I saw on r/CompetitiveOverwatch a topic about Seagull talking to several devs during one of his streams. Since I figured many people might not frequent COW or watch Seagull’s streams, I figured I’d post the recap here.
(VOD if you wanna watch the 2 hours or so of interview. Starts at 34:50)
Original thread:
Geoff Goodman | Principal Designer
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Wrecking Ball was one of their original concepts of heroes
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Started off as a “junkyard magnet bot”
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Went through a lot of different iteration
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Adam Puhl was the initial designer on Wrecking Ball
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Slam and Grappling Claw abilities were added later
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They talk about Grappling Claw “rollouts” and the ability’s depth
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Wrecking Ball is faster down slopes and slides down naturally
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Mines from the ultimate Minefield separate more the higher up Wrecking Ball is since the mines drop at an angle
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Mines can be destroyed and currently have 50 HP. Currently do 120/130 damage. Good combo with Zarya’s ult
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Great at area denial, weak to CC, huge hitbox
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Adaptive shield buffer doesn’t give ult charge to enemy team when they shoot it. Lucio’s sound barrier currently does. They might change his.
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Didn’t want to add more shields to the game to add more visual clutter so they came up with adaptive shield
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Adaptive shield has 100 extra shields plus 100 per enemy hero in his range which is shown by an indicator in the bottom of the HUD
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Seagull thinks the community won’t call the hero “Wrecking Ball”
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Piledriver drives enemies up into the air and limits airstrafing similar to Doomfist’s Uppercut
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Piledriver can do from 20 to 100 damage, has falloff
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Minefield visuals/sounds worked on as recently as two days ago, have been iterating a lot on it
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Seagull tries to grapple under King’s Row
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Seagull asks if the game is getting too crazy with a rolling hamster ball and a hero with like a 10 second cooldown teleporter
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Game has always been a little crazy, important you feel like there are unique opportunities for every hero and what they can bring to a team
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Seagull’s team gets backcapped by the enemy Wrecking Ball grappling under King’s Row - Video
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Getting feedback that Sym’s primary fire is difficult to charge up/has short range, but concerned about insane damage potential
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Sym offers many more options now
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Seagull keeps getting sleep darted
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Recognize the feedback on Sombra changes that some think the nerfs outweigh the buffs. Will keep an eye on her
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Aware of bug where ball mode animation doesn’t show correctly
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Minefield lasts 20 seconds
Ideas tried with Torb
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Turret tossed like Tracer’s pulse bomb
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Turret levels up as it gets kills
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Automatically levels up to level 2(still testing)
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Mini molten cores as ability
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Ult as something different
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Seagull brings up his critbox size
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Much faster reload while ulting
Trying to make Torb more viable on offense while wanting to keep the turret -
Still heavily in flux on Torb
Chat Questions
ANA?
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Trying to bring her more in balance while keeping her weaknesses. Mobility buff unlikely.
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Seagull mentions healers were weaker across the board in the past.
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Realize Ana shooting through teammates had a cost(prehealing)
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Don’t believe Ana needs a total rework
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Falloff damage changes?
OTHER
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Should help McCree, Soldier, Mei against Widow or Pharah
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Mei no falloff damage may not stay. Was tried in the past
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Mei likely strong if Wrecking Ball is strong
REIN?
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Currently trying to fix all his bugs. Actively working on them. Likely a lot fixed in next patch
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Seagull mentions Rein’s hammer swing is much stronger then at launch since you can knock enemies back
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Recognizes feedback that Wrecking Ball brings more knockback things that mess with Rein
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Working on a systemic change to make charging characters colliding with each other more consistent
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Should be knocking down both characters. Might be different for Brig. Possibly in next patch
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Afterwards they will reevaluate to make sure Rein is still viable
Scott Mercer | Principal Designer
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Team did an amazing job on the animations, models, sounds, everything
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Wrecking Ball will be available in competitive mode 2 weeks after release on the live version. Same for Symmetra
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Sym won’t be available in OWL playoffs. Will be on Hanzo patch 1.25
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LFG has reduced toxicity by a lot
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People naturally assume the worst about their teammates in solo queue. Not the same through grouping for the most part
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Recognizes feedback on allowing private profiles. Seagull likes the feature and thinks it has helped reduce toxicity
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Already have changes coming through feedback
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Filters weren’t saving. Will be fixed
(Seagull’s game crashes. PTR ) -
SMS Protect for Top 500. Not anywhere near half of Top 500 were smurfs as some claimed. Seagull says “Thanks Calvin”
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Need 50 games played with SMS protect on to qualify for leaderboard.
