Greetings, everyone. I'm Jeff from the
Overwatch team. We're here with the
developer update about Overwatch Year of
the Rooster. In particular, we're really
excited to talk about the new brawl that
we added, which we named "Capture the
Rooster." So, as you guys know, we have a
tendency to name things just a little
bit differently what you're used to.
Obviously, "Capture the Rooster" is our
version of Capture the Flag and Capture
the Flag is a really interesting topic
for us to discuss because it's something
we mentioned in the past as having had a
lot of trouble with when it comes to
tuning and balancing around Overwatch
heroes. So, to give you guys a little bit of
history with Capture the Flag we started
working on it before the game was even
announced. We would do various prototypes
of different game modes and see if we
can make it work.
What we generally have found with Overwatch over the years, is that the game
works best when we have a single
objective gamemode type. And if you think
about Control, Assault, our Hybrids our
Payloads, they all have one objective.
You're either attacking or defending or
you need to take control of the point
or you already have that point and you
need to defend it. And Capture the Flag
is very unique in the sense for
Overwatch, that there are two objectives
going on at once. There is your flag, the enemy
flag, and you're having to decide how
many resources you dedicate to getting
their flag or to defending your flag and
both flags are in play at the same time.
So, we really wrestled with Capture the
Flag over the years for a number of
reasons. The primary one is that Overwatch heroes are are designed
intentionally with really powerful
feeling mobility abilities. So, obvious
examples are Genji's Dash, Tracer's Blink,
you've got Winston's Leap, D.Va can fly
through the air with her boosts. So,
there's a lot of great mobility going on.
It's challenging with Capture the Flag
which is a very mobile game mode type,
you're trying to get this thing in an
enemy
the base and bring it back to your own
with these types of abilities in place.
So, over the years as we were iterating
and testing various versions of
Capture the Flag, we actually gave up on
the mode for a while because we felt
like what we didn't want to do was add a
bunch of rules that no longer made Overwatch
heroes feel like Overwatch heroes.
I'll give you some examples of this and
in one of our earliest versions that we
had, there was no pickup time on the flag
and we had a character like Tracer well
what are Tracer's would do when we're
we're playtesting these early prototypes
is they would triple Blink to the flag,
obviously they would pick it up since
there was no capture time, and then just
hit recall and be you know 30 meters
back to where they were. Literally,
untouchable to to get the flag and
defenders of the flag didn't even know
what happened. You know
"Oh my god, are flags gone where did it go?"
Well, Tracer is you know already capping
it. So, as we got into preparing for
"Capture the Rooster" and the Overwatch
Lunar New Year Event, we started thinking
to ourselves "You know the players keep
asking us for Capture the Flag and
there's a lot of great suggestions in
the community how to make it work,
we've tried it before, but should we try
it again?" And this time we took a
different philosophy to it. So, early on
when we started iteration for "Capture
the Rooster" we said well we can we can
do all these things to our heroes to try
to make it feel a lot more balanced so
we had a version up and running where we
picked the the abilities that we picked
were the mobility and immunity abilities;
so a great example there is a Reaper's
Wraith form, even Zenyatta's ultimate
Transcendence, where he's moving very
fast and they also can't be damaged at
all.
We picked a bunch of abilities like that:
Tracers Blink, Recall, Sombra's Teleport
Beacon and we made it so when you use
those abilities and you were the flag
carrier you just drop the flag on the
spot. And for a while we played the mode
this way thinking it would feel
more fair and somehow more balanced and
what it ended up feeling like to us and
we did a lot of play testing on it but
it just didn't feel like Overwatch
characters anymore. It felt sort of like a
drag almost, to be the flag carrier one
of the the fantasies there was getting
in grabbing that flag and really doing
the run for your base. So, ironically, we
set up all the abilities to drop the flag
and then we ended up reverting it all
and just saying let's really go to the
spirit of what Capture the Flag is to us,
and we believe is to our players when we
mention it to them. When people think of
Capture the Flag, they think of those
great movement abilities in the really
old school games used to be able to
grappling hook all the way across the
map with the flag and that was one of
the fun things we remember about
various CTF modes in FPS'. So, instead
of trying to overly balance and overly
tune Overwatch around this concept of
sort of fairness, we said "Why don't we
embrace what our heroes do and allow
them to do that." And really the only
couple of rules in playing our version
of Capture the Flag that might be
different from some of the modes that
you're used to, are: 1) There is a little bit
of a pickup time when you get to the
flag
you'll see there's a progress bar and
it will say capturing when you're there and
it's not terribly long but any damage
interrupts that. So, that prevents those
really cheesy captures, like Tracer
triple Blinking in and just pressing
Recall, you know now for Tracer to do
that the flag has to be totally
unguarded and she needs at least enough
time to pick up the flag before she can
do that.
