In the nearly three years that Overwatch has been around, the team-based multiplayer game has seen its roster of characters expand with eight post-launch heroes. It has seen multiple new game modes, features, and more. But as is the case with any game that starts to age, it begins to lose its luster.
Over the past few months, there has been an increasing number of articles and videos posted by the game's community claiming that
Overwatch is "dying." The biggest complaint seems to stem around hero balancing, an issue that often plagues other games of a similar nature.
Overwatch is not immune to this problem and game director Jeff Kaplan has finally responded to concerns.
On the
Overwatch forums, Kaplan said they were hoping to release a balance patch on the PTR next week. He refrained from saying when exactly it will arrive in case the patch ends up being late.
He also left an intriguing note to fans, promising "another cool little surprise" that is also coming next week. Unfortunately, he offered no other details.
We worked on a balance patch this week. We’re hoping to put that patch on the PTR next week. The last time I said that, it was late and everyone flipped out. So please, don’t flip out if things slip… they often do.
Also, there’s another cool little surprise coming next week. Excited!
(sorry no details at this time as changes are still in flux… the PTR will get notes when it goes out… no dev update)
In December, Kaplan
posted a more in-depth message to fans with a list of things the team is working on. It included hero balance, quality of life features, new hero prototyping development, and "more top secret stuff." He also mentioned a new game mode that they have been prototyping, but noted that fans should next expect to see it any time soon.
We’re also in a bit of a “head’s down” mode trying to get a lot of work done. we also had a few people traveling over the thanksgiving holiday (we’re based in the US) and took advantage of the slow week to allow developers to work on whatever they wanted. the end result was pretty cool. we explored new game modes, new features and new engine tech. it was all really rough but some of the prototypes will actually turn into features someday.
Overwatch received universal acclaim when it first released back in May 2016 and won numerous awards. And over the years,
Overwatch revenues have exceeded $1 billion dollars. However, the game has seemed to become a little stale as Blizzard has been slow to roll out new heroes and game modes. For the past few in-game events, Blizzard has simply rehashed old game modes rather than introducing new ones.
Do you still play
Overwatch?