Jeff said there were reasons for the lack of comics this year, but they have plans for more comics:
Jeff Kaplan: We love story content - obviously the animated shorts have been fantastic. A lot of people have been asking about comics, they’re like, “It’s been ages since, you know, you guys have done comics.” We are very interested in doing more comics and we actually have a plan for how we want to do more comics and exactly what the comics would be. And there’s a lot of good reasons that I’m not going to get into why the comics kinda slowed down for a little bit, but we are excited about comics and talking about comics again.
Source: https://clips.twitch.tv/GorgeousFriendlyDurianDerp
So don’t despair - 2018 was just a rough year, and it doesn’t represent a new status quo. The comics will return.
14 Likes
I feel like they might push for actual retail 22 page comic series. They got a leauge and official cereal it wornt be the craziest thing.
4 Likes
Believe it when we get more than 1 cinematic in two years that progresses the story.
6 Likes
“We love story content so much” a literal year passes without a whisper
14 Likes
We did get retribution to be fair, i know it didnt progress the story but it was leaps and bounds better than the already fantastic uprising.
Id honestly rather them do little lore events and replace the summer games, lunar new year and winter wonderland with small less grandiose lore related mini games.
4 Likes
Wow, an actual Developer comment on the story/comic departement.
I though reddit would get this one from the pre-event Questions, since it was #1 question upvoted (180+ points).
But since they didn’t/dodged the question, I guess this would tell that indeed they are slowing down on the story.
Jeff also commented on the game’s engine being incapable of handling huge pve game modes. Retribution took a year to make, so it’s a lot of work.
Yeah I had a feeling something was going on, since this year felt so dry. I wonder what those good reasons are for such an empty year, but I guess it’s none of our business?
1 Like
Retribution was really incredible. It sucks that it took them a year to create, but hopefully they can find a way to make those kinds of things faster. Seems like they are working on some heroes faster, by the sounds of it, but not sure.
They should replace Summer Games and Lunar New Year, but Halloween and Winter Wonderland should stay, in my opinion.
5 Likes
The upside is, now that they’ve taken that time to create their PvE engine, future PvE modes should (in theory) take less time and resources to develop.
4 Likes
I’ll believe it when I see it. The first developer update of the new year 2018, Jeff promised we’d be seeing a lot more of the story and, well, we see how that turned out…
2 Likes
I dunno, I absolutely loved Retribution. I love the fact we got to learn more about pre-Reaper Reyes and the slow descent from what he was.
However, I do admit, i’d have liked…no-LOVED a lot more lore. The comics provided some lore also as well as in game interactions but not story - past or progression.
It’d be nice if we could read the comics in game - not everyone realizes its out there! A lot of people don’t realize Sombras name is Olivia, for example 
4 Likes
The saddest part of this thread is that it’s clear people loved retribution, but that’s a once a year event and everything outside of that is rehashed events with less and less content.
But they just waive it off with “But we’ve improved the PvE engine and hope to get more story out now :)”
Everything was in decline this year, with the one exception of the archives event: Retribution
1 Like
What worries me the most, is that they said that the Junkrat and Roadhog short was relatively easy and quick to make. They were supposed to be making more shorts like that moose because it was so quick and easy to make.
We see how that happened…
I hope that this year truly was just a slow year and that next year will be much better for the lore.
1 Like
“We have a lot of good reasons for why we didn’t put out many comics”
Well? What are they?
It’s like a kid saying “I have many reasons for why I ate your cookies” but then never list them
2 Likes