According to highscoreheroes on twitter. Twitch drops have revealed a new Overwatch weekly challenge coming to Overwatch possibly this week (tomorrow). The drops show “Mardi Gras” themed sprays and notes “Overwatch Ashe Mardi Gras – bundle”.
Tuesday the 25 is “Fat Tuesday” and the day Overwatch drops new content (typically). And Wednesday the 26 is Mardi Gras so this is all looking like good possibilities. Hopefully we get a new Ashe story as well.
Stay tuned to gamewatchtoday for all the latest Overwatch News.
Yesterday Jeff Kaplan dropped a huge developer update for Overwatch talking about the introduction of Competitve Hero Pools, a Experimental Mode, replay sharing and UI changes. After the video released Jeff took to the Blizzard forums for about an hour, here’s all his replies to people.
Blizzard kept saying that this game is about being able to play several heros and flexing between them, but this is basically the first time when Blizzard supports this statement with an in-game mechanics. Which, I think, is good for the game overall.
And I’m sure it was a very hard change for Blizzard, since the whole idea goes against basic game marketing – most people buy the game to play a character they love, not to be an flex-champion. So whatever I like this change or not, I applaud Blizzard for making it.
Thanks for the feedback!
Oddly, we’re not viewing this change as dramatic, scary or impactful as the decision to pursue Hero Limits or our decision to implement Role Queue. Hero Pools will be introduced for Season 21 of Competitive Play only. Unlike Role Queue or Hero Limits, Quick Play and the Arcade will be completely the same as they are today with Hero Pools. This alone already means the number of affected matches is FAR less than those two prior systems.
Also, we’re super open to change with Hero Pools. If we (the dev team and the community) don’t feel like it’s a positive change during Season 21, then we won’t bring it back in Season 22. We get a lot of feedback asking for Competitive seasons to feel “different†from one another. Season 20 and Season 21 will certainly feel different!
Also, something we talk about a lot in game design is the that there is often no one, correct answer. Design is all about tradeoffs. If the thing that the community decides is “the most egregious†is a “static meta†and they “want the dev team to do something about itâ€Â… we’re going to take steps towards change. We can’t force the meta to move and not make the game work differently. Last year was great proof that player creativity and balance changes alone weren’t enough to move people off of 3/3 fast enough for the community to feel satisfied. The meta would have moved on it’s own… just slowly.
We’ve decided to help you move it along. If there are things we don’t like about Hero Pools, we can change it. Maybe they don’t come back for Season 22? Maybe they rotate faster? Maybe more or less heroes should be in the pool? We’ll all find out in Season 21.
But really this should be viewed as a fun an exciting change to Season 21 (we wanted Seasons to feel different, right?). And time will tell what happens after…
Either way, hearing your thoughts and feedback is really helpful to us.
Any information yet on how many heroes will be available in a week of hero pool?
For the first 5 weeks, we will be trying a range to see what feel right. We’ve architected this system so that we can update the hero pools without the need to patch. So we’ll be monitoring feedback very closely, experimenting a bit with the pool and adapting our strategy as time goes on.
Would you consider rotating hero pools once every few days instead? one week is far too long, in my opinion, and once every match may come across as too hectic.
Yes. We’ve definitely considered it. Let’s try a week and see how it feels and if we need to make adjustments we will. But yeah… we’ve talked about rotating every day. We’ve also talked about rotating every match. We don’t like going longer than a week because we want more heroes played… but open to feedback.
we talked about a season rotation but taking a hero out of play for 2 months makes us a bit nervous. never say never but it’s not our first instinct…
Thanks for the communication, hope those features are gonna be good and can’t wait to see the new workshop additions.
workshop creators will really love some of the changes Zach and Dan made to the feature. they listened to their feedback very closely and all of it is in response to what creators wanted. really proud of them for their work!
I have to ask though, what is the point of having super fast and drastic balance changes if we are just going to be enforcing weekly metas with hero pools anyways? Like what is the point of nerfing or buffing a hero if they can only be played whether they are in that week’s pool or not?
Historically, even when we have done consistent and dramatic balance changes, it takes the meta a long time to shift. We’d love it if balance or player creativity alone would shift the meta fast enough to meet player’s demands.
is there a ban protection for popular heroes? will lets say mercy, banned one week, than played alot next week, will she be protected not to be banned 3rd week again? whats the plan?
we’re curating the list ourselves. we have some philosophies and guidelines we’ll be following (and evolving as we hear your feedback). we will do our best to be judicious and make sure no hero is getting the “horizon†treatment, as with our map pools…
I’m sorry but I can’t see how any of this is “fun†or “exitingâ€Â. I love tanking. And outside my horrible D.Va I love using all the tanks.
we would never limit the pool to just one tank. you’ll never be forced to play a single tank, such as D.va as described above… if you love playing all the other tanks, you’ll be fine.
