A 10/10 Platinum trophy back in 2022 courtesy of some of it's outrageously demanding character-specific trophies. One I ultimately had to concede defeat in and boost in order to finish, despite my best efforts to plough through to the end.
Overwatch is still a well supported game. The developers are committed to rolling out regular updates and the live roster now has 52 playable characters. Initially, new characters were accompanied with their own trophies to obtain, but this soon halted - seemingly for good - with this DLC pack signifying the end of this trend.
A blessing in disguise as far as I'm concerned. I'm not sure I could have stomached a trophy list that was willing to continually add more and more undoubtedly complex trophies every time a new season ticked over and we saw the introduction of another new character. I've already said I thoroughly enjoyed Overwatch, and re-visiting it was a nice dosage of nostalgia, but in equal measure, the reasons why I was ultimately glad to leave it on the shelf made themselves known.
My original criticisms of the game from a trophy-based perspective are still current today. The spectrum of difficulty for these trophies is wide and vast - ranging from a fair challenge to borderline impossible - and many of the game features are still very trophy hunter unfriendly. Why do I still have to wait 10 minutes in a queue to get into a game because all I want to do is select a Tank character for the purpose of unlocking a character-specific trophy?! So frustrating.
This DLC pack adds 10 new trophies which cover 5 characters who were later added to the Overwatch roster before Blizzard decided to stop releasing new trophies with any other subsequent character thereafter.
There are 2 trophies attributed to each character, and these include Junker Queen, Lifeweaver, Kiriko, Ramattra and Sojourn, and the initial step was to spend a bit of time getting used to each of these new characters. It had been a long time since I'd last played Overwatch and the step to just get familiar with these new characters in a competitive environment was a necessary one.
Onto tackling the trophies. I was determined to commit to making as much progress on these trophies as I could, putting aside big sessions to see how far I could get. One of the biggest issues with these trophies is that some of them are hugely down to circumstance, and how things align for you, which is a highly volatile factor to achievement.
This was punctuated by unlocking the "Giving Tree" trophy, awarded for Restoring 1200 health with a single use of Lifeweaver's Tree of Life. Activating this ultimate ability on a payload the moment an enemy Hanzo had unleashed a Dragonstrike is exactly the sort of circumstantial luck I'm talking about. This is one of the tougher trophies in the list to earn, but also just shows that all you may need is a bit of luck to be in the right place at the right time to find your window of opportunity present itself.
In similar fashion, the "Taking Charge" trophy, awarded for Getting 4 killing blows with a single use of Sojourn's Overclock, happened for me in similar circumstances. Almost 5 hours after unlocking the prior trophy, and on the verge of giving up for the day, Zarya's Gravitation Surge sucked an entire enemy team in. Sensing the moment, triggering Overclock allowed me to easily get the 4 kills needed to pop this trophy. This is the rarest trophy in this particular list, and I had been actively trying to earn it within this 5 hour period, but the time I got it was when I least expected to. A timely Gravitation Surge - Which was always clutch for group-kill trophies - and then seizing that opportunity.
Ultimately, these trophies could, in theory, take forever. Perseverance will generally win the day, but it's not a guarantee, and those are the worst kind of trophies for me. They're out of your control and your best chances are down to luck. I had some here, but would also run out of it later down the line, and it's the primary reason I boosted some of the Overwatch Platinum trophies.
Before then, there is at least a nice blend of easier to earn trophies that don't require ridiculously improbable situations to present themselves. Why couldn't they all be like this? I'm not suggesting to dumb them all down, just to close the gap a bit and add some fairer balance to the trophy requirements that don't make you feel like you're fruitlessly wasting your time.
I'd go on to achieve another 5 trophies fairly trouble-free, but most of these had fairer requirements. A nice balance between challenge and the sense of feeling that they were actually achievable. It's draining sinking hours into something that still feels like you could end an entire session without any further progress. However, we eventually hit that wall...
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| Purified - Cleanse 5 negative effects with one use of Kiriko's Protection Suzu in Quick or Competitive Play. Life Weaving - Prevent 3 deaths using Lifeweaver's Life Grip without dying yourself in Quick or Competitive Play. |
These 2 trophies were the ones that made me tap out and concede to boosting the remainder of this list.
The "Purified" trophy, awarded for Cleansing 5 negative effects with one use of Kiriko's Protection Suzu in Quick or Competitive Play is fully dependent on matching up against players who have picked a character who has the ability to deal out negative effects.
This list is very limited, and with such a crowded roster, if you're actively attempting for this trophy, you'll need to hope that the opposition team selects a specific character. Realistically - and it's important to bear in mind that you need to cleanse 5 negative effects in one go - there are only a couple of heroes that make this viable.
Mei's Blizzard ultimate is the recommended window of opportunity for this trophy. It has a very wide area of effect, and the gradual freezing damage counts as a multi-cleanse for some reason. This means you won't need your whole team caught up in it.
Junker Queen also has a multitude of attacks that cause bleeding damage, and can again, be linked together to apply to multiple enemies at once. The problem with Protection Suzu is that this is a very small area of effect, so you also need to have your team very closely bunched together and locked into one space. This is why Mei's Blizzard also works so well.
I gave this one an honest go, but just gave up after getting into game after game without the opposition team selecting the correct characters that would allow me to obtain this trophy. Way too much trial and error just to have the opportunity to earn the trophy, let alone earn it.
The "Life Weaving" trophy, awarded for Preventing 3 deaths using Lifeweaver's Life Grip without dying yourself in Quick or Competitive Play, is another trophy built in the same vein as above.
The Life Grip is an ability that pulls a teammate away from a certain death incident, but this is a great example of the unrealistic requirements that come attached to some of these trophies. To do this 3 times AND without dying in the same game is a real stretch, and on top of this, the specifics behind triggering a "life save" are also incredibly cloudy.
There is actually a statistic in-game that tracks the number of life saves you've earned from the Life Grip ability, but these do not correlate to the trophy. I actually had this counter up at 5/6 multiple times without achieving the trophy, and it's very much up for debate what the actual requirements are to unlock this trophy properly.
The theory that makes sense is one that suggests only attacks that were due to kill your teammate count as an actual save. Attacks that fall into this category as good examples are Tracer's Pulse grenade, which is an insta-kill with a stick, and Hanzo's Dragonstrike, which will kill anyone who stands in the way too long. D.Va's self-destruct is also another good example, but much harder to get the timing right for, due to the fact if you pull your teammate away too fast, it won't count.
Either way, you're not just reliant on matching up against opponents who need to select a specific character, but the trophy is just an unclear, buggy mess. Again, I just gave up after an honest plug at this one and decided to call time on something that I just wasn't prepared to waste my time on.
Even boosting these final 2 trophies felt like hard work to get this all finished. Matchmaking 2 groups together is an arduous chore, and the first session I attempted ended after 2 hours of not even being able to pair 2 groups of 6 players together in order to get into the same lobby. Even on the second try a few days later, we had to persist even longer before getting into the same lobby, but once you're there, it's easy enough to manufacture the situations you need to earn any trophy.
I don't like boosting, and I've rarely ever resorted to it. I'll always give any challenge an honest shot before conceding defeat, but the developers really need to re-assess the logic behind some of these trophies. I know Overwatch is a constantly evolving beast, and some of these trophy requirements have changed over time as characters and their move-sets have been tweaked, but some have remained almost impossible to achieve. Maybe that's a hook to keep people playing?
Anyway, never say never, but I think this one's finally on the shelf for good.
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