Since I enjoy playing ARPGs and MMORPGs from time to time to grind for a bit, I thought why not create a custom game mode in Overwatch that allows for some in-match character growth and takes a while to complete.
World of Overwatch – PvE RPG Grind Mode (by Delwion#2667)
1-6 players must defeat regular enemies, champions, and bosses to earn XP! With every additional level, players get more powerful and gain additional Ability Points they can spend on useful passive abilities. But enemies get stronger, too. Choose your preferred hunting zone and grind your way to the highest level. Will you be able to defeat the legendary level 100 boss in 90 minutes?
World of Overwatch is a fun mode which poses a moderate challenge and features some repetitive gameplay. Players can control the difficulty to some extend by choosing their preferred hunting area (Warcraft, Starcraft, or Diablo-themed area). Bosses can be tough opponents, especially in games with only a few players, but with a good strategy and some teamplay, any boss can be defeated.
2. Setup - Lobby
Team 2 (Human players): 1-6 players, no hero restrictions.
3. Abilities
3.1. Town Portal
Players can use Need healing outside of the Hearthstone tavern to cast a town portal spell which will teleport them back to the tavern after a bit more than 2 seconds. The spell gets interrupted when the caster fires a weapon, uses an ability, or takes damage. Abilities with a duration will also prevent players from casting the town portal spell for as long as they are active. This includes all ultimate abilities and abilities like Orisa’s Barrier, the speed variant of Lucio’s Crossfade, or Torjbörn’s Turret.
3.2. Upgradable Abilities
Inside the Hearthstone tavern, players can unlock and upgrade abilities by pressing Crouch near one of the orbs. Upgrading abilities costs Ability Points (AP) which can be obtained by gaining additional levels. The max rank for all upgradable abilities is 10. Players begin the game with 10 Ability Points.
Basic Abilities
Damage: Increases player’s damage dealt.
Max Health: Increases player’s max health.
Healing: Increases player’s healing dealt.
Movement Speed: Increases player’s move speed.
Special Abilities:
Extra Jump Height: Grants additional jump height.
Stealth: Makes player invisible after a certain amount of idle time (using primary or secondary fire, ability 1 or 2, or ultimate will make the player visible again; the player will also get visible again when taking damage; using the town portal spell or a quick melee attack will not break invisibility).
Critical Hit Damage: When landing a critical hit on an enemy will grant bonus damage as percentage of the health the enemy had prior to the critical hit (cooldown: 2 seconds; this damage is still subject to damage reduction from champions and bosses). The cooldown sets in whenever a player dealt damage while the ability was ready, even if the attack wasn’t a critical hit.
On Hit abilities:
Fire: Will deal additional instantaneous fire damage (cooldown: 2 seconds).
Frost: Will slow down enemies for a certain amount of time (cooldown: 2 seconds).
Poison: Will deal poison damage over time to an enemy and reduce the enemy’s healing received for a certain amount of time (cooldown: 2 seconds).
Extra Ultimate Recovery:
Extra Ultimate Recovery: Will grant the player a certain amount of bonus ultimate charge when dealing damage (cooldown: 2 seconds).
Cooldowns are user and target-specific: when an ability has triggered on an enemy then that enemy cannot be affected by the same ability from the same player again until the amount of time listed as cooldown has elapsed. Additionally, whenever an on hit ability is triggered, there is a global cooldown of 0.25 seconds until any enemy can be affected by an on hit ability of the same player again.
Slow and healing received debuffs from multiple players do not stack; only the strongest slow and the strongest healing received debuff currently on an enemy will be in effect; the game mode does however keep track of all debuffs (so if a stronger slow debuff on an enemy expires but a weaker one is still active then the enemy will still be affected by the weaker slow debuff until it expires as well).
Damage over time effects from multiple players can be active on the same enemy at the same time and will all continue to deal their full amount of damage.
Upgrade cost:
Ability
Lv 1
Lv 2
Lv 3
Lv 4
Lv 5
Lv 6
Lv 7
Lv 8
Lv 9
Lv 10
Total
1-4
10
40
90
160
250
360
490
640
810
1000
3850
5
30
60
90
120
150
180
210
240
270
300
1650
6
40
80
120
160
200
240
280
320
360
400
2200
7-10
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
450
500
2750
11
60
120
180
240
300
360
420
480
540
600
3300
3.3. Changes to Standard Hero Abilities
Mercy - Mass Resurrection: Since the respawn delay for players is reduced to 6-8 seconds in this game mode to lower wait times, Mercy’s Resurrection ability has been made slightly more powerful. It will now instantly resurrect all allies within a radius of 15 meters (no line of sight required) and has a cooldown of 12 seconds. When resurrecting an ally, Mercy will gain a bit more than 1.2% of the total amount of XP the resurrected player needed to reach the next level. Players who are resurrected do not lose any XP (normally they lose 5% of their progress towards the next level; see chapter 5: Earning XP).
