Overwatch might be a full price multiplayer shooter, but like most major titles in 2016 that doesn’t mean you can’t spend even more money on cosmetic stuff.
First off, before anyone gets confused — all items you unlock in Overwatch are purely cosmetic. They don’t have any effect on your in-game performance, with the available items ranging from different skins, voice over lines, sprays and so forth.
As you level up in Overwatch, you’ll gain access to Loot Boxes. Each box contains a random selection of four items, including credits that — ala Hearthstone — you can directly spend on skins and unlocks.
There’s five options available in the Overwatch shop right now, starting from the diminutive 2 boxes for $2.95 and stretching all the way up to a hefty $59.95 for 50 loot boxes.
Much like Hearthstone, however, there’s no option to open all of your loot boxes at once. There’s also no real money option to buy credits, which would be my preferred option if I was going to spend even more real money. After all, if you’re paying for cosmetic items you should have the ability to pay for the cosmetic item you want, not a chance to get the item you want.
The full list of options is as follows:
2 Loot Boxes – $2.95
5 Loot Boxes – $7.35
11 Loot Boxes – $14.95
24 Loot Boxes – $24.95
50 Loot Boxes – $59.95
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Payment options include PayPal and direct credit card, although you can also spend any funds sitting in your Battle.net account.
For those currently rapt with Blizzard’s new shooter — what do you think of the microtransactions? Any interest in dropping some coin on a loot box or 50?
Comments
50 responses to “You Can Spend Up To $60 On Overwatch Loot”
I bought the $60 bundle. Love me some skins.
Same. Wanna look fly running around the map.
In general, I think it is a good thing only because it is purely cosmetic and does not impact gameplay in any way and has a positive impact where loot box purchases will fund DLC so everyone gets new maps and new characters. No split player bases.
Lets people pimp there hero who want to do that and everyone benefits. For people who like grinding, they can do that too, especially if you mainline a couple of characters it might take a month to deck them out how you want them, but I don’t find it as offensive as what Forza 5 tried, or DLC for other shooters that split the base.
I feel like you should earn a small amount credits by levelling up, not just as a chance in a loot box. I know that would make the game more fun and less profitable so it probably isn’t a very popular opinion back at Actiblizzard HQ
It kind of stings when you buy a 90 dollar game and it still has micro transactions.
Why though? You can unlock everything by playing the game. If Random Player 76 purchases a loot box and gets a Legendary skin, does that really impact your enjoyment of the game?
Serious question.
My suspicion is that ‘paid’ loot boxes give better loot than ‘earned’ loot boxes. Someone may prove me wrong by doing a comparative analysis of the two, but for the moment it seems that way for me.
The very first loot box gave me a purple and a couple of blues, but after that I’ve got maybe one blue and the rest grey, level after level (I’m about level 6 or 7 now).
There’s also the matter of duplicate loot from the boxes…
Put it this way, if you were to try and get all the skins and stuff just from playing, you’d be playing for a LONG time (like multi-thousands of hours).
Duplicate loot is converted into credits (that can be spent on specific unlocks), so there is a bit of consideration there.
The duplicates converted into coins are only 5 coins though. When a base skin is 250, which is the same outfit in a different colour, and the high end stuff with major changes is 1 000 coins I can see why people grinding would feel the frustration as each coin box is between 50 and 150 in a loot box.
Although I guess that is also part of Blizzard’s hook to keep people gaming and upgrading if they don’t want to pay (which I fully support that choice as well all have different financial circumstances), it cannot be too quick a progression. Grinding probably could be a bit more generous.
The coin cost must be dependant on what it’s a duplicate of, I got 150 coins for a duplicate of something (think it was an emote or something).
I got my first duplicate (grey rarity) and it turned into 15 so they obviously differ in value depending on the duplicate
Was the 15 coins from a duplicate, or was it just a coin pile? Any of the items in a box can be a pile of coins (that seems to be somewhere around 3/4ths or so of the purchase price for an item of that rarity), or items that you already own are duplicates and give closer to 1/4th to 1/5th of the item’s purchase price.
If I was coding it I’d make damn sure that someone’s first paid loot box had a higher leaning on rarer tables. After that I’d leave it as normal and let that first experience colour all future ones.
Turns out I would be a really unethical game designer, probably a good thing I never got into that field =P
There are 1143 items to collect, if every item you get is unique (its not) it will take 283hrs to complete the collection (1 loot box/hr). So estimate 300hrs for everything you “want”.
