Alongside various other changes, Blizzard announced that Competitive Play will now adopt a hero limit. Here's what we have to say about it.
Many of you might have missed the big news – with the release of Ana and various tweaks to heroes' balance – but Blizzard took a major step with their decision to add a hero limit to Competitive Play. For the uninitiated, Blizzard effectively stated for several months that they firmly believed in their non-limiting policy. However, recent feedback from the community likely gave Overwatch developers something to think about.
Professional play suffered large drops in viewership without a hero limit in place, and many wondered whether the limit was the true cause in the community's lack of interest. Professional play with hero stacking was not only hard to watch, but many found it boring. Outside of the standard 2-2-2 compositions (featuring double Tracer, Winston, and Lucio), many disliked a lot of the problems that arose due to Blizzard's unwavering faith in their own ruleset. The community complained that six stacked Torbjörns was unbeatable on console, and that Tracer and D.Va cheese to continue forcing Overtime was ridiculous. This problem has also been fixed by some changes to Overtime: respawning will be slower by 2 seconds during Overtime, and after 20 seconds of Overtime the fuse will start burning down slowly meaning the widow you need to win is easier to hit. Additionally, the change will nip the recent rise of Zarya stacking in the bud.
Despite the developers' previous stance on their format, they listened to player feedback and delivered one of the more welcomed changes to their game. While they made a massive change to Overwatch's core values, many will overlook the hero limit to focus on the upcoming release of Ana Amari, or the impending balance changes that are certainly big. However, as a community, we should not forget that the Overwatch team has interacted with their community time and time again. They do what most other developers do not: listen to feedback.
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