Bastion is not immune to custom knockback effects in Sentry mode (since there is no easy and reliable way to find out if he’s in Sentry mode or not).
3.4. Respecs
Every player can respec twice per match, which resets all abilities to rank 0 and returns all ability points the player has invested to far.
4. Enemies
4.1. Enemy Types
Enemies come in three variants: Regular Enemies, Champions (called “Leaders” in game), and Bosses.
The power of Regular Monsters depends largely on their level with only minor random variation to their stats.
Champions are notably stronger than regular monsters of the same level (all stats increased) and will always have at least one standard ability (that can be any of the abilities 5-10 that the players have access to). Level 20+ Champions will have a second ability and level 50+ Champions will have three abilities. Champions award twice as much XP as regular enemies of the same level.
Bosses are a lot stronger than regular monsters. They will always have one super-charged base stat (damage dealt, max health, healing dealt, or move speed) and at least two player abilities. Level 30+ bosses will have a third ability, and level 60+ bosses will have four player abilities. On top of that, bosses will always have a unique boss enchantment (see list below). Bosses will grant 20 times the amount of XP of a regular enemy of the same level to any player in the game that has contributed to the kill (normally, XP are only awarded if a player is within a certain radius of a defeated enemy, see chapter 5: Earning XP).
Boss Enchantments:
Fire: Deals fire damage to all nearby players at regular intervals, always has additional levels of the fire ability, and explodes in a fire ball when defeated that deals a high amount of damage.
Frost: Greatly slows down nearby players at regular intervals , always has additional levels of the frost ability, and explodes in a large frost nova that deals a moderate amount of damage to players and slows them down.
Poison: Deals damage over time to nearby players and reduces their healing received for a certain amount of time, always has additional levels of the poison ability; when defeated, leaves behind a green mist that covers a large area, deals damage over time to players, and reduces their healing received.
Shock/Lightning: Knocks back all nearby players at regular intervals with a lightning ball, stuns and knocks back players hit with regular attacks (cooldown: 3 seconds), always has bonus move speed, and explodes in a gigantic shock wave that knocks back and damages all players within its radius.
Holy: Takes 35% less damage and moves 35% slower than the other boss types, always has additional levels of the jump and the critical damage ability, always has increased healing dealt, any player who touches the white sphere around this boss will take 10,000 damage; cannot have the hide ability.
EMP (Electromagnetic pulse): Any player who enters the purple sphere around the boss will be hacked, this boss type always has a very powerful version of the hide ability, will hack enemies on hit (cooldown: 1 second), will pull in (teleport to its location) all nearby players and enemies after it has been defeated.
Bosses cannot die from falling out of the map. They will be teleported back to their spawn location when they fall into the water or a bottomless pit. They will also be teleported back to their original spawn location when they enter the active spawn room of their team or when they get too close to the player team’s spawn room (the limits are marked with purple light pillars when there is currently a boss in the game).
Regular enemies will despawn after 20 seconds of inactivity. Champions will despawn after 40 seconds of inactivity. Resurrected bosses will despawn after 20 seconds of inactivity. A real bosses (not resurrected) will never despawn due to inactivity.
4.2. Hunting Areas
There are three separate hunting areas. Enemies will only spawn in an area where there is at least one player. The more players there are in a specific area the more likely a respawning enemy will spawn in that area.
The Warcraft-themed area has enemies of standard difficulty and the default spawn rate for champions and bosses.
The Starcraft-themed area has slightly stronger (higher level) enemies; champions and bosses will spawn slightly more often in this area.
The Diablo-themed area has the strongest (highest level) enemies; champions and bosses will spawn a lot more often in this area.
Green teleporters will transport both players and enemies to a random one of three spots in the Warcraft area. Blue teleporters will transport enemies and players to one of three spots in the Starcraft area. Red teleporters will transport enemies and players to one of three spots in the Diablo area.
Whenever a boss spawns, hunting area-based spawn mechanics are disabled and regular enemies as well as champions will spawn near the boss (the level of the enemies and the champion spawn rate depend on the hunting area the boss originally spawned in). If a boss gets too close to the players’ spawn room (spots marked with purple light shafts) it will be teleported back to its original spawn location. Once the boss has been defeated, hunting area based spawn mechanics are reactivated.
4.3. Balancing Based on the Number of Players
Whenever the number of players in team 2 changes, the difficulty of the game is automatically adjusted within the next few seconds. Bosses always take 50% of the damage regular enemies do with the exception of boss type 5 which takes only 32.5% of the damage regular enemies do. (For example: in a game with 4 players in team 2, a boss of type 5 would have a damage received value of 20.5%.)
