Cards on the table, right up front: I have never played Overwatch.
I feel like I'm in pretty good company with this; lots of people have never played Overwatch. In fact, I'm fair certain that more people haven't played Overwatch than have.
Like a lot of those non-Overwatch players, though, I definitely know a lot more about Overwatch than I normally would know about a game that I've never played. I can recognize, and name on sight, most of the characters from Overwatch, which is better than I can say for most IRL people that I've met in the same span of time.
Tracer, Mei, D.Va, Zarya, Bastion, Winston, McCree Cole Cassidy, Mercy, Widowmaker, Brigitte, Pharah, Roadhog, Junkrat, Lucio, Torbjörn, Genji, Hanzo... the list goes on, and on, and on. Almost everyone can recognize at least ten of these characters on sight, and will have at least low-key crushes on three of them. No matter what appeals to you, at least one of Overwatch's heroes will appeal to you. No matter how you identify, you will identify with at least one of these people.
And they do feel like people, don't they? Even though they aren't.
Rare is the game which ever becomes this much a part of the pop culture zeitgeist. Overwatch had managed it before even being released. Which is why it hurts to see how badly Activision Blizzard have fucked up Overwatch 2, even though I've never played Overwatch 1.
I want to stress here that I'm not just talking about OW2's messy launch. Yes, the launch was a mess... but that's not the only problem, or even the biggest problem.
I'm also not talking about OW2's horrible battle pass, or its free-to-play monetization in general. Yes, OW2's battle pass and monetization are bad, but they're far from the worst we've seen this year from Activision Blizzard themselves, and I'm on record as saying that I'm basically okay with free-to-play monetization in games which are otherwise free to play. OW2's monetization is a problem, but it's not the only problem.
I'm not even talking about the fact that OW2 is actually less game than the original OW, with a third of its roster of heroes currently on the bench because of buggy, poorly-tested gameplay mechanics, and its promised single-player PvE campaign missing entirely. It's hardly the first time that Activision Blizzard have made those mistakes, after all, and while these things are problems, they are not OW2's only problems.
No, in my humble opinion, the single biggest problem with Overwatch 2 is that Activision Blizzard have fundamentally failed to understand what made Overwatch 1 work.
Crucially, this is not the same as failing to understand what made OW1 popular. Activision Blizzard clearly understand that OW1's roster of heroes are popular, which is why they're walling all of their game's most popular heroes behind a wall of battle pass grind which is effectively impossible to get through without paying. Activision Blizzard definitely understood that OW1's heroes were popular; what they don't seem to understand is how important those heroes are to the structural functionality of their game.
What made Overwatch work?
Overwatch was not, and is not, some sort of revolution in gameplay. Overwatch was just Team Fortress 2 with a little more polish, and even more personality. Like most of the biggest successes of Blizzard's past, Overwatch evolved something which already existed (and which was already popular) into something which spawned a gold rush of would-be imitators... none of which captured the qualities which made Overwatch a runaway hit in the first place.
#1 - Overwatch 1 had the Blizzard polish.
Activision Blizzard has now failed repeatedly to release finished, polished, feature-complete products, with Diablo 3, WarCraft Reforged, and Overwatch 2 having effectively erased that perception from the minds of consumers. But Blizzard used to be famous for not releasing products until they were capital-d Done: feature-complete, bug-free, and above all else, fun. Overwatch 1's gameplay had that Blizzard quality.
Overwatch 2 does not.
OW2's terrible net code made a mockery of their login queue; and, yes, the DDOS attack they suffered did not help, but DDOS alone does not explain why a 20,000+ player login queue (which could be made worse by DDOS) was followed by an equally long game queue (which could not), or why their servers were so unstable that even players who managed to get into a game were often losing their game connections and being ejected back to the login queue.
A third of OW2's roster is currently so buggy that Activision Blizzard have removed them from the game. Hero balance is so bad that Doomfist's hero-specific right hand attacks do less damage that the standard melee attack which every hero has by default.
None of this is new content. All of this is recycled from Overwatch 1, which was working fine, before Activision Blizzard took OW1 away from the people who had paid for it. This is a crucial point - OW1 was a paid product, not a free-to-play game. Activision Blizzard took OW1 away from the people who had paid for it, and promised those people that the replacement product, Overwatch 2, would not just be as good as the thing it replaced, but would be an upgrade in every way.
