On October 5th, “Overwatch: Return”, the sequel to Blizzard’s classic multiplayer competitive shooting game “Overwatch”, was officially launched on PC and console platforms, bringing a large number of updates while retaining the original game content, including seasons Pass system and new game modes.
What’s even more surprising is that “Overwatch: Homecoming” also updated 6 new maps and 3 new heroes, which moved many old players. After all, in the past two years, “Overwatch” has only been updated twice. map, and even without a new hero, Overwatch: Homecoming finally brings players the new content they’ve been waiting for.
As an old player who entered the pit during the hottest period of “Overwatch”, I was also attracted back to the pit by a large number of updated content, but two days after experiencing the new “Overwatch: Return”, I was full of expectations but had to I noticed some problems with this game. From the perspective of an old player, there may be many major hidden dangers in the mechanism of “Overwatch: Homecoming”.
The new season pass will not satisfy the appetite of players
Compared with the previous generation, the biggest change of “Overwatch: Homecoming” is that the game abandoned the previous buyout system and adopted the operation mode of free play + in-game purchase, all players can enter the “Overwatch: Homecoming” experience for free Complete game content, and you can purchase a season pass called “Battle Pass” to get advanced rewards, including emotes, doodles, pendants, and character skins.
In the previous work “Overwatch”, players mainly obtained the above rewards by opening the box. In addition to buying with gold coins, they can also obtain treasure chests through various channels such as upgrading and completing challenge tasks. Many players in “Overwatch” are fighting against A major game goal outside the game is to continuously open the box to extract the appearance rewards you want. It can be said that the reward mechanism of the box-opening lottery is a magic weapon for Overwatch to retain players.
In “Overwatch: Homecoming”, the battle order system completely replaced the box-opening mechanism of the previous game. Players can improve the battle order level by winning the game and completing the challenge task, and each battle order level will have corresponding appearance rewards. Such a new system makes players no longer rely on the random lottery mechanism. The War Order Pass has a relatively ingenious design. Every 10 War Order levels will have a very dazzling character skin, and also set up various challenges. Tasks to speed up the speed of players to upgrade the war order level, players only need to continue to play, and they will definitely get their favorite appearance rewards.
In terms of price, the War Order Pass can also be said to be quite favorable. The price of the national area is about 60 yuan, and the duration of each season is two months, which means that players who play for a long time only need to pay 30 yuan per month. The price can fully obtain all the rewards in the Battle Pass, which can be called good quality and low price.
However, when players worked hard to level up the War Order Pass, the first problem surfaced. In addition to the 80 rewards provided by the War Order Pass, “Overwatch: Homecoming” also has a large number of cosmetic items handed down from previous games. , these cosmetic items are basically bound to a specific hero, independent of the War Pass, and the chances of players wanting to get these appearances for free are almost zero.
Without the box draw, players can only use gold coins to buy cosmetic rewards that were launched long before Overwatch: Homecoming. In addition to in-game recharge, another way to get gold coins is to complete weekly challenges. Players can get up to 60 gold coins for free every week.
It is a pity that the appearance rewards that can be bought with these 60 gold coins are pitiful. It takes 25 gold coins to unlock a voice of a hero, and 500 gold coins to buy a hero expression. As for the highest appearance reward that players generally pursue ——The orange skin of the hero sells for an astonishing 1900 gold coins. That said, if players want to get the orange skin for free, they’ll have to spend at least 8 months accumulating gold. According to statistics from foreign netizens, if a player wants to collect all the appearance rewards of a hero for free from scratch, it will take a full five years to accumulate enough gold coins.
Such high pricing has naturally ushered in the opposition of players. Many people said that Blizzard’s adoption of such a model and pricing is simply forcing players to recharge. At the same time, some players pointed out that the massive appearance rewards themselves are “Overwatch”. It is an important factor in keeping players, and Blizzard making it more difficult to acquire them is driving these players out of the game, which is definitely not a good thing for the new “Overwatch: Homecoming”.
This statement is not unfounded. The game revenue of “Overwatch: Homecoming” is no longer linked to the player’s level experience, but is bound to the battle order level. That is to say, now players can get in the game is only the bonus content provided by the Battle Pass. For new players, this is certainly not good news, because without additional recharge, they basically missed the large number of appearance rewards of the previous game.
In addition, there are only 80 levels of the Battle Pass for the entire season, and players can speed up the level by completing the challenge tasks, and quickly get multiple Battle Pass rewards in one day. After the player has obtained all the Battle Pass rewards, it seems that the game has been continued. It loses its meaning, because players can hardly get other benefits in the game. Under such conditions, “Overwatch: Homecoming” is likely to face a massive loss of players.
Improve the game environment, has Blizzard done it?
When it comes to the most unfriendly point of the previous game “Overwatch”, many old players may mention the problem of communication atmosphere, perhaps because the game focuses on fast-paced multiplayer PVP gameplay, which often appears in “Overwatch” games. The situation where teammates throw pots at each other or even spray each other, such a game environment will naturally dampen the enthusiasm of players.
