EDIT: DISREGARD THIS COMMENT, I didn't see it as being possible to unlock the new content with the old credits, thinking it's no longer possible at all cause they don't preview it. Which shows quite the.. "design" flaw but they probably don't want the players to know that either. Tricking? Those are different currencies and you retain the old in form of silver coins, not gold ones. Just note, a legendary skin from ow1 was 3000 coins. You can now buy it.. for 1900 gold coins. That's 19$. You could buy that skin, essentially for free, you can't anymore - only a limited amount of stuff is accessible via silver credtits left-over from ow1. Victory poses or PotGs or smth like that is accessible.
I'm also very very annoyed by this. I spent my 17k credits on seasonal stuff I thought was like my 2nd and 3rd favorite stuff for characters I don't play. If I had just saved them or if we had known how the system actually worked I'd have so much stuff banked for future characters.
I had this feeling that they weren't just going to evaporate the remaining currency of OW1, it felt so off to me to even think that all this properly earned reward that was part of the box deal, would just be stripped away. So I only got the remaining few legendaries I sorta cared about, and saved the rest of my coin - around 35k or so. Either way, I wasn't gonna spend it on skins I knew I'd never use anyways so I figured I would take the gamble and predict that the coins would stay somewhat relevant come OW2's release. Turned out to be true, and I am thankful for my gamble, but I wish it didn't have to be a gamble in the first place. Clear communication was one of the key points the dev team made such a big deal about heading into OW2. I want to see that promise fulfilled. Not just for me, but for the community as a whole. The game is only great if the players are enjoying their time and contributing to a good experience.
@@YTHandlesWereAMistake Yeah. Everything from overwatch 1 should be purchasable with the legacy coins. The fact that a lot of them aren't is ridiculous.
I wish there were skins you could unlock by playing a hero a ton, sort of like an life time achievement skin. Like, get 100 hours of Moira, do x amount of healing and damage with her ult. Save y amount of lives, etc. Gratz now you've unlocked the Prestige skin.
Yea, Paladins does this (or used to - I don't play anymore). I've always wanted some kind of Hero Mastery system in Overwatch. Whether it's for cosmetics or just showing off to others your dedication and skill.
Reminds me of those master skins that used to be in Heroes of the storm. They were great but if you liked another skin more you had to choose between showing off your grinding or choosing a skin that you may like better.
I agree that cosmetics are just too expensive now. I’m not against monetizing the cosmetics but make them affordable. I think most ow fans would want to have at least 1 legendary per hero with 4 emotes and 4 sprays and 1 intro. It shouldn’t cost you the price of a whole game to get that for 1 hero!
If im being honest.. OW1 2016 vs OW1 2022 had so much polish and ui updates added that it too felt it was released unfinished. So i cant even hate what OW2 released with
My only real issues with the monetization is just the skin prices mainly just with old skins, and also the battlepass not paying itself out. I hatw the constant point of how the weekly coins take too long to get because you literally are not supposed to be able to make consistent purchases with free coins otherwise we fall back to the overwatch 1 problem. I do think if a new player sees the old skins and wants that it should not be 20 dollars but at the same time to that new player it is a “new” skin so it’s mainly frustrating for old players if anything. If they want one united price for legendary skins, 10 to 15 dollars is what it should be because there are so many different characters that all function differently that it’s unreasonable to assume one player will main a single hero rather than 2 or 3 heroes. I also think a reduction in price will make more sales as more people will be willing to purchase, plus we have to keep in mind that the world doesn’t work in USD and 20 dollars for us can be a much more absurd price. At the end of the day though free to play with no pay to win doesn’t pressure you nearly as much to spend. I don’t think a hero being in the pass is p2w when you can get them free, though tier 55 is a silly number, but destiny 2 does this and Siege does this but you only get new operators from paying for premium. If a free player can play the meat and potatoes core of the game that’s what matters most which thankfully they did. If they just tune numbers I do believe this monetization is very fair Edit: EEVEE MADE A GOOD POINT WITH THE BATTLEPASS THEY SHOULD BE LIKE HALO WHERE THEY JUST ALWAYS EXIST BECAUSE TIMED BATTLEPASSES ARE DUMB. If halo didn’t utterly flop this model maybe would’ve been made more mainstream to other games
I understand how this can be viewed as anti-consumer, but what I think people are forgetting is that the skins that cost $20, were free for 6 years. In truth, nobody should be paying any amount of money for a 6-year-old skin. However, assuming you are a brand new player coming into OverWatch and you have absolutely zero playtime, it makes sense from a business perspective to charge that player a certain amount of money. And I really don't think $20 is the reason people are angry, because the skin could have cost $10 and people would have still been angry. I just think that people are forgetting that Overwatch 2 will introduce newer players, and these new players are going to have to fork over some money because OverWatch 1 was free for so long. I know that sounds anti-consumer, but considering the fact that the battle pass is pretty generous, along with their daily weekly monthly and hero challenges. Something's got to give
**also an edit; they did say that they were going to do away with OW1 coins BUT they never said they were going to take YOURS away. Myself and others assumed they would let you keep them, which is why I didn't spend it. I warned others not to blow their coins aswell simply because If you saved your coins but you couldn't use them, that reality is far better than spending all of your coins, and you actually in fact can use them because they were going to make it a more rare currency (which was my gut feeling Because they had mentioned that they were going to open your loot boxes, and any duplicates that you get from a merged account would be converted into coins. That told me that they had a plan for those old coins) And this is more personal, but what I've learned from the release of OverWatch 2, is that a lot of people who have played Overwatch over the years aren't really as in tuned with the gaming community in general as they think they are. The concept of a battle pass is a brand new concept to a lot of Overwatch players. So they're reacting as if this is some industry changing event when in reality, Blizzard is just playing catch up to the industry. Which if you think about it, hasn't been a situation that Blizzard has been in for a long time. I'm trying to pick my words very carefully because I'm not trying to get called a shill, or sound like I'm anti-consumer but, out of the 1001 terrible ways Overwatch 2 could have gone, this is literally one of ,if not the best outcome for the game. Yet, people within the Overwatch community are still trying to stay angry. It's such a weird place to be in. Because I do consider myself a die-hard Overwatch fan, but I'm also a fan of gaming in general. And the way that supposed die hard Overwatch fans treat OverWatch just rubs me the wrong way.
