Overwatch's open beta has just wrapped up, and the consensus is that it's pretty damn fun. But is being fun good enough? As I mentioned in my analysis of Titanfall, the long term success of a multiplayer game hinges on its playerbase. Once the playerbase drops below a certain size, the players' experience becomes a lot less fun, and the game is doomed. Some games however manage to keep the community strong for a long time, meaning it's always possible for old players to come back, and for new players to start. So how can Overwatch do this, and avoid taking irreparable damage to its community?One thing that Overwatch lacks is a set progression system. You do get random drops for levelling up, but there's no way of working towards a specific item you might like the look of. And this isn't inherently a bad thing: being rewarded only on overall performance means that people who want to unlock stuff are incentivised to play as well as they can for the good of the team, rather than unlocking something by trying to achieve a specific goal that may not be aligned with the team's best interest.
But there's good reason for lots of games have progression systems with set unlocks: People like feeling rewarded. Some people claim this is a bad thing, and that your fun should come from playing the game, not from the game patting you on the back. But this is a facile argument; there's no wrong way of having fun as long as you're not ruining it for others. Many games would be notably lacking if their progression systems were eschewed in the name of having fun 'the right way', and Blizzard would do well to consider the benefits.
Another thing that's notably absent is non-cosmetic customisation. This is somewhat unusual for an FPS, and while doing things differently can be good, I can see a few problems that may arise from this decision, such as a low number of unique interactions. Once you've played as each class and worked out the nuances of their abilities and weapons, that's it. Short of new characters being added, you've seen all the characters can offer. And while interactions with the maps and other classes may take longer to work out, there would be so much more to learn and discover over a longer of period of time if there were more variations. This could cause the game to feel stagnant after a while, which would make casual players leave faster, and leave competitive players with a boring meta.
The last thing I'll mention is the skins. While there are a lot of cosmetic customisation ones, the only way to change your weapon appearance is to change your whole skin. And since your weapons are the only customisable thing always visible to you, I think it would be wise for Blizzard to put most of their cosmetic focus here. After all, what's the point in getting a new full character skin if the bit you can actually see barely changes?
