Blizz_Alec

nice

When looking at adding to a hero or reworking them, we first ask: can we achieve our desired gameplay changes in their current kit and abilities? The GA meter for Mercy in OW2 is a good example of adding something new within her present abilities. If we can’t solve for desired gameplay within what we have, we’ll next ask if there is room on the hero for something brand new. We are currently asking those questions for Sombra and Roadhog. If we end up doing new abilities for either of them, it’ll take some time and I’d expect small holdover changes like the ones in our Season 3 patch.

I love these types of questions! So it depends on the types of changes we want to make. Let’s use two changes as an example here: Orisa’s recent Fortify nerf (125 to 75) and something like Brig’s upcoming ultimate rework (I’m going to try to answer this without revealing too much about the change).

Say we wanted to just do a seemingly simple change like the Orisa Fortify nerf. It’d start with the balance team making a decision then informing other groups (for this usually our Producer/QA/Live Ops) that a change is coming and will require a hotfix. Then a designer would go into Orisa’s scripts, make the change, and submit. At that point QA and Live Ops are notified, QA tests the change to make sure it’s all good and Live Ops will then get the build process going. We usually see that hotfix occur the next day, so overall a small change like this takes about two days (critical changes can happen faster but hotfixes have a chance to introduce a small amount of instability).

Junkrat has moved quite a bit since his latest nerf two weeks ago (down 3-4% at both the highest ranks and the metal ranks). We understand that there are further pain points in his kit though. One change we’d like to make but it will take some additional tech is: Junkrat’s grenades have a smaller hitbox after bouncing off a wall. We believe that type of change would alleviate a lot of the pain points when facing Junkrat and still keep his gameplay rewarding. No timeline though as it involves multiple teams.

We have been revisiting some of our hero design philosophies and seeing how they line up with OW2. One of the core pillars we have when developing a new hero is Counterplay in Mind. Heroes should have clear strengths and weaknesses as well as space for situational upside. Some of our recent heroes may have been doing too many things well on launch without those weaknesses to offset their strengths.

As we look into the future, it’s quite easy to look at the positive feedback surrounding added complexity in the hero kits and continue down that path. For us though, creating Overwatch heroes will always be about variety and making sure there are different playstyles with varying amounts of complexity. We tend to look at this over the course of the year, balancing those three hero releases so that there’s a healthy mix of playstyles.

This is something we are actively working on and have tinkered with iterations internally! The overall goal here is to bring back some lost synergy in Cassidy’s kit (ex/Fan the Hammer losing some of its ease of use). Magnetic Grenade is rather flat in what it does and while some abilities can be in this space Cassidy’s kit already has a lot of simplicity, making Magnetic Grenade a prime candidate for adjustments. We won’t be in full stun mode like Flash Bang, but are looking at ways to push Magnetic Grenade into an ability that either enables Cassidy to line up more shots or provide newfound utility.

Gonna have to wait a little longer, but I’ll echo something Aaron said earlier that the next hero will have really exciting ways of interacting with your team 👀. Can’t wait to share more soon!

I’ll answer the first question here, we'll cover the Mercy questions in another reply :).

The Moira conversation can be tricky as she offers a sought-out playstyle for many Support players, but she still lacks the utility we want in the Support role. With the Necrotic Orb changes in the beta, it broke Moira’s flow and pushed her in a passive direction. So there’s some things we want to keep intact with any future changes: Moira still having this identity of being able to dish out damage (though maybe tuned down just a tad) and remain a comfort pick for many players as well as preserving her current flow. It’s a tough challenge so we will see where we end up, we’ll share more here as things develop.

One of the things we are currently working on is bringing the community into the fold more on the data we are seeing. We want to inform our players as best we can in order to have better discussions around balance changes and the reasons behind them.

That said, we don’t want to be in a place where we publish all current live data as that can have very unwanted meta effects. If players feel stuck playing meta heroes at times, having official live data could only further cement those sorts of feelings, even if players can have success on a wide range of heroes. Data only tells part of the story when considering the experience of playing with or against a hero.

So what y’all will continue to see are some data shared in livestreams, retrospectives that tell the story of hero performance over a season, and quick updates on the top performers in a particular meta. Hopefully these initiatives start to spark more fruitful conversations surrounding hero balance. We’ll als...