Players in Team 2
Damage Received: Players
Damage Received: Regular Enemies / Champions
Damage Received: Bosses
Damage Received: Boss Type 5
1
50
100
50
32.5
2
60
90
45
29.25
3
70
80
40
26
4
80
70
35
22.75
5
90
60
30
19.5
6
100
50
25
16.25
(All damage received values in % of the game mode’s default values.)
5. Earning XP
When an enemy is defeated, an XP reward will be distributed among all players who contributed to the kill and are within a 50 meters radius. Any player that has dealt damage to the defeated enemy at least once, counts as a contributor.
Number of contr.:
XP per player (in%)
1
100
2
66.7
3
52.6
4
44.4
5
39.0
6
35.1
Players on a damage type hero will receive 33.33% bonus XP when they were the last player with a damage type hero who dealt damage to the defeated enemy.
Players on a tank type hero will receive 33.33% bonus XP when they took damage from the defeated enemy (damage to the player’s barriers counts). They will also automatically earn the contributor status for any enemy they took damage from.
Players on a support type hero will get XP from any enemy that dies within a certain radius of the player, even if the the support hero player was not a contributor.
Damage from summoned units (such as Ashe’s Bob, Torbjörn’s Turret, Symmetra’s Sentry Turrets) or from player abilities 7, 8, and 10 does not count as damage dealt by a player.
When players die they lose 5% of the total amount of XP they needed to reach the next level. However, they cannot lose levels from dying.
Appendices
Formulae(outdated)
Formulae
Known (minor) issues
Known (minor) issues
Other things I noticed about the workshop(very old - partially outdated)
There are 10 ability icons in the Hearthstone Tavern. You can upgrade any ability you like by pressing the Interact button while standing next to the ability’s icon. There are small in-world texts that tell you which ability an icon represents.
Edit: I may have misunderstood your question: If you mean the default Overwatch hero abilities then you have access to all of them from the beginning.
yeah I mean the default hero abilities, like for example, doomfist can upgrade his ult to use E to knock down the victims after upgrade, which means that you can add some specific upgrades for the specific hero, like other games did, here are some of my ideas in X3FQ7H, you can have a look of it.
Oh, maybe your approach is better to make it as general abilities, just let the players choose what abilities suit their hero most.
edit: by the way, I didn’t make it to defeat the final boss, the frozen ana keep teleporting, I have no idea how to deal with it lol, I tried many heros but times up and shut down.
Yes, all the teams I had in my games didn’t make it to the final boss either >< I increased the XP gained per monster again. Orisa is probably the best hero to deal with a Frost boss since her fortify will prevent her from getting frozen or slowed.
Unfortunately the server is still often crashing after around 70 minutes. Not sure what causes it.
Edit: I think having individual upgrades for each hero ability as you suggested is far better than the generic passives that I used in my mode, but it requires a lot more work and I think is a lot harder to implement in the workshop if you want to do it for a lot of different heroes/abilities.
I haven’t had a chance yet to look at the code you linked but will do so tomorrow.
Edit 2: I’ve tried your game mode now. It think there are some really nice ideas. I ike the 2 seconds invincibilty after a kill on McCree, reminds me of the Adrenaline Shield the Heavy Assault class has in Planetside 2; it’s only the best option if you get a lot of kills within a relatively short amount of time there. I also like the resurrect theme of Reaper, fitting to the character. Not sure I understand the flame effect on Mercy. Is it just there as a visual effect? Tracer’s and McCrees’s slowdown effects are really fun to use when playing against AI, but also really powerful (almost makes it too easy with McCree)
I tried out the special abilities of Doomfist and they are interesting and work quite consistently. However, there is unfortunately no way in the workshop to really check if the damage a player dealt was from an specific ability. For example: if I fire with primary fire on Doomfist and then press the Ability 2 button right after that, then the Primary fire will also get the special ability of Ability 2 and knock down enemies, since IS USING ABILITY 2(EVENT PLAYER) is true in the moment when the PLAYER DEALT DAMAGE rule is triggered by damage from the regular primary fire projectiles. (For the same reason, I think Doomfists primary fire does not always activate the burning effect on enemies as it should. The game is checking if Doomfist is firing primary in the moment when the projectiles hit an enemy and cause damage and not if the damage was caused by a primary fire attack). It’s not a big problem for Doomfist, but with other heroes it would be really hard to add rules that only trigger with certain abilities (especially for abilities like Pharah’s Concussive Blast that deal no damage). But that is a limitation of the workshop.
