How do you decide which one is going to be next? You have a lot to choose from.ĭabiri: I think probably the way we choose heroes is similar for all our heroes, in the sense that - we have so many different factors. GamesBeat: There’s always a lot of excitement when you add an Overwatch character. It’s a challenge, for sure, but I think they’ve been doing a great job. By the end of this year we’ll have 75 heroes in this game. It’s something the hero designers - I think they have a lot of experience now. For us it made sense to translate that over to an ability, and then make his basic attack longer range, slower firing, but heavier hitting. We typically wouldn’t put, on a basic attack, something like that, where you hold down the attack button like on Overwatch. You mentioned the differences between his basic attack in Overwatch, for Hanzo, and in our game it’s his Q ability. We look at what would be cool for this hero, what’s a cool new mechanic that’s exciting? What do we think we might need in the game?
It’s the same way we do it for all our other heroes. Then we’ll add the extra one that’s unique to Heroes. Usually people want the iconic one as well. How do you design these new abilities?ĭabiri: The Ultimates are always the place where we can shine quite a bit with Overwatch heroes, because since in Overwatch they only have one, we can always add an extra one. GamesBeat: Most Overwatch characters bring all of their original abilities to Heroes, but you still need to give them some new moves, usually another Ultimate since your game gives players the choice of two.
You have a little more room to play with that. When you bring over Alexstrasza, they’ve never played Alexstrasza before. They’re used to a specific kind of experience, since the games are so similar. The other thing is, there’s also a lot of player expectation when you bring a hero from Overwatch.
I would say it’s both easy and it’s hard. Other heroes, we’ve tried other mechanics. Some heroes, we’ve tried to use that mechanic, in the case of Tracer. Maybe it’s more like ammunition that you’re reloading. The other things that can make it difficult - Heroes is a different game in the sense that, we typically have mana as a mechanic that a lot of heroes have. In Heroes, we’ve tried to get that theme with his natural agility trait and jumping over terrain, but those are some aspects that - we have to figure out the Heroes version of that. Certain things like verticality - obviously Hanzo has wall climb in Overwatch, where he can go up on top of buildings. It’s a first-person shooter, while we’re this top-down MOBA-style game. The difficult is that it’s also a different style of game. You have different abilities, different roles, Ultimates. It’s easy because Overwatch has a lot of similar mechanics to what Heroes has. Do you think they’ve been the simplest ones for you to bring over?ĭabiri: It’s interesting. GamesBeat: Overwatch characters seem to translate easily to Heroes of the Storm. Join gaming leaders live this October 25-26 in San Francisco to examine the next big opportunities within the gaming industry.Īlan Dabiri: You should feel right at home.