Seagull expresses concern with how free-to-play players unlock new characters in Overwatch 2

Overwatch 2 was released yesterday, introducing many changes from the original—including how players unlock new characters. And former Overwatch League pro Seagull wants to make sure Blizzard gets it right.

With the game’s move to free-to-play, it is making all new characters unlockable through the game’s battle pass feature. While players can unlock characters immediately by purchasing the premium edition of the battle pass, those who don’t pay get the character after reaching level 55.

During his play sessions yesterday, Seagull tried to loosely keep tabs on how much experience toward the battle pass he gained during each game. While he personally had the battle pass, he wanted to make sure that getting new characters was reasonable for people who don’t want to pay money.

“The problem is Kiriko, for a free-to-play player, is put at level 55, and so will all future new characters,” he said. “So the decision then is, how many levels can I get a day by playing at like one to two hours a day? Can I feasibly unlock that new character by the time it’s allowed in ranked? I feel like that’s a question that should very easily be possible in my mind.”

While he admitted today that he isn’t totally sure how difficult it is for free-to-play players to unlock new characters, Seagull is hopeful that someone will do the proper math to determine how much effort a player would have to exert to unlock new characters without dishing out cash.

But the more Seagull played today, the less confident he was in how quickly free-to-play players would be able to unlock characters like Kiriko, given how many levels it takes to acquire the hero.

“I still think it’s going to be too slow by a lot,” he said. “I don’t see how a casual player unlocks it by the time it comes out in ranked.”

Each level in the battle pass requires 10,000 XP that can be obtained through doing challenges and completing games. That means you’ll need a total of 550,000 XP to unlock Kiriko this season. Players can get up to 9,000 XP from daily challenges each day and 55,000 XP per week from weekly challenges. In total, a player can get 118,000 XP in a week from just doing challenges, which equals 11.8 levels.

Update Oct. 5 4:19pm CT: This article has been updated with an additional clip and quote from Seagull later in his stream today.