Hero Balancing and Design Process | Developer Blog #3

Having a large cast of characters can lead to balancing issues. Read on to see the developer's design process by taking a look at Moira, as well as how the developers keep the game balanced.

Hero Balancing Process

Moira: Design Iteration Process

In this developer blog, Overwatch 2 developers offered some insight on its Hero design process. The blog goes over the team's process of balancing Moira's possible new abilities and how it'll affect the current meta.

Iteration 1: Pain Converter

Overwatch 2 developers, as much as possible, try not to have Heroes with similar abilities. For example, Moira was supposed to have an ability called Pain Converter but it felt too similar to Baptiste's Immortality Field, so it had to be scrapped.

Iteration 2: Purge and Nullify

Hero abilities that need specific conditions to trigger are also things developers have to look out for. With an iteration of Moira's ability, Biotic Orb, the Purge and Nullify abilities messed with enemy buffs.

While it is a good countermeasure for support heroes, the developers felt that nullifying buffs was too specific to be of use every match.

Iteration 3: Weaken

The most recent iteration of Moira's new ability is called Weaken. The ability is a projectile that builds up every time Moira reloads. The projectile lowers an enemy's attack and lowers healing output.

This new projectile will be comparable in size to Ana's Sleeping Dart. Developers are trying to make strong abilities into ones that are conversely harder to land.
Overwatch 2 Developer Blog #3

What Happens to Unused Ideas?

Unused Hero Ability Ideas Get Recycled

Regardless if Hero ideas make it into the game or not, unused ideas are shelved for later use. According to the Overwatch 2 game developers, unused ideas have a good chance of being added to an upcoming character.

An example of this mentioned in a blog was that an ability conceptualized for Ana, the Biotic Grenade, ended up being Baptiste's ability.

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