2) The other rule that were trying in
"Capture the Rooster" is that we don't
require your flag to be at the base
when you capture the enemy's flag. So, for
those of you who are familiar with World of Warcraft,
we have a battleground
in there called Warsong Gulch and this
is something we've worked for years on
and it's one of the the favorite
battlegrounds in
World of Warcraft and in World of Warcraft
we require your team to
have the flag when when you capture the
enemy team's flag. And it's cool in
World of Warcraft because it creates
some gameplay that wasn't as fun in
Overwatch, it was a little bit
problematic in Overwatch for us when we
tried it this way, where you're the flag
carrier, kind of standing around trying
to communicate to your team like "Hey, I'm
not going to be able to hold out that
much longer you guys need to go go find
the flag,
I can't do it on my own." because the time
to kill in the lethality is higher
in Overwatch. It's more difficult to sort
of have to hold out moments when you
still have the flag. Now one thing people
might be worried about is and I know
we're going to hear this feedback, there
are moments where you're defending the
flag, your team's flag, and enemies going
to come in, you're going to have a cool
battle, but they're going to win and grab
the flag and there's this feeling of you
know they might use some really powerful
ability. Winston's Leap is a great example.
Winston's going to leap away with the flag
and you're going to say "Well, we didn't have a chance to
to get that flag." And we sort of had that
feeling as well and that's way when we
were in our iteration cycle we tried
those versions where it would drop the
flag, when Winston use that leap
ability. What we found during that
iteration time was usually there's a
teamfight before flag cap happens in the
first place like an initial capture
we're grabbing the flag from your base
and even with the abilities dropping the
flag, if the other team took the flag and
got away
they were probably going to cap it
anyway. Whether or not we let you use
your cool movement abilities or not. So,
ultimately, we really went with more of a
free-form Capture the Flag, where we're
embracing more of what Overwatch is about,
which is: your awesome hero, with your
awesome abilities, and letting you use
them all the time. And we kind of want to
create those crazy moments where "Well I
didn't realize." like you might think
Tracer with her Blink is the best flag
carrier.
Wait until you see Winston with
Primal Rage what he can do,
it's pretty amazing. Why we think this is
okay, is because how we've positioned
"Capture the Rooster" within Overwatch. It
is an Arcade mode that's part of
Overwatch Year of the
Rooster, it's going to be a
three-week event, and the mode is going
to live in The Arcade. We're not adding
it to Quick Play or the Quick Play rotation.
We're not adding it to the competitive
rotation, we don't have any plans to, we
just want players to see it as a fun
mode that exists in The Arcade for the
sake of fun and fun alone. And we know
like a mode, like Mystery Heroes, that
also exists in The Arcade, it's not going
to be perfectly tuned and balance for
the way Overwatch works in competitive or
Quick Play. And we're sort of okay with
it because we wanted to be a "blow off
steam" mode that you go and do, in
addition to those other modes. So, that's
not saying it might never be it won't
ever be a competitive mode
maybe you know someday if we fine-tuned
and iterate on it it will be great
and will think about it that way, but
we're not even remotely thinking about
that right now, we just want it to be fun
we want it to be for those players who
have really been vocal about asking for
Capture the Flag we wanted to be our way
of saying we're listening to you and
that you know your feedback is important.
And even game modes that we sort of had
had dismissed in the past when we hear
your repeated feedback like that we want
you to know that we care about it and we
take it really seriously. So, we've heard
so many requests for Capture the Flag, we
wanted to bring it to you guys. You know
maybe in the future is Capture the
Rooster is really successful during
Overwatch Year of the Rooster, will even
consider bringing it back to The Arcade
in a more fully fleshed-out version with
you know new maps and that sort of thing;
but initially we want to see what your
reaction is and see how much you guys
like it. We'll be really curious to hear
your feedback as you're playing it.
We want to hear what's fun. We want to hear
what you don't like about it.
And we'll look to that feedback
to iterate on so in the meantime
enjoy the Overwatch Year of the Rooster
Event, enjoy "Capture the Rooster" as a
game-mode, have lots of fun, and be nice
to each other.
We'll see you guys.