The Great Overwatch 2 Debate feat. Flats, AVRL & Samito

[@SVBOW]

We're back! And the Group Up! Podcast will be a regular show every Friday evening from now on, meaning it should hit your YT feeds late on Friday or on Saturday, depending on how quickly I can get it out! Podcast links below: If you've enjoyed the show, then do consider supporting me directly via Patreon: www.patreon.com/svb Podcast Links: Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/ow_svb/the-great-ow2-debate-feat-avrl-flats-samito?si=531d4497cccf4342b3f44029cf6cc86c&utm Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/6sRWutKTc0gnWuguo62Vpa Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/svbs-group-up/id1490256265

[@ElutPesto]

So happy youre back with these! This is like the only “podcast” type of thing that keeps my attention the whole time lol

[@joshuazhong2520]

So happy to hear it’ll be a regular thing!!!

[@samanthamarino9597]

Excited to see a regular schedule for the series! I love listening to the podcasts at work lol

[@gr8n8m8]

AVRL has some great well thought and perfectly articulated opinions and I'd love to see him on this podcast some more! Flats annoys the hell out of me because he takes forever to set up the premise before he gets to the fukin point, but it's good to hear from a high level tank main their perspective and experience. I've grown to like Samito more now that it doesn't seem like he's acting out for views. SVB you are a perfect mediator/host to be doing these overwatch podcasts. I love your perspective and you have great listening skills. Please don't quit overwatch because we need someone to represent the overwatch community that can call out the bullshit and recognize the reasons we love this game!

[@gr8n8m8]

And to the stacking in ladder issue, just make a clan system where there is a separate clan ladder.

[@therealzahyra]

Just because they put this passive doesn't mean it incentivises switching. It's just less punishment for those who like to swap. Been saying it for ages. Thank you Avrl 💖

[@BrofUJu]

Yup and lots of players do swap, it's just to one of those other one or two heroes they actually do play

[@justfriccoff3363]

Your pfp makes me laugh

[@SeraphArmaros]

Not being punished for doing something you want to do is literally incentivizing doing it. I will be more motivated to swap characters when I have ult charge if I know I won't lose it all.

[@therealzahyra]

@@justfriccoff3363 wow you must be some huge homophobe to be looking for my comments on different content creators' videos just to copy and paste this message. Know that your attempt at pissing me off isn't working. I pity you and I hope you'll get the mental health help you need to resolve whatever issues you're going through.

[@stillnotchill2560]

@@SeraphArmaros no, non-punishment is not incentive. An incentive would be giving additional ult charge for swapping or something. Lack of punishment does not equate to incentive.

[@SlayrLink]

AVRL on every OW podcast this week and I love it! What a great return!

[@conc782]

Dude is just a podcast machine!

[@mattbiggs9715]

Also, my wife is super excited for the new player experience. She's watched me play for 6 years and was just overwhelmed any time she tried to play. This gives her a chance to really fall in love with the game while learning the basics with other people at her level.

[@thepopo592]

30:06 sry bruh but that is such a desperate argument to get money out of somebody. Its the principle of what they're doing that foundationally will make me never ever give a single cent towards that pass. I dont care how little money and how cost efficient you think it is. The fact that what's in that pass was free before and is now locked for money is disgusting. Genuinely whats happened to the game is disgusting in its own right, its literally revolting was blizzard did to overwatch with that update.

[@billbobbophen]

I think at least 3 stacks should be allowed, but I like sam's idea of having a sort of "happy hour" period where 5 stacking is allowed. It might encourage a really active period of play and would be really good for content creators

[@skippydw1228]

Overwatch 1 died because they stopped supporting it for 3 years straight, not because people were too poor to buy it.

[@SolRise_yt]

Glad to see you back! These podcasts/discussions are imo the best source of content for overwatch fans

[@Real_MisterSir]

I think a lot of people are missing the memo on exactly how the voice transcription works, and I've seen so many wild off hand takes and it's low key driving me nuts that people can't spare the 2 seconds it takes to actually read the dev notes before spewing nonsense online. Here's how it actually works, as stated directly by Blizzard: Voice transcription DOES NOT listen to your comms. Voice transcription is ONLY activated once a player is reported by another player in-match. When you report someone for abusive voice chat, that report itself activates the voice transcription to record the VC of the reported player for the remaining duration of that match, and transcribe the audio file before it is promptly deleted (the audio file is deleted). After the match, the transcribed file is then analyzed by the same tools that also search through toxic text chat - which already happens in OW1 when you have reported someone. It evaluates the potential grounds for taking action against the player, based on pre-existing reports. It does NOT evaluate based on constant text monitoring of all players. It only activates when someone is reported. So if you're not getting reported, then there's nothing to worry about. Nothing you say will be intercepted by ai. Blizzard is not listening to your comms. The only parties that are listening to your voice chat, are the other players you're playing with. And if they choose to report you, then that instigates the transcription ai to do its thing - for a time period limited to the exact match you're actively playing at that moment in time. Nothing more. Once the match ends, you're off the hook again. And worst case first time offenders get either a warning or a temporary silence from using match voice chat. Repeat offenders is a different case, but at that point you clearly shouldn't be complaining about these systems for false flagging anyways. So everyone, take a breather and chill. It's not big brother or add influence seeping into Overwatch. There is no surveilance going on. You can say what you want, as long as you're comfortable with saying those things in front of fellow players. If you aren't comfortable with that, then you probably shouldn't be in voice chat to begin with.