Anyway, it was fun to test this mode with a really strong player in team 1 (I played against 6 bots)
Wow that’s a long reply lol. I played your mode by myself, so I think it should be easier? hhhh. Didn’t realize that orisa can fight against frost! I’ll try it. You know in the end, I nearly upgrade all of the abilities, like I was about level 98. I think I have the hope to defeat her when I finally try to use consistence damage and burning effect phara, but the game shut down lol.
As for the abilities, I think adding an ultimate effect of every abilities in your list which have a very high cost is interesting. Like after upgrading to level 10, the speed boost abilities can change to an ultimate abilities to give you slow mode. The ultimate of life can give you resurrect and ult. The burning ult can increase the damage taken of the victims. etc.
And about the status mess up of doomfist, I realize it when trying to apply some effect of rocket punch, it seems that the projectiles need some time to hit the victims, and the condition will change when it hits. One way to solve it is to speed up the projectiles’ speed.
Edit: One more interesting idea comes from the cultist skin of Zen, the longer the people seeing zen, the more damage they will be taken, like a increasing discord effect. And the zen ult can greatly increase the vulnerable level of the enemies within the region! Don’t have an idea if this can be made in workshop.
I’m sorry, at the moment I don’t want to/can’t add any other maps to this mode since I’m working on a different workshop mode that turned out to be very time-consuming Every new map for World of Overwatch would very likely require 10+ hours of work in the very best case (probably a lot more). When I’m done with my current project I will take a look at WoO again and get a better estimate (if I decide to add another map is there any specific map you would like to see added most?)
Heya, the mode you make is really god, and I decided to tinker with it and put it in a different map to learn the workshop and i got the different locations down, but i can’t get the enemies to spawn anywhere even when i use teleporters. Could you offer any advice on it? Thanks
Hi Without seeing the script it’s difficult for me to tell what exactly the problem is.
World of Overwatch has pretty complicated respawn rules with several rectangular areas, some large circular areas, and close to 50 small circular areas defined a “no spawn” zones. There are also min and max values for x and z coordiates. If you didn’t update any of these, that could be the problem (could also be that enemies spawn under the ground very often and immediately die if you didn’t place the centers of the hunting zones high enough).
Before respawning, enemies in WoO pick a random position near the center of a hunting zone (or near the boss when a boss is up) and then check if that is a valid spawn location. If it’s not valid, they don’t spawn.
Global variable G is the array that lists the centers of all hunting areas. You can find a lot of info in the section about “global variales” and “player variables” in the opening post here, in case you haven’t seen it yet
That sounds like a fun idea, but unfortunately, it would lead to problems with Mercy’s custom rez ability, so I have no plans of adding it, sorry, but maybe someone else can.
Delwion, do you know a way we can fix these bots getting stuck?
Sorry i havent really played your game mode but you must know what i mean, the bots get stuck often in overwatch and i’m tired of waiting for blizzard that do jack sh!t about their poorly coded AI.
I’m trying to write a PvE game mode in the workshop, i also play Practise vs Ai and its very common there too. I’ve teleported bots out of spawn so they can at least be killed but its a game breaker usually and you have to hope you get lucky so you can play a full game.
I’ve noticed that bots sometimes get stuck and act as if they were rooted for the rest of the match. I’m not sure what causes this, but it doesn’t go away when a bot dies and respawns. What I usually do when this happens is: I just remove the AI player in the lobby and add a new one (if the game mode allows it).
In World of Overwatch and Loot Quest, enemies will despawn when they do not take or deal any damage for a certain amount of time which fixes the problem of nearest walkable position or a random position near a player being inside a wall or in a normally inaccessible area, but I do not know how to fix the other problem with enemies getting permanently “rooted”.
Maybe you should add Eichenwalde if you want to add a new map since it seems very RPG-ish due to the castle and it makes sense for the castle to have the highest level bots.
Also a little off-topic; but have you considered adding a ultimate generation upgrade and/or passive regen upgrade to help out if we get a devestating combo for the final boss?
Eichenwalde would certainly be a good choice for a second map (it’s also the starting and final map for my other RPG mode, Loot Quest).
The biggest balance/difficulty problem in World of Overwatch in my opinion occurs when there is too much of a level disparity in the player team, and none of the high level players has really specced into damage. The lower level players then will struggle to kill anything because level has such a huge impact on stats. For hard bosses, clever team compositions are usually able to deal with them quite easily, as long as at least one player near the boss’s level has specced into damage.
But I’ll see if it’s easily possible to add something like extra ult charge.
I’m currently considering redoing the script for WoO since the old one was written before MODIFY GLOBAL/PLAYER VARIABLE AT INDEX was added to workshop. So there is a lot of potential for optimization there and I think I could also do the respawn system a lot more efficiently now. This would free up some script size and possibly lower server load, and it would make it a lot easier to add more maps (though I’d still want to be very careful not to introduce anything new that could increase the risk of crashes).
