Investigating Overwatch's Stingy Loot System

[Yahtzee Croshaw]

Investigating Overwatch's Stingy Loot System

Does Blizzard honestly expect anyone to 100% this sodding Overwatch game?

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[Neurotic Void Melody]

Nice effort with the system creation there! It needed to be done to highlight how unsavoury this full priced, temporary game that still requires a subscription to even function for console play is. People will adamantly defend their right to be cynically fleeced for some reason i am yet to understand. Glad this genre isn't my thing, but people do worry me often.

 

[Errickfoxy]

Hm. There's one other random factor I think, since we don't know if the loot selection is "fair" or not. If it's totally random (weighted for rarity) or does it possibly lean towards things you don't already have? I don't know if it's ever been explicitly stated. But for the most part I agree. The loot system is unsatisfying and the expectation to complete a collection is pretty unrealistic.

 

[moosemaimer]

Given that some nutjob 100%'ed World of Warcraft I imagine they thought people would just crank away at it for the next few years.

 

[FillerDmon]

I distinctly remember, in reference to Pokemon Black and Yakuza 4, that Yahtzee admittedly doesn't care about 100% completion. So, why exactly does the completely optional loot system matter? Yes, it'd be pretty freaking hard to get everything through just level ups, but when it -physically- doesn't matter to how playable the game is, I don't see what the problem is. Left 4 Dead and 2 are pretty bare-bones when it comes to content, being so replayable just because of sheer fucking fun. Overwatch is about as fun, except while you play you can also natively get outfits to use on the characters, rather than needing to mod it in. And I don't see the need to defend anyone who is so obsessive over 100% completion (thank you, Undertale) or cosmetics (didn't they have like $50 mount armor in WOW?) as to drop 2 Grand on the game.

Not that I should continue suckling Overwatch's dick, but it seems like Yahtzee was struggling to fill out his review and this column, at least concerning the game itself. If it's not his sort of thing and it's as simple as a piece of bacon, then anything that pops out would need to be commented on to fill out the review and such, and quite frankly comes across less funny for being so forced:

-He acknowledges the amount of media taken up around Overwatch, but only apparently sees a single paragraph talking about the actual lore, when there are comic books and Pixar-looking Animations that flesh out quite a few characters and events and such.

-He noted the "buttgate" situation without actually understanding that they changed the design -entirely- out of artistic vision and went out of their way to hold it up. (I was one of the ones who thought otherwise, but after seeing the new image I got it. Extra Credits did a good job of helping me break it down to one of my friends).

-Overwatch's cast comes off as less human than Battleborns? It's probably because I went and looked around for all the additional lore content and the character chats in game (some dudes even apologize when made to battle against a friend on the opposite team), but I don't see how they're not human (...except for the Gorilla and the Robots technically, and one of those Robots would be able to argue that point super hard). A glance at the Battleborn character roster makes me wonder how many of them actually -are- human. (Granted, not only am I -not- down on Battleborn as an "Overwatch Clone", but glancing at the character roster makes me curious about the game. Somehow, I hadn't really seen anything on it until Yahtzee's review had me look stuff up on it.)

I'd wonder if I was just being a fanboy, but then I go back and watch his Starfox Zero review, and even as I like that game (as one of the few capable of enduring the controls, so to speak), it still both made me laugh and was more accurate. I also notice a similar situation in which he's kinda struggling to fill out his Paper Mario TTYD review even as he's praising it for being fucking fantastic.

 

[Thanatos2k]

You're thinking of "pre-WoW" Blizzard that cared about its players. Post-WoW Blizzard discovered that they can just as easily not give people everything, and that if you put the stuff on an endless treadmill some people will keep playing in a desperate attempt to get more, and by allowing people to instead buy their way some people will throw cash at the problem to try and make it go away. Hearthstone's crafting dust system is just as pathetic to those who don't bust out the wallet.

 

[devilmore]

I'd assume that reality is probably much worse - the expensive items are most likely less common, which means you will have to buy most of them and you will get less money (as you are less likely to get an expensive duplicate). This won't bring you close to the 12k, but probably significantly beyond 2.5k. Impossible to say without knowing the odds.

