Overwatch Dev Tracker

The Overwatch team has been ideating and experimenting with a handful of heroes since the PvP Beta wrapped up. Here’s a hint to one of the heroes we’ve been working on so far:

"The true struggle is for the superiority of ideas."

We’ve been cooking up some new ideas for Moira, and we’re considering how she will perform as we step into the future of the game.

Led by Associate Hero Designer Alex Kwok, the Hero Balance and Design Team is looking at how to best update Moira’s kit for Overwatch 2. She’s an effective support—sometimes too effective in certain metas like GOATS. However, we believe she lacks the play-making ability and utility possessed by other supports on the roster. To improve the feel of her gameplay, we’re iterating on fresh changes that will give her kit more depth; as we navigate toward this goal, we’re here to give you an inside look at how we ideate and iterate on hero design.

Hero Balance and Design Iteration Process

Heroes of Overwatch, let's talk data! Data is a valuable resource when it comes to game design. Data, player feedback, user research, internal discussion, and simply playing the game ourselves, all influence our design decisions. Data can give us a bird’s-eye-view, a close look at the smallest details, and it can illuminate larger trends in our game. Today we’re going to talk about what we can learn from the first Overwatch 2 Beta and how we use data to inform design decisions in-game.

Data and Design: Observing hero performance

The design team wanted to keep an eye on several things as the first beta began. We saw the community play Sojourn and explore the Sombra, Bastion, Doomfist, and Orisa reworks for the first time. We wanted to know how these heroes were performing in the beta and respond with quick changes if they were found to be lacking in effectiveness or too overpowered to play against.

When evaluating hero performan...