Overwatch 2 PvP will be 5v5 with only one Tank per team
Players vs player combat will undergo a big change for the upcoming Overwatch 2, as Blizzard revealed during today's livestream that PvP will change to 5v5 for the new game. The reduction from 6v6 PvP as it currently stands in Overwatch will also bring about changes in team composition, which will be limited to one tank, two DPS, and two support."We feel like this is the next step in the way that Overwatch ought to be played," game director Aaron Keller said. "If you think about it, there is a lot going on in an Overwatch map. It is incredibly fast paced. We have always tried to make our combat easy to read and very understandable, and even with all of the work that we've put into that, sometimes it's just hard to track what 11 other players are doing on the battlefield. Removing two of those simplifies everything, and it allows players to understand everything that's happening around them, and to be able to make better choices."Predictably, the reduction in team size has influenced Blizzard's approach to new map design, but there's an even greater impact on the role of tanks, which will be locked to one per team. "Tanks can be problematic," Keller said. "A DPS hero is simple—they're shooting. But a tank has abilities that can be noisy, or when stacked with other tanks can cause problems for other teams to try to overcome and counter."By going to five players on a team and limiting them to one tank, he continued, there's a better chance of individual players being able to carry teams, because each player "has the opportunity to have a larger individual impact on their own team."
www.pcgamer.comI made it to Plat 5 as support and Gold 3 as DPS in OW2 and I feel like that's roughly where I belong for now. I found this graph from the internet estimating the ranking distribution and it seems like I'm roughly at the "average" rank as Gold/Plat player. Looking forward to climbing to Diamond at some point!
I had to rewatch the OW2 announcement cinematic "Sub Zero" since I'm now playing the game again. I still consider it the best cinematic trailer ever made of any game. If you think there is something better, you can try to change my mind! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKXS_YA9s7E
Who does better cinematics - Blizzard or Riot? 🤔
CD Projekt has confirmed that a new Witcher game is in development, "kicking off a new saga for the franchise."The new game will be built using Unreal Engine 5 rather than CD Projekt's REDengine, which the studio said will begin "a multi-year strategic partnership with Epic Games.""It covers not only licensing, but technical development of Unreal Engine 5, as well as potential future versions of Unreal Engine, where relevant," CD Projekt said. "We'll closely collaborate with Epic Games’ developers with the primary goal being to help tailor the engine for open-world experiences."CD Projekt said that the change to the new engine was made to help streamline the development process.  "From the outset, we did not consider a typical licensing arrangement; both we and Epic see this as a long-term, fulfilling tech partnership," CD Projekt Red CTO Paweł Zawodny said. "It is vital for CD Projekt Red to have the technical direction of our next game decided from the earliest possible phase as in the past, we spent a lot of resources and energy to evolve and adapt REDengine with every subsequent game release. "This cooperation is so exciting, because it will elevate development predictability and efficiency, while simultaneously granting us access to cutting-edge game development tools. I can’t wait for the great games we’re going to create using Unreal Engine 5!"  The studio also confirmed that despite the shift to a new engine, the new Witcher game is not planned as an Epic Games Store exclusive.
www.pcgamer.comMicrosoft to buy Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion 👀
League of Legends looking at long lockouts for AFK laggards
Developers over at Riot Games are broadening their strategies when it comes to countering behavior they don't like, and are going to trial new penalties for players who leave or engage in AFK behavior during matches. According to Riot, about 9% of players worldwide engage in consistent AFK behavior.Riot defines AFK as two behaviors that waste time for others: people who idle during matches and people who just up sticks and leave the match entirely. Right now, the worst those players can get is a queue delay: "Queue Delays are a speed bump on an offending player’s way to their next few games: Upon clicking the play button, the queue blocks them behind a short timer. The purpose of this is to change behavior," says Riot.Now, however, players can get escalating penalties of between 1 day and 14 days of a queue lockout. That means no playing at all: They're removed from the player population entirely. "We're removing the player from the population for a while so they can't continue to AFK in games," says Riot.For now, the new punishments are being trialed in specific regions, as Riot is concerned about certain region-specific connectivity problems. (The SEA region, at least in other MOBAs, is infamous for connectivity issues that players can't control.) Players who would be immediately subject to the new punishments have been reset to a lower tier, so they have a change to change their ways before the new punishments are levied.You can read the whole developer log, with stats, on the League of Legends site.Nice spot, Eurogamer.
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