Plus, an update to Overwatch’s highlights feature.
Blizzard today revealed an upcoming overhaul to Overwatch’s loot boxes and highlights system. Game director Jeff Kaplan offers a rundown of the changes in the video above.
Although the changes to highlights are the focus of the video, the loot box news is the most welcome part of the update. Any seasoned Overwatch player knows the feels of buying a new loot box and getting excited over a legendary item only to have it be a duplicate. The credits you get as compensation are not enough to heal the sting of false hopes. Thankfully, Kaplan says the reduction in duplicates will feel “fantastic.”
If you’re worried you’ll receive less credits after this update, Blizzard’s got you covered. The amount of credits loot boxes offer as rewards will increase to compensate for the reduced duplicate items.
“You have to keep in mind that the system doesn’t have infinite content,” Kaplan warned, “so at some point you’re going to get duplicate items … but we think the changes should be very drastic and significant.”
As for the highlights feature, Overwatch will save your top five highlights for 24 hours, even if you log out of the game or power off your system. What’s more, you can “bookmark” a moment during a match by pressing a Capture key. This sends the highlight to a Recently Captured area, where up to 32 clips can be stored at a time. You can then save these as video files on either your console or PC.
You can try out both the loot box and highlight updates on Overwatch’s public test region on PC, though no date has been given for a public release just yet. We’ll keep you posted on the latest.