Thought I had said it here, but it must have been in a different thread. I thought of a way to get Pink Mercy back, as well as almost every limited time skin.
Running charities is a well established policy within Blizzard. For years, now, WoW has had mount + pet combos in the shop that run for charity for a limited time, and then remain there with the profits for them. I will not EVER advocate for a real money shop within Overwatch; there’s enough already with the ability to buy loot boxes and League tokens, BUT!
Since Blizzard has this history with running charities, let’s say run a second Breast Cancer Awareness charity, and they create a Pink Pharah/Tracer/Zarya/Widowmaker/etc skin for it. If that were to happen, Pink Mercy could also be available for those who missed it.
Now, let’s say they run a different charity. Just to play the opposite, let’s say it’s about Testicular Cancer Awareness (as Deadpool’s TV spots). Then they could add a Royal Blue (that’s the ribbon for testicular cancer) Reaper/Reinhardt/Soldier/Junkrat/etc. In that scenario, Pink Mercy could also be re-attainable.
In this spirit, the same can be done with League skins: Every time a new pair of All-Stars, a new MVP or a new Champions skin skin is released, the old ones become available for purchase once again; in the same spirit as seasonal skins.
Following this train of thought, old Challenge skins could appear in Lootboxes every time there’s a challenge running (and since challenges only last one week and the lootbox drop is random, maybe the skins could be available for one extra week afterwards)
That was the original idea, I don’t know where I left it, but I repeated it in my Skins we must have! thread. And now I’ve got a second idea, while rambling about the shop loot boxes. What if they added a “Limited Lootbox” that guarantees one limited time skin, similar to the one Legendary Lootbox we get during at anniversary events? This lootbox would contain any and all limited time skins from the past: League’s All-Stars Genji, Lúcio, Mercy and Tracer, MVP Jjonak’s Zennyata, Champion Winston, Gray generic League skins; Challenge’s D.Va, Ana and Baptiste; BlizzCon’s Bastion and Winston (not Sombra, since it was promised that skin would be available, hence it kinda belongs in the regular lootbox); Crossover legacy skins like Kerrigan Widowmaker, etc, as well as any and every new limited time skin.
For the system not to be abused (I wait until the event is over and then I get the lootbox which guarantees the skin) I can think of two possibilities:
#1 The one I like the least, the box is as pricey as the skins themselves: Let’s say USD 15 since that’s what Pink Mercy cost.
#2 The one I like the most, every particular skin is added to the lootbox pool exactly one year after it became unavailable, and while pricier than the regular lootboxes, they aren’t that expensive