Last week, we talked about Overwatch's asymmetric level design, and all the complexities of
balancing an attacker versus defender type map that funnels teams down a carefully designed path.
But you can't talk about asymmetric balance and Overwatch without bringing up the other major factor at play:
Overwatch's asymmetric heroes.
Overwatch's characters are wildly asymmetric, with a huge variety in play styles, offensive abilities and mobility options.
So not only do Overwatch's designers have to design their levels around the asymmetry of attack and defense,
but they also have to build them so that there are interesting tactical options for every character.
Pharah and Winston need walls to leap over.
Widowmaker needs advantageous sniper positions to grapple to.
Tracer needs good flanking routes. Reaper needs good flanking positions to teleport to.
Lucio and Genji need walls that are tactically useful to traverse.
The snipers need good sight lines, the offense heroes need useful cover, the turrets need good defensive points.
There are so many factors to consider! And once the designers have created these features,
they also have to make sure that none of them are exploitable by characters that aren't supposed to get to them.
And then the designers have to do that for both teams, so that whether you're on attack or defense,
no matter which direction you're headed on the map, there's always interesting map features for every character to take advantage of.
When this is done well, it makes every character feel special and unique to play.
When you're at one of those points that only your character can really take advantage of, it feels downright heroic.
But in terms of design this comes with a cost: more complexity.
Map knowledge is important in all first-person shooters.
It takes the player longer to learn asymmetric maps, because, well, there's just more variations in the map to learn.
In Overwatch, this is only compounded by the variety of characters and movement styles that the maps have to accommodate.
Of course, that's not to say that this was a wrong decision by the design team.
In fact, it's part of what gives the game its depth.
But this is one of the trade-offs you have to accept with this type of wildly asymmetric design.
This also raises another interesting question, though: will Blizzard have to revamp these maps for every character they create?
What if some new Overwatch hero has an entirely different mobility style that allows them to traverse each map in ways that no other character can?
Every map in the game would probably need at least some slight tweaking,
to make sure that this new hero had plenty of traversal options without being grossly overpowered.
That makes character creation even more expensive,
and that expense would only be compounded by the release of additional maps down the line.
Of course, there are other ways to limit this,
by creating characters that have roughly the same movement styles and roles as existing characters,
but that kind of clashes with one of Overwatch's greatest strengths, which is character diversity.
Ultimately, this added development cost isn't necessarily a bad trade-off,
because interesting maps are a huge part of what makes interesting FPS gameplay,
but the extra cost built into every character does mean that new characters will probably roll out more slowly.
Finally, there's one more way character asymmetry can affect a map design: conflicting player types.
What do I mean by this? Well, as a designer, You always have to consider who's actually playing your game,
and Overwatch presents a particularly thorny problem.
Because someone designing those maps has to ask themselves:
"Am I designing this for pickup groups, or am I designing this for pre-made teams?"
Because there's a huge difference in designing a play space that's fun for a well-oiled machine,
versus one that's fun for a grab bag of randos.
One of these teams coordinates their composition and positioning with great care.
Their Torbjörn has a turret in the optimal position at the match's start.
Their Reinhardt is already standing by to block incoming sniper fire,
while their Widowmaker is watching the sky for any of those pesky enemy Pharahs who might be considering raining down some unwelcome justice.
Meanwhile, the other team has three Reapers, two dangerously unqualified Hanzos,
and one poor Mercy who somehow has to keep this school field trip alive.
These are very different teams of players, and they require very different map design approaches,
and you can feel that tension in Overwatch's map design.
Because Blizzard can't really afford to leave either group behind if they want Overwatch to compete with the other big FPS games on the scene,
like CS:GO or TF2 or Call of Duty.
That said, I do sense that Blizzard is leaning more towards producing for coordinated teams,
perhaps with the hope that some meta will take hold, like it has in the MOBA world,
or even like you see happening to a much smaller degree in TF2.
Or perhaps their hope that they can use the character difficulty level to solve this problem,
and simply build more interesting uncoordinated brawl spaces for the simpler characters.
In the end, though, Overwatch is an interesting game to study as a designer thinking about asymmetric map design,
because that team clearly has the resources to do this right,
and they've sort of turned all the advantages and disadvantages of asymmetric map creation up to 11.
They've created maps that use the inherit imbalance of asymmetric map design
to create interesting tactical options and varied combat situations,
AND to try to create an actual design interest curve for their levels.
But they've created an even harder balance challenge for themselves in the process.
They've built in further asymmetries to provide amazing opportunities for each character from each side of the map,
but in doing so, they not only made themselves vulnerable to the possibility of more game balance landmines,
but also made the process of future character creation slower and more expensive.
AND on top of their map asymmetry, they've embraced the asymmetry of player types,
and built an amazing tactical experience for a fully assembled group into the very maps they make,
but that inevitably means they're sacrificing focus on the pick up group experience.
I trust Blizzard's capacity to walk the fine line that they've created for themselves, but succeed or fail,
I think the rest of us have an incredible amount to learn as designers from Overwatch.
Thanks for watching, we'll see you next week.