Blizzard asked, and it seems they also listened. With the return of the Closed Beta, we have been treated to a whole string of new features.
While the Closed Beta originally started on Fall 10th, for over a month now all fans have been waiting on Winter 9th. Because today Blizzard finally reopened their servers to all beta testers, and they showed how well they've made use of the break. In a 4.3 GB patch, alongside balancing tweaks, the following features were added to the game:
Progression System
The feature that will most likely appeal to the largest portion of the player base: a fun and rewarding progression system. In earlier versions of the game, Overwatch has had at least 3 distinct progression systems that ultimately did not make the cut. The latest rendition revolves around gaining experience through playing, and levelling up your account. With every level-up, you get a loot box which brings us to the following addition.
Cosmetical Unlocks
Previously, multiple sources datamined yet-to-be released sprays that players could use ingame to leave their own preferred imprint on the world. Today's patch brought us a big collection of such sprays, along with various other ways to personalize your playing experience. Through levelling (and probably eventually also through microtransactions) players will be given Loot Boxes that contain unlockables like:
- Player Skins
- Alternative Voice lines
- Player Icons
- Emotes
- Victory Poses
- Highlight Intros
These unlockables vary in rarity, and can also be bought with the ingame currency (which is another possible Loot Box reward). The rarer the item, the more awesome it is of course. This means that soon games will be filled with heroes that look like this:
Player Profile
The nature of shooters makes it so that players are very much interested in their statistics. Stats such as accuracy, kills, deaths and objective score are what tell you if you are doing a good job. While historically Blizzard isn't such a fan of providing detailed statistics to their players, they delivered this time. Players will now be able to keep track of stats on individual heroes, as well as on their total playtime. All the important numbers seem to be there, and players will be able to see how many times they appeared on end-of-game cards as well.
New Maps and Game Mode
The subject of Game Modes has been a popular one. Because of the variety of different abilities that the characters showcase, Blizzard has stated the difficulty in creating fair game modes. Luckily, they did manage to come up with a third, different Game Mode: Control. Playable on two new maps (Lijiang Tower and Nepal), each Control match is divided into 3 seperate parts. In each part, teams battle in a limited part of the map in order to keep control of a single point for long enough to win that round. After a round, the action is moved to another part of the map with another control point and the counter is restarted. We at GosuGamers are most interested in seeing if this format will be popular in the competitive scene, because previously only Payload maps were played.
More Game Settings
In this giant update, Blizzard added a lot of different ways to play the game. Not only is there now a dedicated Play vs AI mode, wherein players can team up to fight bots, but Custom Games were also given an overhaul to allow for even more custom gameplay. When creating a custom game, players can now impact a lot of things including the following:
- Map Rotation, what maps will be played/in what order.
- Hero Selection Limits, what heroes can be played or how many of each can be played
- Hero switching on/off/random on death
- Only headshots do damage
- And many more exciting features that you can read about here.
Quality of Life Changes
A lot has changed, that is clear. But we shouldn't overlook the small but important details that were added in this update. Smaller features such as a Kill Feed (finally!!!), a reworked Ultimate Meter (which no longer grows through damage taken but does generate over time) and a new In-Game scoreboard are what will eventually make Overwatch the perfect game it has the potential to be.
Beta Invite Wave
Blizzard announced it when they took the Beta offline, and they kept their promise: shortly after the Beta went back online they sent out a lot of invites so that more accounts are now flagged to enjoy the game and provide their feedback.
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