BlizzardOverwatch 2’s new Perks system is the shake-up many felt the game needed, but there have been dissenting voices dividing the community.
Overwatch released a brand new Hero Perks system in Season 15, allowing characters to gain new abilities by gaining experience and leveling up throughout a match. Some perks include giving Sombra the ability to heal allies with her Hack and Orisa regaining her Protective Barrier shield from the first game.
While this new system has injected a much-needed freshness to OW2 and has garnered some positive reactions, there has also been some divisiveness with perks, especially with their implementation on certain characters.
Perks do not fit some characters
Notable Doomfist main in the community, GetQuakedOn, expressed his disappointment over Doomfist’s perks.
“Perks have potential if balanced properly,” he said. “Still prefer the game to back to 6v6 and be balanced…also Doom perks are kinda mid, where’s uppercut?”
Content creator and Overwatch expert KarQ actually believes perks may not have gone far enough to change the gameplay and predicts the game won’t feel too different from before.
Blizzard“Early hot take on Overwatch Season 15 perks is: it won’t change the ‘gameplay loop’ as much as you think,” KarQ said. “I think the game will mostly feel the same besides some outliers (Tracer w/ 6 blinks).”
Most players who enjoy Perks agree that the system isn’t fully optimized and in its infancy, and that the mechanic feels like a “first draft” with room for improvement.
“I really like the system, it is a lot of fun and has made the game more dynamic in a way that doesn’t mess with the core loop,” said one user on Reddit. “However, this feels like a first draft. Lot of good ideas, but also a lot of duds. Many perks are either boring power boosts, obviously superior to their adjacent option, or just don’t do anything interesting.”
Perks themselves were already expected to land somewhat questionably from the dev team, but even so, there are certainly some characters who don’t benefit from the system as much as others. Questron, a notable Sombra main, believes her Perks don’t necessarily fit the character and make her stronger.
“Chat I’m starting to think the Sombra perks might not be as good as the rest of the DPS rosters’ perks,” he posted.
Still, even amongst the sea of negativity, Perks are generally agreed to be a positive direction for the game. Hopefully, Blizzard will refine the system even more, as the future of Perks seems optimistic.
