Overwatch Dev Tracker

It differs a bit for everyone, but we usually start each day with a team playtest. Every other day we have a quick "team standup" where we discuss major initiatives we are working towards. And it's an opportunity to keep the team on the same page with where we are and where we're going and to celebrate achievements. For the rest of the day we are typically collaborating with one another in smaller strike teams, meetings, and individual work to drive features forward. At the end of each day we have another team playtest. Every day is different than the other and different for some individuals than others, but that's the very basics. The good thing is that it hasn't changed too much with COVID, though we do miss the face to face. Virtual face to face isn't quite the same. :)

the most immediate priority is a balance patch aimed at the double shield meta. this will show up on the experimental card in the next few weeks.

we don't have any reworks immediately imminent for any hero, although we are discussing some.

2cp is more of an ongoing exploration for us. we've tried many, many things and have yet to be satisfied with any of the results.

paris has gotten some attempts at a rework but we weren't pleased with our results, so we paused. we haven't started looking at horizon again yet.

One of the things we're always looking at are ways to provide positive notes to players after they finish a game, even when they lose. The medal system was one of those, along with the card voting system during the end of round.

However, the medal system provides only view of the match results, when why someone earned gold, silver, or bronze can be way more complicated than just reflecting your skill. This is one of the reasons we want to look into systems that can help you understand key questions like "Did I play well?" and "Did I do something awesome?" whether you win or lose.

That might be an improved medal system, or something else. We'll see!

This is actually really hard to answer actually.

Most of the time heroes go through a ton of iteration, and single abilities or weapons get cut. Often times we'll end up using an older cut idea on a new concept. For example, Orisa's first ult was an idea where she could "teleport" away (we'd probably kit this differently though), and then 'drop' anywhere else on the map via drop pod or something similar. This was back when she was extremely early and we didn't have a character yet, so I was sort of imaging a character more like Dutch from Predator (hence the mini-gun, etc). It ended up not really working for the gameplay, and really didn't make sense once we started developing Orisa's character.

Much later we were working on Doomfist and thought we could revist that old idea and thats how he ended up with his ult!

soon

well there are about 200 pros and 50 million casuals.... but we both know you're not asking for that percentage breakdown =]

we listen to everyone's feedback. it's all important. when it comes to balance, we primarily balance the game around owl, gm/masters.

I've heard that the French perfected scrambled eggs (via my eggs-tensive research on the internet), and so I think it'd be Widowmaker.

we have many years of lore planned for the overwatch universe. there are so many aspects that we're excited about -- far reaching plot lines and individual character arcs. there are also a lot of heroes, places and world groups we want to tell more stories about. we're also excited about telling stories in new ways and using new mediums.

Artist answer here - I really like the themes for the lunar new year events, and I look forward to working on those every year. I'm not sure what I would do if I got to create my own event, but the rockabilly idea and sketches are cool!

yes the summer games are returning this year. information is coming very soon

Hey there, this is a good question. The matchmaking system gains confidence in its evaluation of your skill as you play more games.

the same team that works on and made overwatch is also making overwatch 2. we did find the need to grow the team quite a bit in order to do both and also because overwatch 2 is a much larger game than overwatch. the team that shipped the original game was approximately 70 developers. the team is closer to around 160-170 now. it's a very tricky balance and often very stressful working on two projects at once. the reason we chose to do things the way we did is because we wanted to maintain consistency of vision and direction over the game and the franchise and not make things feel too splintered. for an individual developer, they usually have a clear task that's either for the live game or overwatch 2. but we often find ourselves context switching between the two games.

This is always a possibility! Ana is an example of a hero that came from the story. She wasn't created initially to be made a hero but we saw a cool opportunity while making a new support to have it be her and it worked out great.

That said not every character/personality in the story will (or even should) be a hero, but we'll see!

Sure! There were several factors in the decision to switch to the more flexible queue system we currently have.

1. There were concerns that a 6 stack only competitive queue would prevent some players from participating. While they do want to play competitively, improve their skills, and test themselves, there are many reasons they might prevent them to play as a team with others.
2. Six player only teams solved some matchmaking problems (you're responsible for finding teammates, not the matchmaker), but would create others such as making it more difficult to find fair matches at extremes of SR.
3. Requiring you to find your five teammates to play can be a logistical issue. Let's face it, queueing solo is just really convenient. You can do it at any time of the day, when your teammates are sick or on vacation, etc.
4. Finally, let's face it... If we didn't have a solo queue the first thing people would of asked when we introduced competitive play would ...

From a tech perspective, I think the hardest might have been Echo. Her ability to duplicate an opposing hero brought a ton of challenges and bugs. In most areas of Overwatch, our ideas for what we would like to do are ever expanding in complexity. But we need to make it work with assumptions that we made years ago. Sometimes they don't mesh well. With Echo, it was a difficult clash to work out. In the end, she turned out to be a really fun hero, so it was worth the work. But there was a lot of engineering grey hairs generated around that one!

Hey there, the matchmaker COULD be aware of the level of a player but it isn't something that we currently take into account when matchmaking.

The reason we don't specifically take level into account is because it's an indicator of time played on a specific account and not the skill level at which someone performs. While it is true the more you play the more skill you're likely to gain, it's also true that skill gain will be reflected in the matchmaking values as well.

Cheers

Actually, im not sure if people are aware of this even, but Sombra was initially prototyped as a Support hero. In fact, it really went far beyond prototype, she only became a damage hero in the stretch of her development.

She had some of the most significant changes while going through developement. Her whole kit used to be centered around staying invisible and landing hacks on the entire enemy team (you could hack more than one target at a time). But hack worked differently then: It used to last a lot longer and it reduced your healing and damage output instead of making you unable to use abilities.

This meant even though you had one less healer as a support, you theoretically made up for it by reducing the enemy team's damage. It was a pretty fun little mini-game for her, but people were ultimately very frustrated by being debuffed like that, even if they knew on paper she was reasonably balanced. In fact, we've tried a couple times to try a damage-dealt debuff (W...

we've tried a number of things over the years:

• changed the capture points to work like control points (meaning KOTH points)
• added defenders spawn rooms closer to point a
• added a "middle" capture point between a and b
• moved the defenders spawn point back on b
• made it so that capture happens regardless of if defenders were on the point

those are just a few off the top of my head. lots of level design changes.

Speaking for myself here - I play a lot of competitive Overwatch. I play 10-20 hours of competitive Overwatch every week, and I love it. I used to play flex. I truly enjoy playing a wide variety of characters. Lately I have been focusing on Tanks and Healers, as my friend plays DPS.

we're in a really great place to move forward right now. over the past year we were lucky enough to get jeff chamberlain to become our new creative director. jeff was the director of our original announcement piece for overwatch back in 2014 (as well as some amazing blizzard cinematics over the years -- WOTLK intro for example). we've also added some really amazing narrative designers and are partnering with our story and franchise development group (they make the animated shorts, origins movies, comics, statues etc) at an insanely intense level. there are some very cool lore developments coming.