Similar to Diablo Immortal, I gave my thoughts on OW2 in a detailed post, so this can be considered an update to said thoughts. On one hand, some of the old issues no longer exist (e.g. queues), on the other, there's other issues that I'm more aware of. So I'm going to divide points as such:
GOOD
-Push is a lot of fun. It's so fun, in fact, that it makes Payload feel anemic by comparison. While I'd rather Assault still be in rotation, Push is easier the better mode. In fact, I'd argue it's the best mode in the game, period.
MEDIUM
-Earlier, I commented on the differences between 6v6 and 5v5. Having had more time to play the game, I'm actually going to come down and say that 5v5 is, on average, better. I mentioned earlier that because of the reduction to only one tank, some tanks might have been made obsolete (generally brawlers). Having played through numerous games at this point, that really isn't true, at least as far as I can tell. There's no clear link between certain tanks being in team comps and a win/loss rate, nor the occasions when I've been able to play as a tank.
This leads into the clinker - just how FUN the gameplay actually is. I've mentioned my issues with OW2, but in terms of moment-to-moment gameplay, it's just that much fun. It certainly helps that prior to installing OW2, I hadn't played it for quite awhile for a variety of reasons, so there's every chance that familiarity could breed contempt, but at this time of writing, it's easily more enjoyable than OW1.
-That being said, I still stand by my view that there should really be the option to play OW1 in its original form. From the principled viewpoint, if you're calling a game "2," there should be an option to play the game with the "1" (so to speak). From a more practical viewpoint, considering everything I've said about the moment-to-moment gameplay of OW2, it actually makes the case for me that there should be an option to play OW1, given how differently the two play. Even just for historical purposes.
THE BAD
The battle pass system is attrocious. I touched on this before, but now that I'm more familiar with how it works, I can spell out how it works, and why it's bad.
The battle pass is organized into about 50 levels, divided into 5 lots of 10. If you're on the free track, of every 10 levels, you get about 2 of every 10 for free, as you gain XP (so far, I'd say you need to play about 3 games per level, though the XP you get per match varies due to a variety of factors). Alternatively, if you pay $15 AUD (I think that comes to $10 USD), you get to purchase the battle pass, which gives you the right to unlock the paid track. So, even if you pay money, you still need to unlock the stuff you paid for. If you don't unlock all of it prior to the pass expiring, I don't know if it is added to your account or not, but yeah. Basically, it's paying for the 'right' to unlock things through grinding. Furthermore, even if you do this, every cosmetic you unlock will be the same as everyone else. If you want cosmetics outside the battle pass, you need to spend money on in-game currency to purchase them.
Now, all of this is cosmetic only, so it's something that can easily be avoided if you so choose. I should specify that with future heroes, you can either pay for the battle pass or unlock them immediately, or grind to level 50 and unlock them for free on the pass (apparently there'll be ways to unlock them beyond their respective battle pass), so on average, you'll need to play 150 matches to unlock a new hero, or pay $15 AUD to unlock said hero.
Overall, yeah. The battle pass system sucks. I've already explained why I preferred the lootboxes, but even if you prefer this system, I agree with the notion that the rewards should be in-game currency (at least in part) rather than set rewards. If you're paying for the 'right' to earn stuff, at least give people the means to buy what they want rather than have a paid track.
For my part, I'll probably use the money I originally set aside for OW2 to purchase battle passes that correspond to heroes (so, about two battle passes for Mauga and whoever's after him), but, yeah. Battle pass sucks. Normally I don't really care about this stuff, but going from OW1 (which gave free swag galore, in exchange for a P2P model) to OW2 (limited swag, in exchange for a F2P model), well, pick your pachimari I guess.
OVERALL
There's a review/retrospecitve series called "The Rise and Fall of Final Fantasy," where the reviewer comments on FF8 that, in regards to FF7, it feels like a "jump to the side," rather than being an objective improvement or decline from its predecessor. I bring this up because comparing OW2 to OW1, I feel like similar termonology could be used. There's a lot that OW2 improves on (gameplay), stuff that's downgraded (monetization), and various other things that feel needlessly removed (yes, I know Assault isn't technically removed, but still, I think there should be an option to play the original game in some form).
I guess if you really wanted to know if I think OW2 is better, I'd say yes, but only in a non-emotive sense. Namely, in the scale of gameplay vs. monetization, the better gameplay wins out, because the monetization can easily be ignored (for now - this could change depending on how easy it is to unlock heroes down the line). On a more subjective sense, I'm really uneasy calling OW2 "better," because for everything it does better than the original, it compromises on so much as well. And if the original was still playable, that wouldn't be such an issue, but as it is, now...well, the irony is that if you haven't played OW1, you'll probably enjoy this game more, because you don't have anything to compare it to. I'm holding off on actual ranking (since with multiplayer games, I can effectively rank them numerous times, whereas singleplayer games tend to get only one ranking upon completion), but bearing in mind that I don't do decimals, the non-emotive answer is 4/5, whereas the more emotive answer is 3/5.
