Overwatch’s 21 st season of Competitive Play kicks off today with 4 popular heroes on thebench Hanzo, Mei, Orisa, and Baptiste will start the season obstructed off to players. You’ll have to discover somebody else to play as for a week if one of these heroes is your main. This is Blizzard’s first effort to shock Overwatch’s meta. Weekly a various swimming pool of heroes will be obstructed off, so if you enjoy playing as Mei, she needs to be back next week.
Overwatch’s concept game designer Scott Mercer states that the team got feedback from players that the meta was stagnant for too long. “Especially at the highest ranks of the game, like Master and Grandmaster, we’ve seen the meta become more defined,” he states. “The better you are at the game, the more you start to see the effects of what players deem are the strongest heroes. Even after our decision to switch team compositions to 2-2-2, creating change in the meta is a hard thing to do. We started being more aggressive with hero balancing with the hope that it would affect the meta, but we still worried that it wouldn’t shift enough for players. Hero Pools are part of a solution to address players’ desire to have a constantly shifting meta.”
As intriguing as it is to see Blizzard try out the game’s balance at this moment in its life, it is frustrating that it suggests some players won’ t get to experience the game the method they wish to due to the hero swimming pool eliminations. It is simply one week, however it still stings.
For more on Blizzard’s decision to present turning hero swimming pools, take a look at the official Overwatch blog site.
