00:05What's up, everybody? This is Jeff from the Overwatch team.
00:08We are super excited to be back with another developer update,
00:11but even more than the developer update, we're excited that beta is back.
00:16We hope for those of you who are in the beta, you're having a smooth experience.
00:20We're really excited to get your feedback.
00:22We need to know what you guys think of the game.
00:25We need to know what we need to change before launch,
00:27so it's a very important process for us.
00:29As many of you have probably realized by now,
00:32there have been a lot of changes to Overwatch since the last time
00:36that the beta was up and running.
00:38I'm going to try to cover some of those as briefly as possible.
00:42First of all, we have the new progression system.
00:45I think there's a lot about the progression system already out there.
00:48We have a really in-depth blog post that you guys can read
00:52to get all of the details.
00:54But for those of you who don't want to dive right into that blog post,
00:57the long and the short of it is you now have a player level in Overwatch.
01:02And as you level up in the game, which you do by just playing matches,
01:07you gain experience points.
01:10When you achieve those new levels, you will be rewarded with a loot box.
01:15And in those loot boxes, there can be all sorts of different random rewards.
01:19And they're all cosmetic.
01:21None of them are gameplay affecting, but we think that there's some really cool ones in there.
01:25There's skins, there's emotes for the characters, there's new voice lines,
01:29there's sprays so you can put emblems up in the play space for people to see.
01:34There's new avatars for you.
01:37There's what we call highlight intros.
01:39So if you get a play of the game, your character will do this really amazing animation.
01:43And I think it looks pretty amazing.
01:45So hopefully you guys like that content.
01:48There's a lot more to the progression system that you'll sort of learn over time,
01:52like things like unlocking portrait borders and that sort of thing.
01:55There's infinite levels to it.
01:57So the more you play, you can always just sort of level up.
02:00And it has no bearing on the competitive landscape of the game.
02:03And I think that's what's really important about the progression system.
02:07It's sort of the game's way for thanking you for playing
02:10without putting a heavy burden on you that you have to level up
02:13to really, you know, be viable in Overwatch.
02:17So beyond that, we've added a lot of new ways for you to play Overwatch.
02:22And I'm going to cover some of these as briefly as I can.
02:25One of the ways that we're very excited to talk about is what we're calling play versus AI.
02:34And really the inspiration from this comes for us from Heroes of the Storm.
02:38So Heroes of the Storm, as all of you Heroes players out there know,
02:41has a version of the game where you can just play in a competitive match cooperatively
02:48with other players but against AI.
02:51And for a lot of us, there's a lot of pressure just diving into a 6v6 competitive match against other
02:58players.
02:59We feel like, you know, we have to be on our best.
03:01We don't want to let our team down.
03:03But for whatever reason, it's more comfortable to play against the AI.
03:07And also the AI can be a little bit easier sometimes than other players as well.
03:12So we've put a new mode in.
03:14When you click on the play button, you now get options.
03:18There's quick play, which you guys are all used to.
03:20And now there is play versus AI, which will queue you up with a group of 6 to play against
03:256 AI opponents.
03:26The really cool part about this as well is that you can earn levels and loot boxes through doing this.
03:33So it's a great sort of introduction to the game.
03:36If you're learning a new hero, you're not feeling entirely comfortable with, you know, a new play style
03:42or you just came off of a long break from Overwatch, you can always come back and just play versus
03:47AI.
03:48So that's going to be in there for you.
03:50Now, something you guys asked extensively for was a new game mode in Overwatch.
03:56And we had said in a lot of the interviews that you've heard, you know, members of the Overwatch development
04:00team,
04:00we said, you know, we're always working on new game modes.
04:03They just don't always work out.
04:05Because we feel like it's really important to have a certain type of gameplay in Overwatch
04:09that doesn't discount the amazing abilities that the heroes have.
04:14Well, the game mode that we've settled on, we call Control.
