Deconstructing Overwatch 2 Battle Pass Design
Players have mixed reactions to Blizzard’s Overwatch 2 Battle Pass. Is the rigid reward structure to blame, and what can be done to fix it? Let’s break it down.
📝 Overwatch 2’s Battle Pass offers substantial monetary value, but does it genuinely serve player needs? While providing a high return on investment, the system’s design choices raise critical questions about engagement and player satisfaction.
Key Focus Areas:
Why high-value battle passes don’t always translate to high player engagement
How a rigid progression system and lack of hero choice undermine personalization
The impact of featured battle pass heroes on pick rates—and why it often backfires
Alternative reward structures that could improve long-term player investment
Stay tuned for an in-depth discussion of the Overwatch 2 Battle Pass with author Ted Park and Chris Cobb from Pragma next week!
Read on for a deep dive into how Overwatch 2’s Battle Pass works, where it falls short, and what Blizzard can do to create a more compelling system. 👇
🎮 Overwatch 2 Battle Pass: Good Value, But Could Serve Players’ Needs Better
Written by: Ted Park
Executive Summary
Overwatch 2’s (OW2) Battle Pass offers an 8-week tier system with free and premium tracks. While delivering substantial monetary value, the battle pass should give players what they want regarding items for their favorite heroes. Let's dive deep into what works, what doesn't, and where opportunities for improvement lie.
This analysis was made with Season 13’s Battle Pass, which ran from October 15 - December 9, 2024. Since then, there have been major changes, mainly the reintroduction of loot boxes. We will touch upon why we believe this was a response to the flaws of the original Battle Pass.
🛠️ Core System Architecture
Battle Pass Framework
Duration: 8 weeks
Progression: 80 standard tiers + extended progression to 200
Pricing Tiers:
Premium: 1000 Coins ($10)
Premium + 20 Skips: 2200 Coins ($22)
Ultimate Bundle: $45
Value Proposition
Free Track: 28 tiers, $36 worth of content
Premium Track: $168 worth of content for $10
Premium + Skips: $208 worth of content for $22
Ultimate Bundle: $258 worth of content for $45
🚀 Progression System Analysis
10,000 XP per tier
Multiple earning pathways through daily, weekly, and event challenges
Potential for ~11 tiers per week through standard activities
A buffer of 1-2 weeks for completion
XP Breakdown by Challenge
Players can earn at least 113,000XP per week
Players must do this 7 times to complete all 80 standard tiers.
Leeway of 1 week if players do dailies and weeklies.
Season 13 had four events: the My Hero Academia Collab, Hero Mastery, Halloween, and Overwatch Classic. Each event lasted about two weeks.
XP Breakdown of Event Challenges:
My Hero Academia: 30,000XP
Hero Mastery: 22,500XP
Halloween: 30,000XP
Overwatch Classic: 60,000XP
Total: 142,500XP ~= 14 tiers, about a week’s worth of XP.
Overall, OW2 is fairly generous in terms of giving XP. Players can miss up to 2 weeks and still complete the battle pass as long as they complete the event challenges and the other weeks’ worth of challenges.
🎁 Reward Distribution
Premium track offerings:
5 Legendary skins
80 Mystic Prisms
Additional cosmetics across various rarity tiers
Free track highlights:
Sufficient currency for one Legendary skin
A mix of cosmetic rewards across different rarity levels
Rarity Distribution
The premium track offers more tiers of rewards, including Legendary skins, which are not available on the free track.
Reward Type Distribution
Abundance of Name Cards and Player Icons in the Premium Track.
Player icons and name cards are only seen in the menus and not in-match, so they are of lower value to your average player.
Hero Distribution
OW2 is unique from other games in that rewards can be focused on a specific hero.
Junker Queen, Ana, Mei, Roadhog, and Widowmaker got the most attention, though mostly with Rare rewards: Player Icons, Name Cards, and Victory Poses.
Junker Queen, Ana, Sojourn, Torbjorn, and Sigma got the 5 Legendary skins in the Premium track.
Winston and Kiriko received Legendary skins in the Ultimate bundle. (Not pictured in the chart)
Widowmaker received a Mystic skin that headlined the Season, however choosing this skin is optional. (Not pictured in the chart)
Let’s analyze why these heroes might have been picked.
Tier list
High-tier: Widowmaker, Sojourn, Ana, Winston, Mei, Kiriko
Mid-tier: Junker Queen, Roadhog, Sigma, Torbjorn
60% of the featured heroes are top-tier.
40% are mid-tier.
Pick rate (over past 6 months):
Top 20%
1st (out of 42): Ana (7.45%)
6th: Kiriko (3.92%)
8th: Widowmaker (3.64%)
Bottom 50%
22nd: Roadhog (1.91%)
27th: Winston (1.67%)
28th: Mei (1.59%)
30th: Junker Queen (1.48%)
31st: Sigma (1.47%)
32nd: Sojourn (1.46%)
36th: Torbjorn (1.16%)
30% of featured heroes are in the top 20% of pick rates.
70% of featured heroes are in the bottom 50% of pick rates.
This brings the question: did getting featured in the Battle Pass improve pick rates?
Comparing the pick rate ranking from the past month:
70% of the featured heroes have lower rankings than before.
60% of the featured heroes have lower pick rate percentages than before.
Patch Notes
Sojourn had a buff, while Sigma got a bugfix that buffs him from before.
Whether a character was buffed doesn't seem to factor in what heroes were emphasized for the battle pass.
Currency Reward Distribution
OW2 has three different currencies:
Credits
Not purchasable
Gained through challenges and both tracks of BP
Coins
Purchasable
100 coins = $1
Can be converted to credits for 1:1 exchange
Some cosmetics are only purchasable by Coins
Gained through the free track
Mystic Prisms
Purchasable
1 Prism = $1
Used to buy Mystic skins
Gained through the premium track
Every page in the battle pass gives at least one type of currency:
Every 5th tier of each page gives Credits.
