Where is overwatch going?
One user asked this exact question in the Overwatch forum and the game’s director Jeff Kaplan responded with a lot of updates and teases for what is coming in the future.
Kaplan stressed that the team is working hard on content patches right, while also having a long term plan extending into 2017. However, one focus for the team at the moment is the return of competitive play, after essentially overhauling the mode after receiving feedback from the game’s beta earlier this year.
“We did a big push on this feature in beta and got some really amazing feedback,” Kaplan said of competitive mode. “We were hoping that from the beta version of Competitive Play, we would need to do some polish and iteration and then release the feature but we felt like the feedback we got was basically asking for a different direction. So Competitive Play is quite a big effort for us this time around — almost as much work as the first version.” Kaplan added that Blizzard has been playtesting the mode multiple times a day.
Blizzard is also working on new characters, some of which “are very far along” and some that are “just getting started.” Along the same lines, new maps are also coming, with at least one “officially in the production pipeline”
Other features that Blizzard is working on include improvements to the spectator/broadcast/observer functionality in the game, improving the highlights and player of the game sections, changing the progression system to allow for greater customization, and a lot of social features.
Kaplan stresses that its important to keep in mind that all of these may not happen, but you can see in full detail what the team is working on at Overwatch’s forums.