In Season 15, Blizzard reintroduced loot boxes to Overwatch 2. Alongside their return, Blizzard was allowing players to earn 10 loot boxes per week in bunches of five. That limited-time reward ends today with the transition to Season 16. With it gone, players are now asking for a better way to earn loot boxes through their gameplay.
What is the best way for players to earn Overwatch 2 loot boxes?
Many will remember the original Overwatch as one of the driving catalysts for loot boxes throughout gaming. Nowadays, these caches of goodies are tied to the in-game shop and there is no way for players to buy them. They are only earned through various means like in the battle pass and weekly challenges. Earning them through those ways gives a very limited chance to earn older shop cosmetics. Some players are arguing that they should be added to the already in-place progression system.
In the original game, players would earn experience towards their profile level at the end of every match. Upon level up, they would earn one loot box. The progression system in Overwatch 2 is quite different, with there being levels dedicated to every specific hero, role, and game mode.
Should a live service game give everything away for free?
While, of course, players want more ways to earn in-game cosmetics for free, we would argue Overwatch shouldn’t go full in on giving loot boxes with every single level upgrade. In the original game, players were getting every cosmetic available for free. A new event would come out and they would open saved up loot boxes to get everything instantly. There are new standards in place to prevent those situations, like loot boxes automatically being opened at the end of each season, but if players and the developers want the game to continue to grow, they shouldn’t give everything away for free. Maybe, though, they could make the level up system give one every few levels or so.
Overall, we would say the reintroduction of loot boxes to Overwatch 2 have been a success. They give players that don’t have the extra money a chance to get many cosmetics that simply were unobtainable to them previously. We think, given time, the developers will have a chance to come up with a new way for players to earn loot boxes that feels fair.
