Subreddit for all things Overwatch™, Overwatch 2™ and the Overwatch™ Universe, the team-based shooter from Blizzard Entertainment.
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TIL Jeff Kaplan wanted to release Overwatch with only 4 heros, but decided to spend 2 more years developing and balancing the game.
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Oh god, imagine the only map being Temple of Anubis.
And imagine everyone only playing Tracer, Reaper, Widowmaker and Reinhardt. No heals for anyone (except edgelord i guess)
BLIZZARD!
We need this as a weekly brawl at some point.
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Relevant maymay.
savage
Overwatch Vanilla XD
"The real oldschool Overwatch for true veterans"
weekly brawl q is taking forever...
Tracer can "heal" with recall.
Why doesn't it count for healing on medals then :(
Because the heal doesn't exist, it's a time travel illusion, the damage actually never happened in the first place!
IT JUST WORKS
So you're telling me that if Tracer eats an entire carton of ice cream and then recalls the spoon didn't exist?
I have, just once, seen Tracer get a card on the end screen for damage she's recalled out of.
It's actually really easy to get, I find running around not doing much and then running at the enemy and press e for max gains gives the card quite easily
I've actually gotten a medal for recall healing over a match. I got 10 votes for it since apparently no one else had seen it either.
Seems like a normal quickplay game
You know, they could use this as a weekly brawl.
Temple of Anubis: Tracer Reaper Widowmaker Reinhardt.
Talon V Overwatch
replace Reinhardt with Winston and you have one of the animated shorts.
That's what the health packs are for
i'd be fine. i hope no support meta becomes real.
If I designed an FPS I don't think I would put in support classes. Or snipers.
And it would probably fail.
Imagine the only classes being Tracer, Widowmaker, Reaper, and Reinhardt...there's not even a healer in there.
New weekly brawl: "We almost did this for real"
Available characters: Tracer, Reaper, Widowmaker, Reinhardt
Available maps: Temple of Anubis
I think we all need to experience this to truly know how grateful we are that they delayed the game.
Tracer can "heal" with recall. Reaper can heal by eating the orbs that drop on kill.
Widowmaker can "heal" by being the only long-ranged hero and never getting shot.
That's not the point dude. I doubt they had those aspects of the classes nailed down when there were only 4 heroes.
Actually they probably where going down the route of self healing abilities. Many games do that now, forcing healers or tanks in the game usually people do not like as it adds queue times, atleast in RPGS>
Gw2 is one of the greatest examples of this. There ARE support options, but everyone has self healing as well.
There are certain maps that just feel "gimmicky" in the sense that it ends up being the attacking team ramming their head against a wall over and over until they get lucky one time and they have enough ults up when the defensive team doesn't and they just win off that. Temple of Anubis is definitely feels the most "gimmicky" in that sense.
Temple of Anubis is the shittiest map ever. First there's a choke which the attacking team just rushes through ignoring all enemies, then they take first point, because A is insanely easy to take. Then they either snowball onto point B and win in 30 seconds, they win after like 8 minutes of point B, or they get full held.
Dustbowl 2.0
well u just listed all possible scenarios lol
I dunno we can hold point A for a while. Microwave in the left room for attackers and have a torb set up on top. We don't usually get rolled on point A.
What rank are you at? At higher ranks, attack has a way higher win rate, while at low ranks defense has a higher win rate. I'm at 72 right now, and point A gets rolled every game.
New weekly brawl, early release: the 4 heroes and the 1 map.
Pretty sure I would have lost my mind. Hands down my least favorite map to play on.
Strange. I always have fun playing Anubis.
+1 on that, I like Anubis. I only really dislike Volskaya and I can't really explain why, except those retarded moving platforms, which is just a minor thing.
Let's hope they kept that "up to 40 characters" idea. I want this game to be alive for a long time.
I imagine that they will continue to add heros, but want to maintain a relatively low barrier to entry for newer players.
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I like how easy Overwatch is to learn if you've played at any generic shooter before.
Step 1: Pick Soldier 76. "Oh this game's like Call of Duty"
Step 2: Get killed over and over by someone else's weird ability
Step 3: Choose that hero that keeps killing you
Step 4: "Whoa this guy is so cool"
Step 5: Repeat step 2-5
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Or of you were an Onlywatcher:
Memorise every single detail about the game half a year before release.
I guess you could do that. But hopping into quickplay is far more fun to learn that way. :) At least it was for me during closed beta.
Then proceed to forget to use one particular ability in each character until you remember it 3 rounds later. So many deaths an ice block would have avoided...
