'We should be a little scared of what we're putting out there': Overwatch 2 lead designer says hero perks are about 'letting go' of perfect balance

This week, Blizzard threw a curveball at Overwatch 2 fans just a few months shy of its ninth anniversary. As of next week, Overwatch 2's static heroes will level up throughout a match with mini-skill trees. Blizzard calls them perks, and based on my playtime with them, they're the single largest shakeup of Overwatch's format since 5v5—one perk lets Mercy's blue beam change to two allies at all times, another gives Reaper an entirely secondary fire, and my favorite trades Orisa's javelin spin for a barrier, letting her pivot to a defensive tank role.

While it's natural to question if Overwatch's pivot to mid-game power ups is a direct response to Marvel Rivals' team-up abilities that can similarly elevate heroes, Overwatch 2 lead gameplay designer Alec Dawson told a roundtable of press at Blizzard's Irvine campus this week that perks were in the works long before Rivals was the new hero shooter hotness. That said, the motivation ultimately came from a growing feeling that Overwatch was at risk of stagnating.

"One of the things we all agreed on was that Overwatch needed to evolve and needed to have more choice," Dawson said.

When Season 15 introduces hero perks on February 18, heroes will earn XP throughout the match and level up twice, picking between two perks at levels 2 and 3. The goal, as Dawson tells it, is to identify the creative ways players are already using heroes and designing perks that serve that fantasy.

"People have always asked for Lifeweaver to be more of a damage dealer. How do we look at that and then give that to you in a way that makes sense for Lifeweaver?" he said. "Another [hero] that's representative of that is Sombra. One of her major perks lets her heal allies with her hack. People have talked about 'support Sombra' for a long time. How can we give a little taste of that?"

Perks didn't start out so adventurous. Dawson talked about early versions of perks that were more conservative than their current iteration and said it took a lot of time and playtesting to learn to stop holding back.

"There was one Tracer perk where, when she recalls, she would get back one blink charge. The one we're shipping with is when she recalls, she gets back all of her blink charges."

That desire to be less protective and "less precious," as game director Aaron Keller put it in a presentation to press, about what an Overwatch match can be has become a guiding principle for Dawn's team.

"There's a little bit of letting go of the fine balance that we've been chasing and see how it all plays out to some degree," Dawson said. "We should be a little scared of what we're putting out there, in terms of how it might affect the game. Within reason, of course.

"I think perks are that. It's gonna be a lot for players to learn and we're going to be monitoring how that happens over time, but also giving it room to breathe."

When asked if the overnight introduction of 168 buffs across 42 heroes means Blizzard is embracing a degree of balancing chaos, Dawson copped to Overwatch's reputation for overcaution and fuddy-duddy balance patches.

"We think players do crave slightly more complexity than we've been giving them for a while," he said. "When we look at some of our balance patches, they've been a lot of tuning and recycling. We want to step out of that and make sure that when we make balancing decisions, they are really felt. I think perks give us a nice turning vector for that."

Multiple Blizzard devs mentioned how excited they are that perks will give the team "new knobs to turn" for future balancing passes. Dawson also mentioned that perks will change seasonally, whether that means balance adjustments, ditching underperforming perks, or through two planned yearly "perk drops" to keep the system fresh—a similar approach to Marvel Rivals' rotating team-up bonuses.

"I do think the team overall wants to make sure that we don't forget Overwatch is supposed to be fun," Dawson said. "We're supposed to have a little bit of wackiness, but also let these heroes play in the ways that our players want to play them."

Overwatch 2 Season 15, starting February 18, will bring hero perks to both Quickplay and Competitive. Stadium, Overwatch's new third-person mode with its own upgrade story unrelated to perks, is coming in Season 16 alongside new hero Freja.