Overwatch 2’s new player experience, or First Time User Experience, locks the best parts of the game behind a rut (opens in new tab). After playing on a temporary new account that Blizzard gave me, I’ve seen how it works, and it’s as bad as it sounds.
When Overwatch 2 arrives next week (opens in new tab), people who never bought the original game will unlock a mountain of heroes to climb. Most of the game’s 35 heroes roster is unavailable from the get-go. To unlock them, you need to complete up to 150 games. Wins count as two games and you earn progress to all heroes at the same time, so the “100 games” number Blizzard tells you to play is probably correct. And, at least at launch, you can’t pay money to skip the process like in other games.
You start out with a handful of heroes in each of Overwatch’s three roles: four tanks, six damage, and three support. New players can start right away with beginner favorites such as Reinhardt, Soldier: 76 and Mercy. It’s an easy-to-learn starting lineup for those new to Overwatch, but if you want to try someone else from the original cast, you’ll have to queue for games (grouping with other players doesn’t temporarily unlock them). One game frees Genji to play, two for D.Va, three for Cassidy, four for Ana, and so on, up to 150 games for Echo.
The sequence of unlocking the hero has no clear logic. Genji is a popular character so I can see why he would be the first, but he’s also a highly mobile, projectile-based flank hero who takes a long time to learn how to be effective on him; a truly new player would be a much better fit for a hero like Mei, who for some reason needs 70 games to unlock. It seems Blizzard was trying to rank them based on both popularity and difficulty, without realizing that this isn’t necessarily how people choose which heroes to play.
Blizzard’s blog post (opens in new tab) sees it as the best solution for experienced players who abuse new accounts so that they can play their best heroes and ruin beginner games aka smurfs. I’m not buying it. The game restricts which game modes you can access from the start, it could have forced players into Arcade modes where team composition and hero choices don’t matter, and where players are less likely to smurf in.
First impression
When the original Overwatch launched, part of the appeal was that I could choose any hero at any time. I started with Tracer and was really bad with her (she’s one of the hardest heroes to master), but it didn’t matter because the matchmaking still made me feel competent to compete against people of a similar skill level. to play. The game encouraged you to pick the one that suits your style or used a skill on you that could be fun to try.
The new unlock method throws a lot of that away and uses that curiosity against you. If you really want something, you have to earn it – an ethos synonymous with free-to-play games, but an awkward fit for Overwatch, which always guaranteed equal access to everything but cosmetics.
There were plenty of games where I got tired of playing the hero I picked from the get-go and felt hesitant when I opened the hero select menu to a bunch of gray faces. After being wiped out by the team by devastating enemy ultimates, I was robbed of Zenyatta and his life-saving Transcendence. And for the 20 or so games before I could play Bastion, I wish I had a high DPS character to pick from when the enemy tank got tricky.
Overwatch 2’s new player experience adds friction where it never was before.
As an experienced player who loves the rock-paper-scissors meta game of hero picks and counters, the limited choice hurts more than for a new player. But for a game that has dropped its price tag to let everyone in, Overwatch 2 offers no better way to learn or even play that metagame until you put the time into it. The new tutorial is too short to learn anything other than basic mechanics. It doesn’t illustrate the part of the original that made room for a variety of players who were uninterested or unable to compete through raw mechanical skills. Mid-match swaps are essential to Overwatch, so essential that when you switch heroes in Overwatch 2, you keep up to 30% of your final charge. The way it discourages it from the start clashes with the entire field of the game.
Millions of people already have Overwatch, and I assume many of them will be playing the sequel next week and not be affected at all unless they encounter new player teammates with their own limitations. But there are plenty of people who have never touched the game in the past six years, and more will follow as time goes on.
The full effects of the new player experience won’t be felt for a while, not until the list of heroes grows in a few years and the grind becomes immense. Over time, the hero limits can be frustrating and create a slew of new players who don’t understand that hero swaps are an integral, strategic part of the game and a healthy way to find or avoid solutions to problems in a match. that they get stuck on a single hero.
Right now, Overwatch 2’s new player experience adds friction where it never was before and randomly limits options for players in the key hours of playing a new game. If Blizzard wants it to be accessible to different players for a long time, this is not how you do it.
Overwatch 2 comes out next Tuesday, October 4.
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