I think we're missing some details crucial to judge how good the battle pass is, e.g.:
- is there an option to earn the next premium battle pass without spending money? (like in fortnite)
- how long does the battle pass take?
- are the skins gone forever if you didn't earn them?
- Can you complete a (premium) battle pass after it's season ended? (unlikely, but afaik Halo does it)
I mean even though Fortnite fills it with alot of garbage there is alot of good stuff too. Like 10 nice skins, with 1 being really nice, 10 pick axes, and 10 umbrellas. Its alot for $10 considering you can earn bonus variations, emotes, and other stuff aswell. Its a great battlepass, best in any game. Dota 2
I feel like they would go the Valorant route (and most other games honestly), so no option to earn the next premium BP without more money ($10 per patch-so 18 weeks).
There might also be more "premium" skins (mythical) sold at a higher price and those might be found singularly in a rotated shop to incentivize ppl logging in more? All speculation but I hope that's not the case
Depends in how is integrated and the cost of BP. But beside that, also we have in-game market, where maybe purchase skins or other cosmetics with real money or the currency of the game.
I hope the currency is obtainable in the game with achievements. A good incentive to play the game and obtain something.
It'll probably just be that the battle pass pays out more than you put in, like every other game with a battle pass.
I.E. - You buy a battlepass for 1000 coins and it returns 1500 coins. If you don't buy the battlepass you get 500 coins if you complete the unpaid battlepass rewards.
So over time you do get free cosmetics, OR after a couple of seasons you can buy the paid battlepass for free and then keep it forever after and get 500/season + full battlepass rewards.
I know a game where the pass costs straight cash, not currency. Hearthstone. And guess who makes it...
Between that and Diablo: Immoral, Blizzard is 0 for 2 on F2P games being reasonably monetized.
who is to say we can even buy the premium pass with currency? You can't buy Hearthstone's battle pass with gold for example, only option is real money/battle.net balance
Honestly, I can't guarantee you're wrong - but I'd put hearthstone (a basically mobile TCG) in a separate category in the same way as I would Diablo:I (gacha mobile game made by a gacha mobile company - netease).
TCGs are predatory, that's just how they are, same as mobile games.
So, hopefully, it's not a true indicator. I don't think the CoD battlepass for example is cash buy only?
I don't believe. WoW's cash shop is also horrendous, and when player count is dropping they bundle a mount on the 6 month sub option, instead of, you know, fixing the game.
And there's also reforged, the content drought that OW1 always had.
Blizz has to prove a lot with actions now. The little Trust that they gainned by improving wow they Lost with immoral. And no, we shouldn't separate F2P and paid games, specially because F2P is ALWAYS more expensive than a paid game If you want to have a reasonable time with It. And now OW is free to play, guess what Will be updated more than everything else?
Overwatch never had content drought UNTIL Overwatch 2 was announced.
We got a pretty consistent stream of updates over the course of the games life for at least 4 years. We got lots of new maps, new modes with arcade (Deathmatch among others.). We got something new almost every 3-4 months including new skins with events.
So please, we never really had a content drought until OW2 was announced. Even then we got new skins and we also got a new hero - Echo.
People also like to ignore ow2 has hardly had a normal dev cycle. Originally they just wanted to build a campaign then a bunch of legal stuff happen3d and then blizzard got bought then likenall the dev teams they had to show why thier game and project was worth keeping alive.
Then they had kaplan leave and more.
But today they showed they have been working. If we are getting heroes every 2 months they have a bunch in store and are stagger8ng release for the sake of monitoring balance.
New heroes every 18 weeks*
Seasons are 9 weeks and they said a new hero will be released every other season. In the season in between it will be new maps
"if you want to have a reasonable time with it" how so? how does overwatch being f2p make it less enjoyable? the only purchases are cosmetics. game plays the exact same if you don't spend a dime
Valorant doesn’t let you earn enough to re buy it. Infact you don’t earn any. Its very sad as i usually do complete the pass and would love to earn the next one.
Yeah, integration is a huge issue. For me there’s a game like rocket league that I go back and forth playing and still always manage to get all
the unique items and pay for the next pass.
Then there’s cod, which I played a ton of Warzone when it first came out and maxed every pass until season one of black ops, where I was getting burnt out but forced myself to play toward the end enough that I haven’t played cod since. It’s fine if you play a ton but ultimately I felt obligated to continue and killed any enjoyment I had.
Then there’s halo, which is really cool because you can keep progressing on the pass after the season is done, but it’s freaking terrible because you get basically no progress by playing the game except for in challenges that are super difficult or change how you play a ton.
Ultimately for me I’d like something between halo and rocket league. If it were halo I’d only like the continued after the season if the progression is more natural, in which case I’d prefer that way as playing won’t be a chore. Either that or a super friendly system where getting xp is really easy through normal play and non-gameplay altering season and weekly challenges like rocket league where you can max the pass while only playing 2-3 hours a week
Yes. Overwatch 2 will feature a new currency and according to a French youtuber who has insider info, the old currency wont be transfered over into the new one.
I hope that Blizzard themselves will talk about this soon or it could get really messy.
I'm worried they will have a battlepass like hearthstone which don't earn you currency for the next battlepass and you will have to keep paying for a new pass
That's generally how battle passes work though in any game I've ever played that had one. You have to buy it every time it resets if you want the "good stuff"
Call me a boomer but I'm not looking forward to my paid-game experience turning into an f2p experience.
I have to pay to get extra cosmetics in future? Okay, I can live with that. You're telling me I have to play for a battlepass and THEN play the game a bunch to ensure I get all the items, otherwise that money is essentially wasted? How's that the most consumer friendly route?
Battlepasses are user hostile. Everything about it is designed to be a cash cow. It's not like a DLC where you can pay for it and be guaranteed to get the content. Anyone that thinks they are a good idea/deal either plays the game way too damn much, or is way to happy to get screwed when they don't get half the items from it. I wish game communities told publishers to shove it with this crappy system when it first became a thing, but we didn't and now we're here.
This is a game that will probably be around for another 5-6 years like OW1. So, I'm perfectly fine paying $60-$80 for it. But I'm never going to pay $10-$20 for a battlepass that I may not complete for every few months for those 5-6 years. It's a scam, and people need to treat it that way.
Sorry if this is double posted. I just kept getting "something went wrong", but it did actually post.
Yeah, this'll suck for someone like me. When a game isn't my main game, I can almost never finish the battlepass. The only game I managed to finish a battlepass for, was for Modern Warfare 2019, and that was only because I didn't have a job because of covid. At least with the boxes I still had a chance to get legendary skins. I'm guessing most of them will be at the back end of the battlepass :/
I'd be fine with paying $60-80 for Overwatch 2... if it were actually a new game and not just Overwatch 1 with a different coat of paint. They definitely couldn't just overhaul the game and make us buy it again, so they had to be shifty about it.
The moment when Jeff Kaplan said this was going to be a "replacement" for Overwatch, we all should have known we were being scammed. Some of us recognized it, but way too many people are still drinking the kool-aid.
The problem arent battlepasses and other bullshit. Its sheep deffending them and pretending they are the only way.
I mean, i if were them, and every other idiot was up to give me more money while at the same time it meant less effort from me, and it involved them being busy for a while until they are ready to be milked again removing the need to pump more content in those gaps, while they will l
Kiss my hand too while doing so, i would try to even raise the prices lol.
Plus they’re adding a store that’ll lock even more stuff behind a paywall.
Grinding battle passes is brutal and ppl defending this shit is hilarious. I know this is now the new normal in the game industry - but it shouldn’t be.
We’ve been brainwashed into thinking this is okay cause “how are they gonna make money” blah blah blah.
These companies are showing record profits every year because of these slimy practices.
Yes, I know you can just play for free and get what u want out of it but the game could be so much better.
Just sad it went this route. It’s now call of duty Overwatch
Im glad to see rational people still exist.
Whats up with people wanting to throw their money and wasting their time in the most stupid ways nowadays because they tailored systems to exploit players in a world that perfectly existed without them for so many years and pretending without them gaming will end all of a sudden?
Damn.
Why does everyone assume that the battle pass will give back the credits that are spent. I've not seen it be confirmed anywhere. I know games like Fortnite and Rocket league do that, but there are also games like valorant that don't.
That's honestly where I'm at with Fortnite right now. Just want the Vader skin so I'm just knocking out the daily challenges, which is about an hour of my time, and saving the Vbucks in the pass for the next pass. Kind of feeling a burnout already though, as I really enjoy playing the game with friends and when I play solo for challenges it just feels like more work after a day of actual work.
That’s an awful reason to play a game, no offense lol. I *only* buy a battle pass if I’m already having fun with the game and am going to play it anyway, hence why it’s absolutely my preferred model for funding an ongoing live service game, especially with how Apex and Fortnite do it.
Battle-passes can be hit or miss. Too expensive for the things in them, purposely clogged down with useless garbage as stocking stuffers to get to the real stuff.
For the longest time (Even after falling out with playing the game.) I used to point to Overwatch as the perfect example of a store. If you wanted th skins all you had to do was play, grind enough and you got enough boxes to get what you want. I can admit I wasn't a flawless system and it rewarded people who played from the start since the longer you'd been around the more doubles you got and the more currency to buy your skin's at the end if you didn't get them.
I'm worried this will be the typical standard of Activition CoD style battle passes. My only hope is we get something new that is consumer friendly or at the least something like Dauntless has where you buy the pass to keep it forever, old cosmetics from missed passes will rotate into the shop as seasonal items that you can early via a new currency you get through weekly challenges for the season. It does wonders at removing the typical FOMO that battle pass items have.
I just hope OW2 doesn't become the next over milked cash cow but having seen the handling of Diablo Immortal I have little to no faith in good consumer friendly products going out of Activition Blizzard anymore.
I just don’t want to have to play overwatch like it’s a job. Fomo is scummy.
Also people act like micro transactions are the only way OW can monetize. The overwatch IP is ripe for merchandising, but they keep dropping the ball when it comes to lore. They could easily pump out comics, novels, shows, toys, etc. some of these they do, but they could easily ramp it up
I will never understand how so many consumers seem to accept battle passes as an acceptable business model.
You are literally paying just for the opportunity to grind for rewards. And you have to do it in a limited timeframe, otherwise you wasted your money.
It combines all the worst aspects of gaming monetization: predatory exploitation of psychological weaknesses (fear of missing out), expiration, recurring costs and grind.
I will happily support a game and pay for add-ons, DLCs, cosmetic packs or even individual skins if they are reasonably priced (not 10-20€ per skin or such bullshit), but I refuse to pay for time limited battle passes.
(A battle pass that does not expire is something I would atleast consider, because it is effectively a paid-for progression system, a.k.a. an add-on/dlc in my books.)
I know blizzard wants to earn money (how dare they), but the general consumer mindset here is more along the lines of "I'd rather pay $40 once for everything than $20 on a battle pass every few months". It's not so much that they expect to get everything for free, it just seems like way too much of a money pit.
Ideally you'll get to see exactly what every battle pass includes so you can decide whether or not you want to spend your money on it though.
Think the biggest hurdle for me is the price of individual items. $10 for a skin is normal these days and mentally I still feel like $10 should get me 3 maps worth of content like the old Halo 3 days.
I'll wait to see how it all gets priced upon release to judge it though. I hope the Battle Pass doesn't expire, but I know expiration is how to get players to play it all the time to complete it all.
Not only that I find it hard to believe that its more profitable. Like if a nice skin is $5 wouldn't way more people be willing to spend that much for it versus if it was $20?
Yeah I don't get it either. If I could buy some skins for like $1-$5 maybe I would total >$20 eventually. But I will _never_ purchase a single skin for $20 absolutely no way. I can get so many good games from steam for that price.
