In order to save Overwatch’s friendly neighborhood robot Bastion from getting demolished every time he steps out of cover, hero designer Scott Kennedy made an unusual suggestion: shrink him. Smaller targets are harder to hit and that could be all it takes to keep him alive a little longer.
After some internal testing, the decision was made: Bastion will be 10% smaller in Overwatch’s next season.
“Though I was initially (and correctly) told it would be a difficult change to implement, other departments across the Overwatch 2 team joined the cause and we took a tinier Bastion into internal testing,” Kennedy wrote in a blog post discussing season 17’s balance changes. “We found that reducing his size by 15% simply made him too cute, so we kept tweaking the numbers.”
The team landed on 10% as the sweet spot for increasing his survivability and maintaining his threatening aura. We’re talking about the robot who can transform into a tank with a giant machine gun, after all. “While it’s not the most earth-shattering change to ever hit Overwatch, it’s a testament to the many different ways we can change and balance the game for every hero,” Kennedy said.
I’ve played with enough Bastions to know that they always seem to have a bounty on their head. They roll out to take a few shots and explode before I can get a heal on them. I also know what it’s like trying to kill an enemy Bastion. Having to tear through more health while getting swiss cheesed by his gun arm would’ve driven me mad. Blizzard’s solution is a clever compromise that requires a little more precision from his enemies without turning him into a brick wall.
It’s too late now, but Reddit user Tee_B pitched an even better way to handle it in a thread about the blog post: “Instead of shrinking Bastion 10% at once, you should have shrunk him 1% every week and denied it every time anyone asked.”
“Taking notes,” senior community manager Megan Leigh wrote in a reply.
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