'Overwatch': McCree Nerf, Competitive Play Coming Later This Month, Says Director

New details on the immediate future of Overwatch have finally emerge, including an update on the balance changes that Blizzard promised last week, and a variety of changes for the team-based shooter will apparently begin to roll out later this month. Of course, whether or not the issues most important to you are being addressed might be another story.

Last week, we finally got some idea of what to expect from the first big Overwatch patch, including potential balance changes for D.Va, McCree and Reaper. Now, a new interview with game director Jeff Kaplan, published by Eurogamer, is offering a better idea of what to expect from the game’s first major patch when it arrives later this month. Thankfully, for anyone as sick of Press E McCree as we are, it sounds like the game’s resident cowboy will be one of the first members of the Overwatch roster to be adjusted for balance.

Kaplan says McCree will definitely be getting nerfed in the game’s first patch. While the team is happy with his performance against “squishy” heroes like Tracer or Hanzo, he’s a bit more effective against tanks than Blizzard intended. As a result, the studio will be dropping the damage on his Fan The Hammer ability, leaving it high enough to take out smaller characters while forcing McCree to adopt new strategies against the game’s biggest heroes.

Unfortunately, the changes to D.Va will take a bit longer. The game director says Blizzard is still in “exploration mode” and hasn’t nailed down exactly how they’d like to improve D.Va’s performance.

“We've tried high-damage D. Va with lower survivability,” Kaplan told Eurogamer. “We've tried other directions, like not buffing her damage, but buffing her survivability. I think the D. Va buffs will take a little bit longer for us to get to.... D. Va's not in a horrible place, we just feel like she could be in a slightly better place”

Kaplan pushed back on a variety of assertions about Overwatch ’s current netcode, update rate or anything else one might blame for a sudden, inexplicable and/or exploitative death at the hands of an opponent. According to Kaplan, some of the hard-to-explain deaths we experience in-game are a result of client-side latency, not a low tick rate. He also believes Overwatch ’s post-death kill cam is to blame for some players’ hyper-awareness of latency issues.

After a few days of uncertainty on Twitter, thanks to conflicting answers from the whoever runs the Overwatch account, Kaplan also confirmed competitive play should be returning to Blizzard’s new shooter before the end of June. The team hasn’t locked down a specific launch date; however, Kaplan says its reintroduction is the “big focus” for the current patch.

For more on the future of Overwatch, including changes coming to the Play of the Game system, thoughts on how often Blizzard will update the game and a brief word on Sombra, check out the complete Eurogamer interview with Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan.

Be sure to check back with iDigitalTimes.com and follow Scott on Twitter for additional Overwatch coverage throughout 2016 and for as long as Blizzard supports Overwatch in the months ahead.