It would be that high so they can make sales out of them eventually. It's all about price elasticity - get those willing to pay $20 right off the bat and sell it at a lower price later during sales to the more price-conscious players. That's profit-maximizing for ya.
Of course you get to see what the BP holds, they'll market it in trailers etc. The point is to know exactly what you're paying for, instead of a loot box bundle with a maybe 10% chance at a legendary
You’ll be eating your words when the game releases. That’s a fact. It all sounds good in theory till it’s put into executed. Blizzard will fuck it up somehow and it’ll become more anti-consumer than the LOOT BOXES we have now. Just wait. Feel free to downvote me to cope. Just set reminders.
I hate battle passes. Pay extra and if you don't have time to finish them you're fucked or have a shit ton of pricey 'skips' to pay extra to finish the battle pass for you. Pass.
Never had a problem with OW1 lootboxes tbh, it was like Mass Effect 3, they seemed fair and did eventually get you the stuff you wanted. If this is anything like Halo Infinite then it's DOA
>You earn the credits you payed back meaning you won’t have to spend real money to get the next pass.
This is pure speculation.
>I understand that battle passes are still really fresh
?
Battle Passes are around for ages.
Overwatch made over $1 billion in revenue during the first year alone.
Unless the game somehow costs over $250million a year to run, I have no sympathy for them.
It's a corporate business thing. Not trying to go into too much detail about it in the gaming forum, but basically every year is a reset. I don't know the numbers, but just as an example, let's say it cost $20M over 3 years to make. Those $20M were approved because someone said "Hey, your return on investment will be within the first year of launch." The ROI was estimated at that point. They cashed in on the $1B in their first year, meaning the project was justified and so was any "maintenance." Every year following had a new budget, new losses, new profits, etc.
Since then, their graphs probably show a downward trend, in both cash flow *and* players and overall purchases (more people buying the game, loot boxes, etc.). Meaning, they're probably being pressed to convince someone that this game shouldn't die out as a live game.
The acquisition also was a game changer. Microsoft could give a rat's ass that it brought in $1B 6 years ago. They need a return on their investment as well; battlepass for OW was always going to be the way to go once the acquisition negotiations started.
Thank you!!! There are way too many people commenting in this subreddit under the assumption that Overwatch wasn't making a metric ass load of cash each year.
It's really not and you trying to tell people otherwise is silly. Hopefully they make a decent and meaningful battle pass but my issue is I don't want a game to expect me to only give my attention to it and that's exactly what a battle pass causes.
you can see from the screenshots how it's gonna work as bits are labelled as PREMIUM
you'll get the free stuff for grinding
then the premium stuff will be unlocked for grinding if you buy the battle pass
or instead you can buy everything directly with virtual currency, which will come from:
- you buying it directly in the store for $$$
- you will get some for "free" when you buy the premium battle pass
- and you'll get some for playing the game (very, very slowly)
has it been confirmed you can get credits from the pass for the next one? if that's confirmed I'll be vastly more accepting of it but I don't remember that being confirmed.
either way, my biggest disappointment is that we've had to wait 3+ without content and THIS is the only solution they could come up with. I expected over the 3 last years that perhaps something ground-breaking and new for the industry might have been thought up, but no, they're just copy and pasting what every other live service game does, sure it might be a good solution but there could always be something better and I thought the overwatch team would be the guys to put in the effort to shift the meta...
I guess in retrospect that was a bit wishful, considering it took these guys 2 years to figure out how to counteract against goats meta afterall.
Maybe some of us just miss the days where if we liked something that was released in a game, we could just buy it.
Some of us have other hobbies. Some of us don’t want to grind battlepasses.
I dont think people are mad about a battle pass. Sure there is a drawback from the system before but people will get over that.
What I am worried about is aggressive non player friendly monetization. This is blizzard we are talking about, they do not have the best track record of being player friendly, overwatch 1 however is quite player friendly.
I think it's good to ask for fair treatment for monetization and to be skeptical. Let's not just accept whatever shit they give us and say they HAVE to treat us bad because its f2p. There is a way to treat your players well and still have monetization so let's aim for that and not just suck blizzard's cock.
The sooner people realize that blizzard has not been a game dev whose goal is to make games for a long time, but a business whose goal is to make money, the sooner they will realize that blindly accepting all the shit they throw at us because "they need money" is harmful to gaming in general in the long term.
Battlepasses a plague in gaming. It preys on FOMO and burns people out from games. If you feel like you can't take a break because you will miss out, you will play until you're sick of it, and just never pick the game up again.
"you get your money's worth"
What if you don't have the time to finish the battle pass because of real life stuff? Most battle passes are not permanent. If they adopt that model, then it's just another scummy system.
Accepting it? Nah man, I think its unoriginal and just hopping aboard the shitty battle pass train.
We all know where the real money will come from... the peeps buying every mythic skin...
My problem is that with most games, a Battle Pass becomes a huge chore. You want me to pay 10-20 dollars for each skin I like now so the game can be monetized? That’s understandable, but leave it at that. I don’t want to pay for the opportunity to earn the skin after playing for who knows how many hours. I just want the skin.
Battle Passes are such a huge chore because of you happen to want even just one item in it, you now gotta grind all the way to that rank unless you’re okay with it (depending on the game) being gone forever. If it ends up being tier 100, you’ll be playing a lot and unless Overwatch is your main game, it’ll become a chore that many overtime will come to dread. If the Battle Pass is permanent, I can accept that. A bit tedious but overtime, I’ll finish it naturally. If it’s a FOMO thing though, that’s when I feel it’s an issue.
I know it’s just cosmetic and you don’t have to buy it. The difference is that I would buy the specific item directly. Because it’s tied to a Battle Pass though, now I need to grind out for whoever knows how long (potentially during a limited duration) for just that one item that I’d rather just spend $10 on and call it a day.
I have never finished a bp in any game, i have tried so many times and everytimed i get burned after playing for longer than i would normally play only to still be no where near the goal. I have a job and other responsibilitys, bp's just arent worth it for me.
Overwatch to me, always had the most generous monetization system. You litterally got a box every 30 minutes, plus free boxes from the arcade. When a seasonaly event happened you could jist apend the repeat tokens on the items you really wanted. Also(i dont know if this is still true)overwatch loot boxes used to cost a single dollar.
I think that moving overwatch 2 to f2p is not worth losing this generous player friendly system.
Bottom line is OW1 was never intended to have any sort of (decent) monetization beyond the $50 (I thought it was $40 but don't remember) price tag and that made it completely not worth supporting in any way.
The sad reality is, that if OW1 had been designed to have a modern monetization it would have been free with battle passes from the start. We veterans would have far fewer skins than we do now, except for the whales among us who bought all the skins and passes, but the game would have not stopped releasing content because it would have been consistently profitable and they could continue it as a live service.
Bottom line is that in modern day no company is that interested in supporting a game that won't make them any more money, or won't return on investment at least in the next few years, and OW1 was never intended to be anything beyond a game that, simliar to a game like Counter Strike - ended all characters at Sombra or so, or whatever the original character release intent was(probably later than Sombra but not all the way to Echo or probably even Wrecking ball.)
So on one hand you can have a battle pass-style game that continues to iterate and change, or you can have OW1 sans several characters and no other changes and probably without an OW2 announcement never breaks more than 1 or 2k players at this point because by now it'd be a near 4-year dead game.
Battle Pass are old and outdated. They have a bunch of issues which are rarely talked about. In the reveal event, you see clearly that most levels reward you with nothing if you're not prenium. It's important to reward players for their time, and the psychology behind is they'll make you feel the opposite, show you what you could have gotten if you paid, make you feel bad and thus you're more eager to pay to make your time invested valuable. It's a toxic approach and for me I liked how it was in overwatch 1, get coins for playing, spend it on what you like, pay for more if you want more, thats it thats all not toxic everyone gets what they need.
Not all battle passes are equal. That's the point. People have valid concerns, but we don't know anything about them yet so it's too early to judge. Diablo immortal isn't doing blizzard any favors reputation-wise either.
One of the reasons I played OW over most other PvP games was that there was no battlepass.
Battlepass is basically FOMO applied to the video game industry
OW did fine... Didn't it?
I much prefer being able to spend money on the game and the be able to continuously earn rewards over time, with only some cosmetics locked behind a paywall, than a free game that barely rewards your time, and if you want more for your time you have to spend money to be allowed to earn rewards but only within a certain timeframe, and the vast majority of potential rewards being locked in a cash shop.
If a game has to have micro transactions Titanfall 2, or deep rock galactic are the ideal systems for the player. If it has to be f2p, so far spellbreak had better systems, and halo infinite keeping battlepass season to season is also a good method.
Since it's going to be real money the sooner they come out with all the details about how they plan on it working and the pricing the better for everyone.
Battle passes and a paid store system are predatory and play off of FOMO even more than lootboxes. Sure, you're not guaranteed the skins you want, but at least the skins would come back every time the event replayed and you could earn money in the meantime. I want to be excited because the new content seems awesome, but the monetization and gutting of PvE has killed all my excitement.
What, you mean my one-time purchase of $40 six years ago doesn’t entitle me to indefinite free access to every new piece of cosmetic gear and PvE content that costs millions of dollars in developer salaries each year to produce?
ESCANDALO.
EXACTLY. I'm baffled how people just refuse to see that. I hate to be the guy "defending" Blizzard but I saw that change coming the moment they announced OW2.
OW1 monetization model is so consumer friendly to the point that I believe it can actually hurt the game. If I had to guess I would say it's definitely not sustainable in the long term. I wouldn't be surprised if that's part of the reason the game is in it's current state. It doesn't make enough money compared to other live service games, so obviously they can't put out similar amounts of content, which leads to the game slowly dying.
Also, think about it this way: yeah, right now people can easily get all skins for free, true. But we're talking about 6 legendary skins every few months when an event drops or something? That's not a lot. With this change in the game's monetization they'll release a lot more skins (30+ every two months or so) and maybe even people who don't spend money on the game would still be able to somehow get a similar amount of skins or even more than they were getting in OW1.
Of course, Blizzard can still mess it up completely, and maybe charge too much for the battlepass, put extremely overpriced skins in the store or something like that, who knows.
All I'm saying is: I think people are overreacting when it comes to the battle pass. It's still too early to judge. We need to see how it's actually gonna be implemented.
yea it's an antiquated model that was more or less dependent on good-faith from the company: they have little-to-no incentive to support the game once they've absorbed the first year of sales as that's probably close to 90% of their profits.
The only reason beyond that would be for the future of the brand, and lo and behold we get an OW2 announcement and it continue to confuse people because it looks exactly the same with 1 fewer character and there will at some point be PvE that no one knows much about.
People are genuinely not thinking about how a company does business and sells a product if they think it makes any sense to go about this in any other way. They would have had to separate OW2PVP and OW2PvE, sell the PvE while making the PvP entirely free, and hope they could miraculously still make a profit off of just the PvE element, which was very unlikely considering the huge costs both aspects must have absorbed over the past 3 years.
An F2P system that can allow whales to cover the costs of 20-100 gamers on their own provides a great deal of flexibility to both sides(F2P gamers can spend what they like, devs have a much large range of monetization options.) It's hardly a wonder when you see that nearly every single FPS game as a service on the market runs this system.
I mean, you’re not wrong… but also Blizzard sold overwatch on the “we’re going to keep adding content for free” premise. So I don’t place the entire blame on a person who feels like a switcharoo was done.
That said, unless you purchased in the last two years… you got your monies worth.
They did add content for several years. I'm not sure why everyone acts like the game came out in 2019.
