[2021] What an interesting hypothesis: Creator Experimental Card and Creator Cup

I mean, someone asked if we had a secret, private, ExCard. This is neither secret or private

To provide some additional insight…

• Without being overly pedantic, this ExCard was a result of feedback from both content creators and core players that they’d like to see the ExCard more active, interesting, and fun
• Content creators did a large portion of the work here. Geoff, Josh, and Co. (Hero Balance and Design) gave some guidance, and provided feedback on the proposed changes, however the bulk of the effort came from Flats, Somjuu, and Violet. This means it had a minimal impact on our development and testing schedule. The majority of this work was able to be handled by non-development team.
• On a personal level, I’d love it if we were able to do more of these on a more regular schedule. By keeping them fun, thematic, and over-the-top, we avoid content creators who propose changes getting an undue amount of salt
• If there are content creators you think could bring some pretty cool and creative design ideas to the table, please let us know! We’re measuring how players engage with the ExCard and the effect it has on content creation and consumption, and based on those results we’d like to schedule these events to be consistent and something to look forward to for the broader community.

Greeting everyone,

Just as a quick FYI, I will not be working on my usual Experimental vs Live comparison video that I post on my YouTube channel. The reason being is that I didn’t expect this coming, and with virtually every hero being tweaked it would take days to prepare.

Thanks for your understanding.

It officially released @ 11 AM PST today, however we had a bug that necessitated us pulling it down temporarily. I’ll update ASAP when we have more news.

As a comparison, it took 6 days to make the March Community ExC video, but thankfully 4 of those days I got in advance BEFORE the patch went live because we got the patch notes in advance, so I was able to prep the graphics and the Live patch gameplay.

The ExCard is live once again!

Already under consideration for the next one.

Thanks for the suggestion

We’re continuing to communicate feedback to the development team about game balance and the live service.

I do understand where your frustration comes from. We’re going to continue to explore ways to keep the live game fresh and vibrant, while having minimal impact on the work that T4 is doing towards the future of Overwatch. Experimental Cards are a great tool to introduce variety and different twists on the game in a relatively low risk manner.

Content Creators are players of the game. The easiest thing to do is to lump them all together as some ubiquitous entity but that does a disservice to the individuals who dedicate a large portion of their lives, and in many cases livelihoods, to their audience and the OW community. Their reasons for creating content, and their motivations when playing Overwatch are as varied as all of yours.

I do understand that some folks here on the forums have a negative perception of this segment of the community, so I respectfully ask that you try to avoid vast generalizations when speaking about these individuals.

I won’t hide the fact that we have a different kind of relationship with content creators that we have with the forums. Both Jodie and I spend an equal amount of time managing relationships with current and former OW content creators as I (and soon Jodie) do here on the forums (oftentimes more here, depending on the week).

Each part of the community has different needs, and those needs are addressed in different ways. When it comes to creators, we treat and view them as valued partners in community building. They’re player advocates (to a surprising degree), community evangelists, and some of our most stringent critics. In some cases, their platform is significantly larger than the average player. In the case of the vast majority of creators, they have less notoriety and recognition within our community than you, HANA (I’ve quoted, responded to, and interacted with you more than once in the last few months, something that the majority of creators don’t have the same opportunity for).

On a personal level, I’d love to see a world where the forums understand that Twitch, Youtube, whatever social platform, are all a part of the broader OW community. I believe you all have much more in common than otherwise.

I get it.

The community team goals include hosting regular, consistent, community events. It’s a bit too early to wave the flag of success (we’ll be measuring overall impact in an internal retro), but early indicators about this ExC have been positive, with a significant amount of feedback from creators and core players alike feel that it’s a welcome update that makes the game feel more vibrant than it has in awhile.

We’re going to continue to push forward with community events, without significantly impacting dev work.

The forums are always much more critical of us than the broader community. This likely has to do with the profile of player who tends to be more engaged on a platform like fora (hyper engaged, core fans), whereas the other platforms tend to be a bit less serious in nature.