http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-11-04-blizzard-announces-sombra-new-arcade-mode-new-maps-and-a-professional-overwatch-league

Overall good news for Overwatch.

So tell me this, I don't follow Overwatch to actually know, but I have scrolled through a lot of Overwatch Tumblrs because I'm weird like that. How did people know how Sombra would look like? Was it leaked beforehand? I've seen fanart of her that had that hairstyle and general appearance.

@an_ancient: There was a leaked image of her a while back. People did not know for sure that it was her until the other day but it was strongly suspected by many.

@n00bs7ay3r: Aww shucks, I thought there was more to it than that. Oh well. Nice design and short movie though.

All these new changes and additions Blizzard are doing sound fantastic. Blizzard continue to make me a happy customer.

She seems a bit OP. She can teleport, turn invisible and go super fast, disable abilities at range, disable health packs for the enemy and boost their production for her own team, see when enemies have their ults, see injured enemies through walls passively, and has crazy damage output. There is no way she is not getting nerfed before release. As it stands she is an instant pick for both teams. Not saying she doesn't already have good counters, but I can't think of another hero that has as versatile a powerset. She almost makes Tracer redundant.

@burncoat: I doubt it's as extreme as you say if all you're doing is basing what you think the details of her abilities/damage output will be just from that character video

@colourful_hippie: I'm basing it off watching streams. With her damage output she can shred through D.Vas at range. Her hacked medkits are ridiculous on maps like Anubis and force the 2 healer meta unless you want your support to never heal.

She's going to be counterable, but you're also going to see her in every game.

@burncoat: Its not entirely surprising that people's first experiences with her is making her look too strong. That's not really a guaranteed sign of her being over-tuned right now. There are other reasons why she might also seem too good at the moment. I do agree that she will likely see some adjustments because of the nature of her abilities, but I think its too early to get the OP train rolling. She hasn't even been on ptr yet, so lets wait until she gets out of the phase designed to balance her out a bit.

People don't know how to play around her yet, and she seems like she's definitely made to counter some of the most common picks as well while being countered by some more uncommon picks. That isn't necessarily a bad thing as long as people can deal with her after having time to get used to her. For example, Winston might be the perfect pick to knock her out of stealth frequently and shut her down. He can chase her easily, zone her out with his gun, and he doesn't really lose much of his ability to keep her away from the team if she hacks him. Widowmaker and Hanzo may also be more useful if she sees frequent play because I would guess their detection abilities can reveal her location as well even while cloaked. I didn't actually see a game where anyone tried that though so that's just an assumption.

The way I see it Sombra is here to balance out a lot of the heroes who are constantly picked nowadays in the competitive scene. The ones who lean very heavily on their abilities for most of their output like Anna, Reinhardt, Zarya, etc. etc. to help others shine who don't get as much of the spotlight.

The way Blizzard handled Sombra just sucks and frankly puts me off the game. They teased her from what, June? And the entire process was too long and not rewarding enough.

If their pace will be two characters per year, I don't think it will be enough to keep me interested a long time.

I also kinda hate Sombra as a character, the game is incredibly offense oriented already, you almost always win on offense. And with her it makes it even harder to defend, since she can just run in invisible into your defenses and ruin them with one click of a button.

Sombra seems OP but damn i love everything about her except the accent. Blizzard needs to ramp up the amount of characters they release though. RB6 Siege is having 8 new operators within its first year while Overwatch is going to have what? 2, maybe 3?

I should probably buy Overwatch soon. Although I am all in on Titanfall 2 right now.

New characters and new maps are fine. I heard a Symmetra rework was slated for November, though, so where is that?

No the Symmetra thing sounds like it's still a ways off. Probably won't see anything until next year.

My only issue with Sombra is her ability so see injured opponents through walls. That seems extremely overpowered and completely arbitrary. I can understand if she could see hacked enemies at all times, but this seems way too strong for a secondary ability.

@veektarius: They said at the Q&A that symmetra rework is going to take some more time. They went into it with the same mindset as D.va but then realized that she needs more changes than the D.va did. They gave her shield ability as an example. It's not very engaging/exciting for players but breaks the game when it's too good. So it sounds like that may get the boot altogether in favor of something else. They didn't give an estimated time, but they are working on it.

I don't know, everything they are changing about the game makes me glad i didn't get it now. Arcade mode seems cool but they are forcing a 1 hero limit in quick play? That's fucked, bad enough competitive mode made the game way to fucking serious for me already and now you cant even just have fun crazy full matches? bleh

@oursin_360: There is a mode in arcade that is just quick play without character limits for people who want to play duplicate heroes.

