Jeff Kaplan addresses the trials and tribulations of Overwatch hero balancing and the metagame.
Overwatch’s Jeff Kaplan was requested about the way forward for hero steadiness over on the forums and he had quite a bit to say on the subject.
The query requested if the trouble to steadiness characters would finally put off specific heroes being shunned by the neighborhood for being “troll picks.”
“It’s never our intention to have a hero be perceived as a ‘troll pick’, but that will inevitably happen sometimes,” wrote Kaplan.
“Let’s say that all of us agreed that the entire heroes have been completely balanced (simply faux with me), even when we touched nothing, finally the steadiness would shift over time attributable to evolving playstyles, methods and meta-trends. Lots of us like professional sports activities and have a tendency to consider these video games (soccer, soccer, hockey, basketball) as ‘timeless’. But in the event you observe these video games intently, the leagues have needed to make minor tweaks to the video games to maintain them enjoyable and balanced over time.
“It’s a bizarre analogy, however it is rather just like hero steadiness in a recreation like Overwatch. In these professional sports activities, gamers and coaches advanced their methods of excited about the sport that required the sport itself to alter at instances.
“We will completely do our greatest to verify all of our heroes our viable. With so many heroes, I do consider the playerbase will (at instances) determine that sure heroes are out of style and subsequently deem them as ‘troll picks’. Sometimes this shall be very legitimate. And generally it is going to be notion.”
Symmetra and Torbjorn have been talked about within the query as examples of “troll picks” and Kaplan confirmed that “both Torb and Symmetra are being looked at right now. We want to try to improve them in ways that makes them more fun to play, more enjoyable to have on your team and try to make sure they are not infuriating to play against.”
He wraps up by explaining the difficulties confronted when making modifications for the meta.
“We wrestle with the issue that players get very upset at us when they perceive ‘the meta is stale’ and certain heroes are not viable. Yet it’s also very disruptive to the playerbase for us to make changes. It’s a bit of a Catch-22 but we do our best to responsibly look at all heroes all the time and make sure nothing is terribly unbalanced or worse, un-fun.”
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