory, especially for children and those with gambling addictions.
There is a reason why many countries are banning loot boxes, and it ain’t because they’re an amazing form of consumer friendly monetization.
And what new content? Because we have f2p. Profit from battle passes alone probably doesn’t cover the costs. Which is probably why shop skins are impossibly high.
I also can’t see them giving out free OW2 content when they could charge you for it. Especially because we already get stuff in the BP.
They did though. Millions of people did. It’s not my fault if you didn’t unlock skins for free and chose to buy them instead. Nor is it Blizzard’s. It is your fault. If you’re a child, it’s your parent’s fault as well.
Come off it. They had almost 25 million players. 1 billion in revenue from 25 million players over 7 years really isn’t that much at all. On average, that equates to each player spending like $6 a year. That can get you half of one Battlepass today.
And sure, many players went free to play (after buying the game, of course) and some people spent thousands. And everywhere in between. But deciding that some people choosing to spend a lot means the practice is bad, when hundreds of thousands or millions of players have chosen to spend nothing or very little and are able to enjoy the game just as much is totally ridiculous.
Predatory? “Come and buy these cool items that don’t affect gameplay at all, if you like, want to. If not, you can always earn them in the game. Remember, they don’t change anything. Just look cool. And if you miss them, they’ll be back next year at a discount price of that in-game currency that you’ve been building for free”. Is like, the least predatory marketing practice I’ve seen in a long time. Do you think everything in the game should be free? Or do you think Battlepasses are better? Or what? If not Blizzard’s lootboxes, then what do you think is better?
Um. No. A few countries are banning loot boxes. Most countries haven’t illegalised them. Some are putting in legislation to regulate them because the problem isn’t “ooo, lootboxes evil and scary”, the problem is with how many of these companies were implementing them. Many are suggesting things like, make sure the financial value in real money is easily visible next to the boxes, so people know exactly how much they’re actually spending, and reveal drop rates. Blizzard was already doing the latter. In fact, Blizzard were already doing many of the things that game devs are now legally required to do to host a loot box vending service, such as have free, in game methods of obtaining all items that are sold in loot boxes.
So, no, the fact that loot boxes are drawn legal attention is not a strong argument that Blizzard’s loot box system was bad. Not at all.
You want to argue for loot boxes to return because ‘They were the better system’ then you have to acknowledge that millions of people spent real $$ on them, that they encouraged gambling, and that many countries have either banned them or are in the process of banning them.
Over 3.
They made over $1 billion by 2019. Overwatch originally released back in 2016. Hell by the time Blizzard stopped selling loot boxes in 2022, they likely made another billion, possibly more since there was a massive influx of people buying boxes near the end once Blizzard announced they were getting rid of them.
But of course you ignore this because you’re a loot box defender. As expected. You got your free stuff, and you want more free stuff, screw anyone else who felt obligated to spend money.
I’m in the camp of ‘weekly challenges should offer more coins’ as well as ‘overwatch coins should be on the battle pass’.
In my opinion the first weekly challenge you complete in game should award you 500 coins. With an additional 500 being earnable by completing other weekly challenges. That way, even your most casual player will get a new skin every month (assuming they don’t get coins from the battle pass), with your dedicated players able to earn 2 every month.
Legacy credits in my opinion were a mistake and they need to go. Replaced with regular coins which you can use on whatever you want.
But loot boxes were a predatory abomination and they should never return, no matter how much the rose tinted goggle wearing veterans want them back.
. Oh, ok, maybe not forever. We may return then later on. In the shop 
in a bundle where we also force you to buy 3 other items you literally could not care less about