Today's “Overwatch” patch has brought in much of the new promised content, including both the Team Deathmatch and Free-for-All Deathmatch game modes and the new Widowmaker-focused map, Château Guillard. It also brings player reporting to consoles, which is part of the reason why the download size is 16GB on PlayStation 4 and 14.3GB on Xbox (it’s 6GB on PC).
Deathmatch modes are live
For over a year since it launched in May 2016, Blizzard's fan-favorite shooter only let teams of players compete against each other by completing objectives. Players capture a point or a flag or something.
But you were always capturing, which lacked a certain, “I just want to kill something” quality, until now.
Deathmatch is a free-for-all fracas in which each person is trying to rack up as many kills as possible. The first player to reach 20 points wins, with one point awarded for striking the final blow and one point subtracted for a death due to environmental or self-inflicted damage.
Team Deathmatch is slightly more organized, as two teams of six battle to be the first to 30 kills, a process complicated somewhat by the fact that Mercy resurrections will reduce kill counts.
Reporting system for consoles
“Overwatch's” Patch 1.14 added the system, allowing players to report bad behavior on Xbox One and PlayStation 4.
It's a much-needed addition to the game, as toxic players have run amok on consoles. To report someone on a console, you can select that player from your “recent players” list. A drop-down menu now has the “Report” feature. You can report them for abusive chat, poor teamwork, and any of the other troll behaviors.
Château Guillard map
Blizzard will be adapting the game's maps to facilitate deathmatch modes, and it's added a new map, Château Guillard, for Free-For-All.
In Blizzard’s official description, the small map is Widowmaker's "ancestral home," though it's unclear if she's lived there before. It belonged to the Guillard family—an influential French family presumably related, somehow, to Lacroix—before the family's power declined decades after "the Revolution."
Château Guillard is nothing like any of the others.
It’s very confined, has no objectives to take or push, and is just a field for players to run around and shoot people in. The new map is full of some fun things like jump pads and chokepoints to ambush your enemies in, but it’s also chock full of lore.
In other news, the announced changes to “Overwatch’s” competitive game mode have been applied in full. Season 6 will last two months instead of three, control maps will be played in a best-of-three instead a best-of-five, and more competitive points will be awarded for wins from 10 to 15.