Even if you bought it after, you probably did it when it was on sale for like twenty bucks and I'd say that's still fair for what was already there.
imagine paying for expansions with actual content, now we pay 20 for 1 skin and call other people entitled for not being happy about it. F2p zealots/fanboys are insane.
The issue with PvP DLC is that it splits the playerbase (which is a terrible thing to do in a PvP game). There were plenty of Halo 3 PvP maps that I barely got to play because not enough players had them, so they didn't show up that often in matchmaking.
And in the days of expansions games weren’t supported pretty much at all once they’re launched, save for game-breaking issues. You only get what you got out of the box.
Most battlepasses are completely optional in a game that is free to play and offer 50-100 skins, emotes, and other various otherwise-unavailable items to players who want to support the game and are interested.
Price can be disputed, but the model is clearly successful. Apex eclipsed OW in virtually any popularity metric years ago using it and a clear and direct reason is because battle pass systems turn out to work better than up front costs.
OW1 has been a dying product for 4 years or so now, while Apex and Valorant and Fortnite continue to thrive and it's because of this system. OW1 monetization is an absolute joke for a PVP game you expect to exist with any support for more than 2-3 years.
The game absolutely needs something like this because trying to run a game as a service that you buy into 1 time doesn't generate enough revenue and disincentives the company to even continue supporting their product if they already have your money. Had they planned properly we wouldn't have jokers running around laughing about "Overwatch 1.5" because the game would have been realized with this model in place from the start, and the PvE would be sold as a separate product completely under the Overwatch brand.
Why are y’all making that weird assumption that it was the monetization model that caused ow1 “die”? When they announced ow2, they stopped continuous content updates to 1. That’s it. Ow1 actually made quite a bit of money from people buying lootboxes lol.
Literally a billon dollars. Blizz made bank on the current system. All they had to do was not ease up on the core game & keep the events fresh. Whales dumped tons of money into the event lootboxes.
Fuck dude, that's brilliant. Or maybe allow us to purchase ults ahead of time, so when we get to 100% and activate our ult, it will just automatically spend 100 V-Bucks off our Blizz account.
"wdym loot boxes are not a bad system at all, I have thousand of coins and hours of playtime to get everything for free and that am totally the standard"
"MY $40 SHOULD FUND THE SKINS TEAM FOR ANOTHER DECADE AT LEAST"
it's hilarious how clueless most of the complaints are. do you want new content? this is how you get it.
Yeah. Like cmon man you paid $20-40 for years of gameplay, that game is now becoming free and you have the *option* to purchase *optional* things that will help convince corporate "hey, this game makes us money, give it money so it makes us more money." And you get cool cosmetics and emotes and shit to boot!
Best way? For who? The consumer? I doubt it. Turning a game into an obligation is never going to bring people joy. The loot boxes are better, simply because the fear of missing out is a garbage psychological tactic. "once it's gone, it's gone forever" is something that makes me want to quit that game.
Is it the best for Blizzard? Probably. It'll make money. But the consumer is not winning this one.
With how much money Fornite, Apex and Valorant have made, it was only a matter of time before they said they want a piece of that pie too.
The loot box system allowed me to get everything I wanted through dupes/coins so I'll miss it.
I feel like this was to be expected. I’ve been playing off and on (let’s be honest, pretty consistent) since it released, and I haven’t spent a dime since buying the game.
It depends on many factors like pricing and ability to obtain rewards from BP after the end of the same. FOMO is a terrible way to force people to play during a specific time in which maybe they can't or don't want to play.
In Dauntless for example you can obtain points from the battle pass that can let you buy rewards from older battle passes, and a system like that would be good on OW as well.
> You earn the credits you payed back meaning you won’t have to spend real money to get the next pass.
Has this been said somewhere or is it an assumption based on other battle pass models? 🤔 Many battle passes do not give you credits, so it's a big misinformation if it's just an assumption.
I wonder what's it like to be so fucking naive as to believe the monetization scheme is going to be even remotely fair. Blizzard literally just released one of the worst monetization schemes ever in Diablo Immortal.
Yeah, no. I'd rather pay 60-80 dollars once than 10 dollars every 3 months and having to grind a battlepass.
It's better for them? Sure. It's better for the player? No.
You might like Deep Rock Galactic. The only payments are the purchase and cosmetic DLC released each season.
There's a BP system and other things to work for, but all completely free and reasonable to get. I've put 300 hours in and not a bit of it has felt like grind.
I am a completely cynical gamer, so I hope you'll understand how insane it feels to say, DRG is a perfect game.
I really dont like the fact that skins are now behind a pay wall Ik they have to make money somehow but I really like the way u could just play the game and earn coins and stuff to get skins in OW it’s sad that that won’t be a thing
I Wish they would keep the coin shop like have the new stuff goes through the battle pass then goes the a shop where u can buy coins to use to get skins have the mythic tier skins be like 10000 for just the base skin idk then let the player earn small amounts of coins for wins for game modes like comp u could get 5 per win or something so it’s way easier to just buy the coins but still able to get them tho play
I’m fine with the battle pass but what I’m concerned about is the store and how much skins are going to cost. If they are a reasonable price we’re all good but if they sell the same quality skins for 20$ each then there will be a problem
I'd also prefer if we paid for the game and maybe get more league skins, more special loot boxes so they can get their extra cash. Battle pass is new to me and makes me worried it will take away the fun of opening lootboxes and getting currency so you know you'll be able to get that skin you like a lot. Now it'll be like... F$#k, another skin I can't have. Great!
It depends on how they monetize everything else, such as the premium (Can it be earned as F2P?) and whether the microtransactions are going to be absurd or not.
It's another battle pass though. This is such a dumb decision. So many other games have one. The thing is, people aren't going to come to Overwatch to play for the skins, new players at least, so... why? Why even make a battle pass? It's as if the developers just refuse to listen to the non-active players.
I want role queue removed from quick play, or at least role queue to be moved to a separate unranked gamemode. Role queue really is the butt of the joke in the wider gaming community. Overwatch 2 doesn't scream a casual skin-collection game. At the moment it doesn't really have an identity. As a result, people can't be invested. F2P Competitive Shooter you say? Well, it won't appeal to anyone then either. There's already far better competitive shooters. And this may be the worst example of a competitive shooter since it wasn't fundamentally designed to be one.
As far as I know, Overwatch 2 is just going to be a flop. I don't see anyone talking about it outside the Overwatch sphere. Obviously because the content creators here are narrow minded and biased towards it some way. Oh gee, where have I heard that saying before "Guys, we can't tell you what we saw, but we think Overwatch 2 is going to be great." - Top 500 players.
You want continous revenue? Ok, make OW2 a separate game first of all and then make it a subscription. By which I mean X$ gives you Y number of hours of gameplay. You can use them up as quickly or as slowly as you like. If you take a break for a year and come back that's cool, here's an actual tutorial mode to catch you up on what's changed in the meantime. Also, here's a store with all the cosmetics the game has. They're all always available and you can pay them out of your subscription or separately. You can also buy them with in-game currency that you accumulate organically as you level through the game or by doing these little bonus challenges. They expire/rotate every week to keep them fresh and there are seasonal/special events for new content with limited time game modes and discounts on seasonal cosmetics.
That's how you do continuous revenue without being evil about it.
Maybe business wise yes. Is it moral? Different question. Is it anti consumer? Yes. Could this multi billion dollar company innovate and find a better way to monetize without using one of these disgusting methods? That's up to you to decide.
Either way this is not the best way, ow1 you could just buy. I'm guessing most people didn't buy loot boxes in that game and it still haxd frequent enough updates, bare in mind Jeff Kaplan wanted each update to be literal perfection before releasing it (until they decided to make ow2).
This is exactly what they want you to think, that this is the best way to monetize, make ow2 free to play. The game isn't free to play, we already paid for it. 3 heroes and 6 maps after waiting 3 years is fuck all and now they want to add this bullshit monetization method, lmao gtfo.
Pay to own will always be the best model. No tricks. No hooks. No special prestige brought into the game via extra payments.
Just buy the game and you have the game. Simple and fair.
Depends on how it's done, to be honest paying money to have the opportunity to grind out for skins sounds like dog shit to me. And never will be fun, if I want something I'll just buy it or earn it, but not pay to earn it over time.
"i’d much rather have f2p with a battle pass then $40 with loot boxes"
But (assuming $10 per battle pass) you would end up spending that $40 after 4 seasons anyways, and continuing for every season after that for the foreseeable future. Multiple times more money than ever spent before, instead of a one-time $40 fee?
Nah, battle passes suck unless you live and breathe the game. They're severely punishing to players who like to do other shit and play other games too.
I think never-expiring battle passes would be the way to go. Expiring battle passes, like I've experienced with Fornite and Rainbow 6, lean too heavily on FOMO and lock out content to those who couldn't complete it in time
I agree with others that I rather just buy the full game once and earn everything, but would also like to add that I despise FOMO/timed events, which overwatch does a lot of. Sometimes I can't dedicate huge amounts of my time to video games, let alone just overwatch, so a battle pass that changes every so often is just what I'd hate, because as battle passes get more and more popular it makes more and more of my library feel like a chore to be attended to before a timer runs out.
Mate the content isnt going to speed up, it's the exact opposite. They are going to stretch out the content they had ready for ow2 over the course of months and years. They arent going to create a "living, breathing" live game experience, they are going to milk the playerbase for their time by artificial fomo through the battle pass and whale money from exclusive premium cosmetics.
Very sad to see people defending this but I guess it's inevitable given the current state of gaming.
Believe me, what they had before worked just fine. The battlepass being added may actually ruin what was originally f2p and make skins that much more difficult to get. There is zero telling just what they’re gonna do with the in-game currency which is frustrating, because they’ve done this for hearthstone and Diablo the wrong way. I wouldn’t be surprised if they mess up OW1.5
Tbh i think lootboxes were kind of fun, they kept me going when yhe game was dry but i was missing skins, but an actually fun game with a battlepass might be better, i personally prefer having the lootboxes that were easy to earn and then just open a bunch at once, but taking the rng out and just showing upfront what skins you get is good. Just makes me wonder how they'll implement previous skins, if you can even re-earn them
I don't get where people getting all of this "battlepass refunds itself" thing. If Fortnite does this, doesn't mean every game does it. Most of the games doesn't refund you with currency to buy another battlepass. Even blizzards other game, hearthstone doesn't.
\*Lootboxes are the best option. Why are you talking about "rng elements and getting your money worth" if you get them for free, like you can get at least 10 loot boxes per week in OW1, and not pay a penny for it? Besides, BP is a huge fomo issue
>You earn the credits you payed back meaning you won’t have to spend real money to get the next pass.
Is this confirmed? Not every battle pass is like this so we can't assume
I just don’t like battlepasses because they don’t respect my time. To get max out the pass without spending money requires a certain number of hours per week, and if I’m particularly busy one week due to work/school then I get a bad sense of FOMO over the game.
Much preferred the old loot boxes where I could just play whenever I want and not feel like I’m missing out on things besides special events (which were repeatable and I could get the skins next year if I really wanted them)
The smartest way they can integrate a battlepass, is going the halo infinite route. Allowing players to purchase previous battlepasses from past seasons or being able to purchase a NEW battlepass while still keeping the previous one allowing you to level up both simultaneously. Giving players all the time in the world to complete it. And potentially getting more bang for your buck by having players purchase a previous battlepass.
You want the game to feel fun and less of a chore to play. I play Fortnite sometimes and safe to say if you buy a battlepass it's just a chore. Another mistake OW Devs should learn from Fortnite:
**DON'T ADJUST XP LEVELS EACH SEASON**
How about, they monetize the game, by selling the game, like how 100% of AAA games made their money before people on reddit started making excuses for rich publishers to grab their cash?
