Blizzard's New Game.... OverWatch

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**Compel**

They can do but it's usually some sort of promotion thing (EG, hypothetically, they release a new character).

I had previously found that when Starcraft first came out, it was years and years before it dropped to a reasonable price.

**Melissia**

Ah. Then it'll be years and years before I get this game sadly :/

I can't justify 60 bucks for a purely multiplayer game (or one with a token five hour single player "campaign", in the case of most generic shooters) for the foreseeable future...

**Anvildude**

If you have a PC that can run it, the PC version is only 40, without the fancy stuff.

**Knight**

I've got Origin edition for 42€ from some third party site (keep in mind that most stores do flat dollar equals to euro conversion). Blizzard does sales during major events, Dreamhack, WCS series and Blizzcon comes to mind. Almost for sure, there will be some deal for OW once they start pushing their "e-sport" niche. I do think you'll find a better deal through some other site.

Meanwhile Jeff Kaplan dropped this one:

There's a lot going on right now. We're working on content patches throughout the rest of the year and into early 2017 currently. Of course we have long term plans, but we like to remain agile to respond to the current direction of the game and players' needs.

Our big focus right now is Competitive Play. We did a big push on this feature in beta and got some really amazing feedback. We were hoping that from the beta version of Competitive Play, we would need to do some polish and iteration and then release the feature but we felt like the feedback we got was basically asking for a different direction. So Competitive Play is quite a big effort for us this time around -- almost as much work as the first version. But it's really far along. We're playtesting it multiple times a day. We're also looking into/debating putting up a Public Test Realm for this feature so that we can test it in a larger environment before putting it live. Even when it goes live, I anticipate our first few seasons will require iteration on the feature. 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. I anticipate Competitive Play will require a few season's worth of iteration before we're in the place we want to be.

We're also working on new heroes right now. We have some that are very far along and others that are just getting started. We also have some prototype heroes that may or may not ever see the light of day. We do a lot of prototyping... I don't think we're at a point where I can really talk openly about the release schedule for the new heroes because I don't want to set expectations and then have something come up and suddenly we're backing out on a "promise" we never really made... if that makes sense.

We're also working on a few new maps right now. One of them is "officially" in our production pipeline as it has passed through enough prototyping and playtesting that we feel confident in it. So that map is in the hands of our art group at this time. They are busy making it look awesome and while they do that, we keep going back and playtesting it to make sure nothing changed between the early level design blockout and the final "artified" version of the map.

We have a few other maps that are in prototype and playtest phases right now. Some of them will become real maps and some of them will be totally scrapped -- so I can't really commit to you on those. For example, we tested a map yesterday that was amazing yet a total disaster at the same time. Aaron tried some very innovative level design tricks that we hadn't done before in OW. On the upside, the map was very unique. But the we ran into problems with sight lines and the map was basically dominated by long range heroes, leaving heroes like Reaper practically useless. So if we can fix the sight lines while not losing the overall vision, that map might turn into something some day.

So maps and heroes are being worked on daily. I wish I had dates for you but whatever date I gave you would change and then you'd all be mad at me. The good news is, like we've said before, for Overwatch, we won't be charging for those maps or heroes. Those will just be live updates that will come in a patch for free.

There are some other features that we have our eye on. For example, we want to make a lot of improvements to the spectator/broadcast/observer functionality in the game. The spectator feature has come a long way since the early days of beta but we know it can be improved. We've gotten tremendous feedback from people running tournaments and have a lot of good ideas how to make the game more watchable. We feel like some of these improvements will also benefit things like PoTG and Highlights as well once we get to them. These features are not being worked on heavily right now. We're more in a mode of design and planning around these. So there's not an immediate timeframe for the spectating stuff. But it's important to us and part of our daily conversation at this point.

We have a lot we want to do with Highlights and the PoTG as well. We would like to improve those features and there are a lot of cool ideas we want to see happen.

We talk a lot about the Brawls and Custom Games. These are really cool features that we feel like we haven't even fully scratched the surface with yet. We want to do a lot more with Brawls and there are some seriously awesome ideas from the team as well as the community that we want to get to. For Custom Games, we want to improve overall functionality but figure out a way for players to play more Custom Games with their friends or with strangers (for example, we're researching what a server browser-type feature would look like in OW). This is a ton of work so would not be on the immediate horizon. But in our dream world, you could play Custom Games with 11 other people (friends or strangers) with fun rules in play and gain EXP while doing it... so yeah.

There is more we want to do with the progression system eventually (this is more long term -- not immediate). We want to give you more customization options (we know people want to have random option for Poses for example). 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.

