Blizz_GeoffGoodman

Sombra and Genji were the two hardest heroes to make, probably.

Sombra worked very differently and had to go through major changes pretty late in her development (as I posted about earlier), and Genji started out having only his sword for a weapon (he is still refereed to as SwordNinja in our internal files, etc). His main kit initially involved invisibility, wall perching, and having an 'execute' animation where if he got behind you he could stun you and start this long animation which would just instantly kill you if he finished it.

The idea was he could easily pick off people who were not with their team, but otherwise it would be very difficult to use execute. This kit caused all kinds of problems though, especially his sword being his only form of attacking. Once we moved away from invisibility and instead chased the agile ninja fantasy, and made the sword his ultimate, everything started clicking into place.

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!

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!

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...

Well we've recently been experimenting back and forth with this mechanic. In our latest builds hitting shields doesn't generate ult for either party.

But even with the way it was, both the shield owner and the attacker gain ult equally (and even then only at a 20% rate), so if you were firing into an enemy barrier to charge your ult you're also charging his/her ult as well.

Just to clarify: We do actually have damage fall off for certain weapons in the game, but Soldier: 76 doesn't currently use any. We tend to reserve fall off for weapons that are intended to be close range weapons, such as Tracer's Pulse Pistols or Reaper's Hellfire Shotguns.

For example, In a game of upward in TF2, I can spam the doors with soldier but I can only deal 30-40 damage (if they even hit the target). To dish out the real damage I have to get close to the enemy and take risks

As far as spam is concerned, there's a few things to keep in mind comparing Overwatch to TF2. Firstly, we're only 6v6, whereas TF2 can range from 8v8 to 16v16, so they tend to have a lot more stuff flying through the air at any given time.

Secondly, our tank role heroes are generally very good at shutting down spam like this. If your team is being locked down by a bunch of Pharahs firing rockets into a choke, a single friendly Reinhardt pushing out ...

Its true he has a typically more support-like ability in his Biotic Field, but the roles aren't meant to be hard rules that we have to follow. They're meant to be more guidelines so players can more quickly understand how to they should approach playing the character.

For example, as you guys have seen by now Zenyatta can pump out some insane damage, but he is listed as a support still.

As far as 76 being overpowered, he is! Everyone is!

It works (hopefully) how you'd think it does, by automatically aiming at the nearest target to your reticle within a certain area on the screen, which is currently designating by that large circle in the HUD.

The thing you might now know about it though is that it also locks your spread to zero, which means you can just hold the button down and go to town. This means even if you are an FPS god and somehow can literally hit every bullet without your ult, it still offers you a significant benefit in aim, in a sense.