Something to keep in mind in regards to Blizzard understanding how many players they're waving goodbye to from locking phone sms protection, is that it doesn't just affect the individual players, but also their friends. Imagine you're a friend group of 6 players, you want to play a modern cool shooter and OW2 being free to play may just fit that bill. Great. Warzone is quite old, Fortnite is what it is, OW is for the first time free for everyone. But now imagine 1 or 2 players in your friend group have prepaid phones, that affects the entire friend group because now they can't all play together. So are they just gonna abandon their 1 or 2 friends and say "sucks to be you"? Or are they instead gonna say "let's play another f2p title where we can all play together". In most cases it will be the latter, especially in more poor regions/countries where playing f2p games with your friends is literally the biggest incentive to enjoying gaming in general. These people dont sit with 2k rigs and are invested in being gamers, they're invested because they can play with their friend group and enjoy their time, even on low end hardware. So in my estimate, for every prepaid phone user you're excluding, on average I would assume you're at least excluding one of their friends as well even if they have a traditional subscription phone plan.
As a player who is in the lower ranks, as soon as they turned off SMS protect the quality of the games and competitive has gone down there are a lot of alt accounts starting to pop up and people who are definitely not supposed to be in that rank just stomping all over everybody.
Tired of this "we didn't want to spend money on OW1" narrative. Like all past Blizzard games we were waiting on expansion packs or a brand new PVE full price game. No one wanted to buy duplicate crates and there was no other option to spend money in OW1 by joining weekend tournaments or upgrades of any kind. Pink mercy was very successful, so is OW merch like Funkos. Btw, we arnt "supporting the devs" by spending money on battlepass etc. They all get paid salaries and our increased monetization largely isnt going towards development. It's all about quarterly earnings, stock value, shareholders and executive earnings/bonuses. Don't be naive, the avg Blizz developer salary is only about $60,000.
At this point.... I don't want skins. I'm glad I got all my skins from OW1. I'm not spending $20 per skin. The loot boxes were a better form. I have almost everything for all the old heroes.... But at least we would still got the "token/coins" or what ever you wanna call it. This... It's robbery.
@@healbot9000 Well this was one of the many points she brought up. The prices were too expensive (old skins are now worth $20 USD and that it now costs 12,000 USD to buy everything), the developers didn't explain how old currency was going to work in OW 2 (Even though they said months ago that they would work to improve communications), the confusion between coins and credits, New heroes should be at least level 40 instead of 55... This wasn't a debate, this was a 1 vs 3 ... I mean, why even have Nateson in the debate if he is completely indifferent to it, like dude if this is a debate then seriously put forward a counter-argument or get out. The problem isn't that people want free stuff, the problem is the monetization and the costs seem to be based on Diablo Immortal's pricing... which is ridiculous. The developers don't need people to spend 12,000 USD on their game, they want people to spend that but they don't need that.
@@brycejohansen7114 I didn’t get that impression it was 1v3. I think SVB was receptive to Eevee’s ideas, even if he didn’t agree precisely where the prices should be. It’s not black and white, it’s a gradient, between being so generous that there is little to no incentive to spend any money, and so expensive that it is exploitative. I think it’s currently edging on the greedy, exploitative side (especially with the price of old legendaries and being underhanded about old currency). But I think could make some small tweaks that make it more consumer-friendly. And that’s where I think SVB seemed to land.
You know to be fair, given that they'll start letting more phone providers and stuff in.. the SMS and new Defense Matrix redesign truly does seem like a big W in terms of smurfs and cheaters.
I think the prices are slightly high, but the biggest problem is how many coins you get from playing - the battle pass should reward some coins - not enough to pay for itself but some.
I’m sorry I love these videos but EeveeA interrupting and going on tangents about OW1 makes this really hard to listen to. I want to hear what other people have to say, and I don’t feel like anyone else got a chance to talk. Doesn’t seem like a debate it’s more EeveeA and SVB going back and forth
this has opened my eyes so much the gap between people loyal to Overwatch the game and people loyal to overwatch the community. A lot of us are loyal to both but there are also a lot of people that don't fall into both and this the line in the sand that divides those ppl
Just a random point, I haven't finished the video yet, but since they made arcade modes also have regular open queue quickplay essentially, you can actually play the new heros in those modes while you still unlock them by leveling the battlepass. And it's a great system in my opinion, yes I do think they should unlock a bit sooner, but the fact that you can practice the hero in a realistic match setting before unlocking them and unlock them about the same time as they're allowed in comp.. it's honestly kinda great and definitely not as bad as people made it sound before release.
Something the team could think about is making a monthly subscription to something a pack like the Fortnite crew pack. They could make it like $15 a month or something like that it could have a skin each month some coins and they could give out 2-3 loot boxes with it and not just completely scrap loot boxes. Easy way to get people to spend money outside of 20 dollar legendary skins. 🤷♂️ just a thought.
