Overwatch (the second thread)

Didn't get playing last night as couldn't get in, but I played the second beta, then went back to OW1 again for a few weeks, having not played in about 3 years previous.

At its core it's still such a fantastic game to play. The gameplay is tight and fluid, great selection and variety of heroes and abilities, and the back and forth between teams can be exciting.

That said, I worry about what they're doing with OW2. Going forward, new heroes will be locked deep into the battle pass system, which goes against the whole ethos of being able to switch to a different character whose abilities would help counter another etc. So how are they addressing that? Firstly, you can't play competitive until you've unlocked the new hero (they've said Competitive won't start until 2 weeks into the start of each season to gove people time to unlock the hero, but it'll still be a lot of work/grinding). Secondly, they've said they want to do away with having to pick heroes who are great at countering other heroes by trying to balance out all heroes, which makes it sound like all the heroes will become more generic and interchangeable. Plus moving to a 5v5 with only one tank means each tank now has to be more interchangeable too or are very circumstantial.

Locking heroes in the battle pass is a really sh*tty move because they're not like using different guns; their differing abilities are integral to the balance of each map in terms of how well their abilities and ults can work together etc.

So in a way, I worry about how it's going to go. But on the other hand, I only ever play Mystery Heroes, and they've said new characters will be available in those kinds of modes even without unlocking them, so none of the above will really impact me for the most part. I'll certainly be playing for the first few weeks anyway.

Was reading last night (as I still can't get into the game) that to buy a legendary skin for a character (eg. not from the battle pass but just using the in-game currency) costs about 1900coins. You can only earn the currency by completing weekly challenges, and if you grind and complete all the challenges each week, that's 60 coins per week.

So buying one legendary skin will take 7-8 months.

I had no real complaint about the loot boxes in OW1 either. You got them fairly consistently, and even though there was a lot of nonsense items in them, you'd still get skins, voicelines etc pretty regularly. And even then you'd also either get coins as an item, or a few if you got a duplication of an item you already had, so you'd still end up with coins to buy the actual item you want every few weeks too.

I get that the game is F2P now, but they're really getting the balance wrong. If I felt the currency/reward system was fair, I'd be inclined to buy the occasional battle pass and grind some others. Now I'm not inclined to try get any items and will probably be far more of an occasional player.

Which new character? There are two new characters which are being given for free at launch (Junker Queen and Sojourn) and were part of the Beta. The other new hero Kikiro is the one in the Battle Pass.

It's a disastrous launch.

I jumped on for a few games this evening and enjoyed what I played. Couldn't give a shite about the battle pass or cosmetics or anything like that.

I placed in silver 4.

I used to be high platinum/low diamond. How the mighty have fallen.

Really weird occasional bug where everything on screen other than the characters gun and UI is incredibly blurry, as if the character is suddenly short-sighted. Happened once on the first night after launch, but happened twice last night. No matter if I left the game and joined a new one, was still happening. Only way to fix was to close the game completely.

I googled and all the fixes appear to suggest turning off anti-aliasing settings or other graphical settings, however this is on PS5. I did try play one game like that hoping it'd fix after respawning etc, but no joy. Once it happens, just have to close the game and restart.