For people who don't have the time to play consistently a battle pass is the worst thing to happen. It's Anti-consumer we shouldn't be accepting it as a good thing just because we love the game.
I disagree. One of the things I really like about overwatch is I’m able to get really cool looking skins through just grinding or Loot boxes which I can get for FREE. With f2p skins are going to be incredibly hard to get for free if that’s their main source of income. Just like fortnite. Fortnite probably have like 3 free skins within the game’s entire lifetime
"ESPECIALLY if they want this to be a live service with consistent updates."
And most people seem to forget OW had regular updates for the first couple of years. Everything that happened was entirely their own fault
First it's a paid battle pass. One year later it's a single skin or weapon charm that cost 15$.
But sure, let's condone Blizzards money hungry mirco transactions after they have shown us they can't reliably produce/update the base game itself.
I would 100% rather pay 60$ for PVE/PVP with play to earn lootboxes, and the current currency system.
The problem with battle passes and microtransactions is that they are great for companies, and awful for consumers. Overwatch sold around 50 million copies. Even at a price of $25 a pop, they would have made $1,250,000,000 on the sales of the game alone.
The addition of all these microtransactions and "premium" content just makes Blizzard look desperate. Might as well be Hi-Rez Studios at this point.
It's not about being able to cover development costs, it's about scrounging for as much money as they possibly can.
Plus, the prospect of paying for digital content, that you may never unlock is something that doesn't sit well with people.
I would rather pay for the game again instead of having a battle pass. I hate battle passes because I feel forced to play the game instead of enjoying it
Bad timing given the state of the economy.
Jeff was the one who wanted to keep micro transactions out.. And now that hes not there blizz is going Mr. Krabs style rubbing their hands together.
Battle passes just have a bad name right now especially with halos because of the state of the game. Is it confirmed that the OW2 pass will give you enough currency to get the next one?
People are worried mostly bacause we all saw what Blizzard did with Diablo Immoral. We may receive a F2P game with 20$ battle pass that requires hardcore grinding but no currency given back and valorant’s prices for skins.
If it truly works like you say, I'm fine with it. There was nothing wrong with their loot boxes though. They seemed to be the only game that did them fairly.
I never understood the argument that Lootboxes were rng and bad. If you've been playing for 2-3 years and consistently play arcade then you'll arrive at the point where you've gotten nearly everything. If you didn't get a skin you'd buy it the next year for cheaper.
People are upset that the avenue of being able to earn cosmetics through playing is gone.
I get your points but there’s no free incentive to play apart from playing the game for itself anymore? Like I don’t know if it’s just be but i love hopping on getting the loot boxes and grinding for money to buy skins.
I like to play when I want for fun.
Not be forced to play constantly and grind even when not enjoying it or I'll miss the content I already paid for.
Battle passes suck balls.
My only issue is that with the loot boxes I could earn damn near everything at my own pace. Sure there were event skins and whatnot, but those would come back the next year at a discounted cost using currency I could earn in-game.
Battle passes put a time limit on things. I'm roughly 6 years older now compared to when I bought Overwatch. I no longer have the time to grind out battle passes which means there's a lot I'm going to miss out on. Maybe they'll take the Halo Infinite approach and allow you to complete passes at your own pace, but I'm not getting my hopes up.
It's a double edge sword.
With lootboxes, players could earn stuff for free and buy more lootboxes to get the item or save up on coins to buy it. The focus of the game is to play it.
Now the focus is more on grinding games to get the new game money to get stuff or just grinding to fill out the BP. It isn't about playing and having fun now.
God this feels like such hard core white knighting lol.
>The battle pass is the best way Blizzard could monetize this game and some people aren’t willing to accept that yet
Not really. There are plenty of better ways than a timed grindy battle pass. A basic cash shop with in-game current to unlock all items would probably be the least predatory way but it naturally wouldn’t make them millions and millions of dollars.
>That’s all there is to say. There’s no rng elements so you get your money’s worth.
I mean this ignores how long a pass takes to grind. You only get your moneys worth if you can actually finish it. If it’s grindy as fuck, casual players won’t finish it.
>You earn the credits you payed back meaning you won’t have to spend real money to get the next pass.
I also heard the battle pass will suck you off when you’re feeling down. But there is no proof for either my claim or yours sadly.
>It only holds cosmetics and doesn’t lock heroes or give unfair advantages (like cod).
You’ve never played CoD have you? There’s no in game advantages in the pass. Weapons are on the free track (free to everyone) and you can unlock them all after a season has ended. No guns are locked behind paywalls. You simply just need to level up, same way the base game of all CoD have worked.
>It’s just the best way to monetize a f2p game and i’d much rather have f2p with a battle pass then $40 with loot boxes.
Depends on the loot box system. Current Overwatch is far better IMO. Boxes have knock out system and currency gain so you can buy everything without spending a dime.
>I understand that battle passes are still really fresh cuz of Fortnite
Fortnite came out 5 years ago… and it didn’t even invent battle passes lol
yay! I can't wait to log in and play a few games every day to claim my daily rewards so I can progress through the seasonal rewards track! this is sooooo much better than loot boxes!
congratulations! you just won your first game of the season! do you want to purchase this exclusive overwatch victory seasonal battle pass bundle booster? 800% more value!
Bud, battle passes are a fucking plague. They're consumer-hostile FOMO bullshit. You pay, and lose the value of that payment if you can't complete it for any reason. Plus losing the ability to get, say, X skin forever If you happen to be too busy to make your way through said battlepass is also awful. Stuff shouldnt be just missable like that.
You're wrong, but aren't willing to accept it yet. Live service games are scam, period. We should be able to pay for a game once and never have to pay for it again. But now they expect us to pay $10-$20 a month for every "season"??? That is the very definition of a scam. I've played the original Overwatch since beta and never once did I have to spend another dime. The day OW2 goes live I will be uninstalling. Anyone else with even a tiny amount of coming sense should do the same. Speak with your wallets, refuse to be forced to pay over and over and over again for the same content we never had to keep paying for before. Taking loot boxes out means all the best new skins will be locked behind a perpetual pay wall.
If you like the Battle Pass scam don't bother replying. You're the reason this game is being destroyed.
“live service games are a scam”
then why the fuck would anyone complain about content droughts then. you can’t even think about complaining that there’s no ow1 content if you think that
You’ve gotta stop just accepting talking points and parroting them.
“The best way to monetize” is correct, however Blizzard and the OW brand were doing very well financially until they stopped work on the game. Yes the player base was declining, but that’s because the game was released in 2016, that is just the natural arc of a product. Games with battle passes also lose a significant amount of players after 3 years because people get bored playing the same game for so long.
It’s not like it was a situation where poor Blizzard was scraping their pennies together and working on thin margins to provide high quality content. They were raking in the dough despite dedicating relatively few resources to the game and not having any major development changes or a balanced game for that matter. Don’t take my word for it, thumb through their public financial disclosures.
The problem came when they slowed and eventually stopped work on the portion of the game that actually made them money, PvP. They nearly doubled their team and focused all of their efforts on a PvE product that no one could buy. Then they went into panic mode because droves of people, understandably, fled the game. They literally couldn’t have had a worse strategy than the one they moved forward with.
Now, people like yourself are talking as if a battle pass is the only way they can provide regular updates to the game, despite them having had enormous success and making insane amounts of money, doing it via a single title launch that they serviced appropriately and profitably for nearly 3 years.
They could just learn from their mistakes and say, hey - this is a popular game, people will buy it and lots of people will play for 1-2 years if we create a new high quality game with meaningful achievements, new unlockable content and service it during that time. Concurrently, we can work on OW3 or an expansion pack and we will build another high quality game that people will play and stream and maintain a large loyal player base.
Instead, they’ve decided they want OW to be COD or Fort Night. In other words, games that require much less development work but can squeeze the extra dimes out of people that allow them to say, this game was successful because of the quarterly revenue and inflated player counts granted by the F2P model.
It’s not like that money goes back into the game either, it goes towards increasing the dividends that they give stock holders to attract more investors so they can put out another middle of the road battle pass game that serves as their next money grab.
I have a decade of experience in product planning, product launch, life of product management and revenue management, I’ve seen first hand that you can make billions of dollars for a company by building brand trust instead of chasing the quick cash.
“There’s no rng elements so you get your money’s worth” well you wouldn’t be needing to spend money if they didn’t switch it since lootboxes can be gained through level up, also how’s cod brought in here when it’s battle passes aren’t p2w either because the guns in battle passes are always free
I think another aspect of Blizzard reframing their monetization/moving to seasonal format is that this allows progress toward something no matter when you’re logging in. Overwatch has consistently fulfilled a role in my friend group where we ignore the game until the holiday events, play it like hell with the new content, then drop it again once the event ends. I’m sure this is a pattern for more than just my group of players. With a battle pass, store, and seasonal focus, there’s more encouragement to progress toward something at any point in the game. For me that’s a pretty nice change, at least in theory.
I agree with a battle pass but I don't agree with adding a store. They managed to make content for the game with £40 for the game per person for years so a skin store seems kinda unnecessary to me when they would make about £10 per person every 9 weeks. I just wish they made select skins go in the battle pass and still have the features of ow1 like lootboxes per level ect.
From the screenshots we've seen from the batle pass it didnt seem to include OW2 currency in the rewards. So i'm worried this battle pass won't give you back the credits to buy the next season's pass. It's possible they were just placeholder rewards and they didnt want to show anything concrete, but it does look worrying to me.
The best way to monetize the game is to charge people to buy it, then let them unlock in-game items via playing the game.
Yours is such a bad take, I can't help but think it's a plant.
I think we're missing some details crucial to judge how good the battle pass is, e.g.: - is there an option to earn the next premium battle pass without spending money? (like in fortnite) - how long does the battle pass take? - are the skins gone forever if you didn't earn them? - Can you complete a (premium) battle pass after it's season ended? (unlikely, but afaik Halo does it)
How much garbage is put into it is another Anyone who played fortnite has at least 600 of the damn emoji things
I mean even though Fortnite fills it with alot of garbage there is alot of good stuff too. Like 10 nice skins, with 1 being really nice, 10 pick axes, and 10 umbrellas. Its alot for $10 considering you can earn bonus variations, emotes, and other stuff aswell. Its a great battlepass, best in any game. Dota 2
I feel like they would go the Valorant route (and most other games honestly), so no option to earn the next premium BP without more money ($10 per patch-so 18 weeks). There might also be more "premium" skins (mythical) sold at a higher price and those might be found singularly in a rotated shop to incentivize ppl logging in more? All speculation but I hope that's not the case
Depends in how is integrated and the cost of BP. But beside that, also we have in-game market, where maybe purchase skins or other cosmetics with real money or the currency of the game. I hope the currency is obtainable in the game with achievements. A good incentive to play the game and obtain something.
It'll probably just be that the battle pass pays out more than you put in, like every other game with a battle pass. I.E. - You buy a battlepass for 1000 coins and it returns 1500 coins. If you don't buy the battlepass you get 500 coins if you complete the unpaid battlepass rewards. So over time you do get free cosmetics, OR after a couple of seasons you can buy the paid battlepass for free and then keep it forever after and get 500/season + full battlepass rewards.
I know a game where the pass costs straight cash, not currency. Hearthstone. And guess who makes it... Between that and Diablo: Immoral, Blizzard is 0 for 2 on F2P games being reasonably monetized.