Blizzard seems to want to improve that with Overwatch: Homecoming, creating a more rookie-friendly environment. In “Overwatch: Homecoming”, players can no longer see each other’s level in the game, and the game outside the game is also trying to reduce the presence of the player’s level as much as possible, reducing the discrimination of old players against newcomers as much as possible. In addition, Blizzard is also actively monitoring players’ speech interactions, and even began to record chat channels in order to regulate players’ words and deeds.
It can be seen that in order to improve the communication atmosphere of the game, Blizzard did come up with some countermeasures, but after the game experience of the past two days, I have to pessimistically estimate that “Overwatch: Homecoming” may not be friendly to new and old players. How many.
A major change in “Overwatch: Homecoming” is to adjust the traditional 6V6 game to 5V5, which further speeds up the pace of the game. The 5-player team mechanism has changed the lineup. There is only one official lineup in the standard lineup. For reload heroes, in the previous 6V6 mechanism, there are generally two reload heroes responsible for resisting damage.
The reduction of the front row’s tank means more pressure on the back row, both damage and support heroes need to pay more attention to protecting themselves in battle, making the game more difficult for novices who are not familiar with heroes and maps, especially when When the enemy hero breaks into the back row, the inexperienced Mengxin is often helpless and slaughtered.
As for the reloaded heroes, they have ushered in even greater changes. The reduction in the number has increased the particularity of this position. These heroes now generally have extremely high blood volume and shields, as well as supporting survival skills, allowing them to Even if there is no teammate support, it can persist for a while under the enemy’s concentrated fire.
Under such conditions, the team’s reliance on such heroes has increased unprecedentedly. If there is no rough-skinned meat shield to withstand the front row, the crispy people in the back row will be easily taken away by name one by one. Therefore, when there is a large strength gap between the tank heroes on both sides, the game often presents a one-sided situation.
As a result, Mengxin, who has just entered the pit, has fallen into an embarrassing situation. The heroes who assist and output have low blood and poor survivability. Except for their own skills or teammates, it is basically difficult to have a good game experience, and reloading is difficult. Heroes have higher requirements for players’ experience and strength. This is a headache for new players, no matter which position is challenging for them, there is no so-called “first choice for newcomers”, and even the screen is full of “no choice for newcomers”.
It is worth mentioning that although Blizzard can feel that Blizzard wants to create a more friendly game communication environment, a new system added by “Overwatch: Homecoming” runs counter to this idea, that is, a scoreboard with detailed data. It not only records the player’s KD in a game in real time, but also includes specific damage, healing and resistance data, so that all players’ performance in the game is clear at a glance.
With such a scoreboard, it feels like it provides accurate targets and sufficient ammunition for the scolding battle between players. Once, players could not directly see each other’s data, and they could only throw the pot. Judging who is not playing well by feeling, now it is possible to rely on statistics to target. I have to say that the appearance of the scoreboard does provide players with more intuitive data, but it also further escalates many of the quarrels in “Overwatch: Homecoming”, which also adds fire to the already unfriendly communication environment in the game. Pour oil on it.
“Overwatch: Homecoming” is desperately needed now, in addition to an update or an update
Unreasonable economic system, poor communication environment, lack of novice guidance and protection mechanism… When players enter “Overwatch: Homecoming” with anticipation, what awaits them is not the restart in the summer of 2016, but A continuation of a tragedy. In the eyes of many, the new game does not improve those long-standing problems, or even worse than its predecessor in some respects. This of course caused strong dissatisfaction among players. At present, the user rating of “Overwatch: Homecoming” in Metacritic has been as low as 1.4 points.
Judging from the pre-release publicity of the game, Blizzard originally developed Overwatch: Homecoming with the mentality of breaking the boat, but the current quality of the game shows that they have not yet reached the level of “spare no effort”. “Overwatch: Homecoming” did bring a lot of new content to players, but it did not find a way out of the long-standing predicament of the series. What all players know well is that “Overwatch: Homecoming” is not a The new work that brings change and evolution is more like a large-scale update of the previous work.
For Overwatch: Homecoming to show its progress, all Blizzard can do now is to continue to update the game, adjust those unreasonable mechanics that players have reported in a timely manner, and keep adding new game content. It is worth mentioning that in the early publicity, the new PVE mode was an important element of “Overwatch: Homecoming”, but now it has become a distant future plan. If Blizzard can launch a new game mode as soon as possible, “Overwatch: Homecoming” Return” may have more opportunities to shine.
The launch of “Overwatch: Homecoming” has indeed increased the popularity of this IP again. While the influx of new players, many old players have also returned to the pit, but it is undeniable that, considering that the game has not opened up with the previous work. The gap, if not updated as soon as possible, after the novelty of players passes, “Overwatch: Return” may inevitably embark on the old road of gradual decline.
From this “Overwatch” to “Overwatch: Homecoming”, Blizzard’s operation has given us a strong sense of sight: you are a mature game, and you have to learn to make money yourself! So this livery and kryptonian “Overwatch: Homecoming” finally gives people a mature look.
“Overwatch” has always had a group of hard-core players who never give up, and they may persist in “Overwatch: Return”, but if Blizzard wants to revitalize this IP, of course, it needs to strive to keep more other players. , maybe “Overwatch: Homecoming” can’t bring back the summer of 2016, but it has the possibility of getting better, and for Blizzard and players, perhaps this is a good fortune in misfortune.