'Overwatch' Year of the Dog Event News: To Feature New Map and Capture the Flag Mechanics
Video game developer Blizzard has revealed the upcoming Lunar New Year for its first-person shooter massively online battle arena (MOBA) title "Overwatch," which is the Year of the Dog. This special event will grant players the opportunity of obtaining new skins for their favorite heroes, as well as a brand-new map made for capture the flag specially to fit the theme.
To discuss some of the details for the upcoming special event, a video was released featuring the director of "Overwatch," Jeff Kaplan, and the map for capture the flag, which is loosely based on a very beautiful, albeit, modernized temple in Thailand called Ayutthaya. More importantly, Kaplan also stated that Blizzard has taken a lot of their fans' suggestions to heart by eliminating the possibility of ending the match with a draw if neither team is successful in capturing their opponent's flag — which Kaplan described to be "anti-climactic."
Instead, the match will go into sudden death, wherein both teams' flags will be moved somewhere in the center of the map, as well as decrease the distance that players will have to travel for a more tense and fast-paced gameplay at this time. Furthermore, players will find it much easier to pick up the flag during sudden death, but will not have access to abilities or skills that involve increasing a player's move speed, or providing them invulnerability — which are usually granted by support heroes. This is called "restricted abilities," which eliminate any opportunities to exploit the game's mechanics.
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If players attempt to grant these skills to those who are holding the flag, it will automatically drop.
Any major gaming event will not be complete without free in-game goodies. For this year, six legendary skins will be made available for some of the "Overwatch" heroes. Kaplan was very honest about the fact that some of these skins were made for heroes that players do not often use, and it is safe to assume that these skins might entice others to use these characters more. However, Kaplan also assured that Genji and Mercy will be two of the heroes that will be receiving one legendary skin each from the six that are going to be available.
The Year of the Dog event is scheduled to run for about four weeks, which is a lot of time to play capture the flag competitively.
