[2020] Experimental Mode – Quality of Life November 2020

Hey everyone!

We’re back with another Experimental mode focused on testing quality of life changes and minor balance adjustments. As with all Experimental modes, these changes are not guaranteed to reach the live version of the game.

What are we trying to address?

In recent Experimental modes, we’ve been focused on balance adjustments to address under- and over-performing heroes. We’d like to shift our focus for this Experimental mode to test out some quality of life changes. With that said, we have also built in a few minor balance adjustments for select heroes following feedback.

What are we testing?

We’re making some changes to a number of heroes to offer players more control. This includes the ability to cancel Hanzo’s Storm Arrows manually, as well as manually destroying deployables like Mei’s Ice Wall, Torbjörn’s Turret, and Symmetra’s Teleporter while dead. We’re also testing with Ana’s Biotic Grenade to allow the grenade itself to pass through allies with full health.

We’ll keep an eye on feedback to see if these quality of life changes have impacts to balance. For more direct balance adjustments, we’ll also be undoing the health buff to Brigitte from the most recent Retail patch and will be reducing the rate of decay for Moira’s healing resource, effectively giving the hero an extra second of healing at max resource.

We hope you check out the new Experimental mode and provide us with your feedback! Science will reveal the truth – And all great science requires data! As always, this is an Experiment, so the changes in this test may not reach the live game.

Thank you!

Following some reported issues with Pharah’s Experimental update, we have removed the ability for players to crouch mid-air to accelerate downward. This is something we may test again in the future, but will need to implement some fixes before it’s ready again.