Sun, Jun 12, 2016 by Miggy

Hello Heroes, 

    The world could always use more heroes, and the UGC staff are excited to announce that we will be opening the league to Overwatch!  While things on the backend are still being hammered out (thank you Fornaught and Snowblindfrog), we are drawing closer to having team creation ready by high noon within a few weeks.  Barring any unforeseen obstacles that arrive, we will be able to host a summer season!

    For the first season of Overwatch, we are aiming to have an 8 week season with 4 weeks playoffs, similar to our setup for TF2.  A map poll recently went out to give us a general feel of what maps should be used for the first season.  While most maps were relatively even, the top three scoring maps were King’s Row (Hybrid), Watchpoint: Gibraltar (Escort), and Nepal (Control), with Hanamura (A/D) and Route 66 (Escort) lagging very far behind.  With this in mind, we will be including the first three and excluding the last two in our first season.

    While Overwatch is heavily inspired by TF2, there are differences in gameplay as well as rulesets.  As such, we will be taking a different approach with Overwatch than we have with TF2.  For now, and hopefully a long while into the future, we will be following the rulesets that the Blizzard devs are pushing for as best we can. There are some maps that this will feel different on than in TF2, but unless the Blizzard devs change how they want these maps played, we will be following their format.  For example: Escort maps will not follow a stopwatch format, and will instead be scored on the ability to push last or not.  While some other tournaments are implementing a stopwatch that is not in-game, we will be trialing Blizzard’s style so that we will be able to provide a season’s worth of player feedback.

    Since this is the first season of Overwatch, the number of divs per region will likely be limited to one, with the season used to test map rules, get a general feel of player/team abilities, and so on, to improve future seasons.  That is to say, players that do well this season would be placed in a higher division in the following season.  Among other topics of discussion by our admins are match days, signup deadlines, map schedules, and the finalization of rules, which will be released after they are decided upon and set in stone.

Please feel free to come forward with any questions that you may have, as well as any concerns that arise! 

-UGC Overwatch Staff