In recent months, the Blizzard employees in charge of their Overwatch division have come under a lot of fire, but for once there seems to be a silver lining for them, thanks to their most recent developer update. While at this point, there is much speculation as to how blizzard is going to approach their new changes, the future does look brighter than it has for a long time.

But what exactly are the changes? As far as the major changes go, there are three: the addition of the experimental card, the promise of more frequent and aggressive balance patches and the biggest talking point, hero pools. Each one has its aspects that need to be discussed separately from one another.

Experimental Card
Perhaps the least important of the major changes announced by Jeff Kaplan during his developer update, but still one of significance. Overwatch has always had a way for changes to be tested out by the players in the form of the Public Testing Realm (PTR) however this has yet to be extremely successful. With the PTR being exclusive to PC players and requiring a completely different installation has made it not worthwhile for the average player to play it. As a player myself, the only time I have ever seen the value in the PTR was with the release of Role Queue but even then my time spent there was very limited.

Playing on the PTR gave no rewards for players with regards to gaining coins or loot boxes to get that one skin that they have been dying to get for a long time. The only reason for players to play on the PTR would be to see for themselves what it is like to play a certain hero’s changes. However due to the various amounts of Overwatch streamers and pro players always streaming games on the PTR it became worthless for players to test it out for themselves.

Now with the addition of the experimental card, it both gives players the chance to test new changes to the game whether it be to heroes or gameplay as a whole, as well as the incentive to earn rewards from playing these games. As Jeff Kaplan states during his developer update, the games in this mode even contribute towards wins in events that require nine wins to acquire an event skin like the Nano Cola D.Va skin.

Perhaps this might mean we will see more of these kinds of events to give players that extra incentive to participate in the experimental mode.

While this is certainly not a game-altering change, it is a change that will only help the game advance forward and get the average Overwatch player more involved in the overall outlook of the game. This has very little impact on the upper tier of players for sure, but this is a big inclusion for the overall community. Nonetheless, it will be very interesting to see how this experimental card will allow players to learn more about the game before it enters the final stage. In my opinion, I believe this is a step in the correct direction to build a stronger tight-knit community and open-ended communication between the developers and the community.