I would be more than willing to buy a skin if this summer event ( and to extend the anniversary ) was not a huge let down.
I do fear for the future of events that concern us casuals, being neglected from this day forward. Giving money to something that might as well kill what brought me to this game is the last thing I want to do.
If find it comical that blizzards best content are what cost money 
Its still normal cosmetric for vanity purposes.
They are still not restricting maps or heroes, all of which is still freely available.
it was obvious at release when that glorified pr person jeff said they wouldn’t charge for maps and chars but purposely left out skins.
Honestly to me it just feels like you’re childish and you want all the skins for free. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with microtransactions and thats it
well in my view they are trying to have the game both an esport and a casual game and they are doing a poor job at both.
Something does need to change for OWL and player interaction. I loved OWL personally, but it did feel imposing at several points.
I think advertising in game got a little obnoxious. As stated in the OP, the screens were boring and unappealing. I think to remedy this Blizzard could advertise the OWL on the main screen at the start of a stage and the end. Between the first and last weeks, a small visual queue between these could alert players that OWL is streaming, but would be rather unobtrusive.
The title screen was also boring, showing preset heroes, simple stances in team colors. In addition to the thought above, give us something like the Genji Tracer screen now. Throw a little action in there between the teams a la Winter Wonderland snowball fight.
There are hundreds of watchers that have donated literally thousands of dollars over Twitch and I just don’t understand it. I don’t ever just freely give money (aside from actual donations) without getting something in return. And even the skins were too much man. At that, there really wasn’t any discount for purchasing skins en masse, which I thought was kinda crazy.
There are lots of ways to improve OWL, I just hope Blizzard takes some advice.
I really don’t understand the strong feelings people are having about these skins. They’re two skins. They’re cosmetics that have no impact on the game and they’re meant to be an extra reward for people who follow pro OWL. It’s not like these two skins replaced otherwise free content. They were created specifically for the All-Star weekend and they represent the Atlantic and Pacific divisions of that game (made up of OWL players). I don’t see anything wrong with making them solely purchasable with OWL tokens. I accumulated hundreds of them by watching the matches. I think the possibility of cool premium skins in the future is great. I bought the Mercy one because I thought it was awesome, not for the charity. If you like it and think it’s worth the money, great. Buy it. If not, then don’t. I don’t get it.
You’re right, although by buying the skin you supported them.
What reason is there to believe that these skins came at the expense of new content to the base game? They’re purely OWL skins. They’re for the two divisions of the OWL All-Star game.
The strong feeling is the lack of content in the game is made frustratingly more obvious when you add a paywall.
If this game was more active like Monster Hunter World on updates with contents, skins, and just more things to do then the pay wall would be less of an offender.
Those of us that have had the game since launch pretty much got everything to get and played modes to thousands if not ten thousands.
A hamster and same ol Lucio ball just ain’t gonna cut it imo. I have so many skins I personally don’t care. But I find it dumb and greedy for them to charge so much or worse wait til end of owl season when people spent tokens to tempt them to drop more money.
It’s just a DB move I expect from Activision not Blizzard. Guess Activision is rubbing off on them
And Blizzard skins are lazy. You want skins worth having? Play Smite. You get new taunts, jokes, voicelines, animations, effects, etc. Their skins go above and beyond to be awesome. Meanwhile Blizzard paywalls the bare minimum now.
Why is Gengu Pacific skin a fire skin anyway? Is pacific an ocean of lava or what?
Well, if you put it that way. Then sure it’s a different setting. But, not all players have the same mindset, and as consumers you have to see the sides of the coin. For some people, skins/emotes/voicelines are still essential; a part of the game (not just gameplay, aesthetics counts).
For those people, if they choose the Paywall, it’s like them saying: "Hey, hey, Blizzard Activision. I’m fine buying this $10-30 OW Lore or Comic exclusive to the Overwatch Leauge/All-star event!