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Not all groups are shown at once in LFG. Features help players experience OW how they want
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Seagull mentions endorsements have made players nicer.
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Trying to correct player behavior through warnings before bans. Adding more feedback
Chat Questions
Colorblind Mode?
- Working on more colorblind features. People on dev team who are colorblind. Multiple forms of colorblindness making it difficult
Guild/Clan Systems?
- Something we are definitely very interested in. I think it would be an awesome addition to game. We’ll see what we do in the future with that
other
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Seagull comments on how Sym’s ult is similar to Winston’s shield in that you can dance back and forth
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Hero most exicited about going into next season?
Wrecking Ball. So much fun to play -
Hoping for clever strats with Sym’s teleporter
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Seagull worried about mobility creep. One of the reasons for the damage falloff changes
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World Cup Group Stages possibly playing on PTR patch
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Sym turrets can be shot while moving through the air. Seagull mentions seeing a McCree High Noon being blocked by a turret
Replays/Demos?
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Still working on it. Want to do it. Want to do them at a high quality, easy to use, don’t have to manage all the files. Want to do it right.
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Trying to stomp out server/client side bugs like you see when a Tracer bomb looks like it sticks in OWL
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Want to allow players to learn through VOD reviews that are not just limited to whatever the observer was looking at.
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Seagull mentions he watched other OWL D.vas’ VODs which allowed him to learn D.va quickly. Would be a great tool to help players improve
Genji?
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Genji still has a lot of amazing things about him. Recognizes he’s not as viable as before though he still can be run.
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Nowhere near Sym who was never picked in OWL
other
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Trying to make Torb less snowbally like they have done with Sym
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Not all custom game options working for Wrecking Ball yet.
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One of them is roll mode is always on
Sym’s ult was getting destroyed on the Oasis map with the cars because of the cars
Lucio?
- Speedboost is a great mechanic. Still viable
Map Editor?
- Not going to get to anytime soon. Mentions he got his start in design because of the Starcraft editor. Want to do more, but it’s a long process. Continue to have hope.
Competitive Rewards?
- Don’t want to add anymore since people should play competitive mode for competitive play and don’t think rewards like gold weapons will make that better
Tournament Systems
- Worked on WC3 tournament system. Thinks it could be really cool. Matter of priorities. Top 500 kinda provides that. Could see a more short term super competitive system in the future. Nothing super soon
Jeff Kaplan | Game Director
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Heard they singlehandedly saved the game with LFG and then destroyed it by releasing a hamster as a hero
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Used to not have to interact with teleporter, but could troll team
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Seagull mentions Sym’s left click doesn’t seem worth it in most cases. Devs talked about if it was in a proper place yesterday. Think Zarya is in a good place. Not done with Sym
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Seagull brings up he tried to exploit endorsements by unfriending his friends to get endorsed
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Jeff asks what teleporters will bring in OWL - Seagull says teams will no longer have to wait on cooldowns as much to engage
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Just wants to see Symmetra played once in OWL. Won’t be in OWL playoffs since it’s such a major change.
