Overwatch 2 launch was extremely weak with the promise of big changes and new features coming in the near future.

Naturally, given the events that occurred, we now know that we’ve been absolutely lied to.

The PvE mode that was promised to be the main focus of the game was completely scrapped and the game was released with only a few new heroes and maps.

Soujourn + Mercy used to be absolutely broken, Kiriko has the most survivability in the game and her character doesn’t appear to correlate with both the lore and her original sprays.

And both characters are also some kind of time travelers (esp. Kirko’s lore makes no sense whatsoever). Everything felt absolutely rushed and not planned out at all.

The battle pass was one of the scummiest in the industry, locking hard counters behind a paywall which decimated the competitive integrity of the game.

Season 10

The changes seem subtle at first, but the game has been completely reworked from the ground up over the last 10 seasons.

Lets take a look at the changes that have been made over the last 10 seasons.

• PvE has been “added”
  • Will probably never get any new content
• New heroes
  • Mauga, new tank hero
  • Lifeweaver, new support hero
  • Venture, new DPS hero
  • Illari, new support hero
• Battle Pass is now actually fair
  • Heroes are no longer locked behind a pay/playwall
  • You get 600 premium currency for free
    • This one is actually quite huge, even Fortnite doesn’t give you this much premium currency for free
  • You get “legacy” credits for Overwatch 1 skins
    • Can also be used to buy a few Overwatch 2 skins in the Anniversary event
• Drastic changes to both quick play and competitive
  • Quick play is now a lot more competitive with leave penalties and a hidden MMR
    • (Highly controversial)
  • Competitive progress isn’t absolutely random anymore where your rank didn’t correlate with your actual MMR at all
  • You can now play with friends of any rank in competitive
• The match making system has been completely reworked
  • The game tries to match each person with somebody on the other team playing the same role with a similar MMR
  • This has been a huge improvement over the old system and esp. in the case of Tank having equal skill on both teams is a huge improvement
• Drastic changes to bullets
  • Bullets are now bigger and easier to hit
  • There are a lot of people who don’t like this change, but I personally think it’s a good change. Overwatch 2 has always been a game about abilities, coordination and positioning, not about raw aim.
• Mythic Shop
  • Instead of getting a mythic skin you now get a mythic currency which can then be used to buy any mythic skin you want
  • This is a huge improvement over the old system, esp. since it allows you to buy skins from previous events that you missed
  • There is currently a bit of debate on whether or not this is a good change, but I personally think it’s a good change
    • Fortnite has had a problem with this for a long time, where you can’t buy skins from previous events which include really notable skins that you’ll never be able to get again
• Hero Mastery
  • Small singleplayer missions that teach you how to play the hero
  • (I personally don’t really enjoy these)
• Gauntlet mode
  • Three player co-op “tower defense” mode
  • Quite fun every now and then
• New maps
• Reworked frustrating playstyles
  • Sombra can’t do the “Attack, Translocate, Attack” tactic anymore
  • Mei doesn’t have frustrating movement abilities anymore
  • Roadhog can’t one-shot you anymore
  • Widowmaker can’t one-shot through the entire map anymore
• Unified respawns
  • You now respawn (when possible) as a team instead of one by one
  • Improves team coordination, esp. with random players
• and more I probably forgot about

Why did it take 10 seasons?

Money.

Look, it’s clear that the team behind Overwatch is still extremely passionate about the game and it’s often quite clear that a lot of the scummiest decisions are made by the higher-ups at Blizzard.

Overwatch 2s’ development is still shrouded in mystery, we don’t know a lot about what was going on behind the scenes other than PvE became more and more unfeasible with the (artificially) limited resources that were given to the team.

What we received when the game launched was thrown together in less than a year, to put it bluntly, this was simply a huge management failure.

Seagull made a really good video on the topic, I highly recommend watching it. (Note that it was made before Overwatch 2 dropped PvE entirely, at that time it was only announced that it’ll be cut into smaller parts with each season)

Overwatch 2 should have never launched in the state it was in and the fact that PvE was already basically scrapped before the game even launched but we only found out after multiple seasons is simply absolutely unacceptable.

The game also still deploys some really scummy tactics, some skins are locked behind 40€ “battle pass bundles” that you can’t buy with the premium currency and that don’t reduce in price after buying the battle pass. The entire shop still actively uses FOMO mechanics and so on.

Nonetheless, for the first time, this game is actually in a state where I’d be fine with calling it a sequel to Overwatch 1 and not a mediocre cash grab.

Would it still be hated if it was launched like this? Probably.

Did they still lie to us, even after it they stopped developing the PvE mode internally? Absolutely.

Did they still promise us a lot of things that never came to fruition? Yes.

Is Overwatch 2 still missing some features Overwatch 1 had? Yes.

But hey, at least the PvP part is quite alright currently.