Blizzard Explains Overwatch’s Vague Respawn Change in Latest Update

When Overwatch‘s latest update went live, it came with a “general” change that fans have been struggling to make sense of. According to the patch notes, Blizzard “adjusted the respawn timing to limit defensive stalling strategies when the offensive team has a clear advantage and plays aggressively.” Many understandably questioned what this entailed, prompting Principle Designer Scott Mercer to offer the following explanation on Blizzard’s forum:

There was an existing system that slowly increased the defender respawn time in the case where there are more attackers than defenders on an objective for 30 seconds. The defender respawn time then increased in a linear fashion up to a maximum when the attackers held an advantage for 90 seconds.

We simply retuned the timing so that the increased defender respawn time starts after 15 seconds of attacker advantage, and also reaches the maximum possible increase of defender spawn time at 75 seconds.

Note that this timer doesn’t immediately reset to 0 if the attackers temporarily leave the objective area due to something like avoiding a D.Va Self-Destruct or Mei Blizzard or otherwise no longer have a numerical advantage on the objective. The “attacker advantage timer” instead reverses and counts back down to 0. 

The update also added Doomfist alongside making several notable changes, all of which are detailed here.

[Source: Blizzard]

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