Overwatch

**Overwatch** is a multiplayer first-person shooter developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment. It was released on May 24, 2016 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The game revolves around two teams of six, who play as different heroes in-game, each with their own unique weapons, skills and abilities. These heroes are divided into four classes; Offense, Defense, Tank and Support. Both teams work together to either escort or defend cargo and capture different points around the map in a limited amount of time. Players can also obtain 'loot boxes', either by buying them with money or when the player goes up a rank, which contains different cosmetics, victory poses and sprays the player can equip onto their heroes.

## Gameplay

Overwatch features squad-based combat with two opposing teams of six players each. Players choose one of several hero characters, each with their own unique abilities and role classes. The four character roles include: offense characters with high speed and attack but low defense, defense characters meant to form choke points for enemies, support characters that provide buffs and debuffs for their allies and enemies respectively (such as healing or speed alterations), and tank characters that have a large amount of armor and hit points to withstand enemy attacks and draw fire away from teammates. During the pre-match setup, players on a team will be given advice from the game if their team is unbalanced, such as if they are lacking defensive heroes, encouraging players to switch to other heroes pre-match and balance the starting team. Within a match, players can switch between characters in-game following deaths or by returning to their home base, which is encouraged by the game's overall design.

Each hero has a primary attack or skill and at least two additional skills that can be evoked at any time, some requiring a brief cooldown period before they can be used again. Furthermore, each player slowly builds up a meter towards the one-time use of the character's "ultimate" skill; this meter builds up over time but can build up faster for defeating opponents or performing other beneficial tasks for their team. Once ready, the player can use this skill at any time which may last for a few seconds (such as increased attack strength or immunity to attacks) or be a single powerful action (such as resurrecting any recently-fallen team members), after which they then must wait for the meter to fill up again.

At the conclusion of each match, the game server determines and replays for all players a short period of time from a specific player as the "Play of the Game" based on a number of factors that highlight a high-scoring play, such as a rapid number of kills or an effective use of team healing. Up to four individual achievements for players on both teams are then highlighted and players are given the option to select one to promote. Obtaining the "Play of the Game" or the most votes during this post-game are rewarded as experience points for the player's meta-game.

Players gain experience following a match towards a metagame experience level based on several factors such as whether they won or lost, how effective they used their character's main powers, and beating past personal records in a number of categories; this experience is only gained when playing on the game's matchmaking modes and not in custom games. On gaining an experience level, the player can earn a loot crate, which contains a number of cosmetic items for certain heroes, including victory poses, paint sprays, alternate color schemes and voice lines. They may also earn in-game currency which can be used to purchase specific cosmetic items directly. Duplicate items are rewarded with in-game currency. Players also have the option to purchase loot boxes with real-world currency through microtransactions.

## Roles

Characters in Overwatch come in four varieties: Offense, Defense, Tank, and Support. These roles serve to categorize the heroes of Overwatch by similar characteristics that can be used to describe them and their play style. The first appearance of an Overwatch character in a released game was on April 19, 2016 in Heroes of the Storm.

* **Offense:** Offense characters have high mobility and are known for their ability to deal large amounts of damage. To balance this, offense characters have a low number of hit points.
* **Defense:** Defense characters excel at protecting specific locations and creating choke points. They can also provide several means of field support, such as sentry set-up and trapping the enemy team.
* **Tank:** Tank characters have the most hit points out of all the characters in the game. Because of this, they are able to draw enemy fire away from their teammates to themselves, so as to disrupt the enemy team.
* **Support:** Support characters are utility characters that have abilities that enhance their own team and/or weaken the enemy team. They might not deal the most damage or have the most hit points, but the buffs and debuffs they provide ensure that their teammates who do will make short work of their opponents.

## Map Types

Each Overwatch map has a specific game mode that it supports, which include:

* **Assault:** The attacking team is tasked with capturing two target points in sequence on the map, while the defending team must stop them.
* **Escort:** The attacking team is tasked with escorting a payload to a certain delivery point before time runs out, while the defending team must stop them. The payload vehicle moves along a fixed track when any player on the attacking team is close to it, but will stop if a defending player is nearby; should no attacker be near the vehicle, it will start to move backwards along the track. Passing specific checkpoints will extend the match time and prevent the payload from moving backwards from that point.
* **Assault/Escort:** The attacking team has to capture the payload and escort it to its destination, while the defending team tries to hold them back.
* **Control:** Each team tries to capture and maintain a common control point until their capture percentage reaches 100%. This game mode is played in a best-of-three format.

Each mode includes an "Overtime" period lasting for only a few seconds if an objective is not yet completed by the attacking team, such as if the attackers in Escort have not moved the payload to the next checkpoint, or have failed to take the control point held by the other team in Control. Overtime continues if attackers continuously push at their objective, but will end quickly if the attackers are held away from the objective.