[@evildarc0]

Can it tell the context of a joke?

[@FranTheMann]

Good to have you back SVB!

[@zechtor]

Don’t understand why the hero switching passive change is such a controversial point. Avrl is on the money on its purpose, its a nice QoL, and in a scenario where people only play a few heroes they can switch between them. Seems obvious and should have always been in the game.

[@_Libosido]

To be fair - battle passes requiring bunch of your time to complete, are already outdated, because of FOMO issue. It s only question of time, when companies decide to cancel these daily fomo-systems, because if you are playing another 2 or 3 games, with same system, you end up with option, you have not lifetime to complete all battle passes, then stop buying them = company have no money from you.

[@PaulStargasm]

It's literally a job at that stage. It should be about playing the game because of the enjoyment, not to work unpaid for Blizzard to unlock the battle pass.

[@sarunir1]

SVB has been back for like a week and already has some of the best OW content. And your plug for your Patreon and asking for the like and comments was like ten seconds which was amazing. I'm glad you're back

[@Helpfulchase]

Skip from 20mins to 1hr you won’t miss anything but a regurgitated echo chamber of ideas on free to play model and everything great about it and then pointing out obvious flaws in a one time purchase model. People say your toxic if you ask them to stop charging in and dying on Reinhardt or if you tell someone to switch because they are getting double hard countered and don’t swap so that shit is just dumb people need to grow thicker skin and not feel like language is somehow violence against them….. there is a mute button for a reason and if you say someone is toxic because you play the game like COD where you spawn run in and die and never group up or coordinate ults you need to get off comp in general and then learn the definition of strategy so you understand this game is chess not checkers.

[@ebros2898]

This aged extremely poorly and Flats ACTUALLY looks like a Blizzard shill lol

[@swagfiltr894]

The FTUE thing seems fun, if I was a new player I would like knowing that I’m gonna unlock more hero’s by playing. Gives u something to work for, also it reminds me of super smash bros. U keep playing to unlock fun new heros

[@zacharywoodard2097]

1:33:49 - My only issue with SMS Protect is the folks using Large carriers that utilize VOIP (Cricket for instance) - Seems like that will need to be addressed at some point.

[@Grandpa_OW]

AVRL was such a great addition to this crew! Love Freedo too; maybe it's time to add a 5th square? great stuff!

[@layne3530]

Freedo is the biggest shill of them all lol

[@thepinkcow1661]

@@layne3530 How dare you. He has been (with the rest of the guys you saw on screen) the most honest and frank voice of the Ow community. He has multiple times reached out to Blizzard, tried to make them see their mistakes. As stated here he would’ve stopped content creation if the monetization system was too greedy. He has been working his ass of for people like you and me who love and play the game. But as soon as he actually likes the game a lot, he’s a shill? That’s disrespectful to a man that has done more for the community than you ever will

[@layne3530]

@@thepinkcow1661 k blizz shill

[@SilverScar11396]

@@layne3530 bro wrote a whole essay and you replied with 3 words 🤣😭

[@rheklas1]

I think my biggest complaint about the battlepass system is the time constraint. If I could by the battlepass and have unlimited time to complete it to unlock, I would have no problems buying every pass because I love cosmetics and definitely want all the items and am willing to pay. But I know for a fact that I just don't have the time to grind to lvl 80 each season, so knowing that even if I buy the premium pass I won't get everything I have a hard time justifying spending the money. Let me buy the premium pass while that season is active and then let me choose to work on it at my pace. Blizz gets the money, so not sure why there is a time limit on it after purchase.

[@Filiral]

This, OWL broadcasts, tactical crouch, Plat chat. Avrl is an overwatch Renaissance man taking over KZbin.

[@BAIARJ]

I’m so glad these debates are back

[@Bioboy590]

SMS verification should allow prepaid phones, just with repetitive verification with every login to the game to prevent someone from using an internet temp phone workaround. This would keep the purpose of the verification, while still allowing legitimate prepaid phone users to play the game.

[@DriftRifter]

Found this about 4 hours before OW2 launches. Thx for being the perfect companion piece to my wait!🎉

[@reverb2516]

welcome back SVB. truly missed you and your amazing podcast. everyone did so good but i was so so excited to see you have AVRL on. honestly you and AVRL are the best overwatch podcasters i’ve ever seen and to have you both together was beautiful. My monday flew by listening to you all. thanks again.

