【1981 Archives】

Year one of Overwatchis in the books981 Archives and here are some reflections on it from Jeff Kaplan, the game's director.

It's not all "thank yous" and "see you in 2017s," either. In the video above, Kaplan looks ahead at what's to come in the new year. There's talk of new heroes and maps, of course, but plenty of other tidbits that should delight the game's ardent fans.

New heroes, new maps

On heroes and maps, Kaplan explains that lots of each are in various stages of development. Some of those ideas may never surface, but at least one hero and one map are far enough along to be in the hands of the art team -- which is a positive sign.

Sombra, the offense-oriented hacker hero introduced in November, also comes up. Blizzard has heard the feedback that she feels underpowered, but the team is taking an intentionally slow approach with tweaking how she's balanced.

Kaplan points back to Ana, the other post-release hero addition of 2016. Like Sombra now, Ana was widely considered to be underpowered in the weeks after she joined the roster. Blizzard responded quickly then with balance updates which ended up swinging her too far in the other direction -- she became toopowerful.

Blizzard's lesson from that moment: there's a learning period after new heroes are released as players wrap their heads around how their abilities shake up the existing power balance. Ana ultimately needed to be re-balanced -- as Sombra likely will as well -- but Kaplan hopes a more careful approach will sidestep the underpowered-to-overpowered swing that Ana made.

Emotes, voice lines, and sprays

If you've ever looked at your vast assortment of emotes, voice lines, and sprays -- the cosmetic bits and pieces that let you inject some of your own personality into the game -- and wondered how to juggle them all, Blizzard's got your back.

Kaplan points out that a lot of player feedback has criticized the in-match limitations that allow only one emote, voice line, and spray to be equipped at a time. That's finally going to change.

The radial menu for in-match interactions is going to be updated, allowing players to lock in as many as four items from each cosmetic category. So, for example, you'll still only be able to have one spray visible in the world at a time, but you'll be able to choose from four different sprays.

The update to cosmetics will also allow players to bind emotes, voice lines, or sprays to specific keyboard commands (for PC users, at least; it's not clear how this will work on the console side). So instead of diving into the radial menu for your favorite voice line, you'll be able to simply press a button.

PvP and esports updates

One of the big additions coming on the PvP side is a server browser, which should make it easier for players to search out specific modes in the OverwatchArcade. If you're familiar with server browsers from games like Battlefield or Team Fortress 2, then you have a good idea of what to expect.

Kaplan also noted that the dev team is looking at ways to push parties of players into team voice chat, particularly in the seasonal competitive matches. It's not clear how this will work, exactly, but it sounds like you can expect to see pop-up notifications that provide a one-click switch from party chat to team chat.

For the Overwatchesports fans, Blizzard is also look at ways to improve the game's spectator view. Kaplan specifically mentions plans -- inspired by user feedback -- to introduce overhead maps, so viewers can have a better sense of how teams are spread out at any given moment.

There's more coming as well

Fans of Blizzard's limited time events -- pegged to the summer Olympics, Halloween, and winter/holidays in 2016 -- can expect more of the same in 2017. Kaplan doesn't get into specifics, but he says the upcoming events will connect to a mix of obvious and not-so-obvious real-world moments of interest.

He also confirms that the Oasis map -- which is currently available only in the Overwatch"Public Test Region" -- will make its way to the live game very soon. There's no date yet, but look for it in early 2017.