overwatch Overwatch: Is The Brawl Mode a Hit or Miss?

[demonardvark 556]

To all agents of Overwatch, we are fast approaching the one month anniversary of Overwatch. Overwatch was launched initially with four modes, namely Quick Play, Play vs. AI. Custom Game, and a Weekly Brawl. The weekly brawl implements a specific set of rules and potential character restrictions to each match. So far we have seen five different brawls, including Arcade, Super Shamida Bros, Mystery Heroes, We're All Soldiers Now, and Overly Defensive.

I went out to the internet to ask the community what their opinion of each brawl was. Both polls and interviews were made and conducted on various outlets, including Icy Veins, Gamefaqs, Twitter, and Reddit. The results were collected and analyzed, however I do not possess hard numbers on how many matches were played (that info is hard to obtain).

The results were actually rather surprising. The two most popular brawls were "Arcade" and "Mystery Heroes". Arcade was applauded for its reduced cooldowns and Mystery Heroes was favoured for the spontaneity of it. The other brawls however, were frowned upon in general. "We're all Heroes now" was rated the worst and referred to as "Call of Duty: Overwatch". Truth be told, although "Arcade" and "Mystery Heroes" scored the highest of the brawls, they still scored very low. 

People in general don't seem to like the brawl mode, but why?

The Brawls are viewed as pointless and wastes of time. They are also considered poorly balanced, as is in the case of Arcade, where some heroes become flat out broken. The brawls are criticized as being restrictive or just stupid. Lastly, there is reduced experience gained in brawl mode. Why bother brawling under restrictive measures and getting reduced rewards for it? There needs to be some incentive for actually playing these brawls.

Is there something that can raise the opinion of brawls? Something that would make the players want to do them? Well, the community in fact, had an answer for that. Again the results were almost unanimous as to what people wanted. So, what is this magic fix for brawls? What can make people rush home to queue up for them? The answer is this magic little box, known as the loot box.

This is the incentive players want for Brawl mode. The biggest comparison made was with another blizzard franchise, Hearthstone. In their weekly mode, you get rewarded for participating, and people want to see that from the Brawl mode in Overwatch. Ideas have ranged from rewarding for first brawl win of the week, for playing X games, or for playing simply one game. People hesitate for it to require a win amount because trolls could try to make the process miserable for people. Having it after only one game wouldn't help in the long run, since everyone would play the one match and stop. Regardless, many agree that Blizzard should change it so that in some way, you are rewarded loot boxes for playing Brawl mode. 

So, will Blizzard listen to the community? Will Brawl mode ever get loot box rewards, or will the mode slowly fade into obscurity? Especially with "Competitive Mode" looming, brawl mode may be struggling to stay afloat. It's very likely that people will go for either Competitive or Quick Play and forsake all other modes. 

Tell us what you think. Would you play brawl mode if there were loot box rewards? Do you think they need rewards, or do you think brawl mode will develop its own niche following? Let us know in the comments below.

Happy Brawling!

[Orthios 271]

Either give a loot box for your first win each day/week or some currency.  Right now there's now reward or incentive to play te brawls besides curiosity and the want for a bit of a change.

[Darkjester79 47]

I think in its current incarnation that the weekly brawl is a miss.  While it may be fun once it does not offer the same creativeness as the Hearthstone brawl.  Also it has no incentive to try the mode.  The easy way to fix this is eliminate the worst brawls and reward players for playing outside the box (A.k.a Loot box).  I suggest maybe a contest or something to allow the community to invent new weekly brawls they would like to see.  As in Hearthstone, give a loot crate for first win that week. 

[DashivaDan 1]

I think most people who would play 1 brawl a week for a lootbox will play a brawl a week just to see how it plays, even without any rewards at all.

The easy way to make brawl mode played more would be to make it also competitive, with each week having it's own ranking.

Then you could also give rewards for position, some formula like  roundUp(1000/position) gold. (obviously a better formula, but that gives the idea) Whatever gives "you won a single match and that's it" people ~10 gold, and the best player of the week 1000 gold, second 995 gold, etc...

[demonardvark 556]

6 hours ago, DashivaDan said:

I think most people who would play 1 brawl a week for a lootbox will play a brawl a week just to see how it plays, even without any rewards at all.

The easy way to make brawl mode played more would be to make it also competitive, with each week having it's own ranking.

Then you could also give rewards for position, some formula like  roundUp(1000/position) gold. (obviously a better formula, but that gives the idea) Whatever gives "you won a single match and that's it" people ~10 gold, and the best player of the week 1000 gold, second 995 gold, etc...

That is actually a really good idea I don't think I've heard yet. Doing competitive brawl mode. If you add a ladder there will be people who want to climb it :D