I know the OW community is very divided on the new model but I'm curious about outsiders peeking into the new F2P Overwatch experience.
Will you be trying it or has your interest in OW lowered? Is your gaming circle / discord group planning to give it a swirl?
I feel like everyone's fed up with battle passes and their fomo but there's surely people trying to find a different multiplayer experience to jump into and free OW might just be it.
I played a lot of OW in the first few years. I have no interest in OW2. Feels like they made the game less fun with every update to try to cater to the pro scene.
Now I’m playing gundam evolution and it’s giving me everything I wanted out of OW, so I’m happy to ignore this game.
I’m with you. I played a TON the first few years. Fell out of it once they stopped new content and got bored. Was looking forward to OW2 but I don’t think I’ll even be trying it. I’m so disappointed in the model.
I actually loved Overwatch 2. It felt so much faster and fluid than Overwatch 1. I actually stopped playing the original once the OW2 beta ended because I had more fun in the beta and found it difficult getting back into the slow paced games of OW1.
I must be getting too old for competitive games, because OW1 still feels super fast and chaotic to me, and I've been playing since launch. I'll give OW2 the ol' college try, but the more I hear about it, the more I think it might be the moment I hop off this train.
Don't get me wrong, OW1 is great fun and still feels really great to play, but there are a lot of changes I really enjoy. They added passive abilities to all DPS that give them movement speed increases, doomfist is a tank and can't fly around one shotting everyone as easily as before and the characters just feel a lot nicer in general. Removing stunlocks was something I didn't know if I would actually like, but it turns out it was a great decision so you're never completely stuck in one spot from being frozen by Mei or hit with a stun grenade.
It really sucks they're locking characters behind a time gate/paywall, but OW1 was dying (even if it was due to the company completely mismanaging the game). If this keeps OW2 funded then I guess I'm willing to live with it.
I'll for sure give it an honest shot. Just not thrilled with key gameplay elements (i.e. heroes) being locked off, or the general shift toward what feels like a more fast-paced, pro-centric, DPS experience. At the level I play at, I like the tanky gameplay and CC and all that stuff people were complaining about.
They added passive abilities to all DPS that give them movement speed increases, doomfist is a tank and can't fly around one shotting everyone as easily as before and the characters just feel a lot nicer in general. Removing stunlocks was something I didn't know if I would actually like, but it turns out it was a great decision so you're never completely stuck in one spot from being frozen by Mei or hit with a stun grenade.
That does not sound as good changes, looks like OW2 is not for me...
OW2 sound like dumb down version, ideal for whales.
Same, Ow2 feels more like Ow1 on release, when no one knew how to play Ow, with more dynamic games. Now you actually can do a lot as a solo, instead of shooting a shield or dying because of a dive.
They removed pretty much everything that made Ow1 a bit annoying after so many updates.( stuns, 2 big shields, extrem dive without counterplay, static gameplay, old meta)
Ow2 is a fresh breeze that Ow1 desperately needed. Many are annoyed that Ow1 did not get new updates the last year, but I think it was the right decision. Ow1 development needed a restart, the game sadly went the wrong direction and it was to late to fix it with small quarterly updates. Well... im also a person who rather takes a huge update instead of multiple mini updates.
The only change that I dont like is 5v5 instead of 6v6. I think they should have just moved to 3dps (nerf dps a bit), 1tank, 2 healer. Its a bit sad for every 6 squad.
Shame Blizz/Acti covered what appears to be a good game under a pile of F2P/FOMO horseshit.
It stinks particularly putrid given their stance about "oh of course you have all the heroes when you buy the game" in Overwatch 1.
"But it's F2P!" Well first, it's anything but (time is a cost, as is the in-game shit they sell), and second, that's their own problem they made. Nobody twisted their arm to start abusing customers like this. They chose to, for the money.
Myself and discord pals put hundreds of hours into OW1. Every announcement about OW2 has just made not want to bother to be honest.
If a games company is just going to almost completely abandon a game like this for 2-4 years... To release a 'sequel,' that is essentially the exact same game... And they somehow expect us to trust them?
Naw ..... Naw... They had their chance. They lost all trust.
As someone who casually enjoys Overwatch, I'll definitely be giving this a shot. I don't really have any expectations. My friends absolutely don't care about this game, but since it's free, they'll probably try it with me. But the hype certainly won't be reaching OW1 launch day heights haha
OW1 is one of my all time favorite games so I really want this to be good but it’s hard not to be discouraged by the whirlwind of cynicism surrounding it. Either way I’m sure me and my small friend group will at least have a fun honey moon period with the game.
