Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan has announced a couple of upcoming eSports-centric features that'll give fans of the game a better viewing experience.
The first one is that each team will get Home and Away colors and there will be a new top-down interactive map, which is not only for the benefit of onlookers but for broadcasters and commentators as well.
Home, Away Colors
With Home and Away colors, the eSports groups that qualify for the Overwatch World Cup will be more distinguishable during the matches, which more or less provides them with team uniforms.
The Home team will have "darker, more saturated" colors, while the Away team will have a "lighter color palette."
Called the Team Uniform System or "team color paletting," it's more than just color coding the heroes' skins, though. Kaplan explains that things such as Tracer's bullets or explosions will "adopt the Home or Away team color of that particular team."
The developers are expected to introduce this at BlizzCon 2017.
The New Top-Down Map
The way things are now for Overwatch viewers and broadcasters, it's not exactly easy to keep track of what's going on.
That's where the new top-down interactive map comes in, providing observers a surefire way to see all the action that's taking place in any match. This includes keeping track of the status of each player's ultimate ability and any debuff affecting them like whether or not they're frozen or stunned. It even makes it obvious when Tracer is blinking around the map.
More 'Overwatch' Details
In other related news, Kaplan also took things to the Blizzard forums, giving a quick update on Mercy, Competitive Play, and the toxicity of the player base.
First, the consensus is that Mercy is a bit too powerful, particularly her resurrect ability. At the moment, the developers are testing toned-down versions of the ability. While Kaplan didn't really provide much of an update, he did say that a reworked version of Mercy will be coming to the PTR soon.
Second, about Competitive Play, there wasn't that much info too, but the gist is that the development team is hard at work to bring improvements to the table.
Last but not least, Kaplan assures players that the reporting system is effective and that it's cleaning up the rampant toxicity in the community. There weren't any specifics on this front either, but at the very least, it spells good news.
With all said and done, don't forget to check out the Developer Update below to see what's up straight from the horse's mouth. Keep an eye out for the USA Soldier: 76 skin at the end of the video too.
