Angela’s mind wandered for a long while, and she couldn’t fall asleep—she kept finding her eyes drawn back to that progress bar.
When the system voice finally announced “Update complete” and played a lovely little flourish of music, she couldn’t wait to tap the “Enter” button and open the system interface.
The first thing to appear was a detailed rundown of the “update contents,” broken into several sections laying out the main changes in order: version update, hero update, map update, loot box item update, and shop update.
First came the “version update.” It had jumped straight from V1.01 to V1.10—no telling where the 2, 3, and 4 in between had wandered off to.
The current version was named “X-gene.” The biggest changes were to the system interface, the combat mechanics, and the mission mechanics, plus a batch of new combat modes.
There was too much to take in all at once, so she skimmed it: the two basic modes from before, “point capture” and “payload escort,” were still there, with a whole pile of new modes added underneath.
Hero update: new heroes could now be unlocked using credits.
So far, the only unlocked hero was “Mercy.”
Angela badly wanted to ask whether this system happened to remember that Overwatch used to give players the entire roster for a single flat purchase price—and now it wanted her to unlock them one at a time with credits?
Two hundred fifty credits per hero—was that meant to honor the heroes, or to mock them?
Still—what did “unlocking a new hero” actually mean?
Would she be able to “play as” other heroes from now on?
Or would she gain other heroes’ “abilities”?
There was no way to know until she’d unlocked one.
The hero ability adjustments had tweaked a lot of heroes’ kits to varying degrees, widening the gap from the game even further.
It was as if multiple versions of the game coexisted at once, with each ability cherry-picked at its strongest state—which was, of course, excellent news for Angela.
For instance, Mercy’s ultimate now stated explicitly that it could be toggled between “Resurrect” and “Valkyrie.” “Resurrect” would revive all teammates within an area and grant six seconds of invulnerability after the revive; and if she set her ultimate to “Valkyrie” in advance, then Mercy would instead get a basic single-target resurrection ability.
The map update had far too much in it.
From the original dozen-or-so familiar maps—Volskaya Industries, Ilios, Lijiang Tower, Watchpoint: Gibraltar, Dorado, and the rest—it had ballooned to over a hundred maps.
Sitting right at the top of the list was “Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters”—and according to the description, it was a control map, the kind you won by capturing the point.
That practically spelled out, in flashing letters, that someone might come to attack Xavier’s School down the line.
Angela applauded the system for its blunt honesty.
The loot box item update was the section that really caught the eye.
As everyone knew, in Overwatch you got a loot box every time you leveled up, or by completing missions, or by dropping real money to buy them outright.
Each loot box held four items, with rarities running from Common (white) to Rare (blue) to Epic (purple), and finally Legendary (gold).
—Though there was, admittedly, an ongoing debate over whether Legendary was gold or orange; in any case, when one of those items showed up, it came wreathed in a gold-orange glow.
So what might a loot box contain?
Player icons, skins, voice lines, sprays, victory poses, emotes, and credits.
If you got a duplicate item, then from the second copy onward it would automatically convert into credits worth some fraction of its original value—the system currently listed that fraction as somewhere between one-fifth and one-half, with the exact rate depending on circumstances.
The loot box players saw most often back in the day was the “blue sky, white clouds” variety—one blue and three whites—usually coughing up a heap of sprays and bog-standard character voice lines.
After this update, a new type of item had appeared in the loot boxes.
“Abilities”—the abilities of every game hero she owned could now appear in loot boxes, all of them Legendary tier, none available for direct purchase.
The only way to get them was to open boxes.
At that, Angela finally understood what “unlocking a new hero” meant.
First she had to unlock a new hero; only then would that hero’s abilities be added to the loot box pool.
And if she wanted to actually get them—well, then it was time to gamble on her luck and start cracking boxes.
The Legendary drop rate was 1.8%, and as new heroes were unlocked and new abilities added to the pool, the overall drop rate would stay fixed—meaning the odds of pulling any one specific item would drop sharply.
And the probability of opening exactly the hero ability she wanted out of all the Legendary items?
Looking on the dark side, this seemed designed to torment the unlucky to death.
Not being able to buy them with credits meant that, with everything left to chance, anyone cursed with bad luck might never crack open the ability they wanted, not ever.
Then again, looking on the bright side—surely she wouldn’t fail to pull even a single new ability?
Angela smiled.
System, she thought, thank you so very much.
Last, and naturally the most eagerly anticipated, was the “shop update.”
Anyone who knew anything about system-type cheats knew that the shop was where the truly broken, game-defying stuff tended to hide—though whether you could afford it was another matter entirely.
Having skimmed the other updates, Angela made a beeline for the shop.
When the shop interface opened, bathed in golden light, she looked at the “merchandise” on the shelves and fell into a long, long silence.
Genji’s katana, Hanzo’s bow, McCree’s revolver, Symmetra’s Photon Projector and Sentry Turret, Winston’s Tesla Cannon and Barrier Projector, Mei’s Endothermic Blaster and drone, D.Va’s mech, Reinhardt’s Rocket Hammer, Torbjörn’s Forge Hammer and turret, Tracer’s Pulse Pistols and Chronal Accelerator…
Every weapon belonging to every hero who’d ever appeared in Overwatch was laid out in the shop.
She even spotted Mercy’s own weapons, the “Caduceus Staff” and the “Caduceus Blaster”—though these were marked “Owned.” Also marked “Owned” was the “Biotic Rifle.”
Every last weapon and piece of gear was priced at five hundred credits—one fixed price, honest dealing for young and old alike.
For a moment, Angela started hearing things.
“Big sale, big sale! Katanas, bows, revolvers, rocket hammers that used to run you ten thousand—now slashed to the bone! Not five thousand! Not even one thousand! Everything’s five hundred—just five hundred, and you can take it all home!”
Was this for real?!
Think how long the Overwatch organization had spent developing these weapons—from materials to design, from power supply to controlling their output—all that painstaking effort, and they were only worth five hundred?!
A gold skin cost a thousand credits, a weapon only five hundred, and unlocking a whole new hero a mere two hundred fifty—what kind of value system was this?
This really was a case of “all heart in the cinematics, the game made with their feet, and the balancing done by picking their toes,” wasn’t it?!
If this system wasn’t made by Blizzard, she’d eat her hat!
Why not roll out a top-tier cinematic while they were at it, and show everyone what a real film studio could do?