No longer is King's Row the dust2 of Overwatch. Over the few months, teams have started differing in their map preferences. Time to take a quick look at map drafting during DH Winter.
Those of you who have followed Overwatch since the beta will be aware of the discussions that have been, and are still, going on about the viability of the different gamemodes. The developers decided that modes such as Deathmatch and Capture the Flag would not be suitable for Overwatch. Instead, we saw a heavy focus on Payload, a mode that was mostly unfamiliar to the community, and 2CP (which had balance issues of its own).
Over time, with the addition of Control/KOTH and changes to 2CP and Payload especially, the preferences of players have shifted and continue to shift with every new meta. While King's Row is not seen as often as before, Payload in general has regained some ground from Control. With that in mind, let's take a look at the maps that were played during the main DreamHack event.
Before we show you the map stats, we do first need to summarize what map drafting looked like for this specific event. Some tournaments prefer pre-specifying maps, but DreamHack set up a familiar but very solid process that involved alternating bans and picks from the teams. Starting with two map bans per team, each team was able to pick one that was guaranteed to see play, after which single alternating bans (and picks in Bo5's) lead to the eventual final maps.
With that in mind, these are the numbers:
Payload - 26/39
- 8x Hollywood
- 5x Dorado
- 3x Numbani
- 3x Watchpoint
- 3x Eichenwalde
- 3x Kings Row
- 1x Route 66
2CP - 5/39
- 4x Temple of Anubis (Tied once)
- 1x Volskaya Industries
- 0x Hanamura
Control - 8/39
- 4x Lijang
- 3x Nepal
- 1x Ilios
As shown, Hollywood has managed to take over the convincing spot of most popular map. The popularity of Temple of Anubis is also interesting, especially considering the other maps with the same gamemode. We are happy to see such a wide variety of maps, only missing Hanamura, which is due to DH's drafting process as well as the continued support of the developers!
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