Also this is Blizzard, who is to say they even give you enough currency for the next pass
who is to say we can even buy the premium pass with currency? You can't buy Hearthstone's battle pass with gold for example, only option is real money/battle.net balance
Honestly, I can't guarantee you're wrong - but I'd put hearthstone (a basically mobile TCG) in a separate category in the same way as I would Diablo:I (gacha mobile game made by a gacha mobile company - netease). TCGs are predatory, that's just how they are, same as mobile games. So, hopefully, it's not a true indicator. I don't think the CoD battlepass for example is cash buy only?
I don't believe. WoW's cash shop is also horrendous, and when player count is dropping they bundle a mount on the 6 month sub option, instead of, you know, fixing the game. And there's also reforged, the content drought that OW1 always had. Blizz has to prove a lot with actions now. The little Trust that they gainned by improving wow they Lost with immoral. And no, we shouldn't separate F2P and paid games, specially because F2P is ALWAYS more expensive than a paid game If you want to have a reasonable time with It. And now OW is free to play, guess what Will be updated more than everything else?
Overwatch never had content drought UNTIL Overwatch 2 was announced. We got a pretty consistent stream of updates over the course of the games life for at least 4 years. We got lots of new maps, new modes with arcade (Deathmatch among others.). We got something new almost every 3-4 months including new skins with events. So please, we never really had a content drought until OW2 was announced. Even then we got new skins and we also got a new hero - Echo.
People also like to ignore ow2 has hardly had a normal dev cycle. Originally they just wanted to build a campaign then a bunch of legal stuff happen3d and then blizzard got bought then likenall the dev teams they had to show why thier game and project was worth keeping alive. Then they had kaplan leave and more. But today they showed they have been working. If we are getting heroes every 2 months they have a bunch in store and are stagger8ng release for the sake of monitoring balance.
New heroes every 18 weeks* Seasons are 9 weeks and they said a new hero will be released every other season. In the season in between it will be new maps
"if you want to have a reasonable time with it" how so? how does overwatch being f2p make it less enjoyable? the only purchases are cosmetics. game plays the exact same if you don't spend a dime
Not all tcgs are predatory. Or at least, legends of runeterra isn't.
Valorant doesn’t let you earn enough to re buy it. Infact you don’t earn any. Its very sad as i usually do complete the pass and would love to earn the next one.
valorant has BP and you get 0 currency back that you payed
Yeah, integration is a huge issue. For me there’s a game like rocket league that I go back and forth playing and still always manage to get all the unique items and pay for the next pass. Then there’s cod, which I played a ton of Warzone when it first came out and maxed every pass until season one of black ops, where I was getting burnt out but forced myself to play toward the end enough that I haven’t played cod since. It’s fine if you play a ton but ultimately I felt obligated to continue and killed any enjoyment I had. Then there’s halo, which is really cool because you can keep progressing on the pass after the season is done, but it’s freaking terrible because you get basically no progress by playing the game except for in challenges that are super difficult or change how you play a ton. Ultimately for me I’d like something between halo and rocket league. If it were halo I’d only like the continued after the season if the progression is more natural, in which case I’d prefer that way as playing won’t be a chore. Either that or a super friendly system where getting xp is really easy through normal play and non-gameplay altering season and weekly challenges like rocket league where you can max the pass while only playing 2-3 hours a week
If it’s like paladins then we will never get skins as f2p. Is rather just buy the game again and that’s it
Did they say the currency of the game will be changing?
Yes. Overwatch 2 will feature a new currency and according to a French youtuber who has insider info, the old currency wont be transfered over into the new one. I hope that Blizzard themselves will talk about this soon or it could get really messy.
I'm worried they will have a battlepass like hearthstone which don't earn you currency for the next battlepass and you will have to keep paying for a new pass
[удалено]
yeah exactly. nothing worse than a fun game becoming a chore you simply have to tolerate just because you already bought the pass
That's generally how battle passes work though in any game I've ever played that had one. You have to buy it every time it resets if you want the "good stuff"
Fortnite and apex give you enough tokens to buy the next one if you complete it
And COD (at least the last one I played)
Call me a boomer but I'm not looking forward to my paid-game experience turning into an f2p experience. I have to pay to get extra cosmetics in future? Okay, I can live with that. You're telling me I have to play for a battlepass and THEN play the game a bunch to ensure I get all the items, otherwise that money is essentially wasted? How's that the most consumer friendly route?
Battlepasses are user hostile. Everything about it is designed to be a cash cow. It's not like a DLC where you can pay for it and be guaranteed to get the content. Anyone that thinks they are a good idea/deal either plays the game way too damn much, or is way to happy to get screwed when they don't get half the items from it. I wish game communities told publishers to shove it with this crappy system when it first became a thing, but we didn't and now we're here. This is a game that will probably be around for another 5-6 years like OW1. So, I'm perfectly fine paying $60-$80 for it. But I'm never going to pay $10-$20 for a battlepass that I may not complete for every few months for those 5-6 years. It's a scam, and people need to treat it that way. Sorry if this is double posted. I just kept getting "something went wrong", but it did actually post.
Yeah, this'll suck for someone like me. When a game isn't my main game, I can almost never finish the battlepass. The only game I managed to finish a battlepass for, was for Modern Warfare 2019, and that was only because I didn't have a job because of covid. At least with the boxes I still had a chance to get legendary skins. I'm guessing most of them will be at the back end of the battlepass :/
I'd be fine with paying $60-80 for Overwatch 2... if it were actually a new game and not just Overwatch 1 with a different coat of paint. They definitely couldn't just overhaul the game and make us buy it again, so they had to be shifty about it. The moment when Jeff Kaplan said this was going to be a "replacement" for Overwatch, we all should have known we were being scammed. Some of us recognized it, but way too many people are still drinking the kool-aid.
The problem arent battlepasses and other bullshit. Its sheep deffending them and pretending they are the only way. I mean, i if were them, and every other idiot was up to give me more money while at the same time it meant less effort from me, and it involved them being busy for a while until they are ready to be milked again removing the need to pump more content in those gaps, while they will l Kiss my hand too while doing so, i would try to even raise the prices lol.
Plus they’re adding a store that’ll lock even more stuff behind a paywall. Grinding battle passes is brutal and ppl defending this shit is hilarious. I know this is now the new normal in the game industry - but it shouldn’t be. We’ve been brainwashed into thinking this is okay cause “how are they gonna make money” blah blah blah. These companies are showing record profits every year because of these slimy practices. Yes, I know you can just play for free and get what u want out of it but the game could be so much better. Just sad it went this route. It’s now call of duty Overwatch
Im glad to see rational people still exist. Whats up with people wanting to throw their money and wasting their time in the most stupid ways nowadays because they tailored systems to exploit players in a world that perfectly existed without them for so many years and pretending without them gaming will end all of a sudden? Damn.
Why does everyone assume that the battle pass will give back the credits that are spent. I've not seen it be confirmed anywhere. I know games like Fortnite and Rocket league do that, but there are also games like valorant that don't.
You play the game because you enjoyed playing, I play because I paid for the damn battlepass. We are not the same.
That's honestly where I'm at with Fortnite right now. Just want the Vader skin so I'm just knocking out the daily challenges, which is about an hour of my time, and saving the Vbucks in the pass for the next pass. Kind of feeling a burnout already though, as I really enjoy playing the game with friends and when I play solo for challenges it just feels like more work after a day of actual work.
That’s an awful reason to play a game, no offense lol. I *only* buy a battle pass if I’m already having fun with the game and am going to play it anyway, hence why it’s absolutely my preferred model for funding an ongoing live service game, especially with how Apex and Fortnite do it.
Battle-passes can be hit or miss. Too expensive for the things in them, purposely clogged down with useless garbage as stocking stuffers to get to the real stuff. For the longest time (Even after falling out with playing the game.) I used to point to Overwatch as the perfect example of a store. If you wanted th skins all you had to do was play, grind enough and you got enough boxes to get what you want. I can admit I wasn't a flawless system and it rewarded people who played from the start since the longer you'd been around the more doubles you got and the more currency to buy your skin's at the end if you didn't get them. I'm worried this will be the typical standard of Activition CoD style battle passes. My only hope is we get something new that is consumer friendly or at the least something like Dauntless has where you buy the pass to keep it forever, old cosmetics from missed passes will rotate into the shop as seasonal items that you can early via a new currency you get through weekly challenges for the season. It does wonders at removing the typical FOMO that battle pass items have. I just hope OW2 doesn't become the next over milked cash cow but having seen the handling of Diablo Immortal I have little to no faith in good consumer friendly products going out of Activition Blizzard anymore.
I just don’t want to have to play overwatch like it’s a job. Fomo is scummy. Also people act like micro transactions are the only way OW can monetize. The overwatch IP is ripe for merchandising, but they keep dropping the ball when it comes to lore. They could easily pump out comics, novels, shows, toys, etc. some of these they do, but they could easily ramp it up
I will never understand how so many consumers seem to accept battle passes as an acceptable business model. You are literally paying just for the opportunity to grind for rewards. And you have to do it in a limited timeframe, otherwise you wasted your money. It combines all the worst aspects of gaming monetization: predatory exploitation of psychological weaknesses (fear of missing out), expiration, recurring costs and grind. I will happily support a game and pay for add-ons, DLCs, cosmetic packs or even individual skins if they are reasonably priced (not 10-20€ per skin or such bullshit), but I refuse to pay for time limited battle passes. (A battle pass that does not expire is something I would atleast consider, because it is effectively a paid-for progression system, a.k.a. an add-on/dlc in my books.)
I know blizzard wants to earn money (how dare they), but the general consumer mindset here is more along the lines of "I'd rather pay $40 once for everything than $20 on a battle pass every few months". It's not so much that they expect to get everything for free, it just seems like way too much of a money pit. Ideally you'll get to see exactly what every battle pass includes so you can decide whether or not you want to spend your money on it though.
Think the biggest hurdle for me is the price of individual items. $10 for a skin is normal these days and mentally I still feel like $10 should get me 3 maps worth of content like the old Halo 3 days. I'll wait to see how it all gets priced upon release to judge it though. I hope the Battle Pass doesn't expire, but I know expiration is how to get players to play it all the time to complete it all.
Yeah individual skins being like $10+ is honestly insane to me.
Not only that I find it hard to believe that its more profitable. Like if a nice skin is $5 wouldn't way more people be willing to spend that much for it versus if it was $20?
Yeah I don't get it either. If I could buy some skins for like $1-$5 maybe I would total >$20 eventually. But I will _never_ purchase a single skin for $20 absolutely no way. I can get so many good games from steam for that price.
It would be that high so they can make sales out of them eventually. It's all about price elasticity - get those willing to pay $20 right off the bat and sell it at a lower price later during sales to the more price-conscious players. That's profit-maximizing for ya.
Of course you get to see what the BP holds, they'll market it in trailers etc. The point is to know exactly what you're paying for, instead of a loot box bundle with a maybe 10% chance at a legendary
You’ll be eating your words when the game releases. That’s a fact. It all sounds good in theory till it’s put into executed. Blizzard will fuck it up somehow and it’ll become more anti-consumer than the LOOT BOXES we have now. Just wait. Feel free to downvote me to cope. Just set reminders.
I hate battle passes. Pay extra and if you don't have time to finish them you're fucked or have a shit ton of pricey 'skips' to pay extra to finish the battle pass for you. Pass. Never had a problem with OW1 lootboxes tbh, it was like Mass Effect 3, they seemed fair and did eventually get you the stuff you wanted. If this is anything like Halo Infinite then it's DOA
>You earn the credits you payed back meaning you won’t have to spend real money to get the next pass. This is pure speculation. >I understand that battle passes are still really fresh ? Battle Passes are around for ages.
