I would like to specify i mean Team Fortress 2, not Titanfall 2, and that i am in no way ‘shilling’ or defending the BP unlock system. Okay? Okay.
One of my friends (who still plays TF2 and doesnt really have interest in ow) made me realize something while sharing my thoughts on the whole unlockable heroes situation. TF2 is also driven around hero/class swapping mid game and despite this in order to unlock some weapons that can significantly change the playstyle of a class, you still have to grind for them only to get a RANDOM one and only 1 piece of a set or spend money to get it.
Perhaps the argument is that we still have the 9 base classes and stock is still quite strong on its own and most weapons are just “side-grades” but technically you dont even start with the demoknight, the huntsman, the gunslinger or other weapons that essentially provide a very different subclasse that in some cases plays nothing like the stock variant they are based upon.
In an ideal scenario, everyone will start with the 32-34 non-BP heroes and still have a very flexible lineup to play with (Like stock weapons to some degree). While i get that Overwatch’s balance is not its finest trait, the base idea remains that the heroes should be balanced to all be able to do a similar job but with different approaches and tools. In this case unlocking those ‘sidegrades’ shouldn’t be much a hassle since we atleast know what we invest our playtime for.
BUT we have yet to know IF everyone will have acess to the 32-34 base roster and how much time it would take to unlock a hero during and after its battlepass. And again this is based on a more positive analogy so all we can do is wait and see how they handle this.
I brought this up cause i’ve seen some people say ‘haha tf2 better’ and while i have a preference for team fortress myself my friend had a quite good point and i figured i could share a more mitigated opinion/analogy with you people to bring a bit of nuance to the conversation.
Hopefully we find out more info in the coming week. If you wish to remain cynical about this i won’t stop you. I’m going to wait and see and try to hope for the better case scenario.
I mean if everything is correct then you will need 40$ or days of grind to play OW2 ranked meanwhile TF2 is around 1$ and can play competitively any time. As much as people say, stock loadouts are pretty viable there
It paywalls its subclasses. Demoknight, Huntsman sniper, Gunslinger Engineer are all different enough from Stock that they’d be separate heroes in Overwatch.
I have thousands of hours in TF2 and ran community servers for years. The amount of money that people spend on that game boggles the mind.
And in this case, stock loadout would be the 32-34 characters. Though as for competitive, this is from the perspective of someone who mostly plays outside that format so i cant exactly speak in that regard and i’m not sure how that will be handled.
Learning that the Mythic skin is in the BP is genuinely surprising to me, and I think is fantastic. Compare it to how egregious the similar high-tier cosmetics cost in games like Apex and Valorant - it’s like a small percentage of the same price.
Learning that heroes are also on the BP?
I just don’t get it. The game director himself has been quoted saying that it’s antithetical to the premise of the game.
Yeah, yeah - “R6 and Valorant and League and and…”
This isn’t those. This is this. And just because the cool kids are doing it doesn’t mean you can too.
And to be clear - I hate that Valorant and Apex lock the new heroes as well. And I also barely play those games any longer for various reasons. Also, in my opinion, the cosmetics in both of those games are ugly.
I eventually got a golden frying pan in TF2. Cashed it out for a few thousand USD. Between the keys bought over 10 years and the costs associated with running servers, I still lost money.
You don’t start with any sub-classes because they aren’t important to the gameplay, or specifically needed in any scenario. Nothing but the base classes are needed, actually.
This is directly opposing Overwatch’s model for unlocks since certain characters can do completely unique things. Only Sym has her tele for example. If Fox girl has some fox girl only buff she can give her team, and you don’t have her unlocked, you just won’t ever get to use that thing.
That’s the main difference, and for that reason, I disagree. Overwatch will be inherently worse than TF2 with its unlocks.
Also, the only way to beat this is to make unlockable characters side grades to the main cast. That is, inherently worse since other people can just do their thing. If you’re spending hours to unlock a whole character, they shouldn’t be a side grade, but then you end up in the first issue if they aren’t.
Yeah i get the argument on R6 and such and the fact these arent games with hero switching (and while i love dirty bomb i will certainly not be bringing up how it does hero swapping for the love of god) which is why i brought up a game who is more similarily designed (or well, straight up based on since Jeff explicitly nammed it lol).
Yeah i really cant speak for balance cause i will admit, OW’s isnt its finest strenght. But again, TF2 has some weapons that can do unique stuff a character cannot do otherwise and with the base lineup you still end up with a very flexible cast to begin with. Like in an ideal world, the base idea should be that KFG adds her own thing to the team but its not like you cant provide to your team as a different support. There is probably something other supports have an advantage over her that she cant do that can also be used against an enemy instance of that character.
I love TF2 but I think one of the others things that sucks is that a lot of stuff is tied behind cases you have to open with keys that must be paid for with real money, much like CSGO’s cases.
It’s not. Traditionally in TF2 6s, you run 2 scouts, 2 soldiers, 1 medic, 1 demo, and rarely deviate from that. Even in casual matches or ladder, you rarely deviate from your pick.
These aren’t necessarily better though. Besides a few exceptions, the stock loadouts have intentionally remained the meta. Alt weapons are designed to be sidegrades. Gameplay mostly revolves around the classes themselves moreso than their specific weapons. You play Soldier for the burst, scout for the mobility, demo for the AOE, and Medic for the healing. It’s stuff they can do regardless of the weapons they use.
Which are both meme loadouts anyway.
And either way, if you really want to pull hairs, you can buy a single key from the Mann Co store for like $2, head over to scrap.tf, trade with a bot for scrap metal, get every weapon in the game (probably from the same bot), and still have half of your metal left over for if you want to get some cosmetics.
The reason we toute TF2 is because the barrier for entry is extremely low, and you’re not at any disadvantage as a free to play player, because stock loadouts have options to counter every other weapon in the game reliably. It’s just not a valid comparison.
Side grade doesn’t mean worse, people say it specifically to mean it isn’t inherently worse or better. Words exist for those two things, being upgrade and downgrade.
Side grade means that it is of relatively equal value and you can get mostly similar results in your win rate with either thing.
Maybe I wasn’t clear, but I meant “A side grade is worse because you had to sink time of your life to unlock something that’s basically the same as what you already had.”
For example, imagine you have an electric scooter. Then you spend time working to afford a second scooter, you find out that its basically just like your first but with slightly different specifications. Like the second one moves faster, but runs out of power faster, and therefore you end up getting to places at the same time.
Its not that its a bad scooter, it’s just as good as what you already had. Except, you already had the first scooter, so you wasted your time and money on the second, meaning its worse.
Side grades can be like that, but sometimes it boils down to playstyle. I’d still argue that its awful to waste your time unlocking something that’s ends up being exactly like what you already had. ESPECIALLY if it takes 15 hours to unlock it.
