Overwatch 2: A Game Mode is Receiving Love Next Season

Keeping in tune with their weekly blog posts, Overwatch 2 released a new Director’s Take. Alec Dawson discussed the theory that Overwatch 2 developers serve as groundskeepers, cultivating the game through significant events and releases and trimming the hedges (maintaining the current systems). Season 17 will see three changes: a new Flashpoint map, reworks to the current Flashpoint maps, and map voting.

Overwatch 2 New Flashpoint Map

Flashpoint has been in Overwatch 2 since 2023. Besides the addition of a speed boost out of spawn, the game mode has seen few changes. There have been no new maps and no changes to the maps themselves. Season 17 is changing that. At the beginning of the season, players are traveling to Morocco to experience the brand new Flashpoint map, Aatlis. The team has taken learnings from the previous Flashpoint maps and implemented them into Aatlis. Navigation, objective fights, and chokepoints were all influenced by these learnings.

Those same learnings are getting taken to New Junk City and Suravasa. In the Season 17 Midseason Patch, both maps are getting reworks that should upgrade the player experience of Flashpoint. Flashpoint itself has not been problematic, but rather, the lack of maps in the game mode has made it dull and repetitive. Hopefully, we see more Flashpoint maps in the future.

Overwatch 2 Map Voting

Another requested feature for Overwatch 2 is Map Voting. Finally, in Season 17, players will influence what maps they get to play. The exact implementation is still to be confirmed, but this is a significant upgrade to the player experience. The Overwatch 2 developers will use the data gained from Map Voting to help determine which maps and game modes will need updates in the future.

Overwatch 2 Season 18 Perk Updates

Perks have, overall, had a positive impact on Overwatch 2 gameplay. Most of the perks have increased the fun factor of a hero or negated some of their weaknesses, allowing for a better experience. However, some perks have lost their impact, and the developers aim to change this. In Season 18, every hero is getting at least one new perk. The predominant goal here is to keep the system fresh while also providing some heroes with more transformative Major Perks than they currently have.

The biggest complaint with the perk system at the moment is that there is often one perk, especially for Majors, that is better than the other. Hopefully, we will have better options that make it significantly harder to choose between them. The ideal situation would be to get more perks to choose from. However, it appears that the developers want to keep it at two for the time being.