Hi, everyone. This is Jeff with the Overwatch Team.
Really excited to be back here in 2020
for our first Developer Update.
So, everyone on the Overwatch Team
listens to and gets a ton of feedback about the game,
and we love hearing from you.
And in the past few months, I would say -
this isn't based on science -
there are 2 topics that come up the most, that we hear of the most.
One is, "What's the team's philosophy on balance?
And could the team balance the game more frequently and/or better?"
That comes up a lot -
a lot of discussion about the balance of gameplay and hero balance.
And then the other thing that we hear a lot of feedback and comments on
is the concept of the meta of the game:
"What heroes are played?
Are there other heroes that are viable to be played at any time?
And what could the Overwatch Team do
to make sure that the meta was moving along more fluidly and more frequently?"
So, I want to spend today's Developer Update
talking about some things that we're doing very soon
that will address these 2 points -
balance and the meta.
So, let's start with balance.
I think everybody's interested in balance in some way or another.
In the past, the Overwatch Team has faced some criticism
for being a little bit slow when it comes to our balance patches.
We've often heard that players want to see balance more frequently,
they want us to try more things,
they want us to be more aggressive with changes,
they want us to be willing to revert changes
that the community perceives as not being good.
We have tried to use the Public Test Realm in the past to test some balance changes,
but as you know, things stay on the PTR -
the Public Test Realm - for quite some time,
and we don't always make a lot of dramatic changes
once something makes its way to the Public Test Realm.
We have something that I think is really cool and really exciting
in the pipe, and in the works, that will be coming soon to Overwatch,
which is called the Experimental card.
So, our main play cards, as you know,
there's Quick Play, Competitive, the Game Browser,
which we call our main play cards.
Every now and then, coming in the future,
you will see a card pop-up that says "Experimental."
This Experimental card will be some number of changes.
They might be related to hero balance, they might be related to other things.
We could be testing changes to the way one of our game modes works,
like the Control game mode and how it works in Competitive.
It doesn't have to be balance-related.
But the Experimental card will come up every now and then
when we want to test something,
and it will give all players of Overwatch...
Not just players who want to go to the PTR, but all players,
including console players,
will be able to use the Experimental card
to test changes out that we're trying as a development team.
The really cool thing about the Experimental card
is because it is in the main game of Overwatch
and not some separate Public Test Realm,
you'll still be leveling up your Overwatch account,
you'll still get rewards.
If we were running something like - if you remember, way back when -
we had D.Va's Nano Cola Challenge,
and if you got 9 wins we gave you a skin, that would apply.
If the Experimental card was up,
those wins would count in the Experimental card.
So, we feel like players will be rewarded.
You don't have to change your behavior.
It should drive a lot more players to helping us test out changes.
Also, unlike the Public Test Realm,
the point of the Experimental card is not stability and bug testing.
That's not what we're looking for in the Experimental card.
We're looking at gameplay changes,
and player reactions to those gameplay changes.
So, we really welcome all of you to check this out.
It's going to take us a few weeks to get the first Experimental card up,
so please be patient with us,
but you'll notice it when we add it to the game.
And we really welcome -
in addition to our PC players who have been helping us test
on the Public Test Realm -
really welcome the entire console community
to now help us try out new and fun ways of playing Overwatch
and providing us with feedback.
Along with the Experimental card,
we're also going to change our balance philosophy,
which is going to be: balance more frequently,
more aggressively,
and be less concerned with trying something out
and maybe pulling it back later.
So, that's a change.
We're going to try some pretty aggressive balance changes.
We are going to deliberately target the meta.
Before, we used to balance with stability in mind -
stability of the entire game, all players in mind.
Now we are going to balance more aggressively targeting the meta,
and moving you off of the meta as frequently as possible,
which means some heroes might get buffed,
some heroes might get some changes to make them weaker.
When that happens, we might revert it a few weeks later.
So, be looking for this type of balancing to happen.
Be looking for changes in the Experimental card,
some of which will never go live.
