Blizzard revamped Overwatch‘s battle pass in season 4, and most of the changes are welcome, even long overdue — except for one. The new battle pass divides itself into tracks, where each track ends in a new skin and includes a smattering of other rewards along the way. The idea, as product director Chris McCabe said in a blog post, is to give you more control over the rewards you get. The kicker is that Blizzard’s also moved a big chunk of the free (and even paid) currency to the very end of the pass.
400 gold Overwatch coins and 30 Mythic Prisms are only obtainable in the final track, and that track only unlocks after you’ve completed all the earlier tracks. It’s the equivalent of having to reach tier 72 in older battle passes before you get a big chunk of free stuff. Blizzard is adopting NetEase’s Marvel Rivals strategy and letting you revisit old battle passes whenever you like, but currency won’t be included in rewards for old passes.
It’s a model that also resembles how Call of Duty‘s seasonal passes work. And while some are just happy that they can pick which skins they get first, quite a few more are not thrilled with the change.
“That’s kinda annoying sometimes i’d use a few coins earned to purchase the battle pass without having to spend for the season,” one Reddit user commented. Another replied, “That’s probably why they made the change, actually.”
Image: Blizzard Entertainment via Polygon
“Yea [sic] this is super scummy Blizzard,” another said. “Ngl. Pushing people to buy the ultimate bp because god forbid i want bp itself to pay for it but now i would have to complete majority of it to even purchase ultimate bp.”
“This is to punish f2p players,” a user said under a different post. “They should at least make it so you can hack a skin for coins.”
“At least you can still pay to get it instantly /s,” another joked.
In previous battle passes, Blizzard spread out free rewards so you’d earn gold Overwatch coins roughly every 20 tiers. You’d still have to complete most of the pass to get all 600 of them, but if you didn’t have time to grind close to 80 tiers each season, you could still walk away with 200-400 coins without a huge time investment. That’s enough to maybe tip your balance over the edge, so you can get a shop skin you’ve been waiting for, or purchase next season’s premium pass without spending real money.
Now, you get 200 coins at tier 12 — only if you pick a specific track, so if you want 200 free coins this season, hopefully you like Pharah — and the rest are locked behind completing every other track and then clearing the final. Even the players who purchase the ultimate pass get a crummy deal, too. Mythic Prisms, the currency you need to purchase mythic (read: customizable) skins, were spread out so you’d get 10 of them every 10 battle pass tiers. Now, you complete the starter track (five tiers), then get 10 prisms at tier 11 in each of the optional tracks. The final 30 are in that last track.
You can unlock a mythic skin for 50 prisms, and each additional customization option for that skin costs a further 10 prisms. It’s 80 for the whole set, or 100-110 if you want the additional color options that unlock after you get the initial set. A spare 10 prisms here and there makes a pretty big difference if, like me, you tend to spend them judiciously and get a few options here and there while saving up for a full set. 10 prisms cost $10 in real money, and the next purchase tier is 30 for $25. It’s not cheap!
In general, you could clear all 80 tiers by the middle of the season, if you played about six games per day. Assuming you’re only doing quick play and not Stadium or competitive, that doesn’t seem like too much. Most standard matches take less than 10 minutes, so if queues are short, you’re looking at maybe an hour of play each day (excluding other modes, which would take longer). It’s just one hour, but when you’ve got work, school, or family obligations — or all of those combined — or even just want to play something different with the free time you have, an hour every day is a lot.
Blizzard has made player feedback about things like interface and map design a higher priority in the last two years. However, it’s unclear whether the battle pass changes are up for revision as well.
Related
The oral history of Overwatch
The rise, fall, and redemption of Blizzard’s hero shooter
