Randomised loot is no substitute for player progression
It’s somewhat of a cliché at this point for a critic (or an aspiring one) to go out of their way to point out the flaws of a popular and nearly universally-loved entertainment product, or to proclaim disinterest in it months after its release when they were once showering it with high praise. I can definitely understand why so many people adore Overwatch, so I must stress that my own inability to click with the game is not due to it lacking in quality.
In many ways, I wish that I could love Overwatch. Its art style is absolutely gorgeous, its gameplay is solid, the characters are all genuinely likeable, and the pornographic fan-art that Blizzard took down was pretty great. Any and all issues I have with this game boil down to personal preferences, and my own sensibilities when gaming.
With that out of the way, I feel compelled to make public the reasons why I simply couldn’t remain invested in Blizzard’s highly successful first-person shooter in the long-run.
I’m the type of gamer who needs to feel as if they’re actively working towards a goal, be it through the acquisition of a specific item or weapon, or the simple desire to finally kill that fucking Capra Demon in order to remain fully engaged in a title. I’m also the type of person to spend hours on end customising and tweaking a playable character’s visual appearance. Character creators, especially, are my biggest weakness in gaming.
At this point, it should be fairly evident where my biggest problems with Overwatch lie.
I promised myself that I won’t turn this blog into a big and overly generalised rant about why microtransactions are evil, or why they’re the worst thing in gaming. That’s a another debate entirely, although it is an inevitability that this post will be discussing the way in which Blizzard pushes Overwatch’s in-app purchases.
The big issues that I do have with Overwatch are all inherently related to the manner in which Blizzard has tied player progression to Loot Boxes and random-number generators, however. That is, whenever you level up, your rewards consist entirely of randomised loot. This loot could be skins, voice lines, sprays that can be used to tag the environment, or even currency, which could be used to purchase individual items of your choosing. There’s also the ever-increasing likelihood of duplicates, which only reward you with around 10% of the item’s worth if you were to buy it on its own. Loot Boxes can also be purchased en masse by spending real-world money, mitigating the need to gain experience in order to have a chance at obtaining an individual item.
This, on its own, is not the biggest deal-breaker for me. In a way, I can understand Blizzard’s argument that microtransactions are intended as a method to generate enough revenue for it to support the game long-term. I, personally, have a vehement opposition to microtransactions in general, but it has become increasingly evident that they’re now just a widely-accepted staple of AAA gaming. My biggest issues lie with the fact that I believe Blizzard has gone a bit far when trying to convince players to part with their money on randomised loot.
As I’ve mentioned, I’m the type of gamer who needs to feel as if I’m completing a series of set goals or achieving a specific outcome in order to remain interested. Not only that, but my biggest Achilles’ heel in gaming is a system that allows me to customise my character’s visual design. I can spend hours grinding in a game like Xenoblade Chronicles X or Dark Souls just so I can acquire items that I think look pretty. When I perform such tedious actions, I do so because I have a specified end goal in sight – I want a certain piece of equipment or item to customise my characters’ visual design. I know precisely how I’m going to acquire it, and I have a general idea as to how long it will take to meet my target.
A game that ties its character customisation options to randomised rewards ensures that it is somewhat difficult for me to get the impression that I’m actively achieving a goal – that is, the acquisition of a specific skin. The odds of me obtaining the particular item I want simply aren’t in my favour, and even if I do somehow acquire the skin I desire, I do not at all feel as if I’ve outright earned it. I’ve merely won it. Not only that, but the efforts I took to win the skin I was after feel somewhat for naught when I remember that someone else could have just spent real-world money and obtained the item almost instantly. In a way, it devalues my own sense of achievement or reward.
To its credit, Blizzard already appears to have taken steps in order to provide players with some sort of reward to work towards with the inclusion of a Competitive Mode, which added various sprays and golden weapon skins for those who could earn them. But these rewards feel a little more segregated to those who are well-above-average in terms of skill. Thanks in part to my own admitted inadequacies as a gamer, these rewards feel somewhat out of reach. That’s not even getting into the issues of toxicity that go hand-in-hand with more competitive game modes.
In the standard Quick Play mode, however, the rewards for player progress are still randomly assigned.
There’s a rather obvious solution to my issues with Overwatch; reward in-game achievement with currency that can be spent on a skin of the player’s choosing. That is to say, a player could reasonably work towards a certain skin or spray while also being incentivised to get better at the game by tying currency acquisition to objectives such as capturing locations, killing other players, helping out a teammate when they’re being shot at, defending teammates, or healing them. If an average-to-decent player could earn even 100 currency per match simply by performing well in-game and by being a valuable asset to their team, it would provide a stable and consistent way for them to work towards whatever skin or reward they so desired.
It would still take a while for players to obtain a Legendary skin, and when there’s a plethora of items to choose from, only the most hardcore of players would be able to earn them all. It would, however, provide a reason for goal-centric players such as myself to feel motivated enough to continue playing the game.
With all of that out of the way, Mei is still best waifu.
