give me the random skin one wyoming…in bold pls
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A follow up question about Cross Play and Progression:
Q: How would it be more difficult than crossplay… for crossplay you have to do a lot of server tweaking and networking get around that could take well over a year to set up. Cross progression all you’d have to do is link your psn,xbox live, and switch account to your blizzard account, write some code to catalog each skin they have unlocked on each platform, and have each skin that is unlocked be unlocked on their blizzard account, and when the game loads in on another platform the servers recognize your unlocked skins via your blizzard account.
John LaFleur: The difficultly centers around how we track entitlements and policy concerns with platform manufacturers. There are also a lot of technical concerns, but most are manageable with a good amount of work. It’s all feasible, just a LOT more ducks to get in a row. And, unfortunately, the more groups involved, the more complicated something becomes. And cross-progression just gets more complicated, in that regard.
My question i’ve asked now is:
Are you considering an Unranked Mode in the near future? It would be good to keep those who warf up for Ranked and those who just want to enjoy the game casually separated with the introduction of a mode like that.
isn’t unranked just quickplay?
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Q: Why does the Recall animated short play whenever we boot up Overwatch on console? Is this an oversight or intentional to hide some loading screens? Could we maybe get the option to not have it play?
Bill Warnecke: The animated short will play on all versions, but on PC we only play it once. We track if it was shown in the settings and on console versions this is before the user logs in and we don’t have access to any saved setting information at that time. We intentionally show the movie this early because we’re loading core assets during this time.
We agree it’d be nice to be able to skip it, I spoke with our lead engine programmer a bit just now and it’s something we’ll look at, though I can’t promise we’ll be able to do it (because it would require moving where it plays, and reviewing asset loading times).
Cheers!
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Im thinking about a mode with Competitive ruleset but not affecting the SR
Q: For all: Who has been your favourite character that has been added to the game these past five years and why? Happy Anniversary!**
David Kang: Happy Anniversary! I love echos hero design both visual and gameplay. Always wanted a hero that could clone or mirror someone else!
Q: Why does Funky Baptiste’s belt buckle say Gravy??
David Kang: HAHA It says GRVY and it’s supposed to mean GROOVY
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this is really hard to verify…but im pretty sure that if people would just stick around after matches that the game does cycle through attack/def on the same maps…
nobody every sticks around after matches though
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this is honestly pretty interesting answer, I never knew why the recall short played all the time on Xbox but never saw it again on PC
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I have NEVER seen that short play on startup. Is that one hidden on harddrive?
I would be willing to give tank Mei a try if she gets to keep freeze in some form besides her ultimate.
Ideally I would like her to stay dps but change freeze into an ability with a long cool down.
New Ability - Snowball - 30 seconds cool down
Limited arcing range and no radius - throws a snowball
Mei players would need aim and be careful when to use it, since it would not be up each fight.
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Q: Over the last 5 years a lot of awesome new skins were added to the game. In fact, I can’t decide which one to equip on multiple heroes and swap them regularly. Have you ever considered a “Random skin” option similiar to the “Random” option for highlight intros?
Aaron Keller: We have looked at this. If we were to do it, it likely wouldn’t be completely random, because we’re not sure that’s exactly what players want. Did I just say that?!? What I meant to say was that players might want the ability to just pick from a certain subset of skins(Such as all their legendaries or their 4 favorites). It also wouldn’t change each time a player spawned for technical reasons.
Q: One of the main selling points of Overwatch 2 is the Campaign and story content, but there is a large crowd of players who either have only a very basic understanding of the lore or haven’t engaged with it at all. Consequently, there has been a bit of misinformation spreading around the community about certain key points of the story. I think this is due to the story being told outside of the game in the form of external media like comics, short stories, and animations and not being easily accessible. You kind of have to go out of your way to learn more about the world and its characters which is not something some people are so easily willing to do.
Has there ever been a plan to implement a system that could entice and better educate current, new, and returning players about the Overwatch universe?
Aaron Keller: Great question!
We are looking at this from a few angles. The first is how to include more of this content inside of OW2 itself either through storytelling in the game or through other systems that could contain and deliver this lore(whether its past OW or current OW2 story. The second is looking at ways of bringing people up to speed with media outside of the game. Both are really exciting and I can’t wait for people to see it!
Give McCree a Funky skin so we can call it McGravy
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https://steampugs.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/thank-you-jesus.gif
ive only been asking for this one for 4 years now…
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Q: Hello! So you mentioned in this news blog that Bastion is going to be reworked “from the ground up”. Are you able to share some things you are trying with Bastion?
Geoff Goodman: Sure!
When re-approching Bastion the biggest starting point is like, “what is the core of this hero that feels like we should make sure to preserve”. Our answer to that is he is a transforming robot, with huge damage potential when he is using his various modes well. We want to make sure Bastion isn’t purely about aim-skill, but he also has a big focus on situational awareness and timing/positioning.