Paid loot boxes are exactly the same as earnt loot boxes.
I don’t know about 1 box/hour though. At lower levels this is not too far off, but as you get higher you need more and more XP per level.
My first box gave me a purple and blues as well, Im now level 11 or something and I haven’t seen another purple or orange.
It wouldn’t surprise me if they made your first box give better loot to try and make it feel like this is how its going to continue.
It’s pretty standard suckering in behaviour. Any time you go to a carnival or fete and there are carnies who demonstrate how easy it is to climb a rope ladder without falling off, or cover a circle with some smaller circles, before charging you $5 a try, it’s the same kind of thing. Gambling sites that spot you free ‘credit’ when you start a new account, same thing. This is much more innocuous but I’ve felt quite tempted to purchase loot boxes. I’m sure it isn’t a coincidence 🙂
because hiding anything behind grindy level up mechanics but giving us the illusion of choice of convenience is just poor form imho .. if the game was free to play, then having this kind of payed loot box system would be totally fine. the trouble is they make it so hard to get that really lovely skin that some people just don’t mind dropping another $60 after they just dropped $90 .. i want the skins, but I’m not prepared to pay for the chance to obtain them, so random player 76 paying for them does impact my game by taking the in-game way to obtain the item away. again just my humble opinion.
How does someone paying money take away the ability for you to earn it in-game?
the only way to earn skins is through the loot boxes. They keep the skins behind a rng loot box, that they give out so infrequently that it seems like a good idea to spend even more money on a game you just spent full price on, for only a chance to obtain what you want. instead of accepting pokies like structure in full rrp games in my opinion it should go back to having skins or things behind real progression challenges or xp gains.
Unlocking things is part of the fun of the game, the idea is to keep you getting decent loot at a reasonable pace to keep you invested.
If they make it so you only get something good every 10 hours of play to try to entice you to give them more money then the fun of the game has suffered in pursuit of profit. Also I’m guessing that the higher level you get the longer it will be between boxes.
Worth noting too, that when you hit Level 100, you get a colour portrait around your level number and it resets back down to 1.
yes i agree, if you could earn credits by playing or having the skins locked behind challenges (say 500 kills or something) then i think it would be a lot fairer and a bit less of a problem for me personally.
That would be a great idea. Kind of Borderlands-style ‘challenges’ which can earn credits.
Duplicate items give credits instead of the item, so overtime loot boxes turn into credit points.
I bought 50. I don’t regret anything. I am the monster gamers have nightmares of.
It’s hard to resist the temptation, to be fair. It’s designed that way.
If people like you didn’t buy them we would acquire them at a reasonable rate in game as there would be no reason to hold them back.
I hate to say it but you are the problem!
(It was a joke)
They’ll never add an open all option.
The stimulus and action of opening a box is designed to be very pleasing and addictive, like pokies. If you paid $60 and read through a list of unlocks people would be able to more accurately assess the value of what they paid for.
The frickin’ PS4 controller even vibrates when you’re opening it… it’s… sexual.
Don’t get me wrong, I never got into Hearthstone but opening those packs was fun.
The beta for this? Man opening those boxes was amazing, I can imagine if you started spending money you’d never stop. I’m sure I’ll enjoy opening any I earn but don’t really care much about the unlocks so will refuse to spend money on them.
That said if the game hooks me I might end up buying it on another system… At which point I’ll be really sad unlocks don’t come with me.
That’s all I heard.
Couldn’t care less. I wont be buying any since there’s no guarantee you’ll receive what you want, but if others want to – good for them.
It’s so amusing reading the endless salt from people in comment threads about how this fully priced game is ‘Pay 2 Win’ or should be free since its online only.
If I were you I wouldn’t enjoy the fact that the industry is moving in this direction.
The more accepted it becomes the more likely we are to get games that purposely put content behind massive grinds.
If this becomes the norm expect more games like Forza 5 that had the amount of credits dramatically reduced to encourage you to buy the cars with real money.
well in the case of overwatch do you see there’s a difference? there’ll be an uproar if the locked content has a direct impact on gameplay. these boxes don’t
if we look at your example of using Forza 5, if Car A is free and Car B requires real money but both Car A and Car B perform exactly the same, what’s the issue? woe is me that player #679 has a shinier car then me?
But there wasn’t an uproar, the argument for Forza was exactly the same as this one “Well you can still earn the content in game it just takes you 100 hours per car”
“Its totally fine that full priced games continue to get more money for content already in the game by making it take an excessive amount of time to unlock the thing”
The only reason these boxes exist is to make a huge amount of money. They do not improve the fun of the game in any way shape or form.
