Here’s Why New ‘Overwatch 2’ Heroes Are Locked Behind A Battle Pass

Games Here’s Why New ‘Overwatch 2’ Heroes Are Locked Behind A Battle Pass Kris Holt Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. I cover all things games, especially Overwatch. Following New! Follow this author to stay notified about their latest stories.

Got it! Sep 15, 2022, 08:20am EDT | New! Click on the conversation bubble to join the conversation Got it! Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Kiriko and her fox spirit in Overwatch 2 Blizzard Entertainment It emerged last week that how Overwatch 2 players gain access to new heroes will be completely different than in Overwatch . Rather than everyone immediately being able to try new heroes at the same time, Overwatch 2 will lock fresh faces like Kiriko behind a Battle Pass . You’ll either need to pay for the $10 premium Battle Pass to unlock each newcomer instantly or grind through the free Battle Pass to unlock new characters for the core game modes.

In an interview this week, members of the Overwatch team explained why they decided to gate new heroes as part of the shift to a free-to-play business model, instead of sticking with the previous approach to rolling them out. “Heroes are the single most engaging content that we have in the game. As we designed this model, it seemed to be a very strong fit to put those heroes into our new engagement systems,” Overwatch franchise general manager Walter Kong said.

The idea is to keep players engaged by playing the game more or to encourage them to pay for the premium Battle Pass to help fund the future of Overwatch 2 . There are a lot of employee salaries to pay, as it turns out. “Our core development team has roughly tripled in size since the launch of Overwatch and we have many more folks working on the game on partner teams,” Kong said.

“We want to be able to continually invest in this live game service. So, from the perspective of the business, this isn’t free. ” MORE FOR YOU ‘Demon Slayer’ Season 2 Finally Has An Actual 2021 Release Date Netflix’s ‘Squid Game’ Season 2 Not A Sure Thing, Says Director ‘Genshin Impact’ Still Refuses To Increase Anniversary Rewards, Despite Fan Outcry Kong noted that the team thought long and hard about the business model and how to keep things fair for everyone.

The aim was to be “able to not just deliver a great experience on launch in October, but to be able to continuously deliver content and experiences for years and years to come. ” That’s in service of having the ability “to give Overwatch 1 players what they wanted, which was continuous delivery of content. We know, because players have been telling us, that’s what keeps them engaged over the long term.

” Paywalling new heroes, or at least requiring players to put in an undetermined number of hours to reach the Battle Pass level that will unlock a new hero, has led to concerns from the community that Overwatch 2 will be pay-to-win. That perception isn’t helped by the fact that new heroes tend to be very overpowered when they debut, before balance changes inevitably bring down their power level. The Overwatch crew gave the impression that they’ve put a lot of consideration into how to address those qualms.

For one thing, the shift to 5v5 led to some major changes for many existing characters as part of a different hero design philosophy. Team 4 wants there to be less emphasis on hard counters, such as a DPS player switching to Cassidy to counter a Tracer that’s harassing the backline. Cassidy won’t have a Flashbang to stun and quickly kill a Tracer in Overwatch 2 , while the likes of Zenyatta will be able to create some distance for a Tracer by booting her away .

In a blog post , the Overwatch team said it wanted to enable players to have more impact on games with a broad range of strategies and heroes. “We’ve made changes to reduce the amount of hard counters that Overwatch has,” game director Aaron Keller said in an interview. “We want the game to be a little bit more organic, we want people to have more impact, but we also want them to have more freedom in what hero they’re choosing for any particular situation.

” When a new hero is introduced, they won’t be available in Competitive modes right away. Kiriko, for instance, won’t arrive in Comp for two weeks. Blizzard says this delay will help players get comfortable with each new hero and have more time to earn them, while giving the devs a chance to retune the balance.

“Because of this shift in design approach to heroes, we believe that launching new Overwatch 2 heroes through the Battle Pass system is fair to our players, respects the competitive nature of the game, and aligns with our goal of supporting Overwatch 2 as a live service moving forward,” the blog post continues. On top of that, most players don’t use that many heroes anyway. “A majority of players in Overwatch 1 have a majority of their playtime on two or fewer heroes, and you can get to 99.

9% of playtime for a majority of our players with 12 or fewer heroes,” Overwatch commercial lead and vice-president Jon Spector said. “They’re using a couple of heroes for most of how they play, then sometimes they’ll swap and they’ll add in a couple more heroes. And so when we go and we say, ‘Is it actually going to impact the play experience if someone has 34 out of 35 heroes?’ When we look at the data, we feel really confident that it’s not going to.

” As for how much time people on the free Battle Pass track will need to put in to unlock heroes like Kiriko, Spector said that “We want these heroes to be reasonably attainable for people who are playing regularly. If you’re going to play for free and earn the hero that way, we do want you to play the game regularly during the season to get there. ” The grind could have been worse.

The devs thought about putting new heroes at the very end of the 80-tier Battle Pass, but ultimately determined that was too harsh. As I listened to the team offer their explanations, I started to understand their perspective in the sense that they don’t see gating new heroes as a pay-to-win mechanic. I’m not a fan of the decision, but I get it.

I see how this approach can work out for Overwatch 2, but making sure new heroes are balanced fairly when they debut (or soon afterward) will be absolutely critical to keep the playing field level. Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn . Check out some of my other work here .

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