The game is great but defintly slapped together. The inspect animations aren't there, the thumbs up and down animations, I have still yet to receive the currency from the Watchpoint pack, all of the owl stuff is randomly more expensive, it's all a mess but a beautiful mess
there are some legendaries that are worth 20$ in my opinion. others aren't. i've spent more money than i would like to admit on fortnite and what they do is, cosmetics that are the same tier can have different pricing. collab skins always cost more obviously, but the OC fortnite skins can vary in price. i think overwatch needs to do something similar because i don't see anyone that has a good grip on the concept of money paying 20$ for either of junkerqueen's base legendaries, for example. also, they should keep legacy credits as rewards for challenges, maybe even replace the weekly rewards for legacy credits. i'm fine with brand new emotes and skins costing real money but there's no way i'm spending money on sprays and voice lines. i would buy coins for skins and emotes i want , maybe highlight intros and victory poses, but save my legacy credits for the small stuff.
Would anyone be up for the idea of customizable battle passes? Explanation: Having the premium Rare, Epic & Legendary spots being a selectable option for any older content. This way you the consumer can work towards the content you are interested in. I believe this can and would work. Granted I also believe the price would need to increase from a $10 price point to probably $15. Also, they can just keep expanding the library of items to keep adding new content to work towards.
In a way it was the community that rushed the game development as well aside of the team 4s corporate overlords. Everywhere I've seen people begging ow2, saying they should split the PvE from the PvP - even if that was mainly just because they were hungry for content, that's what we're finally getting and a ton of people are disappointed. I know it's probably two different groups, but there's kinda no win for the dev team here, especially since they're also getting pressure from above. Also the ow1 currency was always credits and in a ton of media they said they're introducing new currency, while I agree that monetisation is awful for the shop, I don't agree with that argument.
I ended up with 200k in legacy credits. Honestly I just played comp and grinded 3k hours into the game. Don't know why they couldn't just convert the old currency to the new currency
This is a hilarious comment I'm not sure if you did it on purpose. If you have 200k credits you effectively have $2000 worth of in game money. You'd be able to buy the battle pass for 200 seasons. On what planet is any company willing to give you $2000 for nothing but having played their game?
Its a "free" marketplace specifically designed to get you to spend money. Its not charity; its a business transaction, which is fine because we get a game to enjoy. RU-vid just gave me a free video to make ad revenue. I am okay with that, but it is not a gift. However, the youtube community is not yelling at everyone that they need to watch videos so we can keep getting new content. Not sure when Overwatch became a gofundme for developers instead of just a masked up subscription service using behavioral and psychological techniques to try and maximize revenue for ABK shareholders. Everyone agrees the old model was not working for Blizzard monetarily so clearly they think it will be more profitable. As a consumer, its up to you whether or not to engage in OW2 spending and you aren't ungrateful for OW1 because you paid the box price they set. It's their job to offer a service, formerly a product, that generates revenue for paying their employees. Buy skins because you like them not because you are afraid daddy Blizzard might disappear again. They literally already doubled down on the IP because they expect a return on investmentt.
I blew thousands of credits right before OW1 shut down because I was led to believe those "legacy" credits would become all but worthless in OW2. I'm so fucking upset LMAO.
People purposely throwing while trying to get challenges, isn't the issue. It's people having to do things like, play a class they have never played, that is without a doubt detrimental to game play. For instance, the flex play daily. If you get 1 or 2 people queuing just for that daily, they're likely going to be throw on support. If they aren't a support player.....you lose, and there's nothing you can do about. 5 people lose, and likely have a terrible time, because people are trying to do dailies. That's not a recipe for fun.
After giving the game a few days, I have to come back and disagree with SVB. Games shouldn't give you infinite content for free, but games aren't really engaging (for me) without something to work towards. If everything intresting in the game can ONLY be realistically unlocked with money, then the gameplay isn't building towards anything and I feel like playing something else. For example, imagine if there was a Monster Hunter game where you couldn't build armor or weapons and every hunt was unlocked from the get-go. Then, let's say the only way to get stronger armor/weapons was to grind for months to get the free scraps or pay real money to skip the grind and get the components you need for an armor piece. Each hunt will be fun the first few times, and trying out different weapons can add a little replay value, but the sense of progression is completely lost in a game like that. Rather than 40 hours, a game like that could get boring in 2-3. And *that* is how OW2 feels right now: trying out the rebalanced characters and new maps is fun, but there's nothing to progress towards (outside of competitive) from game-to-game. Once you've tried every character you're intrested in, you have no reason to keep playing; there's no way you're realistically earning anything through gameplay, anything you can buy at hour 30 you could've bought at hour 1, and once you reach your peak rank, for the amount of time you can put into the game, even competitive will have no allure to it. And when the next character is locked 40 hours into the next battlepass, you won't even get to engage with the new content without slogging through games you aren't really interested in. The free content is pretty much ONLY interesting for the Competitive-focussed players with eyes on getting to Grand Master. They can see their rank going up and down, and can set nightly/weekly/seasonal goals. The casual player (that should be the most-likely to spend money on cosmetics) has very little to do because EVERYTHING is too expensive. I'd argue anything over $5 isn't a microtransaction, and that's practically all the intresting content in the game! So, after about 3 days, I stopped playing OW2 and went back to Xenoblade 3 and New Game + for Ratchet & Clank on the PS5 - games with clear rewards and progression to keep me engaged.
Where do holiday skins come from now? the way its talked about here is like 'pay your $10 once every 3 months and the only skins are in the battle pass'
How can I get on this on podcast as a regular Joe player and with no financial persuasion from this game. 20 dollar skins is laughable. Fortnite charges $20 for 3rd person skins and this is an fps game. I’m looking at hands and wrists at all times. Even destiny skins are $15 for the legendary comparisons but the skins are broken up into 5 separate pieces. U can wear a helm from one set, boots from another and a cloak from some other set.
