‘Overwatch 2’ Is Getting Rid Of Map Pools, But Maybe Not Forever
Overwatch 2 map Circuit Royal.
It’s been a busy few days for Overwatch 2 information, and Blizzard is closing out the week by relating some map-related updates. The largest change is that map swimming pools are going away.
Because the recreation launched, every season has had its personal collection of maps, however that may now not be the case as of Season 4. All maps for the core recreation modes can be accessible always, until Blizzard has to quickly take away any to repair bugs or make different modifications.
“We aimed to supply a little bit of freshness every season and focus the variety of maps that folks have been enjoying, nonetheless participant sentiment round map swimming pools was fairly low, the map roster doesn’t have sufficient maps the place we really want them, and the impression they’d on seasonal identification was pretty low,” recreation director Aaron Keller wrote in a weblog publish.
Not solely does Overwatch 2 not have a large enough quantity of maps to make swimming pools work, placing them on a nine-week rotation doesn’t line up with the pipeline it takes for Crew 4 to make modifications to a map. For example, there have been plans to deliver again Watchpoint: Gibraltar in Season 4, however “the playtesting and iteration we have been doing for the map began calling that deadline into query,” Keller stated.
Overwatch 2’s new Management map has an icebreaker ship that clearly did not break sufficient ice.
Map swimming pools aren’t returning any time quickly, however they might not be gone for good. Keller advised that if and when map swimming pools do return, which wouldn’t be till “the far future” when there are a lot of extra maps, they’d doubtless rotate extra usually — perhaps as usually as each week.
It is a good transfer. I get the place the devs have been coming from in attempting different issues to maintain issues recent from season to season, however map swimming pools by no means fairly labored in follow. Many followers have been left dissatisfied that the maps they take pleasure in most have been being vaulted for some time. As Keller put it, “You have been proper. We have been improper.” You’ll be able to go forward and really feel smug now.
We’ll discover out the ultimate Overwatch 2 map pool (for now) early subsequent week. Season 3 will begin on Tuesday.
Keller touched on just a few different factors within the weblog publish, together with complaints from gamers that they’re positioned into the identical maps too usually. Particularly, gamers say that they find yourself on Colosseo far more often than different maps.
There are just a few explanation why that could be the case. The sport tries to change up the maps and recreation varieties you play from match to match. Nonetheless, Keller famous that “there’s a element of the matchmaking system that does elevate Push maps a bit.” There are fewer maps for Push than the opposite core recreation modes as nicely, so that you’ll see the identical Push maps extra usually than, say, Blizzard World or Route 66.
The devs are exploring a technique to mitigate that. Keller famous that this repair is “much more essential contemplating that we’ve one other new recreation mode with new maps scheduled for a seasonal launch later this yr.” I’ve seen a bit of of this recreation mode in motion, and I can’t wait to lastly strive it out.
Lastly on the map entrance, the workforce is trying into some modifications to spawn factors, significantly on payload maps. With defenders’ spawn factors being near checkpoints on some maps (resembling the primary checkpoint on Gibraltar and the second on Blizzard World), it’s usually the case that gamers respawn proper earlier than the attackers attain the checkpoint, which might put them at a drawback.
“We’ve regarded into degree design modifications to repair this drawback in a number of maps, and can in all probability use that in just a few locations, however these have the potential of opening new flanking routes for the offense that we’d want to keep away from,” Keller wrote. “So, we’re speaking about options that don’t necessitate map modifications. This in all probability received’t hit Season 4, nevertheless it’s within the works.”
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