I played quite a bit last night (about 30games or so) and I can say I like the perks overall. It shakes up the core gameplay loop for each hero, and it adds a much needed disincentive to switching. There’s still lots of rough edges, with some heros I felt like you’d be stupid to not always pick one option, but with many I felt there was really good strategic reasons why both choices could be viable, I hope over time it leans more into the latter. I also notice some of the perks seem to make the heros more consistent while the other choice is more skill expressive, which i think is an interesting way to try and make heros viable in both low and high ranks. Of course as players learn the system this will all change.

I hope most of all that these perks make patch notes more interesting. They have hinted that they expect the perks to change often and I hope that is the case. I think ow2 had a very algorithmic feel to their balancing, lots of small number tweaks that did actually make the game very balanced but i think took a lot of the character out of the heros.

As for cosmetics, I don’t really care about them, but the lootboxes seem generous I guess. I like that they made the odds public, and I like that (as far as I can tell) you can’t seem to be able to directly buy them. I think those 2 changes makes them much less predatory and is overall a positive change.

I can’t overlook the fact that they lowered expectations enough to make people happy for lootboxes

I’m interested to see how these changes feel. I had enjoyed the perks from the Halloween game mode, so I’m hesitantly looking forward to trying these out