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Feels bad for reliability engineers who didn’t want to put the PTR patch out since it had many bugs still
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Happy to have Seagull back streaming
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Seagull doesn’t think players outside of the person playing Sombra will notice her changes much
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Surprised Sombras contested the objective since he didn’t see it at his skill level. Made fun of Genji main friend for having top objective time
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Thinks Genji is a highly effective character who has his place. Depends on meta. 2 top played heroes by a longshot were Genji and Mercy before Brigitte was released
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Seagull still upset Genji triple jump was removed
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Wrecking Ball was one of the earlier characters concepted
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Arnold Tsang, assistant art director, designed the early prototype of Wrecking Ball and gave him his name
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Initially Wrecking Ball’s kit was all to do with magnetism. Hopefully we will see these ideas in future heroes
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Tsang later sent out mailing lists showing the hamster as part of Wrecking Ball
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Wrecking Ball became the most controversial hero within the dev team. Half the team think it’s the best thing ever while the other half thinks it’s ruining the game
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Jeffrey Brill put a meeting on the calendar for 10 years from now(6 years now) to ask did Wrecking Ball wreck the game
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Explains lore of Hammond. Genetic therapy made him more intelligent and larger. He’s now Pikachu sized. Primates on Lunar Colony revolted. Hammond hitches a ride on Winston’s escape module, but detaches and lands near Junkertown.
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Winston and Hammond can communicate since of course all animals can communicate with each other
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Hammond can only speak through a sound board through his mech. Two voice actors for Wrecking Ball. One for the hamster, one for the mech
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Saw a great LFG called “I need healing” that was one tank spot and five support ones
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Wrecking Ball’s guns sound and look different when he’s running low on ammo
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Infinity Ward helped them learn how to make weapons more visceral
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Seagull worried about adding another mobile tank with good burst damage. Winston/Wrecking Ball/D.va dive could be very strong
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Seagull thinks Zen, Reaper, Mei, Sym, basically any character with CC will be good against Wrecking Ball.
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Wrecking Ball has a lot of easy knobs they can tune if he is unbalanced. Don’t want to lose fun factor
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Seagull believes his adaptive shields will likely need a nerf
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Jeff apologizes for being a small indie company
Chat Questions
Optimization?
- Will look into optimizing the game
Colorblind Optimization?
- Almost made 1.26 patch. Will be able to set color of hero outlines instead of just red.
Reinhardt?
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Working on fixing his bugs first then they will look if he needs a buff
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Seagull asks about wallclimb bugs. Not actively working on them. Asks for video clips of bugs so they can reproduce them
Ryan Mourey | Servers Engineer
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Worked on LFG
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Seagull thinks Wrecking Ball will work best with Winston and D.va
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Seagull believes some pros will become insane on Wrecking Ball and concerned about his ultimate damage
Chat Questions
Plans for LFG?
- Nothing major planned yet. Watching feedback
Funniest bug had to deal with?
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No clip as Baby D.va on Volskaya
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Seagull comments on minefield visuals being hard to differentiate between friendly and enemy
Favorite OW map?
- Château. Love deathmatch
Increasing avoid count?
- Worried about increasing avoid count as it could possibly increase queue times especially at high MMRs. No definite answer
Silhouettes through walls for anyone not just supports?
- Will have to ask about that. Seagull mentions he grouped up with his Zen to see where he was easily since his outline was green
Decaying Endorsements?
- Level 5 is very hard to get. There is always decay above level 1. Depends on in game time apparently
Colorblind options?
- Hopefully not too far away
Why can’t you get endorsed in mystery heroes/arcade modes?
- Meant for more serious modes. May change in future
144 tick servers?
- Hard on servers and latency of online has an impact
Biggest challenge faced with bugs?
- Reproducing them. Can’t figure out how they happen. Best thing to do is take a video of the bug
Programming language of choice?
- C++ have programmed in many languages
- Seagull mentions FPS drops when pressing tab and Mourey says they’ll look into it
Match History
- Still a ways off
Will there ever be a scoreboard/veto maps?
- Probably not
How did you end of working at Blizzard?
- Started as an intern. Made mobile games when younger. Advises others to just start making games, you learn a ton.
Credit to u/Seagull_No1_Fanboy on Reddit for compiling this.