The Overwatch team has been very quiet lately about upcoming Heroes in their FPS game. Jeff Kaplan the Game Director released a statement on the official forms [1] stating that “we have new heroes coming” and went into detail about balancing heroes.
This is clearly referring to what happened with Sombra when she was released. When she was released, Blizzard advertised and hyped her up to the community with countdown clocks and information about her abilities.
After so much hype, players were left disappointed by Sombra when she was finally released into the game. Blizzard ultimately admitted they had created too much hype about the hero which caused her release to ultimately ‘fail’. It resulted in disappointed players and created chaos within the community as players argued over the upcoming heroes skills and abilities.
Blizzard seems to have learned their lesson about creating too much hype for their heroes and will be taking a different stance for the future. Hopefully this will result in a more balanced approach to upcoming characters with surprise hero reveals.
Kaplan explained in his forum post that the team tried to “approach things from a more objective stance” so that they represent those who play a certain hero and those who fight against them. This system allows them to balance heroes to suit all players in the game and allows them to preserve the core characteristics of a hero.
While some players will disagree with the team’s stance, it allows the developers to better balance that heroes in the game. Blizzard may not be hyping the release of new heroes so much but the community will still generate their own hype about the upcoming heroes which will be coming to the game soon.
Jess Kaplan statement [1] https://us.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/20753318521#post-13
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