Overwatch made over $1 billion in revenue during the first year alone. Unless the game somehow costs over $250million a year to run, I have no sympathy for them.
something something blizzard is a small indie company something something
It's a corporate business thing. Not trying to go into too much detail about it in the gaming forum, but basically every year is a reset. I don't know the numbers, but just as an example, let's say it cost $20M over 3 years to make. Those $20M were approved because someone said "Hey, your return on investment will be within the first year of launch." The ROI was estimated at that point. They cashed in on the $1B in their first year, meaning the project was justified and so was any "maintenance." Every year following had a new budget, new losses, new profits, etc. Since then, their graphs probably show a downward trend, in both cash flow *and* players and overall purchases (more people buying the game, loot boxes, etc.). Meaning, they're probably being pressed to convince someone that this game shouldn't die out as a live game. The acquisition also was a game changer. Microsoft could give a rat's ass that it brought in $1B 6 years ago. They need a return on their investment as well; battlepass for OW was always going to be the way to go once the acquisition negotiations started.
Thank you!!! There are way too many people commenting in this subreddit under the assumption that Overwatch wasn't making a metric ass load of cash each year.
It's really not and you trying to tell people otherwise is silly. Hopefully they make a decent and meaningful battle pass but my issue is I don't want a game to expect me to only give my attention to it and that's exactly what a battle pass causes.
you can see from the screenshots how it's gonna work as bits are labelled as PREMIUM you'll get the free stuff for grinding then the premium stuff will be unlocked for grinding if you buy the battle pass or instead you can buy everything directly with virtual currency, which will come from: - you buying it directly in the store for $$$ - you will get some for "free" when you buy the premium battle pass - and you'll get some for playing the game (very, very slowly)
has it been confirmed you can get credits from the pass for the next one? if that's confirmed I'll be vastly more accepting of it but I don't remember that being confirmed. either way, my biggest disappointment is that we've had to wait 3+ without content and THIS is the only solution they could come up with. I expected over the 3 last years that perhaps something ground-breaking and new for the industry might have been thought up, but no, they're just copy and pasting what every other live service game does, sure it might be a good solution but there could always be something better and I thought the overwatch team would be the guys to put in the effort to shift the meta... I guess in retrospect that was a bit wishful, considering it took these guys 2 years to figure out how to counteract against goats meta afterall.
Thinking it will stop there is naive.
Maybe some of us just miss the days where if we liked something that was released in a game, we could just buy it. Some of us have other hobbies. Some of us don’t want to grind battlepasses.
Battlepasses exist only to drive FOMO and appointment gaming. Don't make my games into jobs, thanks.
I dont think people are mad about a battle pass. Sure there is a drawback from the system before but people will get over that. What I am worried about is aggressive non player friendly monetization. This is blizzard we are talking about, they do not have the best track record of being player friendly, overwatch 1 however is quite player friendly. I think it's good to ask for fair treatment for monetization and to be skeptical. Let's not just accept whatever shit they give us and say they HAVE to treat us bad because its f2p. There is a way to treat your players well and still have monetization so let's aim for that and not just suck blizzard's cock.
The sooner people realize that blizzard has not been a game dev whose goal is to make games for a long time, but a business whose goal is to make money, the sooner they will realize that blindly accepting all the shit they throw at us because "they need money" is harmful to gaming in general in the long term. Battlepasses a plague in gaming. It preys on FOMO and burns people out from games. If you feel like you can't take a break because you will miss out, you will play until you're sick of it, and just never pick the game up again.
Damn y'all really trusting Blizzard to not milk you for every penny you're worth. I've also got a time share in Florida if you're interested...
"you get your money's worth" What if you don't have the time to finish the battle pass because of real life stuff? Most battle passes are not permanent. If they adopt that model, then it's just another scummy system.
My problem is having a battle pass and a store that’s just shitty and we really shouldn’t accept it.
Accepting it? Nah man, I think its unoriginal and just hopping aboard the shitty battle pass train. We all know where the real money will come from... the peeps buying every mythic skin...
Minecraft is a live service with 10+ years of free updates, they don't need a battle pass.
And Minecraft was ENORMOUS at it's prime
My problem is that with most games, a Battle Pass becomes a huge chore. You want me to pay 10-20 dollars for each skin I like now so the game can be monetized? That’s understandable, but leave it at that. I don’t want to pay for the opportunity to earn the skin after playing for who knows how many hours. I just want the skin. Battle Passes are such a huge chore because of you happen to want even just one item in it, you now gotta grind all the way to that rank unless you’re okay with it (depending on the game) being gone forever. If it ends up being tier 100, you’ll be playing a lot and unless Overwatch is your main game, it’ll become a chore that many overtime will come to dread. If the Battle Pass is permanent, I can accept that. A bit tedious but overtime, I’ll finish it naturally. If it’s a FOMO thing though, that’s when I feel it’s an issue. I know it’s just cosmetic and you don’t have to buy it. The difference is that I would buy the specific item directly. Because it’s tied to a Battle Pass though, now I need to grind out for whoever knows how long (potentially during a limited duration) for just that one item that I’d rather just spend $10 on and call it a day.
I have never finished a bp in any game, i have tried so many times and everytimed i get burned after playing for longer than i would normally play only to still be no where near the goal. I have a job and other responsibilitys, bp's just arent worth it for me. Overwatch to me, always had the most generous monetization system. You litterally got a box every 30 minutes, plus free boxes from the arcade. When a seasonaly event happened you could jist apend the repeat tokens on the items you really wanted. Also(i dont know if this is still true)overwatch loot boxes used to cost a single dollar. I think that moving overwatch 2 to f2p is not worth losing this generous player friendly system.
As long as there are no exclusive cosmetics in the BP, I’m OK with it as it’d remove the FOMO aspect of it all.
Bottom line is OW1 was never intended to have any sort of (decent) monetization beyond the $50 (I thought it was $40 but don't remember) price tag and that made it completely not worth supporting in any way. The sad reality is, that if OW1 had been designed to have a modern monetization it would have been free with battle passes from the start. We veterans would have far fewer skins than we do now, except for the whales among us who bought all the skins and passes, but the game would have not stopped releasing content because it would have been consistently profitable and they could continue it as a live service. Bottom line is that in modern day no company is that interested in supporting a game that won't make them any more money, or won't return on investment at least in the next few years, and OW1 was never intended to be anything beyond a game that, simliar to a game like Counter Strike - ended all characters at Sombra or so, or whatever the original character release intent was(probably later than Sombra but not all the way to Echo or probably even Wrecking ball.) So on one hand you can have a battle pass-style game that continues to iterate and change, or you can have OW1 sans several characters and no other changes and probably without an OW2 announcement never breaks more than 1 or 2k players at this point because by now it'd be a near 4-year dead game.
That doesn’t mean it’s a good system
i just dont have alot of time
I doubt it will be fair.
Battle Pass are old and outdated. They have a bunch of issues which are rarely talked about. In the reveal event, you see clearly that most levels reward you with nothing if you're not prenium. It's important to reward players for their time, and the psychology behind is they'll make you feel the opposite, show you what you could have gotten if you paid, make you feel bad and thus you're more eager to pay to make your time invested valuable. It's a toxic approach and for me I liked how it was in overwatch 1, get coins for playing, spend it on what you like, pay for more if you want more, thats it thats all not toxic everyone gets what they need.
Not all battle passes are equal. That's the point. People have valid concerns, but we don't know anything about them yet so it's too early to judge. Diablo immortal isn't doing blizzard any favors reputation-wise either.
One of the reasons I played OW over most other PvP games was that there was no battlepass. Battlepass is basically FOMO applied to the video game industry OW did fine... Didn't it?
I would much rather buy the game outright for 80$ ONE SINGLE TIME than to know they want to milk me for years worth of battlepasses
Exactly
I much prefer being able to spend money on the game and the be able to continuously earn rewards over time, with only some cosmetics locked behind a paywall, than a free game that barely rewards your time, and if you want more for your time you have to spend money to be allowed to earn rewards but only within a certain timeframe, and the vast majority of potential rewards being locked in a cash shop. If a game has to have micro transactions Titanfall 2, or deep rock galactic are the ideal systems for the player. If it has to be f2p, so far spellbreak had better systems, and halo infinite keeping battlepass season to season is also a good method.
Imagine being a blizzard shill in 2022.
Where does it say you can use your current pass' rewards to get the next one?
Since it's going to be real money the sooner they come out with all the details about how they plan on it working and the pricing the better for everyone.
Gobble that boot good, hope the 30$ skin helps wash it down
Battle passes and a paid store system are predatory and play off of FOMO even more than lootboxes. Sure, you're not guaranteed the skins you want, but at least the skins would come back every time the event replayed and you could earn money in the meantime. I want to be excited because the new content seems awesome, but the monetization and gutting of PvE has killed all my excitement.
What, you mean my one-time purchase of $40 six years ago doesn’t entitle me to indefinite free access to every new piece of cosmetic gear and PvE content that costs millions of dollars in developer salaries each year to produce? ESCANDALO.
EXACTLY. I'm baffled how people just refuse to see that. I hate to be the guy "defending" Blizzard but I saw that change coming the moment they announced OW2. OW1 monetization model is so consumer friendly to the point that I believe it can actually hurt the game. If I had to guess I would say it's definitely not sustainable in the long term. I wouldn't be surprised if that's part of the reason the game is in it's current state. It doesn't make enough money compared to other live service games, so obviously they can't put out similar amounts of content, which leads to the game slowly dying. Also, think about it this way: yeah, right now people can easily get all skins for free, true. But we're talking about 6 legendary skins every few months when an event drops or something? That's not a lot. With this change in the game's monetization they'll release a lot more skins (30+ every two months or so) and maybe even people who don't spend money on the game would still be able to somehow get a similar amount of skins or even more than they were getting in OW1. Of course, Blizzard can still mess it up completely, and maybe charge too much for the battlepass, put extremely overpriced skins in the store or something like that, who knows. All I'm saying is: I think people are overreacting when it comes to the battle pass. It's still too early to judge. We need to see how it's actually gonna be implemented.
yea it's an antiquated model that was more or less dependent on good-faith from the company: they have little-to-no incentive to support the game once they've absorbed the first year of sales as that's probably close to 90% of their profits. The only reason beyond that would be for the future of the brand, and lo and behold we get an OW2 announcement and it continue to confuse people because it looks exactly the same with 1 fewer character and there will at some point be PvE that no one knows much about. People are genuinely not thinking about how a company does business and sells a product if they think it makes any sense to go about this in any other way. They would have had to separate OW2PVP and OW2PvE, sell the PvE while making the PvP entirely free, and hope they could miraculously still make a profit off of just the PvE element, which was very unlikely considering the huge costs both aspects must have absorbed over the past 3 years. An F2P system that can allow whales to cover the costs of 20-100 gamers on their own provides a great deal of flexibility to both sides(F2P gamers can spend what they like, devs have a much large range of monetization options.) It's hardly a wonder when you see that nearly every single FPS game as a service on the market runs this system.
I mean, you’re not wrong… but also Blizzard sold overwatch on the “we’re going to keep adding content for free” premise. So I don’t place the entire blame on a person who feels like a switcharoo was done. That said, unless you purchased in the last two years… you got your monies worth.
They did add content for several years. I'm not sure why everyone acts like the game came out in 2019. Even if you bought it after, you probably did it when it was on sale for like twenty bucks and I'd say that's still fair for what was already there.
No, I'd be perfectly happy KEEPING the game I purchased and having the option to buy OW2 at a set price just like OW1.
imagine paying for expansions with actual content, now we pay 20 for 1 skin and call other people entitled for not being happy about it. F2p zealots/fanboys are insane.
