During a developer livestream right now, Blizzard revealed its roadmap for the approaching months. The roadmap, which was introduced by recreation director Aaron Keller and government producer Jared Neuss, particulars what’s coming throughout Season 5, 6, 7, and past. In addition to PvP updates, the Overwatch 2 builders additionally gave us an concept of when to anticipate the long-awaited PvE expertise that was introduced alongside the sport in 2019.
“As work slowly continued on Overwatch 2, we began to pull more and more of our focus and energy away from the live game and all of the people that were playing it,” Keller mentioned on the stream. (*2*)
Season 5, which has the theme of “Mischief and Magic,” is at the moment set to kick off on June 13. This fifth season of the live-service shooter brings occasions and modes, together with a brand new limited-time occasion referred to as Questwatch, in addition to the return of the Summer Games occasion. The roadmap additionally guarantees a cinematic reveal, a 5v5 mini comp season, the Creator Workshop mode, and the return of the On Fire mechanic that was current in Overwatch.
Season 6, which is ready for later this summer season, is heralded by Blizzard as the only largest drop of recent gameplay launched at one time since Overwatch 2 launched in October of final yr. Season 6 guarantees a brand new assist hero, Flashpoint, Hero Mastery, a Firing Range, a participant development system, and the annual Overwatch anniversary occasion. Perhaps most significantly, Season 6 offers gamers the PvE content material that was introduced again in 2019, as Story Missions arrive as a part of Season 6. Unfortunately, the Hero Missions PvE mode has been lower from the group’s plans.
“Development on the PvE experience really hasn’t made the progress that we would have hoped,” Neuss mentioned on the stream. “The team has created a bunch of amazing content. So, there’s awesome missions that are really exciting, there’s brand new enemies that are super fun to fight, and some truly great and ridiculous hero talents. But unfortunately, the effort required to pull all of that together to a Blizzard-quality experience that we can ship to you is huge, and there really is no end in sight or defined kind of end date where we can put that out into the world. And so, we’re left with another difficult choice: Do we continue to pour all that effort into PvE, hoping that we can land it at some point in the future or do we stick with this set of values that we’ve aligned on and focus on the live game and focus on serving all of you? With everything we’ve learned about what it takes to operate this game at the level that you deserve, it’s clear that we can’t deliver on that original vision for PvE that was shown in 2019. What that means is that we won’t be delivering that dedicated Hero Mode with talent trees, that long-term power progression … those things just aren’t in our plans anymore.”
Finally, we discovered what gamers can anticipate from Season 7 and past, which features a new tank hero, reworks of longtime heroes Roadhog and Sombra, a brand new Control map, a brand new winter occasion, new Hero Mastery missions in multiplayer, cinematic debuts, the return of fan-favorite modes and Competitive Mastery heroes, a brand new limited-time collaboration occasion mode, and a brand new lore codex.
Overwatch 2 launched on October 4, 2022. While the preliminary response was constructive (learn our evaluate right here), the strategy to supporting the sport and the season move construction has deterred many gamers from maintaining with the title.
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