We’re looking at pushing his recon form’s range out by changing his recon weapon. This helps him generally be more useful, but also helps create separation between his other forms, especially sentry. For sentry form, the cost of reducing his mobility to gain huge damage is still interesting and its the heart of what makes him work. However, completely removing his mobility has proved to be too harsh of a penalty, and frankly its not realistically possible to balance him with this downside in mind (especially between different skill levels). So right now we’re testing allowing him to move in Sentry form, but just more slowly than normal. This comes with new tuning for his Sentry weapon, of course, so it isn’t quite as deadly as it is in OW1.
There is more to talk about with him down the road, but we’re still in the middle of reworking him so hopefully we’ll be able show him off in more detail down the road!
Q: As an off-tank player in a 6-stack team, playing mostly scrims, small tournaments and ranked, what can i legetimatly expect for my Ow2 experience ?
A: I would say a lot about OW2 is going to be different. The tank play will certainly change, but if you’re an experienced off-tank player im sure you’ll find great success with those same heroes in OW2 as a solo tank.
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Q: Will the PS5 get a official 120 FPS patch before OW2 arrives?
John LaFleur: We don’t have any plans to do so, at the moment. We would have to invest a non-trivial amount of time to upgrade original Overwatch to recognize and separately treat the PS5 (it involves changing the platform SDK). Instead, we’re taking that time to focus on making OW2 the best we can on the next gen consoles.
Thank you for posting the Q&A
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Q: Matchmaking is always a weighting of queue time vs MMR range/ team balancing. Would it be possible for users to put their own preference of this balance for themselves?
I’d always prefer to have better matchmaking at the cost of time. Even in Arcade. I’d like to have the agency to tell the system how I want it.
Bill Warnecke: Hey mutsuto, we’re unlikely to ever add this. My instincts were that this would add a lot of complexity and probably not be as helpful as one would hope. I spoke a bit with with an engineer on the team who the most knowledgeable about our matchmaking system, he noted that there are a lot of factors that contribute to matchmaking that are outside of a single person’s control. For example in role queue the amount of roles in queue are the dominant factor for matchmaking time. Also the time of day and how active your particular region is at that time plays a big part in what matches can be made.
Adding a feature like this is also unpredictable, there are likely to be knock-on effects that we’d have to work through. It’s tricky if many players set the slider to “match quickly”, maybe the “prefer quality” players would never get a match, and if we decide to eventually pull them in that would be a poor experience since it wouldn’t match your expectations based on the slider.
A key rule to matchmaking is when you introduce constraints in any way, even if they’re meant to be helpful, you generally increase matchmaking time. The matchmaker is by far one of the most complex systems we maintain, we really appreciate ideas and feedback, even if we don’t directly go with a particular suggestion.
Special thanks to Alex from our server team for helping me get some detail into this answer.
Cheers!
Q: Best Drag Race season?
Bill Warnecke: Great question! I think the first season I watched was Season 4, so it’ll always have a special place in my heart.
I was so happy to see Jinkx Monsoon participate in the Mei Gala, that was rad. If anyone knows someone at World of Wonder have them call me, I want to be a guest judge.
Q: Any hopes for 120 tick servers in the future?
Bill Warnecke: We do use 120 tick for the Overwatch League but right now we’re not seriously considering them for the main live game. We find the most significant benefit of playing on 120 tick comes only when combined with all players in a match having excellent network quality and extremely low latency.
I’ll never say never, it could happen, but not currently planned.
Q:
First of all, super happy birthday with 5 years! This Italian user loves this game very much, know that. So, here are some questions on various fronts:
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Artistically and technically, what has been the most challenging skin to make so far?
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We know there is a lot of sci-fi charm in Overwatch, but has it often been difficult to explain some of the game’s techniques “scientifically”? For example, if the dragons of Hanzo and Genji are not “magic”, what could they be?
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I love Blizzcon skins and their crossovers. a little something for HotS too? Maybe Sigma Raven Lord?
Okay, I think I asked too much and about too many different things, SORRY! ^_^" thanks!!!
Arnold Tsang: Here are some answers to the art related questions.
Technically, it’s always a challenge to make skins for our more complex heroes (D.Va, Bastion, Wrecking Ball, Ashe). Penguin Mei was also really hard, we had to do a lot to make her head work.
Artistically, there are tons of examples but a recent one that comes to mind is Polyanitsa Zarya. The inspiration for that skin is the Russian bogatyr warriors, who wear a very specifically onion shaped helmet. We explored helmeted and non-helmeted versions, but ultimately chose the one we found more appealing. Choosing between appeal and accuracy to the reference is constantly a struggle and can be very subjective, but I like how the skin turned out!
Magic is a tricky word that means different things to different people. That being said, not everything in overwatch can or needs to be explained by technology (in my opinion).
Cool idea!
Q: 1. Can we expect the comics to come back? I mean we got the Tracer’s London Calling, but this did not give us much, the comics we had earlier seemed to give great lore bits.
- Pineapple on pizza - yes or no?
Arnold Tsang: We are working on more comics!
yes. (To pineapple pizza)
Been suggesting this for years, so glad this is potentially (and finally) happening