After a 2019 reveal made fans think Overwatch 2 was within reach, the development team at Blizzard went into the dark following a series of delays and the departures of key team members (including Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan). As the development timeline stretched, the once enthusiastic and bountiful player base showed signs of waning and boredom as live service support for the first Overwatch dried up.
Back to top
However, last month Blizzard broke out of its mostly community-free state to reveal that Overwatch 2 PvP and PvE Content Separated and that it’s hosting a PvP beta at the end of April. Things are finally looking right, as the studio continues to provide more information about the highly-anticipated sequel. With beta testing scheduled for just a few days, we’re ready to learn a lot more about Overwatch 2. However, before that beta begins, Blizzard has opened the window, revealing more Details about upcoming changes to the game.
The team viewed the sequel to the popular live-action hero shooter as an opportunity to re-examine every aspect of the game. One element of the formula that is undergoing major changes is the transition of competitive multiplayer from 6v6 to 5v5. “We’ve got a big moment when we’re going to be doing this fundamentally different game, and so there’s really no better time to experiment with really big changes,” the designer said. lead hero designer Geoff Goodman said in a virtual roundtable interview. “Where we started with 5v5 was one of the earlier experiments. We just wanted to say, ‘Well, let’s go back to all the conversations we had when we first got there. started working on Overwatch 1.” What is the scope of interaction? What is group size? Are we satisfied with everything the way it is? Because a lot of those changes are pretty hard to make. It’s not even just like a balance decision or a design to decide on something like 5v5; there is a lot of technology involved in the memory footprint of all the characters and what are our limits. “
It’s been about six years since Overwatch players got used to 6v6 team building, which typically consists of two damage heroes, two support heroes, and two tanks. With Overwatch 2, player counts are down to one participant per team, meaning team compositions will need to be adjusted. Now, teams will only bring one tank into battle, and with that, some characters will receive noticeable tweaks to their abilities, while others receive major overhauls. .
This isn’t the first time Blizzard has made major changes to Overwatch’s heroes or even its core gameplay. However, with Overwatch 2 introducing so many far-reaching changes to even its player count in matches beyond its heroes, the developers run the risk of rejecting those longtime players. . However, Blizzard saw the potential rewards and inflated itself to take the leap of faith.
“This is our chance to do these big things, some of the things we’ve talked about for a long time, and just try crazy things,” Goodman said. “We’re just trying things out. We’ve also tried a lot of map testing. It’s been an exciting time for us in a way because so many of us have been around. when we started Overwatch 1 and the atmosphere was like that again Man, if everything’s fine, let’s treat this like anything can happen… anything we can try. There’s definitely a lot of risk there and there are times when we’ve pushed maybe too […] but I think we were on the very open side of things. We are not trying to change for the sake of change. We had to be very excited about that, especially in a world where a lot of players were invested heavily in Overwatch 1 and we didn’t want to alienate players. We have to be pretty confident that the game will be better for it. “
With those in mind, Blizzard today announced an overhaul of two post-launch heroes from Overwatch 1.
Doomfist
Doomfist
Doomfist is a perfect example of the kinds of seismic changes some heroes get in this sequel. No longer a damage hero, Doomfist entered Overwatch 2 as a tank. However, the single hero still retains a lot of what makes him unique in Overwatch. Changing his status as a DPS-focused character gives a huge health boost, increasing his HP from 250 to 450. His Hand claps largely remains the same but instead reloads faster with its damage dealt. Doomfist’s signature Rocket Punch It’s also faster while dealing less damage, but it still retains the power to hit back.
Where Doomfist’s new kits really stand out from his Overwatch 2 build is in his new spot. The source move, reducing damage taken forward by 90%. After he absorbs damage, his gauntlet will charge, and if he deals enough damage through Power Block, his new Rocket Punch will become stronger and move faster and farther, dealing more damage and knocking down targets farther away. This is meant to further leverage the inspiration that Doomfist’s toolkit takes from fighting games; Power Block is meant to be treated almost like a parry.