There's an endless list of social feature improvements we want to make. These will most likely make their way in "some at a time" each patch -- rather than as a huge feature. We want to continually improve the social experience. For example, in the upcoming patch that has Competitive Play, you can now instigate many of the social actions on another player any time you have mouse control -- so in Hero Select, Assemble your Heroes, end of round card screen etc. (obviously, PC description listed). It's a minor thing but makes a big difference. So ongoing social feature improvements. We cannot stress enough the game is best played with other people -- it's a team game.

There are a lot of tech initiatives going on. I'm not the best one to speak to those. Obviously, we're putting a lot of effort against our high bandwith Custom Game option to see if we can explore proliferating that feature further. That's a big tech effort that isn't really player facing most of the time. We make constant adjustments to our matchmaking system. We're reworking some of our internal architecture so that designers can prototype game modes more easily -- not exciting player-facing features but this is the kind of thing that leads to fun stuff for the players eventually.

And then there is a never ending amount of bug fixing. For example, we have a few bugs on consoles right now that drive us crazy. You cannot leave a game as a group. This needs to be fixed. Also, if a friend gets recommended to your group you get a dialogue telling you to press Y/N... which doesn't exist on a console controller. So this needs to be fixed. There are and will always be things like this that need to be fixed. So that's something we're always addressing. There is a large anti-cheat and anti-hack effort going on, but I can't really discuss that (the first rule of fight club...).

Obviously, there is a lot more going on -- stuff I am forgetting to mention as well as some surprises. I can't stress this enough: some of this stuff might not happen. The reason developers usually don't give insight like this is because if something changes or doesn't happen, players get very angry at us. I would like to change that dynamic but we need to do that together. We'll share more information with you guys so long as you understand none of this is a promise and things do change throughout the course of development. So when we see a "HOW COME WE DIDN'T GET THE HIGHLY PROMISED RANDOM POSE OPTION" rage post 2 years from now, please feel free to quote this paragraph in the reply...

We'd love to hear your thoughts on this stuff. We frequently change our focus based on what we're hearing out of the community! Hope that helps to give some clarity on what's going on here in Irvine, CA.

**Desubot**

PC master race is 40.

i think you could get your hands on a discount off amazon too for consols.

**Melissia**

Anvildude wrote:
If you have a PC that can run it, the PC version is only 40, without the fancy stuff.

It says 60 on the official site?

edit: ah, I see, the site defaults to the Origins version.

**Desubot**

Oh that, they have the first page set to the origin bundle for 60$

there should be tabs somewhere for the base game.

Sneaky gits they got like 3 of my friends to pay an extra 20.

though im jelly of the origin bastion skin

**Anvildude**

Yeah, that's about the only Origins skin I'd actually want. Aside from that, they're all too... people-y, if that makes any sense.

**Desubot**

Slipstream tracer is bitchin too but i actually really like the mach T one more.

so far got 2 legendary off boxes

joker junk rat and junker d-va

**Eumerin**

Anvildude wrote:
D.VA's Defense Matrix would be very worthwhile if it was a sort of alt-fire- either you shoot, or you shield, and you're slower at walking either way- but that would infringe on Reinhardt's shield.

Not really. The advantage that Rheinhardt's shield has is that he can protect others with it. For instance, Rheinhardt can use it to protect the escorted vehicle and allies on a section of map with a very narrow street. D.Va's shield only protects her.

**Ashiraya**

Dva's shield stops all enemy projectiles in the hologram area, no matter who they would have struck.

Putting an ulting Reaper or McCree inside the hologram after running up to them lets you lock them down even more than Reinhardt would.

**Wolfblade**

Ashiraya wrote:
Dva's shield stops all enemy projectiles in the hologram area, no matter who they would have struck.

Putting an ulting Reaper or McCree inside the hologram after running up to them lets you lock them down even more than Reinhardt would.

D.va however cannot stop a roadhog's pull with her hologram like Reinhardt's shield can

**Knight**

Shield can also block Mei's cold gun.

I think commander Morrison is the best skin from the Origin pack.

**Sidstyler**

As far as new heroes goes, honestly I kinda hope the roster doesn't grow too much. It would be harder to keep it balanced if it got too big, and I'd hate for it to get to the point where no one plays the original cast anymore because the new ones are always more interesting or just plain better. But I guess it would eventually get boring if they never added new ones.

**Chongara**

Melissia wrote:
Ah. Then it'll be years and years before I get this game sadly :/

I can't justify 60 bucks for a purely multiplayer game (or one with a token five hour single player "campaign", in the case of most generic shooters) for the foreseeable future...

It's $40 and here's how I see it.

I've paid more than that for games with "100s of hours of content" and novels worth of voice acting and side-quests. I then played them for about 15-20 hours of mediocre story quests, and then if it's a Bethesda title another 10-20 of Dicking around with mods. You know what? Those games, still worth it. Not a bad value as entertainment goes, it'd cost me more per hour to go to the movies or a stage show.

