This is going to be long, so I’d appreciate if people who aren’t interested in the topic of progression/regular-play rewards, and cosmetics to skip this one.
As an OW1 player who has played this game on and off for a while over the years, the shop/progression is extremely unappealing. I’d like to voice my points of contention with it here.
I own a LOT of the classic Overwatch cosmetic content. In the end of that version’s life, when events rolled around, I’d have so much of the base game non-event cosmetics, I’d typically acquire all of the new common and rare items (like sprays, icons, poses, and voice lines) by the end of the first week. It felt nice for the game to almost reward me for being a veteran player with the “prefer un-owned items” RNG that was added eventually.
Now, I wouldn’t immediately earn higher tier rewards like epic and legendary items. I’d have to grind some boxes for them but I’d eventually, through somewhat regular play, earn some things that I wanted. Not always, but enough that I felt rewarded for regularly playing.
Players would typically get the most basic drop (Gray x3, Blue) more once you collected a majority of unique event items, or an event wasn’t on. This drop would give you +5 credits per common duplicates, and +15(so 30c total for the lowest RNG common box) for rare duplicates that you got. Say what you will about the idea of duplicates but the great thing about this was, you could just save up for the next big event, to make SURE you got one or two of the items you really wanted.
The system in place now is intentionally designed to be grueling and unrewarding to regular and veteran players who enjoy cosmetics. Less reason/incentive to enjoy hopping on to play regularly, because there isn’t really going to be reward for it.
The weekly challenges in-game are one of the very few ways to earn the game’s premium currency, and typically you earn 50 a week, 60 if you grind the challenges all the way, which is a more committed player investment. Far more than just regular play to build lootbox currency by playing, like before. New skins in OW2 are only purchasable via the premium currency. (new heroes launch with one legendary and a palette swap that you can buy with the “legacy” credits. -also 2 less legendaries than they used to launch with!)
All this to say, I understand the need to move to a new revenue model for Free-to-Play Live Service. I expected changes and more premium style items, a shop, and no boxes due to legal issues in some countries as well.
But the thing is, this model is extremely unfriendly even with that open mindset.
The Battle Pass is of semi-decent value(several skins, emotes, a custom skin per season, for 10$), but you cannot earn premium currency back on the premium track. This is a standard feature in BP designs across many Live Service games today. Another potential reason to not want to buy, play or invest time.
You could buy a BP in another game, and enjoy spending the premium currency you earned back on potential cosmetics, or the next BP. Ideally, you’d make really good cosmetics so people would want to spend on that, and have to buy a BP again, which gives it more value, as you can earn back spendable premium currency to use how you please, or get another BP. Incentive and reward.
It also takes about 5mo or two and a half seasons of regular play per week(assuming your average 50-OWC per week) to earn enough for a premium BP. I am not saying give away the damn BP, but earning the premium currency is so unrewarding, it feels intentionally designed to make regular players feel bad, and throw money at the game in order to feel gratified, because they essentially can’t earn rewards for playing anymore.
The shop design is worse. Legendary skins alone are priced at 1900OWC. A ~20$USD value. At a rate of 50OWC per week, a new OW2 legendary skin would take you 9.5 months to earn. I guess people who played since launch maybe knew they’d potentially like a skin in the season 5 shop rotation; for a support hero they wouldn’t know about for 6 months, from s4, like say Cleric Lifeweaver(an actually great skin!). If they earned their 50OWC per week, this would be the very first shop legendary they could earn since launch.
Even crazier and uglier design, the store has a rotation system, so you can’t buy OW2 skins unless they’re in rotation. This is intended to push people to spend money lest they might not get a chance to earn the skin for the hero/s they like in time(9mo to earn, and the skin might not even rotate in lol) because you cannot buy things for individual characters in the shop. So, lord knows when your Cleric Lifeweaver will return, I hope you earned enough every single week since launch!
The “For You!” tab is hilarious too, I’d expect given we have a rotating shop, it’d be stuff I don’t own for my top 5 characters. It isn’t. For the past 8 weeks my For You tab has been entirely populated by bundles of seasonal content from OW1, all of which I own except for the one skin in the all of the bundles, and all of the bundles are populated by Torbjorn, one of my bottom-ten played heroes. “For You”.
Many of these bundles created to populate the rotating shop are things I own the majority, if not all of.
So- Extremely exorbitant cosmetic prices, a limited rotation shop- that is populated by generically generated content bundled up from years ago, for heroes(or a hero in my case) I don’t play.
The shop, and earning cosmetic are hideous, unrewarding, and don’t incentivize me to play or decide I’m okay with putting some money in at any point in time. Mind you, I buy characters and cosmetics in DBD all the time. It’s because I get to play to earn them too, or get rewarded for spending on the BP, and really cool cosmetics I want to buy- don’t cost nearly as much.
I don’t know how others feel, but this user experience makes me play less than I used to, and I don’t want to spend actual money on content, even if I like it.
)
