While Marvel Rivals has been incredibly successful for developer NetEase Games, many have wondered how Blizzard feels about a new title seemingly stealing Overwatch 2’s thunder. Director Aaron Keller has since responded in an interview with GamesRadar that the team has to stop “playing it safe”.
Keller spoke about the new sense of competition that Blizzard is feeling from Marvel Rivals since the two games are quite similar in genre and gameplay styles. He refers to this competition as “kind of exciting”.
“We’re obviously in a new competitive landscape that I think, for Overwatch, we’ve never really been in before, to this extent where there’s another game that’s so similar to the one that we’ve created,” Keller said in the interview. “There’s actually something kind of exciting about this for a few reasons.”
The Overwatch 2 director then pointed to the recently-announced Season 15 of the game as a good example of how the company is looking to shake things up in response to the popularity of Marvel Rivals. He refers to the team working on Overwatch 2 as feeling internal pressure, prompting them to make the best possible game.
“There is pressure on the Overwatch team and a lot of it is internal,” Keller said. “It’s [asking] how do we make the best possible game we can? And we’ve been feeling it for a while.”
“We want to inject a bit of freshness into the game, but not just for variety’s sake. We want to increase the depth of play,” Keller continued. “So with perks, there are some choices in there that we hope will add depth to what it means to play any one of our heroes in the game, and we hope that it adds strategy throughout a match because now you’re able to pick things that either augment what your hero is doing – or maybe you’re going to use it to counter what somebody is doing on the other team.”
While Overwatch 2 has maintained a player base, more and more have been opting to spend their time with Marvel Rivals instead. Even Overwatch 2‘s Twitch viewership dropped back in January, with Marvel Rivals getting more viewers since its release.
Season 15 of Overwatch 2, titled Honor & Glory, is slated for release on February 18. The update will bring several new features to the game, including Perks as a new game mechanic. Divided into Minor and Major Perks, the system allows players to refine their play style with any hero the deeper they get into a match. For example, a Torbjorn player will be able to pick between having a more powerful level 3 turret or if they would prefer level 2 turrets that can be built along walls or ceilings instead.
Along with the gameplay and balance changes, Overwatch 2 will also be resetting player ranks and bringing back Loot Boxes.
