Geoff appreciation thread

Hi Geoff, I have a question if it’s ok!

I’ve played Overwatch since day 1 pretty much, and play for hours a day, I play mainly support and love helping my team out and feeling like I contributed to the win in a supportive way.

I’ve mained Mercy since day 1, and I just want to say that I actually really love her rework and am glad that you took out Mass Rez and gave her a more active supportive ult like Valkyrie instead, it feels great to be able to contrtibute to my team while they are still alive!

I also think that the 60 HPS nerf was justified, she was doing a little too much healing compared to the other supports. But I was wondering, would you guys ever consider buffing her HPS up to 55 to see if it works as a nice middleground? It could be the extra “oomph” some Mercy players miss about her healing.

Or also, would you ever consider giving her an ability on her Reload button for her staff which temporarily boosts her healing output?

Thanks for being so active on this thread, cheers and keep up the good work! :heart:

7 Likes

Yeah, i thought so too but apparently, developers are fine. Be it positive or negative.
Just not specific players.

2 Likes

Proof that Geoff is actually evil.
No one with an ounce of good in them could design bosses that were so heinous (and have one of them be mathematically impossible to beat on it’s first iteration).
(Joking aside I actually didn’t know you designed those bosses).

On an entirely different note what is the current opinion on Sombra? Because she seems to be in a very weird spot at the moment and has been for a while now, straddling the line between UP and OP but never quite landing in the middle.
A lot of Sombra mains widely agree that the changes to stealth where kinda unwanted and the translocator change-whilst being nice-was also kinda unnecessary.
Are there any changes planned or are we stuck with her current state?

Interesting, thank you for the response! :slight_smile:

If you don’t mind me also asking, are the characters that were left unchanged in this “Mega-Patch” the ones you consider balanced/in a good spot?

We have a ton of unused ability and weapon prototypes sitting around. They’re generally either something we’ve tried on a hero in the past and didn’t like, or something we did like but didn’t feel like it fit right on the hero we were testing.

Some examples off the top of my head:

Bomblet Gun: We had this gun where the projectiles would stick into enemies, but the impact damage was pretty low. The alternate fire had a fairly long animation time but would remotely detonate all the little bombs you stuck into all your targets. It was pretty fun but we just need the right hero for it to work with (it was really fun playing around with it on Tracer!).

Invis Wall: This was originally on Sombra i think? The idea is you plant this wall that made it so enemies couldn’t see you though it, but you and your allies could see just fine. It didn’t block bullets like a barrier, it was just for hiding while running past a choke or just throwing into the middle of a fight. It was pretty scary to fight against when all these projectiles were just magically coming out of the thing but you couldn’t see who or where they were being fired from. It was like a high-tech smoke bomb, kind of.

63 Likes

I always thought it would be cool to try to do some sort of “tunneling” effect, where you could maybe temporarily destroy or remove a small part of a level to move or shoot through.

Honestly it’ll probably never happen due to immense tech issues, but it always seemed like it could be cool to see.

37 Likes

Have you considered increasing the friction on the grenades so that they bounce/roll less from the intended target location as a means to reduce the effectiveness of the spam? A lot of times I feel like the way I die to junkrat is not from being unable to dodge the grenades he throws at me, but because they ended up bouncing off geometry in a weird way I wouldn’t expect and eventually roll back up to be from behind.

3 Likes

How do u feel about Doomfist now?

1 Like

I think tunneling is something that could be somewhat mimicked through interactive maps, like passageways that can be opened or closed through certain map interactions (i.e. shooting a generator to close a door, or something like that). It’d be a very interesting mechanic to have. Is that something that has been discussed at all, and if so, what are some reasons that we haven’t seen it [yet] in the game?

Good lord, you’re telling me Sombra could have had THIS?

13 Likes

Yo that actually sounds pretty cool

Could this come back as a “charging” mechanic? Like, holding down shift to charge the thrusters at the expense of no shields being held up?

2 Likes

while the recentish buffs to roadhog were very good it just made him a better character he still lags behind every other off tank by a huge margin, i am curious any chance of changes for him? honestly imo he just needs a passive so he doesnt feed so much even the best players in the world(in owl) cant make him work cause he is impossible not to feed with

or maybe give him some form of utility since both d.va and zarya have a tonne of utility and hog has none

1 Like

Sounds both really awesome and extremely frustrating to deal with lol

Remove oneshoting from hanzo and widow. Then add something in compensation like

Widow should have same ashe damage scoope and you can give to widow a damaging ultimate.
Hanzo arrows damage can be reduced and give him something in exchange

But yeah man please remove the oneshoting of this chars

revert back to the 0.3 projectiles please

3 Likes

One huge thing that sits in Sym main’s minds is the teleporter. Are you looking at buffing it / making it more consistent? (Entry porter placement, activation time, interact radius, etc.) Also the railings interaction (goes for shadow step too.)

We’d really love to know if the teleporter concerns are known to the dev team.

Bonus question: Ever thinking about returning shielding (blue HP providing) to Sym in some form? A shield aura would be awesome. Shielding was cool due to being unique to Sym and to many of us, it was a defining part of her identity.

10 Likes

You should focus on reducing one shot abilities (not speaking about combos) from the game because it’s one of the reasons that cause frustration. It just doesn’t work in a game like OW and the same goes to CC (talking about Mei especially)

1 Like

Geoff as a Sombra main i want to give a shout out to you guys for working on her hack visuals on the PTR. This is very appreciated!

However, I’m curious if you have considered adding the timer skull for hacked enemies, as it is very inconsistent compared to her hack on other stuff like healthpacks and turrets.

Is there a reason why you didnt give hacked enemies the same visuals?

4 Likes

Other then how people view Symmetra 3.0, or even my own feelings, how do the devs feel about her? Are y’all happy? Or even, do you feel like she lost something similar to how you said Hanzo has lost something special to him.

Otherwise I’m happier with her then ever, I do miss giving shields though.

2 Likes

Appreciate the rawness of your answer, especially considering that in effect the buff was overall beneficial to game balance but that you still wish he were changed in other ways in order to tell him apart from the other sharp shooters.

Have you considered possibly incorporating some variation of his old scatter arrow or adding a curved arrow so that he still has to rely more on prediction for his primary fire, but can catch certain opponents off guard if he positions himself correctly for these alternate fire modes?

Again thanks for sharing some these insights into what goes on in the design process. :+1:

2 Likes