aaron keller emongg interview:

balance patch next week

highest winrate: lucio (low pickrate tho), rein, reaper, masters+: queen (dva on controller by a crazy amount), mei, lucio

lowest winrate: masters+: dva (46%, rein in comparison is 52%)

highest pickrate: soldier (one of most picked in regular game too)

top pick powered: 76 attack visor + juno second set of missiles (70% percent of players picking those in builds)

stadium is upper 30%, low 40% of all play hours still

aqua not on the roadmap because they're not sure if they should have new heroes come in the mode fast or save those resources for heroes that people have loved for 8 years

consumables - buyable short term powers potentially being a thing in the future

quest system (trials) - give a hero an "upgrade" to their hero early in the game to influence their build (hopefully avoid content drought from meta builds/armory appeal and change the way you think about putting a build together rather same thing every time)

rein is still called juggernaut internally in their systems

pharah was actually mercy at one point

drafts (picking back and forth) - snake pattern for hero selection, first tank will get a ban (no one else will get one); is there a format problem that drafts can fix (there is strategy), or is it more important to put in a system that adds variety from match to match (drafts and trials may swap when one comes out, what they decide will be better for the game mode)

no 6v6 version of stadium, not on the table rn (too many performance issues before even looking at that). the mode started as a 4v4 (for performance and because they were worried it was too crazy)

monday hoping to have a patch to test a few things on consoles to improve performance

made the decision to lock fps at 30 on older consoles to take away spikes, but reduces input as well (experiments are to turn it off and stuff)

mythic weapons was a massive endeavor of trying to figure out how to free up memory for it for performance

no solid plans for keybind for 1st to 3rd person

68% percent in 3rd person, 31% in 1st person

save your build - gonna be more full featured than example builds (you can put more items into it, separate things easier eg early, mid, late games you can keep separate)

matchmaking - designed the rank system so playtime accounts for rank up (not just win percentage) but tapers off, leagues 5-7 it's just win/loss and how well you're doing, so they separate skill from your league (especially in lower leagues), so there's a chance your league level can be much different from your internal rating (you can see this in the normal game, see it in the rank resets so people who jump in in the middle of the season aren't having really bad matches)

search bar - "wow, I don't know if we've ever talked about that but that's a cool idea", quality of life stuff coming

Aim down site improved in season 17 (no more pop)

support is most popular role in stadium by a decent margin, dps and tank are roughly equal, already seeing longer queue times at high levels (supports are even higher population at the higher levels so it's worse). average queue time is under 2 mins

streamers are playing too much and have such a high mmr it's like a little island there's not many people playing in

talking about doing unranked stadium, could eventually add group restrictions in ranked games

would be fun to have a new deployable for a builder character (not really a thing being worked on)

working on replay system for stadium (was on stretch list for stadium features so it was a last second thing)

replays get wiped because they're saved in a specific format and changes to the game invalidate things in that data (different overhauls in the data). if you wanted to keep them you'd have to go back and fix everyone's previous replays each patch. too big of a cost to handle that

support is just as popular in core game as dps after a lot of work trying to get them more fun, there's still things they can do with tank (or dps in stadium). supports might have a leg up in stadium because they have so many roles they can be built into (damage or support, and damage can only be damage)

they definitely plan on changing up abilities, and a lot of knobs they can turn in this game mode (a similar reason they added perks). they will be removing a fair amount of items in season 17 and replacing them. power's they'll be a little more selective on doing that with. adding a new hero shakes everything up (but this is more short term)

could you ever queue for multiple queues at once (comp + stadium for example): talked internally, would be nice QOL but gets really complicated and hard to justify the work on that

no top 500 right now (difficult to due because of engine), maybe there will be (no answer)

they'd like to have drives available for stadium

did an experiment of best of 5 this week, thinking of doing that for the unranked mode

originally wanted way more than 7 rounds in the game mode (wanted more visits to the shop to really grow)

when starting the stadium a lot of the rounds were just team deathmatch, wasn't a target for main audience, shifted to core game mode, so instead of many short rounds it was a few longer rounds (for more ults and stuff)

7 rounds was the sweet spot

you can share builds the same way you can share custom games/workshop codes

they would like to do something long term where you can save others' builds in your match

decent amount of mercy rule games (higher than wanted). overwatch is a game of momentum (winning first round of control you have a higher chance to win the second than the other team, aaron thinks it's psychological), stadium advantage is a little less psychological. thinking of removing currency difference in mercy rule (small chance of losing 3 rounds in a row and winning the next one)

trying to move as fast as they can (hence all the patches)

any changes to the regular game goes into stadium as of now (too much work to upkeep 2 sets of balance), reworking a hero is gonna have a big ripple effect (there's a few on the list)

banger season coming up for the core game modes

choosing the starting heroes: what are ones that will be fun to build/that they have a lot of opportunity space and popularity of the heroes (to give the mode the best chance without all the heroes). sucks for the players that don't have their heroes in, intention is to get them in but unfortunately takes some time

changes for perks are more based on pickrates than balance rates on them (they like the idea of things needing more of a decision rather than just knowing)

upcoming powers season 17: sigma - get a mini experimental barrier that orbits around you + barrier items (you wind up orienting yourself to the barrier as it moves around you as a moving piece of cover, it's fun); zen - flying kick

team morale is very high right now

took feedback from players - like taking bigger risks now (stadium + perks aren't the end of our ambition), there's a lot to look forward to in general (next year is gonna be bonkers)