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Step 1: Mercy's such a waifu, let's try her!
there are no more steps
It's even great for experienced FPS players.
At first I was angry that it seemed like a rip from some TF2 classics mixed in with DOTA abilities, but they did a great job of cleaning it all up and fixing the problems that the old characters had.
Here are some of the few:
Junkrat's arc and hit detection on his bombs are way more viable than Demoman's. They also found a way to solve the balance the weird pipebomb mechanic without making it abusable.
Widowmaker and Hanzo are basically super versions of the Sniper without annoyingly high charge times and poor mobility.
Torbjorn is like a more active engineer. I hate him only because Engineer's sentry gun is way more useful.
What's the problem with the pipebomb in TF2?
Torb is just a reversed Engineer
and that's good, instead of camping like a coward you get to rekt flankers and put turrets to make sure that no flanker runs away unharmed
Step 1: Pick Lucio. "Oh this character has non-molasses movement speed, can hold his own in a fight, and I can heal people?!"
Step 2: The game is now Luciowatch.
I watched Steel's video of "crash course on Overwatch heroes". I didn't play the close nor open beta, but started playing immediately when game came out. I had absolutely no idea of what the game is, but I watched it, 50 minutes and I was good to go. Many people hate him for his past shit, but he has always been massively useful on making informative videos.
Steel is a douche.
MOBA's (minus, say, HoTS) also have items which make things fucking complicated.
It's also a lot faster to play each hero for yourself, league games take 45-1 hour from accepting the game invite to end of game summary screen while 1 game of overwatch takes half that at most
Also unlike LoL you don't have to unlock/buy 100+ characters
that can be solved by playing dota
And I'm perfectly fine with that. I just want them to keep adding characters for a long time :D
Agreed. :)
This game has a very low skill floor. You only need to learn the heroes and their abilities. The maps are nothing sophisticated and there are not many gameplay aspects to explain. Even with 50 characters it should not take more than 10 hours to grasp the hang of it.
Each new hero release will be like early Christmas lol
Yeah like Ana was. Welfare Christmas, every one!
I want this game to have as many characters as DotA 2.
only 40? I expect 100+ like dota 2.
I want them to be tweaking current heroes for a long time to balance the new heroes, to keep the game feeling fresh.
then they will have to introduce standard /s
I would like to know what the other 2 classes were. Were they just reclassifying current characters, or were entire classes and all their heroes never put into the game?
I really hope they don't bloat the game with too many characters though.
I share the same fear. Adding characters for the sake of adding them is a bad idea. They have to enrich the meta. Breathe new life into it by bringing in new styles of play and interaction, while making it as fun for players playing it, and for players playing against it. coughstealth mechanicscough
Six different classes? That's quite the number.
What other roles are there that would fit a decent amount of heroes without being redundant?
I imagine assassins and builders were some considerations. That's probably why the tool tip used to say we needed a builder.
In that regard, probably sniper over assassin
I would have assumed tracer, genji, and unnanounced heroes would be assassin category.
Reaper is much more "assassin" than Tracer.
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Yeah but reaper and his guns are noisy as fuck compared to Tracer
DEATH COMES > cheers luv!
I'm assuming the "assassin" class is comparable to the "flanker" type, which, right now, has Tracer, Reaper and Genji in it (And possibly D.Va and Winston depending on how you use them)
I was thinking:
Assassin: Flankers AND Snipers (games always lump these together for some reason)
Assault: Front line attackers
Defence: Static Defence / Ambushers
Tank: Tanks.
Healer: Support characters that heal.
Support: Support characters that don't heal.
There's beauty in simplicity
it still says builder at least on xbone as far as I know
Proabably along the lines of flanker and utility, which got combined as part of the 4 main roles. Symmetra's not really a support.
It's a hold-over from when her shields were 50(?) instead of 25. Giving people sufficiently large enough shields is near infinite healing as long as they don't take damage past the amount shielded. Unfortunately 25 is way too small for that to be the case.
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Who isn't support? Reinhardts shield, Genji and Widowmaker have ESP, Torb's armor packets...
It's a pointless argument. I wish blizzard would move her to defense so we can stop having this conversation twenty times a day.
Don't forget Soldier 76 is clutch support with dem heals.
I remember once I played a really bad match with a really awful support who refused to heal anyone, so our Solider 76 actually had the most healing on our team.
Reinhardt has one ability that benefits allies. Same for Genji, Widowmaker, and Torbjorn.
The Support class has characters with at least two abilities that directly benefit an ally. Perhaps most significantly: All Support class characters have an ultimate that directly benefits an ally.
