Overwatch Assault, Escort Map Tie Breaker Changes Coming

Published: April 20, 2017 9:09 PM /

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Scott Mercer, Principal Designer on Overwatch, recently posted on the Overwatch forums about the upcoming changes to how tie breakers will work for Assault and Assault/Escort Maps. The latest patch, 1.10, made the initial change from how tie breakers had worked on those maps since launch. Originally you had to capture one more objective than the opposing team, so ties would result if neither team could capture an objective or captured the same objective. The 1.10 patch changed the requirements so that you only needed to get more progress towards capturing an objective than the opposing team.

However, Mercer stated that "...there are now some gameplay situations that ended up feeling more awkward with the new rule." Basically, with the new change all one team would have to do is reach 1% capture progress to win, if the first team couldn't get any progress during their try, which would require the defending team to always have someone on the point the entirety of the round to keep from losing.  Blizzard have decided that they are not a fan of the confusing instantaneous system that has resulted and will be tweaking the new rules in a "future patch" (hopefully the next one).

The tweak that they will be adding is a 33% minimum capture progress requirement to win. Mercer laid out a couple of examples to explain how things will work in various scenarios:

Team A attacks the first objective on Hanamura, but only gains 10% progress after a really rough offensive round. Team B then attacks, but they can only gain 20%. This is a TIE. Neither team achieved the minimum of 33%.

Team A attacks the first objective on Hanamura, and gains 90% progress. (So close!) Team B attacks, and only gains 40%. progress. Team A WINS, as they had a minimum of 33% and more progress than their opponent.

Team A attacks the second objective on Hanamura, and fully captures it with 3:00 left. Team B attacks the second objective on Hanamura, and captures it in overtime with 0:00 left. Team A now is back on the attack, trying to take the first objective. They can only reach 20% progress after their time bank of 3:00 elapses. This is a TIE. They did not meet the minimum target of 33% progress. If Team A had reached 33%, then they would have won the match.

With this tweak you will definitely see more ties, but as Mercer puts it, "still WAY less than the 6% rate across all competitive matches we saw before."

What do you think of the changes? What other changes would you like to see for different game types in Overwatch? Let us know in the comments!

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Kyle Downey TechRaptor
| Staff Writer

Staff Writer looking to keep you both informed and entertained. Favorite games include: Pokemon, Overwatch, Golden Sun, Portal, and Elder Scrolls.