How will you be choosing which heroes don’t make it into the pool? Will it be heroes that are “meta†or will it be a bit more random than that? Or a combination of the two?
it’s curated by us. so it will be a combination of targeting metas that players are being vocally negative about (recent examples: double barrier, goats) and slightly encouraging other playstyles (i.e. “more mobile†comps might be fun for a week…)
but i am sure we’ll refine our approach over time.
An Experimental mode is very interesting. Are the new possible systems will be tested here? How is it safe for OW client? What if the new possible system will make a major bug in the client and what will happen to the PTR?
we’ll still use the PTR for major patches and major changes. for example, if we were testing a new hero or map, that would be on the PTR and not in the Experimental Card.
the experimental card uses a different data set and was engineered by people far smarter than i am. it’s going to work and be magic and nothing could possibly go wrong… right? =]
Jeff hello! Sorry for questioning here, but can you please say something about smurfs on consoles? You know they can create unlimited accounts with one copy of the game. May be some changes specific for consoles?
this is a very hard problem to solve but we have some ideas. any solution is more long term, though. possibly OW2 or later. sorry i know that’s not the answer you wanted but it’s actually very complicated with the way consoles work and the rules regarding account creation.
I really, really like the Experimental Card plan. It seems like it’ll help with testing out small changes or shifting concepts for heroes with more people being able to try them out. Smaller and more tested changes is a good way to go!
totally. we’re so excited for this. we’ve wanted this for so long. it was a ton of work but it’s going to be really cool. plus i am super excited to get console players involved with testing changes (right now they cannot play the PTR)
i think a hero pool would be more beneficial for higher ranks (masters and up) and may have a negative impact on competitive gameplay for the average ranks. although players should be more diverse, having random banned heroes may result in people playing heroes they arent very good at which would hurt the entire team.
we’ve considered having the system only apply to players above a certain rank (diamond? masters?). it’s definitely on our minds.fumingǃ:
ps have yall considered adding a finnish hero? im from finland
i’m not sure we can make a hero great than teemu selanne?
Will OWL affect the hero bans pool of the live game? Or the Live game will affect OWL bans pool? Or these things are separate and does not interfere with each other?
these are separate things that will not affect each other.
going to go get some tea now. thanks for all of the great thoughts and thoughtful questions. we’ll make changes as needed. thanks again! <3
That’s it. Hope you enjoyed reading some of Jeff’s thoughts, there were some real good ones in there and lots to think about. What are your thoughts on the future of Overwatch?
Yesterday we got the news that the Overwatch dev team is working on something big. That “something†could be hero bans. And today the internet has spoken.
Basically hero bans in a game like Overwatch could be presented a few different ways (for those of you that have never played games with them before). The idea is that when you play a game certain heroes durrIng that particular game or series of games you play that day are banned or locked out of play and you will not be allowed to play those heroes. It could be just for that game or a day or a whole season it depends on how it’s implemented. Most people refer to the League of Legends way of Champion selection and ban where it only lasts that match and you vote what hero gets banned that game however you get to see who everyone is picking beforehand (it’s a little more involved but that’s the easy explanation).
The people have spoken, some for it and some against and some are just confused.
FROM TWITTER
I've been reading a lot of interesting takes on hero bans in Overwatch. Good arguments to be made for both camps. My thoughts? I personally think that the game would need a good bunch more heroes to reap the benefits and strategic depth such a system brings with it.
Depending on how you can ban/protect heroes we could see a brand new overwatch. Looks like the Devs are trying to get very aggressive with the foundation of the game pre OW2!! 💪👍🏻
Bans should not be a thing if you can see the enemy players before picking. I really hope that's obvious to the devs, unless they know something we don't in regards to that I guess. https://t.co/AXV1NE5iCG
Are hero bans coming to Overwatch? One source says yes, and they could be as soon as next week.
Monday afternoon MetroOW posted this on twitter.
Big update for OW is rumored in a few weeks, it is very likely that hero bans will be added to the game as the dev team has been working on them for a while!
He is the same source that dropped leaks about Overwatch 2 at Blizzcon and although he says his source is different, it could at least be this if not something just as important. If you remember last week Eemongg (a popular Overwatch streamer) tweeted that a “big update†is coming soon.
Hero bans are to state it as basic as possible. You wouldn’t be able to pick X hero for one day in comp. There is a lot more to it than that but to state it simply for those that don’t know what it is. I will make a longer explanation article to explain hero bans if Overwatch changes to this method.
I am not sure if this would go directly to live servers as they would probs put it in the PTR and then drop it live after season 20 is over but that’s just my guess based on how they typically have done these kind of changes.
We shall see… What do you think about hero bans in Overwatch?
