The 10 DUMBEST Changes in Overwatch 2

10 Dumbest Changes in Overwatch 2

Welcome to MojoPlays, and today, we’re taking a look at the 10 Dumbest Changes in “Overwatch 2”.

Yeah, we’re glad to be playing “Overwatch” in 2022, but under the guise of a number, we gotta wonder why this wasn’t just an update. Did we really need a whole separate game for this? What about “Overwatch 2” has you frustrated the most? Share with us (in a civil manner) in the comments below.

Character Designs

You know, when a game gets a sequel, you expect some characters to receive significant changes in their design. Well, that’s not exactly the case in “Overwatch 2”. Sure, some armor plating is moved around. Colors are in a different spot. Maybe we give Soldier 76 a beard or Roadhog a different hairdo. But overall, they look no different than their original appearances. It makes you wonder if the artists were just told to look busy and turn in whatever. Was this really just another excuse to slap a 2 on the logo?

First-Time User Experience

“Oh no, look at all these characters! How am I ever going to learn and master every single one?”...said no one ever. But that was the excuse Blizzard gave for implementing a god awful “first-time user experience”. If you never got to play the original “Overwatch”, you will have to play well over a hundred games to unlock every Hero. And to unlock competitive modes, you will need to win fifty games in Quick Play. Because, you know…Practice Range and bot matches aren’t options for learning new characters.

Unlocking Heroes

Normally, if an online game features a ton of characters to play as, the developers will do weekly rotations and allow players to access characters for free, or they reward players with currency to spend on characters they want to play as. “Overwatch 2” does neither of those things. Not only will it take one hundred fifty matches to unlock everyone, your progression is tied to milestones that unlock a specific hero. Wanna play as Zenyatta? Play twenty-five games. Ashe? Play fifty games. Even Mei, a character who was featured in vanilla “Overwatch” back in 2016 is walled off behind playing seventy games. As for characters that will be added in the future, there’s an entirely different and arguably more predatory system in place.

Battle Pass

“Overwatch 2” makes it clear from the start that the only thing it wants you to focus on is the Battle Pass. This is the replacement for another predatory system - the lootboxes that handed out sprays and voice lines like candy and made even basic skins a rarity. Spanning across eighty tiers, only eighteen are given to free players. Characters like Kiriko who are added in moving forward will be locked behind later tiers, Kiriko being locked behind Tier 55. Yes, you do have a selection of “challenges” to complete for extra XP, but that’s where our next entry comes in.

Progression

Even if the lootboxes felt like a cheat most of the time, the original “Overwatch” felt rewarding enough to keep us playing. Winning matches could still get you at least five thousand to eight thousand experience depending on your overall performance. Do the math and put in the skills, and you could earn rewards every three matches or so. All of that has been done. The only purpose for XP is to reflect what tier you’re at in the Battle Pass. There is no general ranking anymore, and the XP given for even winning a game feels like you’re being thrown scraps. The Battle Pass gives you a permanent XP bonus of twenty percent, and yet it still comes off like you’re being paid in peanuts.

5v5

This is the biggest change between “Overwatch 1” and “2”. For those who never played the first game, “Overwatch” followed a 6v6 format where two teams fought for control over a payload or control point. This format allowed for matches to maintain a high ebb and flow - get in the fight, defend the point, die, spend respawn time planning or waiting for a fellow teammate to respawn, retry the process. Sometimes, one or two teammates could wind up bringing down the entire enemy team and turn the tide of the fight. Under the new 5v5 format, it's boring and frustrating being on both the winning and losing team. On one hand, games are flying by and teammates can drop like flies in a matter of seconds. On the other, there are moments where the game gets weirdly quiet and boring.

The “New” Maps

To give credit to Blizzard, “Overwatch 2” does come with six new maps. However, this still doesn’t justify this entire relaunch of a game that was just fine. All of the maps from the original “Overwatch” come with just new lighting and new objects in their environments. An alternative Blizzard could have done? Make new maps, and over time, reintroduce old maps or maybe reworked versions of the older maps. If we were just going to get six new maps, why couldn’t the original “Overwatch” just get them as part of a massive update instead of mysteriously ceasing support?

UI

This may come off as nitpicky, but really, this appears to be another one of those excuses to slap a “2” on the logo. The user interface of “Overwatch 2” is incredibly bland in its style and messy in structure. Whereas other shooters have found ways to keep the screen simple and allow for more visual clarity for the player, “Overwatch 2” feels stuck in the past by littering the screen with info, and there is no way to customize this to your liking. Again, other shooters have found ways to tie ammo counters and health to the screen without congestion. Why hasn’t Blizzard picked up on this?

The Font

Alright, now this is more nitpicky than the last, but we really need to be honest. What was so bad about the bold and slanted font of the original game that we needed something more mundane? It fit the heroic theme of “Overwatch”. Some of it still remains in “Overwatch 2”, but most of it has been replaced with this dull, Arial or Calibri font that ends up dismantling the game’s visual identity.

No PvE? No Story Mode? STILL!?

This is the biggest offense of “Overwatch 2”. Part of the appeal behind “Overwatch 2” was the promise of a story mode or PvE mode. Given the success of the few times Blizzard gave players the chance to play PvE modes, one would think this would be of the highest priority to make the game as big of a success as possible. So…where is it? Oh, it’s been delayed? AND it is ONCE AGAIN being locked behind seasonal content??? Even under the free-to-play model, “Overwatch 2” has proven to be one of the most unnecessary sequels to exist in gaming history. And the worst part? Activision Blizzard has ensured that everyone is forced to play under a false sequel by shutting down the servers of the original 2016 game. Player choice is touted a lot in the AAA space. Where is that talk now?