One of the biggest issues I’ve always had with unobtainable skins is that they are unfair to people who haven’t even begun playing up or for whatever reason couldn’t be playing Overwatch at the time. As time goes by the amount of people who own Overwatch will go up, but the amount of unobtainable skins will continue to increase. It is only going to become a bigger problem over time.
I think that all overwatch skins past, present and future should be obtainable with perhaps some special challenges to obtain them.
Can you name me a live-service game (that has digital cosmetics to some extent) that does offer all of its cosmetics at all times? To my knowledge I do not believe there is a game currently online that does this.
I have said in the past that I honestly don’t mind if most cosmetics that have appeared for Overwatch returns at some point or another. We have seen this happen with recent Overwatch League legendary skins this Summer. However there are a few skins that more or less celebrate a special event that commenmorate it and it does make sense that they do not return. Such skins are:
Pink Mercy (it was a limited-time run and because of that it raised over twelve-million dollars, a goal that may not have been achieved in the same time if it was made permanently available)
Kerrigan Widowmaker - This was a freebie-giveaway for logging into Overwatch during the 20th Anniversary celebration
Bastion and Winston BlizzCon skins - The earlier skins from 2016 and 2017 celebrated BlizzCon and are specifically branded to BlizzCon. Jeff Kaplan once confirmed on the old forums that these would never return
Noire Widowmaker - This is the pre-order reward. A thanks for investing in the game before its release. Pre-order items really have no business returning to be collected again in my opinion.
Now I do believe some skins like the weekly challenges during seasonal events or the 12-day challenges for mini-promotions should have a chance to return, and this is because I know some players may not be able to spend time on a certain week to play Overwatch. I myself had to juggle some weeks because I was busy with other tasks (especially when I was in college). If a skin is around for say, a month… that might be more fair for all players to have a fair chance to earn it, but I would support seeing skins like these returning.
Also note, there are some skins out there that very few people have at all. For example, some players do have every single Overwatch Contenders Home and Away skin, but the trick is that player did actually compete in Contenders (its one of the benefits of making it that far up the path-to-pro). There are even skins that we know exist but they are not available as cosmetics in the game (such as the World Cup team skins).
That I can recall no. Its unfortunate that most online games do this, but I still think it is bad with a few exceptions which I will explain shortly.
Pink Mercy (it was a limited-time run and because of that it raised over twelve-million dollars, a goal that may not have been achieved in the same time if it was made permanently available)
This one could easily make a comeback. Now I don’t know how the whole process of getting a fundraiser like this working is, but I would think that something like this could be done yearly similar to holidays and this could raise even more money for breast cancer awareness.
Kerrigan Widowmaker - This was a freebie-giveaway for logging into Overwatch during the 20th Anniversary celebration
It is yes, but I don’t think it should have been. They could have given us some lootboxes as a reward or maybe it could be a reward for an achievement of some kind.
Bastion and Winston BlizzCon skins - The earlier skins from 2016 and 2017 celebrated BlizzCon and are specifically branded to BlizzCon. Jeff Kaplan once confirmed on the old forums that these would never return
These are kind of the exception. These Blizzcon skins don’t offer much we didn’t already have and are very symbolic of a specific event. What I have an issue with is when there are unobtainable skins with very cool unique themes that are basically just unobtainable unless you were playing at the time. Good examples are the roadhog midas skin and snowman skin, the Dr.Zeiger out for mercy, a huge offender is the illidan genji skin.
Noire Widowmaker - This is the pre-order reward. A thanks for investing in the game before its release. Pre-order items really have no business returning to be collected again in my opinion.
The noire widowmaker skin is not that extreme of a change from default widowmaker so its not that huge of a deal to me. But like with Kerrigan Widowmaker, it could have easily been a different kind of reward.
Also note, there are some skins out there that very few people have at all. For example, some players do have every single Overwatch Contenders Home and Away skin, but the trick is that player did actually compete in Contenders (its one of the benefits of making it that far up the path-to-pro). There are even skins that we know exist but they are not available as cosmetics in the game (such as the World Cup team skins).