SVB you are an awesome dude, but you are so far off on the monetization issue. Team 4 currently has 300 devs on it. Let's say there's another 200 people working on this game, just for the PvE side - that's 500. Let's give them a pretty generous salary - 100k, and inflate that cost by 40% for other employee related costs. Let's add another 50% profit Blizzard should expect on this product, bumping this up to $210k per employee. At 500 employees, the payroll costs are about $100 million per year for this project (and I am being **extremely generous here** for how much profit they should expect on an established IP and how much they actually pay their devs). The year 1 lootbox revenue of Overwatch 1 fully covers 10 years of dev salaries. This is discounting any other lootbox spending, the entire box price of the first game (from which they probably made 2-3 billion). Not to mention the complete abomination that is the OW league that made them another billion or so. ONE BILLION DOLLARS IS A LOT OF MONEY. The argument that somehow you are getting infinite value when the core game is finished and the upkeep is small is insane. Blizzard made money hand over fist on the first game, and instead of investing that money into continued game success, they bailed. Please stop pushing the fake narrative that the $60 box price tens of millions of people paid for the first game did not cover "infinite player value" from playing. The devs got their money and then some.
Great post. It's staggering to me that OW1, a full price game with real money currency, gambling mechanics and lootboxes is somehow now considered "too generous" to players. It's greed, not poor communication. "Won't someone think of the poor developers" doesn't wash as an excuse for predatory monetisation when 1) we know how terribly Acti Blizz treats their employees and 2) we know the insane levels of profit they make.
I really dislike Eeveea as a guest. They take 5x longer than necessary to communicate a point (therefor drowning out the other guests) and has a very annoying “uptalk” nature to their communication cadence.
This is karma. They are an evil company with shady tactics and they got what they deserve. Massive flop. Dead game. I play it religiously, but it's dead.
In terms of other games like League where they do price their skins upwards of $20, I think it is important to note the difference in what you are getting. When paying $20 for a league skin you are paying for a "Legendary Skins" which comes with a unique recall, unique effects, animations, voicelines, and a whole host of other bonus' that just are not there with the OW2 legendary skins. I would absolutely be okay with dropping $10 on an OW2 skin but $20 is just too absurd for me.
The funny thing is how the dva skin in the battlepass is like that. Not only does it look unique, it has unique sound effects and is really high quality. But that comes with the $10 battlepass. So for half the price of a boring recolor skin you get that awesome dva skin and the whole battlepass
Fr and they mention fornite so many times the difference is u can buy 2 skins with 10 dollars and a weapon or a back bling with ow2 u get jack shit for 20 and the battlepass between the two is so different with ow2 they just filled it up with anything they could just to call it a free to play voice lines, souvenirs, and weapon chrams, imma still play the game but I'm not gonna spend a dime like nateson, but I feel like they are coping so hard with the battlepass and the currency even with the 20 considering they put 1000+ hours in game it's like watching one piece ur gonna have to like it after you watched the 1000+ episodes u already put the time in
I'm with you on the pricing. I'm all for paying for my cosmetics, but the pricing is too high for me. $10 for a legendary is about the max I would go as well. It's a balance between more people buying them at a lower price and less people buying them at a lesser price. Maybe we are just meant to wait for the "discounts" that they have.
@@SleepRuby I agree with you in that legendary skins are too expensive but personally I think the battlepass if great, I play fortnite and apex and I feel like the quality is much higher in OW.
They should definitely lower the price and give credits to those who already bought the skins. I think they might even make more money if they lowered the price because some people might be willing to spend $10 but not $20.
I have experienced that a major part of the newly targeted demographic for "free to play" players who aren't accustomed with Overwatch and Blizzard yet, a lot of outlets and surface level content creators have issued great skepticism of specifically AI that "listens to you and records you", and there has been a ton of misinformation being spread by those content creators who only echo hearsay, rather than actually going in-depth like the existing core OW creators do. So many communities lit ablaze by the fear of an AI false flagging and banning them or taking other forms of hostile action, or just thinking that they are being monitored by some secret unknown entity. I don't think you should undervalue the depth of these fear mongering outlets who only exist to feed off of drama, and "a spying AI" is literally gold to them and their baity content, and they influence hordes of players who have no experience with Overwatch nor the desire to do their own research. It was quite baffling to me when these outlet channels started getting recommended to me leading up to the OW2 launch and the weeks prior, literally no name drama creators fishing for anything to leech on and put out as controversial or negative, because it helped fuel the fire that sparks engagement and views on their channels. There were HORDES of people being gaslit and misled to form biased negative opinions, and with Blizzard not being forward and clearly messaging their core details in easily digestible and non-disputive manner, it just lets people's tinfoil hats run wild sooo easily.
One thing I always have an issue with in defending the monetization model is it is not a simple black-and-white dichotomy between the OW1 model and the OW2 model, where it's one or the other. Sometimes, a monetization model can be completely overtuned to a point where it turns off players (even newer players, like me!). There is nothing wrong with asking Blizzard to scale that back. In fact, it's probably better for the game's longevity as a whole if people don't end up feeling like they're in a paywalled garden where nearly all sense of progression and accomplishment comes from spending money.
i understand they gotta make money but 20 for a skin is crazy. they should also give more ways to get credits and give us more credits for completing challenges
if they give out to many credits tho then we run back into the overwatch 1 problem. If it went up to 100 coins per week I could see that being fine, but we have to not look at coins as old credits but as premium currency in other games. You can barely earn premium currency in other BR games and also Valorant you can’t earn any at all. The coins they give out for weekly challenges are just like a very small thing to push you to play, or if you buy on of their scummy coin bundle packs (imo we should just have dollar prices for things if currency isn’t meant to be earn-able but obv they do it so you always have change you want to spend) and you’re off a few coins for something else you want then the challenges are there for the extra change. The extra coins are essentially a rewards point system at a store
Nateson hits it 2 minutes in. Game looks great, probably plays well. Between Team 4 having to rush it when it clearly wasn't ready, Actiblizz deciding that they had to suck all the money out of the fanbase before the Microsoft sale by any means necessary, and the usual new release blues, it feels much worse. The one thing is, it's not Overwatch 2. It's Role Queue 3.0. Marketing does their usual job of bad communication/no communication combined with a new penchant for flat out obfuscation, all to the detriment of the team, the game, and the fans.
