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Overwatch7 years agoGosu "GosuGamers" Gamers

Developer Update 1/24: Capture the Flag and How it Fits into Overwatch

Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan gave the rundown on the current seasonal event, Year of the Rooster, as well as the new brawl, Capture the Rooster, and how it will influence Overwatch moving forward.

Jeff Kaplan is back for another Developer Update, this time focusing on the new Year of the Rooster event and its brand-new game mode, Capture the Rooster.

Capture the Rooster is the seasonal event's version of the common-FPS Capture the Flag game mode, where the "rooster" is really a flag with a rooster graphic on it.

Turns out, the game mode has been on the radar for quite some time.

"We started working on [the Capture the Flag game mode] before the game was even announced," Kaplan explained. "We do various prototypes of different game modes and see if we can make it work."

He noted that Overwatch generally works best when there is a single objective that players need to defend or attack. In traditional capture the flag game modes, however, there are two objectives: take the other team's flag while protecting your own, separate flag, at the same time. 

Another challenge was the high mobility of heroes, which could make capture the flag seem very chaotic and not fun to play.

It was those two challenges that caused Blizzard to drop development of the game mode at first.

"What we didn't want to do was add a bunch of rules that no longer made Overwatch heroes feel like Overwatch heroes," Kaplan said. 

In the end, though, iit was the community's request for the game mode that made them reconsider, as well as a new approach to capture the flag than what they did previously.

They tried to nerf some heroes by making any high-mobility move - Tracer's Blink, Zenyatta's Trancendence, Sombra's Translocator, Genji's Swift Strike - cause you to drop the flag. They scrapped the idea when it made those characters not feel like Overwatch characters.

"It almost felt like a drag to be the flag carrier [as those heroes]," Kaplan explained. "But we ended up reverting it all and saying: 'Let's just really go to the spirit of what capture the flag is to us and, we believe, is to our players."

That being said, Blizzard did have a few unique rules to even out the playing field for the new mode:

1) There is a small pickup time where you must wait by the flag in order to capture the flag.

Though it's only for three seconds, any damage you take resets the process. This rule was put in place to avoid any quicker heroes (like Tracer) from being too fast for the other team to catch.

2) Your flag does not need to be at the base in order to capture your flag.

This was due to what Kaplan called the "lethality" of Overwatch, where you're likely to die many times during a round that holding out until the flag has been returned was seen as unlikely and wouldn't be as fun than if you could simply capture without the restriction.

Some feedback that Kaplan and Blizzard are expecting include the idea that high-mobility heroes could get away with the flag unfairly regardless of the delay of picking it up. According to Kaplan, Blizzard was aware of this concern and tested it out themselves; what they found was that a team fight would occur just before the capture, so the hero that ended up with the flag was likely going to end up capturing it anyways due to most of the other team being dead from losing the initial team fight.

In the end, a more "freeform" version of capture the flag was decided upon in order to reflect the nature of Overwatch and its characters.

"[Through this version of capture the flag], we're embracing more of what Overwatch is about, which is your awesome hero with your awesome abilities and letting you use them all the time," Kaplan explained. "We kind of want to create those crazy moments [common to Overwatch]."

At the end of the video, Kaplan further defended the new game mode by citing where the mode is currently operating: in the Arcade, for the current three-week event.

Capture the flag is not scheduled to be added to either Quick Play or Competitive Mode rotations at this time.

"We just want [players to] see it as a fun mode that exists in the Arcade for the sake of fun and fun alone," Kaplan said.

The final reason why capture the flag became a thing? Player feedback.

"We've had so many requests for capture the flag [so] we wanted to bring it to you guys," Kaplan noted. 

The Capture the Rooster game mode will leave the Arcade once the Year of the Rooster event is finished, but there is talks to bring it back if the mode is successful enough during the event; feedback will be crucial in deciding where capture the flag goes from here.

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