If you’ve been playing Overwatch regularly then you’ve probably noticed that the game has been suffering from bare-bones updates, and every seasonal event seems rehashed but with new cosmetics to cover up the lack of variety. While the official Overwatch forums are full of complaints that seemingly fell on deaf ears, it looks like Blizzard has been reading player feedback but it wasn’t in a position to address it until now.
Speaking to Kotaku at BlizzCon, Blizzard Vice President and Overwatch Director Jeff Kaplan acknowledged the recent lack of support for Overwatch, and revealed that the team has been struggling to split its time between supporting the original and developing the upcoming sequel.
“Overwatch 2 was 100 percent the reason,” admitted Kaplan. “And that was the reason that we were so excited to announce Overwatch 2. We now feel like we can have that open dialogue with the community of, ‘This is what we’re doing, this is why we’re doing these things.’”
Kaplan went on to say that rehashing seasonal events was nothing short of painful for the development team, especially because its full of ideas.
“I sit right next to one of the designers of Junkenstein’s Revenge – this brilliant guy named Mike Heiberg – and he’s like ‘I have all these ideas I want to do for Halloween this year,'” Kaplan continued. “And I’m like ‘I understand, Mike, but we’re focused on this other thing right now.’ So it’s hard for us.”
Kaplan added that the multiplayer clients for Overwatch 1 and Overwatch 2 will merge at some point because Blizzard doesn’t want to fragment its player base, and it doesn’t want one group of players to have an advantage over the other due to things like better frame-rates. He also said that when the sequel is out, players will get meaty updates once again.
Overwatch 2 is in development for all current-gen platforms. A release window has not been announced.
[Source: Kotaku]