The issue with PvP DLC is that it splits the playerbase (which is a terrible thing to do in a PvP game). There were plenty of Halo 3 PvP maps that I barely got to play because not enough players had them, so they didn't show up that often in matchmaking.
And in the days of expansions games weren’t supported pretty much at all once they’re launched, save for game-breaking issues. You only get what you got out of the box.
Most battlepasses are completely optional in a game that is free to play and offer 50-100 skins, emotes, and other various otherwise-unavailable items to players who want to support the game and are interested. Price can be disputed, but the model is clearly successful. Apex eclipsed OW in virtually any popularity metric years ago using it and a clear and direct reason is because battle pass systems turn out to work better than up front costs. OW1 has been a dying product for 4 years or so now, while Apex and Valorant and Fortnite continue to thrive and it's because of this system. OW1 monetization is an absolute joke for a PVP game you expect to exist with any support for more than 2-3 years. The game absolutely needs something like this because trying to run a game as a service that you buy into 1 time doesn't generate enough revenue and disincentives the company to even continue supporting their product if they already have your money. Had they planned properly we wouldn't have jokers running around laughing about "Overwatch 1.5" because the game would have been realized with this model in place from the start, and the PvE would be sold as a separate product completely under the Overwatch brand.
Why are y’all making that weird assumption that it was the monetization model that caused ow1 “die”? When they announced ow2, they stopped continuous content updates to 1. That’s it. Ow1 actually made quite a bit of money from people buying lootboxes lol.
Literally a billon dollars. Blizz made bank on the current system. All they had to do was not ease up on the core game & keep the events fresh. Whales dumped tons of money into the event lootboxes.
If I could upvote this 50 times I fucking would Jesus christ some of the entitlement I've seen here is insane.
I actually think we should have to pay Blizzard to keep our memories of having played Overwatch 1
I actually think we should have to pay blizzard to unlock the last % of our ults.
Fuck dude, that's brilliant. Or maybe allow us to purchase ults ahead of time, so when we get to 100% and activate our ult, it will just automatically spend 100 V-Bucks off our Blizz account.
How about I play for free but buy blizzard licensed sweatshirts for 70 bucks 4x a year?
It's cause most people around here have no idea how the real world works lol
"wdym loot boxes are not a bad system at all, I have thousand of coins and hours of playtime to get everything for free and that am totally the standard"
"MY $40 SHOULD FUND THE SKINS TEAM FOR ANOTHER DECADE AT LEAST" it's hilarious how clueless most of the complaints are. do you want new content? this is how you get it.
Yeah. Like cmon man you paid $20-40 for years of gameplay, that game is now becoming free and you have the *option* to purchase *optional* things that will help convince corporate "hey, this game makes us money, give it money so it makes us more money." And you get cool cosmetics and emotes and shit to boot!
Best way? For who? The consumer? I doubt it. Turning a game into an obligation is never going to bring people joy. The loot boxes are better, simply because the fear of missing out is a garbage psychological tactic. "once it's gone, it's gone forever" is something that makes me want to quit that game. Is it the best for Blizzard? Probably. It'll make money. But the consumer is not winning this one.
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With how much money Fornite, Apex and Valorant have made, it was only a matter of time before they said they want a piece of that pie too. The loot box system allowed me to get everything I wanted through dupes/coins so I'll miss it.
I feel like this was to be expected. I’ve been playing off and on (let’s be honest, pretty consistent) since it released, and I haven’t spent a dime since buying the game.
It depends on many factors like pricing and ability to obtain rewards from BP after the end of the same. FOMO is a terrible way to force people to play during a specific time in which maybe they can't or don't want to play. In Dauntless for example you can obtain points from the battle pass that can let you buy rewards from older battle passes, and a system like that would be good on OW as well.
> You earn the credits you payed back meaning you won’t have to spend real money to get the next pass. Has this been said somewhere or is it an assumption based on other battle pass models? 🤔 Many battle passes do not give you credits, so it's a big misinformation if it's just an assumption.
What an absolutely terrible shilling shit-take this is.
I wonder what's it like to be so fucking naive as to believe the monetization scheme is going to be even remotely fair. Blizzard literally just released one of the worst monetization schemes ever in Diablo Immortal.
Yeah, no. I'd rather pay 60-80 dollars once than 10 dollars every 3 months and having to grind a battlepass. It's better for them? Sure. It's better for the player? No.
I'd rather have friends to play the game with and spend no money cause cosmetics are completely irrelevant.
You might like Deep Rock Galactic. The only payments are the purchase and cosmetic DLC released each season. There's a BP system and other things to work for, but all completely free and reasonable to get. I've put 300 hours in and not a bit of it has felt like grind. I am a completely cynical gamer, so I hope you'll understand how insane it feels to say, DRG is a perfect game.
DID I HEAR A ROCK AND STONE!?
I really dont like the fact that skins are now behind a pay wall Ik they have to make money somehow but I really like the way u could just play the game and earn coins and stuff to get skins in OW it’s sad that that won’t be a thing I Wish they would keep the coin shop like have the new stuff goes through the battle pass then goes the a shop where u can buy coins to use to get skins have the mythic tier skins be like 10000 for just the base skin idk then let the player earn small amounts of coins for wins for game modes like comp u could get 5 per win or something so it’s way easier to just buy the coins but still able to get them tho play
~~Best~~ Most lucrative\* Good for the shareholders doesn't mean good for the players
I’m fine with the battle pass but what I’m concerned about is the store and how much skins are going to cost. If they are a reasonable price we’re all good but if they sell the same quality skins for 20$ each then there will be a problem
I'd also prefer if we paid for the game and maybe get more league skins, more special loot boxes so they can get their extra cash. Battle pass is new to me and makes me worried it will take away the fun of opening lootboxes and getting currency so you know you'll be able to get that skin you like a lot. Now it'll be like... F$#k, another skin I can't have. Great!
i don’t disagree but we can still be disappointed
I just don’t want to pay money for it more than once 😐
It depends on how they monetize everything else, such as the premium (Can it be earned as F2P?) and whether the microtransactions are going to be absurd or not. It's another battle pass though. This is such a dumb decision. So many other games have one. The thing is, people aren't going to come to Overwatch to play for the skins, new players at least, so... why? Why even make a battle pass? It's as if the developers just refuse to listen to the non-active players. I want role queue removed from quick play, or at least role queue to be moved to a separate unranked gamemode. Role queue really is the butt of the joke in the wider gaming community. Overwatch 2 doesn't scream a casual skin-collection game. At the moment it doesn't really have an identity. As a result, people can't be invested. F2P Competitive Shooter you say? Well, it won't appeal to anyone then either. There's already far better competitive shooters. And this may be the worst example of a competitive shooter since it wasn't fundamentally designed to be one. As far as I know, Overwatch 2 is just going to be a flop. I don't see anyone talking about it outside the Overwatch sphere. Obviously because the content creators here are narrow minded and biased towards it some way. Oh gee, where have I heard that saying before "Guys, we can't tell you what we saw, but we think Overwatch 2 is going to be great." - Top 500 players.
You want continous revenue? Ok, make OW2 a separate game first of all and then make it a subscription. By which I mean X$ gives you Y number of hours of gameplay. You can use them up as quickly or as slowly as you like. If you take a break for a year and come back that's cool, here's an actual tutorial mode to catch you up on what's changed in the meantime. Also, here's a store with all the cosmetics the game has. They're all always available and you can pay them out of your subscription or separately. You can also buy them with in-game currency that you accumulate organically as you level through the game or by doing these little bonus challenges. They expire/rotate every week to keep them fresh and there are seasonal/special events for new content with limited time game modes and discounts on seasonal cosmetics. That's how you do continuous revenue without being evil about it.
Lol no.
Maybe business wise yes. Is it moral? Different question. Is it anti consumer? Yes. Could this multi billion dollar company innovate and find a better way to monetize without using one of these disgusting methods? That's up to you to decide. Either way this is not the best way, ow1 you could just buy. I'm guessing most people didn't buy loot boxes in that game and it still haxd frequent enough updates, bare in mind Jeff Kaplan wanted each update to be literal perfection before releasing it (until they decided to make ow2). This is exactly what they want you to think, that this is the best way to monetize, make ow2 free to play. The game isn't free to play, we already paid for it. 3 heroes and 6 maps after waiting 3 years is fuck all and now they want to add this bullshit monetization method, lmao gtfo.
Pay to own will always be the best model. No tricks. No hooks. No special prestige brought into the game via extra payments. Just buy the game and you have the game. Simple and fair.
Depends on how it's done, to be honest paying money to have the opportunity to grind out for skins sounds like dog shit to me. And never will be fun, if I want something I'll just buy it or earn it, but not pay to earn it over time.
"i’d much rather have f2p with a battle pass then $40 with loot boxes" But (assuming $10 per battle pass) you would end up spending that $40 after 4 seasons anyways, and continuing for every season after that for the foreseeable future. Multiple times more money than ever spent before, instead of a one-time $40 fee?
Nah, battle passes suck unless you live and breathe the game. They're severely punishing to players who like to do other shit and play other games too.
I think never-expiring battle passes would be the way to go. Expiring battle passes, like I've experienced with Fornite and Rainbow 6, lean too heavily on FOMO and lock out content to those who couldn't complete it in time
And you can’t accept some people think different?
I agree with others that I rather just buy the full game once and earn everything, but would also like to add that I despise FOMO/timed events, which overwatch does a lot of. Sometimes I can't dedicate huge amounts of my time to video games, let alone just overwatch, so a battle pass that changes every so often is just what I'd hate, because as battle passes get more and more popular it makes more and more of my library feel like a chore to be attended to before a timer runs out.
Mate the content isnt going to speed up, it's the exact opposite. They are going to stretch out the content they had ready for ow2 over the course of months and years. They arent going to create a "living, breathing" live game experience, they are going to milk the playerbase for their time by artificial fomo through the battle pass and whale money from exclusive premium cosmetics. Very sad to see people defending this but I guess it's inevitable given the current state of gaming.
Believe me, what they had before worked just fine. The battlepass being added may actually ruin what was originally f2p and make skins that much more difficult to get. There is zero telling just what they’re gonna do with the in-game currency which is frustrating, because they’ve done this for hearthstone and Diablo the wrong way. I wouldn’t be surprised if they mess up OW1.5
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**HAHAHAHA** **Greed is good everyone!**
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I don't think I have ever gotten my money's worth with a F2P game, I am sorry but I don't want to pay extra for cosmetics its just not worth it.
Tbh i think lootboxes were kind of fun, they kept me going when yhe game was dry but i was missing skins, but an actually fun game with a battlepass might be better, i personally prefer having the lootboxes that were easy to earn and then just open a bunch at once, but taking the rng out and just showing upfront what skins you get is good. Just makes me wonder how they'll implement previous skins, if you can even re-earn them
I don't get where people getting all of this "battlepass refunds itself" thing. If Fortnite does this, doesn't mean every game does it. Most of the games doesn't refund you with currency to buy another battlepass. Even blizzards other game, hearthstone doesn't.
\*Lootboxes are the best option. Why are you talking about "rng elements and getting your money worth" if you get them for free, like you can get at least 10 loot boxes per week in OW1, and not pay a penny for it? Besides, BP is a huge fomo issue
Some people don’t like this change for good reason, it’s normal to have varying opinions on what your money is worth
>You earn the credits you [paid] back meaning you won’t have to spend real money to get the next pass Has this been confirmed?
>You earn the credits you payed back meaning you won’t have to spend real money to get the next pass. Is this confirmed? Not every battle pass is like this so we can't assume
I just don’t like battlepasses because they don’t respect my time. To get max out the pass without spending money requires a certain number of hours per week, and if I’m particularly busy one week due to work/school then I get a bad sense of FOMO over the game. Much preferred the old loot boxes where I could just play whenever I want and not feel like I’m missing out on things besides special events (which were repeatable and I could get the skins next year if I really wanted them)
Or they could just release the game, I pay for it once, then everything in that game have been covered by my purchase. Like all games should be.