Thats also fair. As those skins are usually designed in a very symbolic way and I don’t think they are distinct enough to raise a big issue.
Which Skin are you missing or want to obtain? As there are many and I mean many games that has legacy skins that was a limit time only.
The 3 skins I most want that aren’t obtainable right now are the Midas Roadhog, Snowman Roadhog and Illidan Genji skins. Might have some of the names off. Just guessing based on how hey look or what I have loosely heard. Many of the other ones I am aware of are for characters I normally wouldn’t use or just am not interested in as much, but I know there are many who would.
Not available all year, but most games definitely have special event or limited time skins that come back around a few times per year. They’re f2p games though so gotta pay for them or in Paladins case you gotta pay for rng and then cry because you didn’t get the one you wanted.
That said, I do agree with OP. Think challenge skins should be obtainable for free during the challenge week via participation and then go away for a year, and then either become obtainable through in game gallery coins, or as a repeat event to earn it during those long weeks of nothing in between new events.
Rarity makes certain skins more special and valuable
I’ll give a good example. In original Destiny 1, they gave all players during the first year an old guard shader. It was a black and gray tiger stripe pattern that you could put on your armors
You could not get it after that 1st year. It was a special “thank you” cosmetic to signify someone supporting them during the very beginning of the franchise
I don’t think you’d find many people wanting it to come back during the game’s end of life in year 5 or whatever and suddenly you have everyone wearing it after playing the game for 5 minutes instead of needing to have supported the game during it’s beginnings
That’s one skin though, and similar to Noire Widow or Pink Mercy, I get that. That’s fair. But OW has so many of those skins. Every event comes with three now, plus the random weekly ones.
Now imagine being a new player 5 years in and seeing all these skins you can never obtain. It’s a bit demoralizing to a newcomer. Punished for only getting the game now when maybe it was too expensive in the past or they were too young to play it.
Most live service games are gonna be like this to be honest. Paladins is far worse
But OW is slowly making steps to helping this. They recently brought back some premium skins like Atlantic Mercy and GOAT Brig among others for a round 2 bc ppl missed out on first go-around
And speaking of Paladins, they sometimes temporarily unvault old legacy skins for no reason. I was so over-joyed when I finally got my hands on Rave Maeve
Isnt paladins selling all the battlepass skins after pass is done? What else skins they locking away? (at least before i remember it doing it this way)
While I hate things being locked behind timed exclusives, paywalls or both. My main complaint with this is OW barely puts out any content at all.
The dev’s struggle to put out 5-6 skins every few months for the events with nothing but OWL skins between that in most cases. To take what few skins they release and make them a limited time offer is just… pathetic. Sure there is a sense of fear of missing out at play that probably boost sales to a degree.
But you can’t tell me that FOMO numbers out weights all possible future sales for things like the Pink Mercy skin. Let it be a year long exclusive or something like the Sombra Demon hunter skin. Long as your upfront about it when first sold I don’t think any one really have a problem.
I haven’t played in forever but I just remember nearly half the skins for characters I played being locked away, like they’ll say “only available in the 2017 disco extravaganza event” or something
It’s gotten worse. It used to be mostly the Pre-order bonus skins, the ones locked behind the gold ultimate edition of the game and then Blizz Con skins.
But now they have those weekly mini event skins once in a while that are also exclusive on top of the OWL skins which until recently were a one time thing as well. Oh and the Pink Mercy skin which was just a flat out skin for cash deal.
Pretty sure nearly a third of the skins in the last year or two have been timed exclusives.
It’s worse only in that it’s totally rng and you need to pay, but its a f2p so I kinda understand that. Gotta make money somehow. And the skins do come back, even when it says limited edition, like you said they just randomly throw the players a bone. Dire Wolf Tyra was that for me and after wanting it for like a year and a half, I finally got it.
And now more than anything I want Bastet Ana. Yet OW want to keep their skins locked up tight for some reason when they can give people a reason to play instead, even if a mediocre reason, it might draw some people back into the game if they at least have something they wanted become available again.
Yeah, it was a weekly challenge back when I was a Tracer main and didn’t care and was playing other games so didn’t get the wins needed for it. Guess who’s an Ana main now?
