‘Overwatch 2’ dev admits it was a “mistake” to announce contentious self-healing update

15 January, 2024

Overwatch 2 artwork

Overwatch 2’s game director has admitted it was a “mistake” to announce contentious plans for self-healing “out of context”.

Last week, Blizzard announced a huge number of changes coming to Overwatch 2 as part of its Season 9 update.

As part of the planned update, both tank and damage heroes will be given a “modified, tuned-down version of the support self-healing passive”, with many players worried that this change will ruin the carefully balanced team dynamics that have always been an integral part of Overwatch 2.

“This [change] should give non-support players more options in terms of sustaining themselves,” game director Aaron Keller wrote in a blog at the time. “It should also take some of the pressure off support players to keep everyone alive since individual players now have more control of their own health pool.

“In Overwatch, there is a constant tug of war between the power of a team and the power of an individual hero or player,” he continued. “A change like this shifts that balance a bit. This is something that we are constantly evaluating. We still want Overwatch to be defined by team strategy and mechanics, but we feel this can be pulled back a bit now and possibly more in the future.”

In a new update, Keller has taken to social media to clarify that giving non-support heroes the capacity to self-heal was only one small part of the planned changes. “ Internally we’re talking about, and targeting some of these changes at damage spikiness in game, the role of damage heroes in securing kills, and the strength of healing,” he wrote.

“It was a mistake to talk about this lone change out of context, since it’s a part of a much bigger set coming to Season 9. Sorry for that. I look forward to more discussion around Season 9 balance changes when we drop more details,” he added.

In August, Overwatch 2 became the worst reviewed game on Steam, with players criticising the focus on monetisation and the demise of the original Overwatch.

In other news, the developer of the cancelled Portal 64 demake has said the project was “probably doomed from the beginning” because of its reliance on Nintendo’s proprietary library.

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