@@brospros6327 obviously you play what you prefer and it’s good to have options so we can choose what we prefer, me personally though I can’t stand open queue, at least as a solo. Having to rely on randoms to assemble a decent comp is a gamble I do not like, meanwhile the enemy team runs goats 2 and the match is just the most boring gameplay experience. I would assume your experiences are different however so if you’re enjoying it then that’s good for you
I'm sorry but 30 bucks a year is absolutely not fine for a 9-week content schedule in a game that is largely built on the foundation of an existing game that was already paid for. That's what OW1 box costs straight out of the gate. Imagine if OW1 only had content for 2 years, it would be an absolutely hollow game. We joke about how long it went for the past content updates, but still it was only for the last years that content dropped off, it's an early 2016 game, and we shouldn't forget that it's had a long run all things considered. Also worthy to remember that Overwatch has sold over 50 million copies, and not even taking into consideration lootbox sales and OW coins and special skins etc. People tend to confuse it as being a "bad business model", when the factual reality is that it was a perfectly fine business model, it simply wasn't as profitable as Warzone's Battlepass system, which coincidentally is when Warzone launched, that OW had its resources cut and staff thinned out. Those resources were simply put towards the game that made more profit. Not becaues OW was no longer profitable with all their sales in mind. It just wasn't generating the same sales anymore, but they still raked in literally billions of dollars from that game. For context, it has sold 2.5x more copies than the globally hyped Cyberpunk, which definitely hasn't been a sales fiasco (even though it did fail majorly in other departments but thats besides the point). At this point, I believe Activision Blizzard are baiting way too hard with locking heroes behind a grind wall, to incentivize lazy man's way of throwing money at them to unlock what they want immediately. I don't mind it with skins, but when it's the most core part of the game it's a different matter. Not only do you miss out on months of grind playtime to actually learn the new hero, because you gotta grind to unlock them before you can grind to learn how they play - but you also have to play AGAINST them on enemy teams where it's absolutely an advantage to be able to practice the hero so you also know how to play against (or with) them. And comparing it to Warzone guns is also completely lacking context. Guns in Warzone all tend to build roughly from the same platform, it's not rocket science to grasp a new weapon and its quirks, nor is it a detriment to not have it unlocked because it isn't a major core to the gameplay experience which of the +20 available submachine guns you're using /or playing against. But Overwatch heroes are so complex and demand so much time and effort to learn how to use them, that every hour of playtime is incredibly valuable, and I see the grind wall as pure abuse of this value. If Overwatch ever gets as complicated as League for example (in terms of character quantity), I mean League has 140 Champions which means it's just impossible to fundamentally understand all of them to any depth beyond the mere surface level of "they have this key ability and it works sort of like that". Like, in that scenario its fine that there's a level of grind/pay walling because chances are that even if all characters were freely available, nobody would be able to spend enough time to learn all of them anyways, nor care. People would just look at the ones that are meta or look most interesting, and then commit to those champions and get good with them. Overwatch is fundamentally different still. If we ever get to +100 heroes available to us, then yea it makes sense that they want to monetize new hero releases. But now? From the beginning? Wayyyy too early to be capitalizing on the most core fundamental gameplay aspect of the game. Overwatch is THE hero shooter. Don't lock the heroes. It's not rocket science. As it is now, to use a new hero in Competitive, you first have to spend weeks or months grinding to lvl 55 in the free pass - and then you have to spend another month actually practicing with the hero - and before you get anything out of them there'll be a new pass and the grind continues endlessly. This actively forces players to not learn new heroes unless their kit from the surface level is just that intriguing to them that they want to commit the months of playtime it would take just to pass the barrier of entry to play that hero at the most basic competence level. Like all things considered, the "nice model" of OW1 monetization and being nice to the player helped earn them 50 million god damn sales (and those are only the confirmed ones by outside sources as of april this year). 50 million. For a paid box game. In an industry where free-to-play has become the norm for 5 years or more now. That's insane!
I like Jeff and what SVB said id the true, we can blame Jeff for the OW1 state and we will blame Aaron for the OW2 state, now lets remember that OW1 never got a ping system because Jeff believe that "the ping system dont fit in OW"
So glad to see Fenner on this podcast! He deserves a lot more attention than he‘s getting. Such a positive and powerful force in the Overwatch Community
i think EeveeA is my least favorite of all the guest you have here. Talks waaaaay to much and seems to hate everything and seems entitled to everything. Just sounds condescending whenever she talks as if she just knows everything. i wanted to hear more from the other guesta but i felt like they bary had a chance to talk about what they wanted to talk about.
I agree that she dominated the conversation far too much, but I do think she made a lot of very valid points. I agree with her on a lot of the issues she's talked about, but there's not much room for debate when she won't stop talking, and when she interrupts other panelists.
She was in the Ladder debate and it was almost unwatchable too. A shame too because it has other much better speakers in that one. Especially compared to guys like Freedo, Samito or now I guess AVRL is an option. People who have strong opinions and are clear and concise with them is what I want. I appreciate SVB doing this so much because it feels like everyone he gets is so precise with their criticism except for EeveeA. Or some other one off guests who have yet to return.
I strangely thought that EeveeA is actually really articulate and gives valuable points. I like her takes. It's unfortunate that it is outweighed by her tendency to interrupt others. It doesn't excuse her etiquette but it might be worth noting that she's on the spectrum. That might contribute to why she is terrible at restraint.
