Overwatch 2’s Mauga is part of an evolving way of adding new heroes to the game
11.12.2023 - 08:19
/ polygon.com
Overwatch 2’s new hero, the dual-minigun-wielding Samoan tank Mauga, officially launched earlier this week with the game’s eighth season. Before that, Blizzard Entertainment added Mauga to the roster for an early preview weekend, which coincided with this year’s BlizzCon.
Mauga’s early access weekend was more than just a fun surprise for Overwatch fans; it was also a test for Blizzard. The tank hero was buffed, debugged, and tweaked in response to that hero preview, resulting in a more powerful (and hopefully balanced) addition to the game’s hero lineup.
Lead hero designer Alec Dawson said in an interview with Polygon ahead of Mauga’s release that the Overwatch development team hopes to do similar player tests with future heroes. Dawson also talked about some of the lessons learned during Mauga’s preview weekend, and how the Overwatch team is evolving its approach to adding new heroes to the game.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Polygon: For Mauga, you did a kind of unprecedented test of a new hero nearly a month in advance of their launch. Can you tell me about what led to the decision to do that?
Alec Dawson: If you look at the team overall, and how we’ve been trying to treat development over the course of the last [couple] years, it’s really been to open up a lot more of it, engage more with the community, and try to make sure that relationship is as transparent as possible. With Mauga in particular, we had an opportunity: BlizzCon was coming back. We wanted to do something big, especially for all the folks at home, and we thought it’d be a great time to show them Mauga early, and also collect feedback on Mauga before he actually gets launched as well.
We think it’s something that worked out really well, and we’re looking forward to do it in the future again with future heroes.
How did it go?
I think overall we were really happy with the weekend, and there were some things we wanted to tune up, especially around Mauga’s survivability. We saw when he gets in there, gets in close and is in the right situation, he can be incredibly lethal. We saw players utilizing his ult very well early on, too. But there were some things on the survivability front, in terms of his frontline presence — being a tank. So we upped that [survivability] before launch. There were even small bugs that we were able to catch, especially with how quickly he was setting enemies on fire. So we’re able to fix that and get that sorted. We also got to see that first-time user experience across millions of players [and] how they’re playing with Mauga, what were some of the shortcomings there.
One of the biggest things was Overrun, and players not feeling as capable with this ability where he runs at you