Blizzard Entertainment's team-based shooter Overwatch is nearing the end of its four-year lifespan. Its sequel is currently in production, and the developers just released the game's final new hero: The damage-archetype android Echo. However, that doesn't mean fans can't expect to see additional bits of content like new skins trickle out in the meantime, according to Blizzard Vice President and Overwatch Game Director Jeff Kaplan.
Kaplan took part in a Q&A session over the social media and messaging app Discord Friday. Overwatch-focused YouTuber Master Ian Gamer, who has accrued over 45,000 subscribers since joining the platform in 2012, was one of the individuals invited to ask questions, and an answer he found "particularly interesting" revolved around alternate character skins. The director said these skins are designed "almost a year" in advance and go through a long pipeline, but that there are good odds the healing-oriented support character Mercy "has a cool skin coming up."
The Overwatch team pays close attention to community suggestions for skins, in particular, Kaplan said, and he finds Mercy skins are fun because of the light and dark dichotomy they can achieve thanks to her valkyrie and angel-inspired roots. In 2018 the character was the basis of a campaign for the Breast Cancer Research Fund which raised almost $10 million.
Master Ian Gamer's question pertained to the inclusion of post-launch heroes like Echo and whether Kaplan or the rest of the Overwatch team would do anything different with them in retrospect. Kaplan said he felt the two-to-three-per-year release frequency was good for adding unique backstories without going into the territory of titles like League of Legends by adding "100s of characters," but that the team maybe could have better balanced the release of tank, support, and damage heroes.
A lot of the developers' time between now and the release of Overwatch 2 will likely focus on balancing, particularly for support characters. Kaplan also said there are "changes coming to Moira on the experimental card soon," which is suspiciously well-timed following the Overwatch Twitter account acknowledging a hilarious Orisa "rework" video Thursday.
When players can expect to see these kinds of character adjustments or additional skins being added for characters like Mercy was not specified by Kaplan. However, in the meantime the Overwatch devs are working on balancing heroes in different ways, such as changing hero pools based on the Overwatch League.
Overwatch is available now for Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
Source: Twitter, Master Ian Gamer