Blizzard Addresses Overwatch Summer Games Controversy

thewatergamer

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Yeah guys! Overwatch's microtransactions are like totally ok! Blizzard would NEVER do anything shady or bullshit post-launch right? History has vindicated me! Now hopefully Blizzard can fully pull its head out of its ass and figure out "Hmm...maybe super awesome epic skins that can only be obtained in loot boxes and for a limited time isn't a good idea!" If you could I don't know..buy the things like every other skin in the game with in-game currency this wouldn't be a problem BUT of course not, got to soak up all that delicious exclusivity cash!
 

SlumlordThanatos

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Aug 25, 2014
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Kibeth41 said:
thewatergamer said:
Yeah guys! Overwatch's microtransactions are like totally ok! Blizzard would NEVER do anything shady or bullshit post-launch right?
What?...

Seasonal rewards are shady, now? Considering Hearthstone, WoW, Heroes of the Storm and Diablo 3 all offer limited edition and/or seasonal rewards. We all knew prior that this would happen for Overwatch's release.
None of those other games force you to gamble for the seasonal rewards. None of those other games allow you to pay for extra chances at getting the item you want. It's not about getting lucky, or earning the rewards. It's about placing your bet, rolling the dice, and hoping you get what you want.

No one else does it that way, and it reeks of greed.
 

SlumlordThanatos

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Aug 25, 2014
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Kibeth41 said:
Yes they do. A lot of the games do EXACTLY that.
The point I was making is that none of Blizzard's other games work that way.

It's also worth noting that Overwatch is $40/$60, and isn't F2P. I would expect something like this from a free-to-play game, but not from a game I paid full price for. It was also explicitly promised that all future content would be purchasable with the in-game currency. Says so on their own official website. [https://playoverwatch.com/en-us/game/]

The loot box issue isn't just underhanded, Blizzard is going back on what they themselves said. No wonder people are going to call them out on it.
 

ThePurpleStuff

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This just makes me glad I never spent a single penny on any game made by blizzard. I got a month of WOW for free with my ex girlfriend since she paid for it and I hated the game, so never renewed the sub. (She had me play on an account with lvl 90 characters and stuff on it already, so bad first impression for starters. Plus it was just boring to play on my own.)

Trion fucked me over with their F2P game TROVE. I refuse to play any of their games ever again or give them any of my money for destroying my love for that game. I put 500+ hours into that and I loved it since I could earn everything in game as long as I put the effort and time into it. Their sub benefits were just icing on the cake and made things more convenient. But they kept making changes after changes, small in effort, huge in consequence, taking away our trading abilities, making items or sources of gameplay (classes) cash exclusive, milking us for every red cent and just overall ruining their game in the name of "pay us money you fat pieces of shit or no more game for you!"

This is even worse... I paid 42 bucks into Trove all on my own, I didn't have to. You had to pay 40-60 bucks before you could even play Overwatch. I feel bad for these people.
 

ASnogarD

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Its sounds all nice and fair, until you get a box that gives you currency that you cant spend on the new stuff... in the new look box.
 

Metalrocks

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ASnogarD said:
Its sounds all nice and fair, until you get a box that gives you currency that you cant spend on the new stuff... in the new look box.
thats indeed a bad thing. i dont really level up quickly so the chance you get what you desire is pretty slim once you get a box.
 

SirSullymore

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Mar 26, 2009
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But I feel if you could use currency on the event items, then they would have similar commonality to all legendary items.
 

rodneyy

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Sep 10, 2008
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Kibeth41 said:
And even then. The loot boxes can be obtained for free at a fair rate, and the pool of items is pretty small, so you'll either get the legendary you want, or a lot of credits to buy the item you want.
umm the pool of items might be small but its only 1 guaranteed per box im not sure what the chances of getting a second are but the rest of the items are still the normall bits.

secondly you cant buy what you want with credits thats kinna the point and why so many are pissed off. if you could buy them with the credits you have saved up or earned during the event i imagin most people wouldnt be all that pissed. its that you cant and the one and only way to get the thingy you want is to roll a d100 over and over again hopeing to get that one number to show up.
 

SlumlordThanatos

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Kibeth41 said:
Oh, where to begin...
And you're still wrong. World of Warcraft still works in this way.
WoW has a fairly small pool of purchasable items, they're all available for a flat amount, and you don't have to rely on RNG to get them. I'm not saying Blizzard's games don't have microtransactions (and they're not necessarily a bad thing), I'm saying none of them have F2P loot boxes for their extra stuff.

Overwatch charges $40 for access to all characters and maps. Games like League and Heroes of the Storm end up being more expensive when they charge around $8 per character. Especially when they're usually designed with currency sinks in mind. League pushes you to buy Runes, and HotS for Master skins.
That's assuming you buy the character instead of unlocking them. It's time-consuming, but you can easily unlock the characters you want to have. Also, in League, you can't buy runes with money, you have to earn them using the in-game currency.

