In a player’s stream, Jeff Kaplan revealed details about the future of Overwatch. Is “Hero Stacking” still on the table?
“Ana” patch needs many changes
The Overwatch developers occasionally appear on the streams of some streamers and play a few rounds with them. This also happened on the Twitch channel of “ster”, who had the honor of playing a few matches with Jeff Kaplan on the test server. During the games, they talked about many topics, including the future of Overwatch. In particular, it was about the current patch, which in its current version might not even reach the live servers. The following changes were discussed:
- Mercy’s damage buff will be reduced from 50% back to 30%
- Zenyatta could drop from 200 to 175 health points
- Currently, they are working on 4 new maps, but maybe not all will be released
- New skins will come “before the end of summer”
- The developers are working on new game modes, but the next map will contain a mode that is already known
- Ranked matches in Season 2 should be shorter – the times for the attack will be reduced
- The health bars for all allies will be displayed soon
During the stream, Kaplan also elaborated a bit on the details of some changes. Large hitboxes on small characters would be necessary, as the small, fast heroes (like Tracer) would otherwise be overpowered. The recent changes on the PTR should ensure that you are no longer shot “around corners” due to a huge hitbox.
“Hero Stacking” was also a topic. Although this was not explicitly stated, the conversation suggests that in Season 2 they may revisit “Hero Stacking”, meaning multiple selections of the same hero.
Otherwise, many plans for the future were reaffirmed. With Season 2, they aim to eliminate the “Coin Flip”, meaning the random outcome of who is the attacker or defender in the case of a “Sudden Death”.
For more news and articles about Blizzard’s hero shooter, find them on our Overwatch game page.