“Competitor players should be cautious about Doomfist glove charging,” Goodman said in the blog post. “Power Block feels like Zarya when everyone shoots at her shield, but instead of dealing passive damage, his next punch will be buffed until he uses Rocket Punch.” or removed.”
Doomfist’s Seismic now launch him into the air, similar to Winston’s jump. However, when Doomfist lands, he will create a shockwave that slows nearby enemies. While this adds to his mobility, it removes the unpredictability of his movements. The team at Blizzard imagine this will place him alongside other disruptive tanks like Winston and Wrecking Ball.
Doomfist’s new roundup of toolset is a new version of Meteor Strike, his ultimate ability. The skill has a shorter cast time, but does less damage and doesn’t hit back. Instead of knocking the target back, Meteor Strike now slows all enemies hit. Blizzard also assures players that even if the damage is reduced, finding yourself in Meteor Strike’s line of sight still delivers a punch.
Orisa
Orisa
While Doomfist’s change makes him more defensive, Orisa is becoming more inclined to attack after the team noticed she lost a lot of melee fights. Out of the box, the health and armor boosts will aid her in those situations, but that’s a far cry from everything Blizzard is doing with Orisa’s remake. Now, instead of using the ammo system she currently uses in Overwatch 1, Orisa primary fire is a larger projectile that deals more damage when she is near an enemy and uses a cooldown that will trigger if you overheat her weapon; If you shoot too much without recovering, her gun will become unusable for three seconds.
“We wanted Orisa to push and engage more enemies,” senior hero designer Brandon Brennan said in the aforementioned blog post. “Her gun encourages her to get closer to enemies and move forward in Overwatch 2.”
Meanwhile, Orisa’s secondary flame, Javelin Energy, now a skill-based javelin that hits the first enemy in its path, dealing a micro-stun and bonus damage if it pushes them into a wall. Keeping the offensive and javelin-based theme, those annoying Orisa barriers were gone; to replace, Javelin Spin allows Orisa to spin a javelin that destroys enemy projectiles, increasing movement speed and knocking/damaging enemies. While not a new skill, Fortify has been modified to reduce the main weapon’s cooldown requirement and increase it by 125 health.
Her ultimate ability is another new trick in her arsenal. Terra Lance causes Orisa to become fortified and drag enemies around while she attacks an effect area. While this sounds similar to Zarya’s Graviton Surge, enemies trapped in Orisa’s Terra Lance aren’t stuck in the center, so teammates will have to take advantage of it quickly if they want to take advantage of multiple enemies. enemies in the same place.
However, as the lack of content in Overwatch 1 continued to shrink the community, the team’s sole focus was on Overwatch 2. This was not always the plan, however.
“We talked about it the way back; we talked about how we’re going – on the production side – we’re going to develop Overwatch 2 alongside Overwatch 1. One choice we have, those are the ones What we ended up with was, ‘Maybe we have to relax with Overwatch 1, but that will allow us to launch Overwatch 2 faster.’ So it’s like breaking the Band-Aid deal. That was the plan, but suddenly, what we hoped was a small amount of time has turned into a big time, and now, we’ve invested a lot in this planning and we have everything very connected with all of the heroes we’re making and the remake and everything, we can’t even really get away with this plan.You can’t take part of the game. play and throw it up live.It just doesn’t work.Unfortunately.The whole team is really annoyed and a bit annoyed with the time when everything is delayed and there are a lot of reasons for it; it doesn’t. But I think the most important thing right now is that we regroup around this release date and get PvP out of there, back to form, and get the content in the hands of people because whatever players like to have that content, we also love to make it for people. ” —Geoff Goodman, Main Hero Designer on Overwatch 2
Overwatch 2 doesn’t have a release date yet. If you want to read our exclusive coverage from 2019, visit our insurance center to get our impressions from our time with the game and the developers.
