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Blizzard’s Geoff Goodman Discusses Torbjörn Rework
Blizzard’s Geoff Goodman, lead designer on Overwatch,is discussing a rework of Torbjörn and how things are progressing, during an interview with VG247.
“I originally was sort of thinking, ‘Let’s not do anything too massive’,” Goodman tells us, before going on to explain how Torbjörn’s upcoming changes will transform the character in a big way.
“With Torbjörn, the issues we’re trying to solve are that he’s a little overly defensive focused,” Goodman explains. “We need him to be more viable on offense in a non-payload situation. It doesn’t mean he needs to be equal on offense, but we need him at least to not be a troll pick.”
Torbjörn’s power snowballs seem to be the most problematic and he seems ineffective until he set’s down a turret and upgraded it.
“You don’t get to use some of your abilities, your turret’s not as strong, it’s not as much of a threat without your ultimate ready to go,” Goodman said. “It feels like feast or famine with him a lot of time. That’s a thing we’re trying to solve.
“It’s cool when characters have their ultimate and there’s a power spike – being able to use your ultimate at the right time is a big part of the game – but it’s a little too much for him. It does everything, basically.”
The team plans to completely overhaul how Torbjörn’s turrets work.
“Currently, in our internal build, he just tosses it out – not super far, almost like a Tracer Pulse Bomb distance,” Goodman explains. “So you can kind of throw it like that and it deploys itself automatically on level two. It takes a little time to do that but you don’t have to hammer it or anything.
“This plays a lot better on offense – especially because you can run up, throw it in a flank spot and be immediately shooting again and not feel like you have to sit there hammering it. Being able to use that and have an extra threat shooting from the side feels really powerful. We can obviously tune the turret if it ends up being too strong or anything, but that’s the place we’re starting from.”
Molten Core, Torbjörn’s ultimate ability, may not be back as the team is working on a new ultimate when he is re-released.
“We may end up with a completely different ultimate at this point because it ties up too much of his power, but that’s still very much in flux so it’s hard to say,” Goodman says. “First thing we did was try a lot of different takes on Molten Core – maybe we could make it really cheap and take some stuff away from it, we tried it so it only affects the turret and doesn’t give you any buffs, and we tried the reverse so it only affects you.
“We definitely tweaked some of the base ability, so you could reload faster as that was frustrating before – you would run out of ammo in the middle of ulting and you can’t shoot anymore. As of now, I think we’ve decided to move away from Molten Core entirely.”
Currently, there is no specific time table for the rework to take place.
Capcom has officially announced that Free Title Update 4 will be arriving for Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak on February 7th which will include new foes alongside new Anomaly Research content, Event Quests and a new paid DLC.
Velkhana, the elusive Elder Dragon, has been spotted by the scouts of Elgado Outpost and poses a chilly challenge as it can freeze hunters in an attack, and will join the arrival of Risen Crimson Glow Valstrax when the new update drops.
New Anomaly Research will be available, Afflicted Chaotic Gore Magala joining the A8 Quests, and the Anomaly Investigation cap will be upped to 220.
More is in the works for Free Title Update 5, which is currently slated to arrive in April
News
Overwatch 2 Aims to Penalize Players Who Are Friends with Cheaters, Increased Voice Comms Monitoring
Blizzard is leveling up their efforts to thwart cheaters and misconduct within Overwatch 2, as the company aims to penalize players who are friends with cheaters and will amp up their monitoring of voice communications.
The company detailed this in the brand new update for its Defense Matrix Initiative, which is focused on curbing “gameplay sabotage, abusive chat, and cheating” stating their plan to come down on players who team up with cheaters, and more.
Blizzard admitted that cheating in Overwatch 2 is a problem and has “actioned over 50,000 accounts” since the game launched and starting in Season 3 they will be actively identifying players that purposely team up with players who are regularly flagged as cheaters, and will also face potential discipline.
Overwatch 2 will also have improved protection for streamers, as the issue of Stream sniping continues to be a problem, and in Season 3 they will be “introducing new streaming protection features that should be a huge step toward enabling content creators to share Overwatch 2 with their fans safely.”
Blizzard is encouraging players to report any disruptive or problematic behaviour in their matches.
EA and Respawn Entertainment is shutting down their Apex Legends mobile game with the company announced that they will be sunsetting the title this May with EA adding that they have also stopped development on a mobile Battlefield title.
According to Respawn Entertainment, the decision to sunset Apex Legends was not an easy one to make but the company said that “factors” beyond its control have prevented it from “maintaining the high-quality experience and content” players deserve and expect.
Despite the game having a rather strong start, Respawn said that the content pipeline for the game began to “fall short of that bar for quality, quantity, and cadence.”
EA announced that they made the decision to halt the Battlefield mobile title as they wish to create “deeply connected Battlefield ecosystem” which made them arrive at the decision to “pivot from the current direction”
“We remain highly committed to unlocking Battlefield’s enormous potential,” the company said in the statement. “We’re hard at work at evolving Battlefield 2042 and are in pre-production on our future Battlefield experiences at our studios across the globe.”
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