Seagull is at the Overwatch Creator’s Residency at Blizzard Entertainment and is asking a lot of questions with Game Director Jeff Kaplan. I jumped in a little late but will catch up the list as quickly as possible.
- Jeff Kaplan is a good tank, but a TERRIBLE support.
- It took over a year to rebuild the matchmaker and the system to implement Role Queue
- There was a lot of “automation testing” where bots would queue for certain roles (in a closed environment)
- The development never wanted to force the Looking-for-Group tool to enforce player behavior.
- Hints at “Sigma” (suspect hero 31): “It’s a mystery, but not a mystery to me”
- Jeff: “I am less excited about hero bans” They consider it a “bottom-up” design and they believe that there were better ideas to control hero selection other than hero bans. He does not want players targeting other players and stop them from playing the heroes they want to play on.
- THE MATCHMAKING RATING SYSTEM WILL NOT HARD RESET! It will adjust to your new roles.
- Seagull: “When do we get Bikini Roadhog?” (Jeff evaded the question)
- Mystery heroes will remain in “chaos mode” (the ruleset we currently run on the Arcade). However, in Control Maps the next round will reset hero selections.
- Endorsements will soon be allowed on more modes including Mystery Heroes.\
- There is NO MORE SR DECAY for Diamond and higher players.
- Jeff Kaplan addresses the idea of a Ping System like Apex Legends and why it does not work for Overwatch.
- They believe that as new maps will be added, the Competitive Mode will eventually reduce the available map pool for Competitive Mode and we are “nearing that point” (there will not be any “map bans”)
- Seagull: “When will I see Zenyatta lore?” Jeff Kaplan: “SoonTM”
- Jeff Kaplan: “Please have faith in us, we will get this new system working right!”
- Kaplan stole Seagull’s phone!