Overwatch has quickly become so big that Conan O’Brien played it with Game of Thrones’ Peter Dinklage and Lena Headey. With that kind of exposure comes a great responsibility: to make sure that your product remains elite, and it looks like Blizzard already has some changes in store.
Like in the Super Smash Bros. games, there are some characters or abilities that are disproportionately too strong or otherwise game-breaking, but those problems are usually identified and corrected in a reasonable time frame. For example, fans have taken issue with McCree, whose flashbang/fan the hammer combo can easily stun or kill.
Blizzard principal designer Geoff Goodman addressed this in the game’s official forums (via IGN), saying, “McCree’s flashbang plays an important role in being a strong option against very fast/agile teams (tracers/genjis/etc). It is also a nice tool to prevent close range devastating abilities and ultimates such as Reaper’s Death Blossom. That said, its probably a bit too good at dealing damage to higher health targets such as Tanks and barriers. I don’t have any concrete changes yet, but I’m going to be testing some things internally to see how he plays.”
Inversely, Goodman believes that D.Va may actually be under-powered, saying, “I do think there is some room for some D.Va improvements, but these are unlikely to take the shape of increasing her damage output significantly.”
In an age where developers have been accused of releasing games in unfinished states and later patching them with downloadable content, it’s refreshing to see a popular title get the post-release attention it deserves.
Image: Blizzard Entertainment