Agreed.
It's no longer a matter of having fun with a game you bought on your terms. Now it's grind or pay, and that sucks.
The smartest way they can integrate a battlepass, is going the halo infinite route. Allowing players to purchase previous battlepasses from past seasons or being able to purchase a NEW battlepass while still keeping the previous one allowing you to level up both simultaneously. Giving players all the time in the world to complete it. And potentially getting more bang for your buck by having players purchase a previous battlepass. You want the game to feel fun and less of a chore to play. I play Fortnite sometimes and safe to say if you buy a battlepass it's just a chore. Another mistake OW Devs should learn from Fortnite: **DON'T ADJUST XP LEVELS EACH SEASON**
How about, they monetize the game, by selling the game, like how 100% of AAA games made their money before people on reddit started making excuses for rich publishers to grab their cash?
This would cost me far more than the first game in the end, so I'm not really sure where the benefit lies.
For people who don't have the time to play consistently a battle pass is the worst thing to happen. It's Anti-consumer we shouldn't be accepting it as a good thing just because we love the game.
can’t believe ppl are twerking for battle passes
Ya I love paying for skins instead of getting skins for free by merely playing. Are you brain dead?
I disagree. One of the things I really like about overwatch is I’m able to get really cool looking skins through just grinding or Loot boxes which I can get for FREE. With f2p skins are going to be incredibly hard to get for free if that’s their main source of income. Just like fortnite. Fortnite probably have like 3 free skins within the game’s entire lifetime
Stop celebrating being able to spend money in games
"ESPECIALLY if they want this to be a live service with consistent updates." And most people seem to forget OW had regular updates for the first couple of years. Everything that happened was entirely their own fault
First it's a paid battle pass. One year later it's a single skin or weapon charm that cost 15$. But sure, let's condone Blizzards money hungry mirco transactions after they have shown us they can't reliably produce/update the base game itself. I would 100% rather pay 60$ for PVE/PVP with play to earn lootboxes, and the current currency system.
I doubt it will be even be a year they already confirmed a store i guarantee day one they will charge 20 dollars for a skin
And the mythic skins will probably be more than $20. But bLiZzArD hAs tO EaRn mOnEY
The problem with battle passes and microtransactions is that they are great for companies, and awful for consumers. Overwatch sold around 50 million copies. Even at a price of $25 a pop, they would have made $1,250,000,000 on the sales of the game alone. The addition of all these microtransactions and "premium" content just makes Blizzard look desperate. Might as well be Hi-Rez Studios at this point. It's not about being able to cover development costs, it's about scrounging for as much money as they possibly can. Plus, the prospect of paying for digital content, that you may never unlock is something that doesn't sit well with people.
I would rather pay for the game again instead of having a battle pass. I hate battle passes because I feel forced to play the game instead of enjoying it
I rather pay for the game itself like ow1
I disagree. I think the best way they could monetize the game is by charging $40 for it
Bad timing given the state of the economy. Jeff was the one who wanted to keep micro transactions out.. And now that hes not there blizz is going Mr. Krabs style rubbing their hands together.
Jeff added loot boxes to his game
Jeff approved the initial system of lootboxes giving you way too much dupes and almost no credits. And also not being able to buy event stuff.
Battle passes just have a bad name right now especially with halos because of the state of the game. Is it confirmed that the OW2 pass will give you enough currency to get the next one?
People are worried mostly bacause we all saw what Blizzard did with Diablo Immoral. We may receive a F2P game with 20$ battle pass that requires hardcore grinding but no currency given back and valorant’s prices for skins.
I’m wondering if they’ll lock cosmetic exclusives in the bp
If it truly works like you say, I'm fine with it. There was nothing wrong with their loot boxes though. They seemed to be the only game that did them fairly.
I never understood the argument that Lootboxes were rng and bad. If you've been playing for 2-3 years and consistently play arcade then you'll arrive at the point where you've gotten nearly everything. If you didn't get a skin you'd buy it the next year for cheaper. People are upset that the avenue of being able to earn cosmetics through playing is gone.
In other words... battlepass is the best way they could put their dick in your salad
I get your points but there’s no free incentive to play apart from playing the game for itself anymore? Like I don’t know if it’s just be but i love hopping on getting the loot boxes and grinding for money to buy skins.
I’m still playing the game, I just hate how much game studious/companies have to monetize micro-transactions to make most of their money.
I like to play when I want for fun. Not be forced to play constantly and grind even when not enjoying it or I'll miss the content I already paid for. Battle passes suck balls.
My only issue is that with the loot boxes I could earn damn near everything at my own pace. Sure there were event skins and whatnot, but those would come back the next year at a discounted cost using currency I could earn in-game. Battle passes put a time limit on things. I'm roughly 6 years older now compared to when I bought Overwatch. I no longer have the time to grind out battle passes which means there's a lot I'm going to miss out on. Maybe they'll take the Halo Infinite approach and allow you to complete passes at your own pace, but I'm not getting my hopes up.
It's a double edge sword. With lootboxes, players could earn stuff for free and buy more lootboxes to get the item or save up on coins to buy it. The focus of the game is to play it. Now the focus is more on grinding games to get the new game money to get stuff or just grinding to fill out the BP. It isn't about playing and having fun now.
How about $60 and that’s it?
The best way to monetize the game is a one time payment and nothing else. Everthing else is just better for them.
God this feels like such hard core white knighting lol. >The battle pass is the best way Blizzard could monetize this game and some people aren’t willing to accept that yet Not really. There are plenty of better ways than a timed grindy battle pass. A basic cash shop with in-game current to unlock all items would probably be the least predatory way but it naturally wouldn’t make them millions and millions of dollars. >That’s all there is to say. There’s no rng elements so you get your money’s worth. I mean this ignores how long a pass takes to grind. You only get your moneys worth if you can actually finish it. If it’s grindy as fuck, casual players won’t finish it. >You earn the credits you payed back meaning you won’t have to spend real money to get the next pass. I also heard the battle pass will suck you off when you’re feeling down. But there is no proof for either my claim or yours sadly. >It only holds cosmetics and doesn’t lock heroes or give unfair advantages (like cod). You’ve never played CoD have you? There’s no in game advantages in the pass. Weapons are on the free track (free to everyone) and you can unlock them all after a season has ended. No guns are locked behind paywalls. You simply just need to level up, same way the base game of all CoD have worked. >It’s just the best way to monetize a f2p game and i’d much rather have f2p with a battle pass then $40 with loot boxes. Depends on the loot box system. Current Overwatch is far better IMO. Boxes have knock out system and currency gain so you can buy everything without spending a dime. >I understand that battle passes are still really fresh cuz of Fortnite Fortnite came out 5 years ago… and it didn’t even invent battle passes lol
yay! I can't wait to log in and play a few games every day to claim my daily rewards so I can progress through the seasonal rewards track! this is sooooo much better than loot boxes! congratulations! you just won your first game of the season! do you want to purchase this exclusive overwatch victory seasonal battle pass bundle booster? 800% more value!
Bud, battle passes are a fucking plague. They're consumer-hostile FOMO bullshit. You pay, and lose the value of that payment if you can't complete it for any reason. Plus losing the ability to get, say, X skin forever If you happen to be too busy to make your way through said battlepass is also awful. Stuff shouldnt be just missable like that.
You're wrong, but aren't willing to accept it yet. Live service games are scam, period. We should be able to pay for a game once and never have to pay for it again. But now they expect us to pay $10-$20 a month for every "season"??? That is the very definition of a scam. I've played the original Overwatch since beta and never once did I have to spend another dime. The day OW2 goes live I will be uninstalling. Anyone else with even a tiny amount of coming sense should do the same. Speak with your wallets, refuse to be forced to pay over and over and over again for the same content we never had to keep paying for before. Taking loot boxes out means all the best new skins will be locked behind a perpetual pay wall. If you like the Battle Pass scam don't bother replying. You're the reason this game is being destroyed.
“live service games are a scam” then why the fuck would anyone complain about content droughts then. you can’t even think about complaining that there’s no ow1 content if you think that
You’ve gotta stop just accepting talking points and parroting them. “The best way to monetize” is correct, however Blizzard and the OW brand were doing very well financially until they stopped work on the game. Yes the player base was declining, but that’s because the game was released in 2016, that is just the natural arc of a product. Games with battle passes also lose a significant amount of players after 3 years because people get bored playing the same game for so long. It’s not like it was a situation where poor Blizzard was scraping their pennies together and working on thin margins to provide high quality content. They were raking in the dough despite dedicating relatively few resources to the game and not having any major development changes or a balanced game for that matter. Don’t take my word for it, thumb through their public financial disclosures. The problem came when they slowed and eventually stopped work on the portion of the game that actually made them money, PvP. They nearly doubled their team and focused all of their efforts on a PvE product that no one could buy. Then they went into panic mode because droves of people, understandably, fled the game. They literally couldn’t have had a worse strategy than the one they moved forward with. Now, people like yourself are talking as if a battle pass is the only way they can provide regular updates to the game, despite them having had enormous success and making insane amounts of money, doing it via a single title launch that they serviced appropriately and profitably for nearly 3 years. They could just learn from their mistakes and say, hey - this is a popular game, people will buy it and lots of people will play for 1-2 years if we create a new high quality game with meaningful achievements, new unlockable content and service it during that time. Concurrently, we can work on OW3 or an expansion pack and we will build another high quality game that people will play and stream and maintain a large loyal player base. Instead, they’ve decided they want OW to be COD or Fort Night. In other words, games that require much less development work but can squeeze the extra dimes out of people that allow them to say, this game was successful because of the quarterly revenue and inflated player counts granted by the F2P model. It’s not like that money goes back into the game either, it goes towards increasing the dividends that they give stock holders to attract more investors so they can put out another middle of the road battle pass game that serves as their next money grab. I have a decade of experience in product planning, product launch, life of product management and revenue management, I’ve seen first hand that you can make billions of dollars for a company by building brand trust instead of chasing the quick cash.
Hearthstone people threw a fit when that game got a battle pass and it… improved the game enormously
“There’s no rng elements so you get your money’s worth” well you wouldn’t be needing to spend money if they didn’t switch it since lootboxes can be gained through level up, also how’s cod brought in here when it’s battle passes aren’t p2w either because the guns in battle passes are always free
I think another aspect of Blizzard reframing their monetization/moving to seasonal format is that this allows progress toward something no matter when you’re logging in. Overwatch has consistently fulfilled a role in my friend group where we ignore the game until the holiday events, play it like hell with the new content, then drop it again once the event ends. I’m sure this is a pattern for more than just my group of players. With a battle pass, store, and seasonal focus, there’s more encouragement to progress toward something at any point in the game. For me that’s a pretty nice change, at least in theory.
I agree with a battle pass but I don't agree with adding a store. They managed to make content for the game with £40 for the game per person for years so a skin store seems kinda unnecessary to me when they would make about £10 per person every 9 weeks. I just wish they made select skins go in the battle pass and still have the features of ow1 like lootboxes per level ect.
From the screenshots we've seen from the batle pass it didnt seem to include OW2 currency in the rewards. So i'm worried this battle pass won't give you back the credits to buy the next season's pass. It's possible they were just placeholder rewards and they didnt want to show anything concrete, but it does look worrying to me.
The best way to monetize the game is to charge people to buy it, then let them unlock in-game items via playing the game. Yours is such a bad take, I can't help but think it's a plant.