Happy Wednesday everyone – it’s time to complain a bit again. But before I get all upset, here’s the good news: I finally got into the Overwatch beta! Okay, that might only be good news for me and not for you all. But you can’t have everything, can you?
While I was casually playing last night and getting used to the game’s new progression system, I quickly leveled up. Fortunately, defeats also give experience points, because my performance with Reaper is not exactly the best (Okay, neither is it with Reinhardt… or Tracer… or McCree… oh, never mind!). For every single level-up, there’s a loot box reward. Yay, loot! I like that!
Devaluing player performance: Randomness and real money
Already in the game, I saw the ominous “Shop” symbol next to the “Open” button of the reward boxes. And indeed, the official announcement states that there’s currently consideration to sell the reward boxes of the level system for real money. And that really bothers me. I accepted that skins have become standard and that even full-priced titles are no longer profitable without cosmetic offerings, but this particularly annoys me in this case.
The reward boxes are – who would have thought it from the name? – a reward for playing, for progress, and for performance shown in-game. Everything that can be included in them (skins, emotes, profile pictures, etc.) feels significantly devalued in my view if it is also offered in the shop.
It’s bad enough that the rewards are random – but random items that are also purchasable? That’s a bit too much for me and already bothers me a lot – and this is just in planning. I’m against it.
What do you think? Should a progression system be separated from other cosmetic things? Will you buy loot boxes for real money? Or do you not care as long as there’s finally beta access?
P.S.: Now I have to juggle Overwatch and RP – why does a day only have 24 hours?