The distinction is definitely there.
Man I wish I already got the Hunter Genji skin, I need that ESP so bad.
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She negates respawn downtime, just like Mercy res and Lucio speedboost.
I mean, she heals 25 health for 5 heroes out of combat. That's... something.
Damage dealer( Including Mcree, junkrat, s76, etc.), Assassin( snipers and flankers) , Builder( Turbjorn and bastion), Tank, Healer, and Utility (Symmetry and probably Sombra).
TF2 has the same exact archetype, except the engi fills both builder and Utility. Scout, demo, and soldier are all damage dealers, Heavy is a tank, and medic is healer. Spy and sniper are assassins.
Placed in Support group with Medic. TF2's groupings have never made sense to me
" These three guys fight, these three guys guard stuff, and these final three.... uhhhh.... help with stuff.
"Oh, and one of the three guys who fight can't really fight effectively and is typically relegated to a support role and one of the three guys who guard stuff is better at fighting stuff.
Hey, Pyro's a pretty effective fighter. Just join a Valve server and W+M1 (or not, because Valve took down all their official pub servers to add casual matchmaking)
You can also equip the Degreaser + Axtinguisher and fumble around like a fool, because the latter got nerfed so goddamn hard that some horror from the deep probably keeps it as a collector's item.
Maybe Stealth and Builder and changing the Support class to just Healing.
Offense: High damage heroes with low-medium health and medium mobility - I would put McCree, S76, Junkrat and Reaper here.
Tanks: High health heroes with high cooldowns but rewarding when used right offensive and defensive abilities - I would put Reinhardt, Zarya, Roadhog and Winston here.
Flankers: High mobility heroes with medium damage and low health (D.va exception in mecha form) - I would put D.Va, Genji and Tracer here.
Support: Healers or I'm thinking they could release a hero similar to Hank on Evolve: Stage 2, with a shield gun that grants +500 or so shield on an allied hero while actively firing at them that has a recharge as his "Support" ability and possibly a slow moving fast firing projectile as his primary gun, ult could be a supercharged version of his shield gun granting himself and the targeted hero m/s, large shields, and a low damage aoe around each of them which hits any hero that passes through/next to them to make up for the support hero not being able to use an offensive weapon during the channel. I would put Lucio, Zenyatta, Mercy and probably Ana here.
Defensive setup heroes: Low mobility low health heroes reliant on their defensive setup and devices they build with a high damage but difficult to utilise primary weapon - I would put Symmetra, Torbjorn and Bastion here.
Snipers/Long range: Low-medium hp heroes with medium mobility and powerful long range attacks reliant on accuracy - I would put Hanzo, Widowmaker, Pharah and Mei in there, Mei as she has her icicle long range attack.
This just makes me want to know more about just wtf was Titan. I know a lot of assets from OW came from / were inspired by what they had done for Titan but..still. The mystery behind it...I own like every Blizzard product pretty much so I'd love to know more.
Seems like it was World of Warcraft with Overwatch combat. Also explains why the maps are so overproduced. They were probably part of the Titan overworld before they were cut up to make Overwatch maps.
this would have been awesome tbh. Like, Blizzards own Borderlands, except an MMO, instead of just, MO.
Ironically now that Overwatch is popular they could go back and finish Titan and market it as an Overwatch MMO. We'll see.
Especially now that it's pretty clear de facto that Activision has no intention of launching Destiny on PC after all (unless they want PC players to miss out on several expansions).
Leaves room on the PC for an MMO FPS that isn't Activision-Blizzard competing with itself.
I mean, there is Planetside 2 for an mmofps. Tho maybe you are thinking more so of an rpgmmofps
I mean they've kind of set it up perfectly. They have two different options.
Option A: They can go into history and deal with Overwatch's various events such as the Omnic War or its founding. Maybe the Deadlock gang and stuff.
Option B: They can go into the future and have it be a situation where Overwatch has reformed and has to battle all these new enemies.
Your character could be a sub-version of each of the heroes and you grow within certain roles, gaining abilities and using combinations of the character's kits. Like a Reinhardt with a hook instead of a shield or something. Then you could only do cross-class abilities for characters that are allied. So for example Widow and Reaper could swap certain abilities. Like a Widow class could use a temporary invincibility instead of the grappling hook.