At the end of the day what I'm paying for is how much quality engagement I get with my entertainment. I've mostly found that multiplayer-only titles tend to deliver on that one way or another. I've already easily gotten a solid 30 hours of play out of Overwatch the majority of which have been really fun matches. Maybe 15% or so are duds but you can have a bad run in anything. I've also gotten at least 12 hours or so of really, really good time with my buddies. Heck the $40 price of admission was probably worth it just for one good night of playing with 5 of my friends laughing at the stupid memes in other players names. I've spent more than that on bad dates, or nights out where someone got sick and we had to go home early.

Of course all this is dependent on enjoying multiplayer shooters. Overwatch is awesome but it's not really a brand new type of experience. However, if you enjoy that sort of thing I put forward it's a great value proposition. It's hours of engaging fun, doubly so if you've got friends to join you. That value isn't diminished just because it takes place on a handful of maps instead of a giant open world, and with couple dozen characters that only talk in short quips instead of an epic campaign.

**Gamgee**

Sidstyler wrote:
As far as new heroes goes, honestly I kinda hope the roster doesn't grow too much. It would be harder to keep it balanced if it got too big, and I'd hate for it to get to the point where no one plays the original cast anymore because the new ones are always more interesting or just plain better. But I guess it would eventually get boring if they never added new ones.

They might do closed beta style testing or even open style testing on heroes before just throwing them out there. They want to make sure the hero is balanced as possible and a fun pick.

**Melissia**

Chongara wrote:
It's $40

It wasn't obvious at the time, but the reason it was 60 to me was that they presented the mid-tier version as the "standard" option on the website, not the 40 dollar version. I'm considering my options, and if nothing really interests me during the steam summer sale, I'll probably pick Overwatch up.

Chongara wrote:
Of course all this is dependent on enjoying multiplayer shooters.

I have over a thousand total hours in TF2 (including the time before Steam started recording hours played on games), about 300 in Blacklight: Retribution, 60 in Siege (whcih is only lower because my friends and I had our schedules slip apart so we can't play together as often as we could), 200 in Payday 2, another couple hundred in Tribes: Ascend, and about 45 in Planetside 2, which I'm still playing off and on. I like multiplayer shooters just fine.

Even still, 60 bucks is still too much for me. The game would need to be something fantastic that I can enjoy without needing to rely on other peoples' content in order for me to justify 60 bucks, because when I'm stressed out and want to dive in to a game to destress, the last thing I want is to have to rely on other people.

**Desubot**

I get the sentiment about too many heros though.

I hate when there is like 100 characters and a bunch of them have overlap in abilities and such.

but i think they could even out the amount they have.

its like 6 to 4 attack vs support.

Edit: @mel

the funny thing about it is in quick play, you basically dont have to rely on the team that much.
often times no one even really talks, which is kinda sad imho. but nearly every character has potential to wipe the enemy team.

**Chongara**

Melissia wrote:
Chongara wrote:
It's $40
It wasn't obvious at the time, but the reason it was 60 to me was that they presented the mid-tier version as the "standard" option on the website, not the 40 dollar version. I'm considering my options, and if nothing really interests me during the steam summer sale, I'll probably pick Overwatch up.

It's definitely worth trying. Heck it seems like everyone and their dog has the game, might be able to bum a round or two off a friend's machine before taking the dive.

Even still, 60 bucks is still too much for me. The game would need to be something fantastic that I can enjoy without needing to rely on other peoples' content in order for me to justify 60 bucks, because when I'm stressed out and want to dive in to a game to destress, the last thing I want is to have to rely on other people.

Fair enough. Nothing wrong with the value metric of "How much I can enjoy it without having to interact with anyone", very Yahtzee-esque. Just goes to show we all game for different reasons.

Edit: @mel

the funny thing about it is in quick play, you basically dont have to rely on the team that much.
often times no one even really talks, which is kinda sad imho. but nearly every character has potential to wipe the enemy team.

I'll talk, if someone else does first and they're being friendly about. Random online interactions always feel like a potential for a mine field. I don't wanna get pulled into argument some random neck beard, and every time I hear what is obviously a 12 year old kid online it's like "I don't want to be that guy who talks to little kids on the internet".

If i'm playing with my buddies we're pretty chatty. I've lost a fair number of matches because I was too because cracking jokes and apologizing for laughing into an open mic while I'm doing said laughing into open mic. That's another big part of it, I hate PTT because it totally messes with my flow. Random pubs have little tolerance for my breathing, the click-clack of my elephant hands slamming on the keys, or the birds outside my window. My friends don't love it either but it's not a dealbreaker with them and hey sometimes I buy them pizza.

**Melissia**

Like I said, I don't mind multiplayer games, but I've been stressed out lately and I really need more games like Fallout or Dungeons of Dredmor that I can just lose myself in. That said, Overwatch interests me enough that it may very well overcome this hurdle-- it just depends on what's on offer at the end of this month when Steam has their summer sale.