[@rusty4265]

To all of the panelists RE: monetization: It's not about the existence of a battle pass or hero paywalls ... it is ALL of it combined. Blizzard isn't giving you everything via Battle Passes. They're giving you *part of the cosmetic rewards* through BPs and the rest of it is on the Shop. If you earn every other BP and pay for every other one ,that's about $30 a year. But that only gets you like 30% of the cosmetics. The reality is that Blizzard isn't being 'nice' when they do a F2P BP model. If they wanted to be consumer friendly, they could have EVERYTHING in Battle Passes and keep the $10 model for it. They want the $30-60 per year for BP players PLUS the absurd hundreds or thousands that addicts will spend in the Shop. I'm fine with an endless BP model that supports continued development. But the Shop is just pure corporate greed that lines the pockets of executives. It doesn't go to the devs or to the betterment of the game.

[@kwood6013]

Welcome back SVB! We love you!

[@freerider_piccolo]

Making the "bounty hunts" for high-level stacks winning games that sam mentioned an actual mechanic would be sick. Like the alpha stack that's rolling would gain an actual bounty after winning a certain number of games, where the reward for beating them in a match would be a huge SR boost or something. That would give other stacks that try to snipe them even more incentive to be competitive too Edit: basically crowns in fortnite

[@yiklongtay6029]

Love ya SVB. Happy you want to engage with OW again

[@AeroPulse99]

Maybe I missed something: I understand that game balance is what they want to achieve so that you can play any hero and it will be balanced. That no hero will give you a huge advantage over another. In Valorant, you don’t have heroes or weapons behind a pay wall. Nothing that affects the gameplay is locked behind that. You all even said the core of Overwatch is the heroes, and unless the heroes are all perfectly balanced, it doesn’t make sense to lock a hero behind and pay or play wall. I welcome a discussion or someone to enlighten me if I missed something.

[@willanrac]

this first battle pass is interestong because the only people that are effected by the battle pass hero are new players. new player experience has people unlocking heros every four games or so until the last one is unlocked. the free battle pass is timed so by the time you unlock ecjo, the last one. you should be really close to unlocking the new healer. it sounds like moving forward, new players in later seasons will unlock battle pass heros during this new user experience for them. foe example right now echo is the last one, but for new users in three seasons it will be kurito. what i want to see is how the rest of us handle the unlock of new heros in later seasons. for most peoe who want to go into comp day one, there is nothing that will stop them from grinding for the first two weeks in prep for comp. for those players they would probably unlock any new hero on the free pass regardless of where it is at. for more casual players if they dont unlock the hero that season, it looks like you will do challebges in the next season to unlock missed heros. if you are patient you will not necessairly have to pay anything.

[@endless_del]

@@willanrac to my knowledge they havent given info on whether or not BP heroes will be included in the first time user experience. i really hope that's the case, but if unlocking through hero challenges is easy enough i don't see an issue with it not being the case. especially if the challenges are available during the first time user experience.

[@nufcjoker9057]

so overwatch 2 mentality is if you can't béat them join them is that what they tried to say for the first 40 minuits

[@starless_aura]

I'm glad there was some convo done about the sms protect and I think it was all put very well. I personally like sms protect but I don't believe it should be as strict as it is. From providers being blacklisted and even those with postpaid being locked out for simply having a prepaid history, it's all just crazy.

[@doumekikun]

Thanks for having an actual discussion with points and counter points, so many videos that I have seen of people discussing this topics are not only uninformed but also are an echo chamber of the same regurgitated thoughts thrown in the internet where somebody says something and the rest says "yes" and nod in approval without adding anything to the conversation. Keep up the good work ❤️

[@Zalzirim]

I feel like all the people here have too close of perspectives and opinions on these topics so most of the discussion just feels circlejerky and tends to take the casual/pleb complaints and everyone here mostly argues how wrong our feelings are. Although Freedo does still mostly share the same mindset I do feel he at least tries to understand and devil advocates for us "metal rank" plebs even if he might personally disagree with and I appreciate that when he is on. That feels missing here.

[@6Churches]

2:37:00 One of the things I like doing in comp is saying "Hey, let's group up after this if we have good comms and the win" - it would seem v strange to be punished for this

[@Raven-lg7td]

glad to see you and this podcast back SVB!)

[@CouleeCosmonaut]

Glad to see the podcast back, glad you're putting out OW content again SVB. Hope to see Freedo on a podcast soon too. Minor gripe: any chance you could make the looping graphic in the back more seamless? Distracting while watching as it jumps every few seconds. Or at least, can you make the loop longer? Thanks!

