Table of Contents
Table of Contents
The perks of being a hero
Turn and face the unusual, ch-ch-changes
Since its launch, Blizzard’s free-to-play hero shooter Overwatch 2 has been by means of some severe peaks and valleys. Originally pitched as a sequel that may exist alongside the beloved authentic recreation and supply a brand new, layered PvE mode that expanded upon its hero’s skills, the sport gamers bought in October 2022 was very completely different.
Overwatch 2 changed the unique recreation totally, eliminated a participant from each match (going from 6v6 to 5v5), and by no means delivered the promised PvE mode. The free-to-play swap got here with accusations of predatory pricing and pay-to-win schemes, and again in August 2023, Activision Blizzard even admitted gamers had been enjoying and spending much less.
In latest months, Marvel Rivals, NetEase’s free-to-play hero shooter set within the comedian e book universe, has been consuming Overwatch 2’s lunch, boasting larger participant depend and retention than different latest live-service titles like Helldivers 2 and Diablo IV. In the face of a dwindling participant depend, a annoyed core base, and the success of a direct competitor, Blizzard has to reinvigorate Overwatch 2 — and that’s precisely what the studio is doing.
Season 15: Honor & Glory Official Trailer | Overwatch 2
Season 15 (which launches on February 18) and 16 (due in April) will introduce huge modifications to the hero shooter that dwarf something we’ve seen in its almost decade-long historical past, from perks that add 4 new skills to every hero in each Quick Play and Competitive modes, to Stadium, a wholly new mode that provides much more selection amongst a choose roster of heroes.
I traveled to Blizzard’s headquarters in Irvine, California for the Overwatch 2 Spotlight occasion, to check out the brand new perks, new high-skill harm hero Freja, and the Stadium mode, in addition to chat with the builders about how they’re not being so treasured with the Overwatch legacy.
The perks of being a hero
Overwatch’s gameplay has all the time been outlined and tailored by its ever-growing hero roster. During Overwatch 1’s peak, gamers had been annoyed with a preferred group structure of three tanks and three assist heroes (generally often known as GOATS), which persevered till Blizzard launched Role Queue, limiting the roles to 2 of every per group. An older model of assist hero Mercy (wherein she might sweep in and immediately resurrect a number of lifeless teammates without delay) created the “Moth Meta,” which Overwatch 2 lately introduced again as a limited-time mode. Balancing the sport has been a precariously troublesome process since 2016, as including a beefy new tank might simply up-end the sport’s meta, whereas barely tweaking a DPS character might trigger chaos.
But with the introduction of perks in Season 15, Overwatch 2 provides a layer of depth and participant alternative that can fully change how the sport is performed and additional complicate its delicate steadiness. Each hero will get 4 completely different perks — a set of two minor ones and one other two main ones. Minor perks are thought-about smaller upgrades, like an replace to assist hero Lucio’s knockback means that will increase its power, or giving bow-and-arrow hero Hanzo the power to hack close by well being packs along with his arrows.
Blizzard
Major perks dramatically shift a personality’s core gameplay loop, like healer Moira’s Ethical Nourishment, which makes her biotic orbs instantaneously heal close by allies after she throws them, or D.Va’s Heavy Rockets, which substitute her micro missiles with fewer, however far more highly effective, projectiles.
As a match progresses, you’ll earn progress in direction of the perk improve, tracked by a bar within the backside left nook (Blizzard says the primary perk is often earned a few third of the best way by means of a match). When you attain the edge, you’ll be prompted to decide on between one in all two perks, which you’ll be able to convey up with both the D-pad in your controller or the left Alt key on a keyboard.
I solely bought an opportunity to play a number of matches with this new perk system, but it surely’s clear that it fully turns Overwatch 2 gameplay on its head, permitting gamers an opportunity to method the right way to play a personality in new and various methods and including flexibility to a gameplay loop that has lengthy felt all-too-rigid. It will transform how each single match is performed, an important adjustment contemplating how lengthy the sport has felt a bit stagnant, or far too secure.
It may also, naturally, be controversial.