**Chongara**

Melissia wrote:
Like I said, I don't mind multiplayer games, but I've been stressed out lately and I really need more games like Fallout or Dungeons of Dredmor that I can just lose myself in. That said, Overwatch interests me enough that it may very well overcome this hurdle-- it just depends on what's on offer at the end of this month when Steam has their summer sale.

Fair word of warning, the hurdle may be bigger than it seems at first. For all the comparisons people draw with TF2, the game feels very different. The matches are much more intense & fast paced. The teams are small, the rounds are short and the characters are very killy. It's got this kind of pressure-cooker feel to it, I think most people in this thread could attest the feeling you get when you hear "Fire in the Hole!" *vroom* *vroom* *vroom*.

It's not just a game you can't play to relax, it's a game that's been designed wind up the player up.

**Melissia**

Blacklight:Retribution was quite a bit killier htan TF2 as well, as is Planetside 2 and such.

But how small are we talking about for teams? I don't expect 16x16 or 32x32 here, but is it smaller than the modern "standard" of 8x8?

**Chongara**

Melissia wrote:
Blacklight:Retribution was quite a bit killier htan TF2 as well, as is Planetside 2 and such.

But how small are we talking about for teams? I don't expect 16x16 or 32x32 here, but is it smaller than the modern "standard" of 8x8?

The matches are 6v6. Average round length of around ~10 minutes or so, with an upper bound of about 15 if it's a tight slug fest with lots of overtime. 5-8 minute matches are hardly uncommon.

In terms of killy-ness, while this example isn't typical and involves the enemy team failing to respond properly this kind of shows what the potential is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3ZEW6FNGnI

**Melissia**

Hmm. 6v6 is a rather small team indeed... still better than what I was fearing, at least (if it was 4v4 I'd drop all desire to play the game). I'll keep that in mind as I evaluate when I get the game.

**Knight**

SoloQ is stressful, I'm actually guilty of leaving matches as soon as we start to horribly lose (steam rolled is more accurate) or things just aren't working from the start. I don't care about exp gain. I just want to have positive play experience and some resemblance of teamwork.

I imagine once ranked is launched we're going to reach another level of bad manners and blaming. Having even only one friend to team up with and just have a good time can make all the difference.

6 is the team size for OW.

I am pleasantly surprised that I enjoy OW. Thought, like always, that I'm going to buy it for the fun art (Winston, Reinhardt, Zarya are so super cool looking heroes), play few matches and discover that it's not a game for my taste. I do like how you're constantly tested and encouraged to improve.

It's got this kind of pressure-cooker feel to it, I think most people in this thread could attest the feeling you get when you hear "Fire in the Hole!" *vroom* *vroom* *vroom*.

Best when you're playing Junkrat and it's not your ult!

I need to ask, is anyone else surrounded with friends who just don't care about OW, might be even salty ("it's only TF2 clone made by Blizztards?!").

**Desubot**

Honestly never had a bad stress moment in the game. getting steamrolled means the game will end fairly shortly.

do love the crazy moments when everyone ulties and charges a point. its stressful in a good way where everyone actually does a thing instead of poking from a distance to charge ulties.

**Necros**

When I hear Junkrat's tire, I go hide

Then I just come back and res whoever he killed since no one but me ever, ever, ever tries to shoot the thing.

I've also been ditching matches that are going nowhere too like if my team can't even get out of the starting area. But I think that's also the problem with having some kind of poor level design. I don't think there should ever just be 1 doorway to get out to the rest of the map.. though, those maps would go a lot better if people would get behind reinhart's shield and shoot the bad guys on the other end

**Desubot**

I dont think there is any map with a single door way choke point.

there is always 2-3 options at least. some that require wall climbers or jumpers most of the time.

you can do it with mei to some times.

**Chongara**

Desubot wrote:
Honestly never had a bad stress moment in the game. getting steamrolled means the game will end fairly shortly.

do love the crazy moments when everyone ulties and charges a point. its stressful in a good way where everyone actually does a thing instead of poking from a distance to charge ulties.

Right. I didn't meant to imply it was a bad kind of pressure, just that it's pressure. I've had few "Chuck the Controller" moments in overwatch, save the very frequent ones that come from me hitting WindowsKey instead of LeftShift. The maximum level of frustration I usually feel is "OK. This guys have payload allergy I'm going to hop off mercy and try to get some work done".

Just that unless we're really, really stomping the other team even 20s out of the action feels eerily silent. It's a constant barrage of stimulation with movement, sound effects going, you're always being shot at. Then that overtime music kicks in.

**Desubot**

The absolute only thing that pieves me is when blackwidows or hanzos just sit there while the enemy is capturing the point or not contesting for overtime.

flippin tunnel vision :/