[@Ghostalking]

Everyone is complaining about the lack of content in the game. But like you guys mentionned, this is THE START. They launch a brand new product and added some content. But they changed the graphic and game engines, they changed gameplay and added soke map and heroes which required rebalancing. But you are now presented with daily/weekly challenges, rewards, and content to work towards, and before you know it: new season! New maps, new modes, new heros. Things will pick up and move fast once we get through this and I’m all for it! I think it’s also important to mention that heroes are not LOCKED BEHIND A WALL. The ability to play them at launch is. But you can unlock them without a dime. I find that fair enough. They could also make it so that every hero unlocks for all 2 seasons later when a new hero drops. That way they have 18 weeks to balance the game before comp goes live for that hero

[@waynetec13]

Everyone keeps talking about loot boxes being how they monetized OW1, but everyone seems to forget that OW1 was the primary advertising driver for OWL. They decided to make OWL before the game even launched. They were planning to use the money from OWL to fund their development of OW in order to drive engagement for OWL. The whole reason the characters look like Pixar darlings was to rope in casual players from across the gaming sphere, not just the sweaty try hard. Many casual players, like me, don't play shooters because they're too competitive and unfair to new and not mechanically advantaged players. The "hero shooter" was supposed to be the thing that brought casuals into the genre, and they made a LOT of money they wouldn't have. Now, the design seems to be to push for the hardcore sweaty crowd, while alienating us casuals they roped in with awesome character designs. The problem is, most of the real hardcore sweaty players play more competitive games, like Apex, Valorant, and CSGO. Streamers will keep playing, because they make a living on the content, but as the player base dries up, so too will the income of many streamers and content creators, which will drive them to other games, and that will drop engagement even more. What happens the first season someone misses out on a hero? The casual player will immediately lose interest in the grind, and OW will drop off fast. Most of the people I know who stopped playing OW1 because it got stale are planning to avoid this battle pass garbage like the plague. I'm not sure how long Blizzard expects player engagement to continue when people start missing heroes, and start realizing the main reason they played day after day was to chase FOMO, and since the only thing they'll get from their grind is some voice lines and sprays, they'll stop playing in favor of other games that are more friendly to casual players. I really want to be excited about OW2, but everything I'm learning makes me feel like OW2 isn't excited to have me play. 🤷‍♂️ I don't particularly care how "fair" the BP is. I avoid BP games because of how "mobile gamey" it makes games into. Also, on the note of "you must be getting paid, blah blah blah." It's less that you're getting paid, and more, your income relies on the game doing well. If OW dries up, and there's no income to support yourselves, what's your plan? I have seen a lot of OW creators struggle to find some other way to make ends meet. Always remember that it's our money that buys you all the stuff you think we should be happy to pay for.

[@faiz8840]

I HAVE MISSED THE PODCASTS SO MUCH!! so happy you guys are back again!

[@jornsyy]

As someone who played Overwatch for nearly the entire duration of its life, I’m incredibly happy to have the game revived and updated. My only minor complaint would be only 3 heroes, after waiting for years it felt a bit anticlimactic, but as y’all mentioned there’s many more on the way. Super excited for what’s going to come from this game

[@Tropcopter]

Ngl I find blizzard's approach to SMS protect borderline dystopian. "Industry proven" is a misnomer because as far as I'm aware, no other multiplayer game actually does it to this extreme. In CSGO phone verfication is only a requirement for competitve mode, in Warzone it only affects free to play users while paid players bypass it. OW2 locks you out ENTIRELY which is madness. No one should be forced to hand over privileged info like a phone number just to play a fucking f2p game. This is basically blizzard admitting they suck at reports/anticheat and rather than improving on that, countless overwatch fans worldwide have to suffer for it

[@thisisforaclass6919]

Damn, imagine the time of white pages. People used to be able to just look up anybody's phone number. Talk about 1984.

[@mynameisrandy]

@@thisisforaclass6919 you were able to choose for your number to be unlisted. source: am old

[@benjamindempsey34]

Did they really just discuss FTUE and conveniently ignore the fact a first time player can just by the watchpoint pack and completely skip it? Did I miss something? Does handing over $40 to Blizzard magically make a person ready to handle all the complexities of OW thus making the FTUE unnecessary?!

[@evildarc0]

They had a lot of disingenuous arguments. Like flats , oh I didn't get my paycheck from blizzard did you. His content is made from blizzard. And being nice comes with it's benefits.

[@camxi2416]

So glad to see you back brother man.

[@exhalete]

Best OW podcast out there. Great job and thank you for continuing to bring great content and amazing groups with integrity for these discussions. Even having a dev chime in with messages. Makes listening during long morning shifts so much better.

[@KingDanOfBarr]

anyone else here sipping some Kentucky straight bourbon while absorbing a smooth discussion of what matters with ow2?

[@stillnotchill2560]

Kentucky bourbon built diff

[@Shzl47]

It's so unfortunate Freedo wasn't there for the 5-stacking debate. He woulda just said "Tournament Mode" and ended the discussion.

[@john-paul3271]

Like half way through the podcast and I need to vent some the experiences I’ve had playing competitive. Someone once threatened to throw if they weren’t given money on my team and then a guy on my team got so scared and said he was gonna pay the jerk. I told them both that if money is getting exchanged then I am gonna leave the game. 😮‍💨 Too many exasperating and similar to this experiences. Safe words were pretty common when people say something random to each other and cut out of comms altogether because people are so toxic. I love quick play now and stay away from comp. Where throwers are often replaced by an eager teammate. The stakes are low and there’s no need to blackmail people over a game. It’s so refreshing and badass sometimes.