How does Eeveea go from saying it’s very anti-consumer and very expensive to saying we used to get every skin for free? I’m not saying that the prices shouldn’t be fairer (they should) but doesn’t she realize that the previous model was unfair for the OW devs? There’s this weird sentiment in the community that everyone just expects to get shit for free and it bugs the hell out of me
Thank you. The devs have been through a lot of shit and it seems like when they try to appease their "fans" they just get shit on. I understand the free to play model mostly sucks but it keeps revenue flowing to keep the game alive and provide constant content. Why does it matter if you're spending it over the next 63 weeks or up front. You will get plenty of cool shit from the battle pass. Otherwise don't play the game of it bothers you so much?
Overwatch 1 was never really as generous as you make it seem. For a casual that doesn't play the game as much as a youtuber or streamer would, it was always jarring to have to spend money on an event loot box for a chance of getting that one skin I wanted in the the limited time event where I did not have time to play enough fill the get the 3000 credits to unlock it for free. Also not everyone started out at release where every hero only had around 40 unlockables, so those who started year 3 had 100 to catch up to. that is something a casual never achieve. Now it's even worse. Instead of like the old days, you would play -let's say- 8 hours, and you would have amounted 1000 credits and a chance for a loot box skin you actually wanted. Now you must complete all weekly challenges for 7 months just to unlock a single legendary skin. Just one. In that time you have earned nothing else save the pathetic items in the free track of the battle pass. Free to play or not that is extremely sad compared to other games like apex where once again the loot box exists and gives you credits to unlock something you like for free. It is not a matter of entitlement, it is a matter of not standing for Acti-Blizz' plot to drain their players' worth just so Bobby Kotick can sit and drink champagne in his 4th private jet.
I still don't have my watchpoint pack. I'm beyond disappointed in a AAA gaming company with 16 years of development and 6 years of Overwatch development under their belt's launch. It could possibly be excusable if they hadn't literally deleted the game I've paid for several times across several systems/consoles. I paid for the Watchpoint Pack because of the proven track record behind the company, Diablo Immortal aside. Because I couldn't get my watchpoint content, I didn't have access to the hero I literally paid for, so I spent ANOTHER $10 on the battle pass. This is probably the last money I'll pay into this game, after my money being treated as if it's entirely unimportant. Ddos, launch woes, etc are to be expected, but my paid for content missing after nearly a week is a bit ridiculous, especially considering a part of the price on the WP pack included Overwatch 1, which they literally took away. I love the game play, but the business end is fucking terrible.
Very much enjoyed listening to this podcast. Don't follow much of these three but loved hearing them and getting to see another side of them outside the glances at their streams.
wit hthe whole skin situation I really could only agree with EeveeA skins are a fun part of the game and content for a majority of the player, I could understand that yeah it's F2P but it doesn't really make since to say the prices are fair, believe me we should have to pay for skins now, but now that each skin is 20 bucks then try to trick us with bundles frankly is just scummy, and I dont see why just becuase it doesn't effect gameplay doesn't make it a non issue, it honestly effects the mural of the players to want to participate in the new costmetics, believe me especally with the halloween store event coming up I'd glad spend like 50 bucks to get each(probably 5 skins was what I was thinkin) new seasonal skin but seeing how that's more than likely gonna be 100 bucks instead can't say that makes me excited or willing to buy the skins
and lowkey SVB I feel yours and the others take is just a little lame, im willing to buy skins, I've gotten every owl skin with/out buying league tokens, but expecting the value of each skin being set so high I just dont think is good for the consumer
I don't think it's a case of players being unused to Overwatch 2's new monetization model and expecting Overwatch 1's again. I think it's more a case of part of the reason the first game's playerbase bought into it wasn't just the gameplay, it was because the first game's monetization model was a selling point for them, and now this franchise that they got invested in no longer has that selling point. It's true that the way O1 handled microtransactions may not have been enough to keep the game running forever, but was that ever really the plan? It was a regular $60 title at launch. Blizzard got a lot of its money upfront. That money doesn't last forever, but when it runs out, that's when it's time to release the next entry in the series, as most series using traditional monetization models work. If Blizzard had actually initially planned on making O1 last forever, then that's on them for trying to have their cake and eat it too. That, or they were just shortsighted and miscalculated how much money lootboxes would generate over the years.
*Whole monetization in OW2 is wrong* and you cant argue by "devs needs money" because all devs needs money, but they are not so greedy. Monetization in OW2 feels like " _steal as much money as it is possible from players, before game dies_ ". Removing earning of legacy currency, is big step back, because you are literally *removing any account progression* from the game. Fact you are playing the game *2 months* for opening 4 voice lines for your 1 favourite hero, is just ridiculous. When you add on top of that require to buy 1 skin, 2-4 sprays, victory pose, mvp intro and 4 emotes, you probably will be work on one hero over 2 years of playing the game and completing all weekly challanges - and this is just base customize of the one hero, not completing his/her collection. BP is for f2p players completly worthless, for paying players have almost zero value. When I compare it with LoL event BP, the OW2 is not worth your time and money. RIOT make great change for BP, because they include time-limited currency into BP for f2p or spenders, then made time-limited shop, where you can spend currency for stuff, what you want. Even f2p player can do obtain chroma skin for his favourite champion - good to mention, skin change also visual of spells and animations so it have more value intead of OW skin, where you not even see whole hero at while of playing him. I'm completly fine with locking any stuff into BP, make it time-limited for example, but dont stop rewarding all players, for playing the game and make them atleast worth time, in the palying the game. Its mutliplayer game, when bigger population of players is in the best interest of devs and all players. More players means bigger popularity of e-sport and shorter waiting queues for match.