Instead, OW2 is a significant downgrade from OW1, and the promised single-player and co-op modes which might have justified the sequel number are missing entirely. There is simply no excuse for the launch state of Overwatch 2. It's not a Diablo 3 level fiasco, but it's close.
#2 - Overwatch's heroes were available to all of its players, all of the time.
I've already talked about how appealing OW1's heroes were, even to people who never played Overwatch. The Blizzard of old understood how crucial these heroes were to their game; it was the reason why OW1 was a forty US dollar purchase, and not a free-to-play game. The ability to switch your hero mid-match, the ability to play as whichever hero appealed to you, or whichever hero you most identified with, all without having to pay extra, was crucial to the structure of the game.
This isn't just a philosophical dispute about monetization in free-to-play games, either. Overwatch 1 was literally built around the assumption that players would have ready access to all of the game's heroes, all of the time, and Overwatch 2's gameplay is not structurally different from OW1's in any significant way.
And yet, OW2's heroes are locked away behind a battle pass progression system... which you can accelerate your way through by paying extra. Because of course you can.
Activision Blizzard have already been forced to partially walk some of this back. Existing Overwatch players, of course, had already paid to unlock all of the game's characters, since OW1 was not a free-to-play, pay-to-win, battle pass nightmare, so Activision Blizzard were forced to remove the locks on those characters for them. But the locks were only removed for those players; they are not removed for new players.
Which means that new players are getting a game that's structured around ready access to all of the hero roster, but aren't being given that unrestricted access to the hero roster... unless they pay extra. Because of course they can take the locks off by paying extra. Extracting more money from the Overwatch hero roster, the portion of the IP that even non-players care about, is the entire game here.
And I don't believe Activision Blizzard's hand-waving about free-to-players needing to learn how simpler heroes work before being given access to more complicated heroes. The heroes which are locked away behind larger amounts of battle pass grinding are, without exception, the game's most popular choices, not the most complicated ones. This isn't some sort of back-handed tutorial system; it's just a cash grab, and it undermines one of the fundamental pillars of the game's appeal.
#3 - Overwatch 1's gameplay wasn't just fun; it was also rewarding.
How good did it feel to have the game you're playing announce to all who are playing it that you are "on fire"? How good did it feel to have some play that you'd pulled off be anointed as the "play of the game"?
Overwatch 1 didn't just provide you with a fun game to play, and a roster of appealing heroes to play as; it recognized your accomplishments in real time, during the game. It awarded excellence at the end of each game, too, just in case you hadn't quite managed to self-combust during the action. It made you feel appreciated for playing.
There were no other rewards attached to these things; you didn't get a free loot crate every time you made a "play of the game." But it didn't matter; the flush of pride, the dopamine rush that comes from having someone, anyone, just see you for a moment, probably felt far better that any loot crate could have.
Which is why players are complaining about these things having been removed from the game entirely. Because Overwatch 2 is all about its Battle Pass, and nothing else can be allowed to come between players and their Pass.
This means that your wins are no longer celebrated by the game; now, they are rewarded only with slight uptick of a progress bar, which is only meaningful in the sense of it now being the only to unlock the fun parts of the game that used to be accessible to all players by default.
Why can't OW2 have both its Battle Pass, and its "Play Of The Game" and "On Fire" moments? Why can't playing the game well be both celebrated in the game, as well as advancing your progress bar? Activision Blizzard haven't given a reason yet, as far as I' aware, and I'm not sure that there is one. I don't know if they're even aware that they should have one.
The entire focus of OW2 is its Battle Pass. Nothing else mattered to Activision Blizzard; instead of fun being their main goal, as it was in Overwatch 1, monetization is the sole reason that OW2 even exists. The end result is a game that feels like a soulless, cynical cash grab... because it is one.
#4 - Monetization used to be secondary, not primary.
Philosophically, I'm okay with free-to-pay games having some form of monetization attached. I play Path of Exile, all right? My collection of supporter pack badges is, frankly, slightly embarrassing at this point. I am, in the industry parlance, a small whale.
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| Way too much money spent on PoE. |
What I'm not okay with, though, is a gigantic AAA publisher crowbarring these same free-to-play monetization elements into games that they're also charging full retail for. I'm even less okay with a gigantic AAA publisher taking away a game that people paid for, and replacing it with a free-to-play, pay-to-win Battle Pass that has a broken vestige of the original game bolted on as an afterthought.
