An inside look at the ping system in Overwatch 2

[Kaedi-11739]

@HULK-23345

The ping system idea was initially rejected by the overwatch team.

It was stated that having such a system in a game like this would clutter the screen.

I wonder what changed to have the developers change their mind?

Their initial concerns at the time was the amount of spam a ping system could have. Here is the original quote.

@JeffreyKaplan

Respawn did such a good job with the Ping System in Apex Legends. It works really well.

Back in early development of Overwatch, we actually had a very similar ping system. Ours was inspired from MOBA’s like League of Legends and Heroes of the Storm.

We eventually removed it because of a few issues.

1. With 6 people on the team, it got very spammy if more than a few people were using it
2. The geography of Overwatch maps as well as the engagement distances is fairly constrained. This made pinging upwards challenging and often frustrating. An example is standing at the gate of point A of Temple of Anubis and trying to ping the upper ledge above the gate entering point B. Our engagement distances tend to be in the 10-30 meter range (for perspective it’s about 45 meters all the way across the entire dojo in Hanamura B). In Apex, you have very long engagement distances and very big maps… it makes it easier to ping below you

It would be fun to revisit the system and see if we could make something like that workable. We do have some designs for improvements and customization to the communication wheel that we’re trying to get in. But we’re always appreciative of feedback and suggestions.

@ĿȀŖǠǂ1ǾǂƑPŜǃ-2660

Maybe the main defining feature of OW3 will be a mini map.

Right now there is no recent hints that a mini-map will ever be a thing in Overwatch.

@Game Director Jeff Kaplan

We deliberately avoided adding a minimap. In games like CoD, HotS and LoL the minimap becomes an absolutely crucial, strategic advantage for those who divide their time looking at it. We also wanted to reserve “enemy awareness” moments for certain hero abilities like Widowmaker’s ultimate or Hanzo’s Sonar Arrow.

We do plan to add a spectator map for a better esports viewing experience. But philosophically we were opposed to adding a minimap to the HUD for gameplay reasons.

Source: https://mystgraphics.com/overwatchforumarchive/general-minimap2.html