We have just learned from Blizzard Entertainment that the nearing of Season 17’s ending is because of the prioritization of Competitive Drives. Players are urged to go into Competitive Play and Stadium modes to obtain this brand-new Drive signature before August 25th. Which sounds cool and all… But then you start scrolling through the comments and these players are venting whatever else they think might be wrong. At this point, it’s not about the Drives anymore; it’s about everything else going wrong with Overwatch right now.
First off, it looks like the entire Drive system has just gone south at a general level. Some of the players are saying while they’re winning matches in Stadium, the system yet doesn’t credit them for Drive score progress. A Gameformer-level arcane call-out from GarikLoran_OW: “I just won a game in Stadium and got no Drive score.” Which is not exactly a good look, right? How does one promote a limited-time reward if the very go-getter of progression is broke? Anubirai chimed in stating that if a match restarts, that will not count toward your progress either. So here you might be grinding in-game time and getting nada in return. That’s just unacceptable.
And then… the Kiriko thing? A couple of players started to say the devs are putting Kiriko on the favored slot. GroSeumdwich said, “Stop being in love with Kiriko; there’s other heroes like Venture or Mauga, plz.” That is pretty funny, yet quite true, right? Sometimes it really does seem like some heroes just get way more attention than others, from time to time. Then there was a fiery debate about Doomfist’s abilities in the comments, with Yuki and Anubirai going back and forth about whether resuming the uppercut would be a good thing or not.
But wait; really, it’s about banning. Players are up in arms about preposterous ban durations. One such banned player going by the name, _____HACKED____, posted a screenshot of a ban that lasted for a 100 YEARS. What does even cause one of those? Another mentioned they were banned on some ridiculous grounds; for instance, back in 2017, they were banned simply for swearing and had to stop playing because they were scared of losing their account altogether. Finally, somebody claimed to have been got by a game master for abusive language while appealing their suspension. That’s… certainly one look into a rotten customer support.
Another thing plaguing them is customization. HEAa105710 declared, “I wish we could choose between all the drives we already earned,” which makes sense: who would bother earning all these cosmetic items if they cannot even mix and match them? AlphaMoon22 also condemned the banner design calling it “poorly designed” because you cannot reuse it properly. So even if they do add new cosmetics, the players are already not happy about how they are implemented.
Pretending to be the general dissatisfaction with competitive play, AlphaMoon22 brought it up as well: dealing with teammates that refuse to heal or don’t swap when they ought to be causing rank losses and Drive progress issues. Yeah, classic competitive-game-weight; it just hits hard when there are rewards for anything on line.
Others are just outright saying that they will not bother with the Drives this time around because they are too much occupied elsewhere or simply because the rewards are not worthwhile. SacrilegeGG asked if they’re permanent yet, and when the answer was most probably going to be no, they simply said “meh.” Just consider that a nutshell of a lot of people’s thoughts on temporary cosmetics.
Another weird point for a release date: There was one player telling that they are already bringing back the summer event after summer is almost ended just so that they can sell a skin for that character. So typical live service game stuff, really, but still, people are watching.
Competitive Drives were supposed to be the exciting push to the end of the season; however, the reaction of the community has unveiled that there are other major concerns that players care about. From broken progression systems to questionable banning policies to balancing issues, Overwatch players have much more going on in their head other than just buying the newest cosmetics. That is quite sad, considering how this should be a great seasonal event sidelined by those issues. Fix that, and the gaming community will lead you right to the top of their list of pressing concerns. While the Drives might be heating up, player frustration about everything else that’s plaguing the game is just soaring.
