Overwatch gets new Oasis map, plus Roadhog hook fixes
It's Roadhog's time (to get nerfed)
Overwatch [official site] aka The Shooter You Watch From Afar With An Increasingly Disturbing Intensity, has got a new map, the high-tech paradise city of Oasis. The map has been in public testing for a while but it went into the full-fat game yesterday. You can see how shiny and new it looks in a trailer below. In other news, tanky hero Roadhog will be soon getting his slightly-broken hook ability fixed, says one of the game’s designers.
Firstly, here’s some moving pictures of the new map.
As for Roadhog, he’ll be undergoing some work very soon, possibly hitting public testing this week. It’s all about his hook, which is normally supposed to grab folks and pull them toward the hulking shotgunner but sometimes acts wacky and pulls them through walls, or deposits them beside or behind the hero instead of right in front of him. The upcoming changes hope to fix all this by reworking the cogs behind it all, said designer Geoff Goodman in a response to forumites clamouring for the fix. If you want to look at it in more detail, here’s how he explained it will work:
Firstly, the hook victim will now move in to the position directly in front of Roadhog, rather than just a straight line towards him. There is a cap on how far 'to the side' you can be pulled, so you can't just hook someone, spin 180, and dump someone off a cliff. This part (along with some other bug fixes) should generally make the hook feel more consistent as to where the victims get pulled.
Secondly, the line-of-sight check to see if a hook should connect or not is now checked from Roadhog's position, instead of the hook's position. This basically means the hook can't connect to targets that Roadhog himself can't see.
Lastly, there is a new persistent line-of-sight check back to Roadhog once the hook has landed. If this check fails, the hook breaks off and returns to Roadhog. This means if you get hooked and move out of LOS quickly (either you dashed, were falling, were pushed, etc), the hook will now break early and not pull the target.
Sounds good to me. I fear and loathe the sight of a Roadhog when I’m zipping around as Lucio the healz king, or lurking in the air as Pharah. There’s not much that feels unjust in Blizzard’s laser-focused team shooter, but being snatched through solid walls and shot in the head is certainly enough to make a Bastion twitch with robotic rage.