But here, we're talking about cosmetic items.

And actually, Blizzard promised that all future characters and maps would be free. They've given no indication of going back on their work.
Since you didn't go to the link I provided, here's a screen capture. As of 10:33 AM CST, August 5, this screenshot is current.
They said our currency would be good for all future content, and that was not the case. The only exceptions are the Origin Edition skins, but you can purchase all of those for a flat amount.
And even then. The loot boxes can be obtained for free at a fair rate, and the pool of items is pretty small, so you'll either get the legendary you want, or a lot of credits to buy the item you want.
The pool of items is HUGE. There are 863 items to get in the game: skins, voice lines, victory poses, highlight intros, sprays, and so on. Tack on the Olympic stuff, and you get nearly a thousand different items in the loot boxes.

So even though you're guaranteed to get one holiday item in a box, there's 100 different items in those boxes of varying rarity. The odds of getting what you want are pretty low, and only go up if you're willing to drop an indeterminate amount of money on loot boxes.

And if you get duplicates of a Summer item? It's redeemed for coins you can't use to buy what you want.

That's a pretty shitty practice in a game I paid full price for. I would expect this from Nexon, but not Blizzard.
 

CaitSeith

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SlumlordThanatos said:
That's a pretty shitty practice in a game I paid full price for. I would expect this from Nexon, but not Blizzard.
Diablo III Auction House. Next time you say "I wouldn't expect this from Blizzard", remember that they took a nice cut from each transaction.
 

Souplex

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Jul 29, 2008
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*Looks at image*
How does Tracer change her shirt? She can't physically interact with the world unless she's wearing her harness.
 

SlumlordThanatos

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Souplex said:
*Looks at image*
How does Tracer change her shirt? She can't physically interact with the world unless she's wearing her harness.
She can exist without it for a short period.

My guess is that she only has to remain near it for it to work, so she can take it off at home without Quantum Leaping anywhere.

CaitSeith said:
SlumlordThanatos said:
That's a pretty shitty practice in a game I paid full price for. I would expect this from Nexon, but not Blizzard.
Diablo III Auction House. Next time you say "I wouldn't expect this from Blizzard", remember that they took a nice cut from each transaction.
Again, not the same thing. If you spend money on an item, you get the item. You aren't buying chances to get that item. The fact that Blizzard balanced loot drops around it is a different matter entirely, but my primary point was that the new skins were pure RNG. There is no guaranteed way to get them, only better odds depending on how much money you spend. The money is the difference maker: shelling out real monies should be a guarantee, not simply an improvement on the odds.

Kibeth41 said:
Yeah, my numbers were a little out of date. I forgot to add Ana's stuff to it.

But the thing is, this event would be fine if not for three things. One: We went into this event with the expectation that the coins that we've stockpiled would be good for the new skins, and this was not the case. We had no reason to think otherwise until the event was upon us. Two: If you could only get the boxes from leveling up, this wouldn't be nearly as big a deal. It would be like farming the holiday mounts in WoW, which I have no problem with. But you can purchase them, which means someone with sufficiently deep pockets can get the item he wants, while the rest of us are just hoping to get lucky. Three: There are a lot of holiday items, which means that the odds of getting what we want are about equal to getting the Big Love Rocket or Rivendare's Deathcharger, two mounts with particularly low drop rates. This just serves to make people more bitter when they see someone running around with a new skin.

I'm not against rare skins in theory, but Blizzard just badly mishandled the whole situation.

And yes, you'd be right. I would totally defend Overwatch for being F2P if characters cost money. Most F2P games have free hero rotations, which would give me the chance to try all of them out. Then, I would only purchase the heroes I wanted, and no more. The reduction in value is the price paid for a low barrier to entry.
 

elvor0

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CaitSeith said:
SlumlordThanatos said:
That's a pretty shitty practice in a game I paid full price for. I would expect this from Nexon, but not Blizzard.
Diablo III Auction House. Next time you say "I wouldn't expect this from Blizzard", remember that they took a nice cut from each transaction.
Not really the same thing is it? You buy the item, you get the item. The loot crates are paying for a chance to maybe get something out of 800+ items and in the case of the holiday items you can't even use the coins you get from duplicate holiday items to get holiday items.

Even then, I still didn't actually have a problem with the RMAH, balancing around it was bad, but the existence no. D2 had LOTS of real money item trading and well it was going to happen anyway so Blizzard might as well have given people a safe environment to do it in.

OT: Frankly it rather annoys me that theres a huge chunk of people who just brush it off as "its just skins lol" because they can't see the wood for the trees. I mean yeah, if you don't care about the skins themselves fine, but at least /try/ and see the bigger picture rather than just burying your head in sand made of "entitlement lol" and "skins lol".