Aaron Keller and Alec Dawson jetted across the globe to meet with Overwatch fans and brought back inspiration, motivation, and a new appreciation for community.
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I would also like to travel…back in time to before hero bans and map voting
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These discussions were a beautiful reminder of how meaningful a game like Overwatch can be to people
I want to snark. But all I’m going to say is you guys need to remember when OW wasn’t just a game, it was a phenomenon. There were womens movements named after characters and an environmental cleanup initiative for heavens sake.
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The days of Overwatch as a global phenomenon are long gone, squandered on esports dreams and crippled by poor management.
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I remember only two things about the Hong Kong affair (and how it ended isn’t even one of them):
- Mei Overwatch
- The guy who got arrested for deflecting the firehoses with a giant spoon
Overwatch used to be Spoon Guy relevant. Now it’s just pretending to be anime and Hasbro relevant.
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Which community? It would seem as if they have forgotten about the players that actually play the game and not just the whales who buy every cosmetic they throw out.
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Loving the blog posts. Glad the devs got a good boost from the travels and I’m excited for the future.
Not that I have numbers but every time I hear “dead game” it makes me laugh as I think people genuinely don’t appreciate how big Overwatch still is across the world.
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really? i must have missed all those
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I imagine that seeing the world like this, and experiencing the love for Overwatch from different countries around the globe must feel full-circle for the team. Making heroes of different backgrounds and cultures, and then experiencing them first-hand has to feel so fulfilling. That’s awesome.
Coming away from that lesson, I can now say that we’re happily pursuing this cadence as the general direction for the “Overwatch year.” We aim to kick the year off with something huge that changes the way people think about playing the game and I think we’re getting comfortable making these bigger and bigger each year. We also want to follow that excitement up with a mid-year season that doubles down on those features and emphasizes improvements to existing gameplay elements.
This is a pretty good cadence, IMO. I think it’s good to make changes and then refine to see if it’s something that could work. I do hope that the team avoids sunk-cost decisions. If something is really not landing, I’m hoping we see that it doesn’t start to feel like it’s being forced to try to work, and that there still remains flexibility in those decisions. Otherwise, I do like when things get shaken up. It makes things feel exciting and fresh. I like that that feeling of, “no one knows anything because we’re experiencing this new thing together”. It’s like when OW2 launched.
I do want to be honest in that there are some outliers, though…like the big changes you made with perks. They’re a great addition, but I do feel that the heroes who already seemed favored by the team were favored significantly with perks (Sojourn, Tracer, Ana) while others have a significant drawbacks (Junkrat, for example). Some heroes were already strong, and they got strong perks. While average heroes got average (or subpar) perks. It does feel like it widened the gap.
I hope that big changes don’t continue this trend. I feel like part of the vision for perks was that you could pick heroes around their counters and unfavorable interactions to even out the one-sided nature, but I feel like it only reinforced that more. So while you create more high-octane moments and high-impact changes, I do sincerely hope that you don’t continue widening this gap. It makes people look at the heroes that keep getting favored with more disdain. I would say Sojourn is a prime example…I do not think the team understands how many people at all levels of play do not like this hero, but the changes and the updates regarding her are shared as if the majority of the community loves her. But, on Twitter, Reddit, in GM+, in pro play…the majority do not. 
So I hope that the big changes start to either address that, or at the least do not conflate it.
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If you guys are going to continue experimenting with the game on a yearly basis, it would be nice if you could leave Overwatch 1 readily available for those who fell in love with the game as it was. (Track playtime for it, too. That’s why I didn’t play much of the “October 2020” version of Overwatch Classic.)
From changes to hitboxes and health pools to additions like Perks, the game just feels worse to play. As a Tracer main, it was annoying being insta-killed by random headshots from Ashes and Meis before Season 9, but that was the high-risk, high-reward type of balance that kept them largely untouched for years, save for a few tweaks to their weapon damage. Now, I have to wait an additional second to recall-- which changes a lot more than you would think-- all because you guys decided that I should get a buff half-way through a match that lets me blink two more times after recalling? If I wanted to become more powerful throughout a match with numerous ways to change my hero, I would play Stadium, which I actually enjoy much more than the core game these days.
Everything in the new Overwatch’s gameplay is gimmicky. Everything in the new Overwatch’s lore is especially contradictory and uninspired. Even skins, the main selling point to just about every season, are often half-baked and don’t even fit the characters they’re given to. Sure, Aaron, you may have “saved” this franchise, but looking at what it had to become for that to happen, I’m starting to think it was better off dead anyway. If it wasn’t for this game and its universe being my special interest, I would have left a long time ago.
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Fix the damn matchmaker Aaron. You have no idea how terrible it is outside of ranked.
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We aim to kick the year off with something huge that changes the way people think about playing the game and I think we’re getting comfortable making these bigger and bigger each year.
honestly I’m not really sure what else they could do with pvp that’d be on the same level as perks. Really has me curious
Honestly don’t think those levels are possible again. OW was the last big shooter before fortnite introduced the modern live-service era. Even if OW3 came out and it was perfect I don’t think it’d be possible to get that many eyeballs onto a shooter again given how many competitors there are now with captive audiences
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https://dotesports.com/overwatch/news/ecopoint-the-environmental-project-inspired-by-overwatch-keeps-growing
https://www.polygon.com/2017/1/26/14376436/overwatch-womens-march-dva/
Really was something to see a game inspire people like that.
Me neither, but I really wish they’d at least aspire.
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i agree i alyways wanted to play to original and i never got to, i want to see for myself what this game had a shadow that is replaced by ow2, and also for blizzard it would make tons of cash like wow classic it worked for them really good the team is possible of bringing back the original they can not add content and just of archieves it would be still good for people that never got to play ow 1
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I like hero bans, I don’t like map voting. We should only be able to choose maps of a single mode. We shouldn’t choose between modes
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I’m so grateful. I love the Overwatch universe and I’m proud to be a part of it. Thank you. 
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Can they travel to a different job?
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Mystery Heroes mentioned. Automatic 10/10 post.
Also, please bring back competitive Mystery Heroes.
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I’m fullt invested in how you guys can surprise us, this season has been insanely good so far.
The team has been working fast to fix the bigger problems and the things majority of people didn’t like, the no mirror draft is a prove of that.
I’m hyped to see what the future holds for the Overwatch IP!
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This is a good suggestion!
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