Upcoming Experimental Mode – Assault Game Mode

I’m assuming it’s harder for the attackers to gain ult charge on Point B, since they will be constantly taking poke damage? I think it might be okay, though.

I’m sure if it were integrated, people would get used to it. Also, perhaps adding a giant wall to block off Point A attack would help as well.

I’ll predict the majority of players testing this will actually prefer it.

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cyka blyat

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I see the novelty in these ideas for Assault and see why this didn’t work out. That being said can I ask if you guys considered revisiting the “time bank minimum draw rule”

Back during patch 1.2, when Competitive was greatly revamped to the overall time bank system, Assault and Hybrid maps started the rule where if Team A fully completes the map with more than a minute remaining, but Team B completes the map with NO time remaining, a final round is played where team A needed to cap point A with the time remaining. Team B can only defend to end the match in a draw.

For seasons 2 through 4 this was a fair rule I thought, but when in season 4 you guys changed the Assault objective point capture percentage to have a tiebreaker, this made this specific situation feel a lot worse for the team who could no longer win the match (given the team with the remaining time bank had to get 33%/one-tick of the first point to win instead of the full objective point.

I wish to ask, is there any consideration to remove this rule and simply extend both team’s time bank by one-minute so that both teams can play to win the match in the next set of rounds?

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These changes are very interesting indeed, but I’d say part of the hate just comes down to map design. For example, there’s only one way to get past the Hanamura A choke, making it very predictable for you on attack in how you push in.

I feel like fights just take place at the choke rather than the actual point most of the time.

13 Likes

Meh, not the type of experiment I was hoping for.

Oh well, hopefully it’ll be entertaining at least and hopefully contribute something towards improving Assault.

Super excited to try it out!

snowballing is honestly not that big of a deal on 2 CP, while annoying. The deeper issues are:

  1. the fact that 1 hero is enough to stall the point vs 6 heroes. Makes hopping onto the point and off of it kinda a broken interaction. You can do this for example with Lucio on Hanamura B and especially Anubis B and with Hammond on every 2 CP map. Briefly touching the point triggers the internal cooldown and makes the defenders not further their capture progress. As a result, very often, particularly in low and mid-elos, you see this lousy gameplay of people jumping on the point 1 at a time in a process that can go on for even 2 minutes.

  2. this is related to the 1st point but is an extra, on point B of 2 CP due to respawn advantage, winning the fight is not enough, you need to win FAST and DECISIVELY (read: not lose many team members and in particular never the main tank/main support/main DPS). While this is the nature of 2 CP, it’s not very fun because what matters should be winning the teamfight, even if 3 members of a team are left alive, instead what matters is winning and having 6 people survive which particularly in solo queue makes for a very unfun and random experience (in low elo even more but in high elo also). In low elo it’s not uncommon for one team to never capture point B because after a big first initial push that fails, people trickle in 1 by 1 and get picked off which results in 0 good teamfights, while the other team randomly captures it due to some sheer luck or a Reaper getting a 3K flank pre-fight.
    The reason why it is unfun, is because while as tank, DPS and to a degree even support you can always “carry harder” and get 1 extra kill or that 1 extra headshot to offset having bad teammates, you generally can’t prevent your teammates from dying and making bad plays. This means that on 2 CP, if you are for example Widowmaker and playing Attack Anubis B, and you get 2 solo kills, but a respawning Tracer picks off your Ana and Roadhog, you generally still lose the fight. It is not easy to get more than 2 headshots as Widowmaker in a short amount of time, and in theory your team should always win a 6v4. In practice, due to people sometimes misplaying, not playing as a team, having momentarily bad aim, etc, whether or not the point is captured is fully out of your control, because if we get back to our example, your dead Ana and Roadhog have a very long respawn time, while the 2 people you picked off a short one, so typically the resulting 4v4 situation always advantages the defenders and this is unfair toward you as a Widowmaker player because in any other game mode the ensuing 4v4 would likely be won by your team due to Tracer having wasted her cooldowns to kill your Ana and being subsequently an easy kill and stuff like that. Tl;dr; on 2 CP surviving matters more but while you can kill enemies if you’re good enough, you can’t prevent teammates from feeding.

