Since its launch, Blizzard’s free-to-play hero shooter Overwatch 2 has been through some serious peaks and valleys. Originally pitched as a sequel that would exist alongside the beloved original game and offer a new, layered PvE mode that expanded upon its hero’s abilities, the game players got in October 2022 was very different.
Overwatch 2 replaced the original game entirely, removed a player from every match (going from 6v6 to 5v5), and never delivered the promised PvE mode. The free-to-play swap came with accusations of predatory pricing and pay-to-win schemes, and back in August 2023, Activision Blizzard even admitted players were playing and spending less.
In recent months, Marvel Rivals, NetEase’s free-to-play hero shooter set in the comic book universe, has been eating Overwatch 2’s lunch, boasting higher player count and retention than other recent live-service titles like Helldivers 2 and Diablo IV. In the face of a dwindling player count, a frustrated core base, and the success of a direct competitor, Blizzard has to reinvigorate Overwatch 2 — and that’s exactly what the studio is doing.
Season 15 (which launches on February 18) and 16 (due in April) will introduce massive changes to the hero shooter that dwarf anything we’ve seen in its nearly decade-long history, from perks that add four new abilities to each hero in both Quick Play and Competitive modes, to Stadium, an entirely new mode that offers even more variety amongst a select roster of heroes.
I traveled to Blizzard’s headquarters in Irvine, California for the Overwatch 2 Spotlight event, to try out the new perks, new high-skill damage hero Freja, and the Stadium mode, as well as chat with the developers about how they’re no longer being so precious with the Overwatch legacy.
The perks of being a hero
Overwatch’s gameplay has always been defined and adapted by its ever-growing hero roster. During Overwatch 1’s peak, players were frustrated with a popular team layout of three tanks and three support heroes (commonly known as GOATS), which persisted until Blizzard introduced Role Queue, limiting the roles to two of each per team. An older version of support hero Mercy (in which she could sweep in and instantly resurrect several dead teammates at once) created the “Moth Meta,” which Overwatch 2 recently brought back as a limited-time mode. Balancing the game has been a precariously difficult task since 2016, as adding a beefy new tank could easily up-end the game’s meta, while slightly tweaking a DPS character could cause chaos.
But with the introduction of perks in Season 15, Overwatch 2 adds a layer of depth and player choice that will completely change how the game is played and further complicate its delicate balance. Each hero will get four different perks — a set of two minor ones and another two major ones. Minor perks are considered smaller upgrades, like an update to support hero Lucio’s knockback ability that increases its strength, or giving bow-and-arrow hero Hanzo the ability to hack nearby health packs with his arrows.
Major perks dramatically shift a character’s core gameplay loop, like healer Moira’s Ethical Nourishment, which makes her biotic orbs instantaneously heal nearby allies after she throws them, or D.Va’s Heavy Rockets, which replace her micro missiles with fewer, but much more powerful, projectiles.
As a match progresses, you’ll earn progress towards the perk upgrade, tracked by a bar in the bottom left corner (Blizzard says the first perk is usually earned about a third of the way through a match). When you reach the threshold, you’ll be prompted to choose between one of two perks, which you can bring up with either the D-pad on your controller or the left Alt key on a keyboard.
I only got a chance to play a few matches with this new perk system, but it’s clear that it completely turns Overwatch 2 gameplay on its head, allowing players a chance to approach how to play a character in new and varied ways and adding flexibility to a gameplay loop that has long felt all-too-rigid. It will radically change how every single match is played, a crucial adjustment considering how long the game has felt a bit stagnant, or far too safe.
It will also, naturally, be controversial.
“There’s definitely some upfront friction, like getting used to it and remembering it’s there,” lead gameplay designer Alec Dawson says during a group interview. “But you’ve played Reinhardt hundreds and hundreds of times, and you’re gonna play him a bunch now and you’re gonna get used to his perks for that season.”
Yes, the perks could change from season to season based on player feedback and data Blizzard collects from this groundbreaking update, but don’t fret — Dawson reassures us that the team wants to give this new feature space to breathe.
“I think it’s exciting,” he says. “I think there’s always been this sort of ethos that I’d like to follow where we should be a little scared of what we’re putting out there … I think that perks are going to be a lot for players to learn, and we’re going to be monitoring how that happens over time and just seeing how that balance plays out.”
Blizzard has historically been rather precious with Overwatch’s core gameplay loop — until now.
Turn and face the strange, ch-ch-changes
If it feels like perks were inspired by the once-promised, long-dead PvE mode announced by then-game director Jeff Kaplan back in 2019 (which included skill trees that would let players customize hero abilities), that’s because they were.
“There’s some talents that ended up becoming perks, there’s some stuff from [the April Fools game mode] that ended up becoming perks, or stuff from [Halloween mode] Junkenstein’s Revenge that ended up becoming perks,” Dawson responds when I ask if the canned PvE mode inspired this major overhaul. “There’s a lot of ideas that we had in the past throughout the many years of our experimentation that ended up in this system.”
Blizzard no longer wants to be “too precious” or too draconian in its notion of what makes an Overwatch match an Overwatch match. The abandonment of the protective, nostalgic kid gloves hamstringing the hero shooter opens up the floor for exciting new opportunities that the dev team is clearly very excited about.
We’ve been planning to take some big swings for a while.
Stadium is a great example of the rule-breaking fun Blizzard is having with Season 15. The brand-new game mode blows the lid off of Overwatch gameplay with an MMO-style armory system that lets you purchase hyper-specific power-ups and abilities for each of the available heroes (I played with 14, but there will be 17 at launch, including fan-favorites like Reaper, D.Va, Moira, Orisa, and more). These abilities are far more absurd than the base game’s perk systems (though there is some overlap) and include diabolical options like mounting Torbjorn’s turret on walls, giving Reaper the ability to fly, and allowing Bastion to self-heal once again.
After selecting your loadout, you’ll enter into a series of shorter, smaller matches based on typical modes like Push and Control, with the first team to hit four wins taking the W. You can even play the mode in third-person, a feature that Blizzard’s character artists are tickled pink over considering how much work they put into cosmetics.
During my brief time with Stadium, I discovered how frustrating it can be to get locked into a character when the other team has the perfect counter for it: I tried to play D.Va against an absolutely dominant Zarya to no avail, though apparently Blizzard has sorted this imbalance out in a more-recent patch. It will even have its own ranking system scored differently from the other modes, cleverly tapping into the Overwatch community’s competitive nature.
In 2025, more than two years after its launch, it feels like Overwatch is embracing the fun, chaotic nature of its earlier days. Is this finally happening because Marvel Rivals, which has all the anarchy of a 2016 Overwatch match and virtually no matchmaking friction, is doing so well? Though the team insists this far more flexible approach to gameplay mechanics and adjustments has nothing to do with the runaway success of Marvel Rivals, it certainly feels like something prompted Blizzard to throw the baby D.Va out with the bath water.
“We’ve been planning to take some big swings for a while,” senior game designer Dylan Snyder says when asked about this influx of new systems and modes.
Suspiciously fortuitous timing aside, these upcoming Overwatch 2 changes are a crisp gust of fresh air, especially for lapsed players such as myself. When Season 15 launches on February 18, I’ll be diving back in to see if the competitive scene is a lot more enjoyable with a host of new perks shaking up the system.