A new round of balancing changes is giving Overwatch further polish. We have the details.
Plenty of Small Nerfs – Less Mei, More Winston
Slowly but surely, it seems that Blizzard is settling in, as the adjustments to the characters are becoming somewhat less drastic. There are not really any major leaps anymore – except for one or two exceptions – which likely indicates a more rounded and balanced gameplay experience.
- Symmetra now takes 30% longer to use her Ultimate “Teleporter”, making it more worthwhile to eliminate.
- Winston can now jump every 6 seconds (previously 8 seconds), giving him additional mobility.
- There are two adjustments for Mei. Her alternate fire is once again slowed down by 15%, while the damage of the projectile decreases with increased distance. As a trade-off, enemies hit by her “Snow Gun” are now frozen 15% faster.
- Larger changes are also present for Genji, as this agile ninja loses 20% of his Shuriken damage. Instead, he gains 50 health points, bringing him over 200.
- For all heroes, there is an adjustment to the melee attack. This now deals only 30 damage (previously 50), but has a cooldown of only 1 second (previously 1.5 seconds).
The complete list of all changes can be found in our sources.
The Power of Sounds
At GDC 2016, the two developers Scott Lawlor and Tomas Neumann, who are mainly responsible for the soundscape, talked about an experiment that they implemented with Overwatch. The goal was to develop a game that could be played solely based on the sound sources. The underlying idea was simple: players should be able to gather as much information as possible from the sounds.
Therefore, Overwatch does not rely on “realistic” sound, but has made some changes. For instance, the footsteps of enemy heroes are always louder than those of allies. Additionally, there is a “threat system” that analyzes whether players might “get in each other’s way”. For example, if you are targeted by a distant enemy, you can hear them clearly. If another enemy is walking two meters away in a different room, but there is no direct path to them, then their sounds are only faint.
The size of the characters has also been incorporated in a special way: large heroes (essentially all tanks) can be heard more clearly than smaller characters. The exception is: you always hear yourself quite softly. Yes, even as cuddly Roadhog.
You can find more news and articles about Blizzard’s hero shooter on our Overwatch topic page.
