Overwatch Director Jeff Kaplan has more news for players about upcoming hero changes. This time, his focus was on the hero Moira and on combating negative smurfing.
Smurfing is a term used in the Overwatch community to refer to experienced players who create new accounts so they can easily win matches against new players. Kaplan addressed the phenomenon in a recent question-and-answer session, saying that Blizzard "hates" the way smurfing can be used to throw games and manipulate the system. In the same Q&A session, Kaplan addressed how the versatile healer Moira can "eliminate part of the learning curve for new players."
Kaplan cited Blizzard's desire for "variety and diversity of skills and players" as well as heroes. One of the ways he claims the devs plan to combat this is to bring changes to Moira on the Experimental Card "soon." The Experimental Card is a game feature update system that was most recently used for balancing heroes, although some Overwatch players found this to be unsatisfactory.
Some fans don't want the devs to update or attempt to balance a hero, but instead want Blizzard to "dumpster" broken heroes. Kaplan takes a firm stance against completely giving up on heroes, and instead seems to favor an approach where the devs keep trying to fix and adjust the heroes. However, Blizzard is not against just banning heroes from Competitive Play.
The Overwatch director did note that having multiple accounts isn't automatically negative, but that it can lead to things like smurfing that negatively impact the game. Kaplan takes a firm stance against cheaters, and most of the playerbase would probably agree. Everyone was a new player once, and can sympathize with current new players having the frustration of more experienced players thrashing them in matches by smurfing. Overwatch is a game, and it's supposed to be fun. Cheating in all its forms detracts from that.
Moira has the potential to be incredibly powerful when played well, and hopefully she can become even more versatile and fun to play with the upcoming changes. It's great that Blizzard is addressing players' concerns on such a popular hero. Hopefully the upcoming changes will improve Moira and lessen cheating, and if not, Overwatch has a great feedback system in place for any comments players will have.
Overwatch is available to play now on PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One.