“There’s definitely some upfront friction, like getting used to it and remembering it’s there,” lead gameplay designer Alec Dawson says throughout a gaggle interview. “But you’ve played Reinhardt hundreds and hundreds of times, and you’re gonna play him a bunch now and you’re gonna get used to his perks for that season.”
Yes, the perks might change from season to season based mostly on participant suggestions and information Blizzard collects from this groundbreaking replace, however don’t fret — Dawson reassures us that the group needs to offer this new characteristic area to breathe.
“I think it’s exciting,” he says. “I think there’s always been this sort of ethos that I’d like to follow where we should be a little scared of what we’re putting out there … I think that perks are going to be a lot for players to learn, and we’re going to be monitoring how that happens over time and just seeing how that balance plays out.”
Blizzard has traditionally been quite treasured with Overwatch’s core gameplay loop — till now.
Turn and face the unusual, ch-ch-changes
If it appears like perks had been impressed by the once-promised, long-dead PvE mode introduced by then-game director Jeff Kaplan again in 2019 (which included talent timber that may let gamers customise hero skills), that’s as a result of they had been.
“There’s some talents that ended up becoming perks, there’s some stuff from [the April Fools game mode] that ended up becoming perks, or stuff from [Halloween mode] Junkenstein’s Revenge that ended up becoming perks,” Dawson responds after I ask if the canned PvE mode impressed this main overhaul. “There’s a lot of ideas that we had in the past throughout the many years of our experimentation that ended up in this system.”
Blizzard not needs to be “too precious” or too draconian in its notion of what makes an Overwatch match an Overwatch match. The abandonment of the protecting, nostalgic child gloves hamstringing the hero shooter opens up the ground for thrilling new alternatives that the dev group is clearly very enthusiastic about.
We’ve been planning to take some huge swings for some time.
Stadium is a superb instance of the rule-breaking enjoyable Blizzard is having with Season 15. The brand-new recreation mode blows the lid off of Overwatch gameplay with an MMO-style armory system that allows you to buy hyper-specific power-ups and skills for every of the out there heroes (I performed with 14, however there will likely be 17 at launch, together with fan-favorites like Reaper, D.Va, Moira, Orisa, and extra). These skills are way more absurd than the bottom recreation’s perk methods (although there may be some overlap) and embody diabolical choices like mounting Torbjorn’s turret on partitions, giving Reaper the power to fly, and permitting Bastion to self-heal as soon as once more.
After choosing your loadout, you’ll enter right into a sequence of shorter, smaller matches based mostly on typical modes like Push and Control, with the primary group to hit 4 wins taking the W. You may even play the mode in third-person, a characteristic that Blizzard’s character artists are tickled pink over contemplating how a lot work they put into cosmetics.
During my transient time with Stadium, I found how irritating it may be to get locked into a personality when the opposite group has the proper counter for it: I attempted to play D.Va towards a fully dominant Zarya to no avail, although apparently Blizzard has sorted this imbalance out in a more-recent patch. It will even have its personal rating system scored in another way from the opposite modes, cleverly tapping into the Overwatch neighborhood’s aggressive nature.
Blizzard
In 2025, greater than two years after its launch, it appears like Overwatch is embracing the enjoyable, chaotic nature of its earlier days. Is this lastly taking place as a result of Marvel Rivals, which has all of the anarchy of a 2016 Overwatch match and nearly no matchmaking friction, is doing so effectively? Though the group insists this way more versatile method to gameplay mechanics and changes has nothing to do with the runaway success of Marvel Rivals, it definitely appears like one thing prompted Blizzard to throw the child D.Va out with the bathtub water.
“We’ve been planning to take some big swings for a while,” senior recreation designer Dylan Snyder says when requested about this inflow of latest methods and modes.
Suspiciously fortuitous timing apart, these upcoming Overwatch 2 modifications are a crisp gust of recent air, particularly for lapsed gamers resembling myself. When Season 15 launches on February 18, I’ll be diving again in to see if the aggressive scene is much more pleasing with a number of latest perks shaking up the system.