Season 3 Free and Battlepass Rewards - a review

General Discussion
1

With the promised new rewards system in place, I think we should take a deep breath and analyze whenever Blizzard has actually delivered on the promise to bring us “reward galore” as they called it in the Battle App.

FIRST:
Comparing Season 3 and Season 2 Battle Passes:

+1 Weapon charm (total of 6)
-1 Name card (total of 7)

+1 Emote (total of 5)
-2 Voice lines (total of 12)

+1 New Epic Skin (total of 4)
-New Hero

+2000 Legacy Credits

Ignoring the fact that I think Heroes should have nothing to do in the BattlePass, according to this Blizzard values the new hero the same as 1 Epic Skin at best. I’m not counting the 2000 legacy credits as a replacement for the lack of the new Hero because
this addition was suppose to address the lack of rewards and lack of choice in them and they will hopefully remain even when there will be a Hero in the battle pass again.

So question: Is Season 3 pass gives the same value for $10 as Season 2?
No, I don’t think so, but its not like I wanted Heroes in the battlepass but they definetly didn’t replace it with something of the same value either. I think the Battle Pass is worth less than it did in previous seasions.

SECOND:
Items removed from the BattlePass to be sold
For some reason certain weapon charms such as the Lucio’s Winged Sandals and the Bee are categorized as “BattlePass rewards”, despite that they were never available in the battlepass?
Is this a programming mistake of someone just mis-categorizing them? Or were they removed so they can be sold separately. This should be adressed

THIRD:
my bad, icons are purchasable

FOURTH:
Are there more rewards in general?
We know it became infamous that originally it would’ve have taken 327 years or over 10 000 dollars to earn/buy every OW1 items.
The changes reduced this grind to about 65 years or 7500 dollars.
You might say that’s better, but its not. It’s still insane.
Remember when Blizzard asked Diablo Immortal players “don’t you have phones”?
They forgot to ask “don’t you have a thousand dollar laying around every year for the next 6-7 years?”
There are more rewards, just not more enough. Take it into account that the game doesn’t only have skins.

FIFTH:
Did we get choice in rewards?
Very hardly.
Let me ask what’s the purpose of cosmetics? To personalize your hero, to make them look the way that resonates with you and what they represent to you personally.
Battlepasses still restrict rewards because you have no choice in what you get in the majority.
The Invisible Man is my favorite Cassidy skin of all time, but with everyone getting it, everyone just gonna use it because its the “latest” thing they unlocked. Time to time its fun to see this with event skins but this became a constant with the BattlePasses.
Every Phara is a Hades, Every JunkerQueen is a Zeus…
Not to mention its still not addressed whenever we don’t play ANY of the heroes we gets rewards for in the Battle Pass.
The CREDITS we earn are not use-able outside the Hero Gallery. Even if I save up, I can’t buy a bundle with them? Why? Why is that not an option, not even in the “For You” section? Do you think people will actually buy voicelines and sprays separately with coins or credits?
Is there really choice in our free rewards this way?

Every new skin that are not included in the battle pass is still premium cosmetic only purchasable through buying coins.
Why isn’t there a choice for new skins?
Instead of “5 legendaries” in the battlepass why couldn’t you give “4 legendaries and 1900 coins” so at least we could choose one?
I’d happily trade my Chasa Reaper or Demon Queen Moira legendary skin for the Raijin Ashe or the Cupid Hanzo instead. Why is there no choice for even 1?

Conclusion:
While there are some small improvements, the reward system is far away from being acceptable.
My biggest gripe: Capping our progression with only giving rewards for challenges and the battle pass.
We need general every day rewards like 10-15 credits for each finished match. Because right now, after someone is done with its weekly or daily challenges. They are only playing the game for the dopamine of a victory, and seeing how many leavers there are in quickplay matches whenever someone is loosing, that lack of motivation is ruining the game experience for a lot of other players.

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2

Bro you know,i really love the season 2 Olympian skins.I got the bp skins (zues,hades,primodial etc) but the rest of the bundle skins(minator,cyclops,medusa etc) are so so expensive dat i gotta watch my budget & pass it,maybe next time.
Whut i can think,maybe/ probably those skins bundle may go on sales somedays but its gonna a longtime later.Then i’ll buy it for an affordable prices ":smiley:

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3

I think the battle pass this season is alot better then first 2 season battle passes .

