Overwatch has only been out for a few weeks now, but it’s already got 10 million players. Naturally, Blizzard has big plans for the future.
In a recent forum post, Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan laid out Blizzard’s plans for the next many months, noting that the team is “working on content patches throughout the rest of the year and into early 2017 currently”.
While he didn’t offer much in the way of details, he reiterated that Competitive Mode is the big focus right now, and it’s very far along. Blizzard is considering dropping it onto a public test server soon. “We’re working very hard to make it awesome at release but there are some things you need to see and feel along with a large population before you can properly sign off on the feature,” he wrote. “I anticipate Competitive Play will require a few seasons’ worth of iteration before we’re in the place we want to be.”
He also mentioned that new maps and heroes are being worked on “daily”. The heroes are still in a prototype phase, so it’s too early to announce anything, while one map is “officially” in production and shouldn’t be too terribly far off. (What does the lack of in-production heroes mean for Sombra? Hmmm.)
Regardless of which maps and heroes Blizzard chooses to release or scrap, anything that sees the light of day will be free of charge.
In terms of more nitty gritty stuff, Blizzard is looking into improving spectating and highlight functionality, which they say will also help them improve Play Of The Game. HOWEVER. “These features are not being worked on heavily right now,” he added. “We’re more in a mode of design and planning around these. So there’s not an immediate timeframe for the spectating stuff.” Bummer.
Excitingly, Blizzard is also looking into more custom game options (including a server browser!!!) and social features, as well as a beefier progression system. “We want to give you more customisation options (we know people want to have random option for Poses for example),” Kaplan wrote. “We have some cool ideas of how you could equip more than one spray or voice line… so those are fun things we’d like to get to. But they are minor and are far off. We also have some pretty cool new content we want to add to the progression system — so we’re looking forward to getting some of that in eventually.”
Lastly, Blizzard’s heard all the tick rate talk, and they are looking into pushing the game’s high bandwidth mode into other places. “Obviously, we’re putting a lot of effort against our high bandwidth Custom Game option to see if we can explore proliferating that feature further,” Kaplan said.
That’s a lot of stuff, and some of it may fall to the wayside before it’s all said and done. Still, promising stuff. What do you hope Blizzard adds to Overwatch? Which things do you think they should prioritise the most?
Comments
37 responses to “What’s Next For Overwatch”
Skippable POTG
* change skin during select a hero pre fight menu.
* ability to select which type of maps you want to play (i.e. i just wanna play capture the zone)
* keyboard + mouse option on ps4 (games would allow you to identify if the match type is k+m, both, gamepad like UT did on ps3)
Yes, no and God no, both those second options will destroy overwatch on consoles this early, I don’t know about other areas but it ages long enough already without fracturing the community
Ha! Overwatch will never last on consoles.
Stalking isn’t attractive mate, go diddle yourself with the rest of the PC masterracers
I just don’t have faith blizzard games have a lasting online community on consoles. I was burned heavily on the way valve treated the console versions of team fortress two.
why not the last? because everyone would opt to play with keyboard and mouse? isn’t that just stopping users from deciding how they want to play?
it was pretty good on Playstation UT tbh. both lobbies had players with actually keyboard + mouse having less support from the community.
POTG is pretty broken. We watched a widow miss about 10 times and get 1 head shot. I’m pretty sure everyone in the game including that same widow did better at some other point.
If POTG game was the biggest issue the game would be near perfect. Some hero balance (already in the works) and some God damn map balance is needed before caring about potg
Just mentioning the POTG as it recently happened, but yeah there’s a couple of issues that really stand out. One is the amount of people that leave when it’s time to defend on Temple of Anubis, clearly it’s not fun or unbalanced. Maybe a second exit for the defenders to get to last point.
I’ve honestly never had an issue with temple of anubis, I like defending that map, it can be pitifully easy (this is console anyway). Route 66 is a huge issue imo, attacking is just painful, you run straight out into a kill alley, a long one, far too easy to lock down, you just have to get a lucky rush basically and it doesn’t really get much better at all lol
First area is nice to have Winstons to get up the back, take out the squishies. I haven’t found much issue with Temple, however I notice that people will drop out straight away. Clearly they don’t like it or think they can’t win.
I dont know, Route 66 has always been fun, the first stretch is pretty harsh but I’ve never lost a game at that point. I also like Temple, although second exit for Defense would be great. Only ones I dont really like are Volskaya and Ilios, but they are more personal gripes I guess than actually disliking how they play. Also the first chokepoint on Hanamura sucks.
Just an FYI there are 2 exits for temple defense
Personally, the tick rate problem is the biggest thing affecting my enjoyment at the moment as a significant fraction of my deaths are because I am seeing an older version of the truth than the person who kills me. It’s great seeing the kill cam at times because it shows that those seemingly improbable kills were just because they were already shooting you before you saw them.
