Originally posted by IAmBLD

Geoff, could you maybe explain yourself a bit better? Sorry, but since you're already so forthcoming on these upcoming changes, I was hoping you could elaborate. Because what you're saying here sounds like a straight nerf to Moira, Surely that's not what you're trying to acomplish?

Sorry no this would be part of other changes, like Fade still causing your team to phase out (like the last experimental card).

It was a fun experiment, but it was too good as a dispeling/cleasing tool and far too good at countering zarya/sigma ults. We're going to try a version where she can still phase out her allies, but she doesn't remove debuffs (like ana nade) and it wont break people out of these ults. You can, however, learn to time it vs. sigma ult to try to cancel the damage part of the slam, or just reduce incoming damage while stuck in Zarya ult, which can still be very powerful (maybe too much still? we'll find out)

Originally posted by FoxCabbage

Would it be possible to make it a real feature that doesn't require a weird button mash combo?

This is a reasonable request. I'll look into it.

Originally posted by shiftup1772

People love to throw around power creep because everyone can attribute whatever issues they with the game to some kinda power creep.

However, most discussions center around damage/healing and ttk.

On the lethality/ttk front:

Its hard to know exactly if lethality has crept up in the actual hero data, if the meta and/or player skill has pushed it up further than it was, or if its all just perception, but we've tried a couple internal experiments where we've tried lowering dmg and healing across the board to see how it feels. That experiment didn't quite work as a simple experiment, because there are a number of heroes that have certain thresholds that break if you lower damage etc. We'd have to do something more methodical to test it properly but I can tell you for sure the game doesn't feel very good when lethality gets too low, even if healing also gets low.

On the healing front especially, once health bars are moving up and down a lot more slowly, it makes it really hard to feel like you're "saving" people in clutch situations (unless you use an ult or something of course).

Interestingly, on our list of experiments to try is to make the game signific...

Originally posted by bunnyburn36

Question for overwatch dev team and or also jeff kaplan. Is it a good and fun work environment to be creating and be a part of the Overwatch team? P.S. I as an Overwatch Player/Fan am thankful for your guys work.

I absolutely love working on Overwatch and the team is amazing. I'm regularly inspired by the amazing people that not only directly work on the game but also support us from other groups. Much love to folks in IT, Battle.net, Risk, Game Security, Customer Service, Localization, etc.

The community regularly inspires me. It's why you'll find me on reddit and our forums regularly outside of the AMA. Thanks for being a player and a fan, we're thankful for you! <3

Originally posted by ItsZen_EXE

Hey! Aspiring game developer here. I was wondering what some of the core aspects of creating a new hero are for you guys. What steps do you take in creating a new hero? Also, what are some of your core balancing values when it comes to heroes in general, or adding new heroes?

creating new heroes is a lot of fun. our process is interesting in that new heroes can come from story (76, ana), design (pharah) or art (winston). we really inspire each other with ideas and we'll add different heroes for different reasons. we're always talking about "what does the game need right now"

Originally posted by ChineseFountain

How closely do the engine team and content team collaborate? How does that process work?

Like with Echo’s ability, was that something that the engine team needed to build support at the engine level for first, then the content team can get to work customizing the feature that was built?

All parts of the team collaborate in the creation of the heroes. Heroes are usually available to play in team playtests months before they will come out. So we all get a look into them in an extremely early state.

The game engine is a good bit more flexible in development than it is in retail, so often the designers have what they need to make something work; we just need to make a pass to control the performance and efficiency of the heroes so that they will function well on all our supported hardware. On occasion, like with Echo, we need to do more significant rewrites of systems so that we can get things within a shipping budget.

Originally posted by Notna_66

What’s y’all ‘s favorite characters to play?

Zarya, Zenyatta, McCree

Originally posted by ShottyBiondi

To those who have an answer, what's the funniest bug you've ever ran into when designing/building heroes? Thanks in advance!

One time I accidentally replaced Ana's dart projectile with Ana's ragdoll. That meant any time I shot Ana's rifle a dead Ana shot out of my gun hehe.