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Blizzard shares info about Overwatch updates, heroes, ranked, server tick rate, more

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
Eurogamer had a lengthy interview with Jeff Kaplan about Overwatch: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-06-07-overwatch-blizzard-answers-the-big-questions

Quick Summary:
  • There's a big discussion about how the ranked mode works (which is still targeting the end of June). It's now a system where you can rank up and down. The game will try to match you by skill, and at equal party sizes. The seasons will last about 2.5 months.
  • There will be more information about the new maps and heroes coming starting a bit later into the Summer.
  • They're already working on updates all the way through to early next year so they have a steady rate of new content, though they're open to changing the rate based on community feedback.
  • The first few new heroes will be released one at a time since beta players reacted very negatively to three being released at once.
  • Jeff confirms Sombra is real and that we haven't found all the hints in the game about her yet. Apparently I wasn't thorough enough. Presumably she's the first new hero coming.
  • They're open to the idea of Xbox and PlayStation players playing together, but have made no progress on this topic as of yet.
  • Jeff notes that the server runs at a tick rate of 60, though that the client could be updated to run at 60 as well if more people are willing to test it in the custom game mode. Currently it doesn't work for about 20% of their player base and they need more people to test it before it can be rolled out to Quick Play. He does say most of the killed around corner issues are from latency though, and not the tick rate.
  • McCree's Fan The Hammer damage is getting nerfed so that it doesn't kill tanks, definitely kills lightweight heroes, and maybe kills medium health heroes.
  • D.Va is either going to get a damage buff (mostly in terms of lowering the rate at which damage drops off over distance) or survivability buff, but not both. They're testing both options currently. This will be later than the McCree nerf, which sounds like it's soon.
  • Play of the Game is going to get new cinematic camera angles to make plays looks better.
 

Trace

Banned
Huzzah, they did the only McCree nerf that made sense. I hope 60tick comes sooner rather than later.
 

mstevens

Member
No update on the glitched trophy?

(Heading off the inevitable responses. The glitched trophy is lockdown. I'm not talking about shut out. 0% of players have lockdown because it is broken at the moment. If you don't care about trophies, it is tied to an in game cosmetic as well.)
 
Wow, blame the player base for not introducing heroes faster. That's a lie. In reality, I am sure they only have enough bandwidth to do one hero at a time, which they should simply say instead of blaming it on users. Knowing Blizzard, it would also mean waiting 3 times as long to get new content.
 

_woLf

Member
Thank jesus at the McCree nerf. He's the only character I feel is really imbalanced at this point.

D.Va damage buffs feel more important to me than survivability buffs since she can fly away easily. My frustrations with her always come from her machine guns having crazy drop off.
 

Sou Da

Member
Thank jesus at the McCree nerf. He's the only character I feel is really imbalanced at this point.

D.Va damage buffs feel more important to me than survivability buffs since she can fly away easily. My frustrations with her always come from her machine guns having crazy drop off.

Widowmaker exists.
 

Ranmo

Member
Hopefully D.Va gets the survivability buff. I don't have problems but the damage is great already if you know how to play her, and I feel that the survivability buff would help justify her position under the Tank category.
 

Timeaisis

Member
D.va is already my favorite hero, so this will just make her my super favorite.

I do think survivability is the way to go. She can survive fine if your good with her abilities, but there are times where you fly into the fray at full health and die in like half a second, which is a problem. I chalked it up to just using the wrong hero here, but I suppose it might be she's too squishy up front. Her weak point is pretty large, I'd say tone down the damage down to that a little and she should be good to go.
 

kirblar

Member
Wow, blame the player base for not introducing heroes faster. That's a lie. In reality, I am sure they only have enough bandwidth to do one hero at a time, which they should simply say instead of blaming it on users. Knowing Blizzard, it would also mean waiting 3 times as long to get new content.
Doing 2 heroes at once in HOTS turned out to be a big problem for them. It screws with their data samples.
 
Glad to hear about all of the changes. Looking forward to them.

Don't know what I prefer for D.Va. I've always felt like her weapons were pretty ineffective, and not just at range, so I don't know how a range buff will help. Then again, I feel like her mobility makes her fairly survivable. Maybe the survivability is what I would go for at the end of the day, but I'm not really sure.
 

Mupod

Member
Wow, blame the player base for not introducing heroes faster. That's a lie. In reality, I am sure they only have enough bandwidth to do one hero at a time, which they should simply say instead of blaming it on users. Knowing Blizzard, it would also mean waiting 3 times as long to get new content.

Yes, 3 heroes taking 3 times longer to finish than 1 hero is generally how content works.

Adding 3 at once makes sense from the perspective of not having a single hero dominating quick play because everyone wants to play 1 character. But if the first hero is a support that's probably what we need at the moment, and we need it much sooner than we need more Reaper/Tracer/Genji types.
 

Arkeband

Banned
I hope the increased tick rate doesn't compound the issues Blizzard has already routing massive amounts of traffic through their incredibly shitty AT&T network.

I get bottleneck freeze lag a lot less in Overwatch than I do in HotS or SC2, but it's still rough.
 

mreddie

Member
Would be dope to add someone with a sword gun and a person who shrinks.

Since Sombra is said to be a support sniper, would she heal you or give you shields or just debuff people?
 

KissVibes

Banned
Wow, blame the player base for not introducing heroes faster. That's a lie. In reality, I am sure they only have enough bandwidth to do one hero at a time, which they should simply say instead of blaming it on users. Knowing Blizzard, it would also mean waiting 3 times as long to get new content.

It was an actual issue for them to drop several heroes at once though. They aren't blaming anyone. He's being honest. How do you even get all this from him saying one thing? You sound like a political pundit.
 
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