As a guy who reviews VODs of Plats and below periodically, I often see good players lose due to this effect. Teamplay is very important on 2 CP, too important for low elo and particularly fairly good players playing low-impact heroes (e.g. Mercy) can have no say over whether the team trickles in for 5 minutes or decides to group around the shield and capture the point immediately.

  1. team comp matters even more on 2 CP, specifically to hold onto point B as attackers you need:
    a) to have a shield typically (many tanks especially in low elo refuse to go shield tank). This is because a shield allows you to mitigate damage, so that supports can heal everyone and not be forced to pocket the 2 tanks only. And furthermore it also helps tanks be more aggressive and anchor the point and not dance around corners endlessly when they get to low HP. Having a shield also decreases the chances of your DPS and supports randomly dying to respawners.
    b) having high damage matters! Specifically if you start on something like, let’s say Rein Zarya, Tracer Genji, a respawning Hammond can stall this comp forever as its damage output is not the greatest. This makes for very luck-based outcomes to matches where a Hammond stalling forever makes the worse team win only because the better team win the teamfight but are not playing the appropriate damage-dealing heroes to finish off the stallers.

  2. this is kinda a solo queue exclusive also and doesn’t happen in scrims/OWL, but typically defenders can often cheese attackers when defending B pretty hard by constantly looking for stagger kills. Tracers hiding behind enemy lines and sticking a Pulse Bomb, Widowmaker shots, or Roadhog flanks before a fight starts are typical examples of how even if the defenders trade a Roadhog 1 for 1 vs… any hero really, the situation is ALWAYS advantageous for the defenders because all the defenders need to do is stall for a bit, hide behind a shield and wait for the Roadhog to respawn and fight a very easy 6v5 from there. In other modes, it’s not like that, and being down 1 tank (strongest class in the game) pre-fight is a big deal. On defense B of 2 CP, losing 1 tank pre fight is not a big deal in contrast which allows for very lousy and cheesy gameplay/tactics that are anti-Overwatchy I would say.

Overall, and I’m sorry if this sounds very critical, the mode would be best if disabled from competitive. It is fundamentally flawed for solo queue players and breeds toxicity and bad gameplay. As an alternative, the spawn of the defenders on point B could be moved WAY back, with the effect of turning Assault into something similar to KOTH, with the difference that you only need to win 1 teamfight and the defenders have a better defending position (on KOTH typically sides are symmetrical hence neither side has positional advantage).

13 Likes

Lol at the 2cp defenders now

No sir. Hopefully the dev team had the hindsight to remember overtime spawns. Do not increase base respawn time.

This^

I’ve always wanted to see what it’d be like spawning near point A as a defender (defenders probably spawn in the room in the attacker spawn when point B unlocks).

This change would be nice for heroes who require longer setup such as Symmetra.

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Too bad the only reason they are moving defender spawns forward is due to severely cutting the hero select and set up phases. So overall, you probably won’t be any better off time/CD wise.

I know, but it’s still a nice change that could potentially allow setup to be quicker if they decided to make the setup time longer (but shorter than what we have now)

Thank you Molly and thank you blizzard dev/balance team.

I’m be honest with you guys. I don’t think this is a failure.

As I see it anything to help 2 CP is better than what it is right now.

Hearing you guys work on this issue and wanting data is great.

I hoping those game types will be fixed in overwatch 2.

I’ll be experimenting for y’all.

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this could be neat for quickplay, i usually feel a bit exhausted by only get to defend for several maps in a row or very often.

getting to switch sides for A point and then progress through the map depending how close the game is seems great.

That sounds really interesting, can’t wait to play it

Symmetra is going to be even better on 2CP if this does ever go through, good for her.

Now she can teleport her team onto point B without fear of ultimates in the initial fight, which is a big deal.

2 Likes

It’s actually the other way around for point B. You can overtake the highground the majority of the fight, and spawn being that close, stall is very problematic. So the spawn changes are actually a good thing for point B.

maybe if you didnt lose ult in between rounds

I’m honestly going to enjoy the fast-paced rounds. Being snowballed was by far the worst thing. Looking forward to it.

Please no, It’ll be nice not having something revolve around hitting 4 ults to win a fight. Snowballing on 2CP and ult charge have been some of the biggest issues with the mode. So the change is something that shouldn’t ever be reverted. It’s a change in the right direction.

1 Like