The amount of times I’ve ducked around a corner, died post corner ducking, and then the kill cam shows my Lucio grooving out in slow motion out in broad daylight is ridiculous. Not to mention the times when I get out of the way of a Reinhart charge and then the kill cam shows me getting snapped back into it…
Make mystery heroes a game type. After playing for a week it seems odd that I can choose my character when I die. Bored of facing 3 Torbs and a bastion when attacking.
Kick people that have mic but never try to co-ordinate
It could use some balance changes, such as dying not wiping your ult meter, sorta annoying being so harshly punished for a team kill just to return and eat all their alts for another wipeout.
Yeah mystery heroes is a great idea and should be implemented. Everyone’s pretty settled on who they enjoy playing by now so you do tend to see a lot of the same team compositions now.
I agree. I love mystery hero. Id also love solo or I under 2 party queue.
More Skins for D.va! An evangelion one, full metal panic, FLCL, gundam (no wing) etc
Didn’t realise how much I wanted a Unit-02 skin for D.Va…
Deep down… you knew 🙂
Dude:
https://i.imgur.com/URYXPZI.png
When I first looked at her skins I got excited because I read E.va and was freaking out that it was test colours unit 00, then I realised it was God damn b.va
How about they put some effort into acknowledging one of the most common crashes crippling a huge amount of people: “Your rendering device has been lost”.
(Capped) Thread pt 1. http://us.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/20744354236
Thread pt 2. http://us.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/20745165730
A map voting system would be nice, at lvl 65 I have rarely played the Hollywood map which is my favorite and I always seem to get Kings Row or Temple of Anubis. Also the current tick rate is painful.
Wait there are other maps besides operation fucking Gibraltar lol bet you wish this was the old bf2142 Gibraltar map. (But I get what you mean feel like in only play 2 maps. Hell after the beta I didn’t See kings row until 5 days after I bought the game. Forgot it existed)
Mate every day it’s either Kings Row or Volskaya for like 5 games each, and then maybe a random one thrown in to give the illusion that its random. I cant remember the last time I played Lisuang Tower.
I think voting would make it worse. I know in COD you just end up playing the same maps over and over. At least in this game I have played every map
This, go play CS and see how much you like the voting system after 5 straight hours of dust2
1. More game modes, or at least give us the same modes on more maps. Just a bit more variety would be good.
2. More support/actual tank characters. Maybe the buff will help but D.Va is not a tank at this point in time so that leaves 4 tanks and 4 supports (Zarya is hard to play well, and Symmetra is arguably not a support either). Not enough variety and so many games now I’ve seen no tanks/supports on my team.
3. Fix play of the game
4. Fix the tick rate issue
I dunno, a lot of my problems with this game are to do with idiots not playing properly or not picking the right team composition.
I’m glad Zarya isn’t played alot cause it makes me feel special when I tank it up as her. Also symmetra is a game changer when you’ve got someone who knows what they’re doing. I think she just gets flack for a lack of healing and people would prefer that.
Zarya is kickass when you’ve gotten a grip on her mechanics. I’ve played against some unstoppable Zaryas. Especially in an Attack role. But new players typically play Rein/Roadhog as they are a bit more accessible.
Symmetra is great, dont get me wrong. But at the heart of it she’s really a defender rather than a support, especially if Torb is listed as a defender. I find more often than not that if Symmetra is on the team you also need another support character, because that Symmetra player is going to be more concerned with chucking turrets down than supporting.
It’s the same thing with D.Va. Her current iteration is not a proper tank, she’s more a disruptive force offense. She’s excellent at taking a point, but she’s not bullet spongey enough to hold a point, etc. Case in point, we were playing a game on Hanamura where the other team had 6 D.Vas and they couldnt even take the first point even though they rushed. Partly that was the team being shit, but I would bet if we were playing against 6 Roadhogs/Reinharts it would have been a lot different.
I hate going up against 6 anything. I feel they should limit the amount of the same characters a team can select. Went up against 6 tracers and literally though stabbing my leg with a fork would be a better time.
I dont disagree with you there. I was just using that game to illustrate a point. 6 Tracers sounds like nightmare territory…Trying to attack against 6 Torbs was akin to drilling a hole in the back of your head with a blunt masonry bit…
I actually found 4 widows and 2 Reinhearts counters it pretty well. Turrets are no surprise if you know where they are and can attack them from beyond their reach or behind a shield.
I got an invite in-game and it asked me to press Y or N…. on PS4
It says select Y or N, which isn’t a error, but agreed poorly implemented and confusing
21:9 – native 3440×1440 support or bust! They had it in beta & the excuses for removing don’t hold any weight or merit.