Jeff Kaplan Explains Why Overwatch Doesn't Have A Ping System Like Apex Legends
By Zac Cameron ·
The Overwatch Director himself took to the official forums to explain why Overwatch doesn't use a ping system like Apex Legends and other games.
Ever since the launch of Apex Legends, fans of other games have been requesting the introduction of a Ping system similar to the smash hit battle Royale. In a post on the official Overwatch forums, Jeff Kaplan praised what the developer was able to do with the ping system, and the ease of use in the game.
“Respawn did such a good job with the Ping System in Apex Legends. It works really well,” wrote Kaplan in his forum post. “Back in early development of Overwatch, we actually had a very similar ping system. Ours was inspired from MOBA’s like League of Legends and Heroes of the Storm.”
The Overwatch Director went on to explain why they chose not to use a ping system in Overwatch, with the complications that come from having a large number of players use pings at once.
“We eventually removed it because of a few issues.
With 6 people on the team, it got very spammy if more than a few people were using it
The geography of Overwatch maps as well as the engagement distances is fairly constrained. This made pinging upwards challenging and often frustrating. An example is standing at the gate of point A of Temple of Anubis and trying to ping the upper ledge above the gate entering point B. Our engagement distances tend to be in the 10-30 meter range (for perspective it’s about 45 meters all the way across the entire dojo in Hanamura B). In Apex, you have very long engagement distances and very big maps… it makes it easier to ping below you.”
This isn’t to say that Overwatch will never receive a ping system in the future, just that the developers didn’t think it would be a great idea for launch.