World of Overwatch
So a better version of Destiny?
it was an mmo, the idea at first was to have everyone be a hero but also live a mundane life with a secret identity, from what we've seen of overwatch it looks to have had several factions
the russians, the omnics, the omnicmonks, the aussie terrorist, overwatch and talon as well as several other factions that were hinted at (like the shimada's and the gang mecree was a part of) as well as the moon monkeys
game play probably would have been similar to destiny or borderlands but as an mmo and would probably have involved fighting omnics
everything was supposed to be very comic book inspired as well
It's weird, because that Wikipedia quote about the original characters is sort of contradicted by this quote from the book that came with the Collector's Edition:
"We built the four core combat heroes, which were Tracer, Reaper, Widowmaker, and...well, it was supposed to be Mercy or Reinhardt. Then everyone was falling in love with Pharah." (Michael Heiberg)
And then:
"So that character -- who became Pharah -- was one of the four core combat heroes." (Dylan Jones)
It sounds like they had a couple different character concepts fleshed out, and were trying to decide who they wanted to spend time and resources on, which characters they wanted to ship.
Doesn't mean he wanted to release it with just those 4, just that they were considering releasing with a limited set of heroes. Probably would have been around 8 or something. The game would simply be boring as fuck with 4 heroes.
TF2 basically had 4 heroes
Maybe in competitive or something, obviously if you are just looking at that you will cut down hero numbers significantly.
It had 9?
Soldier, Demoman, Scout, and Medic were the only ones used in any semblance of competitive play (6s). Every other class was extremely, extremely niche.
The 6s format isn't real TF2 though. It was a fan made gamemode.
Exactly. Highlander should be the focus. It's much more interesting, imo.
It's the format of tf2 competitive which is in game
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Yeah, real TF2 is Lucksman, enemy Spy that is disguised as a Scout thus moving suspiciously slow, Sandvich-dispensing Hoovies, Pyros playing hot-potato with rockets and Rancho-Relaxing Engineers.
Yeah, unless you're specifically designing a game to court a competitive scene. CS:GO keeps a lot of features that are clunky to new players or frustrating to bad ones, all because it's primarily an esport. Overwatch will never be close to as competitive for that reason, but it will provide a lot of fun for average players.
My man.
There are some who would argue its the other way around.
That's cause 6's only does 5cp and one koth map. It specifically edits out the maps that would be favorable to heavy or engie. Spy and sniper were designed to be niche in the first place; sniper gets some competitive use and spy is out because the classes he counters don't see play on 5cp or koth. Only class that there's a legit case for it being truly underpowered is pyro.
I think he's referring to in the competitive scene. Scout, Soldier, Demoman, and Medic are the only classes worth playing in the 6s format.
had
Ouch. RIP TF2.
Keep in mind though too, with them scrapping Titan, I think a lot of them were all anxious to put SOMETHING out as soon as possible. So there's a chance something like that weighed into the decision making process.
HNNNGGGGG
Right? I want the hero select screen to look like fuckin' Street Fighter eventually
I imagine that if the game did release with four characters that they would more be "classes". And would have lots of customisation options, etc.
Reaper had a grenade launcher, we know that much. Probably multiple weapons for the four classes.
I think the only way to keep the game alive is by creating new maps and seasonal events. I say this because once a new character comes out, people will mostly go back to whatever their previous main was (like how I treat Ana). Maps refreshen the game, just like seasonal events. That's also why I wish they would add a challenge system with weekly challenges, daily challenges, and character challenges.
I don't understand how the selected wiki quotes demonstrate that "Jeff Kaplan wanted to release Overwatch with only 4 heroes".
I have a feeling Jeff is not going to like this insinuation.
Such a misleading title. They considered many things over the years, if you go back far enough, they probably considered canceling Overwatch at some point.
40 HEROES??? 2 MORE CLASSES??? WHAT AND WHEN???
Soon™
I'm glad they decided to go big. It's because of their ambition I've spent a ton of money on lootboxes. I love the gameplay, the balance and the teamwork in pushes you to achieve. I've never used a mic in any multiplayer game until now. Blizzard has created something special. I want this game to blow up bigger than LoL. A game I completely dropped for this.
The game would HAVE to be free-to-play if it came out with only 4 characters, LOL!
There was some shitty Chinese mobile knockoff that only had Tracer, Widow, Reaper, and Reinhardt, I think. I thought they were lazy (well, they are), but I wonder if they found out this information early?
it had a couple more, i remember bastion being in there
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Maybe builder and sniper, at least we get tooltips for these in hero select.
Moral of the story: delays are usually a good thing.
Imagine if those 4 heroes were only Bastion, Torbjorn, Symmetra and Mei...
Wow, its hard to imagin the game with no support. Oh wait... quick match.