Though I assume the odds will be known sooner or later. There are loot tracking and droprate calculating sites for any MMO, no reason to assume people won't do it for Overwatch.

 

[Jorpho]

And yes, completing Overwatch's collections is an intentional gameplay challenge. I might have said that it wasn't, if the hero gallery page didn't display under each character the number of items you have found for them, formatted in a way that shows how many are left - XX/54 and so on. That's absolutely a tacit challenge to the viewer and if you say otherwise I'll fight yer.

This raises the question of whether it would be more or less obnoxious if the gallery page didn't have that counter.

I'm not sure about the Wii U version, but Smash Bros 3DS has achievement panels for collecting all special powers, items, and alternate specials for each of its characters. But there's no trivial way to gauge your progress ? there's no easy way to tell at a glance how many trinkets you have left to collect. It seems too deliberate for it to be merely an oversight, as if the designers knew people would be going nuts and ruining the whole experience if they knew what sort of deliberate grind lay ahead of them.

 

[The_Great_Galendo]

In Overwatch, when you collect duplicate items, you receive a handful of credits that can be used to buy specific collectibles, and obviously your credits are going to mount up quickly when your collection is mostly full and duplicates become more common.
...
At the start of each cycle, before opening any loot boxes, the simulator would purchase any item that the wallet had the credits to afford.

Not to nitpick too much, but this is a pretty inefficient way of using your credits. A better way would have been, at the end of each cycle (after opening the loot boxes), to check the total value of the wallet against the total cost of the unobtained items and end the simulation if the value is greater than the cost.

Basically, you want to save all your purchases for the end, if you're going for 100% completion. That way you never get an item that's a duplicate of one you bought. Your way just wastes most of the early credits. Since you're going to be buying the last few dozen items either way, saving all those early credits to do so is the way to go. If the average item costs a couple hundred plus credits by then, then, e.g., 50 "must-buy" items times 250 credits, cut by a fifth to account for duplicates of purchased items, divided by an average of say 40 credits per box, and you've "overworked" yourself by about 250 boxes.

It's not a huge cut from your overall calculation, but it's still a pretty significant amount.

tl;dr: Yatzhee's estimates should be cut by about 10%.

 

[WindKnight]

And yes, completing Overwatch's collections is an intentional gameplay challenge. I might have said that it wasn't, if the hero gallery page didn't display under each character the number of items you have found for them, formatted in a way that shows how many are left - XX/54 and so on. That's absolutely a tacit challenge to the viewer and if you say otherwise I'll fight yer.

This raises the question of whether it would be more or less obnoxious if the gallery page didn't have that counter.

I'm not sure about the Wii U version, but Smash Bros 3DS has achievement panels for collecting all special powers, items, and alternate specials for each of its characters. But there's no trivial way to gauge your progress ? there's no easy way to tell at a glance how many trinkets you have left to collect. It seems too deliberate for it to be merely an oversight, as if the designers knew people would be going nuts and ruining the whole experience if they knew what sort of deliberate grind lay ahead of them.

There is also an achievement for getting 50 unlocks for one character, so they do seem to be expecting you to be unlocking a lot for at least one character.

Worst part is the sprays and the voice lines taking up so much of the clutter when your unlikely to use more than one of each, and the only sprays I use are the 'Cute' ones I unlocked through achievements.

 

[CaitSeith]

I distinctly remember, in reference to Pokemon Black and Yakuza 4, that Yahtzee admittedly doesn't care about 100% completion. So, why exactly does the completely optional loot system matter?

Because Overwatch doesn't offer any way to meassure your progress other than getting collectibles. Pokemon B&W and Yakuza 4 main goals are to finish the game, and that's a progression system independent to collecting the 100%.

 

[ChaoGuy2006]

Nice work Yahtzee, clever idea with the number-crunching.

The porn-shutdown and ass removal was just the tip of the ice-berg. Seems really greedy on the devs part. Gimme more maps instead of this hat-scam!

Steering clear like the plague.

