If you could change something in Overwatch, what would it be? You don’t always have to go big. Sometimes it’s the subtle changes that feels the greatest. In this series, we’ll go over some of the quality of life changes that could be made in Overwatch.
Current
The customization options in Overwatch are many at this point, and the developer team keeps adding new things for us to enjoy. But there’s a way to enjoy more of your vanity items: the random option. This is currently an option for highlight intros, and allows you to see all your owned intros pass by as they are randomly selected at every PotG. Blizzard has also revealed, that they soon (™) will add this option for your sprays, so that you can use more than just one. Maybe it’s time to give skins the same kind of love, as they are favorite vanity category of choice?
Changes
The main idea is adding a “random” option for your skins. There’s many ways this option could work, but the simplest way is just to make your skins randomize every time you, for example, enter a new game. There’s also another dimension to this change: Adding a sub-menu for the random option. There, you could select what skins you want to cycle between and perhaps how often it will swap. (For example every round, every game, or every tenth game.) The sub-menu would help you avoid those skins that you just don’t want to see. Ever.
Blizzard themselves have another idea, where you would be able to choose a skin during the “assemble your heroes” phase. In this forum thread, Jeff Kaplan says that “This feature has been on our list for a very long time and is something we want to make happen,” but that it gets deprioritized for other, more important things.
Up- and downsides
If we start by looking at the downsides, the thought goes immediately to Blizzard. With the amount of content and changes they push out, something like this might take time and resources they currently can not spare. For the first change proposed in this article, even though it would be a great addition to Overwatch, it can get tricky.
The first problem is that if you play a lot of games in a row, you can not change skins. You would need to go out to the hero gallery to do this, which is not deal breaking but can be annoying. The second problem involves competitive play. If people change skin every round, it can get confusing for enemies when heroes constantly change their look.
Blizzard’s own suggestion for skins is a bit more thought through (as it should be) and proposes a “safer” way for people to play around with different skins. This change would probably increase the preparation time before a match starts, but that isn’t that big of an issue. Another problem with their suggestion is that it might not be as… Random, as some people want. But on the other hand, some people might actually like it being predictable.
Like already mentioned, this is a good change overall. Any way that Blizzard chooses to approach this addition will probably be fine. A random option could also be a very nice addition to all cosmetic items, such as voice lines and emotes.
Do you agree with these changes? Do you have your own idea about a quality of life change in Overwatch? Be sure to let us know what you think!
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