The biggest takeaway for me from all this is they need better direct communication (shocker lol what else is new). Those Jeff dev updates were so huge with keeping the community up-to-date with what was going on with the game. I don’t care if Aaron Keller takes up that duty or not. But they need concise video format updates. If they can’t find a dev who feels comfortable in front of the camera, then hire out a press person. Hell, they could hire out the job to an OWL commentator, or a streamer (if they don’t mind a little “shilling”). But needing to wade through these posts on the Blizzard forum to find out what’s going on has to stop.
the biggest problem imo is that a totally f2p player will literally need to grind every week for 2 years to get 3 legendary skins if they never spend in on anything else ever
It would be nice to see them add hero specific challenges that have meaningful rewards like legacy credits, character banners, or titles. Stuff that new players can earn long term.
I think it’s interesting and annoying how no one brings this up when people talk about microtransactions in video games. Most people aren’t complaining that we have to pay for skins but that they are too expensive. Legendary skins in OW1 were 10$ so why are they now 20$? And I don’t care if Apex also does it. Apex should also be 10$ if not cheaper since their skins suck.
It feels dirty as a returning player, but thankfully I have a good collection of skins. If they drop the prices significantly I can see myself getting skins once in a while, but 3 skins *do not* equal a whole, brand new game.
I don’t expect to get every skin and cosmetic for free, BUT I at least expect the ability to earn a few just by my investment in the game. Ie. Playing. There should be ways to earn credits by playing the game. No shot they think it’s acceptable to expect people to shell out $1 for 1 new voiceline or spray for a hero. No way! That shit should be earnable by playing. Look at apex. You play the game, you earn an apex pack when you level up, you get cosmetics. Yes, they more than often will be a shitty recolour or spray. But they are SOMETHING. Overwatch 2 gives NOTHING for playing. Apex actually gives you enough premium currency on the battle pass to get the next battle pass and enough free currency on the battle pass to craft a free legendary kf your choice. So on top of no way to earn anything for free, the battle pass doesnt give you any currency back to get the next one. A staple in EVERY OTHER FREE TO PLAY GAME. There is no excuse except greed at this point. - 1300 OW coins on the battle pass - 2000 credits on the battle pass - 25 credits per match (would still take a lot of matches to earn 1 free legendary but better than nothing) That way every season you can earn enough currency to get the next seasons battle pass and 1 legendary skin for free. I would hate to be a new player to this game. You get absolutely NOTHING for playing.
Based Eevee, felt like i was taking crazy pills listening to the last podcast circlejerk about how Devs need money so skins should be $17 for an 8 year old legendary. Thank fuck the crew got shaken up.
With valorant, the pricing is soooo expensive and the way their system works for buying and UPGRADING skins to actually show effects, is really bad for the consumer and kinda exploitative (but genius business modelling for getting more money) But because the skins are so high quality and very interesting with the number of effects and animations they come with, I'm happy to spend money. Also the way riot actually communicates really well with the player base about almost everything they do also makes me not mind spending so much and I like to buy the skins cause they are really fun. When it comes to OW the skins don't have these fun aspects, they barely change anything about the gameplay experience. And then blizzard don't even communicate well with the player base and it feels like they rarely listen to the player base. If OW skins were actually interesting I'd be happy to pay for extra things but they're just not interesting enough.
I like EeveeA she brings new ideas to the table. She doesn’t sound entitled to me at all, but more confident in her ideas than the other viewers. These ppl be hatin for no reason smh
Interrupts often. Room for improvements. But yes her opinions and takes are almost always interesting and worth thinking about. Reel it in a but and she will be perfect imo
But overwatch 2 is overwatch 1 saying it’s a new game it’s not it’s a remix game. making existing players or New ones pay so much for Legacy skins is ridiculous. there’s so much I could say on this topic but I’ll be just wasting my time 😅
@@primalinea682 I mean really, if they are going the route of moba games with their monetization model, then I think it’s fair that we could get atleast 3 skins to customize something.
Really appreciate much more thoughtful mature discussion around OW systems. Have these 3 back all the time! Also glad to see the appreciation for what Kaplan and Goodman created rather than the typical Jeff slander.
I ended up spending about 20,000 "Legacy Credits" just for some recolors🤷♂️ I still started with about 41,000 It would have been nice to have had the 60,000 instead of some skins I'll probably never use. Oh well you live and learn.
I’d love to pay for a stat system similar to Dota Plus. I used it back when I was a Dota noob and, even though after 300 hours I barely improved, I found it ridiculously satisfying to have an overlay helping me at all times, even if it wasn’t always useful.
In regards to needing to report something the moment it happens they should implement a report button hot key that snapshots the moment and at the end of the game you can add details as to what happened or dismiss the report I think that would be the easiest solution to that
I'm only half an hour in but it's depressing to hear such little pushback on the monetisation issues. "OW1 monetisation was too unfair to the developers" and "the new battle pass system is fine, it's the industry standard, us old players are just spoiled from the generosity of OW1". If we're really at the point where a full priced game with cosmetic lootboxes you can purchase with real money is considered overly generous for players, then the games industry is fucked. Loot boxes, battle passes, whales, empty rushed releases with nothing but the real money shop fully working, DRM, grindfests, gambling mechanics, pre-orders, subscription passes, etc... It's depressing that these things are just seen as normal and unremarkable now, and the only real criticism is "just communicate well and be honest about how much money you're going to extract from your players".
I've now finished the whole show and as lovely as you all seem, I think you are all too excited and too quick to give Activision Blizzard the benefit of the doubt, and that has prevented you from looking impartially at a ridiculous pricing model and barebones release. The podcast is a good example of why I hate these predatory monetisation practices so much- greedy publishers can use fan excitement and community passion to lower fan expectation and get them to defend the indefensible."Oooh I'm just so excited that now we'll get a new hero and a new map every 9 months" = ignoring the fact that a sequel years in development shipped with minor updates and 3 new heroes. This isn't Overwatch 2, it's Overwatch 1.2 - free to play battle pass edition.
