Capture percentages will be tweaked to improve the competitive game experience.
Blizzard intends to make further changes to the way that wins are determined on both Assault and Hybrid matches in Overwatch’s Competitive Play mode.
In last week’s patch, Blizzard attempted to reduce the number of draws occuring on these maps by tweaking the win condition. Should both teams manage to only cap a single point each – forcing a draw – the capture percentage achieved on the second point now determines an outright winner.
This has reduced the number of draws dramatically, but as principal designer Scott Mercer noted on the official forums last night, this has also lead to some unwelcome play requirements. In Mercer’s exact words:
“If Team A is on Hanamura defense and prevents Team B from ever gaining any capture progress, then when Team A is on offense they only need to reach 1% capture progress to win the game. This means Team B needs to always have someone contesting on the capture point, or they risk losing.”
This results in confusion over how exactly the game was lost, and also forces a quite dramatic change in gameplay strategy for both teams.
An upcoming patch will change things up once again:
- The minimum percentage threshold will be raised to 33%. This means that if both teams fail to capture a single point at or above this level, the game is a tie.
- Should both teams not manage a single capture, but both achieve 33% capture or higher, the higher percentage team wins.
- If both teams capture both points – regardless of how much time was left on either side’s clock – the attacking team must still achieve 33% capture point on the tie-breaker to turn a draw into a win.
These changes will arrive in a patch that’s yet to be dated. As soon as we know more we’ll add a news announcement to the site.
