22 April 2023 , 10:00
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Following the launch of Overwatch 2 Season 4 we sat down with the game's Executive Producer Jared Neuss, to find out what players can expect from the game, both in the short and long term.
The new season of Overwatch 2 hit live servers recently, and along with it, we're seeing a new hero, some quality-of-life changes to ranked play and balance changes to other characters. However, after constant player complaints, it seems that Overwatch 2 is stretching itself too far to cater to the many that it isn't even catering to the few anymore.
Jared Neuss is the new Executive Producer at Activision Blizzard, taking the role after working on games like League of Legends and Skyrim. In our exclusive interview, we wanted to know what his opinion on the state of the game is as a newcomer to the team and where he hopes to take the title in the future.
Neuss told us that the closing down of the original Overwatch, and the subsequent launch of the new free-to-play Overwatch 2, was "all about accessibility and all about bringing in players". However, whether or not the game actually caters to these new players is another question entirely.
The changes we saw last season, which resulted in different heroes having different statistics based on which queue type you were playing, made it clearer than ever that having both Role and Open queue, might not be the best decision for this game.
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These changes led to the Tank role, particularly heroes like Zarya and Roadhog, suffering immensely and becoming almost unplayable in Open queues, but still destroying Role queue games. Realistically, it seems unfair to expect players, new and old alike, to have to keep track of these differences.
In our interview, Executive Producer Jared Neuss justified why the Season 4 changes were implemented.
"I think the recent shift to make sure that that we don't have a terrible experience in something like open queue is a good indicator of us looking to see how players are engaging with the different queues, so that we have an understanding of what the pain points are," Said Neuss.
"You've seen changes to Total Mayhem, for example, where Zarya, constantly being shielded, was really frustrating for players.
"And so we tweaked that, I think we want the sort of the modes that people play the most to be very consistent. We want heroes to feel consistent. We don't want it to be a guessing game every time you go into a different queue.
"We're not going to just hold back and leave something completely overpowered.
"In the future, what we'll do is we'll adjust it. But I don't think it's something that we want to do, to make very different across every single queue that you play, because it would be confusing, right?
"We do want to make sure that the queues that we have are fun and we'll go in and make adjustments to make sure that that's true."
On paper, this sounds good. However, there's a risk that by trying to cover all bases, rather than focusing on a meaningful path moving forwards, they will struggle to cater to existing, or new players.
Earlier in the interview, we asked Neuss about the challenge of trying to draw in new players, whilst trying to keep the current player base engaged, and this point was emphasised further.
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"We have to support the players that we have in the game today, but we also need to make sure that we expand and grow in a way we can bring people in and that [old players] don't feel like they're being left behind."
But you can't please everyone, and this is the inherent issue. Right now, it feels like the game isn't catering to anyone in particular, with new players like myself struggling to keep up with multiple different meta compositions across the different queue types, and older players having their main heroes nerfed into the ground in the queue type they're most familiar with.
Open queue just isn't functional, whether this will continue to be the case as the game progresses is hard to evaluate right now. However, it does seem like it might be time to give it the boot.
When asked about the current state of the game, Neuss stated that "I feel like we've gotten to a much better place since launch [...] being able to understand what players want out of seasons", however, the first game, Overwatch, has been around since 2016. Blizzard has had long enough to understand what players want and implement that, particularly ready for the launch of Overwatch 2.
But there is still hope for Overwatch 2, and of course, Neuss shares that optimism, particularly in the longer term.
"My job is to look at all the things that we could be doing in the future and to work with the team to come up with like the right sequence of those things, the right priorities for them to make sure that we're delivering on the promise of what the game can be.
"When I think about how the service is doing, how players are responding to the game. I'm feeling really positive about where we're at and where we're going."
Overwatch 2 needs to have a clear direction, and decide whether it wants to draw in new players or keep its pre-existing player base happy.
Yes, deciding to go in one particular direction will be painful, and there will be unhappy players, but as long as there's a clear direction, players will inevitably, with time, get on board. The game has potential, time will tell if it can fulfil it.