[@jeremyyamma4364]

When people leave in 3 out of 5 qualifiers, its a pretty big deterrent to wanting to play any more comp. When all my friends left for other games, I was pretty much done with comp. I mean….you lose SR for a fucking teammate quitting!!!! Its fucking impossible to solo climb on console once you are ELO hard stuck. And I know I should be climbing when I’m consistently gold medaling and getting game cards, yet losing game after game

[@maxcarter50]

I have a prepaid phone number, but Blizzard accepts that number and even lets me verify logins using SMS OTP codes. I think the prepaid thing, at least as far as I can understand, is to crack down on services that wire fraud scammers use to get a large volume of phone numbers. If you've got a SIM card and are subscribed to a telephone service, chance are you're gonna be fine.

[@deolux9563]

Fantastic podcast as always guys! Will be tuning in for the spicy OW2 content 👌

[@finnnagle6508]

can't believe I'm just finding this channel. at least I found you for OW2. great cast of people, great host, great podcast.

[@brendantarp]

Glad to see you back SVB!! Also great to see AVRL, I could listen to that guy talk for days and never get bored :)

[@AllNightNDay]

You should try and get Aspen to talk about her perspective on the Calling all Heroes initiative.

[@sonofanarchy5594]

Love seeing AVRL join the pod!! He’s great on Tactical Crouch and Plat Chat and of course OWL broadcast

[@dylansoutdooradventures]

1:35:30 it's not a myth. There IS quick play MMR, but they also don't want to just throw you into diamond master game to test you just because you have high quick play MMR. So if you stomp golds they will throw you up to diamond games next game.

[@KingOfNebbishes]

I'm just waiting for the first time a new player gets mass reported or blasted with toxicity at the least because they haven't unlocked a hero. Or when subsequent heroes are locked despite being an OW1 supporter and people who miss time get blasted because they're not grinding every day. EDIT - Also, as long as heroes like Pharah and Echo exist, there will always be a need to swap.

[@postyoda]

There will be a NEED, but there won't be an action most of the time.

[@MasterMemo]

People already don't switch. We'll never know if the person is stubborn or hasn't unlocked or isn't proficient.

[@Zzz-wu5df]

calling all heros is kinda annoying to me, im a 4k player top 1 percent but dont have access to a tournament system even just to enjoy, but other genders get an entire league built for them with no barrier to entry other than there gender

[@yoshirox4eva]

Blizzard: "We're redefining the sequel!" Every single OW content creator: "Guys! They HAVE to go free-to-play because 'The Industry'™!"

[@evildarc0]

Yeah... there was a lot of sucking blizzard off in this podcast.

[@stillnotchill2560]

They had to go free to play for DPS que times. Been saying they should do this for literally 3-4 years. Didn't expect the 5v5 change but both those changes combined saved the game, cus people would rather just go play Fortnite, valorant or apex, rather than wait 10-15 minutes for a DPS game.

[@LockDieselBeats]

Not only are there tons of smurfs on console, literally every game since smurfing is free, but also there are smurfs using mouse and keyboard set up. Run into that all the time.

[@FrancoDFernando]

The thing about starting with limited heroes; I remember when I was first starting and I tried out Lucio….I thought his primary and secondary fire healed my team lol

[@samanthamarino9597]

SAME LMAO and i thought the green aura was a damage boost

[@KaiDub24]

I didn’t realize he had a boop until 3 hours in lol… I was like oh my god so many assists I’m so good at this 😂

[@ChichiNaka]

a $10 battle pass 3 times a year on top of buying the game would have been enough, it's not that $10 is too much, it's that the battlepass sucks, I've played less than 100h of Fortnite but I've bought like 3-5 battlepasses just to get skins I like, OW's is dull and shitty. Pretending blizzard 'needs to make money' like overwatch 1 didn't make billions of dollars is fuuucking insane, people were spending $60 on 50 lootboxes every holiday, they cleared a billion dollars by 2017. The arguements devolved into complete brainslop within 20 minutes, loot boxes going out of fashion is a fine point, but then dude immediately turns around and implies 'devs need to be paid' as if devs get paid extra from game sales OR continues to regress back to this imaginary OW player with 2000 unopened loot boxes as this idiotic strawman, who are these people? how big a part of the playerbase is it? Just having a circlejerk with only SVB there to try be more in the middle was rough. I bet all the super casual playerbase that OW has is super happy getting key charms and souvenirs for ten levels at a time, getting 2-3 loot boxes a day was enough to keep me playing with friends and getting a gold gun skin every other season, now I know when I log in, for the next 5-10 days I'm only going to get a Zenyatta voice line and some player icons.

[@xXLaSINdaXx]

I'm curious as to what projects some of the OG OW developers that have left the team might be working on today, anyone know?

[@Doomthepixarkid]

I think the 5 stack issue would be solved if teams were given an alternate comp route. I’m thinking of a tournament type mode.

[@josesosa3337]

??? Tournament mode??

[@crishi7459]

It was interesting listening to a group of guys who literally make a living off OW trying to manipulate ppl into believing they're not getting screwed.

[@evildarc0]

THANKYOU!

