A new Overwatch patch is in development and now available for testing! To share your feedback or report any issues, please post in the PTR Feedback or PTR Bug Report forums.
Please note that the below patch notes only include changes currently available for testing on the PTR. While many of these changes may also be available on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One in a future patch, the PTR is PC-only and only reflects changes coming specifically to that platform.
Baptiste
Amplification Matrix
Developer Comments: Baptiste’s Amplification Matrix was sometimes difficult to utilize for his allies without gathering very closely together so we’ve made it much wider.
Lúcio
Wall Ride
Workshop
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Hey everyone!
We’re back with another Experimental mode focused on testing some changes to Baptiste, Mei, and a change in how we address health value adjustments. As with all Experimental modes, these changes are not guaranteed to reach the live version of the game.
What are we trying to address?
We’ve identified some weaknesses with Baptiste and Mei’s kits, which we’d like to address. Baptiste has been one of the lower-performing Support heroes recently. For Mei, we’ve found that reductions to her maximum ammo have had detrimental effects to her gameplay.
We’re also making some health adjustments to a number of heroes in increments of 25, rather than 50. Historically, we’ve always adjusted health and shield values in increments of 50 for ease of understanding how many hits a hero could take. After years of balance updates and fine tuning, we want to try getting a bit more granular with this approach.
What are we testing?
For Baptiste, we’re testing some changes that should allow Baptiste to deal damage quicker and land more impactful healing grenades. We’ve also found that the current iteration of Amplification Matrix forces teams to group closely together, so we’re increasing the width of the Amplification Matrix window for more accessible use.
Mei will now reload 15 ammo when she uses Cryo-Freeze. Since she spends more time out of ammo, Cryo-Freeze just delayed the inevitable need to have to reload afterwards. She still won’t be able to reload while frozen, but this should improve her gameplay flow.
We’re adjusting base health (and shields) for the heroes below in increments of 25 to test how more granular changes to health impact gameplay.
We hope you check out the new Experimental mode and provide us with your feedback! Science will reveal the truth – And all great science requires data! As always, this is an Experiment, so the changes in this test may not reach the live game.
Thank you!
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 Technical Support forum.
The next experiment begins! This time we’re hoping to get your feedback on some balance changes. We’re using the 2-2-2 Role Queue ruleset so that you can get a feel for how these balance changes might affect the live game.
HERO UPDATES (ONLY IN EXPERIMENTAL)
Baptiste
Biotic Launcher
Amplification Matrix
Developer Comments: We’re trying out some adjustments to Baptiste’s Biotic Launcher firing cadence that will make dealing damage quicker and landing a healing grenade more impactful. His Amplification Matrix was sometimes difficult to utilize for his allies without gathering very closely together so we’ve made it much wider.
Brigitte
General
McCree
General
Peacekeeper
Mei
Cryo-Freeze
Ice Wall
Developer Comments: Since we previously made Mei’s primary fire relatively more expensive, she spends more time out of ammo and this was particularly noticeable when unable to reload while in Cryo-Freeze. To help smooth out this gameplay she now regains some ammo during Cryo-Freeze.
Symmetra
General
Widowmaker
General
Developer Comments: We’re experimenting with some max health adjustments in 25 HP increments to allow for more fine tuning of heroes’ power. Until now this was done in 50 HP increments to help simplify the understanding how many hits an enemy hero could withstand.
Hi! I’m going to copy-paste a relevant comment I made over in another thread on the Workshop Discussion section.
There are some complications with the added support of Button Values and Color Values. For anything loaded internally within the game (codes, presets, etc.) we can do the script fixups internally, so everything remains backwards compatible. So if you normally operate using the saved presets or codes, you should be good and won’t need to do anything!
Unfortunately, the copy-paste text system was not backwards compatible with this fixup. So if you normally paste in text files, you’ll have to do some manual fixups yourself (e.g. Red -> Color(Red), Interact -> Button(Interact)). While this isn’t great, we’re hoping that the added flexibility and options will be well worth the minor, one-time, inconvenience for our text-based users. Our goal is never to break stuff if we can help it. But for this case, we’re hoping it’s ok for the greater good of Workshop.
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The above comments here are correct. There are some complications with the added support of Button Values and Color Values. For anything loaded internally within the game (codes, presets, etc.) we can do the script fixups internally, so everything remains backwards compatible. So if you normally operate using the saved presets or codes, you should be good and won’t need to do anything!
Unfortunately, the copy-paste text system was not backwards compatible with this fixup. So if you normally paste in text files, you’ll have to do some manual fixups yourself (e.g. Red -> Color(Red), Interact -> Button(Interact)). While this isn’t great, we’re hoping that the added flexibility and options will be well worth the minor, one-time, inconvenience for our text-based users. Our goal is never to break stuff if we can help it. But for this case, we’re hoping it’s ok for the greater good of Workshop.
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A new Overwatch patch is in development and now available for testing! To share your feedback or report any issues, please post in the PTR Feedback or PTR Bug Report forums.
Please note that the below patch notes only include changes currently available for testing on the PTR. While many of these changes may also be available on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One in a future patch, the PTR is PC-only and only reflects changes coming specifically to that platform.
Feature Update: Minimum Latency Support
Competition is at its best when it’s fair. Historically, we’ve run tournament events like the Overwatch League and the Overwatch World Cup with teams competing head to head, in person, with local servers to provide the lowest possible latency and the best player experience.
In today’s world, with so many events and tournaments moving online and teams spread across the world, we wanted to provide a mechanism to ensure that the experience is as fair as possible, regardless of how close the teams are to the tournament’s servers.
The Minimum Latency option sets a target latency for Custom Games, leveling the playing field between competitors whether they’re 50 or 500 miles away. Players with latency lower than the minimum setting will automatically have their network traffic delayed to meet the minimum target, while players with latency higher than the target won’t have any additional delay introduced.
This feature is designed to work with a variety of network conditions, and will generally keep players within 8 milliseconds of the target setting.
We hope this feature will be useful, especially for community-driven competitions that want to Play Nice, Play Fair.
New Custom Game Maps
Lúcio
Wall Ride
Wrecking Ball
Grappling Claw
General
New Workshop Actions
New Workshop Values
Developer Comments: Evaluate Once can be used to isolate a part of a reevaluating parameter and “freeze” it at its initial value. One way this can be useful is when a reevaluating parameter (such as an effect’s position) makes use of a For loop’s control variable. For example, if you want to create a vertical stack of effects that move with a player, you could loop over a Create Effect action using Global.Y as your control variable and “Position Of(Event Player) + Vector(0, Evaluate Once(Global.Y), 0)” as your position (with reevaluation enabled). Doing this, the position of each effect would move along with the player, but thanks to Evaluate Once, the vertical offset for each effect would be frozen to the value of Global.Y when that particular effect was created (instead of the final value of Global.Y when the loop ends).
Update Every Frame increases the rate at which certain values will update. For example, “Position Of(…)” only updates 12.5 times per second, but “Update Every Frame(Position Of(…))” will evaluate 62.5 times per second for conditions and other logical checks and as fast as your framerate for visual output, such as effects and camera. This value can be used to create highly sensitive positional triggers and smooth movement for effects and camera work. Depending on your usage, this value could have a significant impact on server load, framerate, or both, so use it only when needed. That said, executing a single condition or action that contains an Update Every Frame is still much more performant than repeatedly executing an action in a tight loop to try and achieve the same result.
BUG FIXES
General
Heroes
Hanzo
Pharah
Workshop
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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 Technical Support forum.
Soldier: 76
Heavy Pulse Rifle
General
