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The Overwatch beta is back and it's brought with it a levelling system that never really stops. If players keep playing, they'll keep on levelling, and Overwatch, in turn, will continue to reward them with lovely glowing boxes full of loot. Inside you'll find new character skins, animations and spray paints (what is it with FPS games and graffiti, by the way?), some of which are considerably rarer than others. And because we're talking about Blizzard here, a lot of this stuff looks really, really great. Players want to own it.Which is why it's not a huge surprise to see that Blizzard are likely going to sell these loot boxes to players that don't want to wait for the next level up. In my interview below with Overwatch's game director, Jeff Kaplan, we talk about what that might end up looking like and why they decided not to offer a skin store, in a similar fashion to say, Heroes of the Storm.
Overwatch won't be a free-to-play game and I think it's worth reading how the developers justify any additional microtransactions, but for me, the most interesting part of this interview comes towards the end. Will Overwatch have a ranking system in place at launch, and how on earth do you make it work? It turns out that's a very complex question to answer and one that I was pleased to see Kaplan tackle pretty openly.
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