[@scalamasta]

What a great podcast. I've never been to one of yours before but this is fantastic stuff well done. Subscribed at around 45 minutes in

[@shaneotoole9775]

SVB thank God you're back!

[@KukeyMonster]

I first want to say Welcome Back SVB! Great to see you on my youtube wall again! I also want to apologies that im going to add my take on your vods discussion xD I second want to say that the argument that Overwatch 2 Battle pass is expensive is a load of crap. A cashier avg hourly pay is $10.86/h (you can check this on payscale). So if you don't have any expenses you only need to work a single hour every 18 weeks for a new hero. So if you work a full time job as said cashier and have bills this changes but generally it goes to say that you can not get lunch 1 day every 18 week and have access to all major Overwatch updates that will give you well more then 10 hours of entertainment for that $10 to me is a no brainer. Heck Netflix cost more then your Overwatch battle pass. With the same example Netflix will cost you $41.50 to Overwatch's $10 for the same entertainment time slots. (Ik they are not the same industry but they fight for the same entertainment time slots we give of our time. ) If you cant afford the new battle pass 18 week major content pipeline you don't have the money to play games at all. I'm sorry but its the truth. Other games within blizzard cost $15 a month to have the privilege to play which is equal to $62.31 in the same content window. Get over it. Samito and SVB hit the nail on the head: What is really greedy is requiring to get endless content for free. Third the first time user experience imo is great. Its 2 fold that gets cheaters/smurfs a grindwall to ruin my experience in the game and gives players a way to ease into the game. People do get content overload when they haven't been playing the game for 6 years like us. Fourth with the SMS protect and audio transcription I love this for the accountability it places on players. My #1 issue with Overwatch was players are asshats and generally toxic people. I never wanted to play comp bc every time I would play comp to get better at the game I would get many games in a row that are toxic and it ruins my experience in the game. I want to climb as much as the next person but its harder to continue to grind comp when my mood been ruined by some xXdick_headXx. I already face toxicity for being a women in a competitive game I don't need that guy to trash talk me all game bc I made 1 bad call that lost us 1 team fight over a 20 min game that had many other issues. Now with SMS protect I report that guy and he gets banned I will likely never see that guy ever again. I actually disagree with Samito on this subject. No one joins voice chat because people are toxic already. You can says "Hey ana, your frontlining and you getting killed. Dont do that." Instead of saying "Ana your dogshit your feeding your brains out". If we are Overwatch players have to adjust our way of talking to each other to make it a better environment to grow together then so be it. In that same scenario lets say im the ana. I saw a widow grappling to get a off-angle and blow someone's brains out and I go forward as you as Reinhardt are going backward because of a push the ana didn't see. The 'play' dissonance is what lost the fight not the individual performance of the players. So there is absolutely no reason to call your Ana dogshit when you both make a 'correct' decision. (in the scenario we will say the ana got the sleep dart shot on the widow). Fifth with Comp 2.0 Love love the skill divisions or STDs. We already basically been saying this for years like "low diamond" or "high diamond" Its nice just be "Diamond 3" now. I just wish that my game feel like they matter again after placements meaning nothing then playing several game and not getting anywhere make comp feel pointless. I agree with everyone that GM Stacking needs to come back. I want to see my favorite content creators battle it out that doesn't require them to enter a custom game. They don't take the custom game seriously lol.

[@StaticReed]

SVB next time you have one or two people lagging in a call try temporarily changing the server location for the voice channel. It's usually a momentary bad port from server to a users isp. Great video though! These topics matter and I don't trust any other source besides the official OW webpage. Keep up the good positive content.

[@luketan6160]

glad to see you back after a well deserved break, just in time for OW2 too

[@blackout995]

With regards to stacking, is it possible to put an MMR/SR ceiling? Say shanghai dragons stack in ranked, their combined rank/MMR cannot be matched for so the group is simply not allowed to queue that way. Streamer stacks are the best this game has to offer. I would love to see it happen.

[@zairvix]

I needed this so bad lol helped me mull over my feelings on ow2 and think on them better

[@MeiGunner]

its about having Fun , and if stackign makes the Game more fun , then let them Stack ( this is Coming From a Person who only plays Solo QUee) especially if your only playing Against other Teams who are Also Partied up

[@yefreitor]

Great podcast as usual, but I wanted to let you know that the spotify version of this episode sounds weirdly quiet for me, especially compared to this youtube release

[@burni988]

26:29 I get how this sounds confusing, but the idea that hard counters exist making people feel the NEED to switch, isn't exclusive with the idea that switching can be made less punishing if a player wants. You can reduce hard counters to stop people feeling like they need to swap whilst also making swapping less punishing for those that want to I think the bigger issue is just that hero switching as a concept is seeming more and more confused. They're actively reducing its importance as a purposeful competitive system when it wasn't even a great competitive system in the first place.

[@TheRealTedNeal]

But then they make the choice to increase Sombra's hacked time from 1 sec to 1.75 sec. With the shorter ttk, how is it not a hard counter to many characters?

[@michaelpurdon7032]

Stacking: Open Queue should be replaced with a 5 stack queue with seperate (and maybe even better) rewards than solo queue.