Podcast links below! The best way to support this content is directly through Patreon! www.patreon.com/svb Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/ow_svb/the-great-launch-debate Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/6sRWutKTc0gnWuguo62Vpa Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/svbs-group-up/id1490256265 Guest Socials: Nateson's RU-vid: ru-vid.com | Twitter: twitter.com/Natesonn Daniel Fenner's links: www.danielfenner.com/ EeveeA's links: linktr.ee/EeveeA
I'm so glad your back SVB, your content is amazing and I'm so happy you are doing the podcast weekly! For me the only thing that is fair in the new model is the BP, the fact that you get the mythic skin in it for 10$ really sells it, I have no problem in spending this kinda of money now and then because I think it's a fair trade. My only complain about the BP is the lack of cohesion, they said it that the first season the theme of the skins is Cyberpunk, but besides Genji and Kiriko the other skins are completly off (I know the shop will have more skins with this theme, but I really think these cyberpunked skins should be in the BP and not in the store). Other than that, the skins that are sold in the shop: first of all I honestly think that the quality is worse than what we get in OW1, Kiriko and JQ skins are not legendary level, and this could be ok, if the price was fair. Second the price of the itens in the shop... it's not fair, I can't see myself spending any money ever in the shop ever because I feel robbed. I know they based the price in the competitors, but I think the whole market of free to play games are so off that they could really start a new trend here and become super competitive with good prices. A skin costing the price of a indie game is just absurd, 3 skins equals one triple A game is laughable and I know it's something standard in the industry, but it's completly out of touch. Some suggestions: An annual package that would give acess to the next 6 BPs (you can't choose the BPs you are going to activate, you just get the next 6 - a year long BP content) for a discount (40$ - 50$ for example). Special missions: 1- specific for each hero that in the end would unlock a special skin for them. The missions could be (for Ana for example): put every hero to sleep, do x assists with nanoboost, heal Genji for x amount, sleep Roadhog while he's ulting x times, hit x enemy heroes with the granade, kill Pharah in the sky x times... Something that playing constantly you can unlock eventually, but that is kinda hard to obtain. (they can unlock these missions gradually until all heroes get theirs). I think this could be free, of for a small fee for each hero. I think it can be free because it's something that keeps players engaged wich is valuable for them. 2- Role specific missions. This one could be annually and one hero of each role gets one special skin to unlock in the end. Specific missions for each role.
Maybe it’s just because I, like Nateson, don’t care about cosmetics at all but I just can’t understand why this is such a big deal to people. Are the skins overpriced? Absolutely. Does it suck that you barely earn any coins? Yes. But at the end of the day they’re just cosmetics. I see these people on Reddit rage about how trash the free battle pass rewards are and I just have to wonder, how can you complain about something that is given to you completely for free? They could just as easily give you nothing. I question wether these people actually enjoy playing overwatch or if they only like collecting cosmetics. The only thing I find unacceptable is that new heroes get locked behind the battle pass, because that’s something that affects gameplay. But other than that I feel like people just need to accept that the days of getting endless cosmetics for free are over.
The fact that we don’t get currency back to purchase the next battle pass is ridiculous. Also, the legendary skins in the shop are an absolute joke. Kiriko is super fun though! Loving 5v5
For any OW1 Player none of these older legendary skins are worth the 20. Honestly they are way too expensive as they are. You're not going to convince a OW1 ''veteran'' into buying it. A skin I would say would be worth 20 is either a mythic skin or skins like the new battlepass dva skin.
Eevee makes a really good point I thought about after seeing the phone plan thing screwing over many people. A free to play game that locks you out because of a phone plan isn’t really free to play then. It’s a really tough situation because on one hand, a person who can’t afford to pay a phone plan but wants a game to escape to, can’t because of their financial situation is terrible, I do think it’s rough that taking down that barrier will open up alt accounts and cheaters ruining the experience for those players. I do think it’s a better situation that they can play with some games being ruined by cheaters or trolls than not being able to play at all. Hopefully new players being introduced by friends can be eased in or maybe have a safer space in arcade
I agree the battle passes being a collectable system where once you get the pass, all future game progress applies to any battle passes in your collection, would feel a lot more fair and add value to each pass, especially since each one has a theme anyway. Say for some reason, someone can't play the game for awhile, they should be able to come back, buy any previous passes they want in their collection, and progress them all simultaneously to get caught up and feel rewarded for coming back and spending $.
Putting a price on skins, I think, is a hard thing to put the finger on, but I think we can compare the current system with the one that was before in terms of how much the current Overwatch version rewards you for your time in the game: The transition to the current model found me at roughly 1,000 hours into the game. I bought 4 boxes bundles like 4 times. I have more than 99% of all legacy cosmetics in the game if we don't count league skins. In average, I sunk like 165hs into overwatch each year since it came out. Lootboxes discussion aside, I'd say that the previous system was orders of magnitude more appreciative of my time than the current one.
I'd like to add another idea for the reporting discussion to get a more accurate time of reporting while also giving the player time to add a description to the report. They could have the report action be clicking report and selecting from the drop down the category of report. Then at the end of the game bring up the description box to elaborate further when you have the time to actually type a descriptive report. To me this seems like a fairly simple thing to implement and might actually improve the description of report since a lot of the time I feel rushed when reporting.
Old skins should not be $20. Those are assets from the previous game that did not take them any additional investment to bring over. It gets worse with the fact that a lot of them can't be bought with legacy credits. The other part about it I find gross is how they took down OW1. Some players would have been happy to keep playing that game, long after they stop supporting it, just for casual games or to collect everything. They paid $60 and now that game no longer exists. It really seems like that was done just to force people into this new model, when they could have given the option for us to play the unsupported version. All that being said, I understand the need for this model for a live service game, it just wasn't handled all that well
The devs soul being put into this doesn't have me feel empathy. Are they.. Shocked? That a blizzard release got targeted by a ddos attack? Seems like small indie company idk guys