Your free-to-play monetization model should always be subservient to your core gameplay loop. Every time you interrupt the flow of the game to shove your monetization interface in my face, it's bad. Every time you lock up core gameplay elements behind your monetization interface, it's bad.
And by bad, I don't just mean predatory, psychologically manipulative, and ethically indefensible, although it is also all of those things. No, I mean that it's interfering with the structure of your game; it's bad in the sense of making your game less fun.
Overwatch 2 is, demonstrably, less fun that Overwatch 1. If it weren't Activision Blizzard wouldn't have taken the unprecedented step of apologizing for the state of the game, and offering in-game rewards in the hope that people will keep playing anyway.
And what are those rewards? Extra Battle Pass progression (on week-ends only), and a free legendary skin for one hero, which they'd clearly been planning to sell. Because even now, OW2 is still all about its monetization, in a way that OW1 just wasn't.
Yes, Overwatch 1 did have loot boxes. I'd say OW1 is largely responsible for popularizing loot boxes, which are mostly predatory, psychologically manipulative, and ethically indefensible. Overwatch 2's removal of loot boxes would be a change that I could celebrate... if the Battle Pass system that replaced it wasn't even more predatory, even more manipulative, and even less ethically defensible.
If Overwatch 2 had dropped the loot crates in favour of just selling everything on its cash shop, for real cash, I might be celebrating. What they've done instead is replace cash transactions with funny money, thus obfuscating the real currency prices of the digital things they're selling, while restructuring the rest of the game so that it constantly thrusts the Battle Pass, and its paltry trickle of fun-bucks, in your face at every possible juncture.
This isn't replacing terrible monetization with something more honest and transparent. This is replacing terrible monetization with even worse monetization. It's awful.
Now, for the bad news.
Overwatch 2 cannot be fixed.
Oh, I'm sure Activision Blizzard will address the bugs and balance issues, bring the missing third of their roster back online, and declare victory, but that's just treating the symptoms, not the illness. The problems here are all structural; OW2 is just built this way, at a fundamental level.
And this is a pervasive problem with all of Activision Blizzard's business units. It's not just that the Overwatch team thought, and apparently still thinks, that everything is fine, here; the Diablo Immortal team thought the same thing, and the head of Blizzard, Mike Ybarra, defended both teams
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| Bumpy, buggy launch = Win? |
Diablo IV is going free-to-play with an attached Battle Pass. Much like the Diablo Immortal and Overwatch 2 teams, the Diablo IV team has promised that their game won't be a pay-to-win Battle Pass nightmare... but Blizzard doesn't consider either Diablo Immortal or Overwatch 2 to be the least bit objectionable.
Overwatch 2's launch being a mess doesn't mean that Diablo IV's launch will also be a mess. Overwatch 2 being a pay-to-win Battle Pass nightmare doesn't mean that Diablo IV's Battle Pass will be as bad as OW2's, or Diablo Immortal's. But the normalization of D:I and OW2 by the head of Blizzard does make me even less interested in Diablo IV than I was before this happened, and I wasn't all that jazzed before this happened.
Activision Blizzard really, really, badly needed to knock the release of Overwatch 2 out of the park. Instead, they fouled it off, into the crowd and out of play. They haven't quite managed to strike completely out just yet, but they're not winning any hearts and minds, here, either; you know your Battle Pass is a failure when it has players demanding that you bring back loot boxes.
Prognostication time!
I predict that Overwatch 2 will not receive significant structural or monetization changes.
I predict that OW2's single-player campaign and co-op modes will still, somehow, be all about the Battle Pass, and will not be poorly received as a result. That's assuming that they ever see the light of day, of course; co-op casual and competitive play will probably make it, but the story-drive campaign might not.
I predict that OW2's disastrous launch and well-deserved review bombing will hurt the game's ability to attract and retain players; far from giving Activision Blizzard the influx of new blood, the long delay (which saw almost no content added to OW1 while OW2 was being worked on), followed by this lackluster release will hasten the game's decline.
I predict that Diablo IV will be just as much of a mess at launch as Overwatch 2, and that its version of the Battle Pass will be just as poorly received. The only thing which could prevent this would be:
- The acquisition by Microsoft goes through, allowing them to
- make sweeping leadership changes at Activision Blizzard King, in time for
- Diablo IV to be reworked entirely to remove its single-minded Battle Pass focus, or be delayed again to allow such a reworking, under the new leadership.
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