I'm all for doing whatever you want in quick play, I play there just for fun, but I won't miss entering a room to see 3 widows picked. Or being up against a duplicates comp that my team doesn't know how to counter. Once that novelty wears off you start to realize how groan worthy that is even in quickplay. I can see how an outsiders perspective would see that as being pretty lame to change, but it's not as fun the 100th time you play a game you know you're going to lose.

You can.

Just read the details

The mods and I over at the Your Overwatch Discord compiled a Google Doc of information on Sombra. It mostly pertains to what Hack works against and what it doesn't and what you can Hack through.

The link to the doc is here. We'll update it as we find more information worth noting.

Sombra really drives home for me how much I've begun to detest the character designs in Overwatch. Not like kits/playstyles because I still think those are mostly really fucking cool across the board and Sombra is no exception in that regard. I just mean like personality and looks and whatnot. At this point, it just feels like "waifu bait/cosplayer dream/Sourcefilmaker porn fuel"-the video game when it comes to character designs.

That's just my ol' grumpy ass talking though so meh, whatever.

The 1v1 mode sounds like something I could see myself getting into so I'm pretty pumped about that. I had to get up and do something when they started talking about the Overwatch League during the keynote and, for some reason, I had just assumed it was going by yet another run-of-the-mill esports league like Capcom, Riot, and Valve had done for their respective games. However, after learning what it is, I'm genuinely excited about that too. It sounds neat. That said, I'm still pretty skeptical about the long term viability of Overwatch as an esport, but hey, maybe the people at Blizzard making millions probably have a better idea than me.

@babychoochoo: I think that's more an indirect thing where they design their characters to feel like characters that could exist in The Incredibles and in turn people make a lot of porn out of that kind of stuff. But that's whole weird discussion that might be a tad off-topic.

I think OW has some serious potential as an esport if they can work on the presentation a bit. The production values on the World Cup and the Overwatch Open were pretty fantastic, and they already have the means of getting the content out there through the ESL. Some of the pro OW streams are already closing in on 100k viewers . How far it can grow past that, who knows. I do like the sound of what they're proposing with the Overwatch League though just from the potential of it sounding like a better situation for the actual players than having to whore themselves out to sponsors and being at the mercy of some rather borderline scummy tournament organizers.

So just a heads up to anybody not following things too closely, Sombra and the new arcade are live. Played a few games of 1v1 and didn't really enjoy it. Not a fan of cat and mouse type stuff. Played a few 3v3 and this seems a little better but still nothing more than a distraction. I do very much like the whole new loot box incentives to play arcade though.

Season 3: RIP the Beyblade Meta.

Long live the Nano Visor Meta.

I've had fun with 1v1 and 3v3 myself but I can see how it could be tiresome if the opponent plays endless hide and seek (at least until the timer runs out and locations are revealed). Dueling Phara's at my skill level (very low) is funny as you hope to hit a lucky rocket onto a flying rival.

Are these arcade modes, the 1v1 and 3v3 I guess, matched up by skill level at all do we know or is it just randomly?

Mystery Duel is traaaaash, but I'm really excited by what the 3v3 playlist could turn into - I think it's the perfect team/map size for weird shit that wouldn't necessarily gel with the regular Overwatch modes. Elimination is fun right now, but if they build that playlist up over time with a few more maps and maybe CTF or smaller-scale KOTH or something, I could see myself playing a lot of it.

I do wish that map had like, a couple of health packs on it, though.

I think for 1 v 1 of 3 v 3 elimination to work the map really has to have health packs on it. Otherwise it really makes characters like 76 and roadhog way too good in 3 v 3 and 1 v 1 without health packs often just becomes who sees the other person first. Honestly 1v1 mirror matches could be a lot more fun if they took away some characters that actually make zero sense for the mode. Bastion should, if each player is smart enough, be a draw everytime with each player waiting for the other to come to them. Also I think the arcade mode varient (where everyone has more health and much faster cooldowns) would be a cool mode to take up a slot in the arcade section. Maybe use it to replace 1v1 or something.

I'm just glad there's some real casual modes. I haven't needed to block a bunch of jerks each match since they rolled it out.

1v1 is pretty great to me but I do think something needs to change with 3v3. It's too easy to get trolled by a player rage quitting. The nice thing about threes is that even if the other team has a healer player skill can compensate. I think a single health pack spawn in the middle of the map or dual health pack spawn on either side would be pretty alright. I like the single health pack spawn would be best and could push fights towards it but it could easily be abused by a Sombra player at that point. Again not a huge dilemma.