Overwatch

Overwatch Dev Tracker




22 Dec

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Let’s clear this up:

Cut and dry to me. One could argue the feeding rule. I try to make an effort to confront the player directly first, if they refuse to cooperate or fail to group up, then I report. I also know that i...

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Thanks to the development team for working to keeping the community a great one!

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UPDATE (Dec 22)

We have issued a manual action wave against players with confirmed instances of gameplay sabotage. We encourage everyone to take this time to review the purpose of the Priority Pass feature and its intended function within Overwatch.

The holidays are back, and with them come festive new outfits for Overwatch players to don while they sleigh the competition. Among the skins to unwrap this year are Toybot Zenyatta, a chrome-plated present straight from Santa’s sack, and Penguin Mei, who sports the latest in vogue cuddly climatology gear.

Senior concept artist David Kang, technical artist Ben Gerowe, and concept artist Kejun Wang divulge some of the secrets behind two of this year’s Winter Wonderland skins.

 

Toys for Bots

One of the most unique skins in the sleigh-load of Winter Wonderland cosmetics, Toybot Zenyatta employs visual effects that allow him to swap between faces in the midst of battle. The dichotomy between smiley and frowny face echoes his mantra of balance in both harmony and discord and gives him a bit of fun flair as he helps allies and hurts enemies. David Kang, the art director for the skin, guided the concept from its inception to its...

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21 Dec


19 Dec

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Report only goes so far because we can’t report players who simply plays badly. I myself rarely report for gameplay sabotage (only for abhorrently blatant feeders, AFKers, or use (or not use) abilities to hinder their allies gameplay).

The Avoid as Teammate function is a short-term function designed to simply get away from a specific player during your current session, however it is limited in order to make sure it does not impact matchmaking. In your proposal of a solo-only experience, this function would nothing to improve consistency in matches because each person will still get 11 total random players in their mat...

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So I should be subjected that every single match be filled with solo-queue randoms not knowing if any one of them is going to be toxic, uncooperative, plays in a way that I just don’t do well with (and vise versa)?

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The times displayed are still estimates and will vary. Is this just a one-time instance or are you seeing this consistently throughout your games?

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Splitting up between Solo Queue and Role Queue is a way, but I think the developers have shut down that possibility as they don’t want matchmaking to take even longer to make happen.

As it stands now, is the person who groups up in a 6-stack consistently have the same level of overall skill as that of a person who solo queues consistently? I don’t believe they do and that is what I (personally) think is unfair.


18 Dec

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I think it is important to remember that prior to the introduction of the role queue, the game was already collecting role-specific performance and win rate stats to help shape the SR/MMR for off-roles. Now assuming everything we publicly know about the matchmaker has remained true to this point, a player who has not touched an off-role since the introduction of role queue, any MMR associated with that role should be considered “unstable” and subject to significant swings in MMR/SR gained or lost until the game becomes more sure of their skill. I think this is what Josh Nash means by “grandfathering” the MMR.

Having any sort of reset would...

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Once again, I am going to ask about this as it has never really been explained publicly, only just confirmed in a few past developer posts. Why is group-size a priority of matchmaking? I get in any given single game of Overwatch, this rule feels more fair, but when I look at the grand scheme of things and seeing the balance of the overall Competitive ladder, I would think that demonstrating the skills of good team coordination would be more beneficial for all players, and the best way to do this is by grouping up.

However, because g...

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Hey everyone! Now that the Priority Pass is live on the Retail environment, we wanted to make sure we were clear on the feature’s intended function, goals, and what constitutes misuse of the feature.


How It Works: Intended Function

The Priority Pass is intended to offer players a reward for queueing “Flex” on the role queue screen, thereby helping to fill games’ most needed roles and increase the rate at which matches begin. When you queue for “Flex,” you are essentially signing up for all three roles and will be assigned a role based on which have the lowest population at that time. Based on the final result of the match (win, draw, or lose), you will be awarded differing amounts of Priority Passes, i.e. if you’re looking to maximize your Priority Pass accrual rate, you’ll want to play to win! These Priority Passes can be used to “skip [part of] the line” when queuing for roles currently experiencing high volume (transparently, this is most ofte...

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I much rather equip the “End of 2020” icon, but its not loaded in the forums yet.

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The graphic designer in me is intrigued when I saw this and I wish to ask what exactly does Trey do that requires Illustrator? Is he just planning out the overall map design to build in 3D later? I assume based on his role it’s not to do art texturing or graphics to the maps.

It’s not every day you get to use your teammates as literal bullet sponges (Roadhog aside) in a close-quarters firefight. Grab your pulse pistols, don your coziest skin, and get ready to get cold—Freezethaw Elimination, the newest Winter Wonderland brawl, is here. Instead of dying in this brawl, players are frozen solid in blocks of ice that their teammates can thaw (or choose to utilize as sniper cover while they attempt to pull off that perfect headshot). It’s an Overwatch version of freeze tag, one of the popular Workshop modes enjoyed by players in the Arcade.

This new game mode is the brainchild of associate level designer Trey Spisak, whose spark of holiday brilliance during the team’s annual game jam—also the source of the Overwatch Workshop—led to the icy inception of yet another way to play.

Catch up with Spisak and learn more about working on the Overwatch team and what it takes to design event brawls.


Let’s start o...

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Server crashes like the one Josh describes above usually results in the “Server closed due to unexpected error” and that will not have a penalty. If you were penalized it is more likely due to a disconnection. In any case, Blizzard does not refund skill rating lost, but it is easy to recover it by simply playing Competitive game to full normally and allow your SR and hidden MMR to resync.

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Overwatch Retail Patch Notes – December 18, 2020

A new patch is now live on Windows PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. Read below to learn more about the latest changes.

To share your feedback, please post in the General Discussion forum.
For a list of known issues, visit our Bug Report forum.
For troubleshooting assistance, visit our ...

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