## Game Modes

Overwatch features several means of gameplay, including tutorial and practice modes against computer-controlled opponents, causal matchmaking, weekly brawls, custom games, and competitive or ranked play.

Casual matchmaking allows players, alone or with invited friends, to be randomly matched against others. The game servers would attempt to match the gathered players in party via a dynamic queue with others based on general skill level, only broadening outside this search range if it took a long time to find matching players. Blizzard works to adjust this matchmaking approach to make sure players will find matches of people with roughly equivalent skill level. For example, in June 2016, Blizzard removed the option for players to avoid specific opponents; the option was meant for players to be able ignore trolls, but instead found that highly skilled players were being put on these avoidance lists and were having difficulty finding games or would be matched with new and less-skilled players.

The Weekly Brawl mode was inspired by Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft's Tavern Brawls. These matches feature unique rules, such as players forced to play a specific hero or a specific class of hero, or may force a random hero on the player each time they respawn; as the mode's name suggests, these Brawls will change weekly.

Custom games enable players to have open or private games with several possible options that can be adjusted, such as match length, which maps to play, limitations on character selection, and similar options that are used to create the Weekly Brawl matches. Players do not gain any experience from playing in custom matches as they would in the causal, ranked, or weekly brawl modes.

Competitive mode enables players, segregated in both region and platform, to participate in ranked play. Competitive mode is run in seasons that last for 2.5 months each with a break of two weeks between each season to allow Blizzard to make necessary changes to this format; an exception was made for the first season which will only be 1.5 months long to align timing for future seasons. Players must have reached level 25 from causal matches to partake in competitive play. Before they can play any ranked matches, they must play through ten preliminary matches that used to assign a skill rating from 1 to 100 based on a combination of several factors including the player's performance and the performance of those that were part of their matches. Subsequently, this skill level will be used to match players in all further matches for that season. The player's skill level can move up or down during a season, influenced by their performance and by winning matches against higher-ranked players or losing matches to lower-ranked ones. Matches taking place on Control maps are played best three-out-of-five rounds instead of two-out-of-three as in causal gameplay. Matches taking place on Assault, Escort, and Hybrid map types are broken into two rounds, with teams swapped between attackers and defenders each round. Teams can score a point as the attacker by completing each objective (capturing a control point or escorting the payload past a checkpoint). After these two rounds, the team with the highest score wins. If there is a tie, a random coin flip is made to assign one team as the attackers, and they are given two minutes without any overtime to secure a control point to win the match, otherwise the defenders win. Blizzard has stated that this mechanism for breaking ties may change in future seasons. Each match a player wins in competitive mode earn them a unit of in-game "competitive currency".

Players who complete the prerequisite ten placement matches will gain cosmetic items unique for that season. At the end of a season, players will be rewarded with additional competitive currency based on their final skill ranking. This currency can then be used to purchase cosmetic rewards such as spending 300 competitive currency units to obtain a "golden" weapon for a specific character. Kaplan remarked that competitive play was Blizzard's "big focus", anticipating that it will "require a few season's worth of iteration before we're in the place we want to be."

## Plot

Overwatch is set sixty years into the future of fictionalized Earth, thirty years after the resolution of the "Omnic Crisis". Prior the Omnic Crisis, humanity had been in a golden age of prosperity and technology development. Humanity developed robots with artificial intelligence called "omnics" which were produced world-wide in automated "omnium" facilities and put to use to achieve economic equality. The Omnic Crisis began when the omniums started producing a series of lethal, hostile robots, which turned against humanity. The United Nations (UN) quickly formed Overwatch, an international task force to combat the Omnic threat and restore order.

Two veteran soldiers were put in charge of Overwatch; Gabriel Reyes and Jack Morrison. Though Overwatch successfully quelled the robotic uprising and brought a number of talented individuals to the forefront, a rift developed between Reyes and Morrison, and Morrison became the de facto leader of Overwatch while Reyes took charge of Blackwatch, Overwatch's covert operations. Overwatch maintained peace across the world for several decades in what was called the "Overwatch Generation", but the rift between Morrison and Reyes intensified. Several allegations of wrongdoing and failures were leveled at Overwatch, leading to public outcry against the organization and in-fighting between its members, prompting the UN to investigate the situation. During this, an explosion destroyed Overwatch's headquarters, purportedly killing Morrison and Reyes among others. The UN passed the Petras Act, which dismantled Overwatch and forbade any Overwatch-type activity.

Overwatch is set some years after the Petras Act; without Overwatch, corporations have started to take over, fighting and terrorism have broken out in parts of the globe, and there are signs of a second Omnic Crisis occurring in Russia. Former members of Overwatch decide to reform Overwatch despite the Petras Act, recruiting old friends and gaining new allies in their fight.