Director’s Take: Happy Holidays
Hi everyone, welcome back to another Director’s Take. A lot has happened since our last blog - the OWCS finals, Hazard’s gameplay reveal, our first 6v6 test, and an awesome Season 14 launch! If you haven’t seen what it takes to put together our newest hero, be sure to check out the broadcast segment from the finals. It was incredible being in Stockholm, meeting so many of you, and working alongside my team and the incredible voice actors and esports talent—the whole event was really special. Everyone talks about their meatballs, but I never expected Sweden to have such delicious pizza!
As we head into the holidays, we wanted to check-in and talk about some things that we’re really excited for in-game. Let’s get into it!
Hazard’s Trial & Launch
During Hazard's trial period, we were blown away by how excited the community was to play him. Based on your feedback and some of the things we saw during the trial, his effectiveness was originally not quite where we wanted him to be. He was at ~50% unmirrored win rate across all ranks and ~47% at Masters+ ranks on PC.
When it came time for Season 14 launch, we targeted improving consistency with Bonespur, strengthening his Spike Guard, improving his Vault passive, and reducing some of the less-fun aspects of fighting an enemy Hazard. We’re happy to see that these changes have largely landed where we hoped, as Hazard has climbed to higher unmirrored win rates, 55% and 56% at all ranks and Masters+ respectively on PC through last weekend.
Since then, we tuned down his Ultimate Charge rate a bit in our balance hotfix on Monday, but we have also seen that most of these broader changes positively improved his lethality, while leaving his survivability roughly intact, despite the recent buff to the DPS passive.
One interesting aspect of Hazard's performance that we’re keeping our eyes on is a delta between his unmirrored win rate between PC and Console. The leap and large aiming changes after can be demanding on a controller.
Before the balance patch earlier this week, he had about 3-4% lower win rate on console platforms than PC. This is sometimes the reality for heroes with leaping mechanics in Overwatch 2 on console, as we have seen the same phenomenon with Winston in the past. The large change in aim after can be demanding on a controller. We’ll keep an eye on this as Hazard slays (sleighs? lol) through matches throughout the holidays. If it becomes a problem, we have some ideas on how to bring these win rates closer together.
6v6 Tests Kickoff
The 6v6 tests kicked off this week, and we’ve enjoyed watching all of you jump into the game mode. Just as a recap, this test brings back the original 2 Tank, 2 Damage, and 2 Support Role Queue ruleset. There have been some balance changes for this test to adjust for the additional tank.
We removed a lot of individual hero passives and tuned down key role passives. Tanks got the most changes, with their Role Queue HP bonus removed, but several of them have HP adjustments to help them survive in the 6v6 environment. Some Tank ability reworks like Roadhog’s Scrap Gun and Take-A-Breather along with Zarya’s Particle and Projected Barriers have been reverted to their original versions, as well. The full list of changes can be seen in the 6v6 patch notes.
Later on, we’ll try a new experiment with 6v6 that will play similar to a Quick Play Hacked we tried last season, where up to three heroes of a single role can be on a team, but there has to be at least one hero in each role. The goal with this rule set is to allow greater freedom of hero choice while still ensuring that each team has a semi-balanced roster. If we were to ever make 6v6 a permanent part of the game, this version would eliminate the queue time issues that we had in the past. This Max 3, Min 1 ruleset will come later this season and could have some balance tweaks based off of the current 6v6 mode. We hope to see some competitive and intense action in both of these experiments.
2024 Competitive Year Rewards
On the topic of Competitive, this is the last season of the 2024 Competitive Year, which means you can expect some pretty big changes we're super excited about and think you will be too, coming in 2025. We’re not ready to share everything we’ve planned, but you should expect a bit of a shakeup like we did at the start of 2024 - you're going to love it.
I want to remind all of you, that Season 14 is the last season to pick up the Jade weapon variant for any of your favorite heroes using 2024 Competitive Points. After that, we’ll be premiering a new weapon variant, that I’m super excited about, and any of your unspent 2024 Competitive Points will be converted to Legacy Competitive Points which can only be used to collect Gold Weapon variants. You’ll be able to earn some additional points in another Drives campaign at the end of the season, and it's going to be bigger than before as well.
New Wintery Cosmetics to Unlock for FREE
To celebrate the festivities with all of you, yesterday we launched a holiday challenge in-game that gives you the opportunity to earn three wintery cosmetics.
To learn more about the challenge, be sure to read our very rhymey blog from earlier this week (I did NOT write that, by the way). This is our way to show our appreciation for all of you, and we look forward to seeing you jump in for some merry yule tide fun while the team is on break for the rest of the year.
Speaking of appreciation, when I look back at this past year, I can’t help but feel overwhelmed with gratitude for our community... and the Overwatch team. There are a lot of amazing games out there, and I’d like to personally thank you for spending your valuable time in ours. Thank you for your involvement, feedback and passion for our game – it means so much to us. I’d also like to include a huge thank you to the rest of the Overwatch team. Your support for each other and dedication to the game (and to your craft), bring new and wonderful parts of this universe to life every day.
Expect us to come back in 2025 refreshed and ready to share all of the things we have in store in the weeks ahead! On behalf of everyone here at Team 4, Happy Holidays and may your Play of the Game highlights shine brightly.
Let’s make a great game.
- Aaron
