Blizzard wants to keep all player groups happy and engaged

Mar 29, 2016 14:29 GMT  ·  By

Overwatch might be the most ambitious project that Blizzard has ever created and the company is pushing itself even further by aiming to launch the team-focused shooter on both the PC and home consoles at the same time and by trying to keep separate balance situations on the featured platforms.

According to Jeff Kaplan, the team is aware the tuning the game for console gamers is very different from working with PC fans and aims to keep both groups as satisfied as possible in the long term.

He explains that, “We don’t want to do anything that would harm PCs because of console tuning. And there’s been a lot of unease about ‘I play on this platform, which means the other one is going to ruin it for us’ and we wouldn’t do that.”

This probably means that patches for Overwatch will arrive at different times on the PC and on home consoles.

The announcement is also a good sign that, despite the cross-platform talk that has been coming out of both Microsoft and Sony, Blizzard does not currently have any plans to introduce such a feature to its coming shooter in the short term.

Overwatch should be offered on all platforms on May 24 of this year for the price of a full retail video game.

Weekly Brawls will get more rewards in the coming months

Kaplan also says that the Weekly Brawls, based on an idea first seen in Hearthstone, are important for the future of Overwatch and his team plans to introduce more rewards for them, making sure that even experienced players have a reason to log in and play each week.

Data mining performed by fans shows that 14 variations of rules are currently planned and more will probably be added by Blizzard once the game is out.

The developer is also assuring the community that his team is already exploring ideas for the heroes that will be introduced during the rest of 2016 and the maps on which they will show off their unique skills.

Overwatch is a team-based six-versus-six experience that allows players to switch between heroes at will, giving them extra flexibility when it comes to tactics and making it easy for a good team to modify its strategy based on how the enemy fights.

Blizzard says that it will offer tools to make it easy for groups of players to coordinate with one another and that it wants to foster a positive fan community.