We’re currently in our third season of the game’s second year. After the pretty disastrous year 1 of overwatch 2, and after seeing how good the past few seasons were, it’s pretty clear to me that we’re in the middle of a redemption arc right now. The arc really started during season 6, the final season of the game’s first year, but going into this second year that momentum has been carried
The core new maps and heroes are just as good as they ever were. Mauga isn’t personally my cup of tea, but I see why people would like him and his kit is very healthy for the game. We also got Venture coming up soon, whose kit looks way more interesting than the last dps hero we got, and space ranger coming later this year, whose design is phenomenal. The samoa map is also leagues above the control map we got last year.
Then there’s the balance which is better, faster, and more adventurous than ever before. Mauga was patched more aggressively at launch than any other hero in the game’s history receiving 3 balance changes by the midpoint of his launch season (there was actually supposed to be a 4th but it got cancelled because of a combination of technical issues and the holidays). This is great compared to the old mentality of just letting the hero be OP and ruin the game for a full month. Then there’s quickplay hacked, a massive improvement on the old experimental card which turns the experiments into a gamewide event rather than an optional side mode. And these experiments are much more interesting than most of the old experimental patches, with bold changes like faster objectives and respawn times. And bold changes like this are also coming to the live game too, with the recent patches containing both a new dps passive which obliterates the support powercreep, and the hitbox changes which make it that pretty much every hero is accessible to every player and make it feasible for heroes with large variance in player accuracy to be more balanced the future
Finally the seasonal content is much better than it was last year. The battlepass is nearly all themed skins now, and the few skins that aren’t are still usually really good like the 10/10 Ringmaster Winston and Ramen Bastion skins we got this season. This is a far cry from a year ago when in season 2 they only had 3 themed skins in the battlepass and the rest were the leftover trash they knew wouldn’t sell in the shop like gardener ana or urchin tracer. In fact the shop to a certain degree was abandoned, only receiving one skin this season that wasn’t a recolor. There will also be collab skins added later in the season, but those will probably at least be in a highly discounted bundle like the last two collabs. Fewer $19 skins in the game is a win in my book. As for the pitiful seasonal event rewards of last year, they managed to fix them in Winter Wonderland with the event pass, which let f2p players choose from 1 of 3 skins that were all really good, and let premium players unlock up to 4 skins for a reasonable price, and there was also an system where even if you were premium you couldn’t unlock everything so you had to budget your rewards which made it more engaging, and they even thought to include a failsafe option for the small handful of players who really needed to unlock everything, really great to see them combatting FOMO. There’s also a battlepass rework coming this year which has similar plans to reduce FOMO and make it more engaging
On the non-cosmetic side of the seasons are the event modes. Despite Trials of Sanctuary, Cosmic Crisis, and Concert Clash mode all having a strict player roster determined by the related skins, they actually managed to design the modes around these limitations without having the glaring balance issues we saw in Olympus, Starwatch, and Prop Hunt last year. The PvE modes now have some form of replayability built in, whether it be hero-specific upgrades or light social game elements in the form of a secret traitor system. These modes just feel more creative conceptually too. Olympus was fun but it’s still just deathmatch with a few themed balance changes, but now we got stuff like two giant orisa’s battle each other and you have to heal/damage them while dodging their attacks, or a PvE mode that partially turns into PvP midway through. I feel the theming on events is a bit better too. Starwatch was the only mode last year that really blew me away with theming, but this year Concert Clash and Cosmic Crisis already did the same.
Now I’m not saying the game is perfect, even this season there were clear negatives like the shrinkflation to the battlepass and ultimate bundle, letting heroes like Widowmaker and Zen be insane at launch, and the cartoonishly bad FOMO-exploiting ultra-grindy jade guns. But the fact of the matter is that during last May we thought they were planning to put the game into life support mode by the end of 2023, while today it feels like we’re getting to the point where an eventual Overwatch Renaissance is a possibility