They have clearly been designed by people who know a lot about gambling.
I think that’s more indicative of the Forza community tbh
I take it that the cars have performance differences?
Yeah but the cars are in classes so if you can only afford an F class car you wont be at a disadvantage because you can only race against other F class cars.
I just don’t understand how people can be of the mindset that Forza 4 was designed perfectly when it took 2 hours to get a supercar and its designed just as perfectly when it takes 20 hours to get the same supercar in Forza 5.
Do you think the design is good because you love the series and it upsets you when its criticised or do you think the design is good because its actually good.
50 loot boxes will net you around 1800 credits. This will allow you buy some epic skins (1000c) or legendary skins(750c) that you specifically want on top of all your luck of the draw loot.
So 60 bucks to guarantee one epic skin of your choice, that is a bargain!
Imagine how much less money blizzard would make if they let you just buy the skins you wanted rather than having a gambling mini game!
Much much less 😛
Why sell a skin for $2.95 when you can sell the probability of getting enough credits to buy that skin, plus the chance of other random skins for $59.95!?
I’m in the same boat as you, I think microtransactions (as long as they don’t give you a tangible advantage / are just cosmetic) are perfectly fine. I do not care for them at all, but if other people want to exchange real money for a pixellated outfit? Be my guest.
I do think it is overpriced, and should have been released at more the $40-50 AUD mark as an online only game with very limited amounts of modes, but that’s just my opinion. I’ll probably grab a copy if it’s still going strong when keys are selling for around 40 bucks.
I wonder how close this skirts to being classed as gambling. There have been a few games with randomised loot packs that cost real world money that end up getting in trouble for crossing gambling laws. It’s territory dependent but I’m pretty sure it’s also why games let you buy credits that you can spend on these things because that means you’re buying credits, not a random chance result.
EA did exactly the same thing with Mass Effect 3, but at least you could only get duplicates up to a point, and even then, the duplicates would increase the effectiveness of the weapon, give a new armor decoration colour or give XP to progress a character. From what I’ve read the Overwatch loot duplicates are just that… duplicates.
Yeah they are, you trade duplicates for credits that you can spend on specific things. While it does resemble gambling I wonder is it any different to trading cards?
Oh, that’s cool, I didn’t know you could exchange duplicates for credits. That makes it a whole lot better in my book.
Jim Sterling linked his previous video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHszeYz5Mi0 ) in the comments of his latest vid on Overwatch (which isn’t negative) but the linked video remains spot on. It’s never ‘just cosmetic’ because the system is designed from the ground up to encourage real money spending. 21 characters with 57 unlocks (iirc). You better get cracking.
Maybe if you get enough duplicates at 5 currency each you afford to buy your dream item at a horrible conversion rate.
It’s such a cynical design exercise. Gambling for items for real money just seems evil compared to just selling in-game currency or items directly which is just vanilla greed.
Thank you random guest. I’m not sure you’ll see this reply since you’re a guest, but thank you for getting me hooked on Jimquisition videos. They’re amazing.
Jim is really one-of-a-kind. Listen to his podcasts Podquisition, Fistshark Marketing and Spin-off Doctors for even more excellent Jim content.
And for the truly outrageous Jim experience, dig into old episodes of Podtoid and Dismal Jesters. Poor old Jonathan Holmes copped such a huge amount of shit on those shows although he took it mostly good-naturedly. Freaky Constantina FTW! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_LZgjrjOtY
Pretty sure I could spend a lot more than $60 if you gave me money 😛
I don’t mind it having Microtransactions as they’re completely vanity things, unlike even Hearthstone where cards are the game itself – though that’s a F2P game so different again. I’m swamped with assignments atm though and barely have the time to play (certainly not to open loot boxes) but when I do get around to it, I’ll probably just grab the 24 boxes for a nice start of skins & stuff and be done with it.
Wow you can’t actually be criticizing Blizzard for wanting their game to be profitable can you? You don’t have to buy them but don’t get salty that people who give the game developers significantly more financial support get more shiny skins to show off in. It doesn’t affect gameplay at all, it’s just a status symbol.
I think gambling for randomised content using real world money in a full priced game is pretty dumb. I’d rather unlock skins with progression, like Battlefront, and give people the option to skip the grind and buy specific skins if they want to pay extra.
It’s pretty depressing that people here are willing to waste $60 or more on the CHANCE to get some in-game skins for a first person game.