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4

Not gonna happen lol . :laughing:

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5

Hopefully one day things will majorly improve.

But I think it’ll never be worth paying for.

6

The free credits in the pass tries to address the problem of not having a say in your rewards.

For new players this is awesome, as they can buy any legacy skin with them for a hero they like. Either one legendary or several others instead.

This season wasn’t supposed to have a hero so kt’s not like they replaced that with anything.

Sure,the rewards and credits aren’t that enticing for a legacy player, but the credits will make the experience better for new players.

7

I started a completely new account to play Overwatch2 with so I’m only a legacy player in spirit, so I can tell you that the rewards are not enticing with the eyes of a new player who has nothing either.

In Overwatch 1, I could at least get 2 lootbox every week simply by playing, that’s a minimum of 72 random items of the same duration as a season and all for free not behind a 10 dollar ticket. And its true that we had no choice in what we got, but it was encouraging to play more and provided a sense of progression, and it was fun when friends compared what each of them got that week.

Now they offer us 10 items from the battlepass that we have no choice either but everyone gets the same stuff, so there is nothing to talk about. And 1 skin that we can choose. Even if I would buy the cheapest thing with the free 1500 credits which are sprays I could only get like 30.

By my calculation the rewards you get for playing the game would give you all OW1 items in 64 years. People don’t have over a decade to grind out the game, if grinding out items takes that long that’s predatory method to try to frustrate players into purchases instead of making those purchases actually enticing and valuable. Which is another point:

In Overwatch 1 Lootboxes were great value for money even with the whole “gambling” mechanic. 50 dollar bought you 74 lootboxes, an assortment of 296 random items from the 2100 available items the game offered, with no chance for duplicates if you didn’t have everything in a certain tier.
Compared to that Overwatch 2 offers you enough coins to buy 3,5 skins. Even if you only would buy the cheapest thing which are sprays for 50 coin each, $50 would only get you 114 sprays. The value of what you get for your money is insanely lower now.

The coins and the shop have ruined the game experience for me, I would rather have lootboxes back.

8

Stuff costs to make. Giving loads for free is a bad business model.

Once they hit a good price point in the shop everyone will stop worrying about comparing things.

9

Stuff costs to make, yes, but the very point of digital goods is that they have 1 singular production cost and then they can be sold a million times.

There are 23 000 000 active players, you think if they would sell skins for 1-2 dollars people wouldn’t buy it? They could make 10+ million on a single skin. If they would’ve done that since Overwatch 2’s release, I and probably everyone else would’ve probably bought every skin, giving them approximetly a minimum of 50 dollar per player, giving them a billion dollar in a 4 months.

Instead they overpriced stuff and managed to scrape together a 100 million from the whales in the same time.

They are producing artificial scarcity and its unappealing to regular players who don’t have hundreds of dollars to throw at the game every month.

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Especially with the rise of prices and financial crisis some people endure. Selling skins for even 1-2 dollars like you said would make them a lot of money given the player-base. But they’re just too greedy. I guess when it comes to finance, they don’t have much of a clue.

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This is an exception bold claim

They changed the model to potentially make more money and have a more sustainable revenue stream. This would at least suggest they understand the finances involved in running and maintaining a live service model game.

Activision Blizzard as a whole had an operating income of £368million in Q4 2022 (that includes the OW2 launch and Warzone 2 btw). So it clearly isn’t making ridiculous money off OW2 at the start.

Context for you…
Q4 Net Revenues were - $2.334billion
Q4 Total Costs - $1.966billion

(of those net revenues only $1.131billion came from PC/Console… the rest was from mobile and “other”)

Q4 earnings per share was down 29.2% year on year

EPS for 2022 was down 44.18% compared to 2021.

So comments like they “don’t have much of a clue” seem some what ill-informed. They are a company that runs with high costs. They either have to charge a premium for what they sell, or cut costs HARD… which means we wouldn’t have the game we have now, with content flowing at the rate it does right now.

YES, we want the prices to be lower. But just looking at the accounts, I don’t see it being likely. Certainly not a significant change anytime soon.

12

Not really. It’s kind of factual. I mean it’s common sense. Charging stupid prices won’t make people buy them. Maybe some people, yes, but more people would most probably purchase them when the price is a lot lower, thus making a lot more money. Simple economics.