[@mathijnverkerk2420]

Really looking forward to the next chapter of Overwatch. Keep up the good work dude!

[@ddayMOBBIN]

Good to have you back SVB! Group up is my favorite OW content

[@WheelsOfDeath]

I have missed these videos. Glad to have you back, SVB! ❤

[@avivharel4055]

When i started playing OW i was literally only lucio on heals for like the first 30 games at least, people forget this game is damn hard to learn

[@James_15R]

First thing I click on when I see this in my youtube, love these great debates SVB!

[@kyleconaway8448]

Love your content SVB

[@TheNerd]

Welcome Flats to the special species of "four eyes". It may feel strange at first, but you are going to appreciate the stats increase of your avatar! All those lamp posts will miss you! (I'm a 4 eyes for 32 years now). 👌

[@ohm_ow1726]

In terms of stacking, they shloud just add a tournament mode, available at certain times in the day and having it's own skill rating.

[@itzmescrubz7375]

10:32 why did flats face change when Sam said that, leak?

[@skepticalpickle5258]

I watched the last half of this live. Great stuff

[@lobete]

So there is some conflation here between OW1 losing monetary gain and it being because of lootboxes. OW1 stopped selling boxes because people stopped playing it. It grew stale with poor balance, boring metas and a lack of communication to those asking for change. Players left and then the money dried. That will happen in F2P too if Blizzard repeats its past with these issues. I don't care for the anecdotes of handfuls of people who unlocked everything and have unopened boxes as the reason money stopped coming in, I counter that easily by being someone who doesn't have half the unlocks. It's irrelevant. I didn't stop paying because I had everything, I left because the gameplay bored me. That was most people. We stopped playing. And there is no "double standard" from people complaining about hero lockouts and battle passes because it exists in other games. Why? Because the people complaining about this DON'T PLAY THOSE GAMES. Obviously, right? If they have a problem with those predatory systems, they probably stay away from those games. Guess what other game they will probably stay away from on October 4th? There are so many other games out there. And yes, I said "predatory systems." Nickle and diming through battle passes with gameplay balance content, heroes needed for ranked play, it's no different with than any gacha game's gambling system on their new powerhouse characters. Even if in some rare instance the character isn't powerful, it all relies on psychological tricks like FOMO that are as manipulative and dangerous as any slot machine. If you could never lose the pass content you've unlocked and weren't teased into paying hundreds of dollars as a pass ends to bulk buy what you didn't get enough EXP to unlock at the late pass levels, it would be better. Some games don't lockout old pass levels when the new pass goes live. In OW2's pass, you are NOT paying for the actual content... You are buying the ability to grind that stuff. It is scummy. It was brought up earlier in discussions of $60 box prices and the question was asked if that was too much to expect every 2 or 3 years on a live service game. But that isn't what we are getting. We are getting a battle pass that is $60 every 1 year just to have the privilege of grinding and paying extra if you don't no-life the game. Oh, and they are saving stuff for the cash shop that you can't unlock in the battle pass. Like... WHAT? I do expect Overwatch content creators to defend this though. Not because I think you are all "schilling." I don't think anyone is. I don't think Blizzard needs to pay anyone for defenders among their fans through direct payments. If you are a content creator who makes money on overwatch content, you will subconsciously lean towards your financial interests. It's just hard to stay objective. Hell, the parasocial relationship between game and content creator is so strong, Sam accidentally referred to himself as if he were a part of Blizzard. "WE can compete. WE are part of the conversation." Please never tie yourself to your fandom like this, especially a corporation. Anyway, it isn't all bad. I love all the gameplay changes. I love the new player experience (and how it also serves as a smurf deterrent). They can have my phone number. I have high hopes for the anti-toxicity voice measures. The media is missing the mark complaining about the non-issues. The changes to their monetary system going firsts don't have to be drastic and it just requires more people speaking up.

[@hanzolo7687]

The battle pass is 10$ every half year. Not 60$ also not having every character unlocked doesn't ruin the competitive integrity of the game. Most people only play like 2 characters anyway, don't switch(which you shouldn't do anyway in ow2),you dont need all the characters to play comp anyway. the battle pass is also very high quality, decently cheap, able to be unlocked pretty easily by a dedicated player for free, and a reliable way to get income to the devs to produce more high quality content. Also if you want objective youtubers check out your overwatch and flats. Both of them had mentioned leaving overwatch if ow becomes pay to win or too predatory

[@lobete]

@@hanzolo7687 It's $10 every 2 months. That is $60 for 12 months. Nothing else here really addresses anything I said. How many character players spend most of their time on is an irrelevant statistic to the options available in comp and the ability to react. What if a character you don't have is one of those two characters you'd like to main or powerful enough to help you in more comps than what you have? What if the lockouts have nothing to do with finding a character you'd utilize because of power/situation, but is just a hero most fitting to your playstyle but you quit the game never having tried them because you weren't given them? The bottomline is that competitive play with a handicap isn't really competitive. YourOverwatch is one of the people I've had the MOST problems with for objective coverage. In one of their recent videos, they tired to argue that counterpicking doesn't even exist and said anyone doing it is bad at the game (as if you can't tune into League play and watch pros do it live). And Flats was one of the people in this video.