Just because you see it on the Experimental card
doesn't mean it's going to happen in Overwatch.
These are some balance changes that are going to be different
and coming soon to Overwatch,
and all of this is based on what we've been hearing from you.
We've been hearing this is what you want.
You want us to balance more frequently,
you want us to target the meta,
you want these changes to happen more often,
and you want us to include you in the process more.
So all of this is designed to address that feedback.
Now, I'd like to talk about Season 21 of Competitive for a minute.
Season 21 of Competitive,
we are going to try something
that's going to be very new and very different
to help move players off of the meta,
or to prevent players from stagnating on any one meta too long.
Coming with Season 21 -
which begins in March, so you have some time to prepare for this -
coming with Season 21,
we will be introducing to Competitive only -
this will not affect Quick Play, it will not affect any of the Arcade modes -
we will be introducing hero pools.
Like we have map pools,
what hero pools mean is for that week -
and the hero pool will only last for one week,
and then there will be a new hero pool -
there will be some heroes that will not be included in the hero pool.
For example, in the first week of the hero pool -
let's say Season 21 had just started -
maybe Orisa, Sigma, Mei and Moira are not in the hero pool.
So players will have to think of a new strategy
that doesn't involve those heroes,
and that will last for one week,
and then the hero pool will change.
Again, this is Competitive only.
This is targeted at keeping the meta fluid,
or the meta from stagnating,
and really getting to more hero diversity.
Now, we know there are some challenges with this concept.
This is what I would consider to be something
that we would be willing to change
if we don't feel like it's going correctly.
We could make the hero pools last longer,
we can make the hero pools move faster,
we can make the hero pools change every match.
There are all sorts of ways that we could adjust on this,
but, starting with Season 21,
we're going to start it with a weekly hero pool.
Very exciting is that the Overwatch League is excited about this idea as well,
and they will be implementing a version of hero pools as well,
and the Overwatch League will be releasing a blog
describing how they approach hero pools.
And they were very excited to see the meta moving more frequently, also.
Also, I just want to say how excited for the 2020 season -
which is starting soon for the Overwatch League - we all are.
So, as you can see, there are some very big changes coming to Overwatch.
As always, we are listening to you,
and if we feel like any of these things aren't working out,
well, we're always open to change and iteration.
We have that Experimental card,
we have hero pools coming to Season 21.
Now, that's not all.
As always, there's a huge anti-cheat effort going on.
It's in my best interests and the game's best interests
not to discuss the details of what's happening for anti-cheat,
but we have some major things in the next 2 patches
going in to address anti-cheat.
And, as always, all of the reports are super helpful to us.
Please keep those coming. We really love your help with anti-cheat.
We have a big Workshop update,
which we'll be releasing either a blog post or a forum post about,
so you can read all of the details there.
There are some other fun quality-of-life things coming down the pipe.
Pretty soon there's going to be some great improvements to replays.
You're going to be able to pin a replay.
So if one of your 10 replays is very special to you
and you want to save it for that patch,
you can pin it and always go back to it.
And we're working on the ability for you to share your replays with other players,
where they could play your replay in their version of Overwatch.
I think this will be really fun for content creators in particular.
You'll be able to do really cool things
with some shared replays from your communities.
I think that will be really great.
And we've got some quality-of-life improvements coming to the Career Profile
that some of you have been asking for for ages.
So, Career Profile, it's going to get a major overhaul for Overwatch 2,
but that's way further down the pipe.
That's not in the immediate future.
But for the current Overwatch game,
we want to do a light refresh of the Career Profile
and clean up some things that have been bothering a lot of us for some time.
So, in the meantime,
we're going to have some things like the ability to sort player icons
coming to the Career Profile in the next few months.
So, that's a lot of what we're working on for the live game right now.
I know you're going to give us a ton of feedback and I can't wait to hear it all.
We're really excited,
I think most of all for this Experimental card,
because it will let so many of you help us make the game better.
Thank you for everything, and let's hope we have a great 2020.