It’s been mooted at for some time, but Blizzard has now dispelled the rumours entirely: Overwatch on consoles will be balanced separately from the PC.
It’s been a suggestion going around for several months, and for good reason. Since Overwatch was announced, many of the new heroes added have a passive or active movement ability. That’s fine and all if you’re playing with a mouse and keyboard and can snap onto someone’s head at the flick of wrist. It’s another matter entirely when you’re running around and suddenly a massive ice wall appears and it takes a second before you can respond to the Hanzo sitting on top of the ice, taking pot shots at your face.
@Eclipse_OW Yes, that is the plan.
— Overwatch (@PlayOverwatch) June 4, 2016
The game plays substantially different depending on what platform you’re on — although the technical performance on consoles is solid as it comes — so separate balancing makes sense. It’s also sensible given when patches can be published: Blizzard can push out updates as fast as they like through the Battle.net client, but any patches for consoles have to go through Sony and Microsoft’s certification process first.
Jeff Kaplan, the game director on Overwatch, also said prior to Overwatch’s launch that “we don’t want to do anything that would harm PCs because of console tuning”. That’s clearly
So the next question is: if you’re balancing consoles differently to PC, what do you change? I can imagine Bastion would be a high target for a slight damage decrease, only because most of the replies to Bastion outside of “just play Genji” are generally movement oriented.
But my gut tells me it’s the abilities that restrict or change movement that are more likely to be adjusted. That might be something in line with a slight increase in cooldown for Tracer’s blink or reduced time for Mei’s ice wall. Blizzard will probably look at the figures they can collect and they’ll talk about it, StarCraft 2 style, whenever a change is made.
Comments
20 responses to “Overwatch Will Be Balanced Separately Across Consoles And PCs”
“Jeff Kaplan, the game director on Overwatch, also said prior to Overwatch’s launch that “we don’t want to do anything that would harm PCs because of console tuning”. That’s clearly”
…That’s clearly not the end of the sentence?
Some people just want to watch the world burn.
I would suggest make his range shorter? At the moment, genji is the only real solution. Other then that, a sniper is a good bet, but he can often target a sniper from quite a distance.
What about an accuracy decrease then? Would make sense with a gun like his, shouldnt be able to shoot like a laser
And a spray increase maybe?
Any one of those things would go a long way to making Bastion more balanced.
Why not all the things?
Yeah, I find Bastion’s damage fine. He needs it to keep tank comps in check but the range at which he can accurately shoot is insane. Like, if he can see the Widowmaker trying to take him out, he can easily shoot back and likely kill her before she can do the same.
Primal Rage was a great game.
A damage increase for Bastion? I hope to god you’re talking about on PC and not console with that sentence… he may have been eliminated from the Meta on PC but good luck going a round on console where a bastion isn’t mowing down the enemy.
Glad to hear this over all the amount of crying about Widowmaker being OP is really clearly restricted to PC, I’m a good shot with her and have a lot of fun, but she is nowhere near OP on consoles.
Bastion needs a damage increase? he can already kill a whole team with a clip in the right circumstance
I absolutely meant to write “decrease” there, my bad
Oh no. You can’t back out now. We know what side you’re on. Bastion player =P
*throws up ice wall*
I only have to wait four seconds!
Slow down tracer, she’s way to hard to hit. that bitch can move fast.
I feel this. I’ve been murdered a few times by a tracer who just can’t be hit. I feel team composition helps though. A Symmetra can assist with her turrets to avoid Tracer getting the drop on you, and a D-VA can shred her health with her chain gun spray.
One thing I’ve wondered is why the hell half the time when I try to deflect Reaper’s Death Blossom with Genji I die instead and Reaper keeps spinning.
May help other console players, I reassigned jump to L3 to allow jump and aim at the same time. Makes all the difference with a character like Farah.
Worth noting too is you can bind different keys to different characters. I switched jump to L3 too on my Lucio so he can aim and grind on walls. (Which is required for a trophy). Once I test it out I might make this apply to all of them.
Yeah I use it for everyone. Once you get the hang of it it’s so much better