[@hanzolo7687]

@@lobete 9 weeks is about 3 months. Characters come out every other season. So that's 10$ every 6 months if you want every character without working. Also your overwatch never said counteracting wasn't a thing, he only said that there was much less hard counters. And that's true. I and everyone I have seen play ow2 hasn't needed to switch off because of a character the enemy is playing.

[@nycempirestate4689]

How is it the same as gacha games? In most of those games you aren’t even guaranteed to get what you pay for. When you pay for the OW2 battle pass, you get EXACTLY what you paid for. I’m not seeing how this is predatory. Seriously, how many people think about how much money they’ve spent on gaming over a long period of time? 10 dollars every 3 months, big deal. People pay for comfort, just like anything else. You don’t need to pay for internet, you don’t need to pay for Netflix, or Spotify, or even going to the friggen gym. So, you don’t need to buy the battle pass. If the battle pass bothers you, then it clearly wasn’t made for you. It was made for people like me, who love to pay for comfort. There’s a free track for all the content… have at it.

[@lobete]

@@hanzolo7687 no. This month is 4 weeks and 3 days. Last month was 4 weeks and 2 days. Before that was 4 weeks and 3 days. Basically, a battle pass gets you two months and maybe 1 to 3 days extra. FAR from 3 month, which would be closer to 13 weeks. $10 per 2 months. My critique on counter picking was that counter picking was ALWAYS soft, ALWAYS not necessary. Acting like it now better with OW2 is dishonest, acting like you don't still get the advantage paying for quick unlocks is also dishonest. Something can be unnecessary but still advantageous. Soft counters is reason enough to be against this. And Blizzard knows this. They know counter picking is still important or they wouldn't be lessening the ultimate penalty for swapping. They wouldn't be promising to do better in on the rock/papper/scissors design in press statements. If it was not important in blizzard's eyes, they would just turn off hero swapping. I kind of wish they would, just to go all in and show commitment to this new design philosophy. Don't you think they should turn off hero swapping? And if not, why?

[@OfficialOJS]

I’m pretty much happy with everything the OW team are doing apart from changing 6v6 to 5v5.

[@stillnotchill2560]

I mean, as a tank playing I think it was necessary change for the life of the game. Dps que times are so much faster now, people would rather quit the game than wait 15 minutes for a plat game. 5v5 was mandatory for the game to thrive.

[@jorrellrichardson3181]

Apex is a poor comparison. It's a completely different game.

[@PaulStargasm]

Agree completely. People keep making this comparison but it's so naive. Locking a hero who does 120 DPS but not locking one who does 50 DPS, the Apex equivalent would be paywalling the guns, not the legends.

[@lawlsaucemgee7849]

Love these discussions, always just letting loose and not holding back, even my dude AVRL fit right in. Love listening to these long casts! 🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝

[@moneyglitch]

so glad to see you back SVB, excellent video as always

[@zacharywoodard2097]

1:54:07 - People not joining VC just hurts so much. Coordination matters and it sounds like it will still matter a ton in OW2. The Pings will be great but it's just easier to have a shot caller tell me as a front line Tank to push or to back off rather than trying to keep up with 4 other people's pings.

[@NocnaDusza]

Am I the only one that actually wants to see Samito going around in QP match killing stuff with just melee?

[@stillnotchill2560]

Secretly he's just playing doomfist because all his skills are melee xD jk

[@smileypolice3524]

Great show

[@Ethan-jb8vr]

Great video SVB :)

[@chrisshimmen2847]

How do these content creators slam journos for click baiting titles when they themselves have misleading/click baiting titles on their content. Hypocrites

[@Vastspartan]

Blame the youtube algorithm. It forces the creator to use exaggerated titles

[@darksplash873]

Hi SVB, great podcast episode as always, I got an idea tho: It would be amazing if you could get someone like seagull on the podcast! He has some strong opinions I feel like and it would be interesting to see him directly as part of the discussion!

[@itsme__a]

I tried to listen ti this episode on spotify but the audio is completely inaudible, it's extremely quiet. I would imagine you've been made aware if this issue but wanted to report it just in case

[@askers_]

This didn't age well lol

[@insepra]

As a huge fan of Overwarch League, so happy you had Avrl on

[@Venesect]

Did Blizzard give definitive examples/information on how or when you could unlock heroes out of the battlepass? They said at some point they could be earned through challenges but would those be limited time windows? I know in Apex you can unlock them anytime since they're not tied to BPs. Commenting as I watch part of the video because I might not be able to finish it all. So apologies if it's addressed at a time and I didn't see it.

[@nathanfritz1409]

I'm not sure about a definitive example, but they did say there would be a way unlock heroes in the future. Like season 4, there will still be a way to unlock Kiriko but they didn't go into specifics

[@zero13z34]

fantastic man, thanks for the podcast :)