 

[The Enquirer]

Nice work Yahtzee, clever idea with the number-crunching.

The porn-shutdown and ass removal was just the tip of the ice-berg. Seems really greedy on the devs part. Gimme more maps instead of this hat-scam!

Steering clear like the plague.

The map design teams are separate from the art teams. The artists, upon the map being completed, will go over it and make it look nice, but up until that part it's a separate team's job.

 

[weirdee]

Nice work Yahtzee, clever idea with the number-crunching.

The porn-shutdown and ass removal was just the tip of the ice-berg. Seems really greedy on the devs part. Gimme more maps instead of this hat-scam!

Steering clear like the plague.

they didn't remove the ass, they upgraded it

what is wrong with everybody

do you just read the first half of every sentence

 

[BytByte]

Something I realized after watching the ZP and reading this is the need for a "sense of progression." I guess I might be in the minority of this, but for games like Overwatch especially, the largest sense of progression I get is actually getting better at the game. Being an online competitive game, the main source of enjoyment (at least for me) is the competition against other real peoples. So being able to beat more and more people is the biggest sense of progression I have in the game. Thinking that getting more cosmetics (especially because of the way you get them) is the only "progress" you can make in the game is... weird to me. I'd agree that it's the most tangible "progress" as skill is much more personal and hard to measure, but you get a lot more out of games then what they tell you you have.

Long story short, the biggest sense of progression in games like Overwatch is realizing you are getting better at them, not any digital items.

 

[Xman490]

Gotta catch 'em all! Cosmetics!

 

[Secondhand Revenant]

I don't get the people acting like the cosmetics actually matter much. I usually see them before the game, think "That's cool" and don't pay them much attention until the end screen for a match.

Like really... big deal if getting them all isn't feasible. They're pretty much irrelevant to the actual content of the game.

 

[FillerDmon]

Because Overwatch doesn't offer any way to meassure your progress other than getting collectibles. Pokemon B&W and Yakuza 4 main goals are to finish the game, and that's a progression system independent to collecting the 100%.

Overwatch's main goal is to get good at the game competitively. Hence the level up system used to mark how long you've been at it, and how the match making adjusts itself to your number of wins, losses, and other factors apparently measured in game to determine your skill level and put you with other people who are about as good as you, give or take. Just because Yahtzee doesn't give a damn about it (as said himself) doesn't mean that doesn't count as something to measure progress with.

Additionally, there are also a full system of achievements in game; some based on the type of level, most others based on things you can do with your hero, all of which can be satisfied, however (admittedly, one is to collect most of the cosmetics that apply to a single hero, . That certainly counts as progress. Again, entirely ignored to focus on a 100% inconsequential set of cosmetics that have no bearing on your progress or mechanics.

... though I wonder why some people feel games need a quantifiable end game goal in the first place. Fighting Games get by on just getting good (some have a token story mode, but this is usually just a fight against a number of bots and then some dialog/text/cutscenes). The Sims could be played pretty much infinitely. Minecraft added a "Final Boss", but I wasn't aware that you were required to do anything other than just dick around and explore, which was pretty much the plan for the longest part of its run. Left 4 Dead/L4D2 can be beaten in like 5 hours each in their "campaigns", but you could play the vs Mode for weeks and weeks, quite frankly (or at least, that's certainly how I've enjoyed the game).

The porn-shutdown and ass removal was just the tip of the ice-berg. Seems really greedy on the devs part. Gimme more maps instead of this hat-scam!

You've already been called out on the "ass removal" bit (still surprised others didn't see the part 2 to the initial comment and get that they removed nothing; they made the pose fit the character better while still more than showing off her perky round rear), but I'd like to call out the "porn-shutdown" part of your post. The only thing to my knowledge that was shut down wasn't shut down because porn. It was shut down because it had illegally taken assets from the game and used that to make porn. Which sounds entirely justified to me; why shouldn't they defend people stealing their content and using it to make their own stuff? Not doing so would be stupid from a legal standpoint.

 

[wizzy555]

Comedic writing and coding skills. Some people have it all.