Every 8th tier gives Mystic Prisms.
Coins are scattered throughout the BP as the 10th, 49th, and 79th tiers.
Credits earned from the free track are enough to buy one legendary skin.
Mystic Prisms earned from the premium track are enough to buy one Mystic skin.
Mystic Skins
Every Overwatch season highlights two new “mystic skins,” a customizable character and weapon skin that you can only unlock and level up with Mystic Prisms.
Initial Skin Purchase: 50 Mystic Prisms ($50)
Upgrade Skin’s Level: 10 Mystic Prisms ($10)
Skin can be upgraded up to 3 times
Purchase and fully upgrade a skin: 80 Mystic Prisms ($80)
Purchase “Gilded” level (make skin gold colored after fully upgrading): 20 Mystic Prisms ($20)
Not locked into buying any specific mystic skin; players can choose from the previous seasons’ mystic skins.
The premium track gives you 80 Mystic Prisms, enough to buy and fully upgrade one mystic skin by purchasing a battle pass, but not to make it glided.
💸 Monetary Value
Free Track
2 Epic skins ($7.50 each, total $15)
1500 credits ($15)
600 coins ($6)
Total value: $36.
Premium Track
Cost: 1000 Overwatch Coins ($10)
80 Mystic Prisms ($80)
5 Legendary Skins ($15 each, total $75)
1 Epic Skin ($7.50)
500 Credits ($5)
20% XP Boost
Total value: $167.50.
Premium Track + 20 Tier Skips
Cost: 2200 Overwatch coins ($22)
Value of tier skips: $40 (purchasable as of Season 14)
Total Value: $207.50
Ultimate Bundle
Cost: $45
Everything in Premium Track + 20 Tier Skips
2000 coins ($20)
2 Legendary Skins ($30)
Value of non-Premium extras: $50
Total Value: $257.50
Overall, the BP offers good monetary value for what is paid for.
🎯 Insights
Strengths
Value Multiplication: Exceptional dollar-to-value ratio in premium tracks
Mystic Prism System: Creates compelling progression through upgradeable rewards
Generous Completion Time Frame: Challenges give enough XP for completion.
Pain Points
Skipping players’ mains
It is inevitable for the BP to skip over a player’s mains when it focuses on a handful of heroes out of 42.
For example, my mains are D.Va, Reinhardt, Reaper, and Junkrat:
The first two had no items in the Battle Pass.
Junkrat just had a voice line.
Reaper got an Epic skin, but I like the skin I already have for him.
While it is nice to get skins for characters that you don’t own skins for, it is more likely that a player will decide not to get the BP if it doesn’t include cosmetics for their mains. From our earlier analysis, it appears that being featured in a Battle Pass doesn’t improve the pick rates of a hero.
Linear progression structure
The BP design itself is pretty standard in that each tier gets unlocked one after the other. This contributes to a feeling of tedium, as even if you’re not interested in a tier, you still have to play through that tier to unlock the other tiers.
All 3 of these pain points contribute to the player sentiment of wanting Loot Boxes back:
Loot Boxes - Get a chance to get rewards for your favorite hero for every level up. You also get 4 rewards for every level. And currency if you get duplicate rewards.
BP - Grind to get to tiers with more valuable rewards while mainly getting less valuable rewards. You only get 1 reward per tier. Currency is only on certain tiers.
Can we improve the Battle Pass to make them as exciting as Loot Boxes?
UPDATE: Season 15 has announced the return of Loot Boxes as rewards for challenges and as part of the Battle Pass. While it’s one way to address the problem, it feels like a bandage over the overlying issue.
Over-reliance on low-visibility rewards
A problem with Overwatch’s battle pass design is that there are too many rewards that a player does not value.
To get the more valuable rewards (Skins, Emotes, Highlight Intros, Victory Poses), one has to grind tiers of Player Icons and Name Cards. These aren’t visible to anyone in a match, so having many tiers feels more like a chore to unlock.
Side Suggestion: Victory Poses should be categorized as Epic, not Rare, since you can see them at the end of a match and thus are of higher value to players.
💡 Recommendations
Allow for Hero Choice
Players want to get cosmetics for their mains, so make it easier for them to obtain what they want.
One solution would be to allow players to trade cosmetics for Credits or Coins. You don’t get enough coins to get a Legendary skin, though you can get a Legendary with Credits.
Another solution would be to use an algorithm that generates Battle Passes consisting of unowned content for a player’s mains, similar to what’s used in the Store on the “Made For You” section. This is more appealing to players than the current model and reduces the need for additional content creation.
Implement Reward Selection
Shifting to a system similar to Fortnite, where you can choose the order of tiers you want to unlock, would give more player agency and remove the monotony of leveling up, only to get something less exciting like a player icon.
Another game that uses this system? Marvel Rivals. It goes even further by letting you unlock the skins directly if you have enough credits!
More Upgradable Cosmetics
Mystic Prisms are a great reward. Giving the player the ability to choose a skin, see it level up, and get flashier motivates them to complete the battle pass to get the skin to the highest level.
If other rewards were set up similarly, like a weapon charm that gets more animated on each page, it would make them more interesting than having a bunch of random rewards.
Conclusion
While OW2’s battle pass has value to players, its design and specific rewards leave more to be desired. It’s essential for a game that prioritizes player choice for heroes to have that reflected in its battle pass.
By adopting systems that allow for more player personalization and choice and implementing upgrade paths across more reward types, Overwatch 2 could transform its battle pass from a simple progression system into a genuinely engaging player journey that better serves both business objectives and player satisfaction.
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