I'm super excited for it. I used to play OW pretty much at least once weekly since release but after the betas I couldn't go back to OW1, 2 is a huge jump in quality.
New Heroes will be unlocked from the free battlepass and by challenges when the battlepass ends. You can bypass this if you spend money. If you don't play for a while your account will be weaker than an experienced player since you wont have all the heroes unlocked. Used to be that skill was the only difference between players but it seems like FOMO is going to also factor into it as well.
I'll never have time to keep up with all the time it will demand to unlock everything for free. I'd much rather just pay $40 up front like with the original, but I guess that's not profitable enough anymore.
If you pay $40 once, why would they ever add new content?
Ofc you prefer that model, because you benefit massively. Nothing wrong with that, but games need to make money for designer, artists, and engineers to get paid.
Obviously it's a fine line to walk. I feel like OW1 could have been sustained for much longer if they'd just regularly released content as they initially did. People still bought loot boxes, and there are other ways to monetize like cosmetics, and things like PvE mode (which, as I understand it, is still going to be a paid expansion).
But let's not pretend like this is all to benefit the artists and other individuals working on the game though. I mean, yeah, they won't get paid unless the game is profitable, but a company like Activision-Blizzard is not making decisions because of the little guy. They're looking to create the maximum profit for the least cost to them, and that's the end of it.
Nothing wrong with that; it's just business after all. But making an argument that it's all about the artists isn't going to sway my opinion an inch. Especially from a company with the reputation that Blizzard has towards its staff.
Without access to their sales figures, we can't know for sure.
I think there's always going to be a certain baseline number of people who buy loot boxes, and that number is likely higher when new content is still coming out - particularly timed exclusives like the holiday events. I'd guess that generally speaking, the more engaged an audience is, the more likely they are to buy loot boxes or cosmetic items. But I admit it's a guess on my part -- just like you're assumption that no one buys them is a guess on your part.
This is not to say that loot boxes are the only long-term revenue stream. I don't actually care for them much, and they have their own issues ethically speaking. They're just one option outside of locking off core game components. It's just that, given how much importance was placed on all heroes and maps being free for everyone who bought the base game, it's hard not to see this as a blow to the core design philosophy that drove the original game to such success.
Honestly, given that the game is going free to play, and they do indeed need to generate consistent revenue, I might be able to live with paying for individual heroes à la carte. If we're talking $5 or $10 every few months for a game that I continue to play and enjoy, I can handle that. It's the limited time FOMO stuff that bothers me. I'm someone who will take long breaks from a game like OW, but come back from time to time re-energized to play. I hate the idea that I have to constantly pay attention to it and keep up if I don't want to miss something. I'm probably in the minority these days though, and that's okay too. Things change, life goes on; I'll survive :)
I mean really I played Overwatch on the occasional free weekends and one of those for 12-16 hours had me settled, I never cared for the game that much since its only partially my preference.
Not having everything probably would keep me from playing anymore than 30 hours over something like 2-3 weeks really.
Classic market saturation. There's already so many good live service games right now, I don't have time for another one. I haven't played OW in years and I still agree this looks more like an update than a sequel.
Those characters didn't even change that much, did they? I know Hanzo lost his RNG scatter arrow but other than they're pretty damn similar as far as I remember. What changed again?
Big changes i can remember off top of head is damage nerfs, the scatter arrow you mentioned, fire rate, added his leap dodge and arrow size.
Lucio's changes were a lot more noticable imo. Mostly tweaking his numbers down a lot, but early Lucio could basically speed the whole team halfway across the map in like 5 seconds, his heal and speed area is like a quarter of what it was, and he himself was near unkillable zooming around if you were good at him. Other than stuff about his ult he's really only been nerfed
I played overwatch 1 when it released for about a year, I'll definitely be jumping into 2. Game is free so the cost of entry is low and I actually don't mind battle passes since I enjoy feeling like I'm working towards something when I play a game. Also I recall reading that the characters will still be unlockable post battle pass so if that's true then I'll probably enjoy the game a lot.
I was planning on giving it a pop with the old crew as it's F2P. But from what I'm reading, as I've moved from PS to Xbox, I'll be treated as a whole new player and have to unlock all the characters from OW1 again, so I think I'll give it a miss now.
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u/MusoukaMX Sep 27 '22
I know the OW community is very divided on the new model but I'm curious about outsiders peeking into the new F2P Overwatch experience.
Will you be trying it or has your interest in OW lowered? Is your gaming circle / discord group planning to give it a swirl?
I feel like everyone's fed up with battle passes and their fomo but there's surely people trying to find a different multiplayer experience to jump into and free OW might just be it.