‘Cause it’s the flavor of the month.
It’s not exactly surprising to think of; that the developers of Overwatch considered a Battle Royale mode. after all, that’s what’s big now. But as Jeff Kaplan explains in an interview with Kotaku, they ultimately decided against it.
A lot of times when I hear some of our fans pitch it, they’re like ‘Oh, just put a card in the Arcade one day that’s a battle royale mode,’ and I’m like ‘Fuck, that would be awesome.’ But there’s a lot of design and tech work to get us to that place and not just feel like a me-too game.
Overwatch is a game about heroes, and part of what makes the core loop work in a battle royale game is the search, the looting, and the fairness that everybody’s sort of equal.
Overwatch wasn’t designed to be a 1v1. Every hero’s not balanced against every other hero.
In short, they decided that the game mode wouldn’t work for a number of reasons, not the least of which being character balance. And this is despite the fact that Kaplan has spent a great deal of time playing PUBG. And balance might be the least of it; Overwatch is a tightly designed game, and most areas are designed around a specific engagement range.
I think there are also some technical challenges of large, open game spaces. Our primary engagement distance is usually around 15 to 40 meters. The Hanamura dojo point B is 45 meters across. I don’t think people realise how tiny it is. Part of what makes Fortnite and PUBG so awesome is that you can have these really long engagement distances.
Building those systems and getting that many players – I think battle royale for Overwatch starts to get into new game territory.
Source: Gamespot
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