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Overwatch 2 to see ‘drastically’ reduced spawn timers in Season 8
Overwatch 2 is going to see some changes coming its way in Season 8. Game director Aaron Keller conveyed that the team was looking to make changes to the game, with the focus being to ‘improve fan experience’.
Reducing Spawn Times
The primary method Blizzard’s team hopes to utilize currently to accomplish this is by taking a run over the current spawn timers. The idea Keller put forth from his team is to drastically reduce spawn timers heading into Season 8.
Season 8 is set to kick off in December. With its launch, Keller has cited a desire from the team to drop the game’s spawn timers by a noticeable amount.
The exact/specific adjustment to the number has yet to be revealed. However, currently, the respawn timer is set to 10 seconds by default. Overtime increases that timer by 3-5 seconds, depending on the game mode.
Non-competitive game modes also include a mechanic called ‘group respawn’, wherein players that die within 5 seconds of each other, will respawn together.
Making Games More Enjoyable?
During his address, Keller also spoke on other upcoming changes (experiments) that he and his team are hoping to implement in the upcoming season. The principle behind all of these changes, he explains, is aimed at ‘making the game more enjoyable to play.’
Since a few years now, the playerbase for Overwatch has been in decline. The popularity of the hero shooter only took more of a beating with the launch of Overwatch 2, with the sequel to the hero shooter title only drawing more ire from the community for the changes.
In the case of reducing the spawn timers, the anticipated issue to come would be an increased difficulty for teams to end games. While it would have the intended effect of reducing time in between when players are actively in the game, it does massively shift the dynamic of the game.
Overwatch 2’s ever expanding roster has become home to more and more heroes. More than a few of them are fairly slippery, including the likes of Kiriko, Sombra, and Tracer. Even more are difficult to put down, such as Reaper and Orisa. Thus, this change may have the potential to create games that last into perpetuity due to constant contested and objectives.
Credit: Overwatch 2 // Blizzard Entertainment
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