This interview was released today. It’s an interview with Goodman, concerning the Sombra changes. It’s probably something that could have been said to the forums directly. Here are a couple of snippets from that article that just don’t make sense.
"The Sombra changes, I was a little surprised with the feedback online where people thought it was an overall nerf,” lead designer Geoff Goodman tells me. “We gave her a lot of buffs and a lot of nerfs at the same time. The Sombra changes are a lot about giving her more flexibility in how she plays, and that flexibility gives her a lot more power.”
First off, when Sombra was released to the PTR it was an outright nerf. I don’t know how anyone can think quadrupling the area she can be detected in, making her slower, and having her 5 HP translocator scream its position thrugh walls was a buff just for making a couple timers longer.
Second, the Sombra changes don’t make her more flexible, they physically make her gameplay slower. As I’ve said dozens of times before, anything Sombra can do with the PTR changes she can already do Live. For more on this, see So I guess this means there's one more week to give you feedback that you won't read on why Sombra's changes suck - #27 by Xaron-1831 or Infinite Stealth is NOT Powerful - #116 by Evolixe-2290
“It just seemed like this intense game of micromanagement and these timers, and you often have these situations where you slightly mistime something,” Goodman explains. “None of that is the fun of being invisible and shooting people and hacking people.”
Only bad Sombra players lose the game of timers. Sombra is unique in having to manage twice as my clocks as anyone else, not just the cooldown timer but a duration on all of her abilities. Yeah sure everyone makes a mistake sometimes, but you get good at it.
I want to know how “being invisible” is considered fun. You can’t shoot people, you can’t hack people, on the PTR you can’t even contest an objective. What’s “fun” about being invisible when your hands are literally tied until you leave invisibility?
“The way it originally started, I was like, ‘How far can we actually push this invisibility?’,” Goodman remembers. “So we doubled it and tried that, but we was like, ‘Is this really much different to being infinite?’"
“So we tried infinite on both the translocator and the stealth… and it was just so game-changing for her – the ability to stealth, get where you want and be in position.”
Just because something doubled makes it feel infinite doesn’t mean push it to infinite. Stealth with 10 seconds of duration wouldn’t need the nerfs given to infinite stealth out of fear of it being “too powerful.”
Sombra’s entire kit is built around getting into position. It’s something she’s NEVER had an issue with. Buffing (well, not really a buff since she moves slower) her ability to get into position while nerfing her ability to reposition is frankly stupid. As I mentioned earlier, this can all be done on Live. Sombra can already easily get into whatever position she wants using Stealth and she can hold that positionn with Crouch.
“Because she’s so much about timing – you get that hack just as your team are coming in or you get that damage on an enemy Zenyatta just after he takes a sniper body shot. You can pop out because you’re right there, not waiting for your stealth to recharge. It’s so much more fun to play her this way.”
Waiting for stealth to recharge? It’s cooldown? You’re always going to be waiting for stealth to go off cooldown; this doesn’t change that.
All in all, there seems to be a huge disconnect between what we say and why it’s being said, and what the devs hear. I think this article goes to show how deeply that Disconnect runs.