13

Which is why the prices have adjusted, and will mostly adjust again. They will be monitoring price points and demand curves.

They don’t need to sell to everyone, just enough people.

14

I agree with Wolfebear, its common sense not to overprice stuff. They just assume gamers are computer and business illiterate and don’t know what the real value of these skins are. Anyone who played a simple tycoon game knows that if you build a Burger Stall in your theme park for $2000 you don’t need to sell every burger for $20 in order to turn a profit on it in a reasonable time.

Personally as someone who has worked in IT service for the past 7 years, I can tell that while running a business I understand that services need to make a lot more than just covering their production costs, but what Blizzard is doing here is insanely greedy and counter-productive.

As I said in another thread:
Knowing 3D artist salaries in the industry the production cost of a skin CAN’T possibly be more than 12 000 dollars.
A $19 price tag sold for 24 million potential buyers would mean they try to cover the production cost with only 0.0026% of the players (around 630 people), making the remaining potential purchases from all 23.999.370 players to be used on development of maps, balance, support and server upkeep costs, everything and then the remainder is profit.

1.9 billion costs last quarter, with over a dozen games, lets say, OW’s quarterly upkeep cost is $150 000 000 (no way its this high, but lets assume). They release at least 20 shop skins each season with one quarter covering 1,5 seasons, so lets say they produce 30 skins a qoarter. So how many times do they have to sell these 30 skins with the $19 price tag to cover the cost AND make a $100 million profit?

They’d need to sell 13 million skins, 440 000 from each skin. From a 24 000 000 playerbase, the current model only works if 1,8% of the actual players are also paying customers? That can’t be their aim, 1,8% of players aren’t suppose to be the force that keep a game alive.

In comparison, what if they would sell the skins for $2 each.
They’d need to sell 125 million skins, each skin sold a 4 million times. With 24 000 000 playerbase, thats 16% of the players that would need to be paying customers. They would only need every 6th person to make a purchase to make a 100 million dollar profit. And I guarantee you that for $2 a skin A LOT more people would buy skins than just every 6th.

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15

24 million active accounts… Not 24 million active users btw.

Also, using tycoon games as an example made me laugh, I appreciate that.

$100m profit a quarter… or $400m a year… That would probably be called as below expected performance. They are hoping for more than double that a year at least.

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I am aware, I’m just mocking how proud they pretend to be of it in the latest quarterly report

Blizzard segment revenue and operating income grew approximately 90% year-over-year in the fourth quarter, as
our teams executed against a substantial pipeline to deliver well-received content across key intellectual
properties. Warcraft, Overwatch and Diablo grew strongly year-over-year and each delivered over $100M in net
bookings.

17

Having read the report, there is no “pride”. It is a very dry and boring document lacking any emotion. But it is interesting to see, I will be comparing it with the 2023 Q1 report when it is published in a couple of months.

Also, net bookings is revenue before costs. Essentially saying they sold a load of Battle Passes.

18

And how much is just enough exactly? It’s like these Prime drinks that’s hit the internet. You get people paying stupid amounts for them, even though they’re £2 at retail price. The retailers are taking advantage of “stupid” people. Just like what Blizzard are doing. But luckily there’s not that many of them, so no-one will pay their insane prices. The “Minority” of people that do, won’t make Blizzard as much money as the ones that don’t, if they charged a fair price.

I mean I understand Blizzard need to make money from sales, but with the amount they charge, they won’t make much.

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19

That’s totally different, that is black market sellers ramping prices up. £1.99 is probably fair market value for a 500ml drink with a “premium” name on it.

Blizzard are valuing a product and £8 and selling it for £8. If you don’t think that is a cost you are willing to pay, then fair enough.

For your Prime example to work there would have to be 3rd parties selling skins and adding their own profit margins to it. Which (outside of buying dodgy accounts online) doesn’t happen.

It is no different to walking in to your local supermarket and seeing a block of cheese for £40… Expensive yes. But if that’s what they are selling it for, you either stump up, or move on. (I vote move on and hope many others do, as this is the best way to force prices to change (although they could up them… so it is a gamble)).

20

It’s not much different…

That’s what we’re talking about. Many people feel the need to “move on” because of the outrageous prices they charge. Not only for OW2 but for many Blizzard games.