04:18And I think those of you who have been around FPS communities for a long time
04:22will know this mode to be most similar with what we call King of the Hill,
04:28or FPS vets think of as King of the Hill.
04:31And the way that this mode works is there are three different points on each of these maps,
04:38the control maps that we have.
04:39When your team captures a point, you're accruing progress towards a point.
04:44towards victory on that point.
04:46Once you've captured that point, you don't need to stay on it.
04:48So if you want to put up a front or go send your tracer to harass up against the enemy
04:54frontlines,
04:55you can do that.
04:56You don't need to just sit in one spot on a control map.
05:00If your team wins the first two points, the map is over and you've won the whole game.
05:05If your team wins the first point and your enemies win the second point,
05:10then it goes to a whole third new point in the map.
05:14So it's kind of the tiebreaker point.
05:16That's the new game mode.
05:18And in this beta patch, you'll see two brand new maps that are a lot of fun.
05:23We've been playing them now for months.
05:25One is Nepal, which takes place in the beautiful Himalaya Mountains.
05:31And this is the area where Zenyatta is from.
05:34So there's a lot of cool little lore Easter eggs in here.
05:38For example, the room where Genji stayed with Zenyatta is in this space.
05:43And then the other map is called the Lijiang Tower.
05:46And this is an amazing skyscraper in China.
05:50And it's one of our most beautiful futuristic maps.
05:53So we think you guys will have a lot of fun playing in the new game mode and the new
05:58maps.
05:59Now beyond that, we were reading a lot of your guys' comments
06:02and listening to a lot of feedback from players in the beta.
06:07And there was a request, you know, hey, we want more game mode.
06:10So obviously we've got control coming.
06:12But a lot of times when the request would come through for a new game mode,
06:16it would be the type of thing like, hey, it would be cool.
06:19Like a cool game mode would be only Hanzo's versus Genji's.
06:24Or a cool game mode would be that you can't have two of any of the same hero.
06:29And there's sort of a semantics issue going on here
06:32because I don't really think of those necessarily as complete separate game modes,
06:36but just fun rule sets to play with.
06:38So we did a lot of talking on the development team
06:42and we decided to really change the private game feature.
06:46In fact, we renamed it to custom game, which is more in line with games like,
06:50you know, Starcraft and Heroes of the Storm.
06:53And we really started to blow out the number of rule options that you have
06:58to create your own custom game.
07:00You're going to find some really fun stuff in there.
07:03So let's say you only wanted two heroes of each role maximum on each team.
07:09You can do that.
07:10Or if you've decided that Junkrat is overpowered and doesn't belong in the game,
07:15you can make a custom game with no Junkrats.
07:18Or you're having a really competitive match and you find skins distracting.
07:23Well, you can make a custom game that disables skins.
07:25There's also some fun, you know, embrace your inner game designer features in there as well.
07:31There's a headshot only mode.
07:35You can scale health.
07:36You can control the rate at which ultimate charge gains over time.
07:41So we're trying to give a lot of customization and expression to you as the player
07:47so you can experiment with Overwatch and say,
07:50Hey, for me and my friends, this is the really fun way that we like to play the game.
07:54And of course, we as the development team are going to be watching
07:57and keeping track of what types of custom games you guys are doing.
08:02And if there are really popular features that we see in custom game
08:06that the community is really embracing,
08:08we'll talk about trying to incorporate some of those back into the core game design
08:13when it comes to the quick play mode as well.
08:15You're going to see a lot of other improvements to the game.
08:19I hope you have a lot of fun checking everything out.
08:22If you guys have questions, we'll do our best to be answering it
08:25on our social media sites and also on our forums.
08:30We want to thank you for your patience when the beta was down.
08:34And as always, we look forward to what you guys have to say about Overwatch
08:38because we feel like we're making this game with you guys.
08:40So thanks for everything and we look forward to our next chance to catch up together.
08:45We'll be right back there.
08:47Grazie a tutti