Anyways, the actual thing to debate is whether this actions are Predatory or not. In my eyes, yes. Because of the following conditions and evolutions:
Those are bad apples/anti-consumer move. The fact that they lowered the skins from 300 to 200 OWL tokens means that they were testing waters.
Yep, keep alienating the customers with good contents and sure enough they’ll get hate… It’s good that they lowered the price from $15 to $10 (which seems to be a final move/primer towards paid contents). However it’s still a high bar, for a game with high player-base.
OWL standard skins are crazy for $5 a piece, and seeing that anykind of emotes or Legendary skins are basically 200 OWL tokens ($10) is a disaster. Best I can do is $2.99 and $ 7.99.
I agree that there should’ve been more notice about the skins being purchasable with OWL tokens. People might’ve saved them if they’d known that there’d be new skins offered in the future.
As far as the mentality related to the existence of the skins, though, I’m not sure that’s relevant. Whether or not people see the skins as OWL skins for OWL supporters doesn’t change the fact that that’s what they are. A lot of people don’t even seem to realize that they’re related to OWL at all and they just see content they can’t have without paying for it. I get that that would be frustrating, but not understand what the skins are for doesn’t justify misplaced outrage related to them.
so basically you complain about the “unfair paywall” but you do it anyways because you don’t mind paying for a cosmetic item… hmm
One big difference is Fortnite really only ever requires a single cash payment (for Save the World), after which you have essentially unlimited ability to farm V Bucks and earn skins. Get a season pass, that’s probably 6-7 free skins right there, and then between Pass VBucks and STW VBucks, you’ve got enough for another higher-tier skin or two per season. When you do make a purchase, too, it’s direct purchase (i.e. you buy V Bucks, then buy the item you want), so there’s no chance of you not getting your desired item.
By comparison, Overwatch has RNG lootboxes, and while you can also farm currency/lootboxes in Overwatch, the RNG does significantly exaggerate the grind. Moreover, in the event that you buy a lootbox and don’t get what you want, you either… buy more lootboxes, or grind more. This is on top of the $40-$60 price tag on the game, whereas Fortnite is free (or $40 with STW). And now, there are skins which legitimately cannot be obtained without either watching OWL or paying money.
The RNG element alone makes Overwatch’s mtx system substantially more predatory and consumer-unfriendly than Fortnite (also disregarding the large quantity of junk items like sprays and icons… Fortnite has these too, but not nearly to the same volume, and they also don’t crowd-out the loot pool b/c of the lack of RNG). Add in the OWL skins by which Blizzard is essentially self-promoting a league or asking for a financial substitute to viewership, and I don’t think it’s really at all fair to compare the two.
Because the pacific ocean is also home to the “ring of fire”.
I accept your apology.
I hate the state OW is going in.
It’s about time players start voting with their time and their wallets. Don’t like the state that the game is in? Don’t like the practices Blizzard is using? Don’t play the game. Don’t watch OWL. Don’t even use a Blizzard app/service (except maybe the forums) until it’s fixed/changed/better. There’s no reason to do anything except post on the forums about it once, attempt a discussion over it, then leave the game and come back every month or so to see if it’s better.
I’ve been doing that. I haven’t played the game since Brigitte hit comp. I was tired of what Blizzard was doing. Between false bans/suspensions in game and on the forums, Blizzard was shouting at me that they didn’t want me to be in the community. Blizzard was saying they didn’t want controversial opinions on the forums. Blizzard said to me that they didnt care about me.
Over 1k posts in 1.5 months but 1 of those posts gave me an instant suspension. Over 3k posts in 3 months but 5 of them were enough to put me up for a permanent ban. While that perma-ban got overturned (the reason was “insulting” blizzard), it was the last straw.
For the uninitiated, if you got a perma ban on the forums, a 1 week ban in game was also put on your account.
At that moment, as soon as I could, I uninstalled OW and any other Blizzard-related application on my computer.
Here’s the thing. I disagreed with what they were doing. I stopped playing. If enough players do this, Blizzard is going to have to do something. Right?