Profit marvel, Overwatch has recently been under community scrutiny due to the lack on any limit on the number of occurrences of a certain hero per team, but Blizzard seems to be looking to fix that issue, at least for the eSports scene.
Until now, it was possible to play whole teams of a single hero with no punishment, except for the absolute lack of balance. This has lead to a Tracer dominated meta, which many have asked to be corrected, even if a large portion of the players defend the current system under the guise of fun, that subjective little thing.
The expected changes come due to the influence of ESL, who recently announced its Overwatch Atlantic Showdown, a competition which will see the top four teams in Europe and North America battle at Gamescom, following online qualifiers. The gigantic tournaments is noteworthy due to its 100000$ prize pool.
As with any Blizzard game, any competition with a prize pool over 1000$ must follow the company’s official guidelines and rule book. This implies they must not have a hero limit, something which was applied by ESL as the qualifiers began on the 4th of July.
It now appears, according to reports by Overwatch Central, that a one hero limit will be applied by Blizzard, at least for this tournament, with further clarification pending an official statement on the matter. This changes is also paired with a modification to the Sudden Death mechanic, which was used to solve drawn games. Blizzard will permanently replace it further down the line, but, for now, it has agreed to allow drawn games to go into Stop Watch mode, or be counted as a point for both participant teams.
All these changes are only being brought to the eSports scene, however, with no news on their impact to casual play.
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