Director’s Take – A Designer’s Journey into Sombra’s Rework

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Hola amigos! Andre Abrahamian from the Hero Design Team here subbing in for Aaron this week. I wanted to share with you an in-depth journey through the most recent changes to Sombra, our notorious stealthy hacker. Since her original release in 2016, Sombra has received many changes, including a rework for Overwatch 2's launch. Now the team brings changes to this latest iteration on Sombra once again. 

When we look at each Overwatch hero, we are guided by general values to provide a great hero experience. Each hero should have clear strengths and weaknesses that can be tuned accordingly. A hero's impact on a match should be felt by you, your team, and the enemy team. That impact should be clear enough to inform counterplay so that enemies infer how to respond to a particular hero or their abilities. With these points in mind, we felt that Sombra did not have the correct building blocks for her long-term place in the game, and that is what started our latest approach to the rework. 

We approached the Sombra Rework by identifying key goals to guide decisions throughout the design iteration process: 

With these goals, there were multiple angles to tackle around her existing kit. Naturally, many ideas were also meant to address frustrations playing against the character, ensuring there is proper counterplay for the opposing team. 

Translocator is a very versatile tool for map traversal and safe escapes. The teleport is often discussed as a “get out of jail free” ability because Sombra can escape as she chooses before enemies can deal a fatal blow. Due to the nature of Overwatch’s fast-paced gameplay, it’s not common to hunt for Sombra’s translocator as a form of counterplay. It's especially difficult to catch Sombra in Overwatch