Each ticker on the marker now matters.
Whether we’re talking competitive, casual or ladder play, match draws especially on assault maps like Hanamura, Temple of Anubis and Volskaya Industries are a rare sight, and not a particularly pleasant one. Current Overwatch set-up functions in such a way that there’s no difference between never stepping on a point and almost capturing it with 99% but not quite to the end. In both cases, it counts as a score of zero, despite on team doing obviously better than the other.
The latest PTR change tries to remedy that, by introducing percentage meters to the assault objective marker to create what Blizzard call a “completely granular scale of 0-100%”. In short, the three-segment pie will continue to function more or less the same, split into three equal check points, but progress will also be tracked continuously and the game will record the highest percentage peak during a point capture and use it to resolve tiebreakers.
“A team no longer has to completely capture one more objective than their opponent to gain a win,” principal designer Scott Mercer explains. “If both teams have the same score and run out of time, we now compare the maximum capture% of each team on the last objective they were both trying to complete. The team with the highest capture% on that objective wins. This is not based on the progression points at every 33%, but is on a completely granular scale of 0-100%. The three "pie pieces" still function as before, so if attackers take 50% of a map but wipe out then the minimum capture% decays down to 33%. We show the maximum capture% with an orange triangle placed around the capture circle.”
An example Mercer gives is where both teams fail to capture Point 1. Team A manages to push the marker to 73% peak before it resets back to the second check point. On its own attack, Team B secures a 74% capture peak, thus winning the point.
This change will not only help decrease the number of draws on assault and hybrid maps, but also test the defensive abilities of teams. Leaving the point empty for even a second could mean an extra percentage for the enemy, resulting in a map win.
“Getting full held to 0% capture progress on a point is now a really big deal,” Mercer adds.
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