WINTER WONDERLAND 2020

It’s time again for the Overwatch Winter Wonderland. Unpack cosmetic extras, earn weekly rewards, and freeze your opponents in the new festive 4v4 game mode Frost Dew Elimination!

Our Holiday Gift: Winter Lootboxes. Unlock festive new holiday items-including legendary skins like Reinhardt as a platoon leader, Moira as an ice queen, and Mei as a penguin-as well as other winter-themed items from previous years. You can also play the returning Brawls Snowball Deathmatch, Yeti Hunt, and Mei’s Snowball Fight!

For more information on Winter Wonderland, visit.PlayOverwatch.com/en.

GENERAL UPDATES

New feature: VIP ticket

As a measure against the imbalance of the roles Tank, Supporter and Damage and the often resulting longer waiting times for damage players, we are introducing VIP Tickets as a new feature. Players can earn VIP tickets by placing themselves in the role selection as “Flexible”. Wins will earn you more tickets than losses. A VIP ticket can be used to reduce the waiting time for a role that many players have just lined up for.

VIP tickets cannot be used when playing in a group of 5 or more players. Since we strive to pit large groups against other large groups, and groups of this size have a good balance of roles anyway, VIP tickets are not expected to help reduce wait times here. Finally, we don’t want players to waste their tickets if it doesn’t contribute to the actual purpose of the new feature.

Feature update: Custom viewer options for the Replay Viewer

We’ve added a new options menu to the Replay Viewer, accessible from the video controls. Our goal is to give our players more control over the look and behavior of the Replay Viewer so they can more easily navigate their replays and create great content! The additional settings allow you to individually show and hide user interface elements, modify the thickness of the player border, disable sounds when taking aim, and customize the behavior of the spectator camera, among other things. We’ve also added 0.75x and 1.75x playback speeds to give you even more precise choices.

New options:

• Team 1 banners
• Heroes from team 1
• Banner of team 2
• Heroes of team 2
• Status messages
• Playback displays
• Game mode specific HUD
• Killfeed
• Player names
• Hit point bar of the players
• Player border strength
• first person perspective – hit points
• First person perspective – Ultimate indicator
• First person perspective – skill and weapon info
• First person perspective – Crosshairs
• First person perspective – Hero HUD
• First person perspective – Activity feed
• Sounds when taking aiming points
• Interval for time jumps
• Strength of field of view change per zoom
• Speed of field of view change
• Maximum field of view with free camera

General

• The game sounds for steps in shoulder perspective have been revised so that they stand out more sonically.

UPDATES FOR THE WORKSHOP

New features for the workshop

• [PC-only] Inspector log file

If the [Enable Workshop Inspector Log File [PC-ONLY]] setting is enabled, all entries in the Inspector log will be exported to a local file on your hard drive. When the custom game ends (or you are disconnected from the game server), the current log file is closed. A new log file is created each time you join a new custom game that has [Log to Inspector] enabled.

New values for the workshop

• String slice

CORRECTED ERRORS

General

• Fixed a bug where the hit point meter was incorrectly showing as full for low damage heroes.
• Fixed a bug where the leaderboard option “viewable only by friends by default” was not maintained across the current game session.
• Fixed a bug where the “Leave as group” option for leaving games was not retained across the current game session.
• Fixed a bug that caused ranked – Season stats to display the same values for all roles in the Role Selection Beta.
• Fixed a bug where some abilities with regular damage effects incorrectly charged some heroes’ ultimate abilities while the latter were activated.
• Fixed a bug that caused the sounds for painful exertion to not play as intended.

Maps

Eichenwalde

• Fixed a bug where broken castle gates would incorrectly disappear from the game client after a player respawn.

Ilios

• Fixed a bug that could cause players to land at an undesignated point on the map.

Temple of Anubis

• Fixed a bug that allowed the first objective point to be captured outside of the designated area.

Heroes

Baptiste

• Fixed an animation bug on Baptiste’s left forearm that occurred during the “Scout” emote.

D.Va

• Fixed a bug that could cause D.Va to request a new mech right after leaving her mech in some rare cases.

Echo

• Fixed a bug that caused Echo’s hero portrait to incorrectly display a cloned unit at the end of a round of PvE game modes.
• Fixed a bug where Echo could get stuck in the previous starting area.

Sigma

• Fixed a bug that caused Sigma to protrude into his allies during his “Medal” victory pose in certain winning team compositions.

Sombra

-Fixed a bug that caused Sombra’s hair animation to not display as intended during her “Hacked” victory pose.

Widowmaker

• Fixed a bug where Widowmaker could have too many hit points when appearing.

Wrecking Ball

• Fixed a bug where the length of the grappling hook was shorter than intended. -Fixed a bug that caused the camera to move below the ground when Wrecking Ball switched to bullet mode while his model was still loaded.

OVERWATCH

Overwatch is a team-based 6vs6 shooter that was released on May 24, 2016. Overwatch stays true to the true style of Blizzard’s previous titles. It was developed by Jeff Kaplan and is considered a “new concept” shooter in the FPS genre. The game was officially unveiled at BlizzCon along with 12 heroes on November 7, 2014.

The story of Overwatch is set on a highly fictionalized future version of Earth. In a time where humans and robots, which are called Omnics, live together (Chris Metzen hinted that the story deals with this very robot race). 30 years before the time when Overwatch takes place, the so-called “Omnic Crisis ” occurred. The robots, once helpers of humans, rebelled against their creators for reasons as yet unknown and triggered a worldwide chaos. Faced with the imminent destruction of human civilization, the best soldiers of all nations came together to form a program called “Overwatch”.

Their job was to protect the world from the Omnics, which they succeeded in doing. For the next 25 years, they were the protectors of the planet, united in an international coalition. Some agents stayed, some were replaced, but at some point something changed: the Overwatch disintegrated. However, 5 years later after this event, incidents with Omnics are again accumulating, a worldwide terrorist organization also seems interested in destabilizing the world order. A new crisis is looming. At this point, your career as an Overwatch agent begins.