Overwatch will be getting a pretty significant change to hero movement, and a preview of the update is currently live on the PTR. Well, maybe “update” is the wrong word since it’s a server-side change, but basically you’ll be getting better control of your character on inclines and in midair. There has been one unintended bug in all this, though, and it’s a doozy.
Find out what to expect from Overwatch in 2018 in our interview with Jeff Kaplan.
Jeff Kaplan announced the change on the Battle.net forums yesterday. The change began as a bug fix for a couple of specific heroes, but has ended up being a systemic update affecting everyone. Moving along inclines will no longer affect your hero’s speed, and you’ll also no longer get slight strafing movement there.
The change also means a slight increase to air control across all characters, and Kaplan specifically cites Winston’s jump pack leap as an example. You can see a comparison here, with a Winston leap followed up by immediately holding right on both the live game (upper left) and the PTR (lower right). It’s not an astronomical difference, but it is a clear one. You can see a few other comparisons on Reddit.
Players still seem to be wrapping their collective heads around the changes, and the response overall hasn’t coalesced into anything overwhelmingly positive or negative.
The one big bug makes it very difficult to leave the spawn point on control maps, with doors either drastically reducing your movement speed or reversing your movement controls entirely. Jeff Brill confirmed on the forums that the problem will get fixed (obviously), but it’s gonna stay broken on the PTR while the team figures it out. In the meantime, players are demonstrating some sick dance moves with the ‘feature,’ as you can see in the video above.