50,000 reviews now. It’s a shame, I used to play OW1 a lot even after they stopped providing new content for it. Came to OW2 and I just couldn’t be arsed to grind for characters I don’t have unlocked. You need to win 35 games, and since there’s a basically forced 50% winrate that means you need to play 70 games to unlock a character each time. Wanted to play Ramattra, saw he’s locked, uninstalled and didn’t look back. The monetization is terrible. The balance feels worse than it’s ever been.
This wouldn’t be such a problem if they didn’t literally SHUT DOWN OVERWATCH 1 to shove people into the cash shop grind sequel
I know next to nothing about neither Ow1 or OW2, but from the sound of it they turned OW2 into a game focused on grinding, where you can pay to skip (part of) the grind. Is my assessment correct? If so they must’ve looked at War Thunder and taken that idea.
Yes. OW1 cost money, but you got all the content. The only paid service was cosmetic outfits for the different characters. You could buy loot boxes for cosmetics. But you had all of the characters, maps, game modes, etc available to begin with. You got the whole game, then could grind for cosmetics.
OW2 takes that and flips it on its head. The game is free, but each character costs money. The problem is that they shut down OW1, so now the players who owned 1 are having to grind for everything. They’ve also had some weird server bugs, with players getting indefinitely locked out of characters they already own.
Wait. I bought overwatch 1 but stopped playing a few years ago. If I go back into overwatch I would have to grind for characters that I used to previously have access to?
Yep. The gameplay itself has no p2w or grinding in general, but now you have to grind to unlock characters. In OW1 you also used to get showered with cool cosmetics just for playing, in OW2 they turned it into a paid battle pass and a rotating cash shop where a single skin costs like $20 and F2P users get basically nothing. The thing is set up in a way to scam whales by selling them things that used to be free for hundreds of dollars.
I would still play if it were just cosmetics but now every time a hero releases you have to grind to unlock them.
Does that mean that it I were to start playing again I wouldn’t have my unlocked skins form OW1?
Not at all. Theres no grinding in overwatch (1 or 2), at least in the traditional sense like you’d experience in an rpg. You just queue up into a multiplayer lobby and lock a character.
There are a ton of valid points to be critical about with OW2 and it’s new business model. One aspect that could be considered grindy is that new heroes are locked behind battle pass progression unless you buy the premium battle pass (in which case you unlock them early). I disagree with this practice, as it is the only aspect of PvP gameplay that is locked behind a paywall to get it sooner. Everyone should just automatically get new heroes imo.
In terms of the core gameplay, OW2 pvp is vastly improved when compared to OW1; they went from 6v6 to 5v5, eliminating one tank per team composition, so now it’s 1 tank, 2 support, 2 dps. This allows for much better feeling, fast paced, dynamic gameplay when compared to the late days of 6v6 - which was basically a shield shooting simulator with way too much CC. The game actually feels great to play again.
There’s for sure a ton of valid criticisms to levy against the game, but 99% of the hate circlejerk comes from people who haven’t played since 2017 if ever.
Yeah it’s a wonder to me why anyone would ever continue to play overwatch 2. 1 was fun for a time and I played a single match of 2 to realize that they ruined the game and never went back. The game died when 1 was shut down because 2 was never going to be successful with how shit it is.
Fuck everyone that played OW2
How stupid do you have to be to see this train wreck coming and still contribute.
Hopefully after OW2 and Diablo 4, people finally stop downloading Blizzard games.
I personally have no problem with the monetization, but the balance is really, really bad.
Yeah, but honestly I don‘t think it ruins the game. Sure, it’s not the best idea, but I don‘t care too much. I actually care more about the fact that the gameplay currently sucks and is completely different to Overwatch 1. 5v5 and the overall balancing sucks.
So don’t? You get the new hero like a month or so later then. I haven’t put a dime into ow since I bought it. You don’t need the cosmetics. Let the dumb whales fund the game.
Good. They ruined the game. I paid for it and Now I need a battle pass to unlock the 2 champs? Blizzard, eat a sack of shit. Free Hong Kong. Fuck the CCP
Uh. You don’t need to pay for the pass to unlock the new heroes. They’re at the end of the free tier, and in the following seasons there’s an easy street set of achievement-based challenges to unlock older new heroes.
So you don’t have to pay for the heroes, but you will get them a month or so later than the paying players.
I mean it’s a huge downgrade from OW1 where they were available the moment they launched, but it’s easier than getting your desired weapon in tf2.
They are referring to the Blitzchung incident, when China illegally took full control over Hong Kong before their agreement to let it be autonomous expired. During the mass protests a Hong Kong esports player voiced support for the protests on a Blizzard livestream for an event and was banned from the tournament and was forced to forfeit prize money he already won: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitzchung_controversy
Edit: also, disapproval of the CCP =/= dislike of/racism towards Chinese people
So there’s a problem with the American company freely associating with who they want to? That’s anti-free market!
There’s no need to shoehorn in your dislike of Chinese people into this video gaming story.
Strawman flame-bait everyone. Please ignore.
Account was only made two hours ago and is immediately saying provocative things… 🤔 Totally not a troll.
Not to be crass but
Now I need a battle pass to unlock the 2 champs?
Wasn’t this known before the game came out? Why would you buy the game if you knew this was going to be the case?