Two years and they added 17 heroes. So ~8 heroes a year. Which means they can make in almost two months 1 hero. So, in Blizzcon they will announce two heroes or in Gamescom one and in Blizzcon the other.
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I was going to go, "Blizz needs to give me a character that moves via pogo stick," but then I remembered Genji exists.
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"Blizz needs to give me a character that annoys me even outside the game with shitposts" but then I remembered Genji exists.
"Blizz needs to give me a character that bad players will use as a scapegoat for their own lack of skill" but then I remembered Genji exists.
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Jesus fucking Christ
On top of just having the idea, balancing becomes exponentially more challenging with each new hero added.
"Well we GOTTA get Pudge in there somehow."
And one who doesn't completely fuck up the balance of the game. When making a new character, they have to consider how he/she/it functions with EVERY other character to avoid making them too hard of a counter (so as to ruin an existing character) or too easy to counter (so as to make adding the character pointless).
Well, over time, it'd become a little harder to create new characters, both with trying to decide on unique abilities and testing and balancing against an increasing amount of heroes.
I'd rather see a max of 4 new heroes per year, ideally only 2 so that we don't have to adapt so quickly/game becomes bloated with heroes. Definitely no more than one new release per season.
I mean its not like Ana came in and shook the entire meta to a different state. The changes to existing heroes seem to have much more of an impact
I liked that the Ana update came with some significant changes to existing heroes as well.
It made D.Va feel almost like a new hero with the changes to her interceptors and tweaks to her ultimate. I'd be pretty happy if they continued that trend of bringing the less powerful/competitive heroes up in strength as new heroes are introduced.
I believe the beauty of Overwatch is it's evolving mechanics. Yes, like many have said, you can pick up the heroes quickly in a matter of days. But with that said after playing the game since launch you are always finding new mechanics and combinations with heroes after weeks and weeks of playing. To me that is what makes this game great. So many possibilities with even more to be discovered.
I thought this was a joke at first. Oh wow. The game we COULD have gotten...!
Just goes to show you, a game's success is the accumulation of many many variables.
I would love to see them go in the direction of Dota (at least for ranked/competetive) with pick/ban phases once they have a larger hero pool. Of course there are various things very different between Overwatch and Dota like the that the map and gamemode isn't always the same and most importantly Hero Switching is a thing. I think it would be interesting to experiment with banning heroes (neither team can pick them until the match is over) and/or limiting one hero per game (if team A choses Lucio, he is blocked for team B. Of course if team A switches off him, he will be made available for team B).
Holy fuck that's would have been boring.
I wonder how more furious people would be with Mei if she was a DLC character.
They should do a "Early Prototype Overwatch" brawl with only these 4 heroes and only on Anubis.
Maybe they could successfully balance the game if there was only 4 heroes. /s
This is what has always made Blizzard one of the greatest game developers. They release games when they are ready, not some half baked, half assed money grab.
They fully bake their money grabs
Warlords of Draenor says what.
Unpopular opinion incoming.
I hope the game doesn't end up with a million heroes non of whom are balanced. Like League or Dota. Yes, I know OW is not a MOBA, but I've seen people inironically say they'd love to have 100+ characters to choose from.
Dota is balanced considerably better than Overwatch is.
It won't, Jeff said they won't focus on releasing new heros every other month since this is not a Moba.
There were 105 heroes picked out of 110 in dota international. I think that it is more balanced than OW. Cant say that about lol.
Six classes seems a bit much for 40 heroes.
thats still like 6-7 heroes per class, more than enough imo, would rather that over 10 heroes per class
Thread title's a little bit misleading - it says that they (re: the team) considered doing it, not that he wanted to.
I'm hoping they keep making more after 40 because online games get very stale when they don't keep adding more variables to the roster.
Eyes go bling bling. More classes?
Silly old Jeff.
I think the additional 2 years after the game was essentially done is in part why the game was so polished even at early BETA. Even at the first teasers I thought the game felt very smooth and well designed.
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2 years to balance it..
Attack, Defense, Tank, Support. Huh? Assuming they HAD this idea, but changed it to 4, maybe Sniper, and something else? If this is still the case, but they've yet to include any for the other two classes, boy oh boy. The hype.
Definitely a good decision to do what was done xD
This is what interests me the most. Six different classes means Sombra will likely be the first stealth class
Wish they did that with pokemon GO.
But... Jeff is not VP at Blizzard...
This better be a future brawl. Temple of Anubis with only Tracer, Widow, Reaper, and Reinhardt.