OW2 is free, they’re probably referring to buying OW1 only for them to shut it down and rerelease the same exact game but with battlepass characters.
Okay but we got like 5 years of free updates for OW1. If they had an option to play 6v6 and locked out the new characters, that would basically be “the game you paid for”.
I mean, I hate the 5v5 too, but I can’t say I didn’t get my money’s worth for OW1.
unlike Baldur’s Gate 3, absolutely everything about this game was designed specifically with microtrans in mind
Oh my God, you can’t just say microtrans. The proper terminology is “gender dysphoric little person”
Actually that’s the wrong use of that word in this context. It’s actually a “queer questioning point of sale system” he’s talking about.
No no no thats also wrong, it stands for micro transmission. Ya know for small vehicles.
https://www.pcgamer.com/how-blizzards-reputation-collapsed-in-just-3-years/
Blizzard used to be great. Now they are awful.
As it fucking deserved, honestly.
Fuck Blizzard, shutting down OW1. Pieces of shit.
Good, they absolutely fucking butchered the game just to sell cosmetics and heroes.
Say what you will about the monetization strategy - there are a lot of valid criticisms to make - but the changes made to the core gameplay with OW2 and moving to 5v5 made the game infinitely better to play.
5v5 with reduced CC and shields >>>> late stage OW1
Hard disagree. Late stage OW (post 2020) was pretty balanced after they nerfed double shield. Now the game is too chaotic and more dependent on DPS than it ever has been. Also they seemed to have doubled down on burst damage and one-shot heroes, I want to shoot whoever thought Soujourn was a fun addition.
I played OW1 as my main game from launch to 2-3 years ago. I came back for OW2 then quit again after a month or two…but…
Late stage OW fuckin sucked, man. If you were a tank player who didn’t play hog you were basically solo tanking the whole game while your co-tank (hog) went flanking. Things may have been different in top ranks but the It was absolutely the least fun era of OW1 for me.
OW2 at launch was an unbalanced mess for sure but things felt great after the sojourn nerf. Every character is viable for like the first time ever.
There were decent metas for sure after double shield got nerfed, but the game just feels better with 1 tank imo. Teamfight wins are more consequential and fights don’t drag on as long. There’s more space opened up for solo carrying.
A criticism I have is that tank counter picking has become more powerful than I would like.
I can’t imagine going back to 6v6 anymore. The trade offs are super worth it imo.
PS yeah Sojourn was busted for way too long. She’s in a pretty good spot now though. They also dialed back Widow’s effective range and obviously got rid of doom 1shots.
Late stage OW1 meta was double shield, the worst meta. Also they removed Sojourns oneshot
Stop with the bad takes. If they actually worked on anything during the OW1 content drought that didn’t just make em a quick buck, we might have gotten a better experience. Someone higher up saw the dwindling player base and went with the cheapest and laziest way to squeeze a couple extra bucks from what’s left.
There was so much that could have been done to bring people back, but each time they’ve either done the literal least, lied, or axed it.
They went 5v5 cause it was the choice that had the least work required to get people to tank, but now if your tank is bad you’re pretty much going to lose. They could have kept 6v6 and reworked all the tanks kits.
Blizzard has made every choice so far that says Overwatch is going to be sunset. It’s sad to see something as great as OW1 turn into what it is now. Especially when there’s a lot that can be done to fix it the right way.
Makes me wonder how the current dev team feels about everything that’s happened and how they really feel about the decisions being made currently. Cause Invasion is pretty mediocre so far.
I’ll join you in downvote land. I wholly agree.
Playing tank the last 2 years of OW1 was fucking miserable. I exclusively played tank since season 3 but it made me quit. I’ve put OW2 down, too, but yeah…gameplay wise it got fun again (once they nerfed sojourn).
Whole lot of rose-tinted glasses about balance in OW1. Who the fuck was having fun in the Hog meta besides Hog players? And HOW LONG did that last? Part of that is because they diverted devs to OW2 but every balance change they made to make tanking more fun was a failure outside of giving Rein his passive.
OW2 is slightly worse than year one OW1 but so much better than the bullshit in late OW1. Am I gonna play it again? Hell no. But do I think people are giving honest reviews about the actual gameplay? Also no.
I’m morally opposed to their mtx model but it didn’t affect me as I never cared about skins. The thing that really made me quit was that f2p brought in a ton of young people and it became obvious that I was no longer the target demographic.
Removing a tank completely ruined the balance of the game. There’s no reduced CC, infact they added more. Shields was the only main problem, but they could have tried splitting tanks into main/off tank roles to stop double shields, but the whole freedom is what was great about the game, the game started going downhill when they added Sombra, then fell off a cliff with Orisa. They were adding new heroes for the sake of it and not because the game needed it and that is what fucked it.
The design philosophy now is to try and make every character feel strong to play no matter how horrible they are to play against, so people will buy skins for them (or buy the new heroes).
They objectively did reduce CC. All the biggest examples off CC were removed or nerfed heavily, like Cassidy’s flash, Brigs bash and Sombras hack/emp.
Reduced CC and barriers were good but 5v5 makes the game too swingy and puts too much